The Dunes Highway Opens

Construction on the Dunes Highway had started in 1922. By mid-November 1923, the Highway was ready to be opened to public use. The dedication ceremony would be attended by some prominent Hobart citizens.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

The following week's Gazette reported that the ceremony included an odd incident that was resolved with "a bottle" …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 16, 1923.

… which I'm inclined to interpret as a flouting of Prohibition, which (as we know) was not uncommon — but this case would be uncommonly open and public.

The "Local Drifts" of the same issue mentioned that "Paul Bruebach of this city was a member of Perry's Municipal Band that furnished music last Friday afternoon at the dedication of the Dunes Highway."

Incidentally, in spite of the November 9 issue's giving November 14 as the planned date of the ceremony, and the inclusion in the Route 12 Wikipedia entry of a picture of a historic marker also giving November 14 as the date of the highway's opening, the two November 16 items name "Friday," that is, November 16, as the date of the ceremony. So does this article from the Hobart News of November 22, 1923:


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Hobart News, Nov. 22, 1923.

The "Local and Personal" column of the same issue mentioned a few more locals who attended the ceremony: "Paul Emery, W.J. Killigrew, Evan Roper, Leslie Walters, A.J. Smith, O.L. Pattee; and John Dorman and Alex Boyd of Ross Township."

In the November 22 issue above, an article in the second column to the right mentions a "Bootjack extension" that was planned to connect the Dunes Highway and the Lincoln Highway. An online article about the Lincoln Highway in Indiana includes a map from 1924 showing the "Boot Jack Corner" near Rolling Prairie, and even today in that vicinity there is an "East Bootjack Road." Add this to the collection of random facts I have learned accidentally since I started the blog.

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Also in the November 22 issue, we see an announcement of a law-and-real-estate partnership between F.E. Demmon and C.L. Fleming. We've already met Calvin L. Fleming, former cigar-maker and billiard-room operator, now concentrating on real estate. The lawyer would be, I suppose, Floyd E. Demmon, whom the 1920 Census records as a 28-year-old lawyer for an unnamed railroad, living on Cleveland Avenue with his mother-in-law, Harriett Mundell. Floyd had married Alice Mundell in 1918 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

Bee Movie

In this story in the Hobart Gazette of September 14, 1923 (reprinted from the Chicago Tribune, I gather), Joseph Mundell talks about his honey farm on Old Ridge Road, his family history, his advertising methods, and the usefulness of his free campground in bringing in honey customers.


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Hobart Gazette, Sept. 14, 1923.

In the October 12 Gazette, we learn that a one-minute movie of the bee farm existed, and may still exist somewhere.


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Hobart Gazette, Oct. 12, 1923.

Further down in the same column, we learn that Nicholas (Jr.) and Anna (Halfman) Fleck lost a baby daughter who lived and died between censuses. Zeta (or Zita) had been born August 14, 1922 (Indiana Death Certificates).

A Tragedy in Two Purchases

Here is a page from a daybook I have been indexing, which shows transactions in 1839. Among some familiar old-settler names — Sigler, Mundell, Pierce — we find a Charles Walton who, in early September 1939, made two purchases telling a grim story:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


You can fill in the blanks.

I do not know the full name of the deceased brother. Charles Walton does show up among the locals in the 1840 Census, but that census gives so little information that I cannot trace him any further.

Honey

Here we have a young Minnie Rossow Harms, wearing an apron with a "HONEY" label pinned to it.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

As I've mentioned, the Rossows and Mundells were neighbors, and the most likely explanation I can think of for the "HONEY" apron is that Minnie was working at Joe Mundell's honey-producing operation. However, if she did so, her son Eldon Harms could not recall her ever mentioning it, nor have I heard of it from any other source.

The photo is printed on a postcard with a stamp box style dating between 1904 and 1918.



Though I can't see much of her dress, her skirt nearly touches the ground, which moves the photo back from 1918;* but I don't think Minnie (born 1897) could be less than fourteen here … so I would guess at 1911-15 for the date of this photo.

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*That's assuming she hasn't got herself up in some sort of fancy-dress costume, to which current fashion would be less important.

Gary & Southern Fatalities

The Gary & Southern streetcar line, running to Crown Point, crossed the old Lincoln Highway at what is now Taft Street, so that intersection is probably the location "west of Merrillville" where a fatal accident occurred on September 2, 1922:


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Hobart Gazette 8 Sept. 1922.

Below that article, we find Floyd Demmon setting up his law office in Hobart. He had married Alice Mundell (the Honey Man's sister) in 1918 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

Joe and His Bees

We've seen Joseph Mundell's bees; now here's Joe with his bees.


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This photograph was taken to illustrate a little newspaper item — so I gather from the ragged piece of paper pasted to it:



Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out where and when the story and photo were printed, if they ever were. But a little investigation into Alva Turner of Ina, Illinois, turns up this tidbit, printed in the Mt. Vernon Register (Illinois) of May 16, 1949, under the title, "As You Were: Glances Through the Files of the Register and the News," and the subtitle, "25 Years Ago Today": "Bee stings are declared to be a beneficial treatment for nervousness by Alva N. Turner of Ina, who has himself tried the treatment."

So Joe's photo and story must date to after May 16, 1924, but not so long after that everyone would have forgotten Alva N. Turner's opinion of bee stings. A few barely visible fashions in the newspaper Joe is holding suggest mid- to late 1920s.


I turned up that 1924 story while researching Alva Turner, who was born in 1878 and died in 1963. He had a varied career: he was an insurance agent (1900 Census), a "gospel minister" (1910 Census, by which time he was married), a "common laborer" (WWI Draft Cards), again a minister (1920 Census, by which time he was divorced), and a house painter (1930 Census, 1940 Census).

And still he found time to write poetry — surprisingly modern poetry — and to correspond with William Carlos Williams.

His poetry and his connection to small-town Illinois remind me of his contemporary, Edgar Lee Masters — except, of course, that Masters moved to the big city, while Turner lived and died in southern Illinois. And everybody's heard of Masters; who (outside of academia) has heard of Turner? — I certainly hadn't. So I'm glad I bought that silly bee picture. It taught me something.

Also, that 1924 murder involving a minister and his married girlfriend sounds very juicy.

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.

Joe's Bees

From the steamer trunk.

Does this picture make you feel bugs crawling on you?


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Postcard images courtesy of E.H.

These critters are identified by a note on the back of the postcard:



"Joe" would be Joseph Mundell. His land lay just south of the Rossow farm; the two families were neighbors and friends.


From the 1908 Plat Map. The "J. Mundell" at this time would have been James, Joe's father.

No date on the postcard. Joseph described himself as a beekeeper from his WWI Draft Card through the 1930 Census. The style of stamp box on the postcard dates it between 1904 and 1918. So I'd guess that the picture dates to between 1910 and 1918.





The two pictures above appeared in a photo collage titled "Industries," in the Hobart High School Aurora yearbook of 1923. Joseph Mundell was then secretary of the Board of Education. He was board president when he place the advertisement below in the 1926 Aurora.

Merrillville Then and Now: Stoltz's Store

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Top image courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

No date on the earlier photo, but by the looks of that truck, maybe 1940s?

The original building still stands at 40 W. 73rd Ave. It went up in 1905, according to Jan Clemens' A Pictorial History of Merrillville, as a combined store and home when John and Margaret (Gerlach) Stoltz went into the grocery business in partnership with her brother, Carl Gerlach. The Stoltzes later bought out Carl's interest and operated the business on their own. After John Stoltz died in 1945, Margaret continued the business, with the help of her daughter and son-in-law, Mabel and Joe Derrenbacker, for another five years.

Per Jan Clemens:

The Stoltz store advertised fresh meat — a claim that was a bit of an understatement, for upon request for chicken, Margaret would go out back, kill a bird, come in carrying it with the blood still flowing from the headless fowl. On one occasion a customer good-naturedly inquired, "Are you sure it's fresh?" The fresh meat advertisement also included beef which Margaret butchered by herself in the rear of the shop.

In 1950 Margaret's family sold their building and business to Ray Bohne of Gary.

The Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society has a couple nice photos of the interior of the Stoltz store. According to handwritten notes on the back, these photos date to circa 1917; in the first one, you will notice a calendar showing the month of January that is consistent with 1920 (or 1913).


Left to right: Margaret Stoltz, unknown, Alice Mundell, unknown, and John Stoltz.


Left to right: Mabel Derrenbacker, Margaret Stoltz, and Anna Schmitz.

A Twist in the Mausoleum Story

After I had waxed rhapsodical about the Gruel mausoleum and its mysterious absence from Crown Hill Cemetery, and then Suzi pointed me to an explanation on findagrave.com, I thought the matter had been pretty much laid to rest, as it were. Now I come across an unexpected twist:


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From the "Local and Personal" column of the Hobart News, 31 July 1919.

The Gruel mausoleum I was rhapsodizing about was indeed described as having six cribs. So it may have been there all the time, right under my nose. (I can't say for sure, because goodness only knows what happened in later years.) The Mundell mausoleum is every bit as impressive as the Gruel mausoleum's description.


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But now we have a 12-crib mausoleum to build, and eventually demolish.

Hobart Then and Now: Mundell Homestead/Wise Way Grocery Store

Circa 1888, and 2011:



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Top image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

I will just quote from the text that accompanied the top image in a file at the Hobart Historical Society Museum — perhaps intended for a newspaper article, but if so I don't know the date it was published.

The Mundell homestead on Old Ridge Rd., c. 1888. The original log cabin, built about 1837, is on the left.

Seated at left is Joseph Mundell, b. Oct. 13, 1800, in Green Co., Pa.; d. Aug. 20, 1888, Hobart, Ind. Standing next to Joseph is his youngest son, James, b. Feb. 28, 1844, in Hobart; d. Dec. 12, 1918, in Hobart. Seated to James' right is his mother and Joseph's wife, Amanda Malvina Sigler Mundell, b. Aug. 13, 1813, in Hampshire Co., (W.) Virginia, d. April 28, 1890, in Hobart. Next to her is James' wife, Mary Knothe Mundell, b. Jan. 20, 1853, probably in Chicago; d. Sept. 21, 1831, in Hobart. Amanda is holding James and Mary's daughter, Edna, b. Oct. 16, 1886, in Hobart, d. Aug. 22, 1937, in Hobart. The small boy is the son of James and Mary, Joseph M. Mundell, b. April 17, 1883, in Hobart, d. Dec. 3, 1965, also in Hobart.

Not long after this picture was taken, an addition was built, completely enclosing the log cabin in its walls. Mary lived in the house until the 1920's, when she built a new Sears house next door. (The Sears house is still standing, at the corner of Delaware St. and Old Ridge Rd.) The homestead was sold to the Parks family. After Mrs. Parks died in the late 1970's, it was purchased by a local businessman, who razed the house, hoping that he could get the property rezoned for commercial use. That failed, but several years later, Wiseway bought both the vacant property and the brick house east of it, tore down the brick house and the two lots became the west end of the Wiseway parking lot.

I don't know the exact location shown in the 1888 photo, just took a shot of the general area.