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Note: Jonathan Rhode's mother, Rebecca Hurley Rhode, died when Jonathan was eight years old. After that, his father, Seymour Cobb Rhode, cares for his children for a short while, then goes west to Fremont Co., Iowa. There seems to be a custody question decided by the courts, as the children are "heirs of Rebecca Rhode" even though her father, Zedock/Zadock Hurley, is still alive. Jonathan lives with two uncles, presumably William and Thomas, before going to live with his father. He returns to Warren Co., and marries Dorothy Gray. A few years later, he and Dorothy and their oldest daughter, Rebecca Arvilla, move to Fremont Co., Iowa again. It is obvious from a letter Dorothy writes to her parents, William and Sarah Cobb Gray, that she is homesick. In 1860, Jonathan and Dorothy and their family (Sarah Esther Rhode Messner was born in Iowa) make their final move back to Indiana. They buy land in Warren Co., but sell it and buy a bigger tract of land just over the Warren county line in Benton Co. There they stay for the rest of their lives. Jonathan Rhode, who went by his nickname "Jont," had a congenital eye condition that made him nearly blind. Since his only son who survived, Charles, was his youngest child, his son-in-law, Floyd Stotts, husband of his daughter Elizabeth Lillis May or "Lillie May," helped him farm his land from the time of their marriage in 1882 until Jonathan died in 1893. Jonathan seemed rather skeptical of the men his daughters married. He told his only daughter-in-law, Sylvia "Nettie" Reed Rhode, wife of his son Charles, that he had made a pact with the devil and the devil paid him back in sons-in-law! Jonathan Rhode (Johnathan Rhode) is enumerated in the 1880 Census in Oak Grove Twp., Benton Co., Indiana with wife Dorothea, 45, and children "Lily May," 18, Jane 14, Kate, 12 and Charley, seven. The children's common names are used, not their real given names. All the children are listed as being in school; it was unusual for Lilly May to be so educated in those times.
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