Orramel Chapin ~ Boarding House Keeper

Because I'm still trying to determine the parents of my third great-grandmother, Susan Rood (see Susan Rood Chapin ~ A Challenging Ancestor), I am going back to look more closely at any and all records that I have for her and her family.

Since I wrote about the family's westward migration at Orramel Chapin Moving West Part 1 and Part 2, I have found a couple of additional pieces of information about Orramel Chapin, my third great-grandfather, who married Susan Rood in 1816.

I knew that he was in Hartford, Connecticut, in the 1830 U.S. census, in a household with a total of nineteen, ten of whom were men between the ages of 20 and 29. This puzzled me until I recently discovered a Hartford City Directory at Ancestry in the U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 database. It listed "Chapin, Orramel, Boarding house, front 71."

That explains the additional people counted in his household.

Hartford City Directory, for 1828 (Hartford: Ariel Ensign, 1828), p. 21;
digital images, Ancestry (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2469 : accessed 22 January 2019).

By the time of the 1840 census, he was in Chicago, Illinois, with thirteen in his household including six men between the ages of 20 and 29, who didn't fit into the family as I knew it.

Lowell Copeland Lived in a Church

It recently occurred to me that I had never looked for my great-grandfather, Lowell Copeland, in a city directory, which is a genealogical source that can provide different information than a census, a vital record, or a newspaper article, and if you're lucky, you can find an ancestor in consecutive years and see if there are any changes.

As I have previously shared at Grandfather's Occupation, Lowell Copeland was living in New Trier, Cook County, Illinois, between 1900 and 1920 and all three of his children were born there. By the time of the 1930 federal census, he was living in Michigan City, Indiana.

Lowell Copeland appeared in Chicago City Directories from 1897 to 1902, where he was listed as Asst Treasurer, Sullivan Machinery and resided in Winnetka. He appeared in the Evanston City Directory (living in Winnetka, a nearby suburb) from 1912 to 1922. 

Some time between 1922 and about 1926, Lowell moved to Michigan City, when his information might have been collected for the following year's city directory. His entry is in a gray rectangle in the image.

Caron's Directory of the City of Michigan City, Ind. for 1927-1928 (Louisville, Ky: Caron Directory Co., 1927), p. 131; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2469 : accessed 10 January 2019).

His name was Lowell Copeland; I'm not sure why the middle initial T appears here; his son (my grandfather) was Lowell Townsend Copeland.
Ethel M. (Greeley) Copeland was his wife.
His occupation was pur agt: purchasing agent for the Sullivan Machinery Company, which I wrote about at Grandfather's Occupation.
Lowell and Ethel lived at 614 Franklin. Well, the first thing I like to do when I see an address in a city directory is to search for it on a map.