Death at the Rossow Crossing … Again

Two years after witnessing a deadly train-vs.-automobile wreck at the Pennsy crossing near his home on present-day Wisconsin Street, William Rossow was among the first on the scene of another, equally horrifying, at the same crossing.


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Hobart Gazette, June 22, 1923

This story establishes that it was indeed Herman Harms who bought the cottage being moved from New Street, although here its destination is given as the "H. & S. subdivision." So Herman, along with his father Henry, his father-in-law William Rossow, and his brother-in-law Ed Niksch (Miksch is a misprint) were at work on the house a short distance southeast of the Wisconsin Street crossing.

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An item in the next column to the right mentions the filming of a 1915 celebration in Hobart. That film still exists, I am told, somewhere in the archives of the Hobart Historical Society. It hasn't been digitized, and trying to run the original through a projector would be foolhardy. Someday, perhaps, when both the film and the money to digitize it are found, we'll be able to view motion pictures of Hobart in 1915.

In the right-hand column, we find T.H. Grabowski building an addition to his home — an addition that, fortunately, is identifiable on this current sketch from the Lake County Assessor's website.



This confirms what I conjectured: that the old Carlson house is at 6430 Grand Boulevard. Per the county records, it was built in 1879.

Finally, a new bridge was going up over the Deep River where Ainsworth Road crosses it, known as the Nolte bridge since the road passes through the Nolte property there. When I first moved out here in 1990, there was a metal truss bridge similar to the one at 73rd Avenue — I wonder if that could have been the 1923 bridge? It was replaced within about a year of my moving here, and I never thought to take a photo of it.

I am curious to know what sort of bridge was there before 1923.


Additional Source: "Two More Victims of Grade Crossing Saturday When Mrs. John Clark and Daughter Margery Meet Death," Hobart News, June 21, 1923.

Mahala Burge Frame

Since this blog is full of Burges and Frames, I thought I should go back to 1912 and post this obituary, skipped over the first time …


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Hobart Gazette 1 Mar. 1912.

… not that it's particularly helpful, since it fails to name her parents or her children. But with a little research, we can try to remedy that.

Looking at the 1850 Census, we find J. and Julia Burge farming in Chautauqua County, New York. While the census does not include what relationship each member of the household has to its head, this household includes a 17-year-old Mahala Weaver, a 13-year-old Byron, and a nine-year-old Henry. This suggests that the obituary gave the date of Mahala's first marriage incorrectly. In the 1860 Census, still in Chautauqua County, we find a 27-year-old Mahala Weaver living with a 31-year-old carpenter, Oren Weaver, and a three-year-old Ida.

Sometime after 1860, the family came west. Orrin died in Porter County on June 9, 1866.** In 1867 Mahala married Levi Frame in Porter County (Indiana Marriage Collection). While I can't find them in the 1870 Census, another source* seems to place Levi Frame in Christian County, Illinois, by 1870; and that is where we find Mahala in the 1880 Census, by which time she was widowed. A child of her first marriage, the 17-year-old Arthur Weaver, was living with her, as well as a 10-year-old girl named Effie Brown, who was described as an adopted daughter. The children of the second marriage were: John (11 years old), Burton (10), Frank*** (6), and Jesse (4).

So that gives us the five sons mentioned in the obituary. I suppose the one surviving daughter was from the first marriage.****

Sometime during the next 20 years, Mahala left Illinois for Indiana. In the 1900 Census, she was living in Hobart with her youngest son, Jesse.

Well. That was a lot of research for a little bit of information.

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Elsewhere on that page from the Gazette, we find obituaries of people we've mentioned before — Patrick Sullivan and Ericka Pearson.

Marion Wilson was a member of the Wilson family of Union Township, which I've only recently noticed. The obituary says he was buried in the Boiling Springs cemetery, which may be the Leonard Family cemetery on Boiling Springs Road listed on the NWIGS site. If the obituary is correct, it seems he was later moved, as today he rests in Blachly Cemetery. His wife was a daughter of Harriet Towl Ragen.


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*Ancestry.com. Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
**According to his grave marker in Mosier Cemetery; the obituary states 1865.
***I swear the enumerator wrote "Freak," but that can't be right.
****Based on information at findagrave.com, I believe her name was Blanch.