Carpe Carpem

Rex Roll and his friend caught a whole lot of carp in Lake George, but they are not going to tell you where the lucky fishing spot is.


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That is all.

A Tough Old Bird

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, February 10, 1963, three armed robbers went up against the 70-year-old Peter Bates. Guess who won?


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Hobart Gazette, 14 Feb. 1963.

This story prompted me to look into Peter's background more than I ever had before. He was born Batestes Batistatos in Greece in 1893.[1] Sometime after coming to the U.S. around 1908,[2] he started Anglicizing his name. When he became a naturalized citizen in 1936, he officially changed his name to Peter Bates.[3]

The first record I can find after his immigration is the 1930 Census, where he is living in Hobart and running his own confectionery store. According to the Hobart Historical Society's 1979 oral history, Peter first operated in the candy store in the east side of the Guyer building, then moved to Main Street.

By that time he was married. I know very little about his wife, Lena. She was born in Canada in 1888, but I do not know her maiden name. She told the 1930 census enumerator that she came to the U.S. in 1921, and that she and Peter had been married around 1924. I haven't been able to find a record of their marriage. Her 1959 death certificate states that her husband, the informant, did not know who her parents had been. Her brief death notice mentioned a sister …


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Hobart Gazette, 23 July 1959.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

… but since there was more than one Helen Harney in the Los Angeles area[4] in that time frame and I don't know which was Lena's sister, I can't use the sister as a source for Lena's background.

I don't doubt that Peter and Lena were still living in Hobart when the 1940 census came around, but I can't find them on Ancestry.com — probably a transcription issue. Peter's 1942 draft card lists his residence as 314 Main in Hobart.

They do appear in in the 1950 Census, of course, still living at 314 Main Street, where they operated their hotel and tavern. It does not appear that the couple ever had any children.

As we know, Lena died in 1959. Peter bought an ornate memorial stone for her.

Peter died in 1970:


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Hobart Gazette, 3 Dec. 1970.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The Hobart Historical Society museum has a file on him with several articles about his impressive collection of weapons.

♦    ♦    ♦
The story about the robbers mentions someone else we've met before: Rex Roll. Obviously, if he lived at the Bates Hotel, he and Alice had split up; by that time, she might have already been married to her second husband. Rex, apparently, was not remarried.

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[1] Some sources give his birth year as 1895 (e.g., the 1950 census and his death certificate); his WWII draft card shows his date of birth as February 10, 1892.
[2] That is the date he gave the 1930 census enumerator. Ancestry.com turns up a record of a Batestes Batistatos arriving in New York in 1910 (INDEX TO THE NATURALIZATION RECORDS OF DUPAGE COUNTY, ILLINOIS. Lombard, IL: Dupage County (IL) Genealogical Society, 1999. 248p).
[3] Naturalization record per Ancestry.com.
[4] I think that for "Montre Park" in the obit we can read "Monterey Park."

She Was Wrong, But She Was Right

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Hobart Gazette, 14 Aug. 1952.

Obviously, burning down your house is not a productive way to address any marital problems you might be having. But it does appear that Alice was right about Rex's feelings toward her.

Alice, born in 1914, was the daughter of our favorite plumber, Charles Lee, and his wife Anna. She married Rex Albany Roll (b. 1908) in 1942. The Hobart telephone directory for 1952-1953 lists the Rolls at 1219 Jackson Street, so they had probably just moved to their "West Third street" house when this event occurred.[1]

The children Alice took to Lakeview Park were Grace, Eileen, and Shirley.

Alice and Rex apparently tried to continue with their marriage for a few more years: they had another child, Rex Jr., around 1953 or 1954. But in the 1956 Hobart directory Rex (Sr.) is absent from the Roll family listing. I can't find any information about him until January 1969, when his death certificate describes him as a Hobart resident, divorced.

Sometime after 1958, Alice remarried, to a widower named Herman Alpert. They moved to Sheperdsville, Kentucky, where Herman died in 1989. Alice returned to this area and was living with her married daughter, Shirley, when she died in 1992.

I hope the second marriage was happier than the first.


I spent a little time looking in my 1947 and 1962 Hobart directories for any listing involving counseling, therapy, or psychiatry. There were none. I couldn't find any in 1952 Gary directories, either. Some quick internet research tells me that marriage counseling developed in the 1920s from the eugenics movement. "While in 1932 there were only three marriage counseling centers in the entire U.S., by 1968 there were 1,800 licensed marriage counselors in California alone."[2] The Ladies' Home Journal column called, "Can This Marriage Be Saved?," started in 1953.[3]

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[1] The Hobart phone directory for 1956 lists the Roll family at 1364 W. Third Street. I can't find any such address now.
[2] Wendy Kline, "The Surprising History of Marriage Counseling," American Experience, 19 Oct. 2018, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eugenics-surprising-history-of-marriage-counseling/.
[3] "America's Longest-Running Magazine Column - Ladies' Home Journal's Can This Marriage Be Saved? - Launches as Webisode Series," Cision PR Newswire, 26 Mar. 2010, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americas-longest-running-magazine-column---ladies-home-journals-can-this-marriage-be-saved---launches-as-webisode-series-89015517.html.