Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 5)

(continued from Part 4)


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Now I shall deal with the names Glattli and Mankey, because I think they are related. Why do I think that? First, here is Edward Mankey's 1963 death notice:


Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), May 6, 1963.

Who on earth (I asked myself) was this surviving sister, Mrs. Louise Mounts? The only Mankey girl I knew of was Sophie Mankey Triebess. So I went looking for Louise, and eventually found her death certificate.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Louise's mother was Dorothea Mankey.

Dorothea had become a widow in 1889, when her husband, William, died. William was the father of Henry, Eddie, and Willie, as well as Sophie.

William and Dorothea are elusive. I can't find them in the 1880 Census or any earlier one, nor can I find a marriage record for them. They likely were married around 1880, if Sophie, born in 1881, was their first child. Her birthplace was Indiana, while the boys all were born in Illinois (William, 1883; Edward, 1885; Henry, 1888). Dorothea had a local connection here: her sister, Minnie Brockmiller, became Mrs. Christ Passow in 1885 and resided in Hobart. That marriage had taken place in Cook County, Illinois, so perhaps the Brockmillers lived in the Chicago area.

After William's death, apparently Dorothea married Carl aka Charles Glattli — but again, I can't find a record of that marriage. According to a family tree someone compiled on Ancestry.com, Anna Glattli was born in November 1890, so Dorothea may have been her mother. (Anna died in Illinois in 1920; her death certificate is not online.) That would account for the Anna Glattli on our 1897-98 souvenir. Then Louise Antonie Glattli, the future Mrs. Mounts, was born in 1891.

Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli died in 1899 and is buried under the Mankey name. (She died in Chicago, but her residence was Ainsworth, Indiana, per the Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index. I cannot find a death notice in the local newspaper.) Carl/Charles Glattli survived her, and apparently remarried soon and moved to Chicago, if I've found the right people in the 1900 Census (and if the enumerator made a mistake in the "How many years married" column).

The Mankey children did not go to Chicago with their stepfather. The 1900 Census shows them scattered. While I can't find Sophie at all, I suspect she was living with relatives in Chicago, where she married Julius Triebess in 1901. William, age 16, was a hired farmhand living in the household of Michael and Mary Foreman. The 14-year-old Edward was living in the home of a Calumet Township farmer named William Gallagher; Eddie is described as a "servant" but is also "at school." I can't find their younger brother, Henry, in 1900, but in the 1910 Census he turns up in Hobart, in the home of Aunt Minnie and Uncle Christ, employed in a brickyard.

William married Lena Springman in 1906, and they farmed in Ross Township through the 1920 Census, but it looks as if they moved to Chicago by the 1930 Census.

Edward married Alvina Koeppen in 1911. They farmed in Porter County through the 1940 Census, but then moved to Hobart.

Henry got out of the sticks, married and resided in Chicago, but had moved to Calumet City by 1974, when he died.

Anna Glattli married a man named Charles Mosel in 1911 and lived out the rest of her short life in Blue Island, Illinois.

Louise Glattli married a Joseph Jackson in Blackford County, Indiana, in 1916, and after his death in 1937, married the Rev. Claude Mounts in Gary, Indiana, in 1938.

I can't believe how many hours of my life went into figuring this all out.

Finally, here is the death notice of Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli's mother, from the "Mortuary Record" column of the Hobart Gazette of March 31, 1905:

Mrs. Dora Brockmiller, mother of Mrs. Christ Passow, Jr., of this place, died suddenly at 3948 State street, Chicago, on Tuesday, March 28, 1905, aged 71 years. Services were held at the late residence at 12:15 yesterday and the remains were shipped to Hobart on the Milk Train and taken to the German Lutheran Church where services were conducted by Rev. Schuelke. The interment occurred in the Hobart cemetery.

The deceased is mourned by three children, Mrs. Minnie Passow, Henry Brockmiller and Mrs. Ida Quade.

No mention of the daughter who predeceased her, the ever-elusive Dorothea.

[to be continued]

Nuts to You

While indexing the Hobart Historical Society's earliest Union Sunday School record book, which appears to begin in 1868, I came across this page. Some earnest person carefully recorded something (attendance?) about these young* Sunday scholars … and then some irreverent person came and scrawled "nuts to you" and perhaps left those smudges with his or her dirty hands.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The expression, "nuts to you," seems out of place in 1868. We know it was in use in 1930s-40s — I keep running across this example:

"Please eliminate the expression 'nuts to you' from Egbert's speech." [Request from the Hays Office regarding the script of "The Bank Dick," 1940]**

However, my internet research doesn't turn up any information about how far before 1940 it goes back. So I shouldn't jump to conclusions. But I picture a bored 13-year-old circa 1940 nosing around in the attic when the adults were away, finding this ancient record of good little children, and writing something impertinent for the sheer fun of it.

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*Just to look at a few: John Shearer would have been about 12 years old in 1868; George Shearer, 10; John Frank, 11 (he was the son of William and Salinda Frank; and Simeon Brown, 13.
**E.g., http://www.dictionary.com/browse/nuts.

Jawbreaker

This is not the first barn dance I've heard of at the Houck farm, which I believe was in Winfield Township, but it's the first jaw-breaking I've heard of there. The alleged jawbreaker was one of the Hahn boys who had lived on the McAuliffe farm, but by 1922 I expect he was out on his own. Kenneth Humes had long ago left a finger in Ainsworth.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 11 Aug. 1922.

Elsewhere, news of other acquaintances … Mrs. A.G. Ingram had been born Anne Fleck.

If I've got the right Triebesses, these are Julius and Sophia Triebess, who were living in Chicago while renting their Ainsworth-area farm. I leave it to people with more time than I have to figure out exactly how Sophia was Mrs. Christ Passow's niece, if they are interested.

I believe the farm Harve Carey was moving back to consisted of 160 acres in southeast Portage Township, Porter County.

The Epps family was recently bereaved.

And on his small farm in Union Township, Jacob Yager was breaking his back again picking strawberries.

Mrs. O'Boyle's Terra Cotta Barber Shop

This item appeared in the "Local Drifts" of the Hobart Gazette of April 26, 1901:

Mrs. O'Boyle has had constructed a small one-story terra cotta building on her property on Main street opposite the Hobart House, which will be occupied by Mel Ostrander as barber shop. Mr. Ostrander was compelled to leave the Passow building, owing to the firm of Passow & Killigrew needing the basement room in their business.

In the same issue, Mel Ostranger ran this notice: "I desire to notify my customers that I expect to be located in my new quarters, opposite my present barber shop, about next Tuesday."

If we look at the 1902 Sanborn map, we see a "hollow tile" building roughly across from the Hobart House.


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Image courtesy of the Sanborn Company, Indiana University, Historical Information Gatherers, Inc., and the IndianaView consortium.

It would have been nice if the mapmaker had written "barber shop," but unfortunately the building was vacant when the map was drawn up. All the buildings north of it have since been demolished or moved. I wonder if that terra cotta or hollow tile building could still be standing, as the north wing of the Main Street Station? The county property records give a date of 1874 for the Main Street Station building — only the "paving" dates to 1901 …


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… but the north wing wasn't there in 1895.

Charles Popp and a Series of Dances

I believe this is the first I've seen of Charles Popp doing anything in Ainsworth: a series of dances in the Ainsworth hall, which I suppose means Gust Lindborg's dance hall.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 18 Nov. 1921.

The identity of the members of the Bruebach orchestra is a mystery, though I'm assuming it was named for one or more members of the George and Eliza Bruebach family of Hobart, whose mausoleum graces Crown Hill Cemetery. An item in 1912* described the orchestra as having three members, which might mean George Sr. and his sons, George Jr. and Paul; or it might just mean one of the Bruebachs led it.


In other news, Harvey Carey (former Ainsworth-area resident and stepson of Augusta Stolp Rossow Carey) is renting his Wheeler farm to some guy who had somehow got onto the Blachly farm earlier without me hearing about it.

And as for the birthday party for Mary Passow (who had told the 1920 census-taker she was only 89), I suppose it would be Bertha Ols, aka Mrs. Henry Ols, who baked the cake.

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*"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 25 Oct. 1912.

The Miller Land

Earlier I blithely referred to "the Miller land"; now I find that they didn't own it at the time I was speaking of. They may have rented it; if they lived elsewhere, I have yet to discover where that elsewhere might have been.

But in February 1918 the Millers bought "the Miller land" from the heirs of the late Mrs. Louis Frank.


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In connection with that purchase, I suppose, they found it necessary to file an action to quiet title.



I like these notices — they help to fill in the gaps left by the plat books, although they don't give you a clue as to when these various people owned the land. From the plat books, we know that the Passows owned the land circa 1891; the Scholls circa 1874; I suppose the Leonards owned it before them. And before the Leonards — the Potawotami?

I've heard 73rd Avenue/Lincoln Highway called the Joliet Road, but never before the Joliet Wagon Road. Interesting. To me, anyway.

If you're ever wandering around in Woodvale Cemetery and come across the grave marker of Franz Miller, that's John Miller's father.






Sources:
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "General News." Hobart Gazette 22 Feb. 1918.
♦ "Notice to Non-Resident." Hobart News 21 Feb. 1918.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 8 Mar. 1912.

Hobart Hotness circa 1905

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

This is Alma Esther (Baum) Passow, wife of Edward M. Passow of Hobart.

I'm betting that Edward M. Passow of Hobart considered himself a very lucky man.

There is no date on the photo, but Alma looks to be in her early 20s and she was born in 1882, hence the rough guess at 1905. According to notes written on the back of the original, Ed operated a store at Third and Main "where Main Drugs is now" (old notes, apparently) — i.e., the northwest corner. By World War I, they had moved to Valparaiso and he worked as a manager at Lowenstine's (WWI Draft Cards); by the 1930 Census, they were still living in Valpo, but he now described himself as a "commercial traveler" dealing in "general merchandise." After that I don't know what became of them.

I know none of this has anything to do with Ainsworth, but I just had to post that marvelous photo.


[4/7/10 — I just came across this item in the "Local Drifts" column of the March 19, 1909 Hobart Gazette: "Edward M. Passow, of Chicago, formerly of Hobart, has accepted a position at the Lowenstine department store at Valpo, having the management of the second floor. He assumed his new position last Monday and expects shortly to move his family to Valpo."]