Two More Views of the Nickel Plate Bridge

A few years ago I posted a circa-1906 view of the Nickel Plate Railroad bridge over the Deep River. I have on hand a couple of similar views, dating just three or four years later.

This one is postmarked 1909.


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The photographer stood south of the bridge on the east bank of the river and pointed his camera toward town. Through the supports of the railroad bridge you can see the Third Street bridge, a small structure in comparison. That big smokestack is one of the brickyards, and to the left of it a lot of smaller chimneys bristle up. Between the smokestack and the tree in the foreground is the old mill, and among the branches of that tree is the steeple of Trinity Lutheran Church at Main and Second Streets.

Here's the verso. I know nothing about the sender or recipient.




The photo from the card postmarked 1910 shows the Nickel Plate bridge from the opposite side.



I suppose the photographer stood on the Third Street bridge, or near it. Those houses in the background are on Water Street, I believe. If you look through the bridge supports toward the right of the picture, you can see that somebody has a nice big boat-house right on the river's edge.

We have already met the sender of this postcard — Eathel Westbay Gradle.

Why They Are All Quitting Farming

This notice about yet another public sale by another soon-to-be-ex-farmer includes some comments about the difficulties the farmers were facing in the early 1920s.


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Hobart News 26 Oct. 1922.

In a previous post I identified the Theodore Henning farm:


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It lay on the west side of the intersection of Colorado Street and Harms Road.

This is the first I've heard of Paul Mionske, but he may have occupied the Henning farm when the 1920 Census came around; he appears on rented land (with his parents) in that vicinity. I've a feeling this will be the last I hear of him.

Theodore Henning was born in Germany in 1855, came to the U.S. in 1871, and married Wilhelmine "Minnie" Mau in Chicago in 1884. They bought their Ross Township farm sometime between 1891 and 1900: the 1900 Census shows them there with seven children (Charles, Frank, Amanda, Albert, William, Fred, and Lillian). Theodore died in 1916, at which time he and Minnie were Crown Point residents. The old farm was being operated by their son, Albert, who in 1912 had married Florence Gradle.¹ (Two of their children, Theodore and Delmer, were photographed at the Vincent School.) In January 1917, Albert himself held a public sale on the farm² and apparently got out of farming — the 1920 Census shows him in Gary, employed at a steel mill — but he held on to the land, renting it out. Which is where Paul Mionske comes in, and goes out.

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[1] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 7 June 1912.
[2] "Public Sale," Hobart Gazette 12 Jan. 1917.

"Bowl Your Cares Away"

Here are three tiny men bowling their cares away.


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They have to be tiny so as to fit on the flat top of the cover of book of matches.

Here is the whole cover:





I can't attempt to date this because I can't find this bowling alley listed in any Hobart directory. Moreover, it seems not to have made an impression on any of the old-timers who reminisced for the Hobart Historical Society in 1979, so perhaps it did not last long.

George Dewey Gradle was born in 1898 into the large Porter County farming family that also produced Forrest and Homer. By 1920 he had moved to Hobart and was working as a carpenter. Around 1921 he married and started his own family. In 1930 he described himself as a building contractor. I can't find him in the 1940 census, but the 1947 telephone directory shows him living at 913 Lincoln.

His 1969 obituary confirms that he was indeed a bowling-alley operator, among other things:

George Dewey Gradle, a member of the Hobart City Council from 1930 to 1934 died on Sunday, May 18 at North Manchester, Indiana. He was 71 years of age.

He was a veteran of WWI, and a charter member and Past Commander of American Legion Post 54. Born south of Hobart, Gradle for many years was associated with his brothers in Gradle Bros. Construction Co. He also operated a bowling alley in the 500 block of Third Street.

He is survived by his wife, Emma; two sons, Robert of Maryland and Lester of Schaumburg, Ill.; 4 brothers, Forrest of Valparaiso, Homer of Carmel, Ind., Charles and Jesse, both of Hobart; 3 sisters, Mrs. Elsie Phillips of California, Mrs. Florence Piske of Washington, and Mrs. Caroline Haxton of Hobart; and 6 grandchildren.

Funeral services were held on Wednesday, May 21, 1969 at Rees Funeral Home with Rev. John Holzman officiating. Burial in Crown Hill Cemetery.

Earl Green is more difficult to identify as there were two Earl Greens roughly contemporary with George Gradle in Hobart: Earl J. and Earl T. The latter shows up only in the 1930 census, describing himself as a house painter working for wages, and then vanishes, without ever showing the entrepreneurial spirit that we eventually find in the former. For that reason, and because Earl J. lived in Hobart for a longer time, I am tentatively identifying the bowling-alley owner as Earl J. Green.

He had no siblings, as far as I can tell. His mother's name was Frieda; his father's name was John (but I do not know if he was the John H. Green of the flats on Center Street). John Green shows up only in the 1910 census, where he describes himself as a cattle buyer. In 1900 we find Frieda living with her one-year-old son Earl, married, but the enumerator does not record John in the household. Nor does John appear in 1920, where Frieda's status is not clearly legible but may be "widowed."

Earl married a woman named Emma sometime in the 1920s.* In 1940 he described himself as a bartender working on his own account in a tavern, while she was a waitress in a tavern; this leads me to wonder whether they had anything to do with the Green Café so offhandedly mentioned in the 1979 reminiscences.

Here is Earl's obituary, from 1959:

A former Hobart businessman, Earl Green, died of a heart attack last Wednesday [February 18] in Stuart, Florida, where he had made his home for more than 10 years.

He had done some contracting and building work in Stuart, and at the time of his death was operating a tavern and a variety store there.

In addition to his widow, Emma, he is survived by one daughter, Mrs. Betty Jenkins of Cuttyhunk, Connecticut; two grandchildren; and his mother, Mrs. Fried Green, also of Stuart.

Rev. Howard Palm officiated at funeral services in Pflughoeft chapel Sunday afternoon, and burial was in the Hobart cemetery."

Interesting that both of them were brought back to Hobart for their eternal rest.

I can't believe how many hours of research this little matchbook cover has cost me.

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*This is assuming I've found the right people in the 1930 census, which would require that the enumerator had been a bit confused about the couple's ages. I can't find a marriage record for Earl and Emma.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ "George Gradle Passes Away." Hobart Gazette 22 May 1969.
♦ "Heart Attack Takes Earl Green in Fla." Hobart Gazette 26 Feb. 1959.

Married 50 Years

Since we've been talking about the Sykes farm, this article about George and Mary (Sykes) Hayward caught my eye.


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Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.

They were married May 1, 1872 (Indiana Marriage Collection). I'm guessing it was on the Colorado Street Sykes farm, but they probably weren't married in the big brick house, since it wasn't built until 1898 (per the county property records, which don't always tell the story in the way you'd expect). As for their home "south of town," having looked at the 1920 Census and the plat maps, I think they lived on this farm at S.R. 51 and 61st Ave.:


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Image from the 1926 Plat Book.

In other words, all traces of their farm are now buried under hospitals.

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That page of the Hobart Gazette includes a number of small items that also caught my eye.

Well, I'm not particularly interested in Homer Gradle except in that he was the brother-in-law of Eathel Westbay Gradle.

"Casborro" is a misprint for Casbon.

I wonder whether Henry and Anna Harms took a train, or drove a car, up to Chicago to visit Henry Jr.?

Mary Foreman left Ainsworth for Mercy Hospital in Gary. I'm afraid I've already looked in the back of the book and can tell you that this story will not have a happy ending.

Road improvements were planned on the Lincoln Highway through part of Porter County.

And yet another dance at the former Deepriver schoolhouse.

Weekend Wreckage Report

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Hobart News 25 Aug. 1921.

The first accident occurred at the intersection of present-day E. 73rd Ave. and Grand Blvd./S.R. 51. That spot may have been particularly dangerous, with Lincoln Highway tourists adding to the traffic, and heaven knows if there was even a stop sign at the intersection.

William Fisher (husband of Jennie Hurlburt) was innocently getting the honey from Joe's bees when an anonymous driver struck his car on Old Ridge Road.

The column to the left of the "Week-End Accidents" relates the adventures of the local young men in the National Guard. I believe the John Fisher mentioned in that story was William's nephew.

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In other auto-related news, I now learn of yet another named highway that (like the Yellowstone Trail) I'd never heard of before; but the "Liberty Highway" is so obscure that I have not been able yet to determine whether it, too, was a cross-country route, or ran only between Kokomo and Chicago.


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Hobart Gazette 26 Aug. 1921.

In addition to a reminder of the hard times the nation was experiencing, the "Local Drifts" column notes the purchase by Joseph Wegesin of the Thomas Roper farm "south of Deepriver." The only farm I can find matching that description shows up in the 1891 Plat Book in the northeast corner of Winfield Township:


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Image from the 1939 Plat Book.

Blog-wise, I've ignored the Wegesin family up until now. In my newspaper notes, I've recorded only two mentions.* One was in 1911, when Mrs. Conrad Wegesin (Joseph's mother) came down from Chicago to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. for Mrs. Fasel's 54th birthday party. The second was in May 1920, when Joseph's oldest daughter, Gladys, attended a birthday party for Lillie Fasel, who was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. (I wonder if the Wegesins had a family connection to the Fasels?)

From a brief look at the official records, I gather that sometime after Joseph's birth in Ohio in 1881, his parents, Conrad and Mary, moved the family to Chicago, where 1900 census found them. About a year later, Joseph married Martha Semmer, who also went by the name Magdalen in some censuses. By 1910 Joseph and Martha-Magdalen had moved to Hobart. Ten years later, they had seven children of their own, plus a niece and a nephew living with them.

I'm not sure I'm going to have to pay much more attention to this family, as it appears that by 1930 they had moved to Muncie, Indiana.

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*There may have been more, but I did not record them.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1911.
♦ "Young Lady Surprised." Hobart Gazette 28 May 1920.

Ford v. Cement Truck

Apparently, if you were bored in Hobart, you could go hang around the Nickel Plate Garage and wait for something to happen. Just one day after the barber-v.-barber grudge match, a cement truck showed what it could do to a Ford car out in front of the Nickel Plate Garage. The Ford belonged to our friend Roland Dolphus Sizelove.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 11 Aug. 1921.

In news of other acquaintances — yet another relative for the mysterious Mary Kipp. "Mrs. Wm. Halsted" may have been W.O.'s widow, Barbara; that was how the Gazette of August 12 identified a woman beginning a new house on Garfield Street, though there could have been two such women.

And Vera Quinlan had a job in Gary. From the next day's Gazette, we learn that her brother, Lester, who was then about 16 or 17, had joined the National Guard:


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1921.

… and yes, Mrs. Gottfried Mayer was Oscar's sister-in-law.

Letters from Elma's Mama

Eathel Westbay was born May 25, 1888, to Leander and Jerusha Westbay of Lake County, Indiana. On January 7, 1907, she married Forrest Gradle, an 18-year-old railroad section hand. The May 1910 census found them living in Porter Township, Porter County. By then Eathel had borne two children, but only one survived — their daughter, Elma.

I would never have heard of any of them, I suppose, had I not happened to buy a couple of letters Eathel wrote in the winter of 1910-11, to her own mother. In them, she tells little stories about the two-and-a-half-year-old Elma, on whom she clearly dotes, and on her now 21-year-old husband, Forrest. The letters were mailed from Merrillville, so I suppose the Gradle family had moved there sometime after May 1910.

The first letter was postmarked December 10, 1910.

Gradle letter 12-10-1910 by AinsworthIN

The fourth page of the above PDF is just the reverse of the third page of Eathel's letter, on which someone has scribbled the address of Eathel's sister, Alice. (The 1910 census, taken in April, showed Alice in Meridian, Mississippi, teaching in a "mission school"; evidently she had moved on to Alabama by December.) I think Alice is the "Auntie Awus" whom little Elma points out in the picture. Goodwin and Philenus are Eathel's brothers. I have not been able to identify the "Uncle Goodwin" whose death Eathel asks about.

The second letter was dated January 5, 1911.

Gradle letter 1-5-1911 by AinsworthIN

Eathel died November 22, 1956. Here is her obituary from The Vidette-Messenger of November 23.