The twenty-three oldest: the census list of 1880

1880 · every resident over seventy-five, as the enumerators returned them

Chapman's strangest list is a roll of survival. From the 1880 census, as furnished by the enumerators and filed in the clerk's office at South Bend, Chapman prints every person in the county over seventy-five. Olive Township's twenty-three, reported by its enumerator James Curry, are: Joseph Adams, 76, and Nancy Adams, 77; Samuel Bates, 79 — the schoolmaster Bate under the census's spelling; James Caterlin, 75 — the Catterlin of the sketches; Jane Davis, 77; Barzella Drollinger, 79, and Nancy Drollinger, 77 — the Druliner family under a third spelling; Isaac Faurote, 75, and Mahala Faurote, 78; Mary Flannigan, 75; Margaret Frisby, 80; John Fredinberger, 75; Anna Goolbeck, 84; Christian Herpolshimer, 75, and Anna Herpolshimer, 77; Maggie Harmon, 80; Andrew Kush, 90, and Anna Kush, 80 — the surname is the township's Rush in the list's spelling, and both print; Elizabeth Lane, 79; Nancy Nango, 90; John Nauok, 86; Benjamin Nickerson, 84; and Gabriel Reed, 79. "The oldest men in the county," Chapman concludes, "are David Griggs and George Jacobs, of Penn, and Andrew Kush, of Olive, each aged 90. The oldest women are Mrs. Butchoski, of this city, and Mrs. Nango, of Olive, each aged 90." The township that buried its first settler in 1830 still held, fifty years on, two residents who had been born in the eighteenth century's last decade — and the list that proves it is the most complete single page of names the nineteenth-century record gives this ground.

Sources

1. Chapman (1880), "Aged Persons in the County," pp. 569–570 (Olive Township list, reported by James Curry), read first-hand.