Trench Mouth and a Twice-Broken Leg

In early December 1922 we find disease and an accident in the Ainsworth area. Alice Paine had to suspend her schooling while she battled a case of trench mouth, which sounds rather unpleasant. In the Goldman household, little Reva, only a few months after coming to America, was hospitalized. (And in the left-hand column we see that the Goldmans' store was going to be open every evening until Christmas!) On the former Otis Guernsey farm, James Jeffrey had broken the same leg twice.


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Hobart Gazette 8 Dec. 1922.

Happier news comes in the "Births" column — a new Wesley baby. I haven't completely ignored the Wesley family, but I have pretty well ignored this particular member of it. I had to go checking on Ancestry.com to get some basic information about William Wesley. Thanks to William's death certificate, I now know that his mother (his father's first wife) was Augusta Miller.

William was born in 1890 and named, apparently, for his grandfather (1900 Census). In 1917 he married the 18-year-old Pearl Auton (Indiana Marriage Collection), daughter of Harvey and Elma (Smith) Auton (1900 Census).

Per the 1920 Census, William and Pearl owned their own farm, somewhere in southeastern Ross Township. It may have been this small parcel shown in the 1939 Plat Book.


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(The 1926 Plat Book shows that land owned by "J.W." — probably John Wesley, William's father.)

By 1920 they had one little boy, Howard. The daughter born in 1922 was named Helen. They would have another three daughters (Thelma, Betty, and Elsie Mae) by the time of the 1940 Census.

A Wreck at the Ainsworth Corner

To someone reading about a car wreck in the Hobart News of September 1922, what did "the Ainsworth corner" mean? The corner south of Ainsworth, where present-day 73rd Avenue and Grand Boulevard meet, was notorious for wrecks, sometimes deadly, sometimes only painful. However, in this case …


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 7 Sept. 1922.

… I think "the Ainsworth corner" likely meant the intersection of present-day Ainsworth Road with Grand Boulevard. Hattie Sizelove was presumably coming from her farm east of Ainsworth, so leaving the Lincoln Highway at present-day Greene Street and taking Ainsworth Road to Grand would be a shortcut compared to staying on the Lincoln Highway all the way to Grand.

And Hattie's auto met John Wesley's just south of the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks.

I don't know whether this was John senior or John junior.

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In Hobart, the female population was looking forward to Friday or Saturday night and a trip to the Gem Theatre to see heartthrob Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik.


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Just Another Airplane Falling Out of the Sky

It wasn't as close to Ainsworth as usual when a U.S. mail plane fell out of the sky on November 18, 1921.


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Hobart News 24 Nov. 1921.

The Gazette said that the plane came down in "Wm. Mohl's field," and members of the Louis Boldt family were first on the scene. I can't find the Mohl, or Moehl, land; I can't find a farm owned by Louis Boldt; but here, for what it's worth, is the William Boldt farm on the 1908 Plat Map.


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Speaking of William Boldt (who was Louis' brother, I believe) — he was up to his own activities at this time: he had just sold his house in Hobart, and was holding an auction to sell off some of its contents.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 25 Nov. 1921.

I haven't talked about the Wesley family since the autumn of 1920, when John's sister, Anna, had married William Gernenz — except for a "South of Deepriver" column in June 1921 mentioning that John Wesley was pressing hay for H.H. Smith, and I don't know whether that's John Sr. or Jr. John Sr. was farming in the vicinity, of course, but John Jr., although a townie, earned his living by threshing and pressing hay for others with his own machinery.

Here is the Wesley land as shown in the 1926 Plat Book (it was identical in 1891 and 1908, and substantially the same in 1939):


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Anyway, it's John Jr. who is now going to farm in Ross Township, and maybe he will provide us with better gossip than his father did (not that I have any reason to hope).

John Jr., born May 25, 1889, was the middle son of three from John Sr.'s first marriage. By the age of 21 he had moved out of his father's house and hired on to work on the farm of William and Jennie Fisher. I'd be tempted to draw an interesting conclusion from that fact (for example, that he couldn't get along with his young stepmother, or, what is worse, got along with her too well), except that it was not uncommon for young men from farming families to hire on with neighbors.

Late in June 1917, John Jr. married Frances Mattmiller in Chicago. I'd be tempted to suppose that his having filled out his draft card a few weeks earlier had given him marriage fever, but really I have no evidence of that and I ought to stop thinking such things. And furthermore, he stayed married to Frances through 1940 at least, so no doubt it was a true love match. Anyway, in 1920 there they were in Hobart with one little son, being utterly respectable citizens.

By 1940 they had three children. Let us hope at least that one of the children will commit a youthful indiscretion.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ WWI Draft Cards.

Abscess on the Brain

I can't find the Harold Guernsey, Otis' son, in the 1920 census — not even in Montana, which is where his brother William had to go to fetch him when he became dangerously sick in June of 1921. Harold was about 21 years old at this time.


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Images from the Hobart News 23 June 1921.

All the other news on this page is much more pleasant, including an ice-cream social at the home of Arthur and Mary Strong, south of Deep River; and in Crown Point, a party for Elmer Bullock's 18th birthday.

In the left-hand column we find notices of an upcoming show based on the popular comic strip, The Gumps. The fact that it would be held under a "big rainproof tent" is alarming to those of us who know what waterproofed tents could do when they caught fire. But no reports of disaster came out of "Henpecked Andy" in this case.

Marriages and Other Transitions

Two young people with Ainsworth connections; two marriages.

After the coal-gas incident in 1917, William Gernenz was lucky to have a life to pledge to his bride in September 1920.

And Mildred Blachly had grown up on a farm near Ainsworth, a descendant of local farming families. Her grandparents were (the late) Morgan and Amelia Blachly, her parents Walter and Eva (Harper) Blachly.


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In spite of Anna Wesley's family being "well known people residing south of Ainsworth," I have not seen fit to mention them yet in the blog. I don't even have much on them in my notes. Let us hope this is because they lived quietly happy lives, not because I missed something juicy. It does appear that Anna's father, John, had lost his first wife (name unknown). In 1898 he married the 20-year-old Ida Sonntag, who became stepmother to John's three boys, the oldest of whom was about 13. Ida went on to bear him two daughters, Anna and Theresia. The Wesley land lay mostly at the intersection of (present-day) E. 83rd Ave. and Randolph Street — 40 acres on the northwest corner and 30 acres on the southeast corner, with another 20-acre parcel further south on Randolph. (Anna's oldest half-brother, Edward, had married Martha Sonntag's sister, Selma, in 1906.)

And so the newlywed Gernenzes settled down to farming near Ainsworth, and the young Kostbades took up residence in Valparaiso, washing their hands of both farming and Ainsworth.

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Another kind of transition — from life to death, or from death to life, by Frances Springman Schavey, without whom there would have been no Schavey envelope.



This obituary from the Gazette is a little confused — it was six sons and two daughters who survived her. [7/26/2013 update: more than a little confused, as it got her parents wrong too. Correction here.]

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Lastly, a mundane sort of transition: Amelia and May Blachly moved, yet again.


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The Gazette described Amelia's new house as "opposite the Hobart Lumber Co." (which was on the west side of Main, where the "lumber" part of Hobart Lumber is now). Two weeks early, Amelia had sold her home on Fourth Street, described as the former A.C. Thompson house, to one John Walsh.

Also note the item that mentions a couple of Dr. Clara Faulkner's relations by marriage. But Dr. Clara wasn't married anymore — not if I'm reading the 1920 census correctly. Sometime after the 1910 census, her husband, Samuel, vanished. I can't find him anywhere. I was hoping to see something in the local newspapers about the divorce (or death, if not divorce), but I haven't; either I missed it, or the incident was treated with unusual discretion.


Sources:
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Gernenz-Wesley." Hobart News 30 Sept. 1920.
♦ "Hobart Boy Marries." Hobart Gazette 1 Oct. 1920.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Kostbade-Blachly." Hobart News 30 Sept. 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 16 Sept. 1920; 30 Sept. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 26 Oct. 1906; 8 Oct. 1920.
♦ "Mrs. Schavey Dies in Chicago." Hobart Gazette 1 Oct. 1920.