Day of Destruction

Interesting views from the Ainsworth crossing today. To the north, Sapper's Corner is burning.


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To the south, William Raschka's 110-year-old grain warehouse is being demolished.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

On September 23, 1923, Miss Leona Raschka became Mrs. Fred Ewigleben, Jr.


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Hobart News, Sept. 27, 1923.

We just recently met Leona's bridesmaid, Florence Ewigleben. We've also met the best man, Walter Miller.

In all these years that I've been hearing that wonderful name, Ewigleben — it means "live forever" in German — I've never looked into the family much; I was content to know that they were a farming family from somewhere west of Hobart. Now I'd like to find out exactly where that farm was. Let's look at the 1908 Plat Map:


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Why, you may ask, should I be interested in the land owned by "C. Erigleton"? — because that land coincides with the land owned by Christ Ewigleben as shown in the 1891 Plat Book. My theory is that Erigleton is a butchered spelling of Ewigleben.

I've often wondered about that big parcel on the northwest corner of Liverpool and 49th, which seems like a throwback to the old rural days of this area, almost untouched by the development that has transformed the old Hayward farm on the east side of Liverpool Road. The farmhouse that sits on that land was built in 1890 according to the county records, so perhaps it is the old Ewigleben home.

Christ Ewigleben, the patriarch of this family, was a German immigrant. It appears that he married and had some children in the old country; I do not know what happened to his first wife. In 1865 Christ came to the U.S. (1900 Census). In Cook County, Illinois, in 1873, he married a woman named Johanna, whose surname is listed as Hillmann or Maas.[1]

The earliest I can find the Ewigleben family in Hobart Township is in the 1880 Census, on the same page with (among others) Berndts, Boldts and Mummerys, which suggests that they were in the area west of Hobart where the 1891 Plat Book places them. Christ's wife is listed as "Teressa" or some such thing, not Johanna; it's a mystery.

Their son, Frederick — the father of the groom in our 1923 story above — was born in Hobart in 1878 (Indiana Death Certificates). He married Tillie Blanchard in 1898 (Indiana Marriage Collection); and their son, Frederick, was born in 1902 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Frederick Jr. and Leona's home at 520 E. Fourth Street seems to be a bank parking lot now.

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Elsewhere on the same page of the News, above, we find Clifford O. Mize going to prison for the attempted murder of his mother-in-law back in July 1923.

We also find the Gem Theater receiving a letter demanding that it stop showing movies on Sunday evenings. Just remember how recently we Hoosiers could not buy alcohol on Sunday.

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[1] "Hillmann" per Ancestry.com, Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index, 1871-1920 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. "Maas" per Ancestry.com, Illinois, Marriage Index, 1860-1920 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

William Raschka Still Busy in Ainsworth

Lest we forget that William Raschka was still doing business in Ainsworth in 1923, in spite of having sold his department store business long ago, here is an ad for his feed, grain, and fertilizer warehouse:


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Hobart News, Aug. 16, 1923.

In the left-hand column is the beginning of an article about the death of Kelly Norris. I find him interesting because (1) he might not have died if antibiotics had been available; and (2) his widow was the former Edith Busse. Here is the full story:


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Hobart News, Aug. 16, 1923.

It is interesting to see the number of Hobart people who traveled with his remains to Lagrange, Indiana, including George Sauter and Fred Rose, Jr.

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Speaking of George Sauter — his mother, now Augusta Fiester, had a nice 62nd-birthday party on August 9, 1923.


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Hobart News, Aug. 16, 1923.

The Edward Sauter who attended was, I am sure, Edward Jr., not Edward Sr., Augusta's ex-husband. I have completed lost sight of Edward Sr. He was last seen in the 1920 Census, living in a rooming house at 1249 W. 103rd Street, Chicago, and working as a blacksmith, shoeing horses. I can't find him in the 1930 Census; can't even find a record of his death.

Above that item, the Pecks have returned from their hot and mosquito-ridden motor trip, and chosen to call it pleasant.

Charles Chester and the Unsatisfactory Tractor

In the year between July 1922 and July 1923, Charles Chester's tractor had gone from the EJ&E right-of-way to the Indiana supreme court.


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Hobart News, July 26, 1923.

In the column to the right of that story, Charles' sister, Carrie (Chester) Raschka, is selling a canary warbler; let's hope nobody takes her to court over that.

Happy Birthday, Julius; Goodbye, Hub

This mangled page from the Hobart News of March 29, 1923, tells us of Julius Wojahn's 68th birthday. He was born March 23, 1855, in Posen, Germany (Indiana Death Certificates).


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I have the impression that his residence was more in Ainsworth than "near" it. Among his neighbors in the 1920 Census are the names Lindborg, Foreman, Miller, Nelson (Lovisa), and Hunter.

Just below that item we find Carrie Raschka hosting 40 people from the Merrillville Study Club in her Hobart home.

At the bottom of the column — is this the end of The Hub forever?

The Fisher-Hahn Wedding

Having been showered with gifts by her friends, Bertha Fisher became Mrs. Hubert Hahn on March 17, 1923.


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Hobart News 22 March 1923.


I have no idea where the Owens flats were.

Two columns to the right, we are reminded that William Raschka is still part of Ainsworth commerce.

Here Comes the Triebess Family … Again

Julius Triebess had moved his family from Chicago to Ainsworth in 1917 — and I'm still not sure if that was a return for them, or their first attempt to live on the farm Julius owned.

Whatever it was, that experience ended when they moved back to Chicago in 1919.

Now it's 1923, and the family (what's left of it) is returning to Ainsworth …


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Hobart Gazette 16 March 1923.

… not to farm, apparently, since they have rented the land to Sophie Triebess's brother, but only to live.

Down in the right-hand column, we learn that the Triebess farm had previously been rented to John H. Meyer … which might explain why there was an Andy Meyer graduating from (I believe) the Ainsworth school in 1922.

And below that item comes a little news about the Ainsworth Department Store under its new proprietor, Henry Paulus. Verna Guernsey, the lucky winner of a bag of flour, may still be occupying the Howard H. Smith farm.

By the way, I'm guessing that the "Raschke" in the article in the left-hand column entitled "Ready to Bore for Oil" is our own William Raschka, formerly of Ainsworth.


Elsewhere in the same issue of the Gazette, an ad for the Ainsworth Department Store.

South of Deepriver, March 1923

Much innocent sociability in the countryside.


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Hobart News 8 Mar. 1923.

"The Raschka barn near Leroy" might have belonged to Frank and George, William's brothers.

Arthur Bowman's radio sounds more like a ham set than something to receive commercial broadcasts — but then again, for all I know about radios, it might have done both.

Visions of Concrete

The new year, 1923, brought dreams of pavement:


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

From the Lincoln Highway to Lincoln and Tenth would be the route of today's State Road 51. From the brickyards and the Chicago road to Miller would be Lake Park Avenue.

Speaking of pavement — the next column we find William Raschka winning a lawsuit against the Federal Paving Co. — the same company that had recently lost a court battle with some Ross Township farmers.

The story in the right-hand column about the lecture course interested me mainly because of who was selling tickets — among Hobart's high society, we find Lovisa Chester Nelson in her little house in the village of Ainsworth.

The Chester House Again

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Image courtesy of John Fleck.

This is the Chester house, as seen from the west, and I'm not kidding when I say I really appreciate getting such a good view of Ainsworth Road itself … which would have been called the Chester road when this photo was taken.

Exactly when that was, I do not know. The reference in the caption to the late 1800s may mean the era when Carrie Raschka lived there. The number of electric or telephone wires strung along the road suggests at least a couple decades' worth of twentieth century. The porch pillars have been remodeled from their original appearance (compare the two "then" photos in the series linked to above), and I believe that was done in the early 20th century.

I may try a then-and-now in the middle of next winter, but I'm not sure it's possible, even with the leaves off the trees — the former side yard, the site of some of those outbuildings, is just too thickly grown over.

Order in the Court!

I wish these "Local Court Notes" gave more of the juicy details.

We know all the people in the first case. The last I heard, Nathan Bosen was renting Elmer Arment's new house on S.R. 51.


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Hobart News 24 Aug. 1922.

In the swearing case, I guess the point of where he lived was that the swearing wasn't done within Hobart city limits.

And of course we know Harry Cole, alias Harry Breyfogle. But I'm not sure which of the local John Petersons was suing him.

Lost Sight

This poor kid — he lost the sight in one eye, and no one knew (or cared to tell) more about him than his surname.


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Hobart News 27 July 1922.

The Gazette described him as an "orphan boy." I think he might possibly be the orphaned Raymond Brink whom the 1920 Census shows living in the household of Marcene and Helen Haxton, in Union Township, Porter County. If so, he was about 20 years old at the time of this accident. He had a twin brother, Roy, who has already caused me some confusion.

(At the bottom of that column is an item about the newly established Little Red Hen restaurant, with most of its business from out-of-town tourists, which makes me wonder if it was located along the Yellowstone Trail. Its proprietor was Hobart's first librarian, by this time married to the man with whom she had climbed the water tower.)

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Elsewhere in the same issue of the News, we find Carrie Raschka spending a week at Koontz Lake with her daughters and (I believe) her mother-in-law …


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Hobart News 27 July 1922.

… while Charlie DeWell and the former Anne Fleck (now Mrs. Alfred G. Ingram) were dealing with health problems.

Last and least, drainage was being installed on the east side of the Ainsworth road, now known as Grand Boulevard/State Road 51 — this would be near the township line, where the road had been in a bad condition the previous spring.


Additional Sources:
♦ "General News." Hobart Gazette 28 July 1922.
♦ "Raymond Brink Dies at Age 71." Hobart Gazette 4 Oct. 1973.

Oklahoma!

Just out of high school, Leona Raschka dashed off to spend June 1922 in Oklahoma, of all places. According to a brief genealogy at findagrave.com, Grace Short was the daughter of Leona's father's sister, but I have no clue who the "relatives and friends" in Oklahoma were.


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Hobart News 8 June 1922.

I wonder whence the strawberries would come for the social in the Ainsworth school — from Jake Yager, perhaps, or the Carlson brothers?

The item about little Elmer Palm's christening is interesting to me because this could well be the celebration memorialized in the photo in Mildred Lindborg's album.

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On the morning of June 7, 1922, Hazard Halsted performed an immortalized haircut, and that afternoon Louis Kramer and Myrtle Scharbach were married.


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Hobart Gazette 9 June 1922.


The front page of that issue mentioned Lee & Rhodes' "fine new delivery car" with no further details, alas, and yet another dance at the old Deep River schoolhouse, but it also had some interesting stories about nobody we know, such as a false report of a mass drowning, and a pastor ejected from a church for assault and battery:


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Hobart Gazette 9 June 1922.

Ainsworth Then and Now: Chester Cemetery

1963 and 2015



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1963 images courtesy of John Fleck.

The grave markers of Henry Chester and his second wife, Harriet (mother of Daisy Chester Raschka). Those stones look as if they will stand forever.


In the next photo, behind the monument to Amanda, wife of Simeon Marble, we have the graves of (left to right) Henry, Harriet, Mary (Henry's mother), and Charles (Henry's father).




Mary's grave marker now is broken and lying on the ground.


This last one does not show any Chester graves. It was taken towards the west side of the cemetery, furthest from S.R. 51.




Here the cemetery has changed enough that I couldn't figure out how to reproduce the 1963 photo, or if that were even possible.

Hobart Class of 1922: Leona Raschka

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Apparently she had a beau with a "flivver," but whether that beau was Fred Ewigleben, whom she married circa 1924, I do not know.


Her father bought an ad in the annual, of course.

Frederick Doepping

Frederick Doepping was an "aged Ainsworth citizen" when he died in March 1922.


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Hobart News 23 March 1922.

Per my own imaginative reading of the 1920 Census, I'm guessing Frederick and Mary occupied one of those little houses on the west side of Grand Blvd./S.R. 51 just north of the Canadian National tracks, either of which is old enough to accommodate them. But that's just a guess.

I am a bit confused about the Doepping family. According to the obituary, Frederick had no daughters (if a daughter had died before him, you'd still expect her to be mentioned). And yet the 1900 Census shows Frederick and Mary sheltering under their roof a schoolboy of 13 named Henry Kastner, described as their grandson. With only two sons, how did they get a grandson with a different surname? Or is that just a mistake by the census enumerator?

You may have noticed some mention in this blog of a Reinhart Doepping, most notably in connection with tree-related crime. I'm beginning to suspect that "Reinhart" was the newspaper's mistake for "Rheinholdt." It appears that the enumerator of the 1900 Census made the same mistake, while the 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940 Census got the name more or less right.

Rheinholdt/Reinhart had a son named Richard Doepping (and I've encountered more than one reference in the newspapers to "R. Doepping," which isn't illuminating). In January 1919, Richard Doepping bought a farm belonging to Chester Guernsey — exact location unknown, but my guess is that it was somewhere close to the Ross-Winfield Township line and the Lake-Porter County line. ("South of Deepriver," Hobart News 23 Jan. 1919.)

The other son, Emil, is elusive. He may be the Emil Doepping born Dec. 24, 1880, who married a woman named Bertha between 1910 and 1920 (though I can't find the record of their marriage). But in that case, the official records would seem to place him in Chicago, not south of Ainsworth.

This is where I stop trying to figure out the Doeppings.

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Moving on to the items in the "Local and Personal" column, Mrs. Mike Foreman was married to a man who liked to confuse historians by going by Michael, Mike, or Helmuth, as his fancy took him. She had been born Mary Mau (Indiana Marriage Collection).

James Jeffrey had indeed bought some Guernsey land, but I wouldn't describe it as being near the old Deepriver schoolhouse.

Elizabeth Fredrick was my favorite census enumerator; Sadie Baker helped her husband, William, run their general store in Deep River. I have no idea who Mrs. Carl Harper was. Mrs. Lulu Crisman was married to Thomas, who was a son of John and Elizabeth (Small) Crisman of Porter County … which would, I think, make him a brother of John Crisman of Deep River.

And, of course, we all know the Raschkas and the Shearers.

The Vote of the Ladies Is Respectfully Solicited

Several acquaintances were running in the primary election in the spring of 1922, and every candidate was asking for the vote of the recently enfranchised women. Earnest Walter was the father of the Walter Bros. Robert Harper lived near Ainsworth and, last I heard (1917), served as its marshal. John Harms lived on Cleveland Avenue and was part of the large Harms family that populates this blog.


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Hobart News 23 March 1922.

The "Local and Personal" column is crammed with people we know. The John Crisman, Jr. with rheumatism may be Dorothea's father … or perhaps her 16-year-old brother. Earl Blachly and his second wife, née Annie Witt, had recently shed all their farming-related possessions. Mrs. William Killigrew and Mrs. Dwight Mackey had grown up east of Ainsworth as Etta and Ruth Bullock. And apparently Otto and Lesta (Raschka) Maicke have moved back to Ainsworth, after living in Hobart for some time.

Daisy and Lesta

Let's move forward two years from our earliest pictures of the young Raschka family. Now it's 1898, and William and Carrie have two little girls.


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Image courtesy of John Fleck.

Lesta had been born in December of 1897.

As we know, in the spring of 1921 she became Mrs. Otto Maicke.

William and Carrie and Daisy

These are the earliest photos I have ever seen of William and Carrie Raschka, taken in 1896.


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Images courtesy of John Fleck.




William Raschka married Carrie Chester on May 2, 1894. Here we see them with their first child, Daisy, born January 30, 1895. To me she looks about a year-and-a-half old, or maybe a little more. William would have been about 27 years old in this photo, Carrie about 22. They both look so young!

The Lye Accident, and an Update

I was nosing around in old issues of the Hobart Gazette, looking for any mention of Daisy Chester's marriage to E.D. Scroggins that I might have missed the first time around, when I came across this item in the January 4, 1907 issue that I definitely missed the first time around:

A week ago last Sunday the 2-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Chester who live on the Dick Sykes farm pulled from a table a can of concentrated lye which flew upon the little fellow's face and severely burnt him. The right eye seemed to be the worst for the accident and for several days it was feared he would lose its sight but it is now thought the eye will be all right in time.

Based on the 1910 Census, I conclude that the unnamed two-year-old was Robert Chester.

I do not know where the Dick Sykes farm was. Per the 1891 Plat Book, there had been farms belonging to Sykeses in Ross, Hobart and Winfield Townships — not to mention any that may have been in Porter County — but which was known as the "Dick Sykes farm," I do not know.

[7/20/2015 update] Suzi Emig has solved the mystery of the Dick Sykes farm! She writes:

Climb into the time machine ... we are going back to April of 1912. I have attached the newspaper account of my dad's parent's wedding. It was extremely yellowed and fragile when I got it years ago from my aunt. Fortunately she laminated it, so it survives. You will see many familiar names in the list of wedding guests. There is one error. The bride's mother, Mrs. Susan Casey, was a sister to Constance Chester, not to Mr. as stated. If you refer to the 1908 plat map (which you so conveniently provide!) the SE corner of 61st and Colorado is owned by a William Sykes ... maybe Dick was a nickname or he was incorrectly named in the lye incident article. William is shown in the 1880 census to be living on this property as a 21 year old with his mother and siblings, 3 brothers and a sister. Their neighbors are the John Schnabels. Their main house was on the SW corner of the intersection. It appears that William and his family were living here per the 1900 census, as the Fred Schnabels are listed as neighbors. Evidently William decided to give up farming and leased his home and land ... he is in Mississippi, working as a public road contractor in 1910, then in 1920 is back up north residing in Gary as a city clerk, and a garage owner there in 1930. He died in 1940 in CA. My dad always referred to that SE property as "the old Sykes farm", so I guess to the old timers that name stuck. The Charles Chesters were living in Stark Co., IN per the 1900 census. In 1910 they were somewhere in Ross Twp., and evidently relocated by 1912 to the Sykes property. By 1920 they were in the old house that Henry built.

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I believe this clipping is from the Hobart Gazette of April 19, 1912.

Here is the William "Dick" Sykes farm on the 1908 Plat Map:


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Here's a clipping from the "General News Items" of the Hobart Gazette of July 5, 1907 (I didn't miss it the first time around; I just didn't post it) in which "Dick" is enclosed in quotes, as if to mark that it is a nickname.



Here ends this update. If I find out how William got his nickname, I will update again.

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Thanks to our identifying-est commenter ever, we now have IDs on the people in the Chester-house-then-and-now pictures. (I have also added Chuck's IDs to each picture's description on Flickr, for ease of reference.)