Warning Signs at the Death Crossing

After the recent fatal accident at the Lincoln Highway intersection south of Ainsworth, a private organization put up warning signs, and other steps were taken to improve visibility.


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Hobart Gazette, Aug. 31, 1923.

Two columns over, a couple other stories caught my eye.

I've mentioned Charles Boyd before but never took the time to figure out exactly where his farm was. Here is his land as it appeared in the 1926 Plat Book:


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I don't know exactly where the house and burning barn were.

Below that, we find H.W. Traeger — probably the same man who gave that awful Traeger crossing its name — warning people to stay off not only his land, but "the land known as the Garden City, controlled by" him. Does that mean the former site of the Garden City brickyard, on the east side of the intersection of County Line Road and S.R. 130? It seems likely, with that land being so close to H.W. Traeger's own land. I find it interesting that the Garden City name stuck, although the brickyard had stopped operating long ago.

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Here's the social news from south of Deep River for the last week of August 1923:


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Hobart News, Aug. 30, 1923.

Ainsworth School Teachers 1922

As the new school year began on September 5, 1922, the W.G. Haan school in Ainsworth was staffed by: "Primary, Miss Elsie Brennon; intermediate, Miss Frieda Stark; 7th and 8th grades, J.E. Drillette; high school, Miss Olive Wood."

Elsie's name shows up in the vital records as Brannon, so that is how I shall index it. She came from a farming family in Center Township.

The last time we met Frieda Stark, in June 1922, she was planning to attend the Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute. She had graduated from Hobart High School in 1921.


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From the Hobart High School Memories yearbook of 1921, via Ancestry.com.

J.E. Drillette was, I believe, Jacob Edward Drillette, about 49 years of age, who had been teaching in Lowell, Indiana, when he filled out his draft card in 1918. He was a Hoosier by birth, but not a local.

Olive Wood had been teaching since 1917 that I know of, and would continue teaching for many years.

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Evelyn Fredrick (who had taught at Ainsworth in the past) was now teaching in a Hobart school — "4A and 4B," which I take to mean the fourth grade.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 7 Sept. 1922.
♦ "Local Teaching Staff Complete for the Coming Year." Hobart News 7 Sept. 1922.
♦ "School Opens on Tuesday." Hobart Gazette 8 Sept. 1922.
♦ WWI Draft Cards.

South of Deepriver

Random events in the countryside south of Deep River … and west of Deep River, Alice Paine is on summer vacation from Teachers College.


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Hobart News 22 June 1922.

Pigs and Cows, and People I Just Can't Find

The Nolte Bros., "Hen" and "Lou," are selling Duroc Jersey pigs; Herman Harms took his teen-aged nephew, Lester, to a sale of Holsteins; Mary Yager* hosts a former pastor … and someone I've never heard of and can't find in any records dies an untimely death.


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I've looked in my blog and my notes, and can't find any previous mention of this John Bromberg. I've looked for him without success in the census and death records. I've looked in the NWIGS's all-name listing for Deer Creek Cemetery in Lake County — he's not listed.

(As for the "Hayward farm south of Ainsworth," I believe it was the southwest quarter of Section 29, so it lay on the west border of part of the Hurlburt land that gave Hurlburt's corners its name.)

The following day's Gazette carried an item that brought to mind another person I just can't find:

Mrs. W.H. Wagoner of Goshen, Ind., came to Hobart Wednesday to visit at the home of her daughter, Mrs. C.H. Messick. She was joined yesterday by her son, W.B. Wagoner, and wife, from Chicago, the occasion being their mother's birthday.

It's clear enough that Mrs. W.H. Wagoner was the mother of Bertha Wagoner, who married Cephas Messick in 1905 — thus the grandmother of Dalia Messick. And while I don't know her given name, I don't really care … except that all this reminds me of W.N. Wagoner, the mysterious saloonkeeper who flitted into and out of Ainsworth between September 1905 and March 1906, leaving behind no trace but a remonstrance. His identity has thus far completely eluded me. I wonder if there was any family connection between him and these Wagoners?

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*I hope I've identified her correctly. She was about 66 years old, the wife of our strawberry-growing Jacob Yager, living in Union Township, Porter County. Adam Yager was their son (who lived with them per the 1920 Census), and the Jake Yager mentioned as attending may have been another son, unless that was the News's very strange way of naming Jake Sr.


Sources:
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 12 May 1921.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 13 May 1921.

How the Class of 1921 Partied

Hobart High School's Class of 1921 had its class dinner on the Paine farm, west of Ainsworth. From the report, I gather that Ethel Paine did much of the hard work of preparing the food and décor — surprising, given her health problems, but then again not so surprising, given that Alice was her only daughter.


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I am mystified as to why the cars were left at the Frank residence.

The above article is from the News; the following day's Gazette ran the same article next to an ad for the class play, A Modern Ananias.




Sources:
♦ "Class Dinner Given by the Senior Class Hobart High School." Hobart News 28 Apr. 1921.
♦ "Class Dinner." Hobart Gazette 29 Apr. 1921.
♦ "Senior Class Play" (advertisement). Hobart Gazette 29 Apr. 1921.

South of Deepriver

Here's a South of Deepriver social column that might be mildly interesting if you're related to these people. Also, John Killigrew, moving up in politics, is attending the inauguration of Warren T. McCray; John's brother, William, seems to be doing well in his oil business with Lewis Barnes and Calvin Shearer.



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From the Hobart News, 13 Jan. 1921.

Ross Township Graduates

There are several familiar names among the Ross Township graduates — and this was graduation from the eighth grade, not high school; none of these schools (save Merrillville, mentioned at the end of the article) had high-school classes, and a brief check on some of these children shows them in the age range of 12 to 14 years.

This article predicted that the new Ainsworth school would be ready for the next school year, which I suppose means the autumn of 1920.


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You will also notice Charles Goldman's ad, at right.

Here's another ad, in case you were wondering who the local sellers of United States Tires were:




Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ Advertisement. Hobart Gazette 21 May 1920.
♦ "Ross Township Schools." Hobart Gazette 21 May 1920.