Why They Are All Quitting Farming

This notice about yet another public sale by another soon-to-be-ex-farmer includes some comments about the difficulties the farmers were facing in the early 1920s.


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Hobart News 26 Oct. 1922.

In a previous post I identified the Theodore Henning farm:


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It lay on the west side of the intersection of Colorado Street and Harms Road.

This is the first I've heard of Paul Mionske, but he may have occupied the Henning farm when the 1920 Census came around; he appears on rented land (with his parents) in that vicinity. I've a feeling this will be the last I hear of him.

Theodore Henning was born in Germany in 1855, came to the U.S. in 1871, and married Wilhelmine "Minnie" Mau in Chicago in 1884. They bought their Ross Township farm sometime between 1891 and 1900: the 1900 Census shows them there with seven children (Charles, Frank, Amanda, Albert, William, Fred, and Lillian). Theodore died in 1916, at which time he and Minnie were Crown Point residents. The old farm was being operated by their son, Albert, who in 1912 had married Florence Gradle.¹ (Two of their children, Theodore and Delmer, were photographed at the Vincent School.) In January 1917, Albert himself held a public sale on the farm² and apparently got out of farming — the 1920 Census shows him in Gary, employed at a steel mill — but he held on to the land, renting it out. Which is where Paul Mionske comes in, and goes out.

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[1] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 7 June 1912.
[2] "Public Sale," Hobart Gazette 12 Jan. 1917.

Mary Mau Foreman

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Hobart News 18 May 1922

Mrs. John Fasel had been Anna Foreman, and she was the mother of our cute little Mable.

Checking in on the sisters who lived locally, I find that Wilhelmine "Minnie" Henning had been widowed in 1916; Freda (or Frieda) and William Foreman* farmed their own land south and southwest of Ainsworth. The sister who married Christ Holmstrom was named Augusta — if I've found the right person — and the Holmstroms lived in the village of Ainsworth in 1920, after having moved from Chicago (1900) to Monee, Illinois (1910).

Mary Foreman's death left her husband and 22-year-old son alone on their farm.

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*I must try not to confuse him with William Foreman of Hobart, for whom the school was named.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ "Death of Mrs. Foreman." Hobart Gazette 12 May 1922.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.
♦ "Mrs. Helmuth Foreman Passes Away Wednesday Forenoon." Hobart News 11 May 1922.