Miss Margaret and the Woodses of Ross Township

I must have been in a bad mood seven years ago when I wrote the post about Samuel B. Woods: I put so little effort into it. Now Sam's youngest child is getting married, so maybe I should take this opportunity to educate myself a bit more.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News, Nov. 1, 1923.

The home of the bride's parents stood, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville, "on West 57th Avenue, near the intersection of 57th and Cleveland Street (Route 55)." That certainly helps me figure out which of the various parcels owned by the Woodses was where they actually lived.


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From the 1908 Plat Map.

Samuel Bartlett Woods was born in Ross Township in 1856 to Bartlett and Ann Eliza Woods. Bartlett Woods was among the early settlers of Ross Township and a prominent citizen; you can read more about him in Lake County Encyclopedia. Ann Eliza Sigler, who became Bartlett's wife in 1847 (Indiana Marriage Collection), was the daughter of Samuel and Ann Sigler, early settlers of Hobart Township.

In 1882, Samuel Woods married Mellue Vilmer.[1] They had three children. The first was a son, Harold, who died in 1908. The second was a daughter, Wilma, who married Francis Malmstone in 1915 and lived with him in Griffith. The last was our Miss Margaret.

Now, Chester Clark and his new wife may have spent some of their early married life on his "large farm" at Carthage, Illinois, but we know from the 1930 Census that within seven years they moved back to live on her parents' farm.

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At the top of the right-hand column on the page above, we find another happy event: at the farm on Cleveland Avenue, Lois Harms turned eight years old. Esther Palm was a neighbor; Ruth and Loretta Schavey were maternal relatives, I'm sure, but I don't know their exact relation.

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Lower down in that same column, another item that interested me was A. Johnson's public sale "at the old Collver place." I've just barely mentioned the name of Collver and identified the Collver property without understanding precisely where it was …


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Image from the 1908 Plat Map.

… and now I'm going to try to figure that out. When I wrote the linked post, in 2015, the Lake County Surveyor GIS website may not even have been online — or if it was, my internet connection was not good enough to use it. But now I can use it, and do, and it's very helpful.

Anyway, we can see from the plat map above that the Collver place was bordered on the south by South Side Addition 2. Per the Lake County GIS, South Side Addition 2 is a strip of land running along the north side of 13th Street, from S.R. 51 east to just past Fleming Street (now occupied by a commercial building and several houses). And we have a pretty good idea where the Sapper land was and still is, don't we? So the Collver place was between the Sapper land and South Side Addition 2. Just north of South Side Addition 2 is a cute little house, built in 1919 per the county records, that must have stood on the old Collver place, and was probably occupied by this A. Johnson — maybe even by the Collver family.

And who was the Collver family? The member we're dealing with today — the auctioneer at this public sale — was born Sylvanus Roy Collver in Canada in 1873, but always went by Roy or S.R. He came to the U.S. sometimes around 1890[2], following his father, mother, and brother. In 1900, the family was living in Chicago. Roy was a fruit salesman. In January 1896 Roy had married Margrete Prendergast (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index); in June of that year they had a son, whom they christened Sylvanus Albert.

Since Roy was in his early twenties when he married Margrete, that was probably his first marriage. It wasn't his last. I don't know what happened to Margrete, but by 1905 Roy was free to marry Mary M. O'Donnell (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index). I think she is the "Mae" who shows up with him the 1910 Census, living in Hobart Township, in their own home. In January 1917, Roy sued Mae for divorce.[3] The divorce must have gone through: in May 1917, Roy married Leah Herman (Indiana Marriage Collection). I can't find them in the 1920 Census, and Roy didn't live to be counted in the 1930 Census. He was still married to Leah when he died in 1927 (Indiana Death Certificates).


I cannot identify the A. Johnson who started all this by having a public sale on the old Collver place.


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[1] I believe that her brother, William E. Vilmer, was a local photographer.
[2] 1893 per the 1900 Census; 1889 per the 1910 Census.
[3] "In the Divorce Courts," Hobart Gazette, January 19, 1917.

In-Law Troubles: Extreme Edition

Accusing one's in-laws of meddling in one's marriage is not all that rare. But on July 6, 1923, in-law troubles reached an unusual level, involving attempted murder.


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Hobart Gazette, July 13, 1923

The last time we met Clifford O. Mize, he was brawling on Main Street. Evidently that was not out of character for him.

The 1920 Census places the Schreffler household on Indiana Street, and that seems to go along with the references in the article to the Bruhn factory and the Nickel Plate and "J" tracks. So these events probably happened in the general area of 400 South Indiana.

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I had noticed Harriet "Hattie" Schreffler in February of 1919, when she opened a millinery shop on Main Street.


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Hobart Gazette, February 7, 1919

In June of that year, she married Clifford Mize. It was his second marriage, and a child of the first was reported living with them in the 1920 Census. Harriet and Clifford had two sons together.

Radiophone

By the spring of 1922, gramophones were common. The next thing in entertainment was the "radiophone."


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Hobart News 27 Apr. 1922.

KYW was the first radio station in the Chicago area.

The real-estate transaction described below that ad was reported in greater detail by the next day's Gazette.


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 28 Apr. 1922.

"Near the Collver place," was it? Well, the only thing I can identify out of all this is the Collver place as it appeared in 1908:


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From the 1908 Plat Map.

I find a Fred Trapp in Gary in the 1920 Census and the 1930 Census. In neither does he describe himself as a carpenter, but I can't find anyone else by that name.


Anyway, just above that item we see that Calvin C. Shearer had started work on present-day S.R. 51, which had aroused so much interest because of its bad condition.

Over in the "Births" column, a second child for John and Lillian Call, and two Halfman babies — news that only reminds me how little I've kept track of the Halfmans of Ross Township. John and Joe were brothers, I believe: sons of Frank Halfman, and thus brothers also of young Carl Halfman, who had died in an Army camp in 1918. Their grandfather was Henry Halfman, who had arrived in Lake County by April 1860 (when his marriage was recorded), but he did not appear in the census that year. He did, however, show up in the 1870 and subsequent censuses. The 1874 Plat Map shows him owning 80 acres at the northeast corner of Broadway and 61st Ave (the parking lot of Ultra Foods, in other words). Henry and his wife, Mary, had three children: Frank, Clara, and William. We shall have news of William soon.

Joseph Halfman was born circa 1889 and married Marian Adler circa 1912-3. The child born in 1922 was either their third or fourth. As for Joe's younger brother, John, born circa 1893, he had married Clara Adler (Marian's sister) in 1915, and the child born in 1922 was their third, a son named Leo. I can't find the Joseph Halfman family in the 1920 census. The John Halfman family was running a dairy farm on rented land near his Uncle William's farm — possibly his grandfather's old place.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1860 Census.
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Mrs. Halfman Dies at Lowell," Hammond Times 4 Apr. 1940. Newspaperarchive.com.

Racing News, and the Boys with the Yellow Paint

The Hobart Motorcycle Club was confident enough to place this ad in the News ten days before the scheduled race although, according to the Gazette, its members were still working to get the new track ready — the "low places [were] being tiled and the grading [was] progressing."

Three days before the race, the News reported that the work was nearly done: all topsoil had been removed, the curves were banked properly, and the three-quarter-mile track would indeed be ready for the races on Decoration Day, 1920.

The town's memorial ceremony was scheduled for 1:30 p.m., so the races' 2:30 p.m. starting time would allow people to engage in solemn remembrance and then go have fun.

And indeed they did have fun. The racetrack's opening day was a great success.


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It's not that I think you're interested in all the details of the race, Dear Reader; I just wanted an excuse to include that totally irrelevant story about the murderous farmhand.

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The News of May 20, 1920, which carried the ad shown above, also carried a small and mystifying item in its social column: "It is said that the boys with the yellow paint were at work again one night this week."

That the "boys" had no names and were working at night leads me to speculate that this was a case of vandalism, similar to the events of the autumn of 1918. But if this vandalism was likewise in protest — then in protest of what, I wonder? The war was over, and so were its gasless Sundays and rabid anti-German paranoia; thus there was no excuse, anymore, for denouncing "slackers" or persons of German origin. I wonder if perhaps this time the "boys" were trying to denounce Prohibition-flouters?


Sources:
♦ Advertisement. Hobart News 20 May 1920.
♦ "Hobart's New Speedway Will Be Opened Sunday Afternoon." Hobart News 27 May 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 20 May 1920.
♦ "Motorcycle Races Well Attended." Hobart Gazette 4 June 1920.
♦ "Motorcycle Races Will be Held at 2:30 Sunday, May 30." Hobart News 20 May 1920.
♦ "Motorcycle Races." Hobart Gazette 21 May 1920.
♦ "Nearly 5,000 See Motorcycle Races Sunday Afternoon." Hobart News 3 June 1920.

Daylight Squandering Time

The August 28, 1919 Hobart News, which carried the Ainsworth column buried in its middle pages, had several stories on its front page that caught my attention.


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A baseball game coming up for the Ainsworth Cubs! I don't know who Bakalar or Hudson were, but then I'm not a fan. The "Ainsworth base ball park" sounds pretty grand, but I expect it was just an open field.

A report on the further exploits of Marvin and Willard Hoover, the Hobart motorcyclists.

And daylight saving time is ending, for the present.

Notice the story entitled, "Judge Gary* Refuses Demands of Union Leaders." This is just one episode in a lot of labor troubles through the Calumet Region during the summer of 1919.** Gary, Hammond, South Chicago and Indiana Harbor all experienced strikes. By early August, some 12,000 workers from steel mills, tin mills, railroad shops and the American Bridge Co. were striking for higher wages, shorter working hours and better conditions. Later that month, when workers at a Hammond steel car manufacturer threatened to strike, Indiana's governor — at the request of the Lake County sheriff — sent in the state militia. In commenting on that story in its August 22 issue, the editor of the Gazette said, "The leaders of the strikers are mostly alien Reds and the government has agents there to arrest them with the view of deportation. The women are worse than the men." However, the "Local Drifts" column noted: "Deputy Sheriff Collver was scouring this vicinity the past week, enlisting citizens to guard the peace in Hammond. He was unable to get very many." Since some Hobartites may have been among the Gary strikers, I suspect there was more sympathy for the unions among Hobart's millworkers than in the office of the Gazette.

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*Elbert H. Gary, for whom the city is named.
**Any attempt on my part to better understand and relate the history of these labor troubles would involve me in much more research than I have time for, so I'll just pass over them with these brief comments, based on stories I skimmed through in Hobart's two weekly papers.

Lights on the Ainsworth Road

One of the matters up for discussion at Hobart's town board meeting on March 10, 1919, was a petition from residents along the Ainsworth road, i.e., State Road 51 between Hobart and Ainsworth. The petition was signed, according to the News, by "S.R. Collver, Chas. Sapper, Dave Vinegar, Harvey Auton, David Cox, M.H. Smith, H.W. Bracken, W.G. Bracken, J.C. Kellen, Jos. Hudson, H.L. Ryan, Robert Reichert, V. Miscevich, Mike Drakulich, and George Hayward." They were asking for four electric lights to be installed on the part of the Ainsworth road described as lying "between the Sapper corner and the Peddicord farm." I suppose the Sapper corner is about where S.R. 51 turns south from 10th Street. The 1926 Plat Book doesn't show enough detail in that area to be helpful, so let us turn to the 1939 Plat Book, in which some holdings may have grown, shrunk or changed hands, but we can see some names that correspond to the 1919 report.


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This excerpt from the 1939 Plat Book shows, at the top, 10th Street intersecting with Lake Park Avenue, aka S.R. 51, formerly known as the Ainsworth road.

The town board accepted the petition and instructed the superintendent of Hobart's power plant, Robert Wheaton, to draw up an estimate of the project's cost.

He did so within two weeks, and at the March 24 meeting, the town board faced the question whether they ought to spend $76.32 on lights for the Ainsworth road. After due consideration, they ordered that the lights be installed.


Sources:
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart Gazette 14 Mar. 1919; 28 Mar. 1919.
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart News 13 Mar. 1919.