Henry Paulus Buys the Business

After owning and operating Ainsworth's general store for almost eight years, Charles and Amelia Goldman sold their business (but not their building) in February 1923 to a newcomer named Henry Paulus.


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Hobart Gazette 16 Feb. 1923.

If I've found the right place on modern-day maps, Cook, Indiana, was just west of Cedar Lake (and is now part of the Town of Cedar Lake). I'm going to have to take the newspapers' word for it, because I can't locate Henry Paulus in Hanover or Center Townships. For that matter, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time already trying to trace him anywhere. You wouldn't think "Henry Paulus" was such a common name.

Here's one place where I know I've got the right Henry J. Paulus:


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Ancestry.com. U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971. NARA Microfilm Publication, M841, 145 rolls. Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group Number 28. Washington, D.C.: National Archives.

(This answers the question of why I could never find a first name for the "Mr. Pintz" listed in Along the Route — because he was Max Mintz.)

Anyway, from what I've been able to piece together so far: Henry Joseph Paulus was born December 19, 1882[1] — thus missing the 1880 census. He might be the "Henry Paulis" who shows up in the 1900 Census as coachman to the family of H.A. and Minna Kirchhoff, who were somewhat socially prominent (to judge by their daughter's wedding announcement). In 1903, Henry married Theresa Osburg.[2] By the 1910 Census they had a six-year-old son, Ambrose. (Henry seems to be unemployed, but I have a hard time believing that.) The 1920 Census shows them still in Chicago, now with another son (Urban) and a daughter (Irene); Henry is a salesman.

And the next we hear of him, it's 1923 and he's in Ainsworth. Ainsworth! — what could possibly bring him down here? A desire for fresh country air? And when did he have time to go run a store in Cook, Indiana?

We already know he stayed only a few years here. I've found Henry and Theresa, I believe, in a 1928 Hammond city directory, and then the 1930 Census shows them back in Chicago, where Henry ran a hardware store. They stay there until 1935 (or later), but moved to California for the 1940 Census. And, as that 1944 Vidette-Messenger article says, Henry ran his hardware store in Los Angeles. I believe he died in California on May 31, 1961.[3]

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According to the Hobart News, the Goldmans found their "desirable house" to be Frank Clifford's house in Hobart Park ("Local and Personal," 22 Feb. 1923).

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[1] WWII Army Enlistment Records.
[2] Cook County, Illinois Marriages Index.
[3] Ancestry.com. California, Death Index, 1940-1997 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000. Original data: State of California. California Death Index, 1940-1997. Sacramento, CA, USA: State of California Department of Health Services, Center for Health Statistics.

Hobart's Yellowstone Trail Members

Here's something for you Yellowstone Trail fans: a list of Hobart people and businesses who in December 1922 promised five years' support for the Trail's maintenance and promotion.


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Hobart News 28 Dec. 1922.

I can't index that many names, so here they are for the search engine: S.E. Henderson, O.L. Pattee, Brahst Bros., Hobart Bank, A.J. Newman, First State Bank, Albert Orcutt, Dwight Mackey, Clara Faulkner, Frank Reissig, Busse & Long, Phillips & Byall, Nick Ehrhardt, National Oil & Supply Co., Hobart Lumber Co., R.R. Peddicord, George Watkins, Roper Bros, Emil Scharbach, Hobart Filling Station.


Below that story is one about a wedding anniversary that draws our attention to some Deep-River-area history.

Mary (Ferguson) Hanna was a niece of Catherine Mereness Crisman, but her immediate family is elusive. The earliest I can find her parents, Ezra and Anna (aka Christiana) Ferguson, in a census is 1900, where they are recorded farming in Union Township, Porter County; yet they were married in Lake County in 1861 (Indiana Marriage Collection), and the Civil War draft registration records Ezra in Union Township in 1863. Mary had been born in 1862 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Thomas Hanna was born in Michigan in 1858. I find it interesting that his death certificate (1953) has a blank for his father's given name, and "Unknown" for his mother's name. Either the person who completed the certificate was a bit offhand about it, or his daughter Eva, who reported his death, did not know much about her paternal grandparents.

In the 1900 Census, which shows the Hanna family living in Hobart, Thomas gives his occupation as "R.R. Towerman." By the 1910 Census he had become a teamster — a drayman, as the article says — but the 1920 Census shows him back on the railroad, as a section worker.

Mary died in 1928. I can't find Thomas in 1930. If I've found the right person in the 1940 Census, Thomas had remarried, and his second wife was named Mary, too. I believe the second Mary Hanna died in 1950. Apparently nobody knew her maiden name at that time; from clues on Ancestry.com I'm guessing that it was Moffitt and that her first husband's surname was Smith. I think I need obituaries for all of these people if I'm ever going to figure this out.

As for this Davis Peck — the Deep River justice of the peace from 1882 — I wonder if he was any relation to the Pecks who keep showing up in those "South of Deepriver" columns, but at the moment I don't know anything about him.

… And finally, burgling the home of a grieving widower is pretty darn low.

Lydia Margaret Schnabel Clifford

Today's guest post is by Suzi Emig.


Lydia Margaret Schnabel Clifford was my paternal great-aunt and the second oldest of twelve children born to Jakob (Fred) Schnabel and Catherine Reichert Schnabel in the family home at the intersection of 61st and Colorado west of the creek on the south side of the road. A cousin told me that the family called her Liddy or Aunt Lid. She married relatively late in life, as you know to, Frank Clifford. They are both interred in Crown Hill Cemetery.

Her illness was rather well documented in the local press and she was hospitalized for months before her death. She suffered from pemphigus. I had to research the disease not having heard of it before. It is a rare autoimmune disease that affects the mucous membranes and the skin, causing blistering of the skin which in turn causes the skin to slough off and turn into open sores which can lead to infection. It wasn't until the 1960's and 1970's that an understanding of and the nature of this disease was published. There are three types of pemphigus which vary in severity. From the accounts of her illness in the obituaries, it appears that she may have had the least common and severest form of the disease. She was apparently diagnosed about 5 or 6 months prior to her demise. Since no autoimmune drugs, steroids, or antibiotics existed at that time, treatment consisted of comfort measures and pain relief. The prognosis was grave.

As far as I know Frank never remarried.

I have a copy of the Adams School picnic from 1895 with her and many of her siblings in it. She would have been about 18 at the time and may have been a teacher.



Lydia and Frank's wedding photo, from 1911:


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Their marriage announcement states they will reside on the Heck farm. Evidently they rented. The Hecks and Schnabels were related by marriage.

I think the home northwest of Ainsworth was a house on the Schnabel property between Liverpool Road and Colorado St. and was owned by the family, so again they may have rented it. The plat map of Ross Twp. in 1908 shows the owner as Fred Schnabel, Lydia's older brother. The house is located just a little west of the old Elks on the south side of the road. I don't know the address. It is white with four pillars in the front on the porch that goes all the way across, a fenced pasture to the west and a little barn and garage on the east.


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This image from Google street view shows the house on 61st Avenue that Lydia and Frank may have once occupied.

Evidently Frank had another house built in "Hobart Park" where Lydia died. From what I have figured out the house sat on the north side of 3rd St. in Hobart back from the road. This is about 50 yards from my house. My Dad said that the family used to graze cattle in this area and did own several plots here. So again, the land was most likely owned by the Schnabels.

Martha Wood

Martha Beatty Wood has been so quiet all this time that I don't believe I've yet mentioned her name in this blog — though her husband, William (and indirectly her son, Raymond, who helped to run the Wood garage), and her daughter, Olive, have made several appearances.

Now it's November 1922, and Martha has quietly slipped away.


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.


In the left-hand column, we learn of the death of Lydia Clifford — another person I've never mentioned, but I have posted about three of her sisters: Mrs. Matilda Demmon, known as Tillie, had married Walter Demmon, who built the store in Merrillville; Carrie Chandler, with her husband Eugene, lived on a farm on Liverpool Road; and Emily had married Fred Shults (whose brother just recently quit farming).

Going by the 1920 Census and judging by their neighbors, I gather that Frank and Lydia Clifford owned a farm northwest of Ainsworth, but I haven't been able to find it on any plat map.

Aunt Molly

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From the Hobart Gazette, 25 Feb. 1921.

I hope I've got this right: Molly Schavey Ahrens was the sister of Henry Schavey, who was the father of our Mable Schavey Breyfogle.

Molly had married Fred Ahrens in 1906. Their children were quite young at her passing — Helen about 11, Fred Jr. about 6.

(Above Aunt Molly's is the obituary of Jennie Clifford, whose son, Claude, was once a Hobart plumber.)


Additional Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.

Bricky and Bally

And with a little more research, we confirm that "Bricky" was Milton Ballantyne, our source being this page from Hobart High School's Aurora yearbook for 1915:


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

But we don't know which of those freshmen is Bricky.

As we know, during World War I Milton and Elmer Ballantyne belonged to Co. K, Hobart's home guard. Here is Milton in uniform:



Handwritten notes on the back read:

1917
Milton Ballantyne
Walter MacPherson
Pat Clifford

The writer does not specify left to right, so we still don't know for sure.

Here is brother Elmer (in 1918, according to a handwritten note on the back):



I think I perceive a resemblance between Elmer and the man on the left in the previous photo, so maybe that is Milton.

And I suppose if Milton was "Bricky," Elmer was "Bally."

Asa Bullock, Jr.

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Asa Bullock, Jr. in 1905, at about 13 years of age. This is the only photo I've been able to find of him.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Here is a Bullock we haven't spoken about much yet, if at all. He was the son of Asa and Cynthia Bullock of Hobart, and hence the nephew and cousin of our Ainsworth Bullocks. In April 1918 Asa Jr. came home to Hobart for a visit:


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From the Hobart News of April 25, 1918.

He wasn't kidding about the safety of the troopships — or, at any rate, of the one he returned on, the Leviathan. She was the largest of the American troopships, but in spite of her enormous size, she moved swiftly, and at 22 knots per hour easily outpaced the enemy. According to historian Alfred Crosby, "No U-boat could hope to send a torpedo into the Leviathan unless it was lucky enough to be right in her path." The ship had a rather interesting history.

The most amazing thing about her was that she was German, christened the Vaterland at her launching at Hamburg in 1914. She was not home when war unexpectedly broke out later that year and had to take refuge in an American port for fear of the British Navy. In 1917 the United States entered the war, seized the Vaterland, renamed her, and sent her back to Europe with cargoes of doughboys.

Originally built to hold 6,800 passengers, as a troopship she was sometimes crammed with as many as 11,000 soldiers, in addition to a crew of a couple thousand.

That overcrowding probably intensified the spread of Spanish influenza during one of her later crossings from the U.S. to France. She left New York on September 29, 1918, with between 9,000 and 10,000 army personnel aboard, plus the crew. By the time she landed in Brest, France, 3 sailors and about 76 soldiers had died of influenza or its complications. The exact number of victims is unclear, as in the chaos and exhaustion that came with raging epidemics, record-keeping always suffered. For a harrowing account of this deadly crossing, I suggest Alfred Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, which I have been quoting. (I used the new edition, first published in 2003 by Cambridge University Press.)

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But to return to Asa Jr., here are a few older articles, more or less relevant, that I happen to have on hand.


The death of his father in 1905 (with a biographical sketch of Asa Sr.):


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From the Hobart Gazette of Sept. 29, 1905.



The suicide of his wife:


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From the Hobart News of Sept. 12, 1912. They had been married on August 24, 1912 according the to Indiana Marriage Collection.


The wireless telegraphy station that he and his brother set up on the Bullock farm:


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From the Hobart News of Nov. 6, 1913 (in case you couldn't tell).

Bad Plumbing

In June of 1914, Lee & Bruce were hired to fix someone else's bad work in the Hobart schoolhouse. (Because the article refers simply to "the schoolhouse," I'm guessing it means the high school.)


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I wonder who did the bad plumbing in the first place! The Gazette was kind enough not to say.

The previous month, Hobart's former postmistress, Jane Spray, hired Lee & Bruce to install a state-of-the-art water supply system in her new house.



From the description, it sounds very much like the electric pump/captive-air tank system you might find in any modern house using well water.

And on the plumbing-wars front: two competing plumbers, William Richmond and Claude Clifford, who had previously been solo practitioners, now joined forces.

… As Opposed to a Naughty Plumber

There goes some of the competition.


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Sounds like he skipped town owing people money, as well as abandoning his wife, but unfortunately neither Hobart newspaper gave any of the juicy details.

And at the upper right, Claude Clifford announces that his partnership with Mr. Kalles "has been dissolved." I should hope so! Claude stayed in the plumbing business solo.