Calvin Fleming and His Magnificent Cigar Box

In 1958, these two young Hobartites — Dale Schavey and Ruth Ann Fleming — were married.


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Left image: Hobart High School Memories yearbook, 1954.
Right image: Hobart High School Memories yearbook, 1955.
Both via Ancestry.com.

Thus were the Schavey and Fleming families united, and that is why our Schavey descendant also has a couple of Fleming-related photos to share with us.

First, here is Calvin Fleming, in a photo that is undated but is giving me 1930s vibes.


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Image courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

Calvin Lawrence Fleming was born October 23, 1883,[1] in Hobart, to Elias and Harriet (Curtis) Fleming, who both came from Porter County. I don't know much about his early life. Although I can find his family of origin in Valparaiso in the 1900 Census, Calvin is not listed in the household. If this is not a mistake by the enumerator, that means Calvin had left home already, by 17 years of age — which would not be so surprising, given how active and enterprising he proved to be later in life.

In 1905 he married Lillis Thomas (she lived to marry again) and in 1907 Minnie Voltz. Minnie was the mother of Ruth Ann, and died in 1929. There are a couple of subsequent Indiana marriage records involving Calvin L. Fleming: a marriage in 1931 to Blanche Lawrence, and in 1944 to Irene Buckley (I am not entirely sure that the latter was our Calvin). I do not know how those marriages ended.[2]

In 1953 he married Ida Eastin.


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Brownstown Banner (Brownstown, Ind.), 18 Mar. 1953.

They were still married when Calvin died in 1959.[3]


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Brownstown Banner (Brownstown, Ind.), 5 Aug. 1959

He is buried in Michigan City.

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Readers of this blog already know that Calvin's business enterprises included cigar-making. Even those who don't read this blog need only go into the basement of the Hobart Historical Society and view the display of local cigar manufacturers to find out the same thing. Here is a picture I took at the museum:


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You can just see the initials, C.L.F., pasted on this battered wooden box.

But not all his cigars were sold in such plain boxes. The Fleming-Schavey family has one that is a work of art:


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Images courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

And yes, that portrait is Calvin in his younger days.

Even the lid is magnificent:



Imagine how many of those boxes burned in the factory fire of 1917. It's enough to make you weep.

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[1] Per his death certificate; his WWI draft card says October 22, 1882.
[2] I've gotten to the point where using the computer too much is physically painful. Maybe somebody healthier, with more time on their hands, can look into this!
[3] His death certificate describes him as widowed. While the obituary is wrong on several points, including Calvin's middle initial and his father's first name, I think it is right about Ida's surviving Calvin. She died in 1968 (Indiana Death Certificates).

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).

"Our Store"

This view of Main Street comes from a postcard postmarked 1911. The sender has drawn an arrow pointing to "our store":


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The arrow points to a building with a sign reading "Drug Store," topped by a curved embellishment bearing a name that is not legible. That building once housed a drug store operated at various times under the names Mackey and Scheddell.

Having written "our store," the writer then turned the postcard over and clearly signed herself "Edna":



So far as I have been able to determine, there was no Edna in the Scheddell family or the Mackey family.

However, there was an Edna in the Scheidt family, and Scheidt & Keilman's Bee Hive store was just slightly north of the drugstore.

On this image, blown up to 1200 dpi on the scanner, it's clear which building is marked, but on the original 3.5" x 5.5" postcard, it's not nearly so clear. I think it quite possible that Edna Scheidt marked the wrong building by mistake. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

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Moving south from the drugstore, let's see what we have here:



(1) A one-story wooden building, probably housing the Gazette office.*

(2) A two story building with a sign advertising Blatz beer, suggesting that it houses a saloon, which I think is operated by Fred Ahrens and Fred Schavey, Jr.*

(3) Newman's Hardware, operated by Paul Newman, who is more generally associated with his later location at Third and Center Streets. (This leads me to wonder if I wrongly categorized the interior shot of the hardware store; it could have been taken inside this Main Street location.)

(4) A saloon, "Hogan's Place," operated by Hugo Zobjeck, who seems to have been called "Hogan" as a nickname.

(5) The bakery operated by Severin Baumer** and, later, his son Fred Baumer.

(6) Real estate and insurance office operated by Lewis E. Barnes.

(7) Real estate office operated by a retired Ainsworth farmer, Gilbert Bullock.

(8) A billiard-and-pool business operated by Calvin L. Fleming, where the cigars he sold may have been of his own making.

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*I'm cheating by looking at another postcard that hasn't been posted to the blog yet, but more clearly shows the mid-block area circa 1909.
**He is recorded as "Siegfried" in the 1910 Census.

New Location for Old Schoolhouse

In April 1922 came the time for Hobart's first schoolhouse to make way for a new Masonic hall.


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Hobart Gazette 28 Apr. 1922.

The News reported on the schoolhouse's move a little more quietly.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 27 Apr. 1922.

The family who had occupied the old schoolhouse until its move may have included Irene Slaughter, who appeared in the 1920 Census as a 37-year-old widow supporting herself by dressmaking; she was then living alone in a rented house on Center Street near the Mackey home. (In an overwhelmingly white town, she was the only person in that vicinity with a "B" marked in the "Color or Race" column.)


Above that item, we learn that William Newman (whoever he may have been) had visited "Hogan" Zobjeck, better known as Hugo, whose Porter County farm I still have not identified.

What Dan Maybaum Had

Dan Maybaum, now living in the village of Ainsworth, had a car to lend, and $10 to help out a friend who got in trouble in the big city …


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… and land to sell:

Mrs. Chas. Henning last week purchased the house and one and a half acres of Fred Carbine at Ainsworth, located north of the new school building, and also an acre of ground from Dan Maybaum.

"Mrs. Chas. Henning" was Henrietta, a 62-year-old widow and mother of Elsie (Henning) Nelson.

Fred Carbein described himself in the 1920 Census as a salesman in a "grain house" (perhaps William Raschka's?), and based on his neighbors, he and his family (including a 13-year-old orphan girl) did appear to be living in Ainsworth, near the schoolhouse.


Source: "Local and Personal." Hobart News 19 May 1921.

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.

Up in Smoke

I said I couldn't image a barn on Water Street; you know what else I can't image there? — a cigar factory. And yet we know one existed from the newspapers reports of its destruction by fire in February 1917.

The factory belonged Calvin L. Fleming, though perhaps "factory" is too grand a word: it was a wooden workshop standing on the same lot as Calvin's house. Early on the morning of February 6, Calvin walked across the yard from house to factory, where he lit a fire in the stove to warm the building for his day's work. Around 7 a.m. he went back to the house to eat breakfast. A few minutes later, a glance out the window of his house gave him a shock: the cigar factory was in flames.

Calvin quickly placed a call to the fire department. As he waited for them to arrive, he might have considered braving the flames to try to rescue some of his equipment and materials, until he remembered the shotguns and shells stored in the factory, which could be touched off by the fire at any moment.

By the time the firemen arrived, the building was completely engulfed. The firemen could do no more than keep the fire from spreading.

The factory was destroyed, along with all of Calvin's equipment and materials, which included a large number of finished cigars. Estimates of those casualties ranged from 10,000 to 13,000. This was tragedy on a massive scale.

And Calvin had no insurance. He'd let his policy lapse on the first of the year. (According to one source, he did so because he'd already entered an agreement to sell the whole property to someone else so he could move his family and work "nearer town"). So the monetary loss, estimated to be as much as $1,800, was all his own.

He may have lacked foresight, but we can admire his resilience: before the sun had set on the ashes of his enterprise, he had already placed an order for lumber to build a new factory, and contracted with carpenters to start work the next morning. By the time the weekly Hobart newspapers reported on the disaster, Calvin's new factory was almost ready for occupancy. And by mid-month, Calvin was again manufacturing cigars.

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Calvin soon diversified his business enterprise in a way that surprised me. In March the old Hobart amusement park (standing, I believe, on land that is now Jerry Pavese Park) was auctioned off by the county for back taxes, and the highest bidder was "Calvin L. Fleming, the local cigar manufacturer." The principal structure on the property was a dilapidated roller coaster. It was beyond fixing up. Calvin intended to salvage its lumber for construction purposes.

The following month, Calvin announced to the public that he was now sales agent for all the remaining lots in the subdivision lying along both sides of Third Street from the streetcar barns (the west bank of the Deep River) at least as far, I believe, as present-day Wisconsin Street.

I've heard that some of the houses along that part of Third Street were built with lumber from the old roller coaster. I suppose we can thank Calvin Fleming for that.


Sources:
♦ "C.L. Fleming Loses Cigar Factory and Contents by Fire." Hobart News 8 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Fleming Cigar Factory Burns." Hobart Gazette 9 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 30 Mar. 1917.
♦ "Making Cigars Again." Hobart Gazette 16 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Notice to the Public." Hobart Gazette 20 Apr. 1917.