Indiana Takes Over the Yellowstone Trail

I don't particularly care about Indiana taking over the Yellowstone Trail in November 1923 …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 16, 1923.

… but I'm interested in that bit about the Liberty Highway, as I'm now clearer about some of the roads involved. The first time I encountered the Liberty Highway — in 1921 — its route was being moved from "the North Hobart-Wheeler road [W 700 N] and Cleveland avenue" to "the south Hobart-Wheeler road." I didn't know what the latter was.

But here we are in 1923 and the Liberty Highway route has been moved back to Cleveland Ave./W 700 N "to eliminate the bad crossing of the Pennsy and Nickel Plate railroads" — now, what could that be but that awful Traeger crossing? So the south Hobart-Wheeler road was Tenth Street/W 600 N.

I still don't know where the Liberty Highway started or where it stopped.

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Later in the month, when Alwin Wild is trying to sell property from someone's estate, he thinks it helpful to mention that the property is on the Yellowstone Trail … not a word about the Liberty Highway.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 30, 1923.

Also, a child born to Walter and Hazel (née Thompson) Veal … and a dance at Deepriver Hall, which I believe is the former schoolhouse.

Roads and Rhodes

As September 1921 began, the proposed improvements to Old Ridge Road got underway. Calvin C. Shearer and his son-in-law, Paul Emery, would be doing "all the grading," according to the Gazette article below, but I'm not sure why it was called the "Shearer road," and as for the "Peddicord road" that's somehow involved in this, don't even ask me.


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Hobart Gazette 9 Sept. 1921.

We also find our friend, George Rhodes, moving his family from one place I can't identify to another place I can't identify.

In other moving-to-an-unidentified-location news, we have Paul and Bliss (Shearer) Emery getting out of her parents house into their own home …


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 8 Sept. 1921.

… while Walter Veal seems to have recovered his spirits after his recent bereavement. Franklin Schavey hasn't quite recovered his arm, but that's to be expected. (And how did Mrs. George Hatten acquire a brother with the surname Seider? — I thought her maiden name was Kipp?)

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The News mentioned that the Liberty Highway had been marked as planned, and a surge of traffic resulted: "[f]rom appearances there are now double the number of Autoists over this route than before, when tourists mostly followed the Yellowstone Trail, which took them through Third street and east over the north road to Valparaiso,"* also known as Cleveland Avenue. Here the Liberty Highway was described as "the south road west from Hobart." Earlier the Gazette had described the route as following "the south Hobart-Wheeler road" (as distinct from the "north Hobart-Wheeler road") and then Main Street, leading to "Chicago street westerly" (now known as Old Ridge Road). I do not know what constituted the south Hobart-Wheeler road, or the north one either, for that matter.

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*"Work of Grading Shearer Road Begun Wednesday Morning." Hobart News 8 Sept. 1921.

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.