Hanged from the Rafters

Having asked around about this story, which I stumbled over in the microfilmed newspaper, I have been told that hanging oneself in the barn was a bad habit endemic to this area. I expect if I keep reading the microfilm I will encounter more such stories.

Sometimes I wonder whether I ought to write about every sensational thing I find in the old newspapers, just because it's sensational. This event, for example, happened closer to Merrillville than Ainsworth. Outside my bailiwick, perhaps. And yet no one in Ainsworth, at the time, would have drawn a line to stop news at the border of the village, or town, or township, or county. In fact the newspapers at the time reported sensational things from all over. A juicy murder or suicide or a lesser crime, if remarkable enough, anywhere in the nation or even the world could make it into the newspapers for no reason except to titillate the readers.

I'm not going to report sensational things from New York or Georgia or California, with the excuse that Ainsworth people would have read of them in the papers. But there's no point in quibbling about town limits when I'm dealing with an event that happened to neighbors.


(Click on image to enlarge)
The George Boyd farm as shown on a 1926 plat book.

George and Addie Boyd owned a farm just east of Merrillville, on the north side of the Old Lincoln Highway (73rd Street). They had three daughters, Lenore, Lucille and Ellen. Around 1926, Lenore married Leo Bachelder. She was then 23 years old, he about 24. She did not have to leave her childhood home; the young couple lived with her family, while Leo commuted to his job at a steel mill in Gary.

Late in the afternoon of February 13, 1929, Leo, who worked the night shift, left for the mill with his co-worker, Edward Brackler. About an hour after they arrived at work, Leo told Edward that he wasn't feeling well and intended to go home. He left work, but he didn't go home — he went instead to a pool hall in Merrillville. He spent several hours there.

Around 11 or 11:30 that night, he finally came home to the Boyd house. Lenore was already in bed. Leo came in and spoke to her for a moment. Then he said the dogs were making noise outside and he was going to "see what was the matter with them."

Lenore fell asleep. When she awoke about 5:00 a.m. on the 14th, Leo was not in bed. She got up and looked around the house — no Leo. On the dining room table, she found some money and a piece of paper with her name in Leo's handwriting. Afraid something was seriously wrong, Lenore spread the alarm throughout the household. Everyone began looking for him.

George Boyd had already been out to the barn and not found his son-in-law there, but around 9:00 a.m. he went to the barn again. This time he happened to glance upward, and a streak of sunlight happened to be shining into the topmost part of the barn — and there George saw a body dangling from a rafter.

It was indeed the missing Leo. As far as anyone could piece events together from the scant evidence, he had gone out there shortly after speaking to Lenore. He took a flashlight — which still sat on the rafter above him — to light his way. He climbed up into the hayloft and pulled up a ladder which he then used to climb to the top of the barn. After tying a rope around the rafter and his own neck, he kicked the ladder out from under himself.

But why? No one knew of any troubles Leo had that were serious enough to drive a man to suicide. He had been a bit unwell lately, suffering from the flu — but such a mild case that he had not even been confined to bed. His wife and in-laws were mystified.

The coroner's jury returned a verdict of "suicide due to brooding over recent illness."

Lenore and Leo had no children. Lenore eventually recovered from her loss, it would seem: A Pictorial History of Merrillville, which does not mention her first marriage, tells us that she married again and went on to live a long and happy life, eventually retiring to her childhood home.

Sources:
♦ Allman Gary Title Company. Atlas and Plat of Lake County Indiana. Rockford: The Thrift Press, 1926.
♦ 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.
♦ Clemens, Jan. A Pictorial History of Merrillville. Hobart: Review Printers, Inc., 1976.
♦ "Leo Bachelder, of Ross Twp., Commits Suicide This Morning." The Hobart News (Hobart, Ind.) 14 Feb. 1929.
♦ "Local and Personal." The Hobart News (Hobart, Ind.) 21 Feb. 1929.

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The Boyd house, where these events took place, stands just east of I-65, on the north side of 73rd Street. It is a large, two-story, red brick house, still beautiful in old age.