Lulu Is Going to a Big Dance Tonight

About 112 years ago today, Lulu was looking forward with excitement to a "big dance" in the evening.


(Click on images to enlarge)

I say about 112 years because I'm not completely sure about the postmark. It looks most like 1913 to me, but it could also be 1916 or 1918. Here's a high-resolution scan:



For the sake of completeness, here's the front of the postcard …



… but clearly it's just a generic postcard that merchants could have printed up with the name of their town stamped in the designated space. It was probably cheaper than the postcards with photos of Hobart scenes.


The postcard's recipient, Ada Watts, had been born in 1894 to John and Zilla Watts. The family lived and farmed in Washington Township, Porter County. This 1895 plat map is the earliest I could find showing John and Zilla's farm:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from https://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1895Plats/Washington-1895.jpg.


The Watts family had ties to Ross Township, going back at least to 1850. (I am going to have to do a separate post on the Wattses.)

Ada lived on her parents' farm through the 1910 Census, but by 1920 had moved to Valparaiso and was working as a saleswoman. In 1922 she married Eugene Taylor Nowlin. In 1930 the two of them were back in Washington Township, running a dairy farm. The 1940 Census shows them still living on a farm, but Taylor had become an automobile dealer by then. I don't know who was doing the farming: their son, Irvin, was only 11 years old, and Taylor's father, living with them, described himself as a "retired farmer." Ada herself was a "housewife."

Eight years later, Taylor's life was cut short by a railroad accident during a snowstorm:


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Meets Death at Rail Crossing," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 23 Jan. 1948.

The 1950 Census tells us that the widowed Ada (still in Washington Township) went to work as a cook making lunches in a public school, while Irvin, 21 years old, worked in a steel mill.

In 1959, Ada married Laurence Thatcher.[1] They were together for 21 years — only one year less than her first marriage. Still, when their marriage was ended by her death in 1981, she was buried beside her first husband.


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Obituaries," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 23 Feb. 1981.

♦    ♦    ♦
So that's Ada, our postcard's recipient. What about its sender, Lulu? She hasn't given us her surname, to tell us who she was. We're going to have to guess.

My money is on Lulu Strong. Why? — because that's the only Lulu I know.

But seriously, not only were Lulu and Ada somehow related (Lulu's grandmother had been a Watts), the two young women were friends. For example, I find in my newspaper notes a mention of Lulu Strong making the trip out from Hobart to visit Ada's family in 1911: "Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Guernsey, Fred Hillman, Harry Phillips, Harry Moran, Ross Guernsey and Lulu Strong attended a party at John Watts near Coburg[2] Saturday night. They made the trip by auto."[3]

Lulu Strong would have been about 18 in 1913, when the postcard was sent: prime dancing age. All the more so if the postmark is actually 1916 or 1918. It wasn't until December 1919 that she settled down and became Mrs. John Aley. Which didn't mean that her dancing days were over, anyway.

I hope she had fun at her big dance.


_______________
[1] "Thatcher-Nowlin November Nuptials Just Revealed," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 5 Jan. 1960.
[2] You can see Coburg on the 1895 plat map above. Steve Shook has written up the story of that lost village.
[3] "Personal Mention," Hobart News, 2 Nov. 1911. If there was only one auto involved, it must have been crowded. By the way, "Mrs. Melvin Guernsey" was Lulu's sister, Verna.

Nuts to You

While indexing the Hobart Historical Society's earliest Union Sunday School record book, which appears to begin in 1868, I came across this page. Some earnest person carefully recorded something (attendance?) about these young* Sunday scholars … and then some irreverent person came and scrawled "nuts to you" and perhaps left those smudges with his or her dirty hands.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The expression, "nuts to you," seems out of place in 1868. We know it was in use in 1930s-40s — I keep running across this example:

"Please eliminate the expression 'nuts to you' from Egbert's speech." [Request from the Hays Office regarding the script of "The Bank Dick," 1940]**

However, my internet research doesn't turn up any information about how far before 1940 it goes back. So I shouldn't jump to conclusions. But I picture a bored 13-year-old circa 1940 nosing around in the attic when the adults were away, finding this ancient record of good little children, and writing something impertinent for the sheer fun of it.

________________
*Just to look at a few: John Shearer would have been about 12 years old in 1868; George Shearer, 10; John Frank, 11 (he was the son of William and Salinda Frank; and Simeon Brown, 13.
**E.g., http://www.dictionary.com/browse/nuts.

A Strong Marriage

Hobart News, 25 Dec. 1919.
(Click on image to enlarge)

This happy announcement reminded me that I had not yet mentioned the Strong family. Worse than that, I hadn't even done any research on them, though the name comes up pretty often in the social columns, and I'd gotten the impression that they'd been around here forever.

Which a little research confirms, if by "forever" you mean "since 1850," as that's the earliest I can find this branch of the Strong family in Ross Township — this branch consisting of Asa and Frances Strong and their descendants, one of whom was Thomas Strong, the father of Lulu. Thomas wasn't actually here in 1850, since he wasn't born until 1854.

Here is their farm in 1874:



(Folks, I just recently realized I've been mislabeling present-day U.S. 30 on a lot of my maps, so I only hope this is right.)

In 1842, Asa Strong married Frances Watts in Lake County. They had four children, Thomas being the youngest. At the age of 23, Thomas married the 19-year-old Phoebe Hollister in Porter County. They had five children, of whom three survived to adulthood: Arthur, Verna and Lulu.

Sometime between 1900 and 1910, Thomas and Phoebe moved with their daughters to Hobart. Thomas worked as a carpenter while they rented out their farm (to, I believe, Reinhart Doepping). In 1910, their daughter, Verna, married Melvin Guernsey. That autumn, both Verna and her brother Arthur — who had married in 1900 — returned with their spouses to southern Ross Township and the farming life, and the young Strong and Guernsey families became familiar figures in Ainsworth/Deep River social news. Lulu stayed in Hobart with her parents, working at the Thompson store and falling in love.

I don't know much about the groom's family — they don't seem to have lived in this area before 1910. David Aley was a carpenter, his wife Callie a homemaker; David's widowed mother lived with them. John was their only child.

The young couple may indeed have been building their own house, but for the present they would live with John's parents, Lulu staying at home with the mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law (God help them all) while John worked at a steel mill.


Sources:
♦ 1850 Census.
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Aley-Strong." Hobart Gazette 26 Dec. 1919.
♦ "Aley-Strong." Hobart News 25 Dec. 1919.
♦ "Finds Gas." Hobart Gazette 12 Apr. 1912.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 19 Aug. 1910; 30 Sept. 1910.
♦ "Personal and Local Mention." Hobart News 9 Apr. 1913.

Gernenz Report: More Land and More Trouble

(Click on image to enlarge)
On this image from the 1926 Plat Book, the whole Gernenz farm is outlined in red; the parcels owned by Fred Gernenz at least since 1891 are outlined in green; and Charles' 80-acre purchase from Emil Klemm in 1917 is outlined in purple.

It's been a long time since we've heard from the Gernenz family.

Charles Gernenz's purchase during the summer of 1916 of an 80-acre parcel south of Ainsworth went unreported until February 1917. The land was known as the "old Watts farm," and the 1891 Plat Book shows 80 acres belonging to Joseph Watts sandwiched between two parcels belonging to Fred Gernenz, Charles' father. Sometime after 1891 the land passed into the hands of Otto Klemm, who sold it to Charles. Otto remained on the land for several more months, then announced that he was moving to a farm near Crown Point, and Charles would have possession of this parcel in March. He intended to farm it, along with his other 300 acres, with the help of his four sons, William, Martin, John and Carl, who then ranged in age from 21 to 12.

♦    ♦    ♦
There were two houses on the Gernenz farm, separate but not far apart. One was occupied by the Charles Gernenz family; the other by his elderly parents, Fred and Anna, and their oldest grandson, William.

Bright and early on a Monday morning, February 19, Charles went over to the other house to wake William up. No one answered when he knocked, or called out, so he opened the door to go in — and found himself breathing coal gas. The air inside the house was thick with it. Charles hurried in to check on his parents and son, and to his horror found all three of them unconscious.

He probably carried them out of the house — perhaps his other sons helped him — and laid them down in the warmth and safety of the other house. Several hours passed before Fred and William returned to their senses, and the 80-year-old Anna remained unconscious until evening.

Later they tried to piece together what had happened. William remembered smelling coal gas when he returned to the house around midnight on Sunday. He had checked the stove and found a door open on it, which he closed. Then he went to bed. As to how the stove door had fallen open again, they could only guess that Fred, hearing William come in, had gotten out of bed and bumped against the stove in his grogginess, then retired again without realizing anything was wrong.

All three recovered fully.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Family of Three Nearly Asphyxiated." Hobart Gazette 23 Feb. 1917.
♦ "General News." Hobart Gazette 2 Feb. 1917.
♦ "Personal and Local Mention." Hobart News 22 Feb. 1917.

Our Musical Postmaster

(Click on image to enlarge)
Advertisement from the Hobart Gazette of May 13, 1904.

Hugh Dotzer came to the United States from Germany in 1881 or 1882 at about 20 years of age. In 1888 he married Eva Peck in Porter County, Indiana. By 1900 they were living in Union Township, Porter County, and had three children: Matilda, 11; John, 6; and Valeska, 2. Hugh called himself a farmer, but out among the cows and the corn he worked with the soul of a musician.

Sometime between 1900 and 1904 he began selling Adam Schaaf pianos. I do not know precisely when he moved to Ainsworth, or if there were intervening residences between Union Township and Ainsworth — the family's later history showed a tendency to move around.

On January 28, 1904, Hugh was appointed postmaster of Ainsworth, succeeding Frank Coyle, who had resigned.

The appointment apparently caused some disruption to Hugh: a month later, he announced: "Having taken charge of the Post Office at Ainsworth, I will be selling stock of Adam Schaaf pianos and organs at cost, warranted ten years. This offer good for a few days only."

He may have sold them at cost for only a few days, but he continued selling them at a profit for the remainder of his stay in Ainsworth. He ran ads like the one pictured above regularly throughout 1904 and early 1905.

In May 1904, when the people of Ainsworth organized a Sunday school, Hugh served as organist. That same month he began advertising to give piano and organ lessons every Friday to students in Ainsworth and Hobart.

Hugh's tenure as postmaster was brief. By late May he asked to be released from his duties "for the good of the service" because, as far as I can tell, the quarters he occupied did not offer suitable space for a post office. He recommended William Raschka to replace him, and William was appointed postmaster on May 24, 1904.

Hugh's living space must have been small, or else overrun with pianos and organs. The Grand Trunk's Ainsworth agent, P.H. Swain, and his wife lived for a time with the Dotzers. In September, Swain announced that because the "Dotzer house [was] too small" he and his pregnant wife were going to move to the "Chester house." If he meant they were going to live with Henry Chester, the crowding chez Dotzer must have been terrible indeed to make a man willing to run such a risk.

When the Ainsworth baseball team gave a dance at Ed Sauter's hall in June, Hugh was among the musicians.

At the late-summer Lake County fair, Hugh had the largest musical display — four Adam Schaaf pianos, an organ and over a thousand pieces of sheet music — beating even the Lion Store and the Kimball Co. He had to cancel his usual Friday lessons that week so he could supervise his fair display. In September, he reported that he had sold pianos to Frank Abel, a Hobart builder; Sedley's James Hardesty; and Frank Graves, who lived near Valpo.

That same month, he also announced that he had purchased ten acres in Crown Point and intended to move there in March 1905.

His musical business went on as he made improvements to his Crown Point property. In October he furnished the new Deep River church with an organ; in November he made a trip to Hammond to sell pianos; in December, Christ Heck bought a piano and Miss Martha Heck became one of Hugh's pupils.

On New Year's Day 1905, the Dotzer family hosted a large dinner, the guests including the Morgan Blachly family, Mr. and Mrs. J. Watts and the Frank Graves family. In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Fred Harney and the whole Michael Foreman family visited the Dotzers.

Hugh assured his students that he would continue to teach them after his move to Crown Point. He planned a class recital to take place on February 18.

In January 1905, a "Notice of Commendation" appeared in the Hobart Gazette, placed by some of Hugh's students or their parents:

We, the undersigned patrons of Mr. H. Dotzer, hereby express our esteem and regard for him as a teacher. We are sorry to see him move away from our midst, yet are glad to know that he will continue as our teacher, and heartily recommend him to all.

Elsie Piske, May Abel, Mrs. D. Owens, Ella Jonas, W. Wilson, Dr. Morton, C. Heck, S. Lightner, C. Schnabel, M. Blachly, W. Raschka, M. Wagoner, John Gruel, Miss T. Triebess, John Springman, H. Carey, Clara Sauter, Etta Mander, H. Stevens.

Early in the afternoon on Saturday, February 18, two sleighloads of pianists and spectators drove from Ainsworth to the spacious home of Mr. and Mrs. Seward Lightner in Hobart, where the recital began at 2:00 p.m. It was well attended, with about 20 student performers from Hobart and Ainsworth, and an audience of their family and friends; fortunately Alwin Wild, a Hobart undertaker, had furnished additional chairs.

March came and Hugh went to Crown Point, suspending lessons for three weeks while he got settled.

Whether he resumed them, and for how long, I do not know. In May of 1907 the Gazette mentioned, rather off-handedly, that Hugh had moved to Danville, Illinois. November of 1907 found him in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offering piano and organ lessons as well as the tuning and repairing of instruments.

After that we lose sight of him. It seems he stayed in Fort Wayne; he died there in March 1918. The 1920 census reports the widowed Eva Dotzer working as a live-in servant in a Fort Wayne home.

Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Ainsworth Pick-Ups." Hobart Gazette 9 Sept. 1904; 23 Sept. 1904; 30 Sept. 1904; 7 Oct. 1904; 21 Oct. 1904; 4 Nov. 1904; 25 Nov. 1904; 23 Dec. 1904; 6 Jan. 1905; 13 Jan. 1905; 27 Jan. 1905; 17 Feb. 1905; 24 Feb. 1905.
♦ Ballantyne, Dorothy and Robert Adams. Along the Route: A History of Hobart, Indiana, Post Offices and Postmasters. Hobart: The Hobart Historical Society, Inc., 1992.
♦ Dotzer, Hugh. Advertisement. Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette 24 Nov. 1907.
♦ Dotzer, Hugh. Advertisement. Hobart Gazette 13 May 1904.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 26 Feb. 1904; 27 May 1904; 3 June 1904; 10 June 1904; 26 Aug. 1904; 9 Sept. 1904; 9 Dec. 1904; 10 May 1907.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 5 Feb. 1904; 10 Mar. 1905.
♦ "Notice of Commendation." Hobart Gazette 6 Jan. 1905.
♦ "Sunday School Organized at Ainsworth." Hobart Gazette 20 May 1904.