The Old John and Sophie Harms Place, in Need of Landscaping

Since I can't go to libraries to research more complex topics, I think I'll just drag out some random pictures that I haven't gotten around to posting before.

To start off: Eldon and Norma Harms' new home on Cleveland Avenue as it looked in the summer of 1957, just after they bought it from Eldon's Aunt Sophie.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.



I like these photos because this is how my property is going to look when somebody finally buys it from me or my estate — that is, overgrown and in need of attention. When Sophie (Schavey) Harms sold the property, she was about 76 years old and had been widowed for over a decade. The upkeep of the old place was too much for her. Eldon and Norma had a lot of work to do to tame the wilderness.

The outbuildings were in the same condition. Here is the barn …



… and the granary:




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[5/13/2020 update] Thanks to Aaron (in the comments to this post), we now have some fairly recent Google street view screenshots of the old house.

August 2008:

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October 2008:


July 2009, showing the mound of bare earth where the house has been demolished:


That mound of earth is grown over with grass now. Eldon pointed it out to me, one day when we were driving past there, as the approximate site of the house.

He said that trying to wallpaper in that house was a frustrating experience, since none of the corners were square — perhaps because they never had been square, or perhaps the structure had settled unevenly.

Broken Nehi Bottle in the Woods

Having learned about the rope-like embossing on Nehi soda bottles, I knew what this fragment was even before I turned it over to find the traces of a painted label.


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Found in the woods north of Big Maple Lake.

Autumn Klan Meetings

Now I have to report some of the local KKK activities from mid-November 1923.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News, Nov. 15, 1923.



The women's meeting may have been a manifestation of the new official auxiliary, the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, organized in June 1923.

It's Got to Be Charlie

This is the last of the three photos I bought recently. Like the other two, this one came with no helpful notes on it, and would also have remained unidentified if I hadn't had the pleasure, long ago, of seeing a photo of Charles Dewell, Jr.


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Compare this photo with the earlier one, and try to tell me that this isn't Charlie!

Both photos were taken by August Haase and thus date somewhere between 1902 and 1912, meaning that Charlie (born in 1881) was in his twenties, or very early thirties, when he had them taken.

I have never seen a tie like the one he's wearing in this photo. It combines a bow tie and a straight tie. And the pattern of the fabric!

John and Faye Shults

This sad news from November of 1923 …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

… inspired me to look into John and Faye Shults, to try to figure out if they were related to the Ainsworth-area Shultses.

The answer is: I think so. John's parents, like William's and Charles', were Charles (born in Sweden) and Caroline (born in Germany) Shults, and the date of his birth (1887 or '88) was within the lifetimes of the Charles and Caroline. The only reason I don't say definitely is that all these names were so common.

The 1880 Census shows Charles Sr. and Caroline ("Lena") living in LaPorte County, Indiana, with three children: William, Charles Jr., and Emma. Charles Sr. died in LaPorte County in 1899. Then, in the 1900 Census, Caroline shows up in Union Township, Porter County, in a rented home, with four more children — Edward, Mary, John, and Freddie. To judge by the few of her neighbors who owned their land, I think she was near Union Center, thus not far east of Deep River.

In February 1910, John married Faye Ella Smithers in Lake County (Indiana Marriage Collection).

The 1910 Census shows John and Faye on a rented farm, apparently north of Merrillville in the Turkey Creek area, to judge by the fact that they were recorded near the Schillo family. By August of 1919 John and Faye were renting the farm that Peter and Hulda Palm bought.[1]

In the 1920 Census, John and Faye are recorded on a farm on the "southwest road out of Hobart past the green house," which sounds like west 10th Street, the "green house" being the Kellen greenhouse where present-day Lake Park Avenue/Grand Boulevard meets 10th Street.

In the 1930 Census, they are again on 10th Street, owning a farm. I can't find a Shults parcel on 10th Street in either the 1926 Plat Book or the 1939 Plat Book, so their farm may have been one of the smaller parcels (10 acres, perhaps) where the owner's name is not marked.

John, unfortunately, didn't live to be recorded in the 1940 census. He was killed in an accident on his 10th Street farm in 1939.


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Hammond Times, July 2, 1939.

This obituary also tells us that John was connected to the Hillcrest Dairy.

Faye was still living on the same 10th Street farm when the 1940 census came around. She described herself as a "farm manager." The only other person in the household was a 20-year-old farm laborer who boarded there. Her surviving child, Howard, had married and moved out.

Faye never remarried, I gather. When she died in 1971, she was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery with her husband and daughter.


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[1] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, Aug. 1, 1919.

Unidentified Disgruntled Teenager

Another of the three photos I recently bought in Hobart. Also unidentified and from Showman's Gallery, so dating circa 1893-1898.


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I'd guess this boy's age at about 14 years. The Sunday-best clothing, the corsage, and the little book he's holding up make me think he's just been confirmed in a church, or maybe graduated from the eighth grade. Either way, he's less impressed with his accomplishment than his parents are (who made him dress up and pose for the photographer), and he can't wait to get out of that high, stiff collar.

The suit jacket looks like a hand-me-down from his older brother, but the trousers look new — maybe his first long pants?