Ready to Cut the Wheat

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

The photographer is standing on Ainsworth Road just west of County Line road and pointing the camera south(west), toward the big barn on the farm the Thompson family rented.

There are four horses, two men, a woman, and two dogs. The photo isn't clear enough to identify anyone, although, to me, the woman looks vaguely like Nancy Thompson.

There is no date. I'm guessing, very roughly, at the early to mid-1920s.

As for the machine, here are the notes I took as Eldon Harms told me about it:

The machine is a binder. The rotating arms with horizontal planks knock the grain against the sickle bar at the bottom to cut it. It cuts wheat/oats and binds bundles of grain (ties it up themselves), continues filling up with bundles to a set number, at which point it drops them all at once so you can shock them. Grain is left to dry and cure (maybe days or weeks); then you gather all your bundles and haul them to one place to be threshed. How to tell if grain ready for threshing? You can rub it on your hand to see how dry it is. Some guys chewed on a grain to judge.

If the big barn was still standing in 1939 (at which time the land was owned by Michael and Julie Carrozzo), we can tell where it stood from the aerial photo of that time.


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Photo from https://igws.indiana.edu/IHAPI/.

Road Trip #Whatever, I've Lost Count

Those enthusiastic road-trippers, Charles and Constance Chester, hit the road again in the autumn of 1923.


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

Sela Chester was one of Charles and Constance's children; he was about 24 years old.

Raymond and Maud McClain, Constance's brother and sister-in-law nephew and his wife, had traveled with the Chesters on a 1,000-mile road trip in 1919.

Mamie Hull was the teenaged sister of Charles and Constance's son-in-law, Homer.

Ainsworth Then and Now: John Wood School

1962, and 2015


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Top image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

"Now" is a relative term. Looking through the photos on my computer (since I can't go out and research), I was amazed to find that in the five years since I took the "now" photo, I never got around to putting together this post.

I'm guessing that the earlier photo was indeed taken when the school was newly completed in 1962. The little village of Ainsworth must have been tremendously proud of it.


Back in 2013, I did a "then and now" involving a photo that was identified by handwritten notes as the John Wood School, but that I thought more likely to be the Jonas E. Salk School in Merrillville. I'm leaving that post up (with a disclaimer) just to remind myself, and all amateur historians, that you can't believe everything you are told.

The Old Mill, 1947

A reader sent me this interesting shot of Earle's mill from the Chicago Sunday Tribune of June 29, 1947 — Hobart's centennial year.


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Image supplied by Cheryl Murdock.

The old place is looking a bit tired, but it must have plenty of electricity, to judge by that maze of wiring across the front. I don't know who that man on the porch is. I believe that in 1947 Herman Harms, Sr. was working at the mill, but the picture isn't clear enough to tell if by some chance that happened to be him.

The caption says that Earle's mill supplied the planks "to construct Lake st. in Chicago." The online Encyclopedia of Chicago, in an article on "Streets and Highways," says: "The first attempts by government to build hard-surfaced roads occurred in the 1840s when Chicago covered some of its streets with planks," but I haven't found any more detail than that. I suppose the planks were rafted across Lake Michigan.

Indiana Takes Over the Yellowstone Trail

I don't particularly care about Indiana taking over the Yellowstone Trail in November 1923 …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 16, 1923.

… but I'm interested in that bit about the Liberty Highway, as I'm now clearer about some of the roads involved. The first time I encountered the Liberty Highway — in 1921 — its route was being moved from "the North Hobart-Wheeler road [W 700 N] and Cleveland avenue" to "the south Hobart-Wheeler road." I didn't know what the latter was.

But here we are in 1923 and the Liberty Highway route has been moved back to Cleveland Ave./W 700 N "to eliminate the bad crossing of the Pennsy and Nickel Plate railroads" — now, what could that be but that awful Traeger crossing? So the south Hobart-Wheeler road was Tenth Street/W 600 N.

I still don't know where the Liberty Highway started or where it stopped.

♦    ♦    ♦
Later in the month, when Alwin Wild is trying to sell property from someone's estate, he thinks it helpful to mention that the property is on the Yellowstone Trail … not a word about the Liberty Highway.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 30, 1923.

Also, a child born to Walter and Hazel (née Thompson) Veal … and a dance at Deepriver Hall, which I believe is the former schoolhouse.