Ainsworth Then and Now: the Sievert Farmhouse

Circa 1942, and 2022:



(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

Thank goodness for Google street view, which saves me from having to go park my car on the shoulder-less 69th Ave. or DeKalb Street to get a photo of the old Sievert farmhouse.

Which, it turns out, is probably the old Brown farmhouse, since the county records show 1850 as the year it was built, and that was before the Sieverts came to Ross Township. The earliest record I can find of ownership of that land, from Early Land Sales, Lake County, is its purchase in May of 1844 by Severn Brown, who bought 80 acres constituting the west half of Section 7.

Severn Brown rests in the Chester Cemetery, along with his wife, Elizabeth.

I shall certainly have to write more about the Brown family, as well as the Sievert family, but at present my brain is very, very tired and has taken a leave of absence to rest and recuperate, and I don't know when it will return.

Ainsworth Then and Now: John Wood School

1962, and 2015


(Click on images to enlarge)
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.

Hobart Then and Now: The Miller Corner

1970s, and 2017.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Image above courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


I call this house the Miller house, because Eldon Harms told me that the Miller family lived there. But since I don't know when the house was built, I don't know who among the previous owners of that land might have lived there; nor do I know who might have lived there after the Millers ceased to own it. By 1950 it was part of Chester Wasy's extensive property, but surely he did not live there when he might choose the spacious Chester house or the riverside Nolte house.

If the house dated back to the early 1890s, it once housed Peter and Caroline Stolp, the maternal grandparents of Minnie (Rossow) Harms. They rented that farm for a short time. Peter may have died there (1892).

However, after that mystifying news item about John Miller moving his house, I don't know what to think.

The house was still standing when I moved here in 1990. By then it was painted green. There was a dog house behind it, and beyond the back yard a fenced-in area where a horse was kept, with a shed for its shelter. At the edge of the field to the south was a rusty farm machine — a tractor or some such thing. I liked that house. It was demolished before I began my historical research.

But getting back to the photo above — I'm dating it to the 1970s simply because of the style of photo. We have a similar photo, likewise undated, but taking in a car that looks like the sort of car you might see in the mid-1970s.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

These two photos were taken at least a few months apart, since here the trees are in full leaf, while in the first one the leaves are changing color and falling. I think this photo was taken when the Tonagels had their store up for sale. We have some others taken apparently at the same time with a better view of the automobiles that are helping me date these photos to the 1970s.

Ainsworth Then and Now: The Pantry/Sharp School Services Again

1937 and 2015



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1937 photo courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Taken on July 5, 1937, the top photo is two years later than the first then-and-now I showed you (though the "now" photos were taken the same day in both posts).

I like this photo because it shows you the emptiness of the northwest corner of that intersection (73rd Ave./S.R. 51). Now the fields have been filled up by the Christian Assembly Church and the John Wood Elementary School.


These next photos were taken from that northwest corner.




(Click on images to enlarge)
First and third images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

While the older photos are undated, we can be pretty sure they were not taken on July 5, 1937! I would say that they date a bit later than that: someone has had time to put up some directional signs that weren't there in the 1937 photo. The car is not clear enough to identify, but it appears to be a late-1930s or early-1940s model.

In the foreground of the first photo you will notice a gravel road, which is not the main north-and-south S.R. 51, but a shortcut that people would take if turning west onto 73rd Ave. from southbound S.R. 51 (or turning north onto S.R. 51 from eastbound 73rd) — much the same way that nowadays they cut through the church parking lot. The posts mark off an unused triangle of land between the shortcut and the main north-and-south S.R. 51. You can see a few of those posts in the 1937 photo.

Ainsworth Then and Now: The Pantry/Sharp School Services

A descendant of Cecil and Ruby Tonagel has generously shared a collection of photos with the Hobart Historical Society and the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society. So at last I have seen more than a corner of the Tonagels' store!

Here's a then-and-now:

1935 and 2015




(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

That is among the earliest photos we have of The Pantry, as the Tonagels named their new business.



And I'm pretty confident that 1935 marked the beginning of this business run by the Tonagel family, since the on-line research for my first post about the Tonagels turned up a Mobilgas ad suggesting that as late as July 1935 Cecil was still occupied as the manager of the Walnut Gardens, well east of Ainsworth on the Lincoln Highway … although I suppose he could have run two businesses at once.

In its early days, The Pantry was not so much a grocery store as a lunch counter and tourist stop, taking advantage of the traffic on the Lincoln Highway, which then passed right in front of it. Out back of the main building stood cabins that tourists would rent (and we shall see photos of those, too).

After the new Route 30 was put through, diverting the tourist traffic south, the Tonagels gradually changed the focus of their business to serving the locals.

Ainsworth Then and Now: Chester Cemetery

1963 and 2015



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1963 images courtesy of John Fleck.

The grave markers of Henry Chester and his second wife, Harriet (mother of Daisy Chester Raschka). Those stones look as if they will stand forever.


In the next photo, behind the monument to Amanda, wife of Simeon Marble, we have the graves of (left to right) Henry, Harriet, Mary (Henry's mother), and Charles (Henry's father).




Mary's grave marker now is broken and lying on the ground.


This last one does not show any Chester graves. It was taken towards the west side of the cemetery, furthest from S.R. 51.




Here the cemetery has changed enough that I couldn't figure out how to reproduce the 1963 photo, or if that were even possible.

Ainsworth Then and Now: Summit Lawn/Indian Ridge

Circa 1898, and 2015.



(Click on images to enlarge)
First image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

I had intended to take the "now" photo in the winter, when the view wasn't blocked by all those leaves, but you know how it goes. The circa-1898 photo is not very clear, being a reprint from the Gazette souvenir edition of 1898 — how I wish we had the original. When I moved out here in 1990, there was still a house standing among those trees. I'm not sure whether it was the same house as in the 1898 photo; it was knocked down so long ago that I scarcely remember how it looked.

The stone pillars and walls remaining on the grounds may date to 1911, when "John R. Dorman … greatly ornamented his home place by erecting some tall stone posts" ("Ross Township Notes," Hobart Gazette 1 Sep. 1911).







The newspapers rarely referred to the Dorman place as "Summit Lawn," but I do find this in my notes from the Hobart Gazette of Sept. 13, 1907:

Dorman's Summit Lawn Stock Farm of Duroc Jersey swine captured nine firsts and two seconds, also sweepstakes making this the second year the same herd has done this. He showed against 5 different herds and breeds this year at Porter County Fair.

When I go back and read the 1890s newspapers, I hope to get a better idea of when John Dorman bought this parcel. The 1891 Plat Book shows it belonging to George Sykes, but John Dorman owned it by 1899 per the notes I have on hand, and perhaps earlier.


Another pillar, north of those shown above, has halfway collapsed. I have no idea when or why it got a horseshoe embedded in the cement:




Here is a picture of John Dorman in his later years, from an unidentified 1944 newspaper (clipped and pasted into a scrapbook by Minnie Harms).


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

♦    ♦    ♦
[7/18/2015 update] From the Hobart Gazette of June 15, 1928, here is an article describing the types and sources of the rocks composing these pillars:


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The description of pillars — their height and the four-sided pyramid topping them — matches the existing pillars, but I'm wondering why the article was not written until 1928 if the pillars were indeed erected in 1911. On the other hand, the article does not say they were recently built.

Ainsworth Then and Now: Gruel Cow Barn/River Pointe Country Club

1920s(?) and 2014.



(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of Diane Barnes.

It was the pride of Superior Farm — the barn that housed the cows that gave the milk that made the Gruel dairy famous.

We have a couple of pictures to show where it stood, including the bird's-eye shot that ran with a Chicago Daily Tribune, probably in 1938. But so few points of reference from that photo are still there today — really, the north-south road running past the barn is the main one remaining — that I can only give you a general idea of where it was: about where the picnic shelter is now, and south of it as well, since the barn was much bigger than that shelter.

As to the date of the historical image above, there's not much to go on, except that it was with a group of photos, two of which appear (from the cars in them) to date probably to the 1920s.

Here is another view, from the same collection and so, I'm guessing, from the same time period.


Image courtesy of Diane Barnes.

♦    ♦    ♦
My reading of the microfilm newspaper of 1921 has got to the point where the barn is being planned, so I'm expecting it to go up in 1921 or maybe 1922.

The Hobart Historical Society has a pamphlet that was printed up for the Gruel farm, describing the methods its dairy operations used to ensure the quality of their milk. The pamphlet is not dated, but from its appearance I would place it in the 1920s, or possibly the 1930s. It includes an exterior shot of the barn as well as some interior shots, at least one of which shows the interior of the barn.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Ainsworth Then and Now: The Guest House

Back when I took pictures of the house in the woods, I never expected to have a picture of it for a then-and-now post!

1947 and 2014



(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of Chester Wasy.

Mr. Wasy writes:

[T]he front porch faced the south and in the winter you could see the cabin from Ainsworth Road, of course that was when cattle grazed in the woods and kept the area clear.

During the winter my friend Cleston Brenan and I used to sled down the valley slopes then go back to the cabin and light a fire in the fire place to dry out. O what a good old time!!!

Another neighbor remembers sledding back there with friends as well, but being uninvited, they had to keep a lookout so "old man Wasy" wouldn't catch them — the senior Chester Wasy, that is.

The 1947 photo was taken for a report prepared on the property assessing its value.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Chester Wasy.



I am sorry to have to tell those of you who think this cabin belonged to Al Capone … well, it's a good story, but it's not true.

Ainsworth Then and Now: The Harms Farmhouse

Circa 1915-1938?, and 2011.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of E.H.

This house at 8842 Ainsworth Road was built by Henry (Sr.) and Anna Harms in (I believe) 1882 to replace their log cabin. In 1915 it became the home of the newlywed Herman (Sr.) and Minnie Harms. In 1938 they sold it to Michael Carrozzo.

We do not have a date on the historical photo, but if it was taken during Herman and Minnie's occupancy, it would date to between 1915 and 1938. However, it may possibly be even older.

You will note the profusion of decorative plants in the front yard. Both Herman and Minnie loved flowers.



(Yes, 2011. "Now" is a relative term.)

Ainsworth Then and Now: John Wood School(?)

[5/15/2020 update] The 1962 image is not John Wood School. I don't know what it is, but it's not John Wood School. You want to see John Wood School in 1962? Go here.

Circa 1962 and 2013.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

According to the handwritten caption on the first photo, this is the John Wood school, and the school looks pretty freshly built. The lettering on the building is not clear; however, to me it looks more like "Jonas E. Salk" than "John Wood." I would never have recognized the building — and what are all those structures behind it? It seems to have been placed in a densely built suburban neighborhood. Yet the 1965 aerial view of the school does not show those houses, or whatever they are.

I am mystified. It would be very nice to have a photo of the just-built John Wood School, but I'm not sure I do here.

Ainsworth Then and Now: The Chester House

Through the kindness of a Chester descendant, I have finally seen the Chester house in all its glory!

Pre-1910, post-1910 and 2012 [4/19/2021 update: and 2021]:




(Click on images to enlarge)
First two images courtesy of Bruce McLain.

It was not so much a house as a mansion. When I first saw these images, I thought my pet theory had been shot down, as I couldn't reconcile that huge, beautiful house with the present-day structure at 7302 Ainsworth Road, which is large but (pardon me) looks tired and discouraged. However, now that I've calmed down and taken a closer look, I'm seeing a lot of similarities.

The east side lost its attic and its bay windows; the west side gained bay windows, while the small windows above the front porch were bricked over. Both porches, front and back, have been enclosed. It was difficult for me to duplicate the older photographs, because the original photographers did not have to deal with so many trees around the house. (Also, my camera just operates differently.) But all in all … I think I can keep my pet theory.

The two older photos are not dated, nor are the people in them identified — except for the man at right in the first one, who is Henry Chester himself. Thus the photo must have been taken before April 1910. From what little I can see of the women's fashions, my uneducated guess is perhaps the 1890s.

The second photo is later, when Charles and Constance Chester and their family occupied the house. You can see that the house has already been remodeled slightly. Again, my rough guess at a date, taking into account what I can see of the women's fashions, is perhaps between 1910 and 1920.

I wonder what the structure behind the house in the first photo was. You can barely see it, but it's got a chimney and a pitched roof; the lower windows are boarded up and the upper window appears to have multiple small panes. I imagine that it was the original frame or log house built by Henry's father, Charles. The brick house came later, when the family prospered. And once the brick house was up, the log house could be used for the chickens, or for storage. All of this is just my baseless speculation, of course! Whatever that building was, it had been taken down by the time of the second photo.

Reader, don't you just want to step into either of those old photos, and walk through the front door, and wander around the house to see the parlor, the kitchen, the bedrooms, and all the nooks and crannies?

Ainsworth Then and Now: The Bullock Farmhouse

Late 19th/early 20th century and 2010.



(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

No date was given for the top image, on display in the Hobart Historical Society Museum. I'm only estimating that it's around the turn of the century based on the absence of automobiles in the photo. The house stands west of Ainsworth, on 70th Avenue just west of DeKalb. These days if you tried to take a picture of it from the same spot as the original photographer, you'd find yourself running into a wild hedge along the south side of the road.

I don't know who any of those people were, but evidently they liked dogs. Surely some or all of them were members of the extended Bullock family — and it was very extended indeed throughout the Ainsworth-Hobart area — but which ones, I couldn't tell you.

This was the homestead of Gilbert and Estella Bullock. It had its beginning just before their marriage in 1876, when, according to an 1882 biographical sketch, Gilbert bought "forty acres of improved land, with good frame house and outbuildings" in Ross Township. (Based on that description, and also because the 1890 Plat Book shows Gilbert owning the land on which this house stands, I'm jumping to the conclusion that this house and the 1876 house are one and the same, aside from a little remodeling.)

Gilbert was the son of Moses and Amanda Bullock, who farmed in Ross Township west of Ainsworth. Moses and Amanda also had one daughter, Ruth, who married a man named Halladay, and two other sons, both of whom eventually moved to Hobart: Simeon, who was an ice dealer, among other things, and Asa, a lawyer. The Bullock family had the habit of recycling names — e.g., among Asa's sons were a Gilbert and another Asa — which makes grief for the historian, especially as they were active, talented people, often in the news.

But back to our Gilbert! On Christmas Day, 1876, he married Estella Markham. By the turn of the century they had four children, Hubert, Claude, Ruth and Etta, all born on the farm pictured above.

Through additional purchases over the years, the Bullock farm expanded from its original 40 acres to cover some 200 acres. Gilbert and Estella seemed to have owned (for a while, at least) another good parcel of land north of Ainsworth, on the west side of State Road 51 near the Deep River, but apparently their ownership fell into the blank between the 1891 Plat Book and the 1926 Plat Book.

In the spring of 1901, Hubert Bullock married Miss Daisy Lambert, daughter of Dr. Clara Faulkner of Hobart (by a previous marriage, perhaps?); the young couple moved in with his parents. In the autumn of that year, Claude married Almantha Smith.

Early in 1902, Gilbert and Estella, with their two daughters, retired to Hobart, leaving the old homestead in the hands of one of their sons — I'm not sure which, since reports varied; but both sons continued farming for the moment. Both of the Bullock daughters later married Hobart men — in 1910, Ruth married Dr. Dwight Mackey, and in 1912 Etta became Mrs. William J. Killigrew.

Hubert and Daisy had two sons, Elmer (born 1903) and Cecil (born 1910). This family portrait shows Hubert and Elmer along with (at left) Estella Bullock, Hubert's mother, and (at right) Emily Markham, Estella's mother.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Hubert not only farmed, but made extra money using his up-to-date machinery to grind feed, saw wood and press hay for his neighbors. During the summer of 1909 he even found time to play with the Crown Point baseball team.

As I mentioned in another post, early in 1911 he began further supplementing his income by selling Abbott-Detroit automobiles. He caught the automotive fever in a big way. By the autumn of 1911 he abandoned farming — and Ainsworth — to move to Valparaiso, where he ran an automotive sales-and-service business in partnership with a Valpo man. That enterprise lasted about a year and a half, then Hubert moved to Hobart where he opened his own garage.

Claude got out of farming earlier than Hubert. He had continued to work the family acres during the course of his first marriage; it was tragically brief, for Almantha had tuberculosis. She died, childless, on February 25, 1905, just four days after her 23rd birthday. (She is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.) Before the year was out, Claude had announced his intention to give up farming, sold all his farming equipment, and moved to Hobart. We get no clue of the kind of work he did there until the 1910 census, wherein he describes himself as a laborer working in the house-moving business. In Hobart he met Mary Ann Chandler, who became his second wife on November 4, 1909.

In March 1912 Claude returned to farming; he and Mary moved to his parents' other farm, somewhere north of Ainsworth.

About a year later, that became his parents' only farm. Early in April 1913 Gilbert and Estella sold the old homestead, all 200 acres of it, to a newcomer from Iowa named Albion D. Paine.

And that is where we must leave the Bullocks for now.


Sources:
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 23 Apr. 1915.
♦ "Ainsworth Pick-Ups." Hobart Gazette 1 July 1910.
♦ "Bullock-Lambert Nuptial." Hobart Gazette 5 Apr. 1901.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 21 Mar. 1902; 15 Dec. 1905; 25 Jan. 1907.
♦ "Gilbert Bullock Sells 200-Acre Farm for $20,000." Hobart News 3 Apr. 1913.
♦ Goodspeed, Weston A., and Charles Blanchard (eds.). Counties of Porter and Lake, Indiana. Historical and Biographical. Chicago: F.A. Battey & Co., 1882.
♦ "Hubert Bullock Opens Garage and Auto Repair Shop." Hobart News 9 Apr. 1913.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 17 Jan. 1902; 26 June 1903; 7 May 1909; 1 Apr. 1910; 1 Mar. 1912.
♦ "Mortuary Record." Hobart Gazette 3 Mar. 1905.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 10 July 1903.
♦ "Sold Out." Hobart Gazette 14 Mar. 1913.
♦ "The Car You Want." Hobart Gazette 27 Jan. 1911.
♦ "Young People Marry." Hobart Gazette 15 Nov. 1901.