♀Mary Hartman

Mary Hartman (1 January 1850 – 29 August 1920) was a lifelong resident of Mount Carmel, Illinois, the daughter of German immigrants and the wife of the physician Jacob Schneck, who in 1903 took out a passport for them both, to go abroad together for about six months. She was the great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Sereno Watson Schneck (1875–1953) and his daughter Mary Esther Schneck (1900–1968).

Early life

She was born on 1 January 1850 at Mount Carmel, in Wabash County, the daughter of John Hartman (1813–1896) and Mary Beal (1824–1890). Her father, a native of Hesse, was a blacksmith; the census of 1860 finds the family at Mount Carmel, with John Hartman owning real estate valued at $3,500, and lists Mary, aged nine, with four brothers and sisters, all born in Wabash County. Her mother’s obituary of 1890 names, besides Mary, three married sisters: Caroline, then living at Pittsburgh, and two wives of Mount Carmel men. A county history of 1883 records a further sister, Vina, who married in 1868 and died on 13 October of the same year, leaving an infant daughter.

Marriage and family

On 28 November 1872, at Mount Carmel, she married Dr. Jacob Schneck (1843–1906), a Civil War veteran born at New Harmony, Indiana, who had settled in the town as a physician. The county history of 1883 names them as the parents of one son, Sereno, born in February 1875. The census of 1870 still has her, aged 17, in her father’s household at Mount Carmel, with two sisters, Josephine and Leyda, and attending school. The census of June 1880 shows the family at Mount Carmel: Jacob, a physician; Mary, 30, keeping house; Sereno, five; and a fourteen-year-old servant boy who was attending school. The couple were still in Mount Carmel in 1900.

In May 1903 Jacob applied for a passport for himself, “accompanied by Mrs. Mary Schneck, my wife”, stating that they were about to go abroad temporarily and intended to return about 15 November 1903. The application does not say where they were going, and the records do not explain the journey’s purpose.

Widowhood and death

Jacob Schneck died on 18 December 1906. Mary remained in Mount Carmel as a widow. In 1910 she headed her own household in the town’s first ward, living on her own income with a servant; the census notes that she had borne one child, who was living. By 1920 she lived on West Third Street in a house she owned outright, with a young woman as roomer. A Navy pension index card for her husband’s Civil War service records a widow’s pension filed in her name. She died at Mount Carmel on 29 August 1920, at the age of seventy (her death certificate gives 30 August, but her stated age of 70 years, 7 months and 28 days from 1 January 1850 points to the 29th); an obituary appeared in the local newspaper the next day, and she was buried on 31 August at Rose Hill Cemetery, Mount Carmel. A family narrative says that her son built the family mausoleum there for his parents.

Notes

The censuses do not agree on her parents’ birthplaces. The 1860 census gives her father’s as Hesse and her mother’s as Bavaria; in 1880 both parents are given as born in Hesse-Darmstadt, and in 1900 simply as Germany. A family lineage chart places her mother’s birth at Brackenheim, in Württemberg. The copy of her 1920 obituary held by the family is too small an image to be read, so its contents are not known.