Hobart Then and Now: The Bale House/A Pink Boutique

Many years ago, I posted a then-and-now shot of the Bale house. Here is another version.

Circa 1900, and 2024:

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Historical images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.







The people standing in front of the house in the top photo are not identified, but I'm guessing they are B.B. and Emily Bale. I get the circa-1900 date from handwritten notes on a copy of one of the photos in the historical society's file indicate, and there is nothing in the photos to contradict that. The home was built in 1870.[1] I do not know why the Bales waited some 30 years after construction to get photographs of their house. You'd think they'd do that sort of thing in the first flush of new-home pride. But, of course, photographs were a little more difficult to get in 1870.

Nor do I know when the house was demolished. Per the county assessor's records, the building that houses A Pink Boutique was built in 1950.

Here is a detail from the 1902 Sanborn map showing the area, with the Bale house circled in red, to give us some idea of what we may be seeing in the background of these photos.


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The only thing I actually recognize is the steeple of Augustana Lutheran Church, above the head of the man holding the horse in the second photo. Between him and the church, we may be looking at the old wooden Pennsy station.

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[1] That's according to two sources, the Gazette obit of 1927 and the undated 60th-anniversary article, reproduced in my post about the Bales; but the News obit (also reproduced in my post) says the Bales "bought" the house in 1870, suggesting that it had been built earlier.

Fannie Wheeler Smith

I have been meaning to post this ever since I wrote about Frank and B.E. Smith.

This is the obituary of their mother, Fannie Wheeler Smith.


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Hobart Gazette, 22 Sept. 1899.

I never cease to marvel at how much people traveled in the days when traveling was hard, slow, and miserable.

Fannie's husband, Henry, may have been fairly comfortable financially, if he handled his mill earnings and his Gold Rush money wisely, so perhaps when he died in 1856, he did not leave her in dire financial straits with four young children (or three children and a pregnancy). Nonetheless, the 1860 Census shows her working as a seamstress. By the summer of 1866, as we learn from B.B. Bale's obituary, she and her eldest surviving son, Frank, were operating a hotel together (although the article about the Bales' 60th wedding anniversary describes it as a "small boarding house").

The 1870 Census lists Fannie's occupation as "keeping house." She had only one minor child still at home, but also her 23-year-old daughter, Mariam Brock — who may have been widowed by then — and a little granddaughter. Still, it seems she no longer felt the need to earn money.

As I've mentioned before, I can't find her in the 1880 Census.

I do not know Fannie's middle name. If it began with E., her grave in Hobart Cemetery is marked. If not, then, apparently, it isn't.

Incidentally, Fannie's surviving sister, Mrs. M.H. Earle of Pasadena, was the divorced first wife of John Earle (George's son). They had been married in Lake County on April 12, 1854. I do not know when they were divorced.

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While I'm at it, here is the obituary of Mariam Smith Brock from the Hobart Gazette of November 6, 1909.


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Subtract 37 from 1909 and you get 1872 as the year her husband died; however, the writer did say "about thirty-seven years," so it's possible she was widowed when the 1870 Census recorded her living with her mother. I haven't been able to locate any record of John Brock's death.

Mariam was laid to rest beside her mother, says the article, and the NWIGS' book of Hobart Township cemetery listings records M.N. Brock next to F.E. Smith in row W4 of Hobart Cemetery. Neither stone has any information about birth or death or anything else.

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7/5/2023 update — Thanks to Suzi at the Hobart Historical Society for finding Fannie and Mariam in the 1880 census:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Fannie kept house, while Mariam worked as a dressmaker. Mariam now has a seven-year-old son as well as a daughter, so perhaps I was wrong in guessing that she had been widowed by 1870.

Bale's Island

At the Hobart Historical Society museum, I asked to be shown, on the Google satellite view of Hobart, where Bale's Island was. Here is my attempt to reproduce what I was shown:


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Image from Google Maps.

We're looking at an area south of Sixth Street, just east of Gilbert Court.

It wasn't an island, but a swimming hole used by kids such as Elinor Ferren, born in 1911, who grew up in Hobart and told stories to her daughter about swimming there on the girls' days (as opposed to the boys' days).

According to a 1970 Gazette article, Bale's Island was "completely surrounded by water" when B.B. and Emily Bale settled in that area and built their first home, a log cabin, circa 1866.[1] I seem to recall reading elsewhere (if I could only remember where!) that the "island" became an island only on occasions when Duck Creek was running high.

The 1970 article was accompanied by this letter of reminiscences, written by Dorothy Mellon Gant, born in 1912.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The Mellon family lived at 1001 Georgianna Street (1930 and 1940 censuses). Here is Dorothy Mellon as a senior in high school, from the 1930 Aurora.


Image from Ancestry.com.


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[1] "Here's Bale's Island," Hobart Gazette, 21 May 1970.

Hobart's First Coal Merchant, and the Last of His Name

I recently bought a little packet of commercial papers, held together with a straight pin (because what else do you use when paper clips and staplers haven't been invented yet?).


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Upon taking out the rusty straight pin and getting a good look at the individual papers, we find that they concern sales of coal in 1887 and 1888 by Hobart's own Bell Benjamin Bale.



This is on the reverse of the above:







From the obituaries written up in the local papers following his death on March 25, 1927, we learn that he was Hobart's first coal merchant and established the first coal yard in town. We learn a good deal more, too, for B.B. Bale had been a Hobart resident for some 60 years, known to all, and so his death, and his life, received much attention.


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Hobart Gazette, 1 Apr. 1927.


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Hobart News, 31 Mar. 1927

More details come from this write-up of his sixtieth wedding anniversary, which fell on December 1, 1922. (The text of the article comes from a photocopy of a typewritten manuscript in the Bale file at the Hobart Historical Society Museum, which has no date or source; while it reads like a newspaper article, it's not from the Gazette, and the issues of the News where it might have appeared are missing from the microfilm.)

Mr. and Mrs. Bale Observe 60th Wedding Anniversary
Mr. and Mrs. B.B. Bale, among Hobart's oldest and highly esteemed citizens, on Friday last passed the sixtieth anniversary of their wedded lives, the day being observed by no outward celebration but rather remembered quietly in their home together in keeping with their unostentatious lives.

Mrs. Bale, whose maiden name was Emily Turner Belding, was the daughter of George and Emily Belding and was born December 8, 1837, in the County of Norfolk, England, where her parents owned a large estate.

Mr. Bale, son of John and Mary Bale, also residents of Norfolk County, was born December 25, 1835. At the time of his marriage, December 1, 1862, which was celebrated in the Episcopal church of which both Mr. and Mrs. Bale have been life-long members, he operated one of the large farms of Mr. Belding's estate. Four years after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Bale decided they would come to America, arriving in this country June 14, 1866. They came through to New York and soon thereafter to Hobart, then scarcely more than a wilderness with perhaps about a dozen and a half scattered homes.

They stayed at a little boarding house, located where the Kramer block now stands, for a few weeks after their arrival, while their own log cabin was being constructed on the beautiful little isle long since known as "Bale's Island." Traces yet remain there of what was once their home and its pleasant surroundings.

During the first year or two of their residence on the island they had no near neighbors, but later the Parks family located on the farm across the creek, [1] then quite a stream, and still later the Daniel Lightner family moved near on the place now owned by his grandson, Dick Johnston, and family. Four years, Mr. and Mrs. Bale lived on the island, then built their present home where they have resided for the past 52 years. At the time of their moving there, their own home and that of the Wettengel family and a little house occupied by the Decourcy family, located near where the Swedish Lutheran church now stands, were all the houses then built on the east side of the bridge over Duck creek.

"In town," Black's store was the center of business and the post-office. Andrew Wall, Sr., and family lived in a little house near Black's. Ernest Passow, a brother of the late Christian Passow, Sr., conducted a grocery and shoe shop in a little building located on the corner of Third and Main streets in the space now occupied by the Central Drug Store. Mr. and Mrs. John Mathews, both now passed away, had a home near what is now the Community building. The brick building on School Street at the rear of the M.E. Church, now remodeled and occupied as a dwelling by Mrs. Margaret Rohwedder, was once the public school building where also were conducted Sunday School and church services, a traveling preacher occasionally coming to officiate. Here Mrs. Bale, assisted by Mrs. Wedge, Mrs. DeCourcy, Mrs. Nixon and Alfred French as its superintendent, established the first Sunday school in Hobart, known as the "Union Sunday School." Their music was assisted by a little melodion which Mr. French carried to and from the building each Sunday.

Mr. Bale operated the first coal yard in Hobart. Some thirty years ago he was attacked with grip which settled in his hips leaving him a sufferer and partial invalid for life which caused him to retire from active business.

Mr. and Mrs. Bale have known Hobart through all its years of changes and development and, through their association with its interests, have contributed much to the upbuilding of the town.

May coming years be measured full of life's choice blessings is the wish prompted by the steadfast friendships they have won.

Emily Bale was interviewed in 1937 on the occasion of her 100th birthday.



While the handwritten notes on this photocopy give the source as the Chicago Tribune of December 12, 1937, I have not been able to find this article in that issue online, or any other online paper.


I haven't finished with the Bales, or with this little collection of papers regarding coal sales, either, but this is all I have time for today.

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[1] I believe the reference is to Duck Creek.

I'm Quitting the Dairy Business! I'm Serious, You Guys!

Thus far I've mentioned William Shults only for his effort to oust County Agent S.J. Craig. I don't know much about him. Sometime between 1900 and 1910, he and his wife, Vena, moved into Ross Township from Porter County. By then they had only a son, Alfred, having lost a little daughter, Dora, in early childhood.

(William also had two brothers, Charles and Fred. I've heard of Charles farming the Kramer land south of Hobart, and the Coffey land somewhere between Ainsworth and Merrillville. As for Fred, in 1910 he was 16 years old and living in William's household; two years later he married Miss Emily Schnabel, and the young couple started their life together in "the B.B. Bale residence near the Penna depot" before taking up farming again in Ross Township.)

For a while William and Vena rented the Clinton land northwest of Ainsworth and farmed it. In 1913 they bought for themselves the "Kruse farm," a large spread of land bordering on the Lincoln Highway.


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This excerpt shows the land owned by William Kruse in 1908. Image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

In 1917, we find William elected to the "Trouble Committee" of the Ainsworth branch of the Lake County Milk Producers' Association. Two years later, he decided the dairy business was too much trouble.



It sounds serious, doesn't it? But I've seen the 1920 census; I've seen William and family living on their own farm in Ross Township, William calling himself a dairy farmer, so I know this is only temporary.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Ainsworth Farmers Elect Officers." Hobart Gazette 26 Jan. 1917.
♦ "Kramer Barn Burns." Hobart Gazette 10 Sept. 1909.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 29 Oct. 1909; 30 Sept. 19101; 22 Nov. 1912.
♦ "Personal and Local Mention." Hobart News 25 Dec. 1913.
♦ "Public Sale Today." Hobart Gazette 28 Mar. 1919.
♦ "Ross Township." Hobart News 13 Jan. 1913.

Hobart Then and Now: Georgiana and Illinois Streets

A while back, and 2014:*



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Top image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Yeah, I don't have a date on that top photo, and I'm finding it pretty hard to guess at one. One the one hand, Tabbert's store seems to have hitching posts for horses out front. On the other hand, there are telephone/electrical wires strung all over the place, and a fire hydrant on the street. No vehicles or fashions to help us out.

As for the location … well, after getting it wrong when I first posted this in 2011, and with help from Bonnie's remarks (preserved below) and the 1910 Sanborn map of this area, I think I've finally figured out where the older photo was taken: the photographer stood on Georgiana Street, facing Illinois Street. The focal point seems to be the house (B.B. Bale's, I think), but the camera picked up the side of Tabbert's grocery store, which faced onto Illinois.

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10/28/11 UPDATE: Well, what do you know — someone did come along and educate me. Here's what Bonnie says: "I can't say too much about the picture but I do know it was Tabbert's Grocery Store where the parking lot is now behind T's Pizza. It faced Illinois St. The store was later owned by one of the Scharbachs. After that it was a laundromat."


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*This is a 2014 do-over of a 2011 post that I got wrong.