Sunday, March 5, 2017

Query: Jeremiah Verdeman/Varden Harper, Harrison or Daviess Cos., IN


                Seeking information on Jeremiah Verdeman or Varden Harper, born in Harrison County, IN, October 10, 1811. He died on April 15, 1890, and is buried in Plainville, Daviess County, IN.

Sue Knepp
886 County Road 1500 North
Metamora, IL 61548
glknepp@mtco.com

2 comments:

  1. He is an elusive ancestor! He is my husband's 2x great grandfather from his son Mark Harper & was married to Antylanta (various spellings) Ann Horn,daughter of Henry Horn and Mazana (?) Griffin. Census records give us much of his (wandering) life story, but his parentage is still unclear.

    At one time, FindAGrave had part of Antylanta's story on it, from one of her daughter's view - 'She was the fourth child in a family of 12 children, and had a typical pioneer existence. Her father, Jeremiah Veredman Harper, of Scottish-Irish descent, was a cabinet maker by trade, but was also a builder of grist mills. After the late 1840's he averaged one grist mill a year at different places throughout the state of Indiana and Illinois. During the summer he would build the mills and operate it during the winter months, only to move the following spring to the site of another. Life was just one move after another for them, as they packed their belongings time after time into covered wagons and hauling themselves away to a new home. Often as the little family group traveled along over the uncultivated prairies they ran onto droves of groups of frightened deer, then quite common along the rivers. "All these things are only memories now, it was so different from what we see and know now. Now our homes are modern, someone else makes all our furniture. But it was not always so." She recounted a crude advertising scheme of her father which "worked' in the community in which the family lived, to advertise one of his own products and an innovation in household goods, a wooden washboard. Mrs. Brown recalls that she turned the lathe during its construction. Her mother, who had been doing the family cleansing previously without artificial aid of any kind, began to use the board. His neighbors came in and admired. Finally one suggested she be allowed to borrow it. Then use of the new machine became so general in the neighborhood that there wasn't a day but someone used it. Finally, one by one, the women could stand it no longer and came to the originator of it with orders to have one made’
    Jeremiah and Antylanta went their own ways by 1870; Jeremiah ending up in Daviess County, and Antylanta (spelled Amtlie on headstone) moved in with her daugher Mary Heim in Palestine Illinois. She was buried in Paxton Illinois in 1903.

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