Shults-Kasch

When last we met Alfred Shults, on a summer's night in 1921, he was being held up by highwaymen.

Now it's noon on Saturday, January 21, 1922, and if we go to the German Lutheran parsonage in Hobart, we shall meet Alfred under much happier circumstances, as he stands before the Rev. E.R. Schuelke to exchange wedding vows with Miss Vera Kasch. The groom is 20 years old, the bride only 17.

Just a month earlier, Vera's older brother, Helmuth Jr., had married into the Baessler family. Now her second brother, Edward, witnesses her marriage, along with "Miss Leola Wilson of Blachly's Corners," about whom I know nothing except that she was the same age as the bride.

The young couple planned to live at Alfred's parents' home, and he would "assist his father in farming the Shults farm, near and southeast of Ainsworth." Their residence in 1930 was on the north side of the (old) Lincoln Highway, so the Shults farm may be the former Kruse farm.

♦    ♦    ♦
Elsewhere in the same issue of the Gazette, some random items … including the happy news that after nearly seven years of marriage, George and Pearl Yager have a baby. Also, some miscreant stole the pump from the Cleveland Ave. campground, and the Roper Bros. hold a tractor-bobsled party.


(Click on image to enlarge)


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1922.
♦ "Quietly Married." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1922.

With a Friend Like This, He Didn't Need Enemies

The violent robbery of George Bruebach, Jr., is the most attention-grabbing story on this page …


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette 16 Dec. 1921.

… but we should also note the wedding of Irma Baessler to Helmuth Kasch, Jr.

Irma, about 20 years of age, was the eldest child of Michael (Jr.) and Emma Baessler, who had bought their farm on the Lincoln Highway in 1918.

I have not paid the slightest attention to the Kasch family yet, but in 1920 they were Ross Township residents, renting a farm that seems to have been in the general area of Clay Street and E. 83rd Ave. At that time the family consisted of Helmuth Sr. (45 years old), his wife, Emma (43), and their children, Helmuth Jr. (20), Edward (19), and Vera (16). Helmuth and Emma had brought their family to the Indiana countryside from Chicago. (Also in the household in 1920 were William Dewell and his little son Conrad. William's wife, Martha, who had died of the Spanish flu in December 1918, had been Emma Wischman Kasch's sister.)

Apparently, by December 1921 the Kasch family had moved to "the old Lincoln farm south of East Gary," which I cannot identify.

By 1930 the elder Kasches would be back in Ross Township. Helmuth Jr. and Irma became residents of Hobart.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Kase-Baessler [sic]." Hobart News 15 Dec. 1921.