Bertha's Second Marriage: It Was Bad

Even today I still think, sometimes, of that strange and touching poem written (I'm guessing) by Bertha Mueller Bodamer in memory of her husband, Benjamin, who died in 1917. To judge by the emotions that poem conveys, one would think their marriage was very happy.

After Ben's death, Bertha and her sons, Harry, Ralph, and Carlton, continued farming their 35 acres (more or less[1]) on S. Hobart Rd., marked with "BB" on the plat map from the 1926 Plat Book:


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As I mentioned in an earlier post, this map fails to show the 34-acre farm of Bertha's brother-in-law, John, bordering on the south side of her land.

In 1928, Ralph married Florence Wyant and set up a separate household close to his mother's; the following year Carlton married Helen Hardesty and moved to Hobart. The 1930 Census records only Bertha's unmarried eldest son, Harry, still under her roof.

By then, Bertha had been widowed over a decade. With her nest emptying, I suppose she was feeling lonely, and perhaps wishing for a pleasant and helpful companion, such as Ben had been. Anyway, somewhere she saw an advertisement by a man seeking a wife, and she answered it. The man was Fred Reuter, a widower living in West Virginia, about whom I know almost nothing. Fred came to Indiana, where he met Bertha. Evidently they liked each other.

Bertha's sons were not happy about this development. I wish I knew why! — did they object to a stranger moving in on what they viewed as their inheritance, or was there something about Fred in particular that they didn't like?

Around this time, possibly in February 1931,[2] Bertha's eldest son, Harry, married Ida Hollett[3] of Valparaiso.

Bertha soon went ahead with her own marriage. In April of 1931, she became Mrs. Fred Reuter (Indiana Marriage Collection). Shortly before the marriage, Fred lent her $2,000 to make improvements on her farm, with Bertha giving him a mortgage on property she owned in Porter County known as the "old Bodamer homestead," shown here on a 1938 plat map:


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Image from https://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1938Plats/Union-1938.gif.

If there was a honeymoon period, it was short. Everything soon started to fall apart. In December 1932, Bertha suffered a personal loss when her son, Harry, died at only 32 years of age, leaving a widow and no children. Fred Reuter failed to provide the companionship and help Bertha wanted; in fact, he left the home (or was thrown out by Bertha's sons) and went to Idaho. Bertha filed for divorce. Fred came back and began proceedings to foreclose on the mortgage he held. The unpleasant details started appearing in local papers in the autumn of 1934.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 19 Oct. 1934.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 26 Apr. 1935.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 28 May 1935.

I can't find any follow-up articles beyond this. But it appears that Fred lost his mortgage case, if the 1938 plat map, above, can be relied on. The local papers soon went back to calling Bertha "Mrs. Ben Bodamer"[4] (notwithstanding the 1938 plat map).

The 1940 Census records a widow, Bertha Bodamer, living with her widowed daughter-in-law, Ida, on the farm. Her son, Carlton, had moved back to her neighborhood with his wife and three daughters, not farming but employed as a truck driver with the WPA. Her other son, Ralph, lived with his family and several relatives in Hobart Township and worked in a steel mill.

Both sons were back in the farm neighborhood for the 1950 Census, both working in steel mills. Bertha, 81 years of age, lived in Ralph's household. Ida was nowhere to be found.

Bertha died the following year — August 16, 1951 (Indiana Death Certificates). She was buried beside her pleasant and helpful companion, Ben, in the Woodvale Cemetery.

I still don't know what became of Ida, whose name is next to her husband's on the family grave marker without a death date.


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[1] The size varies slightly from one plat map to another.
[2] I'm getting the date from a family tree on Ancestry.com that does not cite a source. I cannot find a record of the marriage, nor any mention of it in on-line local papers.
[3] The surname comes from family trees on Ancestry.com, none of which cite a source. Occasionally it turns up spelled Hallett. Her middle name is given as Eve. (Just to make things more confusing, there was a longtime Valpo resident named Ida Mae Hollett, who was considerably older than our Ida.)
[4] E.g., "Hobart," Hammond Times, 13 May 1938.

South of Deepriver, March 22, 1923

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Hobart News 23 March 1923.


Among all the other social news, we find Maybelle Guernsey marrying Lloyd Moreland of Sedley, who thus far has figured in this blog only as a visitor in other "South of Deepriver" columns. But looking into his background a little, I find that his family goes back to the 1870s in Union Township, Porter County. His grandparents were Joshua and Margaret Anna. I believe that Joshua, born in Ohio in 1834 (Indiana Death Certificates), shows up in Union Township in the 1870 Census with his name spelled Moorland. The following year he went back to Ohio to marry his sweetheart, Margaret Anna McConkey.[1]

The young couple probably returned to Indiana soon after their marriage. The 1876 plat map for Union Township shows a J. Moreland owning a nice big parcel of land not far southeast of where Sedley would be after the Grand Trunk Railroad came through.

Around 1874, Joshua and Margaret had a son named Harrison (1880 Census). In 1896, Harrison married Jessie Wilson (Indiana Marriage Collection). Their son Lloyd was born in 1898 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Per the Union Township plat map of 1921, Harrison Moreland owned nearly 200 acres around Sedley.


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Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1921Plats/Union-1921.jpg.


The 1930 Census shows Lloyd and Maybelle farming rented land in roughly the same vicinity (to judge by their neighbors); it may have been his father's land. By then they had three children.


To the left of the "South of Deepriver" column is an open letter from William O. Sievert. He may or may not be somehow related to the Ainsworth-area Sieverts — I don't know. I believe he was a Hobart resident; the 1920 Census shows a 25-year-old steel-mill employee by that name in Hobart with his widowed mother, Anna. The Charles Carlson (who was allegedly to blame for the accident) was a son of Swan Peter and Hedwig Carlson, and per the 1920 Census lived in Ross Township, farming on part of the old Carlson place on S.R. 51, roughly across S.R. 51 from the present-day Indian Ridge Golf Course.

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[1] Ancestry.com. Ohio, County Marriages, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Original data: Marriage Records. Ohio Marriages. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, UT.

Various Stages of Quitting Farming

This first public-sale announcement shows that I was sent on a wild-goose chase a year ago when I came across an item in the News where "Hoffman" was spelled "Huffman" and the Sonntags had just bought the Emma Shearer farm.


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Hobart News 5 Oct. 1922.

The John G. Hoffman farm is the one I marked in this post, when it was owned by John's son, Henry. No plat map shows that parcel owned by Mike Ormond, but the 1908 Plat Map of Ross Township shows it owned by Margaret Doyle, who I believe was Mike's sister (their respective death certificates show the same parents (Indiana Death Certificates), and the 1870 Census shows them living in the same household). Straddling the border between Hobart and Ross Townships, the Ormond/Hoffman farm comprised 160 acres.

And that is where the Carl and Anna Sonntag were living when they downsized to the Emma Shearer* farm.

I am not sure how large the Emma Shearer farm was in 1922. The 1908 Plat Map shows a 36.83-acre parcel owned by E. Shearer, which probably stands for Emma (though it could stand for Elijah, Emma's father, who died in 1902):


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The 50-acre parcel immediately north of that is ascribed to Sophia Shearer, Emma's mother, who died in 1907. The 1926 Plat Book shows Carl and Anna Sonntag's farm spreading over both those parcels. (I think the Sonntag farm is the location of Hobart's gigantic new high school.)

So I'm not sure how much of a downsize it actually was, but at any rate they were quitting dairy farming. (I suppose they were udderly tired of it.)


The second public sale advertised in the News was being held by Maude Hardesty. Recently widowed, with a new baby and several young children to raise on her own, Maude would have been hard pressed to supervise a farm as well. Whether she intended to sell the land as well as the livestock and farming implements remains to be seen. I don't know for sure where her farm was. If we look at the Union Township plat map from 1921, we see Hardesty farms all over the place, but no John N. Hardesty farm; we do, however, see a J.W. Hardesty farm:


Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1921Plats/Union-1921.jpg, courtesy of Steven Shook.

In the 1906 plat map, that initial looks more like an N. The 1928 plat map shows a non-Hardesty owning that land. So my current theory is that that was Maude's farm and she sold it before 1928.

♦    ♦    ♦
Two weeks later, we find Charles Shults declaring that he intended to quit farming altogether:


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Hobart News 19 Oct. 1922.

This looks like the William Springman farm in 1921:


Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1921Plats/Union-1921.jpg, courtesy of Steven Shook.

I do not know what, if any, relationship Charles Shults had to Ainsworth's William Shults — I suspect they were brothers, but I'm going to need somebody's obituary to confirm that.

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*The News was using her maiden name, which Emma herself may not have used at that time. I have recently come across some interesting information about Emma's activities in her younger days, which I will post soon.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ Indiana Death Certificates.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.

Women Voters and a Woman Pioneer

The mid-term election of 1922 was approaching, which may be why the Ainsworth League of Women Voters planned a meeting in the W.G. Haan school; but then again, in those days people held meetings for any reason.


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"Local and Personal." Hobart News 21 Sept. 1922.

The death of Mrs. J.E. Small, mentioned at the bottom of that column, got a fuller treatment from the next day's Gazette.


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Hobart Gazette 22 Sept. 1922.

Her daughter, Mrs. Crisman — christened Elizabeth — was the wife of John Crisman, Sr., and the grandmother of Dorothea.

Mary Hardesty, the daughter with whom Mrs. Small had lived, was a widow (1920 Census), but I'm not sure of her deceased husband's name. It might have been Adolphus (Indiana Marriage Collection).

Mary Jane Riley Small rests in Mosier Cemetery.


In the pages above and elsewhere in old newspapers I have come across references to "Small's Crossing," and thus far nobody I've asked has known exactly where it was. Based on the people whose names came up in connection with Small's Crossing, I gathered it was in Porter County but not far from the village of Deep River. In common parlance around the turn of the 20th century, the name likely referred to a road crossing a railroad line near a piece of land owned by a Small. So, let's take a look at the plat map of Union Township, Porter County, in 1895, by which time all the railroads were in place:


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Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1895Plats/Union-1895.jpg, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

There's a Small farm, there's the Grand Trunk Railroad, there's the road now known as N 725 W crossing the railroad. Just over the county line is the village of Deep River. I think this is a pretty good candidate for Small's Crossing. If you can find a better one, please let me know about it.

Quietly Married

On September 1, 1922, the 15-year-old Marie Hardesty quietly married a 28-year-old Yugoslavian immigrant, Vaso Stambolija.*


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Hobart Gazette 15 Sept. 1922.

That she is described as the daughter of Mrs. John Hardesty makes me think that her father was the John Hardesty who had been accidentally killed about four months earlier. Out of my puzzlement about his children, I have finally drawn the conclusion that she had been christened Marie Rebecca, and the 1910 Census recorded her under her middle name, either by mistake or because she preferred her middle name at the time — but later she changed her preference. Evidence that Marie and Rebecca were the same person includes the fact that both were born in 1907 (per the 1930 Census in Marie's case and the 1910 Census in Rebecca's); and according to her death certificate, Marie's middle initial was R (Indiana Death Certificates.)

I've already stumbled across the premature end of Vaso's story:


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The Hammond Times 4 May 1939.

To judge by her death certificate, which gives her surname as Coppock, Marie's story included another marriage and another widowhood.

♦    ♦    ♦
In other news, farmer-turned-bus-driver Glen Nelson was planning to make a little money with his newly purchased bus.


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Hobart News 14 Sept. 1922.

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*The Gazette spells it Stanbolija, but the vital records spell it Stambolija, so that is how I am going to index it.

His Awesome Alfalfa

On July 13, 1922 — about three months after the sudden death of her husband — Maud Hardesty gave birth to his last son. The child's name was not given in the newspaper; it may have been Bruce, but at the moment I'm not sure.

Three days earlier, on their farm southeast of Ainsworth, Emil and Bessie Buchfuehrer welcomed a baby daughter — she would be named Grace, I believe.

But the really surprising thing to happen in July 1922 — surprising to me, anyway — was that Henry Nolte came in to the office of the Gazette to show off his alfalfa.


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Hobart Gazette 21 July 1922.

That page is loaded with news, including visitors at the Paine farm, an expansion of the Wood garage in Deep River, and a thief in the night at the Hayward farm.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Births." Hobart Gazette 21 July 1922.

The Day the Dam Broke

It really did break, but the Wood's Mill pond wasn't big enough to inspire panic.

The News' account included a story handed down over the years of an earlier break and John Wood's near-death experience.


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Hobart News 22 June 1922.

(And it was a slow season at the Hobart Speedway, I gather, if the first race of the year didn't happen until July 2.)

On the original 1908 Plat Map, someone has circled in red the village of Deep River and the mill pond, which lay on the county line south of Old Lincoln Highway.


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The Gazette noted that Tony Cullman had not been operating the mill for a couple of years (after describing himself as a miller in the 1920 Census), but nevertheless he intended to rebuild the dam.


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Hobart Gazette 23 June 1922.

In the Cullman family's history of sorrows, this event was comparatively minor.

(Below that story, a complaint about loud vehicles and constant firecracker-shooting that could have been printed during any recent summer.)

Maypoles and Gay-Mill Gardens

Tidbits from south of Deep River, late in May 1922:


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Hobart News 25 May 1922.

The list of Ainsworth graduates confirms my earlier guess (which wasn't exactly genius-level in the first place), and gives a few details about the graduation ceremonies — drills and Maypole dances in an open field that may have been a bit muddy.

So Howard H. Smith, who has been living in an undisclosed location at least since January 1922, when Melvin and Verna Guernsey moved onto his farm, is now building a house on his Porter County land? — and where might that be, I wonder?

Excuse me while I look at Union Township maps on a hunch …

… what do you know, it's right across the county line from his Lake County land.


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Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/UnionTownshipMaps.html, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

♦    ♦    ♦
This advertisement for the Gay-Mill Gardens sounds as if May 27, 1922 might be its grand opening …


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Hobart Gazette 26 May 1922.

… but if that's the case, then why is the "mirror floor" already famous?

In Dreams of Duneland, Kenneth J. Schoon describes the Gay Mill as "a vibrant dance and social hall with an adjacent hotel and even lakefront houses for rent." It must have seemed quite glamorous to people accustomed to dancing above a blacksmith's shop or in an old schoolhouse, if they ever ventured through the Gay-Mill doors.

South of Deepriver

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Hobart News 4 May 1922.

Among all this ordinary social news, we find an item about the Henry Cunningham farm. Last time we heard about that farm was in 1919, when Thomas and Maud Chandler were renting it and their landlord was planning to sell it.

Looking around on the plat maps, I had to go all the way back to the 1874 Plat Map to find a Henry Cunningham farm:


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Henry Cunningham was born circa 1827 in New York. The earliest I can find him around here is in Porter County in the 1850 Census; he was then working as a hired hand on the farm of Hazzard and Alvira Sheffield. In 1851 he married Elizabeth Sheffield (Indiana Marriage Collection) — the sister of his employer, I'm guessing. Henry and Elizabeth were still in Porter County, farming near Hazzard and Alvira, through the 1860 Census. By the 1870 Census, however, the Cunninghams were in Ross Township, apparently on the farm that would still be bear their name in local parlance in 1922.

… which is strange, because the 1880 Census shows that Henry, apparently widowed, had by then left Ross Township and was living with his children in Chicago, dealing in horses. In the 1891 Plat Book, the Cunningham farm is the Joseph Guernsey farm. I wonder why the Cunningham name had such staying power?

Death, Expected and Unexpected

The family of the octogenarian Julius Manteuffel had been preparing themselves for his death since mid-April 1922,* but when John Hardesty left home on April 28, heading for the Wheeler saw mill, his wife and children had no idea they would never see him alive again.


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The reports about John Hardesty come through to us a bit garbled, and small wonder, since there were two John Hardestys farming in Union Township, and I can hardly sort them out myself. The one we are concerned with, I believe, was John N. Hardesty, born in 1863 to Harmon and Isabella Hardesty, and now resting in Mosier Cemetery.

This John Hardesty may not in fact have been farming in Union Township at the time of his death; while I can't find him in the 1920 census, a 1920 Gary city directory shows him living on Broadway with his wife, Maud, and working as a teamster. However, he had been farming in Union Township in 1910.

The other, John H. Hardesty, was born circa 1871 to George and Catherine Hardesty. He was still alive and well and farming in Union Township in 1930 and 1940.

The report above attributes six children to John N. Hardesty. I can identify only two from the 1910 census: a daughter, Rebecca, and a son, Russell. There was time enough to produce four more between then and 1922, but still, it's possible that the newspapers were confusing John N. with John H., whose family seems to have been more numerous.

♦    ♦    ♦
In happier news, Dr. Clara Faulkner goes to Crown Point to hear her grandson, Elmer Bullock, sing. She brings Mary Kipp with her, and Mary brings her sister, Mrs. Hatten, and Mrs. Hatten brings her sister-in-law, Mrs. Seider.

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*His name was mistakenly give as "Louis" in the April reports.


Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ "Death of Julius Manteuffel." Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.
♦ Gary Indiana City Directory 1920. R.L. Polk & Co. (Indianapolis), 1920. Ancestry.com.
♦ "John W. Hardesty Accidentally Killed." Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.

Huffman's Mill

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Notes on the back of this photo suggest it was taken on October 8, 1938.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Until a few weeks ago I had no idea that the site of another historic mill lay only about a mile beyond Wood's Mill. One Saturday at the Hobart Historical Society museum, someone came across the photo shown above, with "Huffman's Mill" scrawled across it, and none of us knew anything about Huffman's Mill. So of course I asked Eldon Harms if he knew where it had been. Not only did he know, but he was able to direct me to the spot where it had stood, as we drove out there together.

Its site was just over the Porter County line on N 750 W, a scant half-mile south of Route 30. The mill had stood on the east side of the road, on the north side of Taylor Creek — which, these days, is a barely perceptible rivulet, marked by no sign, and in fact I had some trouble even learning its name. (Another local historian theorizes that the conversion of surrounding land from wilderness to farmland caused the creek to silt up.) Anyway, it wasn't the creek's direct flow that powered the mill; the creek was dammed to form a mill pond.

Below, I have tried to identify the mill (and mill pond, but that is really dubious) on a 1939 aerial photo:


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Image courtesy of the Indiana Geological Survey, I.U. Bloomington.

For decades before either of these photos were taken, this site had housed a mill operation.

The August 18, 1936 issue of the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger, a special edition in honor of Porter County's centennial, included a history of Union Township compiled by Wheeler High School history students and instructors (transcribed here) stating that in 1861 David Hardesty built the Cascade Mills on this site.

Written in 1882, Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard) had this to say about it:

The Cascade Grist-Mills were built by David Hardesty, on Taylor Creek. They were built about fourteen years ago [i.e., 1868], on to a small brick mill which was constructed by him eighteen or nineteen years ago [i.e., 1864 or 1863]. The structure is some 18x40 feet, and two stories high. He put in two sets of buhrs, and, at that time, had the only overshot wheel in the county.

Consulting some of the old Union Township plat maps, we find the mill marked.

For example, here it is in 1876 (and you can see a drawing of the mill circa 1876 here):


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From http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/UnionTownshipMaps.html, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

The mill is marked on the 1895, 1906 and 1921 maps as well. On the 1938 map, the mill itself is not marked, but the "Huffman Mill Pond" is:


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From http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/UnionTownshipMaps.html, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

The next available map, from 1969, does not show mill or mill pond. The mill building still stood, but it wasn't operating as such. This clipping, from the Hobart Herald of January 50, 1955, shows the building being used for storage:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The remark about Levi Huffman dying of his injuries in 1900 is probably based on oral history. Here is Levi's obituary from the Hobart Gazette of January 9, 1903:


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He was buried in Mosier Cemetery.


Six photographs of the abandoned mill building were shot in 1981 by Daniel Kleine, who was kind enough to give me high-resolution scans of his photos.


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All photographs by Daniel Kleine. Used with permission.

I don't know when the mill was demolished. Today there is no trace of it.


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Photograph by Ansel Adams.
… Just kidding. Photograph by me.

South of Deepriver

Here's the social news from Deepriver and vicinity, from the Hobart News of Nov. 24, 1921.


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I believe Maybelle Guernsey, now employed at the Ainsworth department store, was the daughter of Chester and Nancy (Hardesty) Guernsey, about 20 years of age.

Howard H. Smith apparently is sprucing up his place, with carpenter work, and a new well to be drilled by "C. Hulbert," known to us as Chester Hurlburt, second son of Milan and Mary Ann (Guernsey) Hurlburt. The 1920 Census lists Chester as 39 years old, still single, and living with his widowed father out in the countryside (possibly on the family farm, although neither gives his occupation as farming).

♦    ♦    ♦
I found the article above the "South of Deepriver" column interesting. The top part of it got cut off, but it's titled, "Chicago Motor Club Complains That Their Signs Are Being Torn Down," and you can get the gist of it — that vandals have been attacking warning signals as well as road direction signs placed along various local roads for the safety and convenience of motorists. This surprised me, in my persistent innocence. I had already learned that in the past drivers could be remarkably irresponsible, destructive, and selfish, but somehow I wasn't expecting this kind of random auto-related maliciousness (except perhaps in times of war or on Halloween).

Back Home Again

Richard Chapman was allowed to return to his foster home in time to celebrate his ninth birthday. If the Dunhams believed that Richard's stay at the "home of the friendless" had cured his problems, I expect they found out otherwise before long.


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"Local and Personal." Hobart News 26 May 1921.

Also, a "South of Deepriver" social column.

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While I haven't discovered what Richard did to get sent away in the first place, I have learned where he went: to the Julia E. Work Training School in Plymouth, Indiana.

The records from that institution record only the barest facts about him.


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Image courtesy of the Indiana State Digital Archives.

South of Deepriver

Here's a South of Deepriver social column that might be mildly interesting if you're related to these people. Also, John Killigrew, moving up in politics, is attending the inauguration of Warren T. McCray; John's brother, William, seems to be doing well in his oil business with Lewis Barnes and Calvin Shearer.



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From the Hobart News, 13 Jan. 1921.

This Must Come and These Must Go

In October 1920, Albert Orcutt (who had an Ainsworth connection through his wife, née Etta Mander) had come to realize that his business building — this one, I suppose — must be renovated "sooner or later."

Also, the social activity of our friends South of Deepriver.


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From the Hobart News of Oct. 7, 1920.

Meanwhile, Edward Rohwedder is getting rid of his excess inventory as he prepares to move to a smaller farm.


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From the Hobart News of Oct. 7, 1920.

Lillie and Alice

Today, just two grave markers, for two of the flu victims we read about yesterday.

In Hobart Cemetery, Lillie Rose Scholler's grave:


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Not only do I not know, I do not even have any far-fetched theory as to why the year of her death is wrong.

She lies next to her parents …



… not her husband. Calvin, as we now know, went on to marry again.


Lillie Rose at the age of 18, from the Hobart High School Aurora yearbook for 1909. Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

♦    ♦    ♦
In the quiet little Woodvale Cemetery, Alice Baker Shoup's grave:



She, too, lies next to her parents. I do not know if her husband remarried.

Her obituaries tell a little about her family. She was George and Harriet Baker's daughter, and thus William's sister. Her other siblings were George Jr., Robert (listed as John R. in the 1900 Census), Mrs. Thomas Keene, Mrs. Schuyler Hardesty, Mrs. John Sandberg and Ada Baker. The 1900 Census gives the three married sisters' first names as Lizzie, Alice and Susan, but I don't know which became which "Mrs."

Our Musical Postmaster

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Advertisement from the Hobart Gazette of May 13, 1904.

Hugh Dotzer came to the United States from Germany in 1881 or 1882 at about 20 years of age. In 1888 he married Eva Peck in Porter County, Indiana. By 1900 they were living in Union Township, Porter County, and had three children: Matilda, 11; John, 6; and Valeska, 2. Hugh called himself a farmer, but out among the cows and the corn he worked with the soul of a musician.

Sometime between 1900 and 1904 he began selling Adam Schaaf pianos. I do not know precisely when he moved to Ainsworth, or if there were intervening residences between Union Township and Ainsworth — the family's later history showed a tendency to move around.

On January 28, 1904, Hugh was appointed postmaster of Ainsworth, succeeding Frank Coyle, who had resigned.

The appointment apparently caused some disruption to Hugh: a month later, he announced: "Having taken charge of the Post Office at Ainsworth, I will be selling stock of Adam Schaaf pianos and organs at cost, warranted ten years. This offer good for a few days only."

He may have sold them at cost for only a few days, but he continued selling them at a profit for the remainder of his stay in Ainsworth. He ran ads like the one pictured above regularly throughout 1904 and early 1905.

In May 1904, when the people of Ainsworth organized a Sunday school, Hugh served as organist. That same month he began advertising to give piano and organ lessons every Friday to students in Ainsworth and Hobart.

Hugh's tenure as postmaster was brief. By late May he asked to be released from his duties "for the good of the service" because, as far as I can tell, the quarters he occupied did not offer suitable space for a post office. He recommended William Raschka to replace him, and William was appointed postmaster on May 24, 1904.

Hugh's living space must have been small, or else overrun with pianos and organs. The Grand Trunk's Ainsworth agent, P.H. Swain, and his wife lived for a time with the Dotzers. In September, Swain announced that because the "Dotzer house [was] too small" he and his pregnant wife were going to move to the "Chester house." If he meant they were going to live with Henry Chester, the crowding chez Dotzer must have been terrible indeed to make a man willing to run such a risk.

When the Ainsworth baseball team gave a dance at Ed Sauter's hall in June, Hugh was among the musicians.

At the late-summer Lake County fair, Hugh had the largest musical display — four Adam Schaaf pianos, an organ and over a thousand pieces of sheet music — beating even the Lion Store and the Kimball Co. He had to cancel his usual Friday lessons that week so he could supervise his fair display. In September, he reported that he had sold pianos to Frank Abel, a Hobart builder; Sedley's James Hardesty; and Frank Graves, who lived near Valpo.

That same month, he also announced that he had purchased ten acres in Crown Point and intended to move there in March 1905.

His musical business went on as he made improvements to his Crown Point property. In October he furnished the new Deep River church with an organ; in November he made a trip to Hammond to sell pianos; in December, Christ Heck bought a piano and Miss Martha Heck became one of Hugh's pupils.

On New Year's Day 1905, the Dotzer family hosted a large dinner, the guests including the Morgan Blachly family, Mr. and Mrs. J. Watts and the Frank Graves family. In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Fred Harney and the whole Michael Foreman family visited the Dotzers.

Hugh assured his students that he would continue to teach them after his move to Crown Point. He planned a class recital to take place on February 18.

In January 1905, a "Notice of Commendation" appeared in the Hobart Gazette, placed by some of Hugh's students or their parents:

We, the undersigned patrons of Mr. H. Dotzer, hereby express our esteem and regard for him as a teacher. We are sorry to see him move away from our midst, yet are glad to know that he will continue as our teacher, and heartily recommend him to all.

Elsie Piske, May Abel, Mrs. D. Owens, Ella Jonas, W. Wilson, Dr. Morton, C. Heck, S. Lightner, C. Schnabel, M. Blachly, W. Raschka, M. Wagoner, John Gruel, Miss T. Triebess, John Springman, H. Carey, Clara Sauter, Etta Mander, H. Stevens.

Early in the afternoon on Saturday, February 18, two sleighloads of pianists and spectators drove from Ainsworth to the spacious home of Mr. and Mrs. Seward Lightner in Hobart, where the recital began at 2:00 p.m. It was well attended, with about 20 student performers from Hobart and Ainsworth, and an audience of their family and friends; fortunately Alwin Wild, a Hobart undertaker, had furnished additional chairs.

March came and Hugh went to Crown Point, suspending lessons for three weeks while he got settled.

Whether he resumed them, and for how long, I do not know. In May of 1907 the Gazette mentioned, rather off-handedly, that Hugh had moved to Danville, Illinois. November of 1907 found him in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offering piano and organ lessons as well as the tuning and repairing of instruments.

After that we lose sight of him. It seems he stayed in Fort Wayne; he died there in March 1918. The 1920 census reports the widowed Eva Dotzer working as a live-in servant in a Fort Wayne home.

Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Ainsworth Pick-Ups." Hobart Gazette 9 Sept. 1904; 23 Sept. 1904; 30 Sept. 1904; 7 Oct. 1904; 21 Oct. 1904; 4 Nov. 1904; 25 Nov. 1904; 23 Dec. 1904; 6 Jan. 1905; 13 Jan. 1905; 27 Jan. 1905; 17 Feb. 1905; 24 Feb. 1905.
♦ Ballantyne, Dorothy and Robert Adams. Along the Route: A History of Hobart, Indiana, Post Offices and Postmasters. Hobart: The Hobart Historical Society, Inc., 1992.
♦ Dotzer, Hugh. Advertisement. Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette 24 Nov. 1907.
♦ Dotzer, Hugh. Advertisement. Hobart Gazette 13 May 1904.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 26 Feb. 1904; 27 May 1904; 3 June 1904; 10 June 1904; 26 Aug. 1904; 9 Sept. 1904; 9 Dec. 1904; 10 May 1907.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 5 Feb. 1904; 10 Mar. 1905.
♦ "Notice of Commendation." Hobart Gazette 6 Jan. 1905.
♦ "Sunday School Organized at Ainsworth." Hobart Gazette 20 May 1904.

. . . And the Corn Husker Taketh Away

A few things jar my modern sensibilities as I read these early-20th-century newspapers — the casual, blatant racism; the number of people killed by railroad trains; and the frequency with which people lost body parts, especially fingers, hands and arms. That last one is today's topic.

Many of those body parts were lost on farms to a machine called a corn husker, also called a husker-shredder, which I believe looked like this.

Just a sampling of injuries from the Ainsworth-Deep River-Hobart area:

• In November of 1900, Jude Blachly got the index finger of his left hand caught in a corn husker. A prominent Hobart physician, Dr. Mackey, treated the wound but ended up having to amputate the finger at the first joint.
• In April of 1901, Edward Maybaum lost a thumb to a corn husker.
• In November of 1901, 19-year-old William Witt's arm was so badly crushed in a corn husker that it had to be amputated.
• In November of 1903, Schuyler Hardesty's hand was mangled in a corn husker; the thumb and first two fingers had to be amputated at the hand.
• Also in November 1903, John Witt lost the ends of two fingers.

Those last two incidents appeared in an article entitled, "Corn Husker Did It." People were well aware of the dangers of that machine. In November 1901 — in the wake of President McKinley's assassination by a self-proclaimed anarchist — the Gazette said, "An Indiana paper suggests a worthy position for anarchists by giving them a job feeding a corn husker."

The corn husker was not the only culprit. For example, in June 1902, Frank Maybaum lost a finger to a machine in the East Tolleston furniture factory where he worked; three months later a young man pressing grapes had three fingers on his right hand mangled, and they had to be amputated.


Sources:
♦ "Corn Husker Did It." Hobart Gazette 6 Nov. 1903.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 5 Apr. 1901.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 15 Nov. 1901.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 19 Sept. 1902.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 9 Nov. 1900.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 27 June 1902.