She Was Wrong, But She Was Right

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Hobart Gazette, 14 Aug. 1952.

Obviously, burning down your house is not a productive way to address any marital problems you might be having. But it does appear that Alice was right about Rex's feelings toward her.

Alice, born in 1914, was the daughter of our favorite plumber, Charles Lee, and his wife Anna. She married Rex Albany Roll (b. 1908) in 1942. The Hobart telephone directory for 1952-1953 lists the Rolls at 1219 Jackson Street, so they had probably just moved to their "West Third street" house when this event occurred.[1]

The children Alice took to Lakeview Park were Grace, Eileen, and Shirley.

Alice and Rex apparently tried to continue with their marriage for a few more years: they had another child, Rex Jr., around 1953 or 1954. But in the 1956 Hobart directory Rex (Sr.) is absent from the Roll family listing. I can't find any information about him until January 1969, when his death certificate describes him as a Hobart resident, divorced.

Sometime after 1958, Alice remarried, to a widower named Herman Alpert. They moved to Sheperdsville, Kentucky, where Herman died in 1989. Alice returned to this area and was living with her married daughter, Shirley, when she died in 1992.

I hope the second marriage was happier than the first.


I spent a little time looking in my 1947 and 1962 Hobart directories for any listing involving counseling, therapy, or psychiatry. There were none. I couldn't find any in 1952 Gary directories, either. Some quick internet research tells me that marriage counseling developed in the 1920s from the eugenics movement. "While in 1932 there were only three marriage counseling centers in the entire U.S., by 1968 there were 1,800 licensed marriage counselors in California alone."[2] The Ladies' Home Journal column called, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?," started in 1953.[3]

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[1] The Hobart phone directory for 1956 lists the Roll family at 1364 W. Third Street. I can't find any such address now.
[2] Wendy Kline, "The Surprising History of Marriage Counseling," American Experience, 19 Oct. 2018, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eugenics-surprising-history-of-marriage-counseling/.
[3] "America's Longest-Running Magazine Column - Ladies' Home Journal's Can This Marriage Be Saved? - Launches as Webisode Series," Cision PR Newswire, 26 Mar. 2010, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americas-longest-running-magazine-column---ladies-home-journals-can-this-marriage-be-saved---launches-as-webisode-series-89015517.html.

The Chicken Farm and the KKK

Here we have the Gazette complaining that a gambling joint between Hobart and Gary is operating openly and suggesting that, since local law enforcement can't or won't close it down, perhaps the KKK should step in.


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Hobart Gazette, Aug. 3, 1923.

The Klan's "taking a hand" would be done outside the law and involve violence or at least the threat of violence (as one essay puts it, the Klan's "controversial methods" of suppressing vice included "late night visitations, tar-and-feathering, and applying a razor strap to the back"[1]).

The article above gives the location of the gambling joint as "near Gary, on the Chicago road" — that is to say, Old Ridge Road. Previously I had the impression that the "chicken farm" was somewhere closer to Lake Station, but I may have misunderstood. Or maybe "chicken farm" was a slang term for any gambling joint?


Meanwhile, in unrelated news, our favorite plumber, Charles Lee, was vacationing at Kuntz Lake, more commonly spelled Koontz.

♦    ♦    ♦
The previous day's News mentioned Valparaiso University's financial troubles and the possibility that the Klan might "take a hand" there as well, but not violently.


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Hobart News, Aug. 2, 1923.

Ultimately this plan came to nothing. It was an odd episode in the history of Valparaiso University, covered in detail by the late Dr. Lance Trusty in "All Talk and No 'Kash': Valparaiso University and the Ku Klux Klan," Indiana Magazine of History 82, no. 1 (1986): 1-36.[2]

The right-hand column contains some good news about President Warren G. Harding's health. But we know that isn't going to last.


_______________
[1] Jerry L. Wallace, "The Ku Klux Klan in Calvin Coolidge's America," Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation (website), July 14, 2014, https://www.coolidgefoundation.org/blog/the-ku-klux-klan-in-calvin-coolidges-america/.
[2] This article can be read at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27790947.

Hot Weather

The last two weeks of June 1923 were so hot that the strawberry crop withered and the M.E. church held its services in the basement. The Gem Theatre in Hobart enticed its patrons with "12 big fans" to cool them off. (The movies had not yet become the talkies so there was no spoken dialogue to be drowned out by those fans.) When sundown brought a little relief, you could go dancing at the pavilion just north of the old Liverpool schoolhouse, on the northeast corner of the Old Ridge Road-Liverpool Road intersection. The brave young people playing tennis on Stommel's lot did so early in the morning or late in the afternoon, I hope.

Nothing much was planned in Hobart for Independence Day, but on its eve Camp 133 promised a big fireworks display. If you didn't care for fireworks, you could go dance at the old Deepriver schoolhouse to music "with real pep" played by Perry's Big Six (I have no idea).


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Hobart Gazette, June 29, 1923.

Still, work had to go on. Planning for the future Roosevelt Gym building was going forward, and our favorite plumbers, Lee & Rhodes, as the only bidders for the plumbing work, were awarded the contract.

Some unpleasant business involving tuberculosis-testing of cattle occurred on "the big farm of Roper Bros." (and even more unpleasant business later at a Chicago slaughterhouse). I don't know where that farm was. I can't find any land owned by a Roper in Union Township on the Lincoln Highway in the 1921 or 1928 plat maps.

Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

The news that Ernest Walters (or Walter) was re-elected yet again in November 1922 as Ross Township assessor leads me to pay a little more attention to him. Thus far I've mentioned him only as the father of the garage partners. As the article explains, however, he had long been Merrillville's cheesemaker.


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Hobart Gazette 11 Nov. 1922.

He had been born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in 1853.[1] Having arrived in this area after 1880, he missed that census. In Lake County in 1888, he married Louisa Niksch.[2] The 1900 Census shows the two of them with their cheese factory and their three sons in Merrillville.

A Pictorial History of Merrillville has this to say about Ernest and his cheese:

Initially Ernest had a factory on Walter's Avenue but later relocated to the southwest side of the C. & O. Railroad on Madison Street in closer proximity to the Township's busy square. … Ernest traveled as far as Hammond, Indiana, in his horse and buggy to peddle his hefty rolls of cheese for $3.00 apiece.

Known far and wide by his nickname, "Cheese Henry," Ernest was much appreciated by the local farmers as they found in his business as market for their slightly sourced milk that was not suitable for shipping to Chicago on the "dummy" train.

If "later relocated" means about 1900, then the second cheese factory (south of the former C&O tracks) may still be standing.

♦    ♦    ♦
In the left-hand column of the page above, we find that Roy Hack, fresh off his victory over the paving company, has won the election for Ross Township trustee. He would succeed Alex Boyd, who after eight years had evidently had enough of trusteeship, as he did not seek re-election.

In the middle column, we find our friend Annie Peterson selling off household goods — preparing to downsize her living quarters, perhaps?

Below that, with respect to the fire starting from the Charles Lee property, if "Nagel subdivision" in the news item = "Nagle's Addition" on the map, then the corner of Cleveland and Ohio was a good distance for a fire to travel, or an odd stopping place for the fire department — I'm not sure which from the wording. Perhaps someone flagged them down there and told them all the excitement was over, but you'd think they would go check it out for themselves.


_______________________
[1] Indiana Death Certificates.
[2] Indiana Marriage Collection; Indiana Death Certificates. Louisa may have been from the Merrillville Niksch family which, as far as I know, was not related to the Hobart/Ainsworth Niksch family.

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 Busy Season at the Yellowstone Trail Campground

The last I heard about Lee & Rhodes' public fountain was in April 1922, when it had been put in working order. Evidently by August it had gotten out of working order and people were going thirsty under the glaring sun.

While the story about Yellowstone Trail campground doesn't say so, I suppose that the registration box had been set out there when the camp officially opened on May 6, 1922.


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Hobart Gazette 25 Aug. 1922.

I don't know where exactly the Harmon house was, but it doesn't matter since apparently you couldn't get any moonshine there. (I wonder if the Harmon who lived there had any connection to the Rush Harmon who had been hanging around with Carrie Peas.)

And lastly, the bereaved Alfred Ingram and Anna Fleck left to close up the empty house in Boston.

Wauhob Lake

I never heard of Lake Wahob, or Wauhob Lake as it seems to be called now, until Charles Lee took a vacation there with family and friends in early July 1922.


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Hobart News 13 July 1922.

Wauhob Lake is in Liberty Township, Porter County:



(Elsewhere on the same page, we find the summer visiting of the Bullock-Killigrew-Halladay crowd.)


Charles and Anna Lee returned from their vacation to show Charles' brother, mother, and sister around Hobart.


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I suppose J.W. Lee was the 49-year-old John W. Lee who showed up in the 1920 Census in Hominy, Oklahoma, working as a superintendent at a gas company. The rest of the genealogy I shall have to leave to the Lee family.

On the page above, we see that Henry Harms, Sr. suffered some wind damage to the barn on his farm, then occupied by the Herman and Minnie Harms family.

♦    ♦    ♦
Here's what August 1922 held for Charles' plumbing firm: "Lee & Rhodes submitted a bid of $198.50 for paying 330 feet of water pipe on Linda street, or to do the work for $132 if the city furnishes the pipe. Supt. Wheaton was directed to purchase the material and have the extension made at once." ("City Council Proceedings," Hobart Gazette 18 Aug. 1922.)

Oklahoma!

Just out of high school, Leona Raschka dashed off to spend June 1922 in Oklahoma, of all places. According to a brief genealogy at findagrave.com, Grace Short was the daughter of Leona's father's sister, but I have no clue who the "relatives and friends" in Oklahoma were.


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Hobart News 8 June 1922.

I wonder whence the strawberries would come for the social in the Ainsworth school — from Jake Yager, perhaps, or the Carlson brothers?

The item about little Elmer Palm's christening is interesting to me because this could well be the celebration memorialized in the photo in Mildred Lindborg's album.

♦    ♦    ♦
On the morning of June 7, 1922, Hazard Halsted performed an immortalized haircut, and that afternoon Louis Kramer and Myrtle Scharbach were married.


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Hobart Gazette 9 June 1922.


The front page of that issue mentioned Lee & Rhodes' "fine new delivery car" with no further details, alas, and yet another dance at the old Deep River schoolhouse, but it also had some interesting stories about nobody we know, such as a false report of a mass drowning, and a pastor ejected from a church for assault and battery:


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Hobart Gazette 9 June 1922.

"Dead Man's Crossing" and School Plumbing

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Hobart Gazette 19 May 1922.

We've already read of one particularly horrific accident at the Merrillville C&O crossing; that may have been enough, or perhaps there were others, to inspire the "dead man's crossing" nickname.

The description of the new school building about to go up in Wheeler and be plumbed by Lee & Rhodes sounds like the one still standing at Fifth and North (but no longer a school):



I don't know where the "present building at Union Center" was in 1922 — possibly in the vicinity of present-day Union Center Elementary School, but that's just a guess.

Lee & Rhodes were also installing new toilets in the Nickel Plate depot, the old ones having been condemned, along with "a number of other toilets about the city," several weeks earlier by the secretary of Hobart's board of health.


Additional Sources:
♦ "City Council Doings." Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 18 May 1922.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 19 May 1922.

Easter Cantata

This public-sale notice has me stumped: I can't find a Doepping farm 3.5 miles southwest of Hobart, and I never heard of Nathan Bosen before.


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Hobart News 13 Apr. 1922.

The 1920 Census shows a Nathan Bosen in Union Twp., Porter County — a Russian immigrant working as a dry cleaner. If he moved into Lake County and changed careers, I didn't hear about it.


Less mysterious is the appearance of two members of the music-loving Harms family as soloists in the cantata performed at Trinity Lutheran Church on Easter Sunday 1922.


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Hobart Gazette 21 Apr. 1922.

I think Henry Harms was Henry Sr. (Henry Jr. was musical, too, but he lived in Chicago and likely had his own church to sing at on Easter Sunday.) Herman, of course, just drove up from the farm east of Ainsworth.

… and then, in the "Local Drifts" column, who should appear but "N. Bosen," presumably Nathan Bosen, who is now renting Elmer Arment's 20 acres and brand-new house on S.R. 51.

I am not sure whether Miss Elizabeth Bruebach was the lovely Liza whose photographs we've seen … but Liza, or Eliza, had been born in April 1890 per the 1900 Census (and her mother, née Elise Manteuffel, had married George Bruebach in 1887 per the Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

In the lower right-hand corner of the page above, we find an announcement that a League of Women Voters meeting will be held in Lindborg hall — the dance hall over the blacksmith shop.


Elsewhere in the same issue of the Gazette, we find "Lee & Rhodes announc[ing] that their drinking fountain is now in working order" — that would be the public fountain in front of their shop, I'm guessing, which likely had been shut down for the winter. I have lost track (if I ever knew) where Lee & Rhodes' shop was by 1922.

Scavenger Hunt

Mr. Hallberg says all of these people had photographs taken between December 1921 and March 1922. Some of the photos may have been destroyed one way or another, or passed down with no name written on them so that nobody knows who they are now, but surely some of them still exist and are identified, somewhere. Anybody want to try to track them down?


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Hobart News 30 March 1922.


Names for search-engine purposes: Allen, Batterman, Beach, Billeaux, Black, Bloomquist, Braddock, Brahst, Brand, Brandt, Bruebach, Burnett, Byall, Calvert, Canino, Carlson, Cavender, Condon, Davis, DeFrance, Emery, Faulkner, Finding, Fisher, Fleck, Frageman, Fratzke, Friedrich, Gresser, Grieger, Gruel, Hagberg, Hamann, Hawke, Haxton, Heath, Henderson, Hulett, Ittel, Jahnke, Johnson, Keilman, Kemp, Keppel, Killigrew, Kipp, Koehler, Krull, Lee, Livingston, MacIver, Mackey, MacPherson, Manteuffel, Maybaum, Melin, Mellon, Miller, Mygren, Nelson, Newman, Owen, Pattee, Paxton, Peddicord, Penniman, Peterson, Peterson, Phillips, Pierson, Quinlan, Raschka, Rhodes, Rohwedder, Roper, Rose, Rossow, Scharbach, Scheidt, Schmelter, Shearer, Shoemaker, Shore, Shults, Siegesmund, Sitzenstock, Stocker, Stoeckert, Strom, Strong, Swanson, Thompson, Traeger, Tyler, Vincent, Voorhis, Walters, Weaver, Wheaton, Wild, Wilson, Wood, Wrobbel, Yetter

The Law or the Shotgun

William Rossow knew who was stealing his corn, I think, but considered it wiser to address him through the newspaper than at his front door.


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Hobart Gazette 12 Oct. 1921.*

And our old friend Charles Lee is under the weather.

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*This issue of the Gazette is erroneously dated "Friday, Oct. 12, 1921." Friday was the usual day for the Gazette to come out, but that week's Friday fell on the 14th.

Bus Drivers

We see some familiar names among the bus drivers (Hobart Township, I believe) as the 1921-22 school year begins. Also, a Lincoln Highway progress report, and general social news. "Mrs. Bertha Bodamer" and "Mrs. Ben Bodamer" are the same person.


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Hobart News 1 Sept. 1921.

The previous year's annual report for Hobart schools gives us an idea of how much extra money bus-driving brought into a household. Beyond that, lots of people we know earned money by work or supplies furnished to the schools.


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Hobart News 15 Sept. 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.

The Camp Ground in McAfee's Woods

Since January 1921 the Hobart Commercial Club had been working with Paul Newman, trailsman, to develop a camping ground near Hobart for tourists on the Yellowstone Trail. At a Commercial Club meeting in March, the camping-ground committee reported on its progress: it had entered negotiations with William McAfee to rent four acres of his "7-acre wood lot east of town"; it had planned what improvements would be built and roughly how much those improvements would cost (about $250, to be raised by subscription); it had already received donations of over $100.

I do not know exactly where these four acres were. William McAfee had owned land along the south side of Cleveland Avenue, east of town, for many years (indeed, his parents had owned land there at least since the 1870s), but it's in different places per the 1908 Plat Map …


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…and the 1926 Plat Book.



Nor can I see anything recognizable as a camping ground in the 1939 aerial photos, though we do see what looks like a wooded tract on the southeast corner of Cleveland and S.R. 51. But it's a long time between 1921 and 1939, and the camping ground may not have been in existence by then, even if it could be identified from the air.


Anyway, work went forward during the spring of 1921, and by the end of April, the camping ground was nearly completed.



The Commercial Club had exceeded its own goal in raising money. So many local individuals and businesses had contributed that I can't index them all. The Kulage Brick Works even donated bricks.




Sources:
♦ "Commercial Club Holds Good Meeting." Hobart Gazette 11 Mar. 1921.
♦ "Report on Tourists' Camp Ground." Hobart News 19 May 1921.
♦ "Tourists' Camp Ground About Ready." Hobart Gazette 29 Apr. 1921.

Warmed by Love, Heated by Hot Water

On the heels of the Spanish-flu marriage came a half-flu marriage, as Calvin Scholler, bereaved of his first wife by flu, became the first husband of Edith A. MacPherson on November 15, 1920.


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From the Hobart News of Nov. 18, 1920.

Also, news of an acquaintance: John Harms was moving onto the farm he had bought last August. (I don't know if "Mr. Maicke" is the Otto Maicke who eventually married Lesta Raschka, but perhaps we'll find out.) And a wedding south of Ainsworth! I must admit this is the first time I've noticed the William and Rosie Wilkening family, even though a little investigation shows they've been farming in southern Ross Township at least since 1908.

From the Gazette, another report on the Scholler-MacPherson wedding, and more news of acquaintances:


From the Hobart Gazette of Nov. 19, 1920.

Lee & Rhodes heating up their own headquarters in the Roper building, and the Borger building, wherever that might have been.

As for Mrs. Harry Barnes, this is the first time I've mentioned her, but it won't be the last. She was born Lillian Newman, and a descendant of hers just recently clued me in to the connection between the Newmans and the Gruel family of Ainsworth. Lillie was the sister of Paul Newman, of Hobart hardware-store fame, and Arthur Newman who appeared somewhere in the Gruel pigeon-shoot picture (and who, I believe, just recently provided confections for the W.G. Haan School fundraiser). "Mrs. Philip Roper, Jr." was their sister, Dollie. More to come from that direction.


Other sources:
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.

Did We Say Yes? We Meant No

As early as 1919 some prominent citizens were actively working to incorporate Hobart as a city (with a mayor, as opposed to its original status as a town, governed only by a board of trustees). A petition to the town board for the change was drawn up, and in July 1919 the Hobart Commercial Club set out three copies at convenient locations for signing: one at the First State Bank, another at American Trust & Savings, and the third in the hands of board chairman, E.E. Pierson. Over several months, the required numbers of signatures accumulated — one-third of Hobart's voters — and the petition was formally presented for consideration by the town board on April 27, 1920.

In general I find this whole issue rather dull, but now and then some point of interest crops up. At the last town board meeting of October 1920, a number of men who had signed the original petition in favor of incorporation as a city now presented a new petition asking that their names be stricken from the first petition. Among them are some particular friends of ours, including C.C. Shearer, William Raschka, Paul Emery, Charles Lee, and Louis Buchfuehrer.


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As you may gather from that report, Trustee John Thiel (a 42-year-old attorney) opposed anything that would stand in the way of Hobart's becoming a city. The same issue of the Gazette carried his argument in favor of the city form, hinting that under the current form there was a good deal of dubious stuff going on.




Sources:
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Petitions Are Out to Transform Hobart Into a City." Hobart News 10 July 1919.
♦ "Reasons for City Government for Hobart." Hobart Gazette 29 Oct. 1920.
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart Gazette 29 Oct. 1920.

No Washing and Sundays Off

Amelia Goldman wanted help around the house, and Lee & Rhodes were heating up the second floor of the Morton building.


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The wages of that "good girl" in the Goldman household were equivalent to about $116 per week in 2013 dollars. If room and board were included, that wasn't too miserable. The average weekly wage for women in manufacturing jobs in 1920 was $15.14 (around $200 in 2013 money). (Men in unskilled manufacturing jobs at that time made about $22 per week; unionized tradesmen in Chicago earned $55 weekly.)

The Goldman household in 1920 was small — just Charles and Amelia, and the 16-year-old daughter who was mysteriously absent from the 1910 census. But they had a store to look after.

♦    ♦    ♦
The frivolous pleasure-seekers in the front-page cartoon here seem headed for the Gem Theater, where on Sunday evening they could catch Billie Burke, who is best known to us as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.


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From the Hobart News of Sept. 16, 1920.


Billie Burke circa 1920. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "All kinds of Wants." Hobart Gazette 17 Sept. 1920.
♦ CPI Inflation Calculator.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 17 Sept. 1920.
♦ Smiley, Gene. "The U.S. Economy in the 1920s." EH.Net Encyclopedia. Edited by Robert Whaples. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Smiley.1920s.final (2010).
♦ VanGiezen, Robert, and Albert E. Schwenk. "Compensation from before World War I through the Great Depression." Originally printed in Compensation and Working Conditions, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fall 2001. Posted January 30, 2003, to http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar03p1.htm.

"Cut Off From the Rest of the World"

The sorry state of the Lincoln Highway in 1920.


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The following week, the Gazette added: "The Lincoln Highway through Porter county is to have a stone dressing to tide the highway over the winter. It is said to be in bad condition."


Sources:
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 6 Aug. 1920.
♦ "Lincoln Highway Improvement Stopped." Hobart Gazette 30 July 1920.

A New End of the Line

In June 1920, the Hobart town board gave permission to the Gary and Hobart Traction Company to stop its streetcars at Main and Third Streets — a new eastern end of the streetcar line that had formerly gone all the way to the Pennsy depot. The same month, the company began to remove its track from Third St. and Union St. — which I believe is what S. Illinois St. was then called.

♦    ♦    ♦
Meanwhile, Lee & Rhodes had plans for June 26: to host a demonstration of an electric washing machine; here you can see the 1919 A.B.C. model.



I do not know what "risbans" might be, unless that is a corruption of "wristbands," i.e., cuffs on shirts, etc., which do tend to get soiled and are hard to clean.


Sources:
♦ Advertisement. Hobart Gazette 25 June 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 25 June 1920.
♦ "St. Car Company Granted Right to Stop at Main St." Hobart News 3 June 1920.