Mary Munch's Sorrows

I can't figure out Mary Munch. In my notes I find a report[1] from the autumn of 1922 that the barn at her home "in South Hobart" had burned, although the fire department managed to save the house and the chicken coop; the fire was allegedly caused in her absence by her son-in-law burning rubbish. If she had a son-in-law, she must have had a daughter. But I can't find her daughter in a census.

A few weeks later, Mary traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to bring her son to a hospital in Gary.


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.

Her son's surname being Wilson suggests a previous marriage, but in the 1910 Census, Mary Munch is described as being in her first marriage, and having no living children. In the 1920 Census, Mary was widowed and no questions about children were asked.

Joseph Wilson died December 23, 1922 (Indiana Death Certificates). The informant was Mary Munch, who gave her maiden name as Mary Maurice and Joseph's father's name as Paul Wilson. I can't find the Wilson family in the 1900 Census, the earliest place I would have any hope of finding them (since Joseph was born in 1891). The death certificate states that Joseph was married to a Josephine, about whom I know nothing.

After the loss of her son, Mary had a little more than a month of peace before she was caught up in a Prohibition raid.


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Hobart News 22 Feb. 1923.

According to the next day's Gazette, Mary claimed she was only storing the unused still on her place as a favor to Nick Drakulich.[2] If that was true, then she suffered for a crime without having had the fun or the profit from it.

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Over in the right-hand column of that Feb. 22 News, we see that Mary was not the only one having bad times that week. The old Wesley Spencer homestead may have been on Center Street near the Nickel Plate tracks — that location seems to be associated with the Spencer name. And I never heard of Thomas Scott before, but I can't help but be interested in a suicide whose wife, according to her death certificate, died of "acute alcoholism."

I'm a bit confused about what Paul Newman was planning to build (left-hand column above). That sounds like the building on the southeast corner of Third and Center, but the county records don't give 1923 as the year it was built. The 1922 Sanborn map shows a substantial building already there.

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[1] "Barn Burns in South Hobart," Hobart Gazette 3 Nov. 1922.
[2] "Locate Two Stills," Hobart Gazette 23 Feb. 1923.