Robert Hanell's tiny tombstone leads to a dead end

This tiny tombstone bearing only a name at the far west end of the Chariton Cemetery's oldest section is covered with snow this morning --- obscuring the sole physical reminder of a young man whose memory has been lost almost entirely to passing time.

Cemetery records, reconstructed at the turn of the 20th century after originals were lost, contain no mention of anyone by this name. Compilers of the 1981 "Lucas County, Iowa, Cemetery Records" apparently overlooked the stone.

The only published trace of Robert seems to be this paragraph from The Chariton Patriot of Wednesday, March 4, 1874: "Robt. Hannell, aged 24, died in this place last Saturday, of typhoid fever. He was a promising young Swede, having formerly clerked at Braden's but later at the 1st National Bank."

This would place his death on Feb. 28, 1874, and provide a birth year of about 1850, most likely in Sweden. But Lucas County census records seem to contain no references to Robert or others with a similar surname. Many Swedish immigrants had begun to settle in Lucas County by that year, however.

Eight years later, a young woman named Ebba Hannell, age 26, born in Sweden, was married in Chariton on Jan. 31, 1882, to a 19-year-old farmer named Andrew J. Anderson. Ebba gave the names of her parents as John and Tressy Hannel. 

Was this Robert's sister? Her birth year would have been ca. 1856 and she would have been about 18 when Robert died so that certainly is possible.

Thinking I might be able to find more by following Ebba, I was able to locate her in the 1885 Iowa census, living with Andrew on a farm near Chariton. They were sharing their home with a young man of 18 named Gustof Soderstrom, no relationship specified. His birthplace was given as Illinois.

By 1900, Andrew and Ebba had moved west and were living in Ogden, Utah, where his occupation was given as contractor. By 1920, they were living in Salt Lake City and operating a boarding house. His occupation still was given as contractor/carpenter.

Ebba died on Oct. 24, 1923, at County Hospital in Salt Lake City after a month-long illness of encephalitis lethargica and was buried on the 27th in Mt. Olivet Cemetery. By this time, however, she and Andrew were divorced, according to her death certificate. The informant on that certificate was a gentleman named Frank Otto Peterson, who shared Ebba's address --- 24 East 4th South, the rooming house she was proprietor of. He seems to have known little about Ebba, other than the fact she was born in Sweden. He did not know her birth date --- she was estimated to be about 60 --- nor the names of her parents.

And that, for the time being at least, is the dead end that little tombstone in the Chariton Cemetery has run me up against.