Saturday, January 19, 2013

Elmhurst, Illinois

  I have been busy scanning what seems like millions of family photos.  I am usually confined to a back bedroom with my computer and printer/scanner when I do this.  But I got a new toy for Christmas that has changed that.  A Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner!  It doesn't require you to be connected to a computer because it saves all the images onto an SD card and when you are ready, you insert the SD card into your computer to transfer the images.  Now I can scan anywhere!  It's really nice to be in the living room scanning and watching TV at the same time.
  I have come across a few old photos belonging to my great grandparents, Erick and Lulu Elsner, that I had not seen before.  Such as this one:
  This is a picture of their house in Elmhurst, Illinois.  I have been trying to figure out the timeline for the period of 1920 thru 1930.  I can't find the 1920 census for them, but I am sure they lived in Minneapolis, Minn at least part of the year, because their son Darrell (my grandfather) was born there in March 1920.  By the time the 1930 census was taken, they were living in Tucson, AZ.  And later they moved to California.  But some time during the 1920's they moved to Elmhurst, Ill.  
    Anyway, grandma Lulu almost always wrote the year on her photos.  I say "almost always" because she didn't do it on this one.  Of course!  Here is the back of the photo:

  So I have been looking for online City Directories for Elmhurst, Ill during the 1920's so I can figure out what years they lived in Illinois.  I have only found one online so far for DuPage County 1925-1926.  
  There is grandpa Eric and his brother Otto.  Grandpa Erick was very close with his brother Otto.  They were carpenters by trade and built and sold many homes during their lives.  They moved to Elmhurst because of the building boom.  
  I didn't find Fred in this directory. (Grandpa's other brother.)  In a previous post, I have a passage from the book Down Winsor Way that says Fred went to Elmhurst in 1923.  And Fred was living in Elmhurst, Ill when the 1930 census was taken.  So I expected to see his name between Eric and Otto.  The directory contains several small communities in DuPage County, and I checked every one of them, but no Fred.