Martha Moll

From the Busse autograph collection.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

While I fail to see any connection between the color of pine needles and the choice of friends, evidently this little poem was popular in this place and time for autograph albums — we shall see it again.

Martha was 14 years old and the middle child of Gustav and Huldah Moll. The 1910 Census shows the family of eight — counting Huldah's elderly mother — living on Kelly Street (possibly neighbors of our friends Charles and Anna Lee). Gustav worked as a section foreman for one of the railroads.

At this point I don't know what became of Martha. The 1920 Census shows her still single, still living with her parents, and I think I've found a 1925 phone directory that shows her working as a bookkeeper in Gary, still living in Hobart … and beyond that I can't trace her.

Here she is in a formal portrait that is undated, but I would guess it was taken within a few years of her signing Lena's album.