Hobart Then and Now: Nickel Plate Garage/Town Hall

1923, and 2023[1]




(Click on images to enlarge)

I don't know when the Nickel Plate Garage was built: I didn't note its construction during my microfilm reading and can't find that information in any online source. At present I can only guess that it must have been built after 1910, when it fails to appear in the Sanborn map, and before April of 1917, when I find my earliest note of its existence.[2]

Here is the garage as shown on the 1922 Sanborn map:


(Click on image to enlarge)

In November 1917, Frank Beltzhoover (by then the sole proprietor) sold the Nickel Plate Garage to William Boyd Owen,[3] a son of the W.B. Owen of brickyard fame. The younger William was born in 1881 or '82 and married Eva Kitchen in Chicago in 1901. In the 1910 Census, William Jr., a Hobart resident, gave his occupation as "Superintendent" of a "Fire Proofing" business — that would be the brickyard, I believe. In the 1920 Census, as might be expected, his occupation was "Auto Salesman."

In January 1920 Paul Wehner bought 50 percent ownership of the Nickel Plate Garage and became its supervisor.[4] Born in 1898, he was the son of Andrew and Anna (Gottlieb) Wehner of Calumet Township. (I would expect to find him in Hobart in the 1920 Census, but I can't find him there or anywhere else.) In 1926, he married Leona Traeger. Sadly, she died the following year from complications of pregnancy; the infant died as well. Paul never remarried. By 1930 he had moved to Michigan City, working as a foreman in an "auto shop," but he came back to Hobart before the decade was out and by 1937 was in some sort of business partnership with Thomas Crisman.[5] He died of pneumonia in January 1937.

W.B. Owen had died in 1928 in South Bend.

♦    ♦    ♦

I haven't been able to find out much about what's on the other side of the card.


(Click on image to enlarge)

The addressee was Eva (Drake) Stevens (or Stephens), a lifelong resident of Michigan as far as I can determine. The sender, Edith S., might have been any of several Ediths in Hobart whose surname begins with S and who were old enough, per the 1920 Census, to be sending postcards. Or she might not have been a Hobart resident at all. With so little information, I can't form even one of my wacky theories about how the sender and receiver might be connected.

_______________
[1] I know the Google street view is from 2022. The view hasn't changed in a year.
[2] "Frailey & Beltzhoover Sell 22 Cars Since January 1st," Hobart News, 5 Apr. 1917. The owners were Clarence Frailey and Frank (or maybe Calvin) Beltzhoover.
[3] "W.B. Owen Buys Nickel Plate Garage of Frank Beltzhoover," Hobart Gazette, 15 Nov. 1917.
[4] "Owen and Wehner New Owners Nickel Plate Garage," Hobart Gazette, 8 Jan. 1920.
[5] "Lake Co. Courts," Hammond Times, 4 Feb. 1937.

People I've Been Ignoring

The first thing that caught my eye on this page was the announcement about Henry Paulus and the premiums he awarded to lucky locals on July 28, 1923.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News, Aug. 2, 1923.

Of course we know who John Miller was, and Mrs. Ernest Sitzenstock might be Mrs. Ernest Sr. or Mrs. Ernest Jr. But Mrs. Frank Steiner? — why don't I know who she is? After poking around in the records, my best guess at her identity is this: she had been Bertha Grosch, who shows up in the 1910 Census at the age of 27, living with her aunt and uncle in Chicago, working as a saleslady in a department store. Somehow she met and fell in love with Frank Stiener[1] (Jr.), who in 1910 was working as a hired man on a farm in Eagle Creek Township, Lake County, Indiana. He was the son of Frank (Sr.) and Susan Stiener, Austro-Hungarian immigrants and farmers in Winfield Township.

Frank Stiener, Jr. and Bertha Grosch were married December 20, 1911, and they came back to the farmland of northwest Indiana. In the "Personal and Local Mention" column of the Hobart News of November 18, 1915, I find this item: "The 3-months-old baby of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Steiner [sic], living south of Ainsworth, is seriously ill with bronchial pneumonia." In the 1920 Census, we find Frank and Bertha living on rented land in southern Ross Township, operating a dairy farm. They had three children under the age of seven: Frances, Robert, and Clayton. And now, 1923, they have an aluminum kettle.

Moving along … the Argo orchestra is still a mystery.

We've met Clinton and Ida Peck before. Linus Peck was their son, born ca. 1897 (1910 Census). In 1919 he had married Martha Frame[2] in Chicago (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index), and they lived in Hobart.

We know Ezra Gilpin and we know he worked the Lake Street "J" crossing. Somebody else can investigate Patrick Glynn.

Just below that, another new (to me) name. Martha Schiesser was the daughter of Michael and Catherine Wehner, a farming family. In the 1900 Census, they lived in Center Township, but by 1908 had moved to Ross Township and owned 148 acres surrounding Lottaville:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from the 1908 Plat Map.

On May 11, 1920, Martha married Frank Schiesser (Indiana Marriage Collection). He was one of the many sons of Adam and Mary (Dumbsky) Schiesser, who owned land in Ross Township as early as 1900, though I can't find it on the 1908 Plat Map … but Adam's father, I believe, died young, and his mother, Catherine, took as her second husband Nickolaus Thiel, which might explain why the land owned by Cath. Thiel in the 1908 map above would end up in the hands of A. Schiesser in the 1926 Plat Book. The land north and east of it, belonging to Chas. L. Merrill in 1908, would belong to B. Schiesser by 1926, but that's another story.

I interpret the statement about her being buried at Turkey Creek to mean Ss. Peter and Paul Cemetery, but findagrave.com lists her in Calumet Park Cemetery.


_______________
[1] The censuses and other records usually spell it Stiener (as does the record of his grave on findagrave.com, though I have not been out there myself to see the grave marker), while the only two newspaper references I have noted spell it Steiner.
[2] Her parents were Newton and Annie Frame, and I have no idea if these were any relation to the various Frames who are all over the "South of Deepriver" columns.

Of Garages and Grief

At Newman's garage in Hobart, on a July day in 1922, a car was brought in by some men who didn't have sense enough to keep from getting rowdy and attracting attention when they were carrying moonshine.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 13 July 1922.

Meanwhile, the Nickel Plate Garage slipped out of William Fisher's reach. We shall see if he continues operating out of the old whip factory with his surviving eldest son, Floyd. (He had two more sons, but they were still schoolboys.)


Additional Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Lands Four in Jail." Hobart Gazette 14 July 1922.

Ross Twp. Farmers' Institute

I gather that in January 1922 Mary Baird Chester McDaniel was still living on the Chester farm, or somewhere in Ross Township, with her granddaughters, since one of them — Helen, now about 13 or 14 years old — walked away with three first prizes at the Ross Township Farmers' Institute.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 2 Feb. 1922.

Glen Peterson didn't do so badly either. About 13 years old, he was the youngest son of Mabel Peterson, Secretary of the Institute and writer of this report.

Vernon and Emery Hurlburt were the only children of Jacob and Augusta, who farmed some 80 acres at the northeast corner of E. 73rd Ave. and Grand Blvd.

Irvin Wojahn was the oldest child of Louis and Lena (Fasel) Wojahn, who had supposedly retired from farming in 1917 — but I can't find them in the 1920 census to see what they were up to.

Dorothy Mankey was the only daughter of William and Lena (Springman) Mankey.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Ross Twp. Farmers Hold Big Meeting." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1922.

On the Ainsworth Stone Road

We know it as Grand Boulevard or State Road 51, but to the 1920 census enumerator it was the "South Hobart Road to Ainsworth," and to editor of the Hobart News, writing in 1921, it was the "Ainsworth stone road." Edwin and Carry Humes had been living in a rented house along that road, with their four children, when the 1920 Census recorded them. In June 1921 they bought that house — the "Hettie Ryan residence," which was in Hobart Township, but since the plat maps don't show parcels of three acres, I don't know exactly where.

Further south on the same road, in Ross Township, the Grabowskis continued their improvements to the old Carlson place. My current theory is that the red brick house on the west side of S.R. 51, on the north bank of the Deep River, is the old Carlson place, but that's just my current theory.

Also, the Yellowstone Trail got re-routed through the heart of Hobart …


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Local and Personal," Hobart News 16 June 1921.

… and a Buick report.