"A Very Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year"

A greeting card from one friend to another in Hobart, sometime around (I'm guessing) 1944.


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If we unfold the card, we find that Margaret wrote her friend a longer message:



The recipient was Lowell Eugene Enslen.



No stamp, no helpful postmark (it may have been hand-delivered or sent inside a package). It appears that Lowell and his family lived in Gary through the 1940 Census, and I haven't been able to place him in Hobart except from 1943 (when he appears in the Hobart High School Aurora yearbook), through 1947 (per his draft registration card dated February 3, 1947; also the Enslens are listed in Hobart in my 1947 directory). He graduated from Hobart High School in 1945, where he was voted the most humorous boy:



By 1950 he was living in Valparaiso, attending the university there.

Who was Margaret? She never included her last name, and the envelope had no return address. My best guess is Margaret "Maggie" Pearson, who signed Lowell's 1945 Aurora yearbook:



I think the handwriting looks similar.

Concerning Lowell Enslen's life and careers, you can find information and photos at his entry on findagrave.com.

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I don't know much about greeting card styles. From the looks of this one, I would have guessed anywhere from the 1930s through the 1950s. I'm posting this scan of the back of the card in case anyone can find out anything from the little characters in the lower right-hand corner. I already tried and failed.

Mahala Burge Frame

Since this blog is full of Burges and Frames, I thought I should go back to 1912 and post this obituary, skipped over the first time …


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Hobart Gazette 1 Mar. 1912.

… not that it's particularly helpful, since it fails to name her parents or her children. But with a little research, we can try to remedy that.

Looking at the 1850 Census, we find J. and Julia Burge farming in Chautauqua County, New York. While the census does not include what relationship each member of the household has to its head, this household includes a 17-year-old Mahala Weaver, a 13-year-old Byron, and a nine-year-old Henry. This suggests that the obituary gave the date of Mahala's first marriage incorrectly. In the 1860 Census, still in Chautauqua County, we find a 27-year-old Mahala Weaver living with a 31-year-old carpenter, Oren Weaver, and a three-year-old Ida.

Sometime after 1860, the family came west. Orrin died in Porter County on June 9, 1866.** In 1867 Mahala married Levi Frame in Porter County (Indiana Marriage Collection). While I can't find them in the 1870 Census, another source* seems to place Levi Frame in Christian County, Illinois, by 1870; and that is where we find Mahala in the 1880 Census, by which time she was widowed. A child of her first marriage, the 17-year-old Arthur Weaver, was living with her, as well as a 10-year-old girl named Effie Brown, who was described as an adopted daughter. The children of the second marriage were: John (11 years old), Burton (10), Frank*** (6), and Jesse (4).

So that gives us the five sons mentioned in the obituary. I suppose the one surviving daughter was from the first marriage.****

Sometime during the next 20 years, Mahala left Illinois for Indiana. In the 1900 Census, she was living in Hobart with her youngest son, Jesse.

Well. That was a lot of research for a little bit of information.

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Elsewhere on that page from the Gazette, we find obituaries of people we've mentioned before — Patrick Sullivan and Ericka Pearson.

Marion Wilson was a member of the Wilson family of Union Township, which I've only recently noticed. The obituary says he was buried in the Boiling Springs cemetery, which may be the Leonard Family cemetery on Boiling Springs Road listed on the NWIGS site. If the obituary is correct, it seems he was later moved, as today he rests in Blachly Cemetery. His wife was a daughter of Harriet Towl Ragen.


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*Ancestry.com. Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
**According to his grave marker in Mosier Cemetery; the obituary states 1865.
***I swear the enumerator wrote "Freak," but that can't be right.
****Based on information at findagrave.com, I believe her name was Blanch.

Emil Pearson, Take 1 (Glass-Plate Image)

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Another small negative from the cigar box. The notes on the envelope read: "Person Emil/No. 85." So apparently the previous photo was Take 2, and by then Emil had lost his cap as well as his patience with the tiresome process of having his picture taken.

This time the photographer managed to get something in focus, if only Emil's shoes. Note how heavily frayed his pants cuffs are — that suit has seen a lot of wear, although it still looks quite respectable.

Emil Pearson (Glass-Plate Image)

All the glass-plate images I have posted thus far came from one box of approximately 5" x 7" plates, all taken by the same photographer, judging by the similarity of the plates themselves (and their subject matter), the envelopes they were stored in and the handwriting on those envelopes. Recently while poking around in the manila folders in the picture files at the museum, I came across a few more plates that (for the same reasons) I believe were taken by the same unknown photographer. Here is one of them.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The handwritten notes on the envelope it is stored in read as follows:

No. 86
Name: Person, Emil
Remarks: Emil Eric Pearson — born in Hobart, on Lake Park Ave first north of Amtrack R.R. tracks on 27th July 1892. The youngest brother of Cecelia (Frank) Helin & Selma (Ernest) Strom, both residents of Hobart. Emil died in Algoma, Wisc. 25th of Nov. 1973.

So this is one of the children of Erica Pearson.

We've seen that fence before, haven't we? — that peculiar combination of picket and plank, with the evergreen trees beside it — here and here.

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[1/10/2012 update] Same photographer, same subject, almost the same pose.

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[3/27/2014 update] Thanks to Emil's grandnephew-by-marriage, Don Miller, we now catch a glimpse of the grown-up Emil, and of his wife, née Stella Mae Miller. (I do not know where or when they were married; it was sometime between the 1910 and 1920 censuses.)

These two photos were cropped from a group photo taken at a family gathering circa 1934, at which time Emil was about 43, Stella about 38:


Images courtesy of Don Miller.



Moving forward to about 1961, here we have Emil and Stella in their home on Pewaukee Lake in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.


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And here they are on a picnic in Pewaukee Park, Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in the early 1960s.


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Flowers for Erica

Speaking of funeral flowers, the Hobart museum has one such photo (not a glass-plate negative) where we know for whom the bell tolled, as it were.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The typewritten caption reads:

In the late 1800s & early 1900s, the vogue was to take photographs of the casket of the deceased. This photo is of the casket of Erica (Alfred Eric) Pearson, 253 Michigan Av., who died Feb. 27, 1912 at age fifty. She was the mother of Cecilia (Frank A.) Helin; Selma (Ernest V.) Strom; Victor Eric & Emil Eric Pearson. Cecelia and Selma: Hobart residents. Victor of Chicago and Emil of Exeland and Milwaukee, Wisc.

In this case I think the photograph was taken inside the family's home, just based on my impression of the décor.

As luck would have it, the museum also has a photograph of the Pearson home.



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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

A handwritten caption reads: "Alfred Melin Pearson/Michigan Av. Home." The individuals are not identified, so we can't know if one of those ladies was Erica.