The Indiana Genealogical Society posted a link on Facebook to a collection of online Historical Indiana Plat Maps at the Library of Congress. My mother’s roots are in Indiana so I searched Clay Township and I found the name ‘Orpha Martin’, my 3rd great-grandmother on an 8.33 acre lot in Dillsborough. The map is in a book entitled Atlas of Dearborn County, Indiana, published in Philadelphia in 1875.
Orpha’s husband, Dr. Samuel M. Martin, had died in July of 1874, a year before the book was published. Just a short distance away from Orpha’s property is the land of J.W. Eggleston, her son-in-law, husband of her eldest daughter, Orphena. It must have been a comfort for Orpha to have her family so near.
The atlas is available from the Library of Congress online at https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4093dm.gla00092/?sp=45 (image 45 of 54). There are some engravings of local sights in the atlas including one of the Dearborn Hotel. I can imagine that Orpha saw the hotel often when she went shopping or on Sundays when she went to church, and maybe even visited there and enjoyed a concert or lecture.
Orpha Courtney Martin is buried in the Old Dillsboro Public Cemetery in Dillsboro, Dearborn County, Indiana. Her gravestone says she was born on March 1, 1814 and died on July 22, 1890 (76 yrs, 4 mo, 21 days). Click here for her Find a Grave memorial.
One thing that puzzles me is this: there is an Orpha Martin listed in the 1880 U.S.Census living in Brownstown, Indiana which is about 60 miles west of Dillsboro. This Orpha is a ‘Border’, although she is listed as head of household. To add to the puzzle, there is a death record for Orpha Martin in Jackson County, Indiana where Brownstown is located. This record has the same date of death as her gravestone and gives her age as 75.
In the 1888 Indianapolis City directory there is an Orpha Martin, widow of Samuel, boarding at 309 Lexington Avenue.
So the questions that come to mind: why would she move to Brownstown, 60 miles away from Dillsboro (1880); why would she move to Indianapolis, more than 70 miles away from Brownstown (1888); and why did she move back to Dillsboro where she died in 1890?
My next step is to look for other relatives who I know were living in Indianapolis at that time and see if they were at the same address. That address seems to ring a bell for me. I have gone through the first 38 pages of the 1880 census looking for a name of a known relative in Brownstown, so I need to look beyond page 38 for someone with a familiar name. Maybe I should look for one of her granddaughters.
It is possible that there were two Orpha Martins of the same age living in Indiana at the same time, so I have a challenge before me to figure out this puzzle.