Merrillville Then and Now: Demmon's Store/Law Office

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Top image courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

Here we are looking at the north side of E. 73rd Ave., just west of Broadway. A handwritten caption on the first photo reads, "Demmon's Store about 1900"; however, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville by Jan Clemens, the store was built in 1924 by Walter Demmon. The later date is more consistent with census records, as in 1910 and 1920 Walter described himself as a farmer; not until 1930 was he a "merchant" selling "retail groceries."

Per Jan Clemens:

Besides being a retail establishment, Walter's store had restaurant facilities and was more aptly described as an ice cream parlor. Many young people made the awning-fronted building their "hangout" because it was just across the street from the school. Neva Shoup, sixteen years of age, who lived down the street, next to the Methodist Church, in her capacity as "soda-jerk" kept the customers satisfied with her repertoire of ice cream delights.

The January 1920 census enumeration lists Neva Shoup as 11 years old, the daughter of Arthur and Clara Shoup who farmed in Ross Township.

The Demmon store closed in 1972.

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Here is a photo of Walter Demmon and Tillie Schnabel on their wedding day, February 7, 1906:


Image courtesy of Suzi Emig.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Clemens, Jan, and Elaine Denta (ed.). A Pictorial History of Merrillville: Stories, Illustrations, and Photographs of Pioneer Buildings. Review Printers, Inc. (1991).

Lillie and Alice

Today, just two grave markers, for two of the flu victims we read about yesterday.

In Hobart Cemetery, Lillie Rose Scholler's grave:


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Not only do I not know, I do not even have any far-fetched theory as to why the year of her death is wrong.

She lies next to her parents …



… not her husband. Calvin, as we now know, went on to marry again.


Lillie Rose at the age of 18, from the Hobart High School Aurora yearbook for 1909. Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

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In the quiet little Woodvale Cemetery, Alice Baker Shoup's grave:



She, too, lies next to her parents. I do not know if her husband remarried.

Her obituaries tell a little about her family. She was George and Harriet Baker's daughter, and thus William's sister. Her other siblings were George Jr., Robert (listed as John R. in the 1900 Census), Mrs. Thomas Keene, Mrs. Schuyler Hardesty, Mrs. John Sandberg and Ada Baker. The 1900 Census gives the three married sisters' first names as Lizzie, Alice and Susan, but I don't know which became which "Mrs."

Not Spanish Influenza

The winter of 1920 was a sickly one, the prevailing complaint being flu — but no report called it Spanish influenza. The last News of January noted that although doctors around Hobart were being "kept on the go day and night," no one in town had yet died from the flu. After that hopeful remark came a list of out-of-town fatalities with local connections — a middle-aged dairy farmer, prominent in the business; Mrs. Louis Randolph, the former Ella Merrill, brought home to Merrillville for burial from South Chicago; in Miller, a 35-year-old husband and father, and two women who left husbands and children; a 35-year-old bachelor at Crown Point.

During the first week of February alone, 50 cases of flu were reported to Dr. Clara Faulkner, Hobart's health officer.

The "South of Deepriver" social column in early February was a sick list: Dorothea Crisman, a high-school student; the Deep River miller, Tony Cullman, and his two youngest children; Zelda and Thelma Huffman, 9-year-old twins; a 17-year-old farm boy, Richard Fisher, whose mother cut short a vacation in Missouri to return to his bedside — all ill with flu or its complications.

In Hobart, illness kept many children out of school, though the schools remained open. In the Calvin Scholler home, the two school-aged children came down with flu, and so did Calvin himself. His wife, the former Lillie Rose, nursed them through the worst of it; just as her patients began to recover, Lillie fell ill, and died on February 1 at the age of 29 — Hobart's first flu fatality that year. On the 7th, Carolina Ahrens, age 67, became another fatality. On February 11, flu took the life of George and Susan Schnabel's 9-month-old son, Robert.

Richard Fisher was taken from his parents' farmhouse to the hospital in Gary, where he died in spite of all the doctors could do. At her home in Deep River, Mrs. Frank Shoup — née Alice Baker — died of flu at the age of 33 years.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Funeral of Mrs. Frank Shoup Held in Deep River, Wednesday." Hobart News 12 Feb. 1920
♦ "Funeral of Mrs. John Ahrens Held at Lutheran Church Tuesday." Hobart News 12 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 29 Jan. 1920; 12 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 6 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Mrs. Calvin Scholler Laid at Rest in Hobart Cemetery Wednesday." Hobart News 5 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Mrs. Calvin Scholler Passes Away." Hobart Gazette 6 Feb. 1920.
♦ "Much Sickness and Many Deaths In and About Hobart." Hobart News 29 Jan. 1920.
♦ "South of Deepriver." Hobart News 5 Feb. 1920.