Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 5)

(continued from Part 4)


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Now I shall deal with the names Glattli and Mankey, because I think they are related. Why do I think that? First, here is Edward Mankey's 1963 death notice:


Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), May 6, 1963.

Who on earth (I asked myself) was this surviving sister, Mrs. Louise Mounts? The only Mankey girl I knew of was Sophie Mankey Triebess. So I went looking for Louise, and eventually found her death certificate.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Louise's mother was Dorothea Mankey.

Dorothea had become a widow in 1889, when her husband, William, died. William was the father of Henry, Eddie, and Willie, as well as Sophie.

William and Dorothea are elusive. I can't find them in the 1880 Census or any earlier one, nor can I find a marriage record for them. They likely were married around 1880, if Sophie, born in 1881, was their first child. Her birthplace was Indiana, while the boys all were born in Illinois (William, 1883; Edward, 1885; Henry, 1888). Dorothea had a local connection here: her sister, Minnie Brockmiller, became Mrs. Christ Passow in 1885 and resided in Hobart. That marriage had taken place in Cook County, Illinois, so perhaps the Brockmillers lived in the Chicago area.

After William's death, apparently Dorothea married Carl aka Charles Glattli — but again, I can't find a record of that marriage. According to a family tree someone compiled on Ancestry.com, Anna Glattli was born in November 1890, so Dorothea may have been her mother. (Anna died in Illinois in 1920; her death certificate is not online.) That would account for the Anna Glattli on our 1897-98 souvenir. Then Louise Antonie Glattli, the future Mrs. Mounts, was born in 1891.

Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli died in 1899 and is buried under the Mankey name. (She died in Chicago, but her residence was Ainsworth, Indiana, per the Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index. I cannot find a death notice in the local newspaper.) Carl/Charles Glattli survived her, and apparently remarried soon and moved to Chicago, if I've found the right people in the 1900 Census (and if the enumerator made a mistake in the "How many years married" column).

The Mankey children did not go to Chicago with their stepfather. The 1900 Census shows them scattered. While I can't find Sophie at all, I suspect she was living with relatives in Chicago, where she married Julius Triebess in 1901. William, age 16, was a hired farmhand living in the household of Michael and Mary Foreman. The 14-year-old Edward was living in the home of a Calumet Township farmer named William Gallagher; Eddie is described as a "servant" but is also "at school." I can't find their younger brother, Henry, in 1900, but in the 1910 Census he turns up in Hobart, in the home of Aunt Minnie and Uncle Christ, employed in a brickyard.

William married Lena Springman in 1906, and they farmed in Ross Township through the 1920 Census, but it looks as if they moved to Chicago by the 1930 Census.

Edward married Alvina Koeppen in 1911. They farmed in Porter County through the 1940 Census, but then moved to Hobart.

Henry got out of the sticks, married and resided in Chicago, but had moved to Calumet City by 1974, when he died.

Anna Glattli married a man named Charles Mosel in 1911 and lived out the rest of her short life in Blue Island, Illinois.

Louise Glattli married a Joseph Jackson in Blackford County, Indiana, in 1916, and after his death in 1937, married the Rev. Claude Mounts in Gary, Indiana, in 1938.

I can't believe how many hours of my life went into figuring this all out.

Finally, here is the death notice of Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli's mother, from the "Mortuary Record" column of the Hobart Gazette of March 31, 1905:

Mrs. Dora Brockmiller, mother of Mrs. Christ Passow, Jr., of this place, died suddenly at 3948 State street, Chicago, on Tuesday, March 28, 1905, aged 71 years. Services were held at the late residence at 12:15 yesterday and the remains were shipped to Hobart on the Milk Train and taken to the German Lutheran Church where services were conducted by Rev. Schuelke. The interment occurred in the Hobart cemetery.

The deceased is mourned by three children, Mrs. Minnie Passow, Henry Brockmiller and Mrs. Ida Quade.

No mention of the daughter who predeceased her, the ever-elusive Dorothea.

[to be continued]

Frederick Wallace Gordon

I have not finished with the Gordon family yet — I still have some obituaries to post. This one tells of the untimely death of E.R.'s brother.


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Hobart Gazette 5 May 1899.


The article has details about the funeral but does not tell us where Frederick was buried, nor can I find any information on that.

His wife, Amanda, was the daughter of Frederick and Wilhelmine (Passow) Triebess, and now I have another project: figuring out if this Triebess family was related to Julius, Tillie, and Lena.

Here Comes the Triebess Family … Again

Julius Triebess had moved his family from Chicago to Ainsworth in 1917 — and I'm still not sure if that was a return for them, or their first attempt to live on the farm Julius owned.

Whatever it was, that experience ended when they moved back to Chicago in 1919.

Now it's 1923, and the family (what's left of it) is returning to Ainsworth …


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Hobart Gazette 16 March 1923.

… not to farm, apparently, since they have rented the land to Sophie Triebess's brother, but only to live.

Down in the right-hand column, we learn that the Triebess farm had previously been rented to John H. Meyer … which might explain why there was an Andy Meyer graduating from (I believe) the Ainsworth school in 1922.

And below that item comes a little news about the Ainsworth Department Store under its new proprietor, Henry Paulus. Verna Guernsey, the lucky winner of a bag of flour, may still be occupying the Howard H. Smith farm.

By the way, I'm guessing that the "Raschke" in the article in the left-hand column entitled "Ready to Bore for Oil" is our own William Raschka, formerly of Ainsworth.


Elsewhere in the same issue of the Gazette, an ad for the Ainsworth Department Store.

"The Marriage of Her Brother"

I have previously gotten pretty well convinced that Julius Triebess married Sophie Mankey in Chicago on June 11, 1901. Thus, this little item from the "Miller Murmurings" column of the Hobart Gazette of June 14, 1901, pretty well convinces me that Julius and Lena Triebess were brother and sister: "Miss Lena Triebess went to South Chicago to attend the marriage of her brother."

Although that item does not specify June 11, it would be a great coincidence if two Triebess men with local ties were married in Chicago during the same week … and no mention of such a coincidence appeared in the local paper. Ergo, I am pretty well convinced.

She That Was Sophie Mankey

Thus far I haven't learned much about Julius Triebess and his family, but thanks to this little item from January 1923, I have learned that Sophie Triebess' maiden name was Mankey.


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Hobart Gazette 12 Jan. 1923.

With that information, I can be pretty sure Julius and Sophie were married in Chicago on June 11, 1901 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index). According her Indiana Death Certificate, her parents were William and Dorothea* (Brockmiller) Mankey … but they are proving elusive in the census records.

Her brother, William Mankey, farmed the east side of Randolph Street south of the Grand Trunk tracks.


Reported at the bottom of that column, Dr. L.M. Friedrich had minor car crash somewhere south of the intersection of Randolph Street and E. 73rd Avenue, where the Ed Niksch place lay.

Over in the left-hand column is a (partial, maybe) listing of who was in the local dairy business in January 1923.

__________________

*In death certificates of other relatives, her name is given as Dorothy or Doris.

John Wood School ca. 1962

The John Wood School looks freshly built in this aerial view:


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The image is not otherwise dated.

Here is the same image with a couple of features marked.



The old Foreman house is still standing, though its outbuildings (aside from the pump house) are gone. I have marked the location of the old wooden Ainsworth school according to what I have been told. I can't clearly see it in those trees, though I do see something that looks like a small building.

The Triebess house lies just outside the left border of the photo. That house was built in 1849 according to the county records. If that date is correct, we may also call it the old Horace Marble house (per the 1874 Plat Map) and maybe even the old Booth house, since members of the Booth family owned that land in 1848 and 1850, per Early Land Sales, Lake County.

The white house along the left border was built in 1939 according to county records, and I haven't yet found out yet who built it.

For Sale or Rent: Mysterious Places

Two items from the "All kinds of Wants" column in the Hobart Gazette of Sept. 8, 1922:

FOR RENT — My farm of 100 acres, on Lincoln Highway, south of Ainsworth. Julius Triebess, 6936 Michigan avenue, Chicago.

FOR SALE — My house, barn and acre tract at Fatout, south of old Deepriver schoolhouse, on C.&I. railroad. Otis Guernsey, Route 2, Crown Point.

I've been unsure about who, if anyone, has been renting the Triebess farm; I hope one of the papers will report on its new tenant.

That second item has taken up 'way more of my time than it should have. We know that Otis Guernsey's farm lay northeast of where Randolph Street crosses the C&O Railroad. When Harold Guernsey died in 1921, his obituary used the name "Putout" — which I believe to be a simple typographical error, since my notes from 1916 carry the first mention of "Fatout":

Delbert Young has moved into the new house which he has built on the road leading south of the Deepriver schoolhouse past "Fatout," the new railroad station. His new house and barn look fine.*

And now in 1922 we see it spelled "Fatout" again. Majority wins. But Google, which knows about everything, doesn't know about the village or railroad station called Fatout.**

And what about the railroad where Otis' property lay? Is "C.&I." a typo for "C.&O."? The C&O railroad has had several names, but I can't confirm that "C.&I." was among them. There was a railroad in Pennsylvania with those initials, which I didn't want to know but had to spend the time finding out because of this stupid little want ad. Is it any wonder I can't get anything done?

Well, if you want my theory on all this, here it is: the C&O Railroad built a new station circa 1916, probably about where Randolph crosses the tracks, called it Fatout after one of its bigwigs, but — in contrast to how thoroughly the station name "Ainsworth" was adopted — the name never really took hold among the locals and was forgotten until I came along nosing around in the old microfilm.

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Another mystifying item from the "Local Drifts" of the Hobart Gazette of Sept. 1, 1922:

H.F. Carey, who recently moved upon his farm, has rented his house and five acres south of 10th street to Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Bracken, who have leased the place for 14 months, and moved yesterday.

I don't know where the Carey house was. I used to think it was one of the older ones on the north side of 10th but according to this news item it was the south side. Or was just the five acres on the south side?

The item goes on to say that Mr. and Mrs. Howard Bracken would continue to occupy the Bracken place, moving into the big house from the small house. I gather that Mr. and Mrs. William Bracken are the parents of Howard. William was born on that farm and when he married, he and his wife took up housekeeping there, so this was the first time he'd ever lived off the old Bracken place. But the Bracken milk route — William's, I'm assuming, though it's not clear — would continue without interruption.


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Bracken land as shown on the 1908 Plat Map. The 1926 Plat Book shows the parcel on the west side of S.R. 51 belonging to someone else.

_______________
*"Additional Local News," Hobart Gazette 30 June 1916.
**It doesn't help that there was a Purdue U. professor named Paul Fatout who wrote about historical topics and whose name clogs up the Google searches.

Jawbreaker

This is not the first barn dance I've heard of at the Houck farm, which I believe was in Winfield Township, but it's the first jaw-breaking I've heard of there. The alleged jawbreaker was one of the Hahn boys who had lived on the McAuliffe farm, but by 1922 I expect he was out on his own. Kenneth Humes had long ago left a finger in Ainsworth.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 11 Aug. 1922.

Elsewhere, news of other acquaintances … Mrs. A.G. Ingram had been born Anne Fleck.

If I've got the right Triebesses, these are Julius and Sophia Triebess, who were living in Chicago while renting their Ainsworth-area farm. I leave it to people with more time than I have to figure out exactly how Sophia was Mrs. Christ Passow's niece, if they are interested.

I believe the farm Harve Carey was moving back to consisted of 160 acres in southeast Portage Township, Porter County.

The Epps family was recently bereaved.

And on his small farm in Union Township, Jacob Yager was breaking his back again picking strawberries.

"We Have Come to Stay"

Two smiling young women, a bicycle, and a snowy landscape.


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Handwritten notes on the back identify them:



The photo has no date, but based on their leg-of-mutton sleeves and apparent ages (Clara was born circa 1877, Lena circa 1879), I would put it close to the turn of the 20th century.

I'm not sure which is Lena and which is Clara. Comparing them both to the person identified as Lena Triebess in the Old Maids' Basketball Team, I think Lena is on the left. Also, here's a photo of Lena in 1916:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Lena and Clara worked together as schoolteachers at the Miller school during the school year beginning September 3, 1900. Lena continued teaching there for at least two more school years; Clara did not. The school's principal was a G.F. Peterson — this may have been the George F. Peterson who in June 1907 became Lena's husband.

Their marriage is the first time I can find either Lena or George in the official records. I naturally wondered whether Lena was related to Ainsworth's own Julius Triebess. In January 1900, "Julius and Tillie Triebess made a short visit with their sister Lena" in Miller — I just haven't been able to find anything to show me if that was our Julius. (In 1910, we find a 29-year-old Tillie Triebess living in Miller, teaching school, but that doesn't prove anything. There was also a Triebess family in Hobart — one of whom married Fred Thompson — but based on the matriarch's obituary, I don't think she could have had any closer relation than aunt to Lena or Julius, if related at all.)

Here's the Gazette's story of Lena and George's wedding:

One of the prettiest weddings occurring in Hobart took place at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Owen last Monday evening, June 24, 1907, when Miss Lena A. Triebess of this place and George F. Peterson, of Miller, were united in marriage. The ceremony was performed at 8:30 o'clock in the presence of about forty relatives and friends by the Rev. Bruce Brown, Ph.D., pastor of the Christian church at Valparaiso. The Methodist Episcopal service was used.

The bridge was attired in white and presented a most handsome appearance. She carried a shower bouquet of pink sweet peas. Mr. and Mrs. Owen's little daughter Jessie was flower girl and gracefully performed her part. The Owen home was extensively decorated, suitable for the occasion.

After congratulations, a fine wedding dinner was served, following which the bride and groom departed to their new home, which, for the present, will be a cottage on the beach at Lake Michigan north of Miller. Their future residence will be either at Miller or at Gary, where at present the groom is engaged in his chosen profession, that of electrical engineer.

The groom was raised at Miller, educated at our public schools and two years ago he graduated from the department of electrical engineering at the Purdue University. The past year and a half he was engaged in teaching manual training in the public schools at St. Paul, Minn., while the bride has claimed Hobart as her home, having lived for a number of years at the Owen residence. After attending our public schools, she began teaching eight years ago, having taught five years in Miller and the past three years in the Hobart schools, having been very successful in her school work. Both young people are very popular among their friends and acquaintances and are highly respected in our community. We join their numerous friends in extending well-wishes and happiness.

Those present from out of town were: From Miller — Mrs. Hannah Peterson, the groom's mother, and his sister Clara, Mrs. Aug. Olson and two daughters and Prof. Frank Fitzpatrick; from Lake [Station] — Mrs. V.P. Babcock [née Esther Hazelgreen] and Misses Clara and Eleanor Hazelgreen; from Chicago — the bride's brother Julius and family and sisters Amanda and Annie; from Valpo — the bride's sister Tillie, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Kitchen and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Foster; from Cincinnati — Chas. Langeman, a classmate of the groom while in colleage, and from Kentucky, Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Boone.

That still doesn't tell us if this Julius Triebess was the Ainsworth Julius.

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As for Clara Hazelgreen, by 1910 she had left northwest Indiana and, along with several of her siblings, was living in Seattle, Washington, describing herself as a missionary teacher. It appears she lived out her life in Seattle, and now rests there. (Her findagrave.com entry includes photo of three people identified as Lena, George, and Clara.)

This undated portrait of Clara Hazelgreen was taken in Seattle:





Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "A Pleasant June Wedding." Hobart Gazette 28 June 1907.
♦ "Deaths." "Mrs. Minnie Triebess." Hobart Gazette 14 Feb. 1935.
♦ "Miller Murmurings." Hobart Gazette 12 Jan. 1900.
♦ "School Begins Sept. 3rd." Hobart Gazette 24 Aug. 1900.
♦ "School Teachers For Next Year." Hobart Gazette 26 July 1901.

Visiting the Farm

In May 1922 Julius Triebess came down from Chicago to remind me that he existed, and to visit his farm just south of Ainsworth. I do not know who was living there at this time; the last I heard (autumn 1919) it had been rented to the Harris brothers, but in November 1921 they had held a sale of livestock, machinery, etc. ("Public Sale," Hobart News 17 Nov. 1922) — an event that usually preceded a departure.


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 12 May 1922.

Among the other items that caught my attention was the detour sign "at the Deepriver schoolhouse"; that is, at 73rd and Randolph. So which way did that sign direct travelers? North, I suppose, along Randolph, and thence the motorist would take Ainsworth Road, to County Line Road, and again turn north, and take either the road (450 N) that passes by the site of the Hoosier's Nest, wend their way along the back roads to Wheeler, thence to … no, they'd probably be wiser to stick to main-traveled roads, taking County Line Road north all the way to Cleveland/700 N, then known as the Hobart-Valpo Road.

Speaking of the (former) Deepriver schoolhouse — yet another dance there. It was a lively place.

I have often noticed the dignified two-story brick house on the north side of E. 10th Street, just east of the intersection with S. Hobart Rd. Now I know it was George Lutz's house. Here is his property as it appeared in the 1926 Plat Book:


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Raymond Triebess

1921 was a year of significant progress toward the use of insulin, the first effective treatment for diabetes in medical history. But this progress came too late for Raymond Triebess. He would never return with his family to "our farm."


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From the Hobart Gazette of 25 Mar. 1921.

Evelyn's Birthday

From the Triebess scrapbook.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Going by the 1920 Census, I believe July 19, 1920 was Evelyn's 17th birthday.

Evelyn's 14th

From the Triebess scrapbook.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Ninety-three years ago today, at about this time, Evelyn Triebess was at a dinner party.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I just popped in to mark St. Patty's Day, or rather to let Evelyn Triebess do it for me, via her high-school scrapbook.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


(Still on break. Getting lots of sleep. It's great.)

Misery in Chicago

Evelyn Triebess was the only one in her family having a fun over the winter of 1920, as the "Local Drifts" column of the Hobart Gazette reported on March 19, 1920.

John C. [Julius] Triebess was out from Chicago Tuesday looking after some interests at his farm, south of Ainsworth. Mrs. Triebess, he said was in a hospital, recovering from an operation last week Wednesday for tumor, and his son is very poorly, having lost 30 pounds in weight since they moved to Chicago last fall. He has some heart trouble, and has to remain in bed most of the time.

Speaking of Raymond Triebess, Evelyn happened to preserve in her scrapbook the record of his transfer in 1917 from a Chicago school to the Ainsworth school.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

How Evelyn Spent Valentine's Day

From Evelyn Triebess' scrapbook of her senior year in Chicago's Parker High School, we have this account of her Valentine's Day party:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The Pollyanna Girls

In September 1919, Evelyn Triebess was living in Chicago when she and some high-school classmates formed a club called the "Pollyanna Girls."



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Images from the Triebess scrapbook, courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Pollyanna had been published in book form in 1913. I expect Evelyn and her friends had read it when they were about the same age as the title character (11 years old), and were quite sincere in their admiration of an outlook on life that nowadays we tend to think of as unrealistic if not slightly annoying.

"I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," from Oh Look! (1918 recording).

"Our Farm"

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

"Our farm" was the Triebess farm. This photo comes from a little scrapbook put together by Evelyn Triebess after the family returned to Chicago, recording the events of her last year in high school. That scrapbook is now at the Hobart Historical Society museum.





So Evelyn spelled it "Triebes," but if you think I'm going to go back through this blog and correct every spelling of "Triebess," you overestimate me.

Unfortunately the scrapbook contains almost nothing relating directly to Ainsworth, aside from the photo of "our farm," which tells us very little — no date, and the young woman in the photo is not even identified, though I would guess it's Evelyn herself. I don't know where the orchard would have been. The Triebess land roughly coincides with John Wood Elementary School and the Christian Assembly church on the north side of 73rd, and, on the south side, Calumet Orthopedics and Prosthetics, and part of Veterans Memorial Park.

The Commute Was Killing Him

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I believe this was the Julius Triebess farm, as it appeared in 1926 Plat Book.

For over two years, Julius Triebess had been a commuter: a trip to Chicago, 24 hours as a fireman, then a trip to Ainsworth and 24 hours as a farmer. It was a life of perpetual tiredness. (I know; I myself used to commute between Chicago and Ainsworth.) After two years and a few months, Julius couldn't take it anymore. He had to choose whether to be a fireman in Chicago or a farmer in Ainsworth.

He chose Chicago, but not so completely as to sell his land. His livestock and his farming equipment, yes …

… but the land he would hang on to, renting it out to a couple of brothers, Charles and Lee Harris, who up until then had been renting the Albert Halsted farm northwest of Ainsworth.

And so Julius and Sophie, and their two teenaged children (Evelyn and Raymond), would be living at 6936 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago in January 1920, when the census came around.

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The Gazette of October 31, 1919, aside from its comments on Julius, mentions a few other people we know, or wish we knew:



I must have missed some news about Earl Blachly: as far as I knew, he was living on his own farm, having moved back there in 1914. Apparently that didn't last long! But now he's going to try farming once again.

"Miss Chester" would be Jennie, now about 21 years old. Her position must have been in one of Hobart's elementary schools, as I don't see her among the high-school faculty in the 1920 Aurora yearbook.

As for the "Jolly Four," I don't know who they were, but I wish I did.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 16 Oct. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 31 Oct. 1919.
♦ "Public Sale." Hobart News 30 Oct. 1919.

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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