Gay-Mill Gardens

Miller is outside my bailiwick, but having previously encountered a 1922 ad in the Hobart newspaper for the Gay-Mill Gardens, I couldn't help but be thrilled to receive a photo of the place.


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Image courtesy of R.F.

The 1922 ad described the location as Lake and Forrest Avenues, so I suppose the photographer was standing on Forest Avenue and looking west toward Lake Street.

This photo was among a group relating to the Buchfuehrer family. William Buchfuehrer may have been driving the Henderson Ice Cream truck out front of the Gay-Mill Gardens. He was employed by the Henderson factory in Hobart off and on during the 1920s and '30s. In fact, in 1937 he (in partnership with William Ittel) purchased the factory, and went on to operate it for some 20 years. But this photo predates that purchase — by 1937 the Gay-Mill was abandoned. The cars in the photo are from the early 1920s (as the Ainsworth vintage-car expert tells me), so the photo probably was taken not long after the Gay-Mill first opened.

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).

Now, About All Those Other Guys

Mayor Sherman Henderson's instructions to Police Chief Fred Rose in early April 1923 testified that, in spite of all those recent acquittals, plenty of people in Hobart were selling and buying vice in the form of liquor and gambling.


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Hobart News, April 5, 1923.

I had to ask Professor Google what punch boards are. In his letter, His Honor sounds as if he were still mad about losing money on them.[1]

In the left-hand column, we find another type of eradication underway, as local cattle were getting tested for tuberculosis, and many failing.


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[1] I'm kidding.

To Build an Ice Cream Factory

Somehow I thought Sherman Henderson's ice cream factory had always been there … I was too busy making assumptions to check the Sanborn maps. It first shows up on the 1922 map. But it wasn't even begun until November 1922:


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.

Yellowstone Trail Campground Report

Here's something for you Yellowstone-Trail fans …


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Hobart News 21 Sept. 1922

… and something for you baseball-and-ice-cream fans:


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Hobart News 21 Sept. 1922.

I wonder whether anyone in Hobart saved enough wrappers to get a baseball autographed by Babe Ruth. Such a baseball would sell for five figures these days, but even the ice-cream wrapper might be worth something.

A Rare Treat

Since the Ainsworth-area community had been holdings meetings and entertainments in the W.G. Haan school from the time it opened, I would guess that the entertainment of April 7, 1922 took place there as well, although the article gives no location.


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Hobart Gazette 14 Apr. 1922

Perhaps someone can tell me if "Lola" was Eleanor (Schuelke) Pflughoeft, Herman's wife; if so, she was then about 27 years old. I can't identify "Mrs. Forsberg." Thelma Fetterer was the daughter of Franklin (Sr.) and Harriet, about 24 years old. "Little Margaret Strong" was very little indeed — only about four years old, if I've identified her correctly (which isn't at all certain, since I can find her only in 1930, living with her grandparents in Winfield Township). Ellen Boyd was only a year older, the daughter of George and Addie (Guernsey) Boyd, who farmed near Merrillville.

I'm afraid "the Sunny South Girls," whoever they were, blackened their faces and spoke or sang in exaggerated dialect. Such treats as that were not as rare as we might like to think.


As for the meeting about the paving of what's now S.R. 51, I don't know where it took place. I can only imagine how "interesting and enthusiastic" it must have been, since just the previous month S.R. 51 had been described as "nearly impassable" around 61st Ave.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.

Young People's Reading Circle

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

Herman Harms was about 12 years old when he completed the course of reading that earned him this diploma.


These photos, of George H. Thompson and his office, come from the 1915 Hobart High School Aurora yearbook, which I just happen to have lying around.



If Etta B. Henderson was any relation to Sherman Henderson, Hobart's ice-cream mogul and first mayor, I haven't found it out. Here is her obituary, from the Hobart Historical Society's files. (Unfortunately the newspaper it was clipped from was not identified.)


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

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Minnie Rossow Harms kept the certificate above in a Continental Airlines "complimentary flight packet" that (I'm guessing) she saved from an airline trip to visit one of her children in California. And I just had to scan the cover of that packet, because it's so fabulous.


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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

According to my quick internet research, Continental Airlines did not use the Boeing 707 before January 1959, and judging by those fashions, I would date that photo pretty close to 1959.

His Honor and His Eskimo Pie

December 1921: the Eskimo Pie comes to Hobart, introduced by the Mayor, who intended to manufacture them in his ice cream factory.


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Hobart Gazette 23 Dec. 1921.

South of Deep River

The social news from the countryside as November 1921 came to an end:


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Hobart News 1 Dec. 1921.

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In unrelated news, the Roper Bros. in Hobart suggest you buy a one-ton truck chassis and build your own truck.


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Hobart Gazette 2 Dec. 1921.

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Sarah Read's return to the Nolte farm in late October did not last long. She became ill again sometime in November, I gather, and had to go back to the home of her nephew, Benjamin Packham, in Hobart ("Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 2 Dec. 1921). She spent most of December 1921 convalescing there, and not until after the New Year was she able to leave the house — only to go to downtown Hobart, though; not to the farm ("Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 13 Jan. 1922).

First City Government

The Hobart News of November 10, 1921, gave the results of Hobart's first city election.


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The Hobart Historical Society has a photo-portrait of all those who made up the first city government of Hobart:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


Additional Source: "Henderson Honored as First Mayor." Hobart Gazette 11 Nov. 1921.

The Noted Chicken Farm and the Disgusting Hog Farm

I don't know anything about the "Chicken Farm," but apparently the Gazette's readers were expected to know all about it, as the paper reported in August 1921: "The noted 'Chicken Farm' gambling house may be transferred into a school house, as East Gary is said to be considering its purchase. A school house is needed in that part of town." So it was somewhere in or near present-day Lake Station.

Elsewhere, the paper noted that "[t]he Berghoff Road House had its grand opening last Saturday evening. This is Hobart's new place south of the Chicken Farm." The two establishments being mentioned in the same paragraph suggests to me that they were of similar character.

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West of Hobart, a hog farm was stinking up the place. At a special session of the town board on Tuesday evening, August 9, the "secretary of the local board of health was directed, through a notice from the Clerk, to notify the owners of the hog farm, situated in the west part of town, to place their farm of 40 acres in a sanitary condition. This place is known as the Sykes hog farm, the hogs being fed on garbage from Gary." (I have not been able to identify those 40 acres or their owner.)

At the same meeting, Sherman Henderson was appointed to the town board to fill the vacancy left by Hugo Zobjeck's departure the previous spring.


Sources:
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 5 Aug. 1921.
♦ "Town Board Meeting." Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1921.

Ice-Cream Plumbing

Our plumbing friends, Lee & Rhodes, got to spend some of their summer days inside Sherman Henderson's ice-cream factory.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 July 1921.

The "Mrs. Wm. Carey" who mothered young picnickers at the campground was born Augusta Stolp; the widow of Henry Rossow, she became the second wife of William H. Carey in 1903, and was widowed again in 1916.

One Saturday, and Many Sundaes To Come

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Leo Fifield and Augusta Buchfuehrer on their wedding day. Her dress was of yellow chiffon over yellow satin.
Image courtesy of Norma Buchfuehrer Collins.

It was the evening of Saturday, October 9, 1920, when the youngest daughter of the former Ainsworth-dwellers Louis and Frederike Buchfuehrer became Mrs. Leo Fifield.


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Nine days later, Leo and Gusta became the owners and operators of an ice-cream parlor.


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The ice-cream parlor in question was at 310 Main Street.


Sources:
♦ "Fifield-Buchfuehrer Nuptial." Hobart Gazette 15 Oct. 1920.
♦ "Fifield-Buchfuehrer." Hobart News 14 Oct. 1920.
♦ "Leo Fifield Buys Henderson Confectionery store." Hobart News 21 Oct. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 22 Oct. 1920.

Embarrassment at the Bank

This ad appeared in Hobart High School's Aurora yearbook for 1919.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

It was an ordinary business morning — Wednesday, January 25, 1920 — and in the Hobart Bank, cashier William Killigrew and assistant cashier Deering Melin were going about their ordinary business when an official from the state banking department walked in and told them to close their doors and suspend all business. The bank was under investigation.

The news came as a shock to the two men, as they had no reason to think anything was wrong. The state official explained that the Farmers' State Bank of Valparaiso had likewise just been closed, and there lay the problem: the two banks shared a principal owner, one William H. Gardner of Valparaiso — so it was a case of suspicion by association.

State officials' examination of the Valparaiso bank's books, begun earlier in the week, had turned up a shortfall of $200,000. Examiners believed that bank funds were being used in stock speculation. The Farmers' State Bank cashier, Henry Winneguth, openly confessed to the shortfall; as for President Gardner, he had nothing to say — he was nowhere to be found.

The news, and the shock, spread locally. William Killigrew published a notice in the News asking for Hobart Bank patrons' "patience and good will until matters [were] straightened out." The Gazette had this to say:

Wm. J. Killigrew, the cashier, has been connected with the Hobart bank for some ten years, and D.D. Melin, the assistant cashier, for the past eight years. They have always retained the confidence of the general public, and through this confidence the bank has grown nicely, much to the credit of these two young men and the town. The Hobart bank was established here as a private bank in 1884 by the present owner's father, and was counted as solid as any institution.

By Friday, Mr. Gardner had turned up and surrendered all his property — hundreds of shares of stock, including all his stock in the Hobart Bank, his "magnificent home and all its luxurious fixtures" and "half a dozen other pieces of property"; Cashier Winneguth had also surrendered his home and personal property. Between the value of those assets and "financial soundness of [the bank's] backers," by the end of the week the Farmers' State Bank failure was apparently headed for a happy ending.

Meanwhile, the Hobart Bank, with a shortage of $46,000, faced either a winding up of its affairs with a possible loss of 30 percent to depositors, or a reorganization that would allow it to continue business with no loss to depositors. On Sunday morning a number of depositors, determined to reorganize, gathered at the bank and worked out the details with the help of state banking examiners. Quickly ("in ten minutes," according to one report) depositors bought $50,000 worth of stock, more than making up the shortage. By Tuesday morning, the Hobart Bank was open for business again.

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Many of those involved in the reorganization are acquaintances of ours. The bank's new officers were William Stommel (president); John J. Wood (vice-president); William Killigrew (cashier); and Deering Melin (assistant cashier). Its directors were Calvin Shearer, Emil Scharbach, Sherman Henderson, John Stocker and John Hillman. All officers (except Deering Melin) and directors were shareholders; additional shareholders were Andrew Melin, Armin Mackeldey, Paul Emery, Fred Rose, Lawrence Traeger, Alex Boyd, John Killigrew, Philip Thompson, Harry Parker, Siegfried Baumer, Robert Scholler, and Simeon Bullock.


Sources:
♦ "Bank Shortage to Be Made Good by the Backers." Kokomo Daily Tribune 27 Feb. 1920. http://www.newspaperarchive.com (accessed 12/7/12).
♦ "Doors of Hobart Bank Closed Wednesday Morning." Hobart News 26 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Hobart Bank Closed Wednesday by State Officials." Hobart Gazette 27 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Hobart Bank Involved in Crash, Will Reopen." Elkhart Review 1 Mar. 1920. http://www.newspaperarchive.com (accessed 12/7/12).
♦ "Hobart Bank Opened Tuesday." Hobart Gazette 5 Mar. 1920.
♦ "Hobart Bank Opens Under Reorganization." Hobart News 4 Mar. 1920.
♦ "State Auditor Closes Up Two Indiana Banks." Kokomo Daily Tribune 26 Feb. 1920. http://www.newspaperarchive.com (accessed 12/7/12).
♦ "Two Indiana Banks Closed By Auditor Shortage $200,000." Logansport Daily Tribune 26 Feb. 1920. http://www.newspaperarchive.com (accessed 12/7/12).