South of Deepriver

Random bits from the countryside south of Deepriver, late July-early August 1922.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Hobart News 3 Aug. 1922

I don't know exactly what a separator canvas is, but the wording of that item suggests that the farmers of southeastern Ross Township had chipped in to buy themselves a communal farm machine — a sensible thing to do — and it was getting a workout in that summer's wheat threshing.

… Here's a little article about a threshing machine that has a separator and a canvas, somehow or another.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the Chilton Tractor Journal, Vol VIII, No. 4 (April 1, 1922). Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=xsZMAQAAMAAJ&lpg=RA3-PA14&ots=pSADxxAJwL&pg=RA3-PA14&ci=80%2C816%2C899%2C500&source=bookclip#v=onepage&q&f=false.

♦    ♦    ♦
Elsewhere in the August 3, 1922 issue of the News, we find out that the strikebreaker has still not recovered …



… and among the familiar names in the second column, we also find Miss Jeanette Peterson, daughter of Lena and George. The Hugo Zobjeck at Camp Knox in Kentucky was Hugo Jr., now about 17 years old.

In the third column are a couple of obituaries. The first concerns the untimely death of Ida (Heck) Carlson, who probably grew up on the old Heck place. The second brings me to consider the Wilson family of Union Township, Porter County, whom I have considered very little up to now. Mrs. Jane Harwood would have been Aunt Jane to "Miss Leola Wilson of Blachly's corners," and also, I believe, to Ralph Wilson, who in his youth took music lessons from Ainsworth's own Hugh Dotzer ("Ainsworth Pick-Ups," Hobart Gazette 6 Jan. 1905). In my notes and in the blog, I find several references to Wilsons, and some day when I retire and have time on my hands, perhaps I shall investigate which of them belonged to the Wilson family of Union Township.

Here is the farm of Jane's parents, Amos and Hannah Wilson, as it appeared on the 1876 plat map:


From http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1876Plats/Union-1876.jpg, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

Hobart Class of 1922: Lester Quinlan

Lester Quinlan wasn't from Ainsworth, but as a Bullock descendant he had enough connection for us to take note of his graduation — as we did for his sister, Vera, in 1920.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

He was also a basketball player.

Mary Funk Yager

We last heard of Mary Yager when she hosted a dinner for her former pastor in the spring of 1921.

The next spring, she died.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 4 May 1922.

The earliest I can find Jacob and Mary in Ross Township is 1880, where (to judge by their neighbors) they seemed to be southeast of Ainsworth, perhaps along present-day 73rd Ave. Their daughter Clara was 5, and they had a one-year-old son, Theodore, who never appears again. Presumably he died, but I cannot find his grave in the NWIGS listings for Ross, Union or Hobart Townships.

By 1900 the Yagers had bought their own farm in Union Township, Porter County. Again, to judge by their neighbors, it was this small farm just north of Huffman's mill shown on a 1921 plat map:


Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1921Plats/Union-1921.jpg, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

That parcel looks like about 10 acres. I believe the Yagers concentrated on strawberries.

The "Mrs. Robert Anders" mentioned in the obituary was probably our Deep River grocer.

♦    ♦    ♦
In the "Local and Personal" column to the left of the obituary above, we find minor news of some acquaintances: Louis and Gertrude Dunham and their troublesome boy, Richard Chapman, have moved from one house I can't identify to another I can't identify; and Jessie Quinlan is feeling better.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Death of Mrs. Yager." Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.

Scavenger Hunt

Mr. Hallberg says all of these people had photographs taken between December 1921 and March 1922. Some of the photos may have been destroyed one way or another, or passed down with no name written on them so that nobody knows who they are now, but surely some of them still exist and are identified, somewhere. Anybody want to try to track them down?


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 30 March 1922.


Names for search-engine purposes: Allen, Batterman, Beach, Billeaux, Black, Bloomquist, Braddock, Brahst, Brand, Brandt, Bruebach, Burnett, Byall, Calvert, Canino, Carlson, Cavender, Condon, Davis, DeFrance, Emery, Faulkner, Finding, Fisher, Fleck, Frageman, Fratzke, Friedrich, Gresser, Grieger, Gruel, Hagberg, Hamann, Hawke, Haxton, Heath, Henderson, Hulett, Ittel, Jahnke, Johnson, Keilman, Kemp, Keppel, Killigrew, Kipp, Koehler, Krull, Lee, Livingston, MacIver, Mackey, MacPherson, Manteuffel, Maybaum, Melin, Mellon, Miller, Mygren, Nelson, Newman, Owen, Pattee, Paxton, Peddicord, Penniman, Peterson, Peterson, Phillips, Pierson, Quinlan, Raschka, Rhodes, Rohwedder, Roper, Rose, Rossow, Scharbach, Scheidt, Schmelter, Shearer, Shoemaker, Shore, Shults, Siegesmund, Sitzenstock, Stocker, Stoeckert, Strom, Strong, Swanson, Thompson, Traeger, Tyler, Vincent, Voorhis, Walters, Weaver, Wheaton, Wild, Wilson, Wood, Wrobbel, Yetter

The Night Man's Early-Morning Adventure

It was helpful of the Wood family to have a big reunion, and so remind us of Woods we've forgotten; and it was kind of John Dorman to come down off the heights of Indian Ridge and work to lure people to travel through Ainsworth; but for thrills, you can't beat Ed Kisela's 4:30-AM adventure.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette 2 Sept. 1921.

By the way, my understanding is that the route between Chicago and Valpo via Ainsworth was to be marked but, thank heaven, not named.

Weekend Wreckage Report

(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 25 Aug. 1921.

The first accident occurred at the intersection of present-day E. 73rd Ave. and Grand Blvd./S.R. 51. That spot may have been particularly dangerous, with Lincoln Highway tourists adding to the traffic, and heaven knows if there was even a stop sign at the intersection.

William Fisher (husband of Jennie Hurlburt) was innocently getting the honey from Joe's bees when an anonymous driver struck his car on Old Ridge Road.

The column to the left of the "Week-End Accidents" relates the adventures of the local young men in the National Guard. I believe the John Fisher mentioned in that story was William's nephew.

♦    ♦    ♦
In other auto-related news, I now learn of yet another named highway that (like the Yellowstone Trail) I'd never heard of before; but the "Liberty Highway" is so obscure that I have not been able yet to determine whether it, too, was a cross-country route, or ran only between Kokomo and Chicago.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette 26 Aug. 1921.

In addition to a reminder of the hard times the nation was experiencing, the "Local Drifts" column notes the purchase by Joseph Wegesin of the Thomas Roper farm "south of Deepriver." The only farm I can find matching that description shows up in the 1891 Plat Book in the northeast corner of Winfield Township:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from the 1939 Plat Book.

Blog-wise, I've ignored the Wegesin family up until now. In my newspaper notes, I've recorded only two mentions.* One was in 1911, when Mrs. Conrad Wegesin (Joseph's mother) came down from Chicago to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. for Mrs. Fasel's 54th birthday party. The second was in May 1920, when Joseph's oldest daughter, Gladys, attended a birthday party for Lillie Fasel, who was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. (I wonder if the Wegesins had a family connection to the Fasels?)

From a brief look at the official records, I gather that sometime after Joseph's birth in Ohio in 1881, his parents, Conrad and Mary, moved the family to Chicago, where 1900 census found them. About a year later, Joseph married Martha Semmer, who also went by the name Magdalen in some censuses. By 1910 Joseph and Martha-Magdalen had moved to Hobart. Ten years later, they had seven children of their own, plus a niece and a nephew living with them.

I'm not sure I'm going to have to pay much more attention to this family, as it appears that by 1930 they had moved to Muncie, Indiana.

___________________
*There may have been more, but I did not record them.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1911.
♦ "Young Lady Surprised." Hobart Gazette 28 May 1920.

Ford v. Cement Truck

Apparently, if you were bored in Hobart, you could go hang around the Nickel Plate Garage and wait for something to happen. Just one day after the barber-v.-barber grudge match, a cement truck showed what it could do to a Ford car out in front of the Nickel Plate Garage. The Ford belonged to our friend Roland Dolphus Sizelove.


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Local and Personal," Hobart News 11 Aug. 1921.

In news of other acquaintances — yet another relative for the mysterious Mary Kipp. "Mrs. Wm. Halsted" may have been W.O.'s widow, Barbara; that was how the Gazette of August 12 identified a woman beginning a new house on Garfield Street, though there could have been two such women.

And Vera Quinlan had a job in Gary. From the next day's Gazette, we learn that her brother, Lester, who was then about 16 or 17, had joined the National Guard:


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1921.

… and yes, Mrs. Gottfried Mayer was Oscar's sister-in-law.

Catherine Quinlan McAuliffe

(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Jocelyn Hahn Johnson.

I have already told most of what I know of Catherine (Quinlan) McAuliffe. Here is a little glimpse of her personality:



… That is, her personality as described by her daughter, Mary, to someone else, who wrote these notes on the back of the photo.

The photo is undated, but could not be later than October 1899. To my eyes, both the fashion of her blouse and her apparent age suggest the 1890s. That means the photo was taken some years before it was printed on this divided-back postcard dating to 1907 or later.

The McAuliffe Farmhouse

Since we've been talking about the Hobart Speedway, which sat on the McAuliffe farm, it's a good time to begin showing you selections from another collection of photos and other materials recently donated to the Hobart Historical Society by Jocelyn Hahn Johnson. These materials came to her through her father, Edward Hahn.

Timothy Sr. and Catherine (Quinlan) McAuliffe were Irish immigrants. They moved to the Cleveland Avenue farm around 1871. They had three children: Mary, Jerry, and Timothy Jr. The younger McAuliffes would spend the rest of their lives together on that farm. None of them ever married.

I will let Jocelyn explain the relationship of the McAuliffes with the Hahns, in her own words:

Sometimes in the early 1900s Mary [McAuliffe] took in homeless boys in order to help with farm chores, as well as perhaps give extra income. Among those boys were my father Edward Hahn and his 2 older brothers, Arthur Jr., and Hubert. The 2 older boys arrived first, probably in 1911 and Edward in 1912.

(Arthur Hahn Sr., the boys' father, was born in Sydney, Australia — their mother, Lilian, perhaps born in England, later emigrated to Australia. Arthur Sr. was a singer and had been entertaining in Vaudeville in Australia as well as New Zealand. Little is known about Lilian but she may have been an entertainer as well. In 1902 they left that area, along with their 2 boys born in Australia and New Zealand. Eventually they ended up in Chicago where Lilian died in 1906, having given birth to my father sometime earlier there although his birth registration has never been found. After Lilian died, Arthur continued traveling on the Vaudeville circuit; the boys went to orphanages and/or lived with friends of their father's. In 1911 the 2 older boys arrived in Hobart at the McAuliffe farm, but it is unknown to me how Arthur Sr. found this place. Edward later arrived to join his brothers.)

As the boys grew into their teens, Arthur and Hubert left the McAuliffe's in order to find jobs. Occasionally they came back for awhile, but in general did not stay. Arthur Jr. became a stonemason and eventually built at least 3 homes in Hobart which remain standing today; he and his family stayed in the Lake County region all his life, as far as I know. Hubert soon moved to the west coast where he remained until he died.

Edward, however, spent his teen years on the farm and attended Hobart High School. In 1931 when he married Mildred Nelson from Lake Station/East Gary. During these years he and Mary developed a close bond which lasted through the rest of her life (she died in 1945). Edward paid the taxes on the land when she couldn't, helped her with maintenance, and supported her in many other ways. He became the heir to the McAuliffe property since Mary, Tim (junior) and Jerry had no children.

To begin the McAuliffe/Hahn collection, here is the McAuliffe farmhouse, in an undated photo.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Jocelyn Hahn Johnson.

No one in the photo is identified, but I like to tell myself that the man at left is Timothy McAuliffe, Sr., and the woman standing by the fence with her arms crossed is his wife, Catherine. (We have a photo of Catherine, but this photo is too blurry to make a positive ID.) Perhaps the younger woman at right is their only daughter, Mary.

If that man is Timothy, then the photo must date to before February 23, 1911; if that woman is Catherine, then it must date to before October 26, 1899.

Here is Catherine's obituary, from the Hobart Gazette of Nov. 4, 1899:


(Click on image to enlarge)

And here is Timothy Sr.'s, from the Hobart Gazette of March 3, 1911:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Irene Esther

John and Lillie (Buchfuehrer) Call had their first child in January 1921.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the Hobart News, 20 Jan. 1921.

… Plus a few minor news items, including poor George Sauter being ill again.

He wasn't the only one on the sick list.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the Hobart News, 20 Jan. 1921.

Some happier news about Fred and Mayme (Harms) Harney. And it took that item about Paul Newman to teach me that there ever was (and is) such a thing as the Yellowstone Trail — a coast-to-coast highway similar to the Lincoln Highway, I gather, only for some reason not nearly as famous.

Class of 1920

I had forgotten to check Hobart High School's 1920 yearbook for graduates with an Ainsworth connection. Turns out I wasn't missing much, as the only Ainsworth connection was a distant one — our old acquaintance, Vera Quinlan, who was related to the Ainsworth Bullocks.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

One of her classmates was Esther Boldt …



… who perhaps was part of the Boldt family — maybe? There's some resemblance between this picture and the two older girls in the linked one (especially the girl in the white dress), but I can't say for sure.

Sweethearts and Smallpox

Just before Valentine's Day, the front page of the Gazette simultaneously invited people to a dance and warned them of the contagion that may lurk among the dancers:





Smallpox had come to town — but in a "mild form," according to the previous day's News as it reported on two "new" cases. The home of the Rev. J.C. Whitt was now under quarantine, Mrs. Whitt being ill with smallpox; likewise the home of Simeon and Abbie Bullock. Their 15-year-old grandson, Lester, was sick. If his mother, just then on another lengthy visit to Alva, Oklahoma, got the news, she apparently was not overly alarmed, as she did not return until early the next week.

By the next week, the home of Dave Young, south of Deepriver, was also on the quarantine list; and smallpox had "invaded" the Struble home in Hobart.

Early in March, Dr. Faulkner ordered fumigation of Hobart's school building and public library, "as a precautionary measure against smallpox."


Sources:
♦ Advertisement. Hobart Gazette 13 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Imperative Notice." Hobart Gazette 13 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 12 Feb. 1920; 19 Feb. 1920; 15 Mar. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 20 Feb. 1920.

Vera Quinlan

Last in our little series of re-discovered Quinlan photos is Vera.


(Click on images to enlarge)
All images in this post courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Handwritten notes on the back read: "Merry Xmas to Uncle Gil & Aunt Tell"; in another hand: "Vera Quinlan." And embossed on front: "Vreeland Studio/Alva O.T." The photo is undated, but since Mrs. J.C. Herron opened the Vreeland Studio in 1901 (you can go here and search or scroll down for a brief biographical sketch of Mrs. Herron), and Oklahoma became a state in 1907, we have a possible range. Vera was born in 1900.

"Uncle Gil & Aunt Tell" would probably be Gilbert and Estella Bullock.

This photo of Vera, also undated, was taken in Hobart by August Haase.



I really can't tell which photo is earlier.

Finally, a photo of Vera later in life, undated (but she died in 1958).

Jessie Bullock Quinlan

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Continuing with the little collection of Quinlan photos … this graceful portrait is identified by a handwritten note on the back as Jessie Quinlan. There is no date, and I have yet to learn during what time span Roland(?) Grabill operated his Hobart studio. From general appearances, I would place this photo, very roughly, in the early to mid-1930s. In the 1930 Census, Jessie was 53 years old.

Sam Quinlan, Knight Templar

At the Hobart museum, I find that it pays to go through files again and again, because the more I learn, the more meaningful the contents become. Case in point: some Quinlan photos that I recently encountered in a photo file — I'm sure I looked through that file a couple of years ago, but the presence of the photos did not register in my mind the first time I saw them because the name, Quinlan, simply didn't mean anything to me.

This is one shows us — according to a handwritten note on the back — "Sam Quinlan, Knight Templar" in all the glory of his Masonic regalia. No date on it, nor any indication of whether it was taken in Oklahoma or Indiana.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Final and Other Business

Simeon and Abbie Bullock were happy to open their home to their grandchildren, Lester and Vera Quinlan. The young folks had now enrolled in the Hobart school; they were no doubt making new friends, and they had plenty of relatives in the area. But the newly widowed Jessie Bullock Quinlan still had her husband's estate to settle. In mid-April 1919, she and her father left for Alva, Oklahoma. They spent three weeks attending to the final business, returning to Hobart on May 3.

Meanwhile, in Hobart, the first ad of the resurrected business of Lee & Rhodes appeared, perhaps by accident, next to an ad placed by Charles Lee's long-ago partner, George Bruce.


(Click on images to enlarge)

And the Gem Theater's Saturday-night features included a comedy starring the immensely popular Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.




Sources:
♦ Advertisements. Hobart News 10 Apr. 1919.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 10 Apr. 1919; 8 May 1919.

The Death of Samuel Quinlan

On the ides of March, 1919, a little family part alighted from a Nickel Plate train in Hobart: Jessie Bullock Quinlan and her two teenaged children, Vera and Lester. Jessie had come home, but it was not a happy homecoming, for the same train carried the coffin of her husband, Samuel.

Samuel had been troubled with heart problems for several years, and in the past month had gone through some "bad spells," so his death may not have been a surprise to those closest to him. Still, it was untimely — he died a week short of his 52nd birthday.

He had been born on March 17, 1867, in Wheeler, Indiana, to Michael and Eliza Quinlan. Samuel spent his early childhood in the area, and although, in the late 1870s, the family moved to Oklahoma, he evidently maintained ties in the Hobart area. Jessie Bullock went out west to become Mrs. Quinlan on July 30, 1899. They spent most of their married life in Oklahoma.

Samuel described himself in 1900 as a "merchant" — he had a part interest in a country store. By 1910, he was the Woods County recorder of deeds, an office he held for four years. At the time of his death, he was president of the school board of Alva, Oklahoma. "He had been an active personage in the development of his town and county," said the Gazette. "He was a man highly respected by all who knew him."

Besides Jessie and the children, Samuel was survived by six brothers and a sister — one brother being a Catholic priest at Fort Wayne, which makes it a little surprising that Samuel's funeral was held in the Unitarian Church. It took place on Sunday, March 16, under the direction of the local Masons (Sam had been a member of the Alva, Oklahoma Masons). Fannie (Mrs. Fred) Werner sang.

The ground in Crown Hill Cemetery being too waterlogged from recent heavy rains to allow for digging, Sam's coffin was placed temporarily in the Smith vault, until it could find its final resting place.


(Click on image to enlarge)


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Deaths for the Week." Hobart Gazette 14 Mar. 1919.
♦ "Funeral of Samuel Quinlan Held at Unitarian Church Sunday." Hobart News 20 Mar. 1919.
♦ "Samuel Quinlan Passes Away at Alva, Oklahoma." Hobart News 13 Mar. 1919.

Sisters for Life

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Ida Bullock Morris and Jessie Bullock Quinlan in later years and nearly identical outfits. No, I don't know if that's left to right, I don't know why they wore the same outfits, and I don't know how many years later. Early to mid-1940s, maybe?

Crops and Malted Milk and Love

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

In July 1913 Jessie Bullock Quinlan received this postcard from Wellington, Kansas, sent by "S.H.Q." — who could that have been but her husband, Samuel H.? They had been married for 13 years by that time.