Calvin Fleming and His Magnificent Cigar Box

In 1958, these two young Hobartites — Dale Schavey and Ruth Ann Fleming — were married.


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Left image: Hobart High School Memories yearbook, 1954.
Right image: Hobart High School Memories yearbook, 1955.
Both via Ancestry.com.

Thus were the Schavey and Fleming families united, and that is why our Schavey descendant also has a couple of Fleming-related photos to share with us.

First, here is Calvin Fleming, in a photo that is undated but is giving me 1930s vibes.


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Image courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

Calvin Lawrence Fleming was born October 23, 1883,[1] in Hobart, to Elias and Harriet (Curtis) Fleming, who both came from Porter County. I don't know much about his early life. Although I can find his family of origin in Valparaiso in the 1900 Census, Calvin is not listed in the household. If this is not a mistake by the enumerator, that means Calvin had left home already, by 17 years of age — which would not be so surprising, given how active and enterprising he proved to be later in life.

In 1905 he married Lillis Thomas (she lived to marry again) and in 1907 Minnie Voltz. Minnie was the mother of Ruth Ann, and died in 1929. There are a couple of subsequent Indiana marriage records involving Calvin L. Fleming: a marriage in 1931 to Blanche Lawrence, and in 1944 to Irene Buckley (I am not entirely sure that the latter was our Calvin). I do not know how those marriages ended.[2]

In 1953 he married Ida Eastin.


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Brownstown Banner (Brownstown, Ind.), 18 Mar. 1953.

They were still married when Calvin died in 1959.[3]


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Brownstown Banner (Brownstown, Ind.), 5 Aug. 1959

He is buried in Michigan City.

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Readers of this blog already know that Calvin's business enterprises included cigar-making. Even those who don't read this blog need only go into the basement of the Hobart Historical Society and view the display of local cigar manufacturers to find out the same thing. Here is a picture I took at the museum:


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You can just see the initials, C.L.F., pasted on this battered wooden box.

But not all his cigars were sold in such plain boxes. The Fleming-Schavey family has one that is a work of art:


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Images courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

And yes, that portrait is Calvin in his younger days.

Even the lid is magnificent:



Imagine how many of those boxes burned in the factory fire of 1917. It's enough to make you weep.

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[1] Per his death certificate; his WWI draft card says October 22, 1882.
[2] I've gotten to the point where using the computer too much is physically painful. Maybe somebody healthier, with more time on their hands, can look into this!
[3] His death certificate describes him as widowed. While the obituary is wrong on several points, including Calvin's middle initial and his father's first name, I think it is right about Ida's surviving Calvin. She died in 1968 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Merrillville Then and Now: 73rd Avenue West of Broadway

Circa 1909, and 2024:


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Second image from Google street view.

"Main Street," also known as the Joliet road, had not yet become the Lincoln Highway when this photo was taken sometime before July 17, 1909. The road is dirt, but electrical wires (or are they telephone?) run along it.

We are standing more or less abreast of the Merrillville school building (now the Merrillville History Museum).

The Burge-Underwood house would be to the left, but just out of range of the camera. The first house visible on the left is the Floyd Pierce home, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville. The next house is the Coffey (or Coffee) house. I do not know what families occupied any of the other houses.

On the right, of course, we can see the steeple of the Methodist Church.

In the distance on the right, I believe you can see a couple of businesses: the Stoltz general store, and next to it the Old California Exchange Hotel:


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The verso includes a postmark, thank goodness, and a friendly message from Howard Walter of Merrillville to Ruth Casbon of Valparaiso:


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It's interesting how he spells the town's name; is that evidence that he pronounced it "Valpo-RISE-o" rather than "Valpo-RAYS-o"?

Howard and Ruth were both about 16 in 1909. Howard was one of the Walter brothers of Merrillville.

Ruth was the daughter of Thomas and Ella (Downs) Casbon. She had been named Mable Ruth but preferred her middle name. She spent her early childhood on a farm in the vicinity of Deep River. Sometime after the 1900 census the family relocated to a Porter County farm, where the 1910 Census, and by 1920 they lived in the city of Valparaiso.

In January 1924, Thomas and Ella held a party to celebrate Ruth's engagement to a man named Joseph Albert Bancroft,[1] a native of Chesterton about 4 years older than Ruth. He had previously been married, in 1914, to Fay Smith (Indiana Marriage Collection); that marriage lasted at least through June 1917 (WWI Draft Cards), but must have ended in divorce at some point, since Fay lived to marry again.[2]

Ruth Casbon and Joseph Bancroft were married in April 1924:


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Hobart Gazette, 2 May 1924.

The marriage was not happy, apparently, as the couple were divorced within two years, according to a Chesterton newspaper item posted to Joseph's Findagrave.com entry.

Joseph moved to Michigan and married again. Ruth resumed her maiden name and lived out the rest of her life as a single woman in Valparaiso. She died in 1989.

For some surprising background information about Ruth, I refer you to the Casbon expert.


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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.
[2] I have come across a record of a 1907 marriage in Lake County between a Joseph N. Bancroft and a Lillian Miller, but the record does not include enough information for me to say that this was or wasn't our Joseph.