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.