Bought of E. Batterman

Here is a receipt that Timothy McAuliffe (senior?) carried away from Ed Batterman's shop on a September day in 1908:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Jocelyn Hahn Johnson.

Visions of Concrete

The new year, 1923, brought dreams of pavement:


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

From the Lincoln Highway to Lincoln and Tenth would be the route of today's State Road 51. From the brickyards and the Chicago road to Miller would be Lake Park Avenue.

Speaking of pavement — the next column we find William Raschka winning a lawsuit against the Federal Paving Co. — the same company that had recently lost a court battle with some Ross Township farmers.

The story in the right-hand column about the lecture course interested me mainly because of who was selling tickets — among Hobart's high society, we find Lovisa Chester Nelson in her little house in the village of Ainsworth.

10,000 Kisses

Haken S. Hazelgreen's work — railway and road construction — sometimes took him out of town for weeks at a time. It was probably from a work site in Danville (Illinois?) that he wrote this letter to his young daughter, Elna, in 1904, sending 10,000 kisses and begging her to improve her handwriting.


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Danville June 28th 1904

My dear lowing Elna

How should I thank you for your kind and nice letter of the 24th inst. I am well and is glad to here that you is in the same circumstances but I am werry werry sorry I do not be able to meet your wishes and request to meet you sone but I am thinking so much more abouth you now dear lithel toddelix hwen you next writh chanse your hand a lithel wi have lithel hard to read it your lowing letter. Good by darling Lord be with you. Your afectionat pappa

10,000 kisses

H.S. Hazelgreen.

Haken was born in Sweden and came to this country at about thirty years of age, so it's no wonder if he struggled a bit with English. He was able to win contracts for significant projects and supervise American crews, but English in a nine-year-old's bad handwriting was almost too much for him.

On the outside of the folded letter, he noted that it was intended for Elna J.J. Hazelgreen, personally.

Lots of Them

On Christmas Day 1922, over there at 61st and Arizona, the family of William and Louisa Lute had an intimate family dinner, just the 37 of them.


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Hobart Gazette 29 Dec. 1922.

Over in the left-hand column we find a summary of "a splendid year's growth" — all the buildings that went up in Hobart in 1922, as well as repairs and remodeling.

Henry Smith (whoever he was) built his house of Kellastone, something I had never heard of before. A little Googling turned up the ad below, which tells us that Kellastone is "imperishable stucco." I wish I knew the location of Henry's house so I could check on that "imperishable" part … if it's still there. I don't suppose they meant that Kellastone could resist the wrecking ball.


Image credit: stuccometrics.com

Hey, search engine, over here: Banks, Baumer, Brahst, Bruhn, Burris, Campbell, Carey, Carlson, Ciesilski, Demmon, Dewell, Fasel, Fasel, Ferren, Fleming, Flick, Gransow, Gresser, Gruel, Harney, Henderson, Jahnke, Kasonovich, Kibler, Killigrew, King, Kozub, Kramer, Kucaba, Lutz, McAfee, Metaxis, Miscevich, Mundell, Newman, Niksch, Norris, Palm, Peddicord, Phillips, Popp, Ream, Scharbach, Scholler, Schuelke, Schuknecht, Schwuchow, Scull, Smith, Smith, Sohn, Thompson, Verplank, White, Zelibor

Bobsled on a Snowy Day

In honor of the (let us hope) last snowfall of the season, which is now turning the ground into mud, here's a picture of some snowy transportation.


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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

The photo is undated; based on general appearances I'd put it in the 1920s. The location is not specified. It might possibly be the old James Chester place, but I can't say for sure.

The woman second from the right looks like "Aunt" Nancy Thompson (as she was known to the young Harmses), Eva's mother. The rest of the people are unidentified.

The sled was probably a wagon for three seasons out of four. When snow fell, you'd take the wagon wheels off and put on skids.

Streetcar on Third at Main, 1939

Here's a scan of a negative I bought recently:


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The negative appears to date to 1939, based on the envelope it came in:



As interesting to me as the car is the background — the south side of 238 Main, with a barn-looking outbuilding that has since vanished.

Dan Kleine points out that it would be natural for someone to photograph a streetcar in February 1939, since the line was going to be shut down in March of that year. He also did some research on the names listed on the envelope, and found that John A. Rehor was a published Nickel Plate historian and photographer. W. Lupher Hay was described as a "rail photographer" by Dean K. Fick in The Lakeside and Marblehead Railway (2003), and it seems he once used a railroad car as a summer cottage — how cool is that?

The negative has been donated to the Hobart Historical Society.

Welcome Back, Zobjecks

The Zobjeck family had moved to a farm somewhere in Porter County in the spring of 1921. Less than a year later, they were coming back to Hobart.


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Hobart News 28 Dec. 1922.

Also in that column, we find Herman and Minnie Harms both sick with quinsy — but, of course, they recovered, unlike poor Daisy Chester Scroggins.

After the family reunion at the Sauter home, it looks as if Mrs. Frank Severance (née Clara Sauter) and Mrs. A.G. Epps (née Lizzie Sauter) left for Grand Rapids. Somehow, I don't think Ed Sauter, Sr., was part of the reunion.

The Spaghetti House

Or: It Came from New Zealand, Part 2.


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The interior of the matchbook:




Don't know who ran this place, can't find it in any of the few directories I've checked, can't date the matchbook cover.

In the 1979 article on downtown Hobart, nobody seemed to remember any connection between spaghetti and 337 Main St.



Anyway, here's some cute New Zealand stamps.

Augusta Juhnke Lewin

The day after Christmas 1922, Augusta Lewin passed away at home in the Shearer house.


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Hobart News 28 Dec. 1922.

Here we learn that in addition to her daughter, Ida, and her son, John, she had suffered the loss of three other children.

See also "Death of Mrs. Lewin," Hobart Gazette 29 Dec. 1922.

♦    ♦    ♦
The News of December 28 also carried this less depressing item:

Make Abbott's a Habit

Today's random old matchbook cover has come to us all the way from New Zealand. Don't ask me how it got there.


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Of course we've all heard about Abbott's, and some of us have experienced it.

I took down some of what Eldon Harms told me about John and Sarah and their restaurant:

That Sarah, she was a worker. She cooked, she waited tables, she swept and mopped and cleaned. John was what you might call the PR guy. He'd stand at the cash register, dressed up all sharp, watching Sarah work.

When we went to Abbott's, we'd park where the bank is now, then walk up the back alley, come in through the back door, walk right through the kitchen and go sit down in the dining area. Nobody ever objected.

I can't find any information to help me date matchbook covers produced by the Ohio Match Co.