Not Tillie, SUSIE!

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Image courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.

This is Mathilda "Tillie" Prochno with two horses, Daisy and Beauty. Judging by her apparent age (and she was born in 1911), I would date the photo to around 1920. The location may be the Prochno farm, but it is not identified.

As we know, at some point Tillie stopped being Tillie and became Susie or Sue, and it seems that someone felt pretty strongly about the name change — strongly enough to obliterate "Tillie" and write in "Susie" on this old photograph.

A Kid in the Kitchen

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Images courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.

Handwritten notes on the back of the original identify this kid only as: "The little Goat. 1930."

Whose little goat? and why was it so special that it was allowed in the kitchen? — We don't know.

The photo comes from a group dominated by Lester Harms, his wife Sue Prochno White Harms, his parents and extended family. This leads me to think that the scene is on either the Harms farm on Cleveland Avenue, or the Prochno farm on Colorado Street.

I like the homey details you can see in the background if you enlarge the image: the plain spindle-back chair, the plastic- or oilcloth-covered table, and the lidded bucket or cast-iron pot atop it. But I am mystified by the appliance at the far left. Here I have fiddled with the light values to try to bring it out more:



In a farm kitchen in 1930, you'd expect to see a stove, cupboards, a sink, and maybe an icebox. I'm trying to see one of those things in this image. Is that bright vertical line caused by a convex central panel reflecting light from the back window? Or is it a shiny metal handle down the side? I suppose we could be looking at an oven door, but I've never seen one with those rivet-like dots around the central panel.

William Prochno's Death Notice

One thing I know about this blog is that it's never going to reach 1958 by its usual agonizingly slow weekly progression. So I'll just post this now — from the Gary Post-Tribune of June 2, 1958:


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I do not know if "his home" at the time was still the farm. Perhaps someday I will try to find a 1957-58 Crown Point directory at the library.

Windmill Daredevil

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

It's a poor photo, but you wouldn't want to ask him to do that stunt twice so you could be sure to get a good shot.

The notes at the bottom tell us that this was Roney Sauter in 1926. I have no idea who Roney Sauter was. Notes on the back tell us that the location is the Prochno farm.

At the base of the windmill, you can see a neat and substantial-looking structure (pump house?). In the photo of the Prochno farm posted earlier, the only pump-house-like structure near the base of the windmill is a ragged wooden shack with a hole in its roof.

That may indicate that the earlier photo dates to before 1926. Or not.

The Prochno Farm

This is the Prochno farm — probably the one on Colorado Street, near the Lester Harms farm.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

You can see the mailbox in front, which would be used by the mail carrier working a Crown Point rural delivery route.

The back of the photo was stamped with blanks to be filled in by hand:



I'm not sure what the purpose of all this was — documentation for insurance purposes? Or perhaps the proud homeowners were ordering a tinted enlargement of this photo to hang on their wall? Anyway, I like the little color details: house white, with green trim and shutters; barn red, with white trim.

There is no date on this.

William Prochno was born in 1880 to Ferdinand and Bertha Prochno, German immigrants. The earliest I can find the family is in 1900, when they farmed rented land in southeast Ross Township. In 1902 William married Louisa Saager. Now, in 1908 the farm that would eventually be the Prochno farm was owned by August Saager, but I don't know what relationship he might have had to Louisa.

The young Prochnos were farming rented land in Eagle Creek Township in 1910. In 1920 they were back in Ross Township, farming what may have been the Saager/Prochno farm (to judge by their neighbors), but the enumerator did not know whether they owned it. They did own it by 1926.

William and Louisa had lost one child in the early years of their marriage. Only their daughter, Mathilda, born circa 1911, survived to maturity. As we know, she married Noland White and then Lester Harms, but neither marriage produced children.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.

Students at the Vincent School

I have mentioned that in the spring of 1918 Evie Thompson's family moved to the vicinity of the Vincent school, and Evie became a student there. We have a photo of her with her classmates.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

On the back, someone has hinted at the identities of the children …



… failing to include a full surname, or to indicate which name belongs with which child. The only one we can recognize is Eva Thompson herself, the tall girl with glasses, second from the left in the back row.

Looking through the 1920 Census, I have come up with possible surnames for these children, based on the matching first letter and the apparent proximity of their families to the Vincent school:

Elmer Reithel, Harry Sullivan, Clarence Reithel, Theodore Henning, Delmer Henning, Donald Weiler, Eva Thompson, Mathilde Prochno, and Mabel Burkley

These are only guesses on my part, and I still don't know which name goes with which child.

The former Vincent schoolhouse still stands on the southwest corner of the intersection of Clay St. and 83rd Ave., and you can still see that pattern in the brick on its side wall.

Incidentally, I suspect that when the Gazette, in June 1912, mentioned that Gust Lindborg had "bought the old Sullivan schoolhouse" and moved it to Ainsworth to serve as his residence, the building referred to was the old frame Vincent schoolhouse. At that writing, per the 1891 Plat Book, the Sullivans had owned for some twenty years what was originally the Vincent land (per the 1874 Plat Map), and the schoolhouse had always been catercorner to that land, so I can understand why either name might be applied to the schoolhouse.

Also, this obituary of Mercy Vincent suggests that the Vincents had owned the land from circa 1844 until circa 1890, which really has nothing to do with anything, but I didn't post this before so I might as well do it now.


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Hobart Gazette 12 Jan. 1906.

What the Wheat Beard Did

I mentioned that I had a few photos of Noland White; here is one of them, and you can judge for yourself whether he looks like any of the Nickel Plate section workers.


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Images courtesy of E. Harms.

Notes on the back:



No date on the photo, but as we know, Noland died in 1945.

Poor horse! I had no idea that a wheat beard (aka brush, or awn) could be so dangerous.

Bill Prochno, who owned the horses, was Noland's father-in-law.

How the heck some photographer in Iowa got involved with this, I have no idea. I can find very little information on Geppert Studios.

Nickel Plate Section Crew

Here we have two photos of a Nickel Plate section crew from Hobart.


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Images courtesy of E.H.



The reason we have these two photos is because, as I mentioned earlier, Lester Harms married the widow of Noland White. She retained these photos from her first husband's days as a railroad section worker.

Noland's older brother, John, was the section foreman.

The Whites came from a farming family in Pulaski County, Indiana. John was born in 1884 and Noland circa 1902. The earliest I can place them in Hobart is 1930. By then John (already a section foreman) was living with his wife, Bessie, and their 20-year-old daughter on Lake Street in Hobart. His household included his brother William and his wife (her name was Bessie, too — confusing!). William worked as a section hand, probably in John's crew. Noland, also a section hand, rented a separate residence; in 1930 he was still single, but the following year he would marry Mathilda Prochno.

The two photos above have no identifying notes — their present owner recognized them as section crews and knew about the Whites' connection with the Nickel Plate. Since I have no photos of John or William, I have no hope of recognizing them, if they are pictured here. I have three not-very-good photos of Noland (which I will get around to posting eventually), and on the basis of those, I would say that if Noland is in those photos at all — in the first one, he may be the guy second from the left, or second from the right; in the second photo, he might be the guy standing on the car with his hands on his hips. In both cases, though, I'm really not sure.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ "Noland White To Be Buried Saturday." Hobart Gazette 5 Apr. 1945.
♦ WWII Army Enlistment Records.

Harms Road

From the Lester Harms collection.

Harms Road is an odd little stretch of two-lane blacktop just south of Route 30. It cuts diagonally across the countryside to connect two regular east-west section roads, E. 83rd and E. 89th. Back in the old days (circa 1930s, perhaps later) it was known as the Sitzenstock Road in honor, I believe, of the family of Ernest and Emma Sitzenstock, whom we find on the 1908 Plat Map owning a farm that straddled the road just as it dove southwest from present-day E. 83rd Ave. Its name was changed in honor of Lester and Mathilda "Sue" Harms, who owned 80 acres at the junction of Colorado St. and the Sitzenstock road at the time the road names were being formalized and set — well, not in stone, but on street signs and maps, I suppose. Why them, instead of any of the other landowners along that road? Perhaps they had been there longer than anyone else, but if that's the case then the street name must have been assigned sometime after 1950, when the Sitzenstocks still owned their old farm.


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From the 1950 Plat Book.

Or maybe "Sitzenstock" wouldn't fit onto a street sign.

Anyway, today our selection from the Lester Harms collection is an undated aerial view of the farm that gave Harms Road its name.


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Image courtesy of E.H.

We are looking northwest. Lester's farm is in the foreground, with Harms Road running in front of it, horizontally across the picture. Beyond it you can see Colorado Street. The little collection of buildings and trees on the west side of Colorado is the farm of William and Louise Prochno. Their daughter, Mathilda, after losing her first husband (Noland White), would become Lester's second or third wife — I am really confused at this point over how many times Lester was married and to whom.

Today, Lester's former house and the big barn are still standing. Maybe some of the other outbuildings are, too, but I'm not sure. Nothing is left of the Prochno buildings.