Alfred Winslow, International Man of Mystery

I came across this story while researching the Underwoods: in the winter of 1875, the Lake County school superintendent[1] went around visiting schools, and much of what he saw, he didn't like, especially in Ross Township. The physical facilities were deficient — maps and charts lacking, blackboards poor, and the pupils' seats ranging from "not very good" to "dilapidated" to "a complete wreck."


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Crown Point Register, 11 Feb. 1875.

Unfortunately, I don't know which school the district numbers refer to, although I can make a guess based on who the teacher was.

The first teacher mentioned is Alfred A. Winslow. I don't remember ever encountering that name before. And yet, when I go searching for the family in the records, I find them here in Ross Township in the 1860 Census through the 1880 Census. But their farm lay on the western border of Ross Township …


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From the 1874 Plat Map. The circle marks the nearest schoolhouse.

… so if I'd wanted to learn about the Winslows, I should have been reading Crown Point rather than Hobart newspapers.

And — what do you know — when I look for "Winslow" in the on-line Crown Point newspapers, one of the first things to come up is this interesting tidbit from the Crown Point Register of March 8, 1888:


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It looks as if the whole family is fighting over their parents' estate, which was considerable. What I want to know is why our Alfred A. Winslow is among the plaintiffs while Mrs. Alfred Winslow (to whom he was still married) is among the defendants!

But let me back up a little and look at the family. The earliest local record I find of Alfred's father, William Augustus Winslow, is his 1853 marriage to Mary Cleveland in Lake County, Indiana. She was his second wife, but what became of the first[2] I do not know; presumably she died, and he was left with two small children (Henry and Lois). In 1854 Mary Cleveland Winslow brought our Alfred into the world. The 1860 Census finds the family farming in western Ross Township (to judge by their neighbors). By then another three children (Edgar, Helen, and John) had joined them, although, oddly enough, the daughter from the first marriage, Lois, was not in the household. At some point after 1860, William and Mary lost their little John, it seems. The 1870 Census shows the addition of three more children: George, Josephine, and Mary, who was also known as Minnie per the 1880 Census. Around 1873, they had a little girl, Flora Bell, who died at two years of age.

In December 1886, William Winslow died.


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Crown Point Register, 16 Dec. 1886.

About ten months later, his widow followed him.


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Crown Point Register, 6 Oct. 1887.

And the next spring, as we've seen, the children fought it out over the estate. In 1890, the old farm passed out of Winslow hands.


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Crown Point Register, 5 Dec. 1890.

At 52 acres, it was half the size it had been in 1874.

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Getting back to Alfred — I believe the school where he taught per the 1875 county superintendent's report was identified by Lenore Boyd Calpha as the one-room Brown's Point school. I believe that simply because it was the school closest school to Alfred's home (see the circle marking it on the 1874 map above).

The fact that the superintendent gave a good account of the teacher and students in spite of the school's lack of equipment and the poor physical condition hints that Alfred was a man of some ability. His subsequent career bore that out; witness this description from 1910:

Alfred A. Winslow … studied law for some time and taught school for ten years,[3] but gave up the profession of teaching for that of journalism, founding in 1881 the "Hammond Tribune," which he published for fifteen years. He assisted in organizing the meat-inspection forces of the Government at Chicago, Illinois, and Hammond, Indiana, having received an appointment as assistant inspector in the bureau of Animal Industry. Mr. Winslow was also for a short time city treasurer of Hammond, Indiana, and assisted in taking the Government Census of 1890. In 1989 he accepted the consulship at Liege, Belgium, from which post he was promoted in 1902 as Consul-General to Guatemala, and in 1906 was transferred to Valparaiso [Chile] as Consul.[4]

From the same source comes this photo of Alfred:


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After retiring from the international scene, Alfred moved back to Crown Point. His death in 1929 was splashed across the front page of the Crown Point Register and was mentioned in newspapers from Connecticut to California.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 17 Aug. 1929.

He is buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Crown Point, beside his wife, who died in 1947.

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As so often happens when I start on a story with more than one name in it, I originally meant to focus on the Ross Township schools and what the county superintendent thought of them, but then I went off on the Winslow tangent and spent so much time there that I will have to save for another time my discussion of how awful the rest of the schools were in 1875.

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[1] I think the superintendent at that time was Thaddeus S. Fancher, a Crown Point attorney. See Timothy Horton Ball, Encyclopedia of Genealogy and Biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a Compendium of History 1834 – 1904 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1904), p. 363.
[2] Susan Decker, whom William married in 1844 in Ashtabula County, Ohio.
[3] I find some evidence in local papers that he left Ross Township and began teaching in Hammond schools soon after 1875.
[4] International Bureau of the American Republics, Bulletin of the International Bureau of the American Republics, Vol. XXX, Nos. 1-3, Jan.-Mar. 1910 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1910).)

New Utility Poles of Ainsworth (Part 2)

Watching this process was educational. I was expecting them to dig the post-hole with the giant auger that you'll see in one of the photos below, but instead they use a vacuum.


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The guy operates that big pipe apparatus by hand-held remote control.



Is that not the neatest post-hole you ever saw?



Another guy puts insulating tubes on the wires so he can pick them up and move them off the old pole onto a temporary holder.



Then they attach the crossbar to the new pole.



Working between the wires, they hoist up the new pole.



A claw grabs the pole to position it more precisely.



Then they fill in the post-hole with dirt and rocks.




Old and new side-by-side.

Breakfast and Love

This typical ad for the Bass Restaurant appeared in the Hobart Index-Commonwealth of October 21, 1937:


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Fred's Bakery was operated by Fred Baumer. Apparently his rolls were so celebrated around town that H.C. and Martha Bass expected them to lure people into the Bass restaurant.

Among the Basses' customers in the mid-1930s was Herbert Ols — a resident of Hobart, a 1932 graduate of Hobart High, and now a working man, single, who lived with his parents on Linda Street. Every Saturday morning, he enjoyed breakfast at the Bass Restaurant.

His waitress was often Joyce Malone, who had been helping out at her mother and stepfather's restaurant since her graduation from high school.

Saturday after Saturday, the young people got to know each other, and to like each other … very much indeed.

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The wedding took place on October 20, 1937.


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Hammond Times, 25 Oct. 1937.

Hobart's Index-Commonwealth[1] specified that the newlyweds would be living in an apartment at 54 Main — evidently the house was broken up into separate units.


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Image courtesy of Fred Ols.

I wondered at first why only Mrs. Henry Clinton Bass, and not Mr. and Mrs., was announcing the marriage. It's true that Joyce was not Mr. Bass's biological daughter, but a close and happy family might well have ignored that technicality. Then I learned that this was not a close and happy family. The Bass marriage was troubled. In fact, Joyce thought her stepfather treated her mother cruelly. For Joyce, the happiness of starting a new home with the man she loved was enhanced by the relief of getting away from a man she didn't even like.

This explains another thing that had puzzled me — the fact that while Joyce's mother is buried in Hobart, her stepfather is buried in downstate Illinois.

Martha and H.C. Bass eventually separated. They were recorded in the same household in the 1940 Census, but two years later, when H.C. filled out his draft card, the contact name he gave was not his wife but a relative back in Illinois[2]. And in the 1950 Census, H.C. was living alone in Illinois — calling himself widowed — while Martha and her son Carl Malone were in the crowded but (I hope) harmonious household of Herbert and Joyce Ols, who by then had two little sons, the younger of whom would grow up to share many interesting pictures and stories with Hobart history enthusiasts.

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This photo from the spring of 1938 shows Herbert and Joyce some six months into their marriage and looking very happy about it.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.


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[1] "Herbert Ols and Joyce Malone Wed at Quiet Ceremony," Index-Commonwealth, 24 Oct. 1937.
[2] Fred Bass of Grayville, Illinois, whom I believe to be H.C.'s younger brother, James Fred Bass.

Valedictorian, Class of 1935

Since I attended a high-school graduation ceremony a few days ago, it seems an apt time to present to you a high-school graduate whom we last saw out front of her home on Central Avenue: Joyce Malone, valedictorian of the Class of 1935 of Edison High School in East Gary (Lake Station).


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

This is the speech she gave at the ceremony:

Good Bye and Good Luck

During the past year we have listened to the Byrd broadcast and the thrilling communications between America and Little America[1] and as we heard the announcer, Harry von Zell, sign off with his "Good bye and good luck" we have thought that those men in the expedition must have been reluctant to hear those words for it meant that a whole week would elapse before they would again have the same opportunity of communicating with home folks. Harry von Zell was given a special privilege in the opportunity to say for all the people in the United States, "Good bye and good luck."

I feel that mine is a special privilege when I am permitted to voice the farewells for the class to teachers, fellow school mates, school associations and class members. We have enjoyed our years of fellowship together, particularly this last year of school, and we are reluctant to say the last good bye. We have enjoyed many sessions in this school. Some of us have been here for years and others but a comparatively short time and we hope that we have been able to give something to the school as well as to take so much from it. What we take from the school has not lessened its usefulness nor its material content but is measured in our training and in our character and our abilities. In giving to us the school has not lessened its efficiency but rather it has given us something that money cannot buy and that nothing can take from us.

Today we come to the last program together. Soon we will separate and go our several ways, some to one thing and some to another and will attempt to put into practice some of the knowledge and abilities we have secured while in school. Education is something to be desired and thinking people are anxious to give the young graduates a chance to do something with their training. We need education to live worthwhile lives in this great democracy, and democracy needs educated men and women and thinking boys and girls.

As we say good bye and good luck to old school friends and go out into the world of business and adult living we need to consider what our part will be in the future and what is needed from us in the present. While it is true that we will doubtless have difficulty in securing what we commonly call "paying positions"[2] there will be work of one sort or another for each and every one. It may be that we will be able to do something to make life easier for our parents who have denied themselves in order that we might complete our school work and now may be our "golden opportunity" to repay them in a small measure. Our community offers many opportunities for service in leading young people's activities or assisting with adult organizations. There is no need of our simply sitting down with folded hands, waiting for something to turn up.

As we say "good bye" to schoolmates who remain in the school for another year or more we do so with a feeling of sadness. You will be going on in the old ways that are no longer ours, you will tread the stairs and enter into the school activities but we will be out and away. We trust you to carry on the school spirit and traditions and to make us proud that we once belonged to this school. We are sorry to leave but such is the decree of progress. We would no longer remain once we are fitted for higher things but still we are saddened at the parting. As another school year opens before you, fellow school mates, we shall be watching you with pride and anticipation.

Teachers of this school, to you we must also say "good bye and good luck." Faithfully you have performed your duties and more, for you have gone outside your regular work to help us and to guide us. We may have seemed ungrateful at times and often you have questioned if it was worth all it cost you. In the future we hope to make up to society if not to you for what you have given the members of this class. Will you accept our heartfelt thanks and our "good bye and good luck."

As we come to the parting of the school ways we look back over our school life and wish that we might have done some things differently but this is no time for hashing our past mistakes.

Tonight we are looking into the future with eagerness, and with joyous anticipation of what life may hold in store for each of us. Tonight we are starting forth in a new life, a new world in which each one is to be the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. Parents, school mates, officials and friends, we hope that this new life may bring to each of the members of the class of 1935 some of the richer blessings, some of the finer things of life and that each member of this class may succeed in life to such an extent that we justify the confidence which you have placed in us. Trusting that our ambitions and ideals of tonight may not prove to be empty dreams I bid you all "good bye and good luck."

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[1] The "Little America" exploration base established in Antarctica set up the first radio station on that continent in 1933 and continued broadcasting until January 1935.
[2] Joyce and her classmates were, of course, beginning their adult lives in the midst of the Great Depression.