Wauhob Lake

I never heard of Lake Wahob, or Wauhob Lake as it seems to be called now, until Charles Lee took a vacation there with family and friends in early July 1922.


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Hobart News 13 July 1922.

Wauhob Lake is in Liberty Township, Porter County:



(Elsewhere on the same page, we find the summer visiting of the Bullock-Killigrew-Halladay crowd.)


Charles and Anna Lee returned from their vacation to show Charles' brother, mother, and sister around Hobart.


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I suppose J.W. Lee was the 49-year-old John W. Lee who showed up in the 1920 Census in Hominy, Oklahoma, working as a superintendent at a gas company. The rest of the genealogy I shall have to leave to the Lee family.

On the page above, we see that Henry Harms, Sr. suffered some wind damage to the barn on his farm, then occupied by the Herman and Minnie Harms family.

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Here's what August 1922 held for Charles' plumbing firm: "Lee & Rhodes submitted a bid of $198.50 for paying 330 feet of water pipe on Linda street, or to do the work for $132 if the city furnishes the pipe. Supt. Wheaton was directed to purchase the material and have the extension made at once." ("City Council Proceedings," Hobart Gazette 18 Aug. 1922.)

Charles Halladay

Probably because Margaret Bullock Killigrew was both an early member of the Hobart Historical Society and a cousin of Charles Halladay, his portrait can now be found in the files of the Hobart Historical Society. He was the son of Josiah and Ruth (Bullock) Halladay, and brother of Louise Halladay Hile.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Charlie was born around 1882. This portrait is undated, but judging by his apparent age I would guess it was taken around 1900. His wife, Caroline or Carrie, was the daughter of Ernest and Henrietta Sohn of Hobart. Charlie and Carrie were married in 1913 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index), and for him, I believe it was the second or possibly third marriage. The 1920 Census finds them living in Chicago with three children, the eldest eight years old and thus, it would seem, a child of a previous marriage.

"Something Different"

The "Local and Personal" column of the Hobart News of July 21, 1921, was bristling with news of our acquaintances, including George Sauter, who dreamed of "something different" and ended up with an eye-catching red-on-white delivery truck, which would be different from the one we have a picture of.

Charles Halladay was the son of Josiah and Ruth (Bullock) Halladay, thus a nephew and cousin to the local Bullocks.

And a couple more sisters for the mysterious Miss Mary Kipp.


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And, speaking of "something different," I just keep reading that Chesterfield ad over and over. I think those guys at the ad agency were smoking something different from Chesterfields.

War!

I don't have statistics; all I have is a general impression, from reading the census reports, that the Ainsworth-Hobart area at this era was crawling with German immigrants and their first-generation-American descendants. For several years the Hobart News had been running, almost every week, a German-language news column; occasionally the paper also ran an English-language column of news from Germany entitled, "In the Fatherland," with the subtitles, "Interesting Bits of News from the Great German Empire — What's Doing in the Old Home." (I also note that a February social item in the News mentioned that the Rev. E.R. Schuelke had christened one of John Witt, Sr.'s grandsons "in English," as if German were the default language in that Lutheran church.)

It was only natural that these people should feel some emotional connection to Germany, and the News catered to those feelings with its German news columns.

That changed abruptly in early February 1917. With the announcement that President Wilson had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, both German news columns disappeared from the pages of the News. And the Gazette, in reporting on Emma Gruel's remaining in Germany, felt the need to add that she and her colleagues "all count America their home country."

On February 28, 1917, President Wilson released to the press the contents of the notorious Zimmerman telegram, which revealed Germany's intention to enter an alliance with Mexico and Japan against the United States and offer U.S. territory to Mexico as an inducement to wage war against the U.S. (Hobart's weekly papers carried reports the first week of March.) That news, coupled with Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, shocked the American public out of its neutrality, and I suppose the local public felt the same shock.

Early in April, the U.S. declared war on Germany.

I have no way of seeing into the thoughts of those locals with living memories of Germany, or whose parents had come from that country. Were their loyalties divided at all? Perhaps their love of their adopted country, or their sense of betrayal at Germany's actions, overrode any emotional ties they had with the land of their birth or their ancestry.

If there was any private ambivalence, it was well hidden. The public response was an enthusiastic demonstration of American patriotism. When the Methodist Church threw open its doors to all pastors and congregations of Hobart for a special patriotic evening service on Sunday, April 22, a huge crowd attended, testing the capacity of the impressive new church building and shaking its walls with the opening hymn, "America." Hundreds of people sat in rapt attention through prayers for the nation, patriotic songs, and a 50-minute speech by Capt. H.S. Norton of Gary, who discussed the military situation and what civilians could do to help the war effort.

Two days earlier, the Gazette had inaugurated a new weekly feature, the "Roll of Honor," listing Hobart men who had joined the military.


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Among the early volunteers (enlisted within the previous two weeks), John Boldt had a German-born father, as did Ed Kostbade. Both parents of Charles Sohn, a member of the National Guard, were German immigrants.

This was only the beginning of military and civilian mobilization.


Sources:
♦ "Big Patriotic Demonstration." Hobart Gazette 27 Apr. 1917.
♦ "Congress Votes a State of War Exists Between the U.S. and Germany." Hobart News 5 Apr. 1917.
♦ "Germany Urged Mexico and Japs to Fight America/Teutonic Intrigue Against U.S. Shown in Official Document Held by Wilson." Hobart News 8 Mar. 1917.
♦ "Many Hobart Boys Are Now Enlisted in the World War." Hobart News 26 Apr. 1917.
♦ Meyer, G.J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918. New York: Bantam Dell, 2007.
♦ "Patriotic Meeting Draws Big Crowd Sunday Evening." Hobart News 26 Apr. 1917.
♦ "Patriotic Sunday Service." Hobart Gazette 20 Apr. 1917.
♦ "Personal and Local Mention." Hobart News 8 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Receives Good News." Hobart Gazette 9 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Roll of Honor." Hobart Gazette 27 Apr. 1917.