Daylight Squandering Time

The August 28, 1919 Hobart News, which carried the Ainsworth column buried in its middle pages, had several stories on its front page that caught my attention.


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A baseball game coming up for the Ainsworth Cubs! I don't know who Bakalar or Hudson were, but then I'm not a fan. The "Ainsworth base ball park" sounds pretty grand, but I expect it was just an open field.

A report on the further exploits of Marvin and Willard Hoover, the Hobart motorcyclists.

And daylight saving time is ending, for the present.

Notice the story entitled, "Judge Gary* Refuses Demands of Union Leaders." This is just one episode in a lot of labor troubles through the Calumet Region during the summer of 1919.** Gary, Hammond, South Chicago and Indiana Harbor all experienced strikes. By early August, some 12,000 workers from steel mills, tin mills, railroad shops and the American Bridge Co. were striking for higher wages, shorter working hours and better conditions. Later that month, when workers at a Hammond steel car manufacturer threatened to strike, Indiana's governor — at the request of the Lake County sheriff — sent in the state militia. In commenting on that story in its August 22 issue, the editor of the Gazette said, "The leaders of the strikers are mostly alien Reds and the government has agents there to arrest them with the view of deportation. The women are worse than the men." However, the "Local Drifts" column noted: "Deputy Sheriff Collver was scouring this vicinity the past week, enlisting citizens to guard the peace in Hammond. He was unable to get very many." Since some Hobartites may have been among the Gary strikers, I suspect there was more sympathy for the unions among Hobart's millworkers than in the office of the Gazette.

___________________________
*Elbert H. Gary, for whom the city is named.
**Any attempt on my part to better understand and relate the history of these labor troubles would involve me in much more research than I have time for, so I'll just pass over them with these brief comments, based on stories I skimmed through in Hobart's two weekly papers.

What About Lefty? (Random Old Photo)

Still working my way through a bunch of recent purchases. This postcard, postmarked 1945, would have been completely irrelevant for my purposes …


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… if it hadn't been sent to Ainsworth's own Cecil Tonagel.



Now that we have access to the 1940 Census, we can find Cecil and Ruby Tonagel in Ainsworth (with their children and her parents), operating their little grocery store.

Here is Cecil Tonagel circa 1959:


Image courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

The sender of the postcard, Bud Gierke, may have been Leon R. Gierke of Porter County.

But who was "Lefty," and what about him?

Ainsworth Items

Back in July 1919 the News ran one Ross Township column — now it's August and we have one actual Ainsworth column!


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From the Hobart News of August 28, 1919.

The excerpt from the 1926 Plat Book below shows (my best guesses at) a few of the locations mentioned in the column. At left, the Raschka land rented by Charles Henrichs; at center, Lovisa Nelson's 40 acres bought by Jacob Hurlburt (don't ask me why the 1926 Plat Book shows them still in Lovisa's name); at right, the James Chester land rented by William Shults, and just to the left of that land, the green dot shows approximately where Herman Harms was building his new silo.


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Hattie's Baby?

Sometimes I buy these postcards just to see what's on the back, if the seller hasn't scanned it. That's my way of playing the lottery.

Here's one that's not very exciting, as we've seen it before — Third Street in Hobart, looking east from the intersection with Main, circa 1910.


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But the message on the back had me intrigued.



I said to myself, "Self, I wonder if 'Hattie' is our own Hattie Schumacher Schavey."

The baby girl was born December 25, 1909. The 1910 Census, written May 5, 1910, shows William and Hattie Schavey with a baby girl, Grace, who was then four months old. So … it's possible.

I don't know who Margeret was. (The 1910 Census shows Miss Anna Schwieman, 35 years old, as a domestic servant in the household of Ferdinand and Norma Armbruster of Oak Park, Illinois.)

The Housekeeper's Social Life

The Nolte brothers' housekeeper, Sarah Read, had a more active social life than they did — which isn't saying much. In the summer of 1919, I suppose you could attribute the Noltes' quietness to grief over the death of their younger brother, but then they've been like that all their lives thus far. August 1919 brings two stories about Sarah's social life, and not a word about the Noltes'.

Sarah Read was a widow. She and her husband, William, had been married in England in 1881 and had come to the U.S. around 1889 (when William was 53 and Sarah 43). By 1900 they were in the Hobart area, farming in a small way on rented land near the Fox farm.

William died in September 1910. I do not know when Sarah joined the Nolte household, but the first mention I hear of her being there is this, in the Gazette of August 22, 1919: "Mrs. Wm. Read of near Ainsworth visited with relatives in and around Hobart this week." (I'm reading a lot into "near Ainsworth.")

If the Reads had any children, I don't know about them. Sarah did, however, have a sister, as we learn from this article in the next week's Gazette:


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Ann Jeffery (or Jeffrey) and husband John were in Hobart as early as 1880.

That obituary is a lot of newspaper space to devote to someone with a very tenuous connection to Hobart; I suppose it is evidence of the sisters' love for their brother-in-law, or pride in him.

♦    ♦    ♦
Speaking of tenuous connections, here's a story about an early encounter Louis Dunham had with a criminal:


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Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 22 Aug. 1919.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 29 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Pickpocket Caught." Hobart Gazette 22 Aug. 1919.

Henry's Secret Friend

I recently bought this weird postcard:


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I think that's supposed to be funny, but I don't get it. And I can't tell whether that "Oh you kid, I'll get you yet" was machine-printed to look like handwriting, or actually handwritten on the card by the sender.

Who the sender was is a mystery, since he/she didn't sign it. The recipient was Henry Hoffman.



Per the 1910 Census, Henry was about 25 years old, single, living with his parents and siblings on a farm in the Turkey Creek area. His father, John G. Hoffman, owned several parcels of land (see the 1908 Plat Map); I don't know exactly which they occupied.

From later censuses, I gather that Henry did not marry, after all. I can't find him in the 1920 Census, but in the 1930 Census, he's living with his parents in Hobart, working as an insurance agent, and giving his marital status as single (not divorced, not widowed). Same thing in the 1940 Census.

I showed this card to a long-time local resident and he remembered Henry Hoffman as farming this parcel shown in the 1926 Plat Book (there are also 40 acres north of the Hobart-Ross Twp. line).

Yet More Land Changing Hands

When Swan Peter Carlson died in 1919, he had been a Hobart resident for five years but still owned a farm in Ross Township.

As we learned from his obituary, Swan had settled on the "Harper homestead" when he moved to Indiana from Chicago in 1890. The 1874 plat map shows us 80 acres in Ross Township belonging to a C. Harper (possibly Calvin), and the 1908 plat map shows those same 80 acres owned by "S.P. & H. Carlson" — Swan Peter and (I believe) his wife, Hedvig (or "Hadwick," per the 1910 census).


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Late in August 1919, their daughter, Augusta Koehler, "traded her home and twenty acres on the Ainsworth road for a residence in Chicago," according to the News ("the Ainsworth road" being known now as Grand Boulevard, or State Road 51). It is not clear to me whether those 20 acres were all that was left of the old homestead, or whether that was only Augusta's share, the remainder being divided among her brothers. The buyer of the 20 acres was one "Wm. Blumenthal of Chicago."

I gather that Mr. Blumenthal was an acquaintance of John Dorman and intended to be an absentee landlord, as we find John Dorman, in the September 5 Gazette, offering for rent "the Carlson 20-acre farm 1½ miles south of Hobart."


Sources:
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "All Kinds of Wants." Hobart Gazette 5 Sept. 1919.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 4 Sept. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 29 Aug. 1919.

Scenes of Winter (WWI-Era Photo Album)

The next two photos are frustrating because both have handwritten notes on the back that I can't read because the photos are glued too well onto the album page.

I think this first one is "Myself," out hunting in winter.


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The second looks like the "J" bridge over Lake George, or possibly the Nickel Plate bridge. I think the photographer stood on the partially iced-over lake to take it — brave person.



And with that, we complete our tour of this little anonymous photo album.

But never fear! I have plenty more unidentified old photos of dubious worth, and I will get around to posting them soon!

Hobart Township, 1908

The good news is that I've finally added Hobart Township from the 1908 Plat Map to my Land Ownership page.

The bad news is that it's a pretty poor image (I photographed it myself!!!). I'll try to come up with a better one, one of these days.

Fox and Harms

John Harms grew up on the Harms homestead east of Ainsworth. In 1901, at the age of 24, he married Sophia Schavey. By 1910, it appears he had moved his wife and young son, Lester, to Valparaiso, while he worked as a railroad baggageman. (I say "it appears" because we have to allow for a couple of errors on the census-taker's part to conclude that this little family is the one we want.) But in August 1919 he bought the land that would become his lifelong home.


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Both newspaper accounts agree that the parcel was 40 acres, so I don't know how to account for the fact that it looks smaller than that in the 1926 plat book.



The 1891 plat book shows the parcel as being about 35 acres. Even then it was owned by the Foxes (John and his wife, Anna), but I have not been able to find them in the census earlier than 1900, when John was 50 years old, Anna 44, and they farmed that land with the help of their 20-year-old son, William.

The spring mentioned in the article was the only source of water for the house when John and Sophia Harms bought it. There was no running water in the house — you had to carry it up from the springhouse. Nor was there an indoor bathroom, or a septic tank. The Harmses remodeled the house to include those modern conveniences.

I am told (by the same person who told me the above) that the Fox-Harms house, which stood at 1722 East Cleveland Avenue, was demolished just a few years ago.

I have a couple photos of bits of the Fox-Harms house, accidentally taken while someone was photographing his beloved cars. The first is undated, but must be from 1957 or later. The second is from 1964.


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Images from a private collection.




Sources:
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "John Harms Buys John Fox Forty Acres Just East of Town." Hobart News 14 Aug. 1919.
♦ Untitled social column. Hobart Gazette 22 Aug. 1919.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Chokecherries

We have already seen the blossoms. Here is the fruit.

In late June, ripening:

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In July, ripe:

The View from a Canoe (WWI-Era Photo Album)

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

This photo comes from the same page as the first guy in a canoe we saw previously. For that reason, and the general perspective and tone of the photo, I think it was taken from the canoe that day.

One the page with "Myself" in a canoe, we find a picture of rabbits and the guns they were shot with, probably from a different hunting expedition.



I wish I knew whose house that was in the background, but there are no identifying notes.

Farm Buildings and Buyings

The Price family set about improving the farm they had recently bought. By early August 1919, they had hired numerous local contractors to do work for them:

F.B. Price of Ross township has given the contract to Wall & Fleming for the building of a new house and barn, including half a dozen outbuildings on his farm which he recently purchased from W.O. Halsted. The cement contract goes to Vincent Boyd and the electrical wiring to Henry Kegebein. He will install a private electric generating outfit, making his farm one of the most up-to-date in the vicinity.

I'm not sure if any of that glorious work has survived. I've gone out there and tried to spot anything that suggested 1919, but then I have trouble applying those boundaries, so clear in the plat maps, to the real land outside the window of my car.

♦    ♦    ♦
A little distance northeast of the Price farm lay some 200 acres that had been known as the Clinton farm for decades — as early as 1874 we find most of that land under Eli Clinton's name, and by 1919 it all belonged to Steve Clinton. Now it passed into the hands of David and Agnes Frank. Those 200 acres touched on the 167 acres that the Franks had farmed since at least 1908 (I can't find any earlier records of them).


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From the 1908 Plat Map: outlined in red, the Frank farm in Hobart Township; outlined in green, the Clinton 200 acres in Ross Township.

David Frank intended to continue farming all his land, with the help of his 20-year-old son, John. His other son, Robert, was 17 years old and probably still in school.

♦    ♦    ♦
If we look again at that 1908 map, we will notice the Bullock land due north of Ainsworth, 160 acres bordering State Road 51 and divided by the Deep River.



In 1919 this land changed ownership on paper only. Since 1912, Claude and Mary Ann (Chandler) Bullock had lived and farmed there. Now they bought out the shares in that land belonging to Claude's brother, Hubert, and sister, Ruth Mackey.

Claude was then about 39 years old, Mary Ann 34. They had two sons: three-year-old Kenneth, and little Gilbert, just past his first birthday.


Sources:
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 7 Aug. 1919; 14 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 Aug. 1919.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Burdock

It occurs to me that although I posted a photo of burdock gone to seed, I never got around to showing you its blossoms. Just look at what beauty you've been missing!


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Actually, you probably haven't been missing it at all, since you can hardly step out of your house without seeing one of these plants.

I already knew that burdock is ugly, prolific and unkillable, but until I did a little casual internet research, I did not know it had culinary and possibly medicinal uses. Now I don't hate it quite so much.



This particular specimen found in Jerry Pavese Park.

Guys in a Canoe (WWI-Era Photo Album)

On adjacent pages of the album, we have two photos of guys in a canoe — looks like the same canoe and probably the same day in both photos. Neither is identified in any way.


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.



The first guy seems to have caught himself a duck, or some kind of bird.

I think the second guy might be "Myself," the owner of the album.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Starry Campion

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Found in Fred Rose Park. A harmless little flower with a pretty name. I suppose the name is inspired by the blossom — with its five white petals, deeply fringed, its does look a bit like a star.

Air and Water

Henry Brand, a 51-year-old grocer from Hobart, went on a little vacation to Ohio in August 1919. He returned with a story to tell, and the Hobart News gave him credit for a "first":



The Gazette said, more moderately, that Henry "perhaps" was "the first or among the first Hobartites to fly through space."

It is a matter of interpretation. We know that George Severance, Jr. had learned to fly airplanes for the military some two years earlier, and had even survived a crash. However, though the Hobart newspapers seemed to treat George Jr. as a hometown hero, he was a Ross Township farm boy, technically not a Hobartite.

♦    ♦    ♦
And now we go from up in the air to down in the ground, as a town board meeting in late July resulted in a contract for some old friends of ours:

Supt.* reported a bid of $294 by Lee & Rhodes for furnishing all labor and tools in laying the Main street water extension from 6th street south about 600 feet, under and across the "J" tracks to 7th street. The town will furnish all material. The contract was let to Lee & Rhodes.

__________________
"Supt." probably refers to Robert Wheaton, superintendent of Hobart's light and water plant.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Henry Brand Takes Air Trip in Bombing Plane at Dayton, O." Hobart News 7 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart Gazette 1 Aug. 1919.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Culver's Root

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A single stem adorned with whorled leaves and topped by one or more spikes of tubular blossoms.



This plant was widely used in 19th-century medicine to purge the bowels. The Chippewas used it for that purpose, and also to stop nosebleeds, according to Jack Sanders. The name, Culver, is generally thought to be that of an early American physician whose exact identity is unknown, but who probably did a lot of purging of his patients.

Found in Fred Rose Park.

Liquid and Ice (WWI-Era Photo Album)

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Interesting little island there. Too bad "Myself" didn't identify this. I don't think it's local — where around Hobart could you see that combination of land and water, with that substantial highway in the distance? Perhaps this is somewhere around Layffatte.

Here we have a partially frozen body of water, and lots of snow. I'm sure it all seemed very impressive when "Myself" was looking through the viewfinder.

A Fledgling Barn Swallow (Random Pointless Photo)

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With some baby fuzz still sticking out among its adult feathers, one of the barn swallows has left the nest.

When I tried to crack open the window to get a better picture, it flew away like an old pro.

Its less adventurous siblings are still in the nest, or on the nest, since they scarcely fit in the nest anymore.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Sweet-scented Joe-Pye Weed

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Tall plants topped by delicate-looking clusters of pale pink flowers. Also known simply as sweet Joe-Pye weed. It has whorled leaves and cylindrical flowers.



There are various stories about the identity of the Joe Pye for whom the plant is named, but they all agree that he was a Native American medicine man. According to stories, he befriended European settlers in New England in the 17th or 18th century, using the weed that now bears his name to treat typhoid fever. (According to one story related by Jack Sanders, the European settlers responded to his kindness in the usual way — by chasing him off his own land.)

This variety of Joe-Pye weed grows abundantly in Fred Rose Park. I think it was planted there as part of the lakefront stabilization project.

A Twist in the Mausoleum Story

After I had waxed rhapsodical about the Gruel mausoleum and its mysterious absence from Crown Hill Cemetery, and then Suzi pointed me to an explanation on findagrave.com, I thought the matter had been pretty much laid to rest, as it were. Now I come across an unexpected twist:


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From the "Local and Personal" column of the Hobart News, 31 July 1919.

The Gruel mausoleum I was rhapsodizing about was indeed described as having six cribs. So it may have been there all the time, right under my nose. (I can't say for sure, because goodness only knows what happened in later years.) The Mundell mausoleum is every bit as impressive as the Gruel mausoleum's description.


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But now we have a 12-crib mausoleum to build, and eventually demolish.

Barn Swallow Progress Report (Random Pointless Photo)

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These great hulking birds are the same nestlings who, two weeks ago, were just little beaks poking up out of the nest.

Muskrat House

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Handwritten on the back of this photo:

Muskrat House
Nove – 1917
South In EJE Bridge
M_____"

The last part is illegible, covered by glue and paper.

This was interesting enough to "Myself" that he would waste film and paper on it.

There is handwriting on the back of the second photo on this page, but I can't read it at all because the photo is thoroughly glued to the backing.

The Kids Are Growing and So Is the Store

As Carrie Raschka's two youngest daughters had close birthdays, she decided to host a joint birthday party to celebrate Bernice's fourth and Wilma's second. (I haven't been able to find an exact birthdate for Bernice, but I believe it was sometime in July 1915; Wilma had been born July 15, 1917.) And so some fifteen little children came to the Raschka home on Lake Street on Wednesday, July 9, 1919. They spent the afternoon playing games and eating goodies. A week later Uncle Charles and Aunt Luella Olson came out from Fort Wayne, bringing with them 18-year-old Cousin Flossie and probably some birthday presents as well.

♦    ♦    ♦
Back in Ainsworth, the store that the Raschkas had enlarged in 1905 was growing once again:


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You will notice the lengthy article on that page about the return of George Severance, Jr. from military service. He was at last safe at home with his family, including his wife of two years — and I think in those two years they'd spent more time apart than together.


Sources:
♦ "Goldman's Store Building Being Enlarged." Hobart Gazette 1 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Hobart's First Soldier Returns." Hobart Gazette 1 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 10 July 1919; 17 July 1919.
♦ Untitled social column. Hobart News 19 July 1917.

Helen and Edna (WWI-Era Photo Album)

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.



Other than the handwritten first names, we have no information on these smiling young women. Nor can I tell where the photos were taken — in a town, apparently; perhaps Hobart. Perhaps not.

I wish I could tell what Edna is holding!

Another Farm Suddenly Empty

Just four months after one little farm family was wiped out by a train in Wheeler, the same thing happened in Merrillville.

Gustav Piske, his wife, Alice, and their only child, Arnold, had been renting part of the Blachly farmland, west of Ainsworth, from J.B. Blachly. Late in July 1919, they had visitors from Hammond: Emil and Anna Ebert, and their two young daughters, Esther and Ruth. The visit lasted a couple of days — great fun, I'm sure, for Esther and Ruth; their father was a factory worker, so the farm would have been a novelty to them, and they probably enjoyed playing with six-year-old Albert.

On the evening of Saturday, July 26, the time came for the Eberts to return to Hammond. Gust Piske would drive them, so both families crowded into his almost-brand-new car. Gust set out west on the Lincoln Highway; at Merrillville he turned north onto the Merrillville-Gary road (now called Broadway). Just a ahead, the C. & O. Railroad crossed the road. Gust approached the tracks cautiously, for the crossing was (in the words of the Gazette) "a dangerous one, the approach … each way being a steep grade" that limited a driver's view of the tracks. But Gust saw and heard nothing, so he accelerated up the grade and onto the tracks.

And at that moment a train came out of nowhere — "two engines running light, with only a caboose, at high speed" — and slammed into the auto.

Gust and his son were killed instantly. So too were Emil Ebert and his younger daughter, Esther, just nine years old. Rescuers found Alice Piske still alive on the pilot of the engine and rushed her to Mercy Hospital in Gary, but she died there.

Anna Ebert was also taken to Mercy Hospital, with fractures of the left leg and arm, but she was expected to live. Her 11-year-old daughter, Ruth, somehow escaped with only bruises and cuts.

And so the farm was suddenly empty, but for whatever animals the Piske family might have had. I do wonder what happened to the animals in such cases. I expect the neighbors stepped in and took care of the cows and whatnot, until some orderly settlement of the estate could be made.

The little Piske family now rests together in Waldheim Cemetery in Gary.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Five Killed at Merrillville." Hobart Gazette 1 Aug. 1919.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.
♦ "Two Families Nearly Wiped Out at Merrillville." Hobart News 31 July 1919.

Having a Wonderful Time (WWI-Era Photo Album)

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

A handwritten note behind this photo reads:

Jenings Family
June – 1918

At left is the "girl" we saw earlier. Since she's dressed exactly the same in both photos, this may be the same day; even, perhaps, the same place — the back yard of the elusive William Ramsey.

They all look a bit grim, but the woman at center, who I'm guessing is the mother, looks downright haggard. And that's probably a baby bundled up on her lap.

In contrast, on the same page, three happy young women, all smiles and blooms. I don't recognize the women and there are no identifying notes. I believe that is the high school on Fourth Street in the background.