Olive Esther Harter was born in 1861 in Allen County, Indiana, the eldest child of William H. and Lorinda I. (Hall) Harter. Both William and Lorinda were natives of Ohio; Lorinda’s family arrived in the “unbroken wilderness” of northern Indiana in 1836, when she was still an infant, and William came to Indiana as a young man in 1854. They were married in Allen County, Indiana in 1859 and were living in Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana when the census was taken in 1860. In 1870, William, Lorinda, their children Olive, Theodore, Mildred and Isaac, and a Catherine Harter, aged 23 years (relationship unknown) were living in Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana. William was a farmer with $3000 in real estate and $400 in personal property. The 1880 census located the Harter family (William, Lorinda, Olive, Theodore, Mildred, Isaac and Lorinda’s father Isaac Hall) residing in Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana. William and his father-in-law were both farmers. William and Lorinda’s youngest daughter, Emma Loretta, had died at the age of only one year in 1872.
Robert S. Robertson’s History of the Valley of the Upper Maumee River, published in 1889, told of William: “In 1859 he bought twenty acres of land which he farmed about ten years, and then bought forty acres; to this he has added until now he owns 220 acres of as fine land as there is in the township. He has the largest and best bank barn in the county. …Of their five children, four are now living: Olive Esther, Arthur, Milly and Isaac. He and [his] wife are members of the Presbyterian church at Hicksville. In 1866 he was elected trustee of Springfield and served nine years in succession, and in 1880 was again elected for four years without any solicitation from him. He has been president of the Hicksville fair association for ten years. On two occasions he was nominated as a candidate of the r**n party for county commissioner, and in his own township and Scipio, where he is well known, he ran ahead of his opponent. Mr. Harter is a leading stock-raiser and makes a specialty of short-horn cattle and thoroughbred Poland China and Chester white hogs.”
Of Olive Esther “Ettie,” her father’s biography may serve to illustrate what her childhood was like. She was brought up on a farm, and by the time she was old enough to take notice of the world around her, her family was quite well-to-do, for an Indiana farming family. Though the census records from 1870 and 1880 do not state it specifically (and there were places where it should have been noted), she later reported in 1940 that she had completed the eighth grade, so she did attend school. Ettie was married at the age of twenty-one years to Simon Lorenzo Swaidner, also an Indiana native. She and Simon had four children. Jessie May was born when Ettie was twenty-two; Vernon Lorenzo was born when Ettie was twenty-four; William Lee was born when Ettie was twenty-six, and Mildred was born when Ettie was thirty-two. Mildred died at the age of only three months in 1894. Ettie’s mother, Lorinda (Hall) Harter, passed away in 1895, when Ettie was thirty-three.
In 1900, Simon, Ettie, their children Jessie, Vernon and William, and Ettie’s niece Lois Harter (my great-grandmother) were living in Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana. Simon was a farmer and all three children were attending school. Ettie’s younger brother Isaac Sheridan Harter, married in 1891 to Margerett Rosallia “Rose” Snyder, had two children with Rose – Herbert and Lois. Rose died just two weeks after Lois was born, and though Isaac raised Herbert, who was five years old when Rose died, he gave Lois to his sister Ettie to raise. The conditions of this arrangement might be lost to history at this point. Herbert’s daughter Fayne had only this to say in her book in 1969: “After her [Rose’s] death, Lois, the infant daughter, was taken to Ike's sister, Ettie, to be raised.” No extant records belonging to Isaac ever mention Lois again, yet in records belonging to Ettie, Lois is usually referred to as a “niece,” and only in Ettie’s obituary is she referred to as “adopted daughter”. I don’t know how Lois was treated by her father after she was “taken” to Ettie’s family to be raised – or if he ever had anything to do with her again. No one ever spoke or wrote that Lois was mistreated or that Ettie was anything less than a loving mother to Lois. In fact, Fayne wrote, “Ettie and Lorenzo raised Lois Harter, the only daughter of Ettie's brother Isaac, as one of their own family.” Looking back from more than a hundred years in the future, though, Ettie was always given a lot more credit for raising Lois than Lois was given for accepting her lot as a rejected daughter and a niece with an extra mouth to feed.
From Fayne Harter’s 1969 book: “Olive Esther was always called Ettie. Ettie was given 20 acres with a house about the time of William's second marriage, when he divided his property among his children. The house was located just a short distance east of the original Hall family home. Ettie was a Methodist for many years.” Ettie’s father William’s second marriage, to Lucinda M. (Wolf) Nelson Lybarger, took place in 1906, and so Ettie owned the house and land for more than a decade before her husband passed away. I have never been able to find out what she did with it until she began living there as a widow. I also find the phrase “Ettie was a Methodist for many years,” a curious one. Did she stop being a Methodist? Did she become a Methodist later in life? How was that different from whatever religion she had identified with before – or after? Did she do or say something to cause the Methodist church to oust her? Who knows…and when I last corresponded with Fayne in 2004, she was in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease and would not have been able to remember why she wrote what she wrote in 1969. She passed away in 2015.
The 1910 census located the Swaidner family residing in North Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana. Simon, Ettie, Vernon, William and Lois lived together on the Swaidner farm, where Simon was farming, both Vernon and William were schoolteachers, and Lois was attending school. Ettie’s father, William Harter, passed away in 1916, at the age of eighty-three years. Simon and Ettie were farming in Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana when the census was taken in January 1920. Simon Lorenzo Swaidner died at the age of sixty years in March 1920. According to the Hall-Harter Reunion book, which Lois kept and which was among her papers when she passed away (and then among my grandmother Vivian’s papers when she passed away, which is how I came to see it), “The third annual reunion of the Hall-Harter family was held the first Sunday in September 1923, at the home of Mrs. Etta Swaidner in Harlan, Indiana. …The day was spent in social chatter interspersed with music. At the noon hour a bounteous dinner was served on the lawn. Arthur Harter [Ettie’s brother] was elected president for the ensuing year, with the next meeting to be held at his home.”
In 1930, Ettie was living in Springfield Township, Allen County, Indiana, likely in the house she had received from her father in or near the town of Harlan. Again, from the Hall-Harter Reunion book, “The eighteenth annual reunion of the Harter family was held on Sunday, June 19, 1938, at Mrs. Swaidner's in Harlan, this being her birthday anniversary. Had a cafeteria dinner that everyone seemed to enjoy. Later in afternoon homemade ice cream was served.” Ettie was still living in Springfield Township in 1940.
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Friday, December 6, 1956.
“Mrs. Olive E. Swaidner. Funeral services for Mrs. Olive E. Swaidner, 85, of Harlan, who died at 9:30 a.m. Thursday at the home of a daughter, Mrs. Cody Yerks of Milan Center, where she had lived for the past six years, will be conducted at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Oetting Funeral Home, Harlan, and at 1:45 o'clock in the Harlan Methodist Church, the Rev. Warren Hamm and the Rev. Bruce Pearson officiating. Burial will be in the Scipio Cemetery. Mrs. Swaidner had been bedfast for the past two weeks. Survivors include two sons, V. L. Swaidner of near Harlan, and W. L. Swaidner of Troy, O.; an adopted daughter, Mrs. Lois Wetzel of near Fort Wayne; 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. The body was taken to the Oetting Funeral Home where friends may call.”
Ettie gets this platform, eighty years after her death, because she raised my great-grandmother, Lois. Lois’ eight children were counted among her own grandchildren, whose biological grandparents were long deceased. In family records and writings, Ettie is given the highest praise for stepping in to raise her brother’s daughter. (Reading between the lines, I believe that Isaac likely blamed Lois for his beloved wife Rose’s death and certainly did not think he could rear an infant alone.) While I don’t have much to go on to describe what Ettie’s life was like, I imagine it was much like that of other women of the time. Her youngest child died as a baby; she was a farmer’s daughter, a farmer’s wife, a farmer’s mother, a farmer’s mother-in-law, a farmer’s widow. She likely worked very hard at manual labor every day of her life and was likely never paid for any of it. She was likely never even acknowledged for any of it – except for that one day in 1898, when she decided she would take in her niece and never look back. Thank you, Ettie, for stepping up. Rest in peace.
“One generation passes to the next a suitcase filled with jumbled jigsaw pieces from countless puzzles collected over time and says, ‘see what you can make out of these’.”
-Kate Morton, The Clockmaker’s Daughter
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