A Grand Trunk Hero

The Fratzke family had come to the U.S. from Germany in 1914 — just ahead of World War I. By 1920, they were renting a home in Ainsworth. The family then consisted of William Sr. (39), his wife Bertha (37), daughters Martha (14) and Hilda (13), and son William Jr. (11).

William Sr. worked as a laborer in a Grand Trunk Railroad section crew. Possibly within a few years his son had joined him on that crew, or perhaps William Jr. just felt a sort of family interest in the well-being of the railroad because of his father's work. Whatever the reason, he rendered a service to the Grand Trunk and its passengers that brought him a reward and a mention in the Hobart newspaper.

The day was November 18, 1928. William Jr. was out on the tracks west of Ainsworth when he discovered a wash-out so serious that he feared it might cause a derailment of the next passenger train, which was due through Ainsworth shortly. He hurried back to the Ainsworth depot and notified the Grand Trunk officials there, and thus the passenger train, the Hobart News said, "was probably saved from being wrecked."

There were six daily passenger trains through Ainsworth in 1928, and only one of them actually stopped. The other five were express from Valparaiso to Chicago. If the train in question had been any of those five, it would have been moving pretty swiftly when it hit the washout. And I can believe the washout was serious — you don't have to walk very far west along the tracks before you find yourself looking down a surprisingly high, steep grade into wide gullies in the landscape below.

William's reward was a $25 check from the Grand Trunk Railroad and a mention in the Hobart News. I would say also the gratitude of a trainful of passengers, but unless the conductors told them of the washout, they were probably just ticked off about the delay.

Sources:
♦ Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Note: Enumeration Districts 819-839 on roll 323 (Chicago City) Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920; (National Archives Microfilm Publication T625, 2076 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
♦ Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart News (Hobart, Ind.) 24 Jan. 1929.
♦ Grand Trunk Railway System. Local Time Tables: Lines in Michigan, Indiana and Illlinois (in effect April 1, 1928).