Fast Time

Our friend Fred Rossow lost nearly all his cows in April 1923, as the tuberculosis testing of local herds finished up.


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Hobart Gazette, April 20, 1923.

No one else lost as many in this round of testing, and most of the herds tested clean. "John Harnes" is a misprint for "John Harms."

There is so much material on this page! In the far-left column, Bess Hayward is selling off livestock and farming implements from her parents' estate.

In the next column, just below the cow-testing story, confusion arises from the inconsistent adoption of "fast time" — Daylight Saving Time. (And below that, yet another dance at the Niksches' Deep River Hall.)

In the right-hand column, we find an entertainment planned at the W.G. Haan School.


From Plays of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Volume 27 (1884)

And at the bottom of the column, some Severance-Yager socializing. From the 1920 Census, it would appear that George (Sr.) and Agnes Severance, who always rented the farms they operated, had moved from their previous home, a Ross Township farm west of Hobart,[1] to land in southeastern Hobart Township: their neighbors are Malones, Ensigns and Fasels.

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I was able to confirm the Harnes/Harms misprint above through the News version of the cow-testing story. That paper also carried a story about Ruby Fisher's marriage to a Hobart chiropractor named Alfred[2] C. Wickham, whom I never heard of before …


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Hobart News, April 19, 1923


… or after, either — I can't find them in the 1930 Census.

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[1] "Celebrate Silver Wedding," Hobart Gazette, July 20, 1917.
[2] Indiana Marriage Collection.

Elsie and Glen and Their Sons

Thanks to another Chester descendant, we now have a Nelson family photograph.


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Image courtesy of Kelly.

Elsie (Henning) and Glen Nelson are in back. Their sons are, left to right, Melvin, Robert and Delmer. (The owner of this photograph is descended from Delmer.)

We don't have a date or a location for the photo. Robert was born in September 1922 and here I'd say he looks approximately nine years old, so we can estimate its date at roughly 1931. The style of Elsie's dress looks consistent with that estimate.

I can see some resemblance between Glen and his brother Owen.

Bull Calves and an Exploding Radiator

Allow me to get back to my adopted quiet family, the Noltes — two of its surviving members have some pure-bred bull calves to sell in March of 1923:


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Hobart Gazette 9 Mar. 1923.


Above that ad, we find Charles Chester selling oak fence posts, which I expect he made from oak trees felled in his own woods, nowadays the domain of horse-riders, dog-walkers and track-meeters.

Elsewhere, we learn about Christian Heck's arrival in this country in 1860, and James Chester's hard lesson about patching a radiator with cement.

In the last column, the report about Wayne Nelson's appendicitis describes his mother as living "north of Ainsworth," which is news to me. Either that is a mistake, or she moved out of the village when I wasn't looking.

Kenneth Humes Puts a Ring on His Finger

After winning $100 in damages for his lost finger, Kenneth Humes could afford to buy a nice set of wedding rings, I suppose.


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Hobart News 15 Feb. 1923.

I still don't know exactly where the Humes residence was, or is, if it's still standing. Nor do I know where the Bradley garage was — but it might have had something to do with Charles Bradley.

An item in the "Local and Personal" column of the same issue reports that a sister of Kenneth who married a William Hill came to town for the happy occasion. As far as I know, Edwin and Carrie Humes' only daughter was Gladys … but Gladys shows up in the 1930 Census, married, with the surname Stevens (living with her parents; husband not recorded in the household), and with a child old enough to have been very young in 1923, surname also Stevens. Hm!



I hope Grace Nelson got well in time to attend the program at the W.H. Haan School.

Sweethearts Wrecked

The country roads in Winfield Township were dark and icy on the evening of January 13, 1923, when a car full of young people bound for Ainsworth skidded and overturned. Among its occupants were Lynn Peterson and Grace Nelson.


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Hobart News 18 Jan. 1923.

Grace's brother, Wayne, must have been driving his own car (or a borrowed one) if he could take the young ladies home.


And in Hobart, that forward-thinking entrepreneur (and former Ainsworthite), George Sauter, was looking to put the ice-man out of a job.

Visions of Concrete

The new year, 1923, brought dreams of pavement:


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

From the Lincoln Highway to Lincoln and Tenth would be the route of today's State Road 51. From the brickyards and the Chicago road to Miller would be Lake Park Avenue.

Speaking of pavement — the next column we find William Raschka winning a lawsuit against the Federal Paving Co. — the same company that had recently lost a court battle with some Ross Township farmers.

The story in the right-hand column about the lecture course interested me mainly because of who was selling tickets — among Hobart's high society, we find Lovisa Chester Nelson in her little house in the village of Ainsworth.

W.G. Haan Staff

We've seen these people before. Now we get to see them in front of the great emptiness that used to inhabit the west side of State Road 51, opposite the W.G. Haan school.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Notes on the back of the original identify them as "Mr. Garland, Mrs. Zieseniss, Miss Frame, Miss Tabor."

Mr. Garland was, I believe, George Bronson Garland, born in 1904. I can find him locally in the 1930 Census, but not at all after that. If I've found the right person, he married a woman named Esta, and they both rest in Adams County, Indiana.

Ella Zieseniss was born Ella Kretschmar (Indiana Death Certificates) in 1899. She married Wayland Zieseniss, a farmer, about 1929 (1930 Census). She became a schoolteacher after Wayland's untimely death in July 1930 (Indiana Death Certificates). More than half a century later, she joined her husband in Maplewood Cemetery, in Crown Point.

Allene Frame was born in 1915 to James and Rose (Stegmeier) Frame (Indiana Birth Certificates). She is the only one of these four whom I can find in the 1940 Census. At that time she was a teacher, single and living with her parents, but according to information transcribed from her 2010 obituary on Ancestry.com, the following year she married George Chermak, and they had five children.

Bernice Tabor descended from a long line of locals. The 1850 Census shows her great-grandparents, George and Chloe, living in Ross Township near the Guernseys and Strongs (in the neighborhood that would eventually be chronicled in the "South of Deepriver" columns). In their household is a five-year-old Charles — Bernice's grandfather. In 1865 Charles married Margaret Hooseline (Indiana Marriage Collection), and in 1884 they became the parents of Grover Cleveland "Cleve" Tabor. Cleve married Clara Klemm in 1908 (id.), and eight years later Bernice came into the world. According to information on findagrave.com, after some years of teaching, Bernice married Dr. Arthur Nelson (a chiropractor), and operated the Hobart Employment Agency at 449 E. Third Street.

Quietly Married

On September 1, 1922, the 15-year-old Marie Hardesty quietly married a 28-year-old Yugoslavian immigrant, Vaso Stambolija.*


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Hobart Gazette 15 Sept. 1922.

That she is described as the daughter of Mrs. John Hardesty makes me think that her father was the John Hardesty who had been accidentally killed about four months earlier. Out of my puzzlement about his children, I have finally drawn the conclusion that she had been christened Marie Rebecca, and the 1910 Census recorded her under her middle name, either by mistake or because she preferred her middle name at the time — but later she changed her preference. Evidence that Marie and Rebecca were the same person includes the fact that both were born in 1907 (per the 1930 Census in Marie's case and the 1910 Census in Rebecca's); and according to her death certificate, Marie's middle initial was R (Indiana Death Certificates.)

I've already stumbled across the premature end of Vaso's story:


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The Hammond Times 4 May 1939.

To judge by her death certificate, which gives her surname as Coppock, Marie's story included another marriage and another widowhood.

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In other news, farmer-turned-bus-driver Glen Nelson was planning to make a little money with his newly purchased bus.


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Hobart News 14 Sept. 1922.

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*The Gazette spells it Stanbolija, but the vital records spell it Stambolija, so that is how I am going to index it.

Glen Nelson Quits Farming

Though Ross Township would pay him to haul pupils to the W.G. Haan School, Glen Nelson had to buy his own bus. The item doesn't tell us whether the bus was horse-drawn or motorized.


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Hobart News 24 Aug. 1922.

A couple of showers for our friend, Mabel Schavey, soon to be Mabel Breyfogle, one at the home of Uncle Henry and Aunt Christine Springman of Hobart. As you may remember, Mabel's mother, Frances, had been born a Springman.

(And we all know where to go to locate Walter Miscevich's Sunnyside Addition, don't we?)

A week later, Glen Nelson announced the planned sale of all his many accoutrements of the farming life:


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Hobart News 31 Aug. 1922.

To find the "old Wm. Burkely farm," let us look at the 1908 Plat Map:


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That land is still ascribed to William Burkley in the 1926 Plat Book, so Glen apparently was farming a nice parcel of nearly 160 acres. I believe that land would have been on a Crown Point rural delivery route, which may explain the reference in October 1921 to the Nelsons and Crown Point.

On the 1874 Plat Map, we find some land in that area owned by "G. Burkle," which I believe to be Gottlieb Bürkle, William's father. At some point the surname got Americanized.

Hands Off His Apples!

County Line Road, that orphan road, was getting some theoretical attention from both Lake and Porter County road commissions in July 1922. They were even contemplating building a bridge over the Grand Trunk Railroad, which would not be too difficult since even today the railroad sits in a dip between two rises in the road. Think of it! We might have had a nice rickety wooden bridge like the old Sedley Bridge! — but, alas, no bridge was ever built there.

If you went a little further south to the Lincoln Highway, you could make $4.00 a day doing concrete work.


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Hobart Gazette 28 July 1922.

In other news, somebody has been stealing Owen Nelson's apples. He identified his current residence as the "Parks place." Here is the Parks place as it appears on the 1908 Plat Map.


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I believe that corresponds roughly with the open field lying on the south side of 6th Street's eastern dead end:



Last I heard, Owen and Caroline Nelson had moved onto the "Hoffman farm," which I hadn't clearly identified; but if it was the Hoffman land I marked in Section 32 on the excerpt from the 1926 Plat Book in the linked post, then it would have included the old Parks place.

The Mystery of One-Eye Nelson

In the archives of the Hobart Historical Society museum, in a box labeled (among other things) "Shearer and Emery, Coal Dealers," I found an interesting ledger detailing coal purchases in the early part of the 20th century. Whoever kept the ledger* often spelled purchasers' names phonetically, and when he didn't know or couldn't recall the buyer's first name, he sometimes just wrote an identifying characteristic, such as "lady" or "old" or, in this case, "one eye":


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Who was this unfortunate coal buyer? We have checked all the Nelson obituaries we could find — but an obituary would not necessarily mention an old injury. I have looked at all the local Nelson WWI Draft Cards without finding this physical disqualification — but Mr. Nelson may have been over draft age or out of the area, if indeed he lived to see World War I (I'm guessing he was male; a lady with one eye is still a lady). The time period covered by the coal ledger is beyond living memory. So at present I can't restore Mr. Nelson to the dignity of a Christian name.

But I'll keep an … watch for any further information.

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*With no name stamped or written on the ledger to identify the seller, I'm not sure who exactly he was. While the ledger no doubt was donated by a Shearer or an Emery, as far as I know Calvin Shearer and Paul Emery first became business partners in 1917. My guess is that the seller in these 1905-08 transactions was a predecessor of the Shearer & Emery firm, such as Calvin Shearer doing business solo, or the partnership of Shearer & Barnes.

Harriet Towl Ragen

An early resident of Ross Township, Harriet Ragen died in June 1922, just short of her 79th birthday.


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Hobart Gazette 30 June 1922.

Here is the Ragen farm as it appeared on the 1874 Plat Map.



This map suggests a house in the approximate location of 4012 E. 73rd Ave., where there now stands a house and large barn along with other outbuildings, most of which date to 1921 if the county property records are correct.

After moving to Hobart in 1896, the Ragens rented out their farm. Charles and Lovisa (Chester) Nelson rented it in the spring of 1903; by August of that year, the Ragens had rented it to a Wilhelm Neuman (or Newman), reportedly for a five-year term. By December 1908 George Ragen was advertising for a new tenant. In September 1914, the widowed Harriet, now living in Gary, offered it for sale or rent. She sold it in January 1915 to May Blachly (who sold it to S.J. Craig, who sold it to Emil Wojahn … who probably built that house and barn, etc.).

I believe "Mrs. Cora Maybaum of Gary" was married to Louis Maybaum, the streetcar motorman whose photo we've seen.

Harriet Ragen's husband, George, was not only a veteran of the Civil War but also a brother of Amanda Ragen Bullock, as we learn from his obituary:


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Hobart Gazette 1 Mar. 1912.

That would explain why Joseph (aka Josiah) Halladay came down from Chicago in June 1922 to attend Harriet Ragen's funeral — he was the husband of Amanda Ragen Bullock's daughter, Ruth. (I don't know why Ruth did not accompany him.)

From George's obituary, also, we also learn that the "Mrs. Mary Stevens of Gary" who survived Harriet was the wife of Hobart's one-time baker and restaurateur, Willard Stevens (so I suppose she is the Mate Stevens identified in one of the photos in that first link).

In closing, I will add this random item I came across in the 1901 microfilm: "A carload of laborers, men and women of the African type, have pitched camp upon George Ragon's farm near the Grand Trunk railroad and will be engaged in work on the double track grading. They are said to be a jolly crowd."

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The second story marked on the 1922 image above tells us that the elder Severances, George and Anna, had celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. I believe Bunge is a misprint for Burge — the married name of their daughter, Mary.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "For Sale or Rent." Hobart Gazette 25 Sept. 1914.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 19 Apr. 1901; 24 Apr. 1903; 28 Aug. 1903; 11 Mar. 1904; 11 Dec. 1908.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 6 July 1922.

Hobart Class of 1922: Lynn Peterson

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

After the death of his brother, Herbert, in 1916, Lynn was the eldest of Frank and Mabel Peterson's surviving children.

The Peterson farm lay on the west side of Grand Blvd. at its intersection with E. 93rd Ave. — here is how the 1926 Plat Book showed it (taken from an earlier post):


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As we know, Lynn Peterson would marry Grace Nelson in 1929 — but its seems that his classmates had already noticed his liking for her.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Hobart Class of 1922: Wayne Nelson

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Wayne, who lived in the village of Ainsworth, was the youngest of Lovisa Chester Nelson's children. His sister, Grace, had graduated in 1921.

Wayne was, apparently, short.



And if I'm interpreting the "Bughouse Fables" correctly, he was forever writing notes to his classmates.

Ninth and Lincoln, Fifth and Lake

The "Local Drifts" in the Hobart Gazette of April 7, 1922, reported on a child's birthday party in the Briney house, on the northwest corner of Ninth and Lincoln, which is for sale these days.


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Hobart Gazette 7 Apr. 1922

Earl Blachly, who recently sold his farm, is opening an auto repair shop at Fifth and Lake, which sounds like the old German Methodist Church building. The 1922 Sanborn map confirms that the building was being used then for auto repair.


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Image courtesy of the Sanborn Company and Indiana University.

According to Hobart's Historic Buildings by Elin Christianson, the building had ceased to be a church in 1914 and was bought first by the town of Hobart, and then (in 1916) by L.E. Barnes, who leased it out to a laundry business. "The old church was used for commercial purposes for many years" — now we know another of those purposes.

Also, over in the "All kinds of Wants" column, someone is selling Rhode Island Red eggs, and that someone has Lovisa Nelson's phone number.

Eggs, Eggs, Eggs

Among the people selling eggs in March 1922 were our friends Mary McAuliffe and "Mrs. L. Nelson," whom I believe to be Lovisa Chester Nelson.


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Hobart News 23 March 1922.

My print-out cut off the "Births" column, which contained the announcement that on March 17 a daughter had been born to Vernon and Anna Bodamer. No name was given for the baby. After about 45 minutes of research, I have concluded that her name might have been Thelma, or maybe Selma.

The Lye Accident, and an Update

I was nosing around in old issues of the Hobart Gazette, looking for any mention of Daisy Chester's marriage to E.D. Scroggins that I might have missed the first time around, when I came across this item in the January 4, 1907 issue that I definitely missed the first time around:

A week ago last Sunday the 2-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Chester who live on the Dick Sykes farm pulled from a table a can of concentrated lye which flew upon the little fellow's face and severely burnt him. The right eye seemed to be the worst for the accident and for several days it was feared he would lose its sight but it is now thought the eye will be all right in time.

Based on the 1910 Census, I conclude that the unnamed two-year-old was Robert Chester.

I do not know where the Dick Sykes farm was. Per the 1891 Plat Book, there had been farms belonging to Sykeses in Ross, Hobart and Winfield Townships — not to mention any that may have been in Porter County — but which was known as the "Dick Sykes farm," I do not know.

[7/20/2015 update] Suzi Emig has solved the mystery of the Dick Sykes farm! She writes:

Climb into the time machine ... we are going back to April of 1912. I have attached the newspaper account of my dad's parent's wedding. It was extremely yellowed and fragile when I got it years ago from my aunt. Fortunately she laminated it, so it survives. You will see many familiar names in the list of wedding guests. There is one error. The bride's mother, Mrs. Susan Casey, was a sister to Constance Chester, not to Mr. as stated. If you refer to the 1908 plat map (which you so conveniently provide!) the SE corner of 61st and Colorado is owned by a William Sykes ... maybe Dick was a nickname or he was incorrectly named in the lye incident article. William is shown in the 1880 census to be living on this property as a 21 year old with his mother and siblings, 3 brothers and a sister. Their neighbors are the John Schnabels. Their main house was on the SW corner of the intersection. It appears that William and his family were living here per the 1900 census, as the Fred Schnabels are listed as neighbors. Evidently William decided to give up farming and leased his home and land ... he is in Mississippi, working as a public road contractor in 1910, then in 1920 is back up north residing in Gary as a city clerk, and a garage owner there in 1930. He died in 1940 in CA. My dad always referred to that SE property as "the old Sykes farm", so I guess to the old timers that name stuck. The Charles Chesters were living in Stark Co., IN per the 1900 census. In 1910 they were somewhere in Ross Twp., and evidently relocated by 1912 to the Sykes property. By 1920 they were in the old house that Henry built.

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I believe this clipping is from the Hobart Gazette of April 19, 1912.

Here is the William "Dick" Sykes farm on the 1908 Plat Map:


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Here's a clipping from the "General News Items" of the Hobart Gazette of July 5, 1907 (I didn't miss it the first time around; I just didn't post it) in which "Dick" is enclosed in quotes, as if to mark that it is a nickname.



Here ends this update. If I find out how William got his nickname, I will update again.

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Thanks to our identifying-est commenter ever, we now have IDs on the people in the Chester-house-then-and-now pictures. (I have also added Chuck's IDs to each picture's description on Flickr, for ease of reference.)

The Chester Farm, From the South

I may never get a better scan of this photo, so I may as well post what I've got. [Update: I despaired too soon. Here is a nice enlarged scan of the photo.]


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Image courtesy of John Fleck.

[7/7/2015 update — information from a comment to this post] In the one horse carriage are Charles E. Chester & Lovisa Chester Nelson. Standing (L to R) Luella Chester Olson, Carrie Chester Raschka, & John J. Chester. On the milk wagon are James & Jerome Chester. In the wagon on the right are Henry Wm Chester and Daisy Chester Fleck. Picture was taken around 1905.

This undated photo shows the Henry Chester farm as viewed from well south of Ainsworth Road. I would not have recognized it, had not it come from a Chester descendant who identified it as such. But once you know enough to look, you can recognize, in the right-hand background, the Chester house as it looked before Charles Chester someone remodeled it.

They may or may not be the traces of these buildings that you can still find on the south side of Ainsworth Road, across from the house. I don't know what demolitions and rebuildings went on between this photo and the final knock-down.

Nobody in the photo is identified.

The Wheat and the Check

Based on this brief summary, it sounds as if William Raschka did not get a fair shake, if he didn't at least get his $500 back.


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Hobart Gazette 20 Jan. 1922.

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Elsewhere in the same issue of the Gazette, we find a "School Notes" column written by Wayne Nelson, the youngest of Lovisa Chester Nelson's children; and a spirited letter from "Canada":

Merry Christmas from the Ainsworth School!

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

There is no date on this program, but one of the participants estimates that it took place in the very late 1930s, or 1940 at the latest. The Ainsworth school had a Christmas program every year (she tells me), as well as a Halloween masquerade party and some sort of program in the spring. And every month during the school year, a "community meeting."

I wish I could index every surname, but Blogger won't let me. So I will just type them out for the search engine: Baldner, Bergman, Blimel, Bodamer, Bowers, Bryant, Buchfuehrer, Bush, Busselburg, Carden, Collins, Dick, Doepping, Dorman, Engstrom, Ford, Gernenz, Harms, Hartin, Homeier, Johnson, Jones, Kissinger, Klemm, Kuntz, Lines, Madura, Maihofer, Mitchell, Moreland, Nelson, O'Brien, Olson, O'Neil, Peterson, Pike, Piske, Ready, Robb, Robinson, Schmidt, Shaw, Sullivan, Tonagel, Watts, Weiler, Wesley, Willy, Wise, Witham, Wojahn, Yager, Ziemanski.