Of Toilets Condemned and Toilets Installed

During 1922, Hobart had seen a splendid year's growth in its toilets.


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

In unrelated news, Leona Niksch's 15th birthday party was probably taking place in the house on her parents' farm along the Lincoln Highway.

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Elsewhere in the same issue of the News, we find John Harms taking office as Hobart Township Assessor. I believe his account book is at the museum and maybe one of these years we will get around to photographing it.


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

Also, another plane falling out of the sky, somewhere southeast of where the new roundabout is. The Peddicord farm straddled the Hobart-Ross Township line in that area. I think the "Wm. Sonntag home" was no longer occupied by Wm. Sonntag, but was somewhere near the intersection of S.R. 51 and 61st Avenue.

Blimp

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

Here's a Goodyear blimp moored in the open field at the north side of the Hobart Sky Ranch Airport (so I'm told).

The Hobart Gazette of July 16, 1970, tells us why it was hanging around here:

The giant Goodyear Blimp, AMERICA, has been a welcome local visitor this week. It is staying at the Hobart Sky Ranch on North Lake Park Avenue during the celebration of the opening of the new Port at Burns Harbor. The first ocean going vessel will dock at Indiana's international port today. (Thursday) The AMERICA has been flying guests around the area and lighting up at night in four colors with signs reading "Port of Indiana, New Gateway to the Midwest."

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.

Airmail

I suppose disabled planes were landing in farmers' fields all over the country. It only seems as if they all came down around Ainsworth because I'm reading about Ainsworth, not the rest of the country.


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From "Local and Personal," Hobart News 9 Dec. 1920.

(Also, the Melvin Guernsey family, who had fled to Florida to escape the Indiana winter, have fled back to escape the Florida cost of living.)


From Hobart News 9 Dec. 1920


From Hobart Gazette 10 Dec. 1920.

The "old Bragington farm" was at the southern border of Ross Township:



That's how it looked in the 1926 Plat Book. The Bragington name covers most of Section 31, Range 7, from the 1874 Plat Map onward. That doesn't change until the 1939 Plat Book, and for all I know the names listed there could be Bragington heirs.

And we do find Ed Maybaum, in the 1920 Census, living on rented land in southern Ross Township.

Vern, There's A Man at the Door, Wants to Gas Up His Flying Machine

It wasn't quite true that people no longer bothered looking up at airplanes — witnesses reconstructed the route of this plane as it ran out of gas, came down in an oat-field, and eventually took off again. But probably the path of the plane's flight, or the sound of its engine, alerted people that it was in trouble, and who can resist looking, under those circumstances?


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From the Hobart Gazette of Sept. 3, 1920.


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My reconstruction of the incident. Think the NTSB will hire me?

The Bodamer who supplied the gas is not specified, and while the 1920 Census shows two Bodamer households nearby (on what's now South Hobart Road), Vernon Bodamer seems a more likely candidate than his widowed Aunt Bertha.

(Below the plane story, a little news about work on the Lincoln Highway.)

Oh, Nothing; Just Another Airplane

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From the Hobart News of June 24, 1920.

If you want people to look at your airplane these days (1920), you have to involve it in a death-defying stunt.


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From the Hobart Gazette of July 9, 1920.

Air and Water

Henry Brand, a 51-year-old grocer from Hobart, went on a little vacation to Ohio in August 1919. He returned with a story to tell, and the Hobart News gave him credit for a "first":



The Gazette said, more moderately, that Henry "perhaps" was "the first or among the first Hobartites to fly through space."

It is a matter of interpretation. We know that George Severance, Jr. had learned to fly airplanes for the military some two years earlier, and had even survived a crash. However, though the Hobart newspapers seemed to treat George Jr. as a hometown hero, he was a Ross Township farm boy, technically not a Hobartite.

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And now we go from up in the air to down in the ground, as a town board meeting in late July resulted in a contract for some old friends of ours:

Supt.* reported a bid of $294 by Lee & Rhodes for furnishing all labor and tools in laying the Main street water extension from 6th street south about 600 feet, under and across the "J" tracks to 7th street. The town will furnish all material. The contract was let to Lee & Rhodes.

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"Supt." probably refers to Robert Wheaton, superintendent of Hobart's light and water plant.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Henry Brand Takes Air Trip in Bombing Plane at Dayton, O." Hobart News 7 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 Aug. 1919.
♦ "Town Board Doings." Hobart Gazette 1 Aug. 1919.

Look! Up in the Sky!

The Hobart Gazette took notice of a most unusual event on May 12, 1919 — an airplane in the skies over Hobart.

By chance, the same page carried glad tidings of Asa Bullock. Apparently he had somehow managed to recover from the tragic end of his first love — or perhaps we should just say his first marriage — and was once again a husband and father.


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From the Hobart Gazette of May 16, 1919.