Bertha's Second Marriage: It Was Bad

Even today I still think, sometimes, of that strange and touching poem written (I'm guessing) by Bertha Mueller Bodamer in memory of her husband, Benjamin, who died in 1917. To judge by the emotions that poem conveys, one would think their marriage was very happy.

After Ben's death, Bertha and her sons, Harry, Ralph, and Carlton, continued farming their 35 acres (more or less[1]) on S. Hobart Rd., marked with "BB" on the plat map from the 1926 Plat Book:


(Click on image to enlarge)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, this map fails to show the 34-acre farm of Bertha's brother-in-law, John, bordering on the south side of her land.

In 1928, Ralph married Florence Wyant and set up a separate household close to his mother's; the following year Carlton married Helen Hardesty and moved to Hobart. The 1930 Census records only Bertha's unmarried eldest son, Harry, still under her roof.

By then, Bertha had been widowed over a decade. With her nest emptying, I suppose she was feeling lonely, and perhaps wishing for a pleasant and helpful companion, such as Ben had been. Anyway, somewhere she saw an advertisement by a man seeking a wife, and she answered it. The man was Fred Reuter, a widower living in West Virginia, about whom I know almost nothing. Fred came to Indiana, where he met Bertha. Evidently they liked each other.

Bertha's sons were not happy about this development. I wish I knew why! — did they object to a stranger moving in on what they viewed as their inheritance, or was there something about Fred in particular that they didn't like?

Around this time, possibly in February 1931,[2] Bertha's eldest son, Harry, married Ida Hollett[3] of Valparaiso.

Bertha soon went ahead with her own marriage. In April of 1931, she became Mrs. Fred Reuter (Indiana Marriage Collection). Shortly before the marriage, Fred lent her $2,000 to make improvements on her farm, with Bertha giving him a mortgage on property she owned in Porter County known as the "old Bodamer homestead," shown here on a 1938 plat map:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from https://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1938Plats/Union-1938.gif.

If there was a honeymoon period, it was short. Everything soon started to fall apart. In December 1932, Bertha suffered a personal loss when her son, Harry, died at only 32 years of age, leaving a widow and no children. Fred Reuter failed to provide the companionship and help Bertha wanted; in fact, he left the home (or was thrown out by Bertha's sons) and went to Idaho. Bertha filed for divorce. Fred came back and began proceedings to foreclose on the mortgage he held. The unpleasant details started appearing in local papers in the autumn of 1934.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 19 Oct. 1934.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 26 Apr. 1935.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 28 May 1935.

I can't find any follow-up articles beyond this. But it appears that Fred lost his mortgage case, if the 1938 plat map, above, can be relied on. The local papers soon went back to calling Bertha "Mrs. Ben Bodamer"[4] (notwithstanding the 1938 plat map).

The 1940 Census records a widow, Bertha Bodamer, living with her widowed daughter-in-law, Ida, on the farm. Her son, Carlton, had moved back to her neighborhood with his wife and three daughters, not farming but employed as a truck driver with the WPA. Her other son, Ralph, lived with his family and several relatives in Hobart Township and worked in a steel mill.

Both sons were back in the farm neighborhood for the 1950 Census, both working in steel mills. Bertha, 81 years of age, lived in Ralph's household. Ida was nowhere to be found.

Bertha died the following year — August 16, 1951 (Indiana Death Certificates). She was buried beside her pleasant and helpful companion, Ben, in the Woodvale Cemetery.

I still don't know what became of Ida, whose name is next to her husband's on the family grave marker without a death date.


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[1] The size varies slightly from one plat map to another.
[2] I'm getting the date from a family tree on Ancestry.com that does not cite a source. I cannot find a record of the marriage, nor any mention of it in on-line local papers.
[3] The surname comes from family trees on Ancestry.com, none of which cite a source. Occasionally it turns up spelled Hallett. Her middle name is given as Eve. (Just to make things more confusing, there was a longtime Valpo resident named Ida Mae Hollett, who was considerably older than our Ida.)
[4] E.g., "Hobart," Hammond Times, 13 May 1938.

Road Hog Report

Back in September 1921, Sarah Read had been lying ill at the home of Mrs. E. Hartnup, likely a relative; by early October, Sarah was doing a little better and had moved into the home of Ben Packham, who was definitely a relative — specifically, her nephew, though I have no clue exactly how. But the 55-year-old Ben was, like Sarah, a native of England.

As the October days went by, Sarah's health improved so much she was thinking of going back to keep house for the Nolte brothers. The report of that good news appeared on the same page as another story that deepens my impression that drivers today are better than they used to be:


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"Local and Personal." Hobart News 20 Oct. 1921.

"Abe" Wyant, more formally known as Albert B., lived east of Ainsworth on South Hobart Road where it begins to curve toward present-day River Pointe Country Club (the house has been replaced by a new one). He was then about 42 years old. As for Harry Grey (or Gray), he was then a 25-year-old garage repairman who would later own his own garage in Hobart.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 7 Oct. 1921.

The Costs of Justice, 1913

1913 JP fees
(Image courtesy of the Hobart History Society.)

I came across the above typewritten list in the docket book of A.B. Wyant, who was a Hobart Township justice of the peace in the late 1930s-early 1940s. In the various stories in this blog, when I say someone had to pay a fine plus costs, the latter would include some of this stuff.

Continuing on the topic of my vast ignorance, I have to admit that before I started this research, I never thought of a justice of the peace as doing anything but marrying people who didn't want a church ceremony. So it came as a surprise to me, as I began reading the old newspapers, that when someone thought someone else has wronged him or her, a justice of the peace would get involved.

From an 1878 book entitled The Statutes of the State of Indiana I find that justices of the peace had jurisdiction over actions in contract or tort where the debt or damage claimed was less than $100 (or $200 in cases of concurrent jurisdiction; and a defendant could confess judgment up to $300). Excepted from their jurisdiction were cases involving slander, malicious prosecution, land ownership, and where any party was related to the justice of the peace by blood or marriage. Matters not falling under a J.P.'s jurisdiction would go to the county circuit court.

(I didn't find in the 1878 book, nor am I otherwise at all clear, how and to what extent J.P.s got involved in criminal matters, so I'm not going to try to deal with that now.)

The J.P.'s court was a civil court on a small scale, somewhat like our small-claims courts except that parties could be represented by attorneys if they so chose. Someone would show up in the J.P.'s office and, under oath, would tell the J.P. how he believed the other party had wronged him. If the J.P. thought the alleged facts constituted a legal case, he would issue a summons, which he would give to a constable to serve upon the other party, either by reading it to him or by leaving a copy with him. The summons would tell the other party when to show up in the J.P.'s court for the case to be heard. (If the case involved a debtor who appeared to be about to flee, the J.P. could order his arrest.) The J.P. also had the power to subpoena witnesses.

The J.P. himself would try the case, unless either party requested a jury trial, in which case the J.P. would preside over the jury trial.

In the same docket book, I found what was probably a typical summons:
1940 Summons
(Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.)

And that's our legal lecture for today. Hope you enjoyed this edition of "The Blogger's Court."


Source: Davis, Edwin A., LL.B. (ed.). The Statutes of the State of Indiana. Indianapolis: Bingham & Co.; Merrill, Hubbard & Co., 1878.