Ross Township Commencement

Ross Township's graduating class of 1919 including two young people from Ainsworth — Robert Chester and Raymond Triebess, as well as three from Deep River.

The page from the Gazette of May 16, 1919, carrying that announcement also gives us an update to our continuing saga, Plumbing Hobart's Secrets. In this episode, George and Helen Rhodes have just returned from Philadelphia, where George had finally concluded his wartime plumbing mission. George was ready to hit the ground running in the service of Hobart's plumbing needs. Meanwhile, George Bruce — perhaps seeing the Lee & Rhodes juggernaut bearing down on him — had started rethinking his career in plumbing.


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More on Rhodes and Bruce, from the Hobart News of May 15, 1919.


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A Ross Township High School Commencement

Ross Township 1935

Above is the program for the commencement ceremony of the Ross Township High School class of 1935 — all 24 seniors. When I bought this program at auction last summer, none of the names meant anything to me. Now I've encountered several of these surnames, on plat books and census reports, in local newspapers, and in Chester Cemetery. They might all come to mean something to me if I keep on with this obsessive historical research.

I wonder if the violin-playing John Saylor of this program is related to the Paul Saylor who broke his wrist falling off "the Forman boy's new pony" in August 1938 ("Ainsworth News," Index-Commonwealth (Hobart, Ind.), 11 Aug. 1938).

ETA: It occurs to me that I should list these seniors in case any genealogists out there are looking for news of them via search engine: Francis M. Stowell; Ruth Marie Troxel; Raymond A. Mitsch; Vernon L. Piske; Marion Lee Davis; Edward W. Roberts; Dorothy L. Meyer; N. June Fowler; Edward F. Spitz; Edith Louise Sievert; Edith W. Struebig; John M. Brewer; William A. Snyder; Mary E. Crisman; Alma J. Saxton; Jean Ellen Bolt; Evelyn Ruth LaCroix; Alma Louise Hopp; Edward W. Fraikin; Laura H. Dziurdzy; Delmer W. Nelson; Gladys W. Shonkwiler; Donald E. Niksch; and Milton H. Shults.