The Scharbach-Kramer Wedding Party

Long ago, I posted a photo of Louis Kramer on the morning of his wedding to Myrtle Scharbach, getting a haircut from Hazard Halsted. Later I posted a newspaper account of the wedding.

Now, thanks to a modern-day Scharbach, the Hobart Historical Society has a photo of the whole wedding party.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Mr. Scharbach knew only the identities of the bride and groom. To identify the rest of the wedding party, who were all named in the newspaper story, we have to use other means. So, I believe we have, standing, from left to right: Florence Ewigleben (by process of elimination), Elmer Scharbach (cousin of the bride and looks a bit like her), George Kramer (brother and spitting image of the groom), Erna Piornack (confirmed by living relatives), and Mary Grace Barnard.

Florence Ewigleben was related to the bride: Myrtle Scharbach's mother, Caroline, had been an Ewigleben. Florence was born in 1906 to Fred and Tillie (Blanchard) Ewigleben. In 1927 she would marry Erna Piornack's brother, George (Indiana Marriage Collection).

Elmer Scharbach, born 1906, was the son of Emil and Emma (Busse) Scharbach.

George and Louis Kramer were sons of Conrad and Louise (née Wischman).

I do not know if Erna Piornack was actually related to the bride or anyone else in the party, or just a good friend. As I mentioned above, she was Florence Ewigleben's future sister-in-law.

As for little Mary Grace Barnard of Mishawaka, her mother was born Gertrude Scharbach. Gertrude's father was Frank — the bride's uncle — and her grandfather William Sr. of the lumber yard.

Granny Ensign's House

One day several years ago, I was driving with Eldon Harms along South Hobart Road when he pointed to a house on the east side of the road (number 1395) and said, "That was Granny Ensign's house."

"Who was Granny Ensign?" I asked him.

"I don't know," he said. "I just knew that as Granny Ensign's house." He went on to tell me that the house originally consisted of only the front part, and the larger back part was a later addition.

The house in question was built in 1925 according to the county records. If it started as only the "front part," it would have been very small — about 400 square feet, according to the sketch on the Assessor's website.

I bring this up now because the September 13, 1923 issue of the Hobart News, in an article entitled "Building of Residences Here Not Active This Year," mentions an exception in "Mrs. Elizabeth Ensign" who was building a house described as being southeast of Hobart, across the road from her present home. Well, we know who Elizabeth aka Nora Ensign was, and we know her "present home" was on the west side of South Hobart Road, so maybe I've finally found the Granny Ensign of Granny Ensign's house.

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Elsewhere in the same issue, a story about our old friend, Calvin C. Shearer:


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Hobart News, Sept. 13, 1923.

Two columns to the left of that story, we find an article about the wedding of Erna Piornack. I have been following her outside the blog because her mother, née Emma Zobjeck, was the sister of Hobart's own Hugo Zobjeck. Emma had married Charles Piornack in Chicago in 1896.[1]. According to the 1920 Census, they had only two children: Erna and George.


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[1] Ancestry.com. Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index, 1871-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data: "Illinois, Cook County Marriages, 1871–1920." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2010. Illinois Department of Public Health records. "Marriage Records, 1871–present." Division of Vital Records, Springfield, Illinois.