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1816 – 1907 · this section's standing surname warning
The rule stated once, at the family it governs: four distinct Moon households stand in the Penn Township record — (a) William Moon's, (b) Nelson Moon's, (c) Solomon Moon's, (d) James Moon's — and no source read connects any two of them. They are entered separately, under their own heads, because a shared surname in one township is not a family.
(b) Nelson Moon (Chapman, p. 831): born in Yates County, New York, 1 January 1816, son of Reynolds Moon, the War of 1812 soldier of the Wars file, and Nancy (Briggs) Moon; he came to the county in 1839, settled in Penn Township section 6, owned 175 acres, worked railroad wood contracts, and was a Mason for over thirty years. He married Betsey Hoard (31 August 1837), daughter of James Hoard, the second 1812 soldier of that file; nine children, six living. His daughter Caroline married Eli O. Newman, the township's 28-battle survivor of Company I, 9th Indiana — the marriage is stated in both sketches.
(c) Solomon Moon — the band's largest single-person conflict, printed whole. Chapman (p. 831): born in New York 25 March 1825, son of Wanton and Barbara Moon; came to this county about 1855; married Charlotte Hollingshead 26 June 1861; nine children, four living (Annie, George, Ira, Laura); died of consumption, after travelling West and South for relief, 25 December 1872; Methodist Episcopal. Howard (vol. 2, pp. 930–931): the same birth date, the mother named Barbara Biggs; the family moved to Michigan in his boyhood; he removed to St. Joseph County "in the '40s," worked for others until marriage, bought 40 acres of timber in Penn Township and grew it to 160; married Charlotte Hollingshead 26 June 1851; the children Annis, Arvilla, Amy, George, Ira, Laura, Charles, and two dead in infancy — with Arvilla, Amy, Ira and Charles also deceased by 1907 (Ira living in Chapman, deceased in Howard; Charles present in Howard, absent in Chapman); and Solomon died at age 53 — born 1825, that is about 1878, six years after Chapman's date. The shared day-and-month of the marriage, ten years apart, stands as both books print it. Solomon's daughter Annis married John H. Parett (Howard, pp. 936–937), whose entry stands in the Howard-generation article below.
(a) William Moon (Howard, vol. 2, pp. 934–935): born in New York 3 May 1820, came to St. Joseph County in 1838, taught school in the county a number of years, married Fannie Eutzler (b. 5 December 1824, in Ohio; brought by her parents at about six — a Eutzler daughter, tying this household to the Eutzler article); the couple removed to an Elkhart County farm her father had entered, among the first residents of what is now Wakarusa, and returned about 1852 to Penn Township, where he bought 200 acres and died 3 November 1857 — "active member of the Methodist Episcopal church in Osceola, having assisted in the erection of the church there," the record's own proof that an Osceola congregation's building predates 1857. His son George E. Moon (b. on the farm, 25 December 1856) owned 240 acres, ran as president, treasurer and salesman of the Crystal Springs Creamery, married Alice L. Funk (31 March 1887; five children named with their birth dates in Howard), and sat in the Maccabees at Osceola and the Osceola M.E. church.
(d) James Moon (1875 Atlas biography): born 6 March 1816, "first came to St. Joseph county, Ind., May 30, 1834, and is one of the old settlers in Union township" — Union, not Penn. His son Calvin Moon (Chapman, pp. 829, 831) — Valparaiso College, three years in the engineer corps of the C. & C. So. R.R., elected County Superintendent of Public Instruction in June 1877 and unanimously re-elected in June 1879 — resided in Penn Township section 32 in his own right (the atlas has him teaching the Lakeville village school in 1874), and the father's Union Township settlement is printed so the son's Penn residence is not back-projected onto him.
Sources:
- Chapman, pp. 829, 831 (Calvin, Nelson and Solomon Moon); Howard, vol. 2, pp. 930–931 (Solomon Moon), 934–935 (William and George E. Moon), 936–937 (Parett); 1875 Atlas biography (James Moon) and Penn footnote.