Losing Lucy

I missed the good part, back when I wrote up a short bio of Levi D. Jones. The good part is how he lost his third(?) wife in August 1857, half a year after marrying her:[1]


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Crown Point Register, 4 Aug. 1857.

It gets even better: apparently, he got her back for a while, and then lost her again in February 1858.


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Crown Point Register, 16 Feb. 1858.

In case you can't read it:

WARNING

This is to forbid all persons harboring or trusting my wife Lucy Jones, after this date, as she has left my bed and board, without just cause or provocation.

Levi. D. Jones
Ross February 11th, 1858.

I don't think he found her again after that. In the 1860 Census, Levi is living with (I believe) his daughter from the previous marriage, and no one else. Lucy is back home with her parents:[2]


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Notice the three "Jones" children and their ages in the census — George (9), Sydney (4), and Mary (2) — and remember that Lucy married Levi Jones in December 1856. So George can't be the product of that marriage, and Sydney also is questionable.

Let's take a little detour, and speed over to George's death in 1924. According to his death certificate, his parents were Lucy Sly …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… and Jacob Bigelow. I have not been able to find any record of marriage between those two. Nor can I positively identify Jacob Bigelow.[3]

As for Sydney, people on Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com believe he was actually Seneca Bigelow, born to Jacob and Lucy (Sly) Bigelow in November 1853.

But getting back to Lucy — we next catch up with her in July 1864, when she married William Brown in Berrien County, Michigan.[4] That was just an elopement, I believe; their permanent home was Porter County, where we find them in the 1880 Census:[5]


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The interesting thing we learn here (aside from the fact that Lucy is completely illiterate) is that William has a 25-year-old stepson named Simon Bigelow. Maybe the enumerator got Seneca/Sydney's name wrong, or maybe that's his middle name.

William Brown died in 1897. In August 1902, Lucy married Samuel Scott, who was some 35 years her junior. The marriage did not work out:


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La Porte County News (Union Mills, Ind.), 12 Feb. 1903.

Somewhere, perhaps in the next world, Levi D. Jones was laughing.

Lucy died in Michigan City in 1912. Here is her death certificate:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Martha Eckert, the informant, was Lucy's daughter. I find it interesting that Martha didn't know her maternal grandmother's name. Also, Lucy is described as widowed, but Samuel Scott outlived her by 30-plus years.

If you have the urge to stand at Lucy's grave and pay your respects, you'll need to go to Michigan City.

Seneca/Sydney/Simon Bigelow died, alas, in Chicago in 1941, meaning that his death certificate is not readily available and his obituary does not give his family background.

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[1] Per the Indiana Marriage Collection, they took out a marriage license in July 1857, and married in December 1857.
[2] Their farm was probably in west-southwestern Ross Township, based on the few of their neighbors I've been able to find on the 1874 Plat Map. (By 1874, Lucy's parents and married brother Russell had relocated to Michigan, and both parents had died.)
[3] Someone by that name was buying land in Porter County in 1837, but I can't find him in any census in this area. There was also a Jacob Bigelow involved in the planning City West (see Lake County 1929 at 183). I just don't know if that was the man who married Lucy Sly.
[4] Ancestry.com. Michigan, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1822-1940 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
[5] Neither I nor anyone else, apparently, can find them in the 1870 census.

Ainsworth Then and Now: the Sievert Farmhouse

Circa 1942, and 2022:



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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.

Nuts to You

While indexing the Hobart Historical Society's earliest Union Sunday School record book, which appears to begin in 1868, I came across this page. Some earnest person carefully recorded something (attendance?) about these young* Sunday scholars … and then some irreverent person came and scrawled "nuts to you" and perhaps left those smudges with his or her dirty hands.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The expression, "nuts to you," seems out of place in 1868. We know it was in use in 1930s-40s — I keep running across this example:

"Please eliminate the expression 'nuts to you' from Egbert's speech." [Request from the Hays Office regarding the script of "The Bank Dick," 1940]**

However, my internet research doesn't turn up any information about how far before 1940 it goes back. So I shouldn't jump to conclusions. But I picture a bored 13-year-old circa 1940 nosing around in the attic when the adults were away, finding this ancient record of good little children, and writing something impertinent for the sheer fun of it.

________________
*Just to look at a few: John Shearer would have been about 12 years old in 1868; George Shearer, 10; John Frank, 11 (he was the son of William and Salinda Frank; and Simeon Brown, 13.
**E.g., http://www.dictionary.com/browse/nuts.

Visions of Concrete

The new year, 1923, brought dreams of pavement:


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

From the Lincoln Highway to Lincoln and Tenth would be the route of today's State Road 51. From the brickyards and the Chicago road to Miller would be Lake Park Avenue.

Speaking of pavement — the next column we find William Raschka winning a lawsuit against the Federal Paving Co. — the same company that had recently lost a court battle with some Ross Township farmers.

The story in the right-hand column about the lecture course interested me mainly because of who was selling tickets — among Hobart's high society, we find Lovisa Chester Nelson in her little house in the village of Ainsworth.

She May Have Had Lots of Cats

In a comment to an earlier post about the Deep River general store, a reader mentioned dim memories of a woman who ran a grocery store in Deep River in the early 1960s, whose name was Anna Anders, or Anderson. In asking around, I found some other people who remembered this woman, including one who couldn't recall her name but believed she'd had lots of cats.

Luckily, I was able to find our Deep River grocery lady listed in a 1955 directory:


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Telephone Directory for Valparaiso, Chesterton, East Gary, Hobart, Kouts, Ogden Dunes, Wheeler. General Telephone Company of Indiana Inc. February 1955.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

We learn a little more about her from the "Obituaries" of the Hobart Gazette of Dec. 5, 1963:

Mrs. Anna L. Anders, 77, Deep River, died on December 3 in Porter Memorial Hospital, Valparaiso, following a lengthy illness.

Born in Wheeler, she had lived in Deep River most of her life, and owned and operated a confectionery and grocery store there for 45 years.

She is survived by one daughter, Mrs. Nellie Simpson of LaPorte; one granddaughter and two great granddaughters.

Funeral services will be held Friday at Pflughoeft's Chapel.

Counting back 45 years from 1963 would take us to 1918, and even earlier if Anna had retired from the grocery business some time before her death, and yet I find absolutely nothing in my notes about her. Shame on me! I suppose she could have been unusually quiet about her business.

(To make matters worse, there was an Anna Carstensen Anders in Hobart who also ran a grocery. I believe it was her store that George Sauter bought in 1919. I must try not to confuse the two Annas.)

I believe our Anna was born circa 1886 to Arthur and Elizabeth Brown. I find the Brown family in the 1910 Census farming rented land in Union Township, Porter County. Anna had a younger sister, Ella.

Two years later, Anna had somehow met and fallen in love with a Chicago man, Robert Anders, about 17 years her senior. Robert, an immigrant from England, shows up in Chicago as a schoolboy in the 1880 Census, and then in the 1900 Census and 1910 Census, working as a house painter. He and Anna were married on October 20, 1912 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

Eight years later, the 1920 Census recorded them living in eastern Ross Township (to judge by their neighbors in the census). Robert was operating his own ice-cream parlor. They had no children of their own, but their household included a 10-year-old orphan, Nellie Chaffin.

By the time of the 1930 Census, Robert and Anna had moved to Union Township, where Robert worked as a "house decorator" — his old trade, I suppose. Nellie was gone, but Anna's widowed mother and unmarried sister were living with them.

According to the family gravestone, Robert died in 1934.

The 1940 Census shows Anna, widowed, back in Ross Township, in the vicinity of Deep River. In the occupation column, the enumerator wrote "attendant," then crossed that out and wrote "proprietor" of a "filling station." Her sister Ella, still unmarried, lived with her.

When Ella died in October 1962, the Vidette Messenger's Union Center correspondent noted that Ella "had made her home with her [sister] for many years."


And that's all I have at the moment about Anna Brown Anders. But at least now I know she existed.

Weekend Wreckage Report

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Hobart News 25 Aug. 1921.

The first accident occurred at the intersection of present-day E. 73rd Ave. and Grand Blvd./S.R. 51. That spot may have been particularly dangerous, with Lincoln Highway tourists adding to the traffic, and heaven knows if there was even a stop sign at the intersection.

William Fisher (husband of Jennie Hurlburt) was innocently getting the honey from Joe's bees when an anonymous driver struck his car on Old Ridge Road.

The column to the left of the "Week-End Accidents" relates the adventures of the local young men in the National Guard. I believe the John Fisher mentioned in that story was William's nephew.

♦    ♦    ♦
In other auto-related news, I now learn of yet another named highway that (like the Yellowstone Trail) I'd never heard of before; but the "Liberty Highway" is so obscure that I have not been able yet to determine whether it, too, was a cross-country route, or ran only between Kokomo and Chicago.


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Hobart Gazette 26 Aug. 1921.

In addition to a reminder of the hard times the nation was experiencing, the "Local Drifts" column notes the purchase by Joseph Wegesin of the Thomas Roper farm "south of Deepriver." The only farm I can find matching that description shows up in the 1891 Plat Book in the northeast corner of Winfield Township:


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Image from the 1939 Plat Book.

Blog-wise, I've ignored the Wegesin family up until now. In my newspaper notes, I've recorded only two mentions.* One was in 1911, when Mrs. Conrad Wegesin (Joseph's mother) came down from Chicago to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. for Mrs. Fasel's 54th birthday party. The second was in May 1920, when Joseph's oldest daughter, Gladys, attended a birthday party for Lillie Fasel, who was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. (I wonder if the Wegesins had a family connection to the Fasels?)

From a brief look at the official records, I gather that sometime after Joseph's birth in Ohio in 1881, his parents, Conrad and Mary, moved the family to Chicago, where 1900 census found them. About a year later, Joseph married Martha Semmer, who also went by the name Magdalen in some censuses. By 1910 Joseph and Martha-Magdalen had moved to Hobart. Ten years later, they had seven children of their own, plus a niece and a nephew living with them.

I'm not sure I'm going to have to pay much more attention to this family, as it appears that by 1930 they had moved to Muncie, Indiana.

___________________
*There may have been more, but I did not record them.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1911.
♦ "Young Lady Surprised." Hobart Gazette 28 May 1920.

Ford v. Cement Truck

Apparently, if you were bored in Hobart, you could go hang around the Nickel Plate Garage and wait for something to happen. Just one day after the barber-v.-barber grudge match, a cement truck showed what it could do to a Ford car out in front of the Nickel Plate Garage. The Ford belonged to our friend Roland Dolphus Sizelove.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 11 Aug. 1921.

In news of other acquaintances — yet another relative for the mysterious Mary Kipp. "Mrs. Wm. Halsted" may have been W.O.'s widow, Barbara; that was how the Gazette of August 12 identified a woman beginning a new house on Garfield Street, though there could have been two such women.

And Vera Quinlan had a job in Gary. From the next day's Gazette, we learn that her brother, Lester, who was then about 16 or 17, had joined the National Guard:


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1921.

… and yes, Mrs. Gottfried Mayer was Oscar's sister-in-law.

Two Chester Sisters at the Centennial

Two more photos from Chester-Raschka descendant Bruce McLain!

The first shows (l to r) Lovisa (Chester) Nelson, Carrie (Chester) Raschka and Lilly Davis in costume for the 1947 Hobart Centennial celebration.



Don't you wonder how much of their clothing is really antique? I know that many people sewed "old-fashioned" costumes for the occasion, but I can image Lovisa and Carrie's mother wearing those black mitts on Lovisa's hands.

I do not know who Lilly Davis was. (Anyone who does is invited to leave a comment.)


Next, we have a summery Christmas greeting card, showing Mabel Brown and her husband, the Rev. Charles A. Brown, pastor of the Methodist church.


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The card is undated. The 1920 Census shows the Browns in Lowell; the 1930 Census has them in Hobart (he 64 years old, she 45); and the 1940 Census has them in Chesterton, with the Reverend "retired." Beyond that, I don't know; and, of course, the card could have been sent from anywhere.

Cutting the Midnight Hair

Deep in the cold silent darkness of Hobart, in the autumn of 1919 and the winter of your soul, you reach that point where only a shave and a haircut can restore your will to live. Where can you go? To whom can you turn?

To pretty well any of the local barbers, apparently. Just rouse them out of bed and they will take care of you in their sanitary, up-to-date barbershop whenever you like.

The Hobart barbers have done away with closing hours, and are now working whenever and as long as customers wish work done. Lawrence Niksch is again working all alone, his barber having gone to the steel mills where he can make more money. E.E. McAdams is helping Otto Sizelove at the former Wilder shop, and O.C. Mize is all alone. Since Mr. Brown left about a month ago Mr. Mize has added some new fixtures to his place and now has one of the most sanitary and up-to-date shops in the Calumet region.

Which is great for the hairy men of Hobart, but a hard life for barbers.

♦    ♦    ♦
A happier announcement moves me to say a few words about James and Rosa Frame …


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… who, if they really had wanted to be mentioned in this blog, should have been less orderly and law-abiding. However, they had the foresight to suffer some misfortune, in the form of Rosa's serious illness early on in their marriage — but I'm getting ahead of myself.

James was born in November 1870, Rosa Stegmeier in July 1874; both in Indiana, and Rosa probably on the land where she and her husband would be farming in 1926:



They married in 1898.

We first hear of Rosa's illness in early September 1904, when she was "reported very low," which in the idiom of the time meant seriously ill. Two weeks later she was in the "Logansport asylum," i.e., Longcliff Hospital — but the "very low" suggests it was her physical, not mental, health at issue, so I'm guessing she had tuberculosis.

Unlike so many of the tuberculosis cases we've encountered so far, Rosa's had a happy ending: she recovered. The 1910 census found her back home, the mother of a two-year-old boy, Irvin (though she had borne and lost another child at some point). In 1915 she gave birth to a daughter, Allene or Aline (who eventually became a teacher at the W.G. Haan school).

Those were the high, or low, points of the Frames' life so far. Other than that, they quietly went about farming and socializing, and obviously had plenty of friends to celebrate James' birthday in 1919.

I don't understand how his 50th birthday could fall in 1919, when he himself told the 1900 census-taker that he was born in November 1870, but that may be a mistake on the part of the News. And anyway, when 35 friends turn up at your door to celebrate your birthday, you don't fuss about the details.


Sources:
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Ainsworth Pick-Ups." Hobart Gazette 9 Sept. 1904; 23 Sept. 1904.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 4 Dec. 1919.

Random Changes

Having auctioned off their farm things, the Rossows apparently were making plans to move to town.

Wm. Rossow last week purchased the Ray Halstead home on Lincoln avenue, the consideration being $3,000. Mr. Halstead and family will remain there until next March, when they expect to move on the farm.

I don't know exactly where on Lincoln Street this house stood (or stands). By "the farm," I suppose the writer meant some of the Halsted property between Ainsworth and Merrillville.

Speaking of Halsteds, changes were coming up for Hazard.* In July he sold his barbershop to a partnership formed by Clifford O. Mize (a barber sidelining in phonographs) and one Mr. Brown, whose first initials vary from report to report. Since none of these newspapers stories ever give an address, I don't know if the barbershop in question is the one in the photo linked to above, but it was indeed on Main Street. "Mr. Halstead has not fully decided as to his future business engagements," the Gazette commented on July 4, adding that Hazard meant to work for at least a week in the barber shop of Lawrence Niksch — filling in for the said Mr. Brown, who had worked there for several weeks.

Meanwhile, his sister, Alta, had left for Boston, intending to spend a month's vacation traveling and visiting in the East and South.

In non-Halsted news, our Deep River friend, Wilma Cullman, enrolled for the "summer courses" at Valparaiso University. While the report does not specify what courses, Wilma was likely preparing to become a teacher, as she would be by 1920. Among her classmates were Elsie Gruel and Pearl Ols.

And finally, on May 30, Benjamin and Mertie Strattan returned from Florida. They had been visiting someone named Harlan, who I believe was Benjamin's son from his first marriage, and who operated a "pleasure boat" for a living.

____________________
*I still don't know what, if any, relation Hazard and Ray were to each other.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Halstead Barber Shop Sold." Hobart Gazette 4 July 1919.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 29 May 1919; 5 June 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 4 July 1919.
♦ "Mize & Brown Form Partnership and Buy Halstead Barber Shop." Hobart News 3 July 1919.
♦ "Mize-Schreffler." Hobart News 3 July 1919.

Charles Chester v. Everybody

A new season, a new action to quiet title.


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Two and a half acres of this land overlapped the land that Charles' stepmother and her second husband had been suing over the previous autumn. I wish I knew the story behind that.


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These days you can go walking in the woods on the land that was the subject of this action.


Sources:
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Notice to Non-Resident." Hobart News 11 Apr. 1918.

(For search-engine purposes) Defendants named in the action: Benton, McDonald, Race, Beckwith, Barney, Wheeler, Bond, Hanks, Smith, Maxwell, Wilcox, Brown, Green.