Biography: Lillian Blanche BYRUM DITZENBERGER
Her father was Andrew Jackson BYRUM, who was born in North Carolina, but whose family immigrated to Indiana by the time he was eight. Andrew's older siblings, Calvin and Isabel, appear to have been twins. Their births are both estimated at 1840, and the census taker took pains to pair their ages by placing a bracket around them. Andrew was born two years later, 1842 (d.1926, IN). Like so many, his father was farming and Andrew was a hand on the family farm in 1860 at the age of 18.
Judging by the age of his first child, he must have married Susan A MILLER around 1869 when he was 27. Susan was born in Pennsylvania around 1848 (d.1934, IN), so she was about 22 at the birth of her first child. Lillie Blanche was born the fourth of seven children on May 31, 1879 in Coesse, Whitley Co., IN. (For more about the county and town, see the website of the Historical Society of Whitley County.)
Lillie happened to be born just before the 1880 federal census, which provides a snapshot of the Byrum family at the time. As mentioned, she was the fourth child. Her oldest brother was Franklin, age 10 (b.1870) and going to school, and then there was another boy, Ora Edward, age 8 (1871-1959), and then a sister, Stella, age 5 (b.1875). Lillie, the baby, was duly reported as one-year-old. Lillie's father, who went by his middle name of Jackson, was making his living as a shoemaker, a not uncommon trade, sometimes in adjunct to farming.
Three more children, all girls, were born to Jackson and Susan in the years before Lillian Blanche was eight. The oldest, Grace, was born in 1882 and then Lula Bertha, born 1884 (d.1945) and last, Ida M, born 1887. Of these seven children, the best records are for Ora Edward, who went to California, for Lillie, for Lula Bertha, who married and also moved away from Indiana and for Ida M, who married and lived near home as Lillie did.
Lillie remained in Indiana, where she met and married John Bert DITZENBERGER (b. Mar 1875) in 1897 (according to the 1910 census and estimated from the birth date of their first child). John's parents were William Nelson Ditzenberger (1853-1918) and Susan HOWARD (1836-1904). His mother, Susan, was seventeen years older than her spouse, and their only child, John Bert, was born when she was 39. Susan was from Ohio, but William Nelson, as were so many Ditzenbergers, was from Indiana, Boone Co., where the Ditzenberger reunions were once held in the city park of Lebanon.
The couple's first son, Ferdinand Dewey, was born in 1898 on July 4 in Whitley Co., IN. As recalled by one of John and Lillie's daughters, they lived on a farm adjacent to that of John's father, William Nelson. Census records show that Lillie's parents also remained in Whitley Co. In Whitley, Lillie gave birth to six more children over a span of ten years. Their second was John Fred, born in 1900, and then Nellie, born in 1901. This girl died two years later in 1902 or 1903, possibly the same year as her younger brother, Charles W, who did not survive his infancy.
In the summer of 1904, John Bert's mother, Susan Howard, died, leaving William Nelson alone on his farm with no one to keep the house. That same autumn, 23 Nov 1904, Lillian Blanche gave birth to the couple's fifth child, Bertha Ruth, although only three of those five children had survived. Susan, the sixth child, was born in 1906 and then Mabel Elsie, the seventh, in 1908.
According to one of these daughters, probably Mabel Elsie, her grandfather, William Nelson, did not long remain in Indiana after his wife's death. He is said to have turned his farm over to his brother, Perry, and leave it to travel. This is probably correct, although Perry Ditzenberger was not William's brother; he was a nephew. The census records show that Perry's family changed residence from Boone Co. in 1900 to Whitley Co. in 1910, suggesting they moved to take over William Nelson's farm in the interim.
There is the question of why it wasn't John who took over his father's farm. In 1910, Lillian and John Bert's family appears on the federal census record for Union, Whitley Co., IN, and John is recorded as a laborer. All is known is that he did not assume the farm. Instead, it was shortly after, around 1911 or 1912, that John Bert divorced his wife, Lillian Blanche, an event which could not have been long after the birth of their youngest on Jun 24, 1911, a boy named Edward. The account of one of the couple's daughters was that her father divorced her mother, and he moved away, leaving Indiana with her grandfather, William Nelson.
Lillie was now the single, divorced mother of six children ranging in age from infancy to age 13. In addition, her son Ferdinand Dewey, the oldest at 13, could not have been much help to her. Although he lived with the family while growing up, he had become an inmate of the Indiana School of Feeble Minded Youth by 1918, the date when he was required to fill out a WWI draft card. The 1920 census confirms his residence at the school. It is possible that his father's departure precipitated the need to place Dewey, as he was called, at the institution.
Also in 1918 (Oct 6), William Nelson died in Shasta, California, confirming his granddaughter's tale that he had left Indiana to travel. A half year later, 24 March 1919, Lillie Ditzenberger's attorneys placed a notice in the Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, notifying John B Ditzenberger, aka John Howard, administrator of the estate of William N Ditzenberger, of the pending complaint of non-residency and an injunction for $12,000.00. It's possible that John Bert was not found. In 2002, one of his daughters was still wondering what had happened to him after he left Indiana, and the 1920 census record still showed Perry Ditzenberger residing in Whitley, presumably still farming William Nelson's land. Other than secondary scraps of information, it's unclear whether William Nelson's daughter-in-law or grandchildren received any of his estate.
What is recorded, however, is that Dewey was not the only one of Lillie and John Bert's children separated from their mother in 1920. John Fred, 20 years old at the time, was a boarder in Fort Wayne, but the other children, ranging in age from eight to 15, were too young to live independently. Instead, their names, Ruth, Susan, Mabel E and Edward, appear on the rolls of the Mennonite Orphan's Home in West Liberty, Ohio.
John Fred may have been headed toward Ohio, too. At any rate, he married a girl named Ethel M Shearer around 1924, and they were living with Ethel's parents in Ohio in 1930 with a son named Paul F. Neither the 1920 or 1930 census records reveal anything of Lillie's whereabouts, although it's reasonable to assume she was in Indiana and knew of her father's death in 1926, Whitley Co., where he was laid to rest in the Coesse Hope Lutheran Cemetery. After Lillie's father died, her widowed mother went to live with Lillie's youngest sister, Ida M, who had married a man named Frank Golden, but had no children. They lived in Union, Whitley Co.
Lillie, presumably, was also aware a couple of years later when her daughter, Bertha Ruth married Joel DIENER and they had a son, Richard, in 1929. The Diener family resided in Elkhart, IN where Bertha, known as Ruth, died and was buried at the Elkhart Prairie Cemetery in 2000. Lillie and John Bert's daughter, Susan, died in Oregon in 1988. There's no death record (uncovered) for Mabel Elsie, but she may have lived as late as 2002. The couple's youngest son, Edward, died in Texas in 1985. Overall, the children were fairly scattered, especially considering they were Ditzenbergers, who tended to remain in Indiana (with notable exceptions).
Lillie's mother, Susan Miller, died on May 28, 1934 (age 86) in Whitley Co., where she was, like her husband, buried at the Coesse Hope Lutheran Cemetery. Only four months after her mother's passing, Lillie died, Jul 30, 1934, in Ft. Wayne, IN. She was 55 years old. She, too, was laid to rest in Whitley at the same cemetery as her parents. She was survived by six children and, at least, two grandchildren. Additional grandchildren were born after her passing.
There is no death record yet uncovered for John Bert, but it would be interesting to know what became of him. Did he die in California as his father did or elsewhere? Did any of his children ever see him again? What did his descendants believe of his departure and long absence? Did John know of the notice in the Fort Wayne newspaper or ever claim his father's estate?
I don't know.
