Wedding Report

In late November 1923, a flurry of weddings involving people we know.

The first took place on the farm of Theodore and Annie Rossow. Harry, born in 1898, was their youngest son, but not their youngest child.


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Hobart News, Nov. 29, 1923.

The young couple stayed in Gary, to judge by the 1930 Census and the 1940 Census, and had no children of their own as far as I can tell; but in 1940 their household included a young niece and nephew. I wonder what the story behind that was.


The next wedding, further down in the same column, involved Isaac Small, descended from the Smalls of Small's Crossing. Isaac's father, Richard, was one of the children of John E. and Mary Jane (Riley) Small, and had died in 1916, which is why only Isaac's mother, Carrie, is mentioned.[1]

Frances' father, Severin (aka Siegfried), was a baker with a shop on Main Street (bought out in 1922 by his son, Fred). Her mother, Lena (Conrad), had died in 1910.

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The third wedding involved the Moehl family, members of which eventually ran a garage at East and Second Streets in Hobart, near the flat where the article says the newlyweds would live.


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Hobart News, Nov. 29, 1923.

As for the Born family, I can't say I've learned anything about them since the one and only time I mentioned them before, so perhaps it's time for me to do a little research.

Viola Born's grandparents, Charles (aka Carl) and Hanna (aka Johanna) — both German immigrants — brought their family down from Chicago sometime after the 1880 Census. The 1891 Plat Book shows them owning over a hundred acres of farmland west of Hobart. Here is the Born farm as it appears on the 1908 Plat Map:


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It was the same in 1891 but for those southeasternmost 20 acres.

If I'm reading this all correctly, the brick house at 5050 Liverpool Road — built in 1900 per the county records — is probably the old Born place. And the Borns were neighbors of the Ewiglebens.

Viola's father, Paul, was the eldest child. By the 1900 Census he had five siblings. In 1901 he married Emilie (aka Amelia) Bastian (Indiana Marriage Collection). In the 1910 Census, Paul and Amelia, with Viola, Lauretta and a newborn daughter (as yet unnamed) were farming rented land in the same neighborhood — possibly part of his father's property.

Paul's mother died in 1904, his father in 1917. The 1920 death notice of his sister Anna gives a little snapshot of the family at that time:

The funeral of Mrs. Wm. Medrow was held from the home of her sister, Mrs. Bertha Thurber, of West Third street …. Burial was in Crown Hill cemetery.

Mrs. Anna Medrow died Monday at her home in Chicago after an illness of some time from tuberculosis. She was born in Hobart, her age being 46years, 4 months and 2 days, and lived here most of her life. Besides her husband she leaves seven children, six sons and one daughter, also three sisters, Mrs. Bertha Thurber, Mrs. Edward Rohwedder and Mrs. Edwin Sievert, and three brothers, Paul Born of Hobart, and Otto and Fred of Illinois.[2]

The 1920 Census shows Paul's family (now including four daughters) living on their own farm, which, according to the 1926 Plat Book, was formerly his parents' land.

Viola and Ernest Moehl are recorded in the 1930 Census living in their own home (with a radio) at 901 Garfield Street. He was employed by a lumber company as a truck driver.

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[1] Carrie's maiden name was Haxton and she married Richard in 1881 (Indiana Marriage Collection).
[2] "Funeral of Former Hobart Girl Held Wednesday Afternoon," Hobart News, May 20, 1920.

Mr. Moehl Wants to Build a Garage

On May 28, 1923, William Moehl bought a lot on Second Street (near his home) where he planned to build his garage.


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Hobart News, May 31, 1923.

Higher up in the same column are a couple of items that involve our friends the Harmses. The first just tells of a visit by Herman and Minnie (Rossow) Harms, along with her sister and brother-in-law, to her parents. The second tells us that Herman Harms bought a cottage, intending to move it elsewhere in the city. The Fairbank cottage was being moved from New Street to make way for what would eventually be the Roosevelt Gym.[1] In an earlier report, however, the Gazette named the buyer as Herbert Harms — whom I cannot identify in any local census — and the intended destination of the cottage as being in "the Melin subdivision," which may be Andrew Melin's Fairfield Addition on the east side of Wisconsin Street.[2] I will just add that in all the time I knew Herman's son, Eldon, he never mentioned any such cottage to me, but that doesn't prove anything.

An item over in the right-hand column tells us that the Amlong family was spending a second summer camping out near the village of Deep River.

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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, May 17, 1923.
[2] "School Board Sells Dwelling," Hobart Gazette, May 18, 1923.

That Other Michael Foreman

Speaking of (apparently) unrelated local people with the same names, this "Michael Foreman" living "near Hobart" was not the Michael Foreman of Ainsworth.


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, May 4, 1923.

Ainsworth's Michael Foreman was born in the U.S., and known as "Mike" mainly in newspaper items. In one census only (1900) he gives his name as Michael; all others record him as Helmuth.

The Porter County Michael's middle name was Helmuth, according to one source — his listing on findagrave.com — but I can't confirm that with any other source.

I myself got them confused at least once, when I noted down this item from the "Local Drifts" of the Hobart Gazette of October 30, 1908: "The Blake farm has been sold to Mike Foreman who lives on one of the Wolf farms." Now that sounds like the Porter County Mike Foreman.

I don't expect to trouble myself any further about the Porter County Mike Foreman.

Other items I have marked on the page above include a fire at the Mohl house — more commonly spelled Moehl. Back in 1921 when the Moehl houses were the subject of a legal dispute, they were described as being on Second Street, and I believe they were west of East Street. The Haxton creamery, as I understand it, is still standing on the east side of New Street, north of Third. So I'm a bit confused by the use of "adjoining" in this description. [Update: I was wrong about the former Haxton creamery's location; it stands on the east side of the alley between East and Center Streets, so the description in the newspaper item makes sense.]

The Mrs. Abel whose hospitalization is mentioned below that item was born Johanna Bruebach. She was the sister of Liza Bruebach and the widow of Frank Abel, Jr.[1]

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In the following week's Gazette, Helmuth "Mike" Foreman of Ainsworth had published this tribute to his late wife.


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Hobart Gazette, May 11, 1923.


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[1] His death certificate from 1919 gives his marital status as divorced (Indiana Death Certificates).

Quitting Farming: Part XVIII or Whatever

Now we learn that back in the autumn of 1921 when an airplane fell into "William Moehl's field," it was technically George Hayward's field on the northeast corner of Liverpool Road and 49th Avenue.


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Hobart News, 19 Oct. 1922.

The renters vacating the flat were, I believe, Lloyd and Mamie Arnold (1920 Census). I have mentioned Lloyd before in passing. He was from Wheeler, where his father had been a blacksmith (1900 Census). I don't know anything about Mamie (maiden name unknown). Lloyd seems to have spent just a few years in Hobart, then moved to Gary to stay.

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Elsewhere in the same column on the page above, we have some teacher news — Elsa Gruel teaching in Chicago, and Evelyn Fredrick entertaining her colleagues in the Fredrick home on S.R. 51. Bunco, in case you didn't know (and I didn't), is played with dice.

Carl Sonntag

From the "Local and Personal" column of the Hobart News of April 20, 1922:

Carl Sonntag, who resides on the Huffman farm southeast of Hobart, has recently purchased the Emma Shearer farm. It is his intention, we are informed to remain on the Huffman farm until the expiration of his rental lease of the place next spring, when he will take possession of his new residence.

I'm not aware of L.R. Huffman owning any land in Lake County, so Carl must have moved onto the Porter County Huffman farm — after 1920, when the census records him living on rented land in Ross Township.

At that time Carl was 34 years old, a German immigrant, married to Anna (maiden name unknown), with an infant son, Arthur. I've seen the Sonntag name around, but never with "Carl" in front of it, and yet he was related to many of the Sonntags, including Martha, who was his niece — or so I gather from his 1961 obituary:

Carl W. Sonntag, 75, of 2585 Willowdale road, a Portage resident for 33* years, died Wednesday in Gary Mercy hospital.

Born Oct. 24, 1885, he retired from the Gary sheet and Tin mill eight years ago.

Surviving are his widow, Anna; a daughter, Mrs. Marie Kuzak of Portage; a son, Arthur of East Gary; five sisters, Mrs. Bertha Moele [or Moehl], Mrs. Emma Baessler, Mrs. Minnie Maier, Mrs. Lena Judge and Mrs. Martha Luke, all of Hobart; two brothers, William of Hobart and Ernest of Fairchild, Wis.; a grandchild and a step-grandchild.

Services will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday in Redeemer Lutheran church, East Gary. The Rev. Leonard Fiene will officiate, and burial will be in Calvary cemetery.

(From "Deaths," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso) 5 Jan. 1961, newspaperarchive.com.)

Well, he's got until the spring of 1923 to stay on the Huffman farm and make Ainsworth-area news.

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*I may have misread this number; it is not clear in the on-line copy of the newspaper.

Just Another Airplane Falling Out of the Sky

It wasn't as close to Ainsworth as usual when a U.S. mail plane fell out of the sky on November 18, 1921.


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Hobart News 24 Nov. 1921.

The Gazette said that the plane came down in "Wm. Mohl's field," and members of the Louis Boldt family were first on the scene. I can't find the Mohl, or Moehl, land; I can't find a farm owned by Louis Boldt; but here, for what it's worth, is the William Boldt farm on the 1908 Plat Map.


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Speaking of William Boldt (who was Louis' brother, I believe) — he was up to his own activities at this time: he had just sold his house in Hobart, and was holding an auction to sell off some of its contents.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 25 Nov. 1921.

I haven't talked about the Wesley family since the autumn of 1920, when John's sister, Anna, had married William Gernenz — except for a "South of Deepriver" column in June 1921 mentioning that John Wesley was pressing hay for H.H. Smith, and I don't know whether that's John Sr. or Jr. John Sr. was farming in the vicinity, of course, but John Jr., although a townie, earned his living by threshing and pressing hay for others with his own machinery.

Here is the Wesley land as shown in the 1926 Plat Book (it was identical in 1891 and 1908, and substantially the same in 1939):


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Anyway, it's John Jr. who is now going to farm in Ross Township, and maybe he will provide us with better gossip than his father did (not that I have any reason to hope).

John Jr., born May 25, 1889, was the middle son of three from John Sr.'s first marriage. By the age of 21 he had moved out of his father's house and hired on to work on the farm of William and Jennie Fisher. I'd be tempted to draw an interesting conclusion from that fact (for example, that he couldn't get along with his young stepmother, or, what is worse, got along with her too well), except that it was not uncommon for young men from farming families to hire on with neighbors.

Late in June 1917, John Jr. married Frances Mattmiller in Chicago. I'd be tempted to suppose that his having filled out his draft card a few weeks earlier had given him marriage fever, but really I have no evidence of that and I ought to stop thinking such things. And furthermore, he stayed married to Frances through 1940 at least, so no doubt it was a true love match. Anyway, in 1920 there they were in Hobart with one little son, being utterly respectable citizens.

By 1940 they had three children. Let us hope at least that one of the children will commit a youthful indiscretion.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ WWI Draft Cards.

A Fight Over the Moehl Houses

It was in February 1919 that the 75-year-old Caroline Moehl (mother of William Sr.) entered a contract to sell her lot and two houses to her neighbors, Theodore and Elfrieda Schroeder, for $2,500, to be paid in installments. As inducement to murder her, the contract provided that the Schroeders would take ownership of Caroline's property upon either full payment of the purchase price, or her death, whichever came first. As added inducement, the contract obligated the Schroeders to nurse her in any illness.

In spite of all that, the Schroeders restrained themselves. When death came for Caroline in June 1920, it had to seek her out far from her old neighborhood, for she was staying with her son on his farm west of Hobart. And her death was so sudden — reasonably healthy one day, suffering from "acute dilation of the heart" the next, and dead the day after — that the Schroeders had no opportunity to nurse her in illness. In their opinion, their contract with Caroline now entitled them to her property.

Caroline's heirs thought otherwise, and so the fighting began.


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From the Hobart Gazette, 27 May 1921.

The other heir mentioned in the story, aside from William, would probably be Caroline's daughter, Mrs. Alvena Clemens of Canton, Ohio.


The second story marked on that page is about a possible successor to the Hillman soft-drink parlor.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Mrs. Moehl Dies Suddenly." Hobart Gazette 11 June 1920.

Phone 289 for Moehl's Garage

I bought this little cigarette lighter some time ago; finally got around to attempting to photograph it, not very successfully, since it's little and round and has a heavy side and a light side and always wants to lie heavy side down. This is as good as it's going to get.


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There's still a spark in the old thing!



… but no fuel, probably, so no flame.

The building that once housed Moehl's Garage was at the northeast corner of the junction of Second and East Streets. I believe it was the one recently demolished and replaced by another building on the same site. Thank goodness for Google street view, which lags behind real time — they haven't sent their cameramobile down that street since the demolition, so I went in there and nabbed this picture:*



I have checked local directories; the earliest Moehl's Garage appears is 1947, and the latest, 1974. A 1956 directory gives the proprietor's name as Elmer, a 1962 directory has it as Lowell, but I think they might be the same guy.


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*Why didn't I think to do that with the Crisman house right away? It's too late now. The cameramobile has gone down 73rd Avenue again.

The Moehls Get Flats and the Flats Get Tenants

There were two William Moehls in Hobart in 1920, father and son. I'm not sure which one the Gazette was talking about when it announced: "Wm. Moehl is converting his brick house, corner Second and East streets, into a double flat building, with modern improvements." But I'm inclined to think it was the 45-year-old William Sr., since William Jr., only 18 years old, was a bit young to have acquired a two-story brick house.

Since both the 1930 census and the 1930 phone directory shows William living at 200 East Street, I wonder if the house still there now was his? It's still a two-flat, if I'm not mistaken, and I think it's brick under that stucco siding.

What the house had been doing up until its conversion to a two-flat, I don't know. The 1920 census shows William and Bertha Moehl, with their three sons (Ernest, William, and Elmer), farming rented land — somewhere west of Hobart, it appears, since the enumerator recorded them near Eugene and Carrie Chandler, who lived on Liverpool Road north of 61st.

In less than a month, William already had prospective tenants for his two-flat, though the conversion was not yet completed:


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"Miss Nellie" was the daughter of Clinton and Ida Peck, who had formerly been among the numerous Pecks living in Union Township, Porter County. The 1906 plat map shows their farm of about 60 acres in the center of Section 27.* The family's move to Hobart must have been pretty recent — the 1920 census shows them there, but as late as February 1919 Clinton's name cropped up in the "South of Deepriver" social column. Nellie, the youngest of five children, was about 20 years old. Nick Ehrhardt, Jr., was about a year older. His was a farming family in southeastern Hobart Township.

And these were to be William Moehl's tenants for the upper flat.

For the lower flat, a prospective tenant soon turned up. Our old friend Edward Scroggins, with his second wife, Bertha, and their two young children, rented the flat in late December, planning to occupy it in January 1921.

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*My brain is too tired to figure out where the farm would have been in relation to present-day roads.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Ehrhardt-Peck Nuptial." Hobart Gazette 19 Nov. 1920.
♦ "Ehrhardt-Peck." Hobart News 18 Nov. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 24 Dec. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 29 Oct. 1920.
♦ "South of Deepriver." Hobart News 20 Feb. 1919.