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.

Four Generations

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

From left to right: Martin Ols, Herbert Ols (Martin's oldest child, born April 1914), Bertha Ols (Martin's mother), Christian Wischman (Bertha's father). The photo is estimated to date to around 1915-1916.

This photo was taken near the end of Christ Wischman's life: he died in the spring of 1917. Here is his obituary from the Hobart Gazette of March 16, 1917:

Christ Wischmann, who has been ill for a couple of months, died at his home in the Ryan subdivision yesterday morning, March 15, following an attack of pneumonia, aged 78 years last November. He was born in Germany, Nov. 27, 1838, and came to this country in 1867. He lived a number of years in Hobart following his coming here, but most of his years thereafter were spent in Milwaukee and on a farm nearby. His last residence in Hobart has been about eight years.

He is survived by wife and three sons, William, Arthur and Frank, by his third marriage; a son, Christ, Jr., who lives in Wisconsin, by a second marriage, and a daughter, Mrs. Henry Ols of Gary, by his first marriage; besides a brother and a sister, William Wischmann and Mrs. Christ Passow, who reside in Hobart. Fred Wischmann, who lives here, is a nephew.

The funeral will be held this week Saturday from the German Evangelical Lutheran church at 2 o'clock. The burial will be at Crown Hill.

His first wife's name was Mina — probably short for Wilhelmina; maiden name unknown. That marriage also produced a son, Robert, who died in 1887 per the genealogy compiled by Fred Ols. It may be Mina's gravestone in the Hobart Cemetery, bearing a date of death of Jan. 26, 1872, and an age of 30 years, 9 months and 12 days, per the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society's transcription. In 1873, in Lake County, Indiana, Christ married Amalia* Schroeder, and sometime before 1880 they moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. By that time they had three children: Herman (whose fate is unknown**), Martha,*** and Christ Jr., named in the obituary as a survivor. In 1891, Christ Sr. married another Amelia, and by 1900 they were farming in Juneau County, Wisconsin, and had five children: Willie, Louie, Charlie, Arthur and Frank. Louie apparently died between 1900 and 1905. In 1910 the family was still in Wisconsin, but they must have moved to Hobart very soon after the census, if the Gazette could reasonably attribute about eight years' recent residence to Christ. Charley Wischman died in Hobart in 1914 at the age of 21 (the cause of death being tuberculosis), and is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery under the name Wishman, as is his father.

That more or less accounts for Christ's wives and children at the time of his death. His son Arthur would not outlive him by long: he died of Spanish flu in September 1918. Here is Arthur's obituary, from the Hobart Gazette of October 4, 1918:


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*Her name is given as "Mina" in the marriage record transcription, but "Amalia" in the 1880 census.
**He died in December 1910 according to a very helpful family tree compiled by the Dewell family archivist on Ancestry.com, but I have not been able to find any independent confirmation of this. I doubt that the Herman Wischman buried in Crown Hill Cemetery is Christ's son, since his birth year (1883) doesn't jibe with the 1880 census.
***This was not the Martha Wischman who married William Dewell, and died of the Spanish flu in 1918; that Martha was the daughter of Christ's brother William. (Thanks to the DeWell family archivist for straightening me out on that!)


Sources:
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 25 Dec. 1914.
♦ Ancestry.com. Wisconsin, State Censuses, 1895 and 1905 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007.
♦ "Funeral of Christ Wischman Held Saturday Afternoon." Hobart News 22 Mar. 1917.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ Indiana WPA Death Records Index.

Some Women We Know

I think this is a companion photo to the men we know — that tree in the background is the same in both photos.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

The notes identify these women only by their first names (and two of them not at all), so I'm going to have to try to figure this out. My guesses are in brackets.

Front row, L to R: Mary Mae [née Vetter; married Martin Ols]; unidentified; unidentified; Alphie [dau. of Christ and Alpha (Struble) Ols].

Back row, L to R: Catherine [née Yandow, married Herman Ols]; Emma [dau. of John and Sophia (Ols) Baessler]; Bertha [née Wischman, married Henry Ols]; Jenny [dau. of Christ and Alpha (Struble) Ols]; Sophia [née Ols, married John Baessler]; Evelyn and Caroline [daus. of Christ and Alpha (Struble) Ols]; Mary [née Ols, married Wm. Thiede]; Minnie [dau. of Wm. and Mary (Ols) Thiede]; and Liz [dau. of Henry and Bertha (Wischman) Ols].

I got the family relations from the genealogy compiled by Fred Ols, but I jumped to my own conclusions about how the surnames related to the women in the photograph.

No date on this photo either. As for the fashions — well, I'm seeing styles I'd place at around 1920, plus two or three dropped waists, which I wouldn't expect to see until circa 1923. Looking at the men's photo, I guessed circa 1926 based on one person's apparent age, but here I'm inclined to revise my estimate downward, maybe circa 1923 or '24.

Brickyard Buddies

A member of the Ols family has allowed the Hobart Historical Society to copy a number of photographs and documents. We shall begin looking at some of those here.

By the Ols family I mean John and Charlotte Ols and their descendants. We have already met two of their sons: Christ (and I shall have an update on that story), and Charles. It is their eldest son, Henry, we are to deal with now.

Henry was born around 1860, when the family was still in Germany (Prussia). They arrived in this country in the early to mid-1870s,* and by 1880 were farming in Hobart Township. In 1884 Henry married Bertha Wischman of Hobart. They had five children, three of whom survived infancy: Herman (born 1887), Elizabeth (1889) and Martin (1894).


Let's start with this photo that has come down to us from Henry:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

Handwritten notes on the back: "Henry buddies from brickyard (probably Natco)." We don't have a date for this photo. It is printed on postcard with a divided back, but no printer's name or other helpful information.

I am not sure whether Henry is in the photo at all. I don't recognize him, but then again the faces of a few of these men are so blurred their own mothers wouldn't recognize them. Nor do I know whether Henry ever worked in any brickyard. To the census-takers, he gave different occupations: farm laborer (1880), day laborer (1900), carpenter (1910 through 1930).**

So we don't know who these brickies are, but it's a nice brickyard picture.

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*Henry gave different dates to different census-takers.
**The 1920 census is illegible on that point, but it looks as if it might possibly have "carpenter" as his occupation.

Mable (Fasel) Dewell

From the steamer trunk.


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Images courtesy of E.H.


This cute little kid is identified by handwritten notes on the back of each photo as Mable (Fasel) Dewell.

The DeWell family archivist was able to save me a lot of work by explaining where this little creature came from and where she went: "Mable's parents were John J. Fasel and Anna Foreman (sister of Otto). Her grandparents were Henry J. Fasel and Mary Ann Springman. Mary Ann was another daughter of Charles Springman and Caroline Kegebein." We have already seen Mable's younger sister, Marie, among the early-1930s students at W.G. Haan School.

Mable Fasel grew up to become Mrs. Conrad DeWell. (Conrad was the son of William F. DeWell and his first wife, Martha Wischman, who died in the flu epidemic.) Mable and Conrad were married May 11, 1937.


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Image courtesy of the DeWell Family Archives.