The Story of the Store: The Prequel

Just recently stumbled across this tidbit of information, and I'm wondering how I missed it the first time I read through the 1919 microfilm. For our purposes, the most interesting part is the last sentence.


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"Deaths for the Week," Hobart Gazette, Feb. 21, 1919.

Here's a photo of Frank as a prosperous businessman, circa 1915:


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That photo comes from History of Lake County and the Calumet Region, which includes a biographical sketch of Frank and the ups and downs of his career.

'Way back when I first started getting into the history of the Ainsworth general store, I was theorizing that perhaps W.O. Halsted was the first storekeeper; apparently that's wrong. Nor would Frank have been the first storekeeper, if the 1915 bio is correct in saying that he bought the store.

But I find the early history in the 1915 bio questionable. According to that source, Frank moved to Crown Point in 1875, spent nine years as a contractor — which brings us to about 1884 — then three years at a wood-working mill in South Chicago, which brings us to roughly 1887 and the purchase of the Ainsworth store. However, in other records, Frank shows up as postmaster at the Ainsworth post office in 1885.


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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.

We know from the 1880 Census that Frank was living in Crown Point, with his wife, Elizabeth (née Hutton), and their young family. So it must have been sometime between June 1880 and September 1885 that Frank moved his family to Ainsworth and became the village storekeeper and postmaster.

Frank is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Hammond.

I have pretty thoroughly neglected the Clintons so far. I shall have to remedy that.

A Hodgepodge of Tidbits

A few news items that for some reason I thought needed to be in this blog, dating to mid-March 1920.


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When I saw that item about Gust Deering moving onto an Ainsworth-area farm, I thought I had never heard of him. But upon perusing my notes, I see he's figured in them twice before (though I never mentioned him in the blog), and both times because he was moving, or thinking of moving, to another farm, i.e., in January 1910:

Gust Deering who lives on the Kruse farm east of Ainsworth has rented the Wm. Bissell farm five miles east of Crown Point and will move sometime next month. We understand that James Ed Kelly who formerly lived on the Kruse farm will again occupy the place as soon as Mr. Dearing [sic] moves.

and in February 1920:

Gust Deering and family are preparing to move on to the Nightingale farm, [microfilm illegible but I think it says: formerly known as the Zeller] place containing 220 acres, located southwest of Ainsworth. They have resided on the Clinton farm for the past five years, but this farm was sold last year to D.C. Frank. Mr. Deering thought some of quitting farming, and last year bought the Thos. Hanna home in Joryville, but when his son Henry returned from the war and concluded to stay with his father on the farm, Mr. Deering thought it best to continue farming. Their other son William, is employed this winter in Gary.

So at this point I don't know anything about Gust except that he keeps changing his mind.

As for what was formerly known as the Underwood farm, if we go back to 1874 we find several parcels owned by various people with that surname, but the one directly north of the Vincent schoolhouse comprised 240 acres on the west side of Clay Street.



Concerning Lesta (not "Tesla") Raschka and her visit to Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, the News attributed her health problems to an attack of "infantile paralysis several years ago."

"Mr. Chester" is, of course, Charles Chester.


Sources:
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 5 Feb. 1920; 18 Mar. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 14 Jan. 1910; 19 Mar. 1920.

Farm Buildings and Buyings

The Price family set about improving the farm they had recently bought. By early August 1919, they had hired numerous local contractors to do work for them:

F.B. Price of Ross township has given the contract to Wall & Fleming for the building of a new house and barn, including half a dozen outbuildings on his farm which he recently purchased from W.O. Halsted. The cement contract goes to Vincent Boyd and the electrical wiring to Henry Kegebein. He will install a private electric generating outfit, making his farm one of the most up-to-date in the vicinity.

I'm not sure if any of that glorious work has survived. I've gone out there and tried to spot anything that suggested 1919, but then I have trouble applying those boundaries, so clear in the plat maps, to the real land outside the window of my car.

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A little distance northeast of the Price farm lay some 200 acres that had been known as the Clinton farm for decades — as early as 1874 we find most of that land under Eli Clinton's name, and by 1919 it all belonged to Steve Clinton. Now it passed into the hands of David and Agnes Frank. Those 200 acres touched on the 167 acres that the Franks had farmed since at least 1908 (I can't find any earlier records of them).


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From the 1908 Plat Map: outlined in red, the Frank farm in Hobart Township; outlined in green, the Clinton 200 acres in Ross Township.

David Frank intended to continue farming all his land, with the help of his 20-year-old son, John. His other son, Robert, was 17 years old and probably still in school.

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If we look again at that 1908 map, we will notice the Bullock land due north of Ainsworth, 160 acres bordering State Road 51 and divided by the Deep River.



In 1919 this land changed ownership on paper only. Since 1912, Claude and Mary Ann (Chandler) Bullock had lived and farmed there. Now they bought out the shares in that land belonging to Claude's brother, Hubert, and sister, Ruth Mackey.

Claude was then about 39 years old, Mary Ann 34. They had two sons: three-year-old Kenneth, and little Gilbert, just past his first birthday.


Sources:
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 7 Aug. 1919; 14 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 Aug. 1919.

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.

The Wandering Post Office

The Ainsworth Post Office, in its 52-year existence, revolved clockwise around the Ainsworth Triangle to end exactly where it began.

(1) In January 1882, Ainsworth's first post office opened in a general store (I think this store was later operated by William and Carrie Raschka) on the southwest corner of the intersection of Ainsworth Road and State Road 51.

(2) In 1927, it moved to Charles and Lucy Popp's grocery store across Ainsworth Road.

(3) In 1931, it moved into the Grand Trunk Railroad station and was administered by the railroad's agent, E.G. Clark.

(4) Subsequently (date unknown), it moved back into the general store where it had started. The Ainsworth Post Office ceased operation on February 15, 1934, and Ainsworth's mail delivery was handled by the Hobart Post Office.

The table below lists the seventeen people who held the position of Postmaster and the dates of their appointment:

Name of Postmaster	Date Appointed
Henry Chester	1/10/1882
Francis W. Clinton	9/4/1885
George Guernsey	9/21/1888
Mary E. Guernsey	5/23/1889
Willard O. Halsted	5/11/1893
Elmer Griffith	5/15/1901
Frank Coyle	1/14/1902
Hugh Dotzer	1/28/1904
William Raschka	5/24/1904
Mr. Pintz[1]	9/7/1915
Amelia Goldman	12/14/1915
Henry J. Paulus	5/15/1923
Lucy Popp	6/10/1927
E.G. Clark	3/11/1931
Nellie Slaters	9/3/1931
William Summer	10/29/1932
Milton Guernsey	7/12/1933

Source: Dorothy Ballantyne and Robert Adams. Along the Route: A History of Hobart, Indiana, Post Offices and Postmasters. Hobart: The Hobart Historical Society, Inc., 1979.

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[1] This postmaster's name was actually Max Mintz.