Grubbses, Campbells, Sutters, and Hodils: Margaret Grubbs and her husband Samuel Hodil

Lottie Campbell's sister Emma appears on the 1880 census in Indiana Tp., Allegheny Co., living with Samuel Hodil, 74, and his wife Margaret, 65. Emma is listed as "domestic servant" and "grandniece". Margaret, it turns out, was born a Grubbs, so here is a likely connection with the mother "Sarah Grubbs" mentioned on the death certificate of Emma's and Lottie's younger sister Sarah's death certificate.

Hodil families on the 1870 Federal census.

Samuel and Margaret Hodil's family is fairly easy to track.  Their nine children were as follows:

• Frederick Hodil, b.5 July 1832. He married Ann Campbell some time in the early 1860s.
• John Hodil, b.20 June 1834. He married Sarah Jane Wible around 1860.
• George Gilliam Hodil, b.15 September 1836. He married Mary Jane Hassinger, some time before 1880.
• Susanna Hodil, b.17 April 1839. She married George Weber in 1859.
• Sarah Ann Hodil, b.2 July 1842. She married John Shaw around 1885.
• Samuel J. Hodil, b.30 September 1844. He married Sarah Jane Henry in the mid-1860s.
• James C. Hodil, b.29 April 1847. He married Anna M. Sutter around 1871.
• Rachel M. Hodil, b.20 September 1850. She married George Hassinger around 1872.
• Margaret M. Hodil, b.9 November 1854. She married John R. Rickenbaugh about 1875.

(Mary Jane Hassinger (1844-1933) and George Hassinger (1850-1933) were brother and sister, found on the 1850 census in Indiana Tp. with their parents Henry and Eliza Hassinger. It was probably not the first time, and certainly not the last, that siblings in the Grubbs and Hodil families married siblings in another.)

This family appears in various permutations in Indiana Tp., on the Federal censuses for 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 -- their name is found spelled "Huddle" and "Hoddil" before it settles down to "Hodil". Margaret died 20 July that year, and Samuel seven years later, on 18 August; they were both buried in Pine Creek cemetery.  (Frederick, John, George, Rachel, and Margaret, and their respective spouses, were also buried in Pine Creek.)

There do not, unfortunately, appear to be any Grubbs brides or grooms in the mid- or late-1800s in the "Pennsylvania Marriages, 1709-1940" database at FamilySearch.

Anna Sutter, James's wife, was as it happens the daughter of Ursula Sutter, the mysterious Lotta Sutter's "aunt" on the 1880 census.  This therefore gives us two connections now to Lottie Campbell McCully, the Sutter one (the family who took her in) and the Hodil one (Emma's great-aunt being Margaret Grubbs Hodil), three if you count that Margaret was born a Grubbs.

Assuming that Emma's, Lottie's, and Sarah's family had been broken up -- since they certainly do not appear together in Allegheny Co. on the 1880 census -- we can say that it is probable that one or the other, and more likely both, of their parents had died by 1880.