Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Clarence and Hazel, Signing on the Line

Among several interesting donations made recently to the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society are two large, ornately bound books containing handwritten records of the Lake County government.

One is titled, "Record of Recognizance Bonds," and memorializes some of the law-breaking that went on in Lake County from 1877 through 1892. I have glanced through it and was delighted to find various interesting things like adultery, and assault and battery; also a mystifying crime described as "maintaining screens on Sunday" — I don't know what that means, but it was occasionally practiced in the early 1890s by familiar residents of Hobart. I suspect that maintaining screens had something to do with saloonkeeping, but I don't have time to figure that out.

More pertinent to today's post is the other book, titled, "Applications for Marriage License," covering just a single month: January 1922. And from that book, I present to you the marriage license applications of Clarence Schavey (one of the children of Henry Schavey, Sr., and thus a brother of Mable Schavey Breyfogle) and Hazel Comstock (about whom I know nothing).

2014-9-30. C. Schavey marriage license application
(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.


2014-9-30. H. Comstock marriage license application

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow you found it after all. Looks like I had the date right, January 1922. I can tell you that Clarence and Hazel divorced in 1936 both citing "cruelty". Clarence went on to get married 2 more times and died in 1964 after a car accident.

Hazel remarried and moved to Plymouth where after a time in a mental asylum sadly committed suicide in 1950. It's really interesting to see the actual license.

Rachel