Stoltz Family Stories: The Tragedy

While searching in the online newspapers for any explanation of 1911 plate from the John Stoltz store of Merrillville, I came across a story of a 1914 tragedy that devastated another branch of the Stoltz family.

It's odd that I was shocked to find that story. I must have seen it before: it was reported on by both of the Hobart newspapers, which I had read on microfilm long ago. Not only did I neglect the story the first time, I forgot I that my eyes had ever swept over it. The fallibility of human memory is a topic that comes up sometimes in this blog, and I have to say that my own memory heads the list of the fallible.

But let us proceed.

Among John Stoltz's many siblings was an older brother, Joseph, born in Illinois (like John) in 1868. By the time we catch up with Joseph in the 1880 Census, with the family living in Hammond, he was 12 years old and already gainfully employed. In what capacity, the census doesn't say; I hope he wasn't working in the slaughterhouse with his father.

In February 1891, Joseph married Mary Diedrich, and the young couple quickly started a family. In the 1900 Census, they were the parents of five children, four of whom were still living. Joseph described himself as an "express man." Trying to find out exactly what that meant took me on a side trek and I'm still not sure exactly what his job entailed. But evidently it didn't pay a great deal, as the household included two boarders.

Joseph and Mary lived more quietly than his brother John, so I'm not sure when they moved their family from Hammond to rural Ross Township. But that is where we find them in the 1910 Census. They were farmers, not storekeepers. Their rented farm appears to have been south of Merrillville (to judge by those of their neighbors who were not also renting). The household included seven children: Daniel (15), Cora (13), Margaret (9), Philomena (6), Fredrick (4), and Theresa (1); their oldest daughter, 17-year-old Katherine, is not listed with them (which may be a mistake by the enumerator).

A couple years after the census, Joseph's mother, Elizabeth — widowed in 1899 — came to live with them.

On October 2, 1914, tragedy struck the family.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 3 Oct. 1914.

The reference to "Tracy Stoltz, aged 6," is to little Theresa, who was one year old in the 1910 census.

Two days later, the Times reported on the funerals and burials of the victims.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 5 Oct. 1914.

Besides adding some heart-rending details, the article mentions a "passing Chicago autoist." Some days later, he and his wife, who also helped, were identified:


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North Judson News, 15 Oct. 1914.

As mentioned in the October 5 article, all the children were buried in SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery. Their entry on FindAGrave does not include a photo of a grave marker; nor does NWIGS' Ross Township Cemeteries note their grave in its listing, so it may be unmarked.

The grandmother, Elizabeth Weis Stoltz, is buried in Hammond.

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The exact location of the Stoltz farmhouse is unclear. The family was probably still on rented land. One of the newspaper articles describes the house as "about a quarter of a mile south of the four corners in Merrillville" — the "four corners" being the intersection of 73rd and Madison. That would translate to a bit south of the intersection of 75th and Madison, which means Section 16, or Section 21 if the article's writer underestimated the distance south from the "four corners."

If we look at the 1908 Plat Map, we find some interesting names on the east side of Madison in Section 16, and just below its southern boundary:


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Andrew Popp was Elizabeth Weis Stoltz's brother-in-law. And her own brother, John Weis, was among the "et al." in the "Elizabeth Weis et al." who owned 120 acres south of the Popp land. (John and Elizabeth Weis were the parents of Michael, whom we met in my previous post as the manager of the Marion Pierce store that preceded the Stoltz store.) It seems likely to me that the Stoltz family would rent land from relatives. However, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville, both the Popp home and the Weis home were (and still are) the original structures — there is no mention of either burning in 1914.[1] There may have been another house on the land, or the Stoltzes may have rented on the west side of Madison. In short, I don't know the location of the farmhouse that burned.

Nor do I know where the surviving family lived after the loss of their rented home. The 1920 Census shows them living in their own home in Merrillville. It was probably a home in town, or close to town with a much smaller lot, as the 1926 Plat Book doesn't show any parcel belonging to them. Joseph was no longer farming; he had gotten work in the steel mills. The family was again taking in boarders.

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At the Merrillville History Museum is a three-ring binder full of notes that we believe were gathered through interviews conducted by Jan Clemens (and any helpers she may have had) in the mid-1970s in preparation for writing A Pictorial History of Merrillville. The 1914 Stoltz tragedy is not mentioned in A Pictorial History, but it is mentioned in the notes in the three-ring binder, along with another tragedy in the family.


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Images courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.





I think there were two interviewees, one of whom comes in on the third page with only a few lines. The first interviewee, covering the first two pages plus the top of the third, is surprisingly familiar with the tragedy some 60 years after it happened, naming all the young victims of the fire.

There is one odd detail in the story — the house that burned is described as "the old cheese factory." Now, among the people who run the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society, the old cheese factory in Merrillville is thought to be still standing at 7200 Madison Street. According to A Pictorial History, that house/cheese factory was built in 1880 to replace an earlier cheese factory on Walter Avenue. (The county records give it a build date of 1900, which is often a way of saying, "We don't know the exact year, but it was a long time ago.") The only other cheese factory mentioned in A Pictorial History was one built in 1855 by Dudley Merrill along 73rd Avenue — that one was donated to the Methodist Church's Ladies Aid Society by Charles Merrill (1850-1913).

So, was the interviewee confused, or was there yet another cheese factory south of Merrillville that has been lost to memory?

The second interviewee has only a few remarks on the tragedy: "Grandmother [Mary Diedrich Stoltz?] had to jump out the window; broke both ear drums — stone deaf. Spark from train set house on fire." Although the Times article of October 5, 1914, describes the house as one story high, I suppose a fall from a first-story window could rupture eardrums. The detail about the fire's originating with a spark from a train is more confusing — there were no train tracks between 73rd and (present-day) U.S. 30, so if the newspapers were correct about the Stoltz house being south of Merrillville, this detail could not be true. The "old cheese factory" house was close to train tracks, but it (so far as we know) never burned.

Could the second interviewee's memory have been shaded somehow by that other family tragedy mentioned on the first page of notes — Mary Stoltz's death on the C&O train tracks?


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Hammond Times, 24 Sept. 1943.

It's interesting how this event is retold by the first interviewee in the 1970s notes:

Mary … was killed by a train while walking from Walter Demmon's grocery store. She used to walk on the railroad track to the store…..they had a path worn from their house to the store…..she had thought about stopping to visit next to the store but changed her mind and decided to take the short-cut home.

How on earth could anyone have known what she was thinking in those last minutes before she was killed?


It is just possible, of course, that the odd details in these retellings resulted from confusion on the part of the note-taker!


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[1] Per the county assessor's records, both the Popp home (7489 Madison), and what I believe to be the Weis home (7883 Madison) were built in 1870. Build dates in the 19th century are often approximations. Incidentally, A Pictorial History does not give an address for the Weis home, but says that it is south of U.S. 30; I believe this to be an error. No plat map shows John and Elizabeth Weis owning any land south of what is now U.S. 30.

The Burge-Underwood House

The Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society museum has a three-ring binder labeled "Places" that includes numerous photos of local homes, farm buildings, and businesses, some of them identified more or less clearly, some not at all. One of the projects on my "when I have some time" list is to research the locations of the originals.

Among them was this photo, which looks as if it had been taken in the late 20th century (as opposed to early 20th/late 19th).


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Image courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

I had this filed as "Burge-Underwood house," so of course when I started researching the history of the Willy family farm and came across both of those names, I started wondering what the connection was. And when I received a photo of the Willy house, which looks similar (with differences that could be explained by half-a-century's remodeling), I jumped to the conclusion that they were the same house.

I was wrong about that. Looking more closely at the notes on the back of the museum photo, I find a different location specified: "Burge-Underwood House / 73rd Ave — next to town hall / 1976 / the right view."[1] What was the town hall in 1976 is now the historical society museum.

However, the house is still connected to the farm on Colorado because both were occupied by the same family for a time. According to A Pictorial History of Merrillville, the 73rd-Avenue house was built in 1880 by Winfield Scott and Mary Jane (Demmon) Burge. They lived there until, according to the book, Mary inherited a farm from her father, Julius Demmon, who died in 1898.[2] That was probably the Colorado-Street farm; so when when the 1900 Census recorded them there, they hadn't been occupying it for long.

After the Burges left the house in this photo shortly before 1900, A Pictorial History skips over the next 20-some years, and then tells us that in the 1920s it was bought by Frank Underwood — hence the "Burge-Underwood" appellation. Frank lived there for some time with two of his sisters, Clara Underwood and the long-widowed Mary Castle. "Frank, a confirmed bachelor for many years, startled the community when, at the age of 60, he took Mrs. Nettie Macy as his bride." (Nettie, a widow, married Frank in 1933, in Kankakee County, Illinois.)

I came across this item about the house in a 1937 newspaper:


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Hammond Times, Hammond (Ind.), 25 Aug. 1937.

The 1940 Census records them still in the 73rd Avenue house, apparently. Frank died in 1956. My 1958 Merrillville directory shows Nettie still at 15 W. 73rd Avenue. She died in 1965.

That is all the specifics we can find in A Pictorial History: after the Underwoods, "[o]ver the years, the house was rented or owned by several families." When Jan Clemens was writing up the first edition of the book, which came out in 1976, the Burge-Underwood house was still standing. She mentions that it was then owned by the Town of Merrillville and its fate was uncertain. But its fate was decided soon, I imagine — perhaps before the book was actually printed, since the Merrillville Public Works Department building, which now stands on the site, was built in 1975 per the county records. The house probably had to be demolished to make way for it.

Here's the site as it looks now, from Google street view (2019):


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Image from Google.com.


The first photo I posted above was taken from the west side of the house. The Historical Society has another taken from the east — a negative, but with photo editing software, easily enough turned positive:


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Image courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

In the foreground you can see the sign pointing to the town hall parking lot and entrance. The house stood very close to the driveway of the town hall (now the museum).

I wonder if those are the same asbestos shingles from 1937?

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[1] The "right view" in contrast to the wrong view, which we also have: I think it's the same photo but printed backwards.
[2] Julius Demmon does not appear as owner of the farm on any of the plat maps I have, but he have might been if only the farm had been included in the 1891 Plat book.

The Farm Under the Big Boxes

Standing at the intersection of U.S. 30 and Colorado street today and looking west, you see a vast expanse of asphalt surrounding big-box stores such as Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, as well as restaurants and gas stations. Thousands of vehicles pass through the intersection, day and night. The parking lots are never empty. The lights never go out.

You can hardly imagine those hundred-plus acres as quiet farmland. You can hardly imagine U.S. 30 ending there, either; and yet all the maps we have show the road that is now U.S. 30 going no further east than Colorado, until the new Lincoln Highway came through in the mid-1930s.

I have been researching that area because the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society received an inquiry about the farm that once lay there — specifically, the farm of Frank and Catherine Willy, which comprised approximately 115 acres on the west side of Colorado Street, cut in half by the road that is now U.S. 30.

Here is my attempt to outline the Willy farm on the modern-day Google satellite view:


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Image from Google.com.

This farm, under various owners, had retained nearly the same dimensions for over a century. The earliest record I can find of it comes from the NWIGS' Early Land Sales, Lake County: on October 18, 1852, Harmon Underwood bought a total of 160 acres.[1] On January 11, 1854, those 160 acres became the property of John Underwood, who I believe was Harmon's son.[2]

Sometime between 1854 and circa 1874, the farm lost 40 acres on the west, as we can see on the 1874 Plat Map:


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The new owner of those 40 acres, P.A. Banks, was probably Parley A. Banks. You can also see that H[armon?] Underwood owned another 200 acres east of the original farm.

And lastly, you can see that the mapmaker has clearly drawn a road from the west up to what is now Colorado Street, but eastward of that point, there is no trace of a road.

The 1891 Plat book does not include Section 23, so next we have to jump forward to 1908. Now we find the farm owned by Mary Burge.


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We also find the parcel reduced in size by almost five acres, taken, I believe, by the Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville (later Chesapeake & Ohio) Railroad, which began buying up right-of-way through Ross Township circa 1903.

My best guess as to the identity of Mary Burge is that she was a daughter of Julius and Nancy Demmon and married Winfield Scott Burge in 1878. The 1900 Census shows Winfield and Mary, with numerous children, living on their own farm in Ross Township in the general area of Colorado and U.S. 30 (to judge by their neighbors). Mary died in 1922. By the mid-1920s the farm had been sold: we find a new owner in the 1926 Plat Book.


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I cannot identify Caroline Schwer.

In 1932 the farm changed hands again. I will let the new owner tell the story of how that came about, as he told it to his descendants:

Three Ears of Corn

by Frank Anthony Willy

After Frank and Catherine were married, they moved onto a farm in Dyer, Indiana, which Frank rented from his father August. Besides charging rent, August required his son to hire his brothers to work the farm. This was a difficult situation at best for Frank and Catherine. During the Depression they had little money to spend and Frank's brothers were teenagers, with poor work ethics. Eventually Frank and Catherine realized that they could no longer afford to rent the farm in Dyer. They knew they would have to go out on their own and start a new life away from Frank's family.

Frank set out to visit three farms that were for sale nearby. The first was in Wisconsin. The ears of corn in the fields were large and well-formed and the house was well built with a natural spring underneath that could be used to keep food cold. This farm, he thought, would be an excellent choice.

The second farm he visited was in Illinois. Once again, the corn in the field was large, showing that the soil had been well taken care of. The outbuildings and home were also in excellent shape. He believed this would be a good farm to own.

Lastly, Frank visited a farm for sale in Indiana. This corn was just "nubbin."[3] The soil seemed to be spent, with most of the nutrients used long ago. The farm and its buildings were neglected and in very poor shape. As he took pictures of this farm he thought, "This is a very poor farm. It would be difficult to make a go of it here." As Frank returned to Catherine to tell her of his trip, his heart was heavy. He laid an ear of corn from each farm in front of her and then began to cry, for he knew the only farm they could afford was the neglected one in Indiana. And so it came to pass, that in 1932, Frank and Catherine Willy moved their family of eight and all they owned to the neglected Indiana farm with "nubbin" corn. Little did either of them realize what an excellent choice it would turn out to be.

(Story courtesy of Nick Hopman.)

Frank was then about 35 years old, Catherine (née Alber) about 32. They had been married in 1920.

Frank mentions taking photos of the farm when he first visited it. That may be the source of these two photos of the farmhouse and barn.


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This and the following image courtesy of Nick Hopman.



Again, thanks to Nick Hopman, we have Frank Willy's own story about the early days on the farm, and what the construction of the new Lincoln Highway did for the family:

You kids first went to St. Peter and Paul's School. I had to drive you. But when I had no money to buy gas, I sent you to the Ainsworth school as the bus passed our house. The first day you came home you said you needed about $14.60 for books. Had to sell corn for $.12 a bushel. Had about $.60 over on that truckload. That shows you what the Great Depression was like. I did not sell any more, as Henry Bloom[4] said, "Don’t sell. I will go along with you if it takes ten years. I won't foreclose on the mortgage!" The mortgage was for $7,000. The next year we had the cinch bugs. Twenty acres of corn barely filled my little silo. The next year we had the great dust storm. Steady wind from the southwest. In Kansas the dust covered fences and buildings. People left their farms. We bit our lips and held on.

Had 12 acres of fine wheat. Wanted to cut it on Monday. Henry Bloom was out on Saturday. "You ought to cut it. Sometimes it don't pay to wait 'til it has fully ripe." Sunday night it hailed. Shocked everything flat. Holes in the tarpaper roofs. Cut off branches of trees. It was a quarter-inch thick on the ground. I raked the wheat field and got Hank Homeier[5] to come and thrash it. Blew the straw into the barn and got 60 bushels of wheat. I needed that straw. Also paid Koehler[6] $10 so I could cut some slough grass, and Old Nick (our hired hand) herded the cattle there. In 1934 the new highway (US 30-the Lincoln Highway) came through. Then I had it made. When US 30 road work was being done I rented a small area to the state for material storage. When the work was done, instead of having the state clean up the storage area by removing the remaining sand, gravel, and steel, I negotiated to do it myself, for a price of course. But instead of cleaning up the mess, I just sold the materials until they were gone.

For some reason, the 1939 Plat Book fails to show the new highway east of Colorado:


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But the 1939 aerial view shows it clearly:


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Image from https://igws.indiana.edu/IHAPI/Map/.

This raises the question whether the 1874 cartographer just made a mistake about the road extending east of Colorado, and that mistake was perpetuated by subsequent map-makers who didn't bother to investigate for themselves. But I am going to ignore that possibility because it's just no fun at all.

Anyway, the 1950 Plat Book shows the new U.S. 30:


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As you can see from the 1939 aerial view above, the Willys' house and farm buildings stood on the west side of Colorado Street, north of U.S. 30. This photograph shows more clearly how the buildings were arranged in relation to Colorado Street, which runs diagonally across the bottom of the photo:


Image courtesy of Nick Hopman.


Frank and Catherine Willy farmed that land for 30 years, through the Great Depression, through World War II, and beyond. Their children grew up, moved out, started families of their own. Frank and Catherine bought a modern ranch house in the Green Acres neighborhood. In 1962, they sold their farm.

Here is the former Willy farm as it appears in the 1972 Plat Book:


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The new owner probably rented most of the land to locals who were still in the farming business.

This 1978 aerial view from the Lake County GIS website shows that the farmhouse and outbuildings have been removed, and some kind of business is operating in the northwest corner of the U.S. 30/Colorado intersection:


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The 1990s brought the era of the big-box store, and the landscape of the old farm was utterly transformed.


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[1] He bought the south half of the northeast quarter, and the north half of the southeast quarter.
[2] Cf. Lake County Encyclopedia, p. 80. I'm a bit confused.
[3] "Nubbin" — a small or imperfect ear of corn [per the author].
[4] We don't know for certain who Henry Bloom was. My best guess is Henry Blume (1867-1958), who shows up in the 1910 Census farming his own land in Center Township, but in all subsequent censuses he gives no occupation. He and his wife, Mary, had only one child, who died in 1920.
[5] I think this was Henry Homeier, who farmed northeast of Merrillville.
[6] I give up.

The Dunes Highway Opens

Construction on the Dunes Highway had started in 1922. By mid-November 1923, the Highway was ready to be opened to public use. The dedication ceremony would be attended by some prominent Hobart citizens.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

The following week's Gazette reported that the ceremony included an odd incident that was resolved with "a bottle" …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 16, 1923.

… which I'm inclined to interpret as a flouting of Prohibition, which (as we know) was not uncommon — but this case would be uncommonly open and public.

The "Local Drifts" of the same issue mentioned that "Paul Bruebach of this city was a member of Perry's Municipal Band that furnished music last Friday afternoon at the dedication of the Dunes Highway."

Incidentally, in spite of the November 9 issue's giving November 14 as the planned date of the ceremony, and the inclusion in the Route 12 Wikipedia entry of a picture of a historic marker also giving November 14 as the date of the highway's opening, the two November 16 items name "Friday," that is, November 16, as the date of the ceremony. So does this article from the Hobart News of November 22, 1923:


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Hobart News, Nov. 22, 1923.

The "Local and Personal" column of the same issue mentioned a few more locals who attended the ceremony: "Paul Emery, W.J. Killigrew, Evan Roper, Leslie Walters, A.J. Smith, O.L. Pattee; and John Dorman and Alex Boyd of Ross Township."

In the November 22 issue above, an article in the second column to the right mentions a "Bootjack extension" that was planned to connect the Dunes Highway and the Lincoln Highway. An online article about the Lincoln Highway in Indiana includes a map from 1924 showing the "Boot Jack Corner" near Rolling Prairie, and even today in that vicinity there is an "East Bootjack Road." Add this to the collection of random facts I have learned accidentally since I started the blog.

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Also in the November 22 issue, we see an announcement of a law-and-real-estate partnership between F.E. Demmon and C.L. Fleming. We've already met Calvin L. Fleming, former cigar-maker and billiard-room operator, now concentrating on real estate. The lawyer would be, I suppose, Floyd E. Demmon, whom the 1920 Census records as a 28-year-old lawyer for an unnamed railroad, living on Cleveland Avenue with his mother-in-law, Harriett Mundell. Floyd had married Alice Mundell in 1918 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

A Wrench Named Johns

In the Hobart Historical Society's 1835 ledger (which I just finished indexing) are some loose pages tucked into the back of the book. Two of them bear the name Joshua V. Johns.


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.




Now I'm thinking back to the breakfasts at Liverpool and wondering if the writer meant — not John's breakfast but Johns' breakfast? That would throw a wrench into the works of my theory that "John" was a first name there.

Joshua V. Johns is an elusive figure. I have found a Joshua Vaughan Johns of LaPorte County, Indiana, buying some land in 1837:


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Image via Ancestry.com.


In Lake County, Indiana, on June 16, 1845, Joshua V. Johns married Caroline Matilda Demmon:


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Image via FamilySearch.org.


Beyond that, I cannot find any records of Joshua V. Johns, although he was a pretty busy person around Liverpool in the mid-1830s according to that ledger.

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[1/11/2018 update] Alice Smedstad, who is in the process of researching everyone buried in the Merrillville Cemetery, points out to me that one of her subjects, Dr. John W. Johns, was the son of Joshua and Caroline. Per his biography in Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard), his parents died when he was only eight years old, which helps to explain why they are so elusive, but not, of course, why I can't find them in the censuses of 1850 and 1840.

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.

Gary & Southern Fatalities

The Gary & Southern streetcar line, running to Crown Point, crossed the old Lincoln Highway at what is now Taft Street, so that intersection is probably the location "west of Merrillville" where a fatal accident occurred on September 2, 1922:


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Hobart Gazette 8 Sept. 1922.

Below that article, we find Floyd Demmon setting up his law office in Hobart. He had married Alice Mundell (the Honey Man's sister) in 1918 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

The Lye Accident, and an Update

I was nosing around in old issues of the Hobart Gazette, looking for any mention of Daisy Chester's marriage to E.D. Scroggins that I might have missed the first time around, when I came across this item in the January 4, 1907 issue that I definitely missed the first time around:

A week ago last Sunday the 2-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Chester who live on the Dick Sykes farm pulled from a table a can of concentrated lye which flew upon the little fellow's face and severely burnt him. The right eye seemed to be the worst for the accident and for several days it was feared he would lose its sight but it is now thought the eye will be all right in time.

Based on the 1910 Census, I conclude that the unnamed two-year-old was Robert Chester.

I do not know where the Dick Sykes farm was. Per the 1891 Plat Book, there had been farms belonging to Sykeses in Ross, Hobart and Winfield Townships — not to mention any that may have been in Porter County — but which was known as the "Dick Sykes farm," I do not know.

[7/20/2015 update] Suzi Emig has solved the mystery of the Dick Sykes farm! She writes:

Climb into the time machine ... we are going back to April of 1912. I have attached the newspaper account of my dad's parent's wedding. It was extremely yellowed and fragile when I got it years ago from my aunt. Fortunately she laminated it, so it survives. You will see many familiar names in the list of wedding guests. There is one error. The bride's mother, Mrs. Susan Casey, was a sister to Constance Chester, not to Mr. as stated. If you refer to the 1908 plat map (which you so conveniently provide!) the SE corner of 61st and Colorado is owned by a William Sykes ... maybe Dick was a nickname or he was incorrectly named in the lye incident article. William is shown in the 1880 census to be living on this property as a 21 year old with his mother and siblings, 3 brothers and a sister. Their neighbors are the John Schnabels. Their main house was on the SW corner of the intersection. It appears that William and his family were living here per the 1900 census, as the Fred Schnabels are listed as neighbors. Evidently William decided to give up farming and leased his home and land ... he is in Mississippi, working as a public road contractor in 1910, then in 1920 is back up north residing in Gary as a city clerk, and a garage owner there in 1930. He died in 1940 in CA. My dad always referred to that SE property as "the old Sykes farm", so I guess to the old timers that name stuck. The Charles Chesters were living in Stark Co., IN per the 1900 census. In 1910 they were somewhere in Ross Twp., and evidently relocated by 1912 to the Sykes property. By 1920 they were in the old house that Henry built.

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I believe this clipping is from the Hobart Gazette of April 19, 1912.

Here is the William "Dick" Sykes farm on the 1908 Plat Map:


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Here's a clipping from the "General News Items" of the Hobart Gazette of July 5, 1907 (I didn't miss it the first time around; I just didn't post it) in which "Dick" is enclosed in quotes, as if to mark that it is a nickname.



Here ends this update. If I find out how William got his nickname, I will update again.

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Thanks to our identifying-est commenter ever, we now have IDs on the people in the Chester-house-then-and-now pictures. (I have also added Chuck's IDs to each picture's description on Flickr, for ease of reference.)

A Menu of Death

This page from the Hobart Gazette of November 25, 1921, offered up varied styles of death, from the horrifyingly sudden to the tragically premature.


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I'm guessing that Bertha Stoltz's mother was Gust Busse's sister (Bertha's maiden name being Heiman, not Busse). Bertha had married Robert Stoltz in 1908, and early in their married life they rented a house on Center Street in Hobart, convenient to Robert's work in a brickyard. By 1920 they had moved into Morgan Township, Porter County, and were farming rented land.

The Gazette's version says the shooting was accidental, but a couple of articles I have tracked down from other sources, including a Wanatah newspaper, say it was intentional, though impulsive.

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Minnie Chase Smith had been born November 9, 1865, on her parents' farm, which I believe I have found on the 1874 Plat Map:


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I wish I had figured out earlier that Sela Smith had this local connection; I could have talked about him more — not that he's done anything particularly interesting, but I think his name has popped up in the newspapers more than his wife's … which isn't saying much. They seem to have led a pretty quiet life. (Minnie's brother, Gust, is the one who would be killed in a car crash in 1927.)

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We saw this coming for poor Harold Guernsey, who had been seriously ill for many months. Incidentally, I have never heard of Putout, Indiana, where Otis Guernsey is described as living, nor can I find any information on such a place. (And "Mrs. Carrie Sondong" in the last sentence is a misprint for "Santonge.")


Additional Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Funeral of Mrs. Sela Smith Held at Her Home Saturday Afternoon." Hobart News 24 Nov. 1921.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Mrs. Robert Stoltz Killed by Shot Gun in Hands of Orphan Boy." Wanatah Mirror 24 Nov. 1921 (newspaperarchive.com).
♦ "Obituary." Hobart News 17 Nov. 1921.
♦ "Youth Slays Woman." Indianapolis Star 23 Nov. 1921 (newspaperarchive.com).

Merrillville Then and Now: Demmon's Store/Law Office

(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

Here we are looking at the north side of E. 73rd Ave., just west of Broadway. A handwritten caption on the first photo reads, "Demmon's Store about 1900"; however, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville by Jan Clemens, the store was built in 1924 by Walter Demmon. The later date is more consistent with census records, as in 1910 and 1920 Walter described himself as a farmer; not until 1930 was he a "merchant" selling "retail groceries."

Per Jan Clemens:

Besides being a retail establishment, Walter's store had restaurant facilities and was more aptly described as an ice cream parlor. Many young people made the awning-fronted building their "hangout" because it was just across the street from the school. Neva Shoup, sixteen years of age, who lived down the street, next to the Methodist Church, in her capacity as "soda-jerk" kept the customers satisfied with her repertoire of ice cream delights.

The January 1920 census enumeration lists Neva Shoup as 11 years old, the daughter of Arthur and Clara Shoup who farmed in Ross Township.

The Demmon store closed in 1972.

♦    ♦    ♦
Here is a photo of Walter Demmon and Tillie Schnabel on their wedding day, February 7, 1906:


Image courtesy of Suzi Emig.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Clemens, Jan, and Elaine Denta (ed.). A Pictorial History of Merrillville: Stories, Illustrations, and Photographs of Pioneer Buildings. Review Printers, Inc. (1991).

Ross Township Graduates

There are several familiar names among the Ross Township graduates — and this was graduation from the eighth grade, not high school; none of these schools (save Merrillville, mentioned at the end of the article) had high-school classes, and a brief check on some of these children shows them in the age range of 12 to 14 years.

This article predicted that the new Ainsworth school would be ready for the next school year, which I suppose means the autumn of 1920.


(Click on image to enlarge)

You will also notice Charles Goldman's ad, at right.

Here's another ad, in case you were wondering who the local sellers of United States Tires were:




Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ Advertisement. Hobart Gazette 21 May 1920.
♦ "Ross Township Schools." Hobart Gazette 21 May 1920.

In Milk We Trust

The dairy farmers surrounding Chicago had scarcely begun marketing their own products through the Milk Producers' Co-operating Marketing Co. when the federal government began investigating them. The Gazette reported in mid-April:

A thousand or more dealers, farmers and brokers will be summoned before a federal grand jury. It is alleged that the "milk trust" has complete control of milk and butter in the dairy district surrounding Chicago, in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law. Federal officers have had this matter under investigation for some time, and some farmers from this locality have been quizzed.

Secretaries of local branches of the Milk Producers' Association were ordered to bring their books and records to Chicago and turn them over to the grand jury. Locally, those summoned included George Lutz of Hobart, Robert Harper of Ainsworth, Walter Demmon of Merrillville, and L.F. Bay of Gary.

The details of the investigation were not reported in the Hobart papers, but evidently it resulted in the indictment of eight officials of the Milk Producers' Association. Although the case was ready to be heard in June 1919, it was postponed, apparently on the grounds that "keeping a jury locked up for the summer months" during what promised to be a "long drawn out" trial would be inhumane.

♦    ♦    ♦
In somewhat-related news,* the Lake County Commissioners announced in April that they had selected and purchased a site for the county's planned tuberculosis sanatorium — a spread of nearly 80 acres known as the J. Frank Meeker farm, in southern Ross Township about two miles north of Crown Point, and conveniently near a trolley line running to that town. The commissioners had $100,000 to work with, consisting of funds from the sale of bonds. The land cost about $13,000. The remainder would be used for buildings and fixtures.


(Click on image to enlarge)
This excerpt from the 1926 Plat Book shows what I believe to be the land purchased in 1919 by the Board of Commissioner's for Lake County's tuberculosis sanatorium. This land is now the site of the Lake County Government Center.

_____________________
*As we know, there is a link between dairy cows and tuberculosis in humans.


Sources:
♦ "County Commissioners Purchase Sanitarium Site." Hobart News 24 Apr. 1919.
♦ "Government to Probe Milk Trust." Hobart Gazette 18 Apr. 1919.
♦ "Indiana Milk Shippers Summoned Before Federal Authorities." Hobart News 24 Apr. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 20 June 1919.