Who's Teaching and Who's Being Taught

Here are updates on two young south-of-Deepriver women who embarked on teaching careers.


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Hobart News, July 5, 1923.

Esther Strong had earned her high-school diploma in 1922; the position at the Vincent school was her first.

The last we heard of Esther Guernsey, she was heading off to South Dakota in August 1920. I am a little confused about her parents — it appears she was born to Randolph and Nancy (Hardesty) Guernsey, but after her father's death in 1902 (when Esther was only about two years old[1]), her mother married Randolph's elder brother (by about 13 years), Chester. Nancy went on to have more children with Chester, so there were a lot of step-siblings in the family, but all had the Guernsey name from birth.

Esther Guernsey continued teaching school, I believe, until her marriage in 1933 (in Iowa) to Leslie J. Moreland, after which they located on a farm in Ross Township and she stayed home to care for their two adopted daughters (1940 Census). She is buried in Valparaiso.

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Hobart's budding artist, Dalia Messick, began an eight-week course at the Art Institute of Chicago, according to an item in the "Local Drifts" of the Hobart Gazette of July 6, 1923. She had just completed her freshman year at Hobart High School and had illustrated the 1923 Aurora yearbook.

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[1] Esther and her younger sister were mistakenly omitted from the list of survivors in the Gazette's account of Randolph's death.

Many Happy Days

H.S. Hazelgreen was in out Cincinnati in October of 1902 — supervising railroad construction work, I suppose. He wrote a letter to his little daughter Elna, at home in Lake Station, that probably reached her in time for her eighth birthday on October 24.


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Cincinnati Sta L Ohio Oct 22th 1902

The Lord Bless you

My Darling little Elna —

I here with congratulet you on your 8st Birthday and wish you many happe days and a good helt. You know when wi have a good helt wi injoi the life. I am glad that I can tell you I and the boys your loving brothers are all in a good helt. Be kinde to tell sweet Mamma that I am ever so much tank full for her sweet Letter, it cheer me up so mutch. I must stop now for I am bissy but my best love to you, Mamma, Esther, Clara. Kiss them all for me. Your Loving Father H.S. Hazelgreen

(I added a little punctuation for clarity.)

Hot Weather

The last two weeks of June 1923 were so hot that the strawberry crop withered and the M.E. church held its services in the basement. The Gem Theatre in Hobart enticed its patrons with "12 big fans" to cool them off. (The movies had not yet become the talkies so there was no spoken dialogue to be drowned out by those fans.) When sundown brought a little relief, you could go dancing at the pavilion just north of the old Liverpool schoolhouse, on the northeast corner of the Old Ridge Road-Liverpool Road intersection. The brave young people playing tennis on Stommel's lot did so early in the morning or late in the afternoon, I hope.

Nothing much was planned in Hobart for Independence Day, but on its eve Camp 133 promised a big fireworks display. If you didn't care for fireworks, you could go dance at the old Deepriver schoolhouse to music "with real pep" played by Perry's Big Six (I have no idea).


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Hobart Gazette, June 29, 1923.

Still, work had to go on. Planning for the future Roosevelt Gym building was going forward, and our favorite plumbers, Lee & Rhodes, as the only bidders for the plumbing work, were awarded the contract.

Some unpleasant business involving tuberculosis-testing of cattle occurred on "the big farm of Roper Bros." (and even more unpleasant business later at a Chicago slaughterhouse). I don't know where that farm was. I can't find any land owned by a Roper in Union Township on the Lincoln Highway in the 1921 or 1928 plat maps.

"Hickory Grove" and Other Mysterious Places

In August of 1874, Hobart's Union Sunday School made plans for its annual picnic. The date was set for Thursday, September 3. The organization's secretary, John Blackhall, wrote to neighboring Sunday schools inviting them to join in the fun. Two of them accepted the invitation: the Underwood school and the Hickory Grove school.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

I have come across the Underwood name before. There was a one-room schoolhouse by that name in Ross Township, exact location unknown, which may have been associated with a Sunday school as well. But in all my research, I have never come across the name Hickory Grove in this area. Was that a mistake for Hickory Top — the village that eventually became Ainsworth? And then again, was it actually a mistake? Perhaps some people called the village Hickory Grove, while others called it Hickory Top, and somehow the former was overshadowed by the latter in collective memory.

That's just a theory. You know how I love theories.

Anyway, it sounds as if the picnic went off well. The Hobart Cornet Band came along to provide music. The attendees rode in two excursion cars — on the Pennsy Railroad, I'm guessing, since during the planning stages the location was set for Robertsdale, which got its name from George Roberts' giving the Pennsy Railroad right of way through his land.[1] But below the reference to Hickory Grove on the page above, the writer gives "Sheffield" as the location of the picnic. Perhaps those were pretty much the same place. These days you can find Robertsdale on Google maps, but not Sheffield. We do find Sheffield on this section of the 1874 Plat Map showing the west end of North Township:


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Image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

At the eastern border of Sheffield, we find a parcel of land belonging to George Roberts, with the Pennsy Railroad (the southernmost of those three lines) crossing it. Further to the southeast lay another George Roberts, also crossed by the Pennsy Railroad. I don't know which of those gave Robertsdale its name — maybe both?

But all of that area is in Hammond now, and this is as far as I intend to go into Hammond history.

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[1] Gayle Faulkner Kosalko, "Robertsdale has a history all its own," April 3, 2008, NWI Times, https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/robertsdale-has-history-all-its-own/article_df6cf958-2db8-540f-aff0-8f3ea0fe5f81.html

A Rossow by Any Other Name

In June 1923 the Rossow family held its first annual reunion. There were so many different names with a Rossow connection that I can't index them all, much less explain the connections.


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Hobart News, June 28, 1923.

The home of "Taylor" aka Theodore Rossow was on the southeast corner of County Line Road and Tenth Street.

We've already met the eldest attendee, Augusta Carey. The youngest, Betty Maxine Harms, was a daughter of Henry and Minnie (Rossow) Harms, born March 24, 1922.

Clara Davy is a misprint for Davies.


Additional Source: "Rossows Hold Reunion," Hobart Gazette, June 29, 1923.

Another Third of the Mystery Solved

Just a little update to my 2010 post about Sadie Price (the update is at the bottom of the post).