Kids These Days! (1924)

Some things never change …


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Hobart Gazette, 28 Mar. 1924.

… but some things do, let us hope.


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Hobart News, 13 Mar. 1924.

The "School Notes" reporter that week was Florence Ewigleben, whom we've met before.

Moonshine Again

It's the winter of 1924. In spite of the cold weather, local entrepreneurs are busy supplying consumers' wants.


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Hobart Gazette, 11 Jan. 1924.

The article is worded for an audience that already knows where this is — "the road," "the farm." I suppose "the road" is Lake Park Avenue, but that's just a guess. I do not know how many roads the New Chicago area had in 1924. And I'm guessing that "the farm" was the C.J. Smith farm as shown in the 1926 Plat Book:


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I cannot identify John Kopek (spelled Kopack in the story below), except possibly as John Kopec, a Polish immigrant (born mid-1880s, arrived in the U.S. circa 1909) residing in Gary in the 1920 Census but later moving to Hobart. He was married, as described in the article below, and old enough to be running a booze operation. But I can't be sure that's our guy: all the vital records I have found thus far show only that this John Kopec lived the blameless life of a steel-mill employee, and now rests from his labors.

As for the other guy, his name was probably Szymanski, but he lived out his life in Gary, so he's Gary's historical problem.

They were found guilty:


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Hobart Gazette, 15 Feb. 1924.

In the next column over is an item about several Rossows attending the funeral of Mrs. Herman Borck — Christina Kummerow Borck — about whom I know almost nothing except that she was the mother of "mom's godmother." The weekend after the funeral, Ella Rossow came down from Chicago to visit her parents (William and Antonia), bringing along August Rolff,[1] whom she would marry in June of that year.

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Here's a near-death experience involving liquor:


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Hobart News, 21 Feb. 1924.

The idea of taking the midnight train to Valparaiso seems so evocative. I guess I've heard too many songs about midnight trains. Actually, I'm surprised there even was a midnight train to Valparaiso.

To the right of that story, we find that on Valentine's Day, Lena Maybaum Barney, who had lost her first husband in 1921, married Henry Schavey, who had lost his first wife in 1920.

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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 14 Feb. 1924.

Dead Man's Curve

"The curve west of Ainsworth on the Lincoln highway" — there is only one.



It may be haunted by a Fort Wayne "booze runner" who met his untimely end there sometime in 1923.


Hobart News, 24 Jan. 1924.

$200 in 1924 would be nearly $4,000 today.

That spot is also known by the locals, so I am told, as Whiskey Corner (because people who drank and drove tended to smash up there).

The Slow Death of a Veteran

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From the Hobart High School's "Memories" yearbook of 1921.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

He didn't die in action, or even in the service, but World War I killed John Small anyway, according to the Hobart News.


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Hobart News, 20 Dec. 1923. See also "Death Summons John E. Small," Hobart Gazette, 21 Dec. 1923.

If I understand the family tree correctly, this John Small was the grandson of John and Mary Jane Small, who (I believe) gave Small's Crossing its name. The farm he grew up on seems to have been in southwest Portage Township, Porter County, based on neighbors' names in the 1900 census and several parcels owned by Smalls in that area on the 1906 plat map. By 1910 his parents had retired from farming and moved their family to the village of Wheeler. In 1920 John and his wife, Martha, were living in Hobart, where John gave his occupation as a teacher in a public school — modestly, perhaps, if the News was correct about his being the high school principal by then.

Martha remarried in 1935, to a widower named Ralph Orr, but when she died in 1975, her remains were brought home from Indianapolis to be laid to rest beside John.

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Moving from the serious to the silly, we note (in the lower right of the page above) that a Hobart night marshal resigned from his position under a cloud. According to an earlier article, he had been suspended after being accused of not only drunkenness, but also poker-playing ("Night Marshal Carrier Suspended," Hobart Gazette, 14 Dec. 1923).

"Send to Ainsworth on the Grand Trunk Road"

In April of 1886, J. Miller of Deep River asked F. Madlener of Chicago to send him numerous bottles of … something.


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This was a government-issued postal card of the kind that had been authorized by 1872 legislation. Apparently, the F. Madlener firm of Chicago bought a lot of these, stamped its own address on them, and handed them out to people to use for ordering its products.

The Madlener firm manufactured alcoholic beverages. Its most famous and profitable product was Fig Rye, a concoction of figs and rye whiskey touted as a health supplement. Fig Rye was first marketed sometime in the 1880s.[1]

J. Miller didn't bother to specify what was supposed to be in those pint and half-pint bottles, but it had to be some kind of alcohol. The fact that he ordered numerous small bottles, rather than one big one, suggests that his intent was sales, not his own personal use.

Now I'm wondering if he was selling, or trying to sell, alcohol in the village of Deep River. Its founder, John Wood, had been a temperance advocate, and had taken steps to keep saloons out of his village during his lifetime. Now in 1886, just three years after Wood's death, had his anti-saloon policy been abandoned already? Or was J. Miller a grocer, perhaps, who intended to sell Fig Rye as a health aid? … which, incidentally, just happened to produce drunkenness if you drank enough of it.

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I would like to find out who J. Miller was, but with such a common surname and only an initial for his first name, the task seems hopeless.

Of course, I immediately thought of Ainsworth's John Miller. Born in Germany in 1865, he came to the U.S. in 1880 (1900 Census). It was in Chicago in 1896 that he married Martha Maybaum (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index). I do not know where he spent the years between 1880 and 1896, but his meeting and courting Martha, who lived in our area, probably took a little time. However, there is a problem with my hypothesis that the "J. Miller" of the postcard was this John Miller (besides the fact that I have no records to show him here in 1886): the handwriting and wording of the postcard don't suggest, to me, someone whose language until he was at least 15 years of age was German, and who was, in April 1886, just short of 21 years old and six years in this country. The postcard sounds as if it had been written by someone born in the U.S.

I turned to the on-line newspapers to try to find any mention of someone named Miller doing alcoholic business around Deep River circa 1886, and did not find it.

A saloon-keeping John Miller, born in Indiana in 1863, turns up in Griffith, St. John Township, in the 1900 Census. But I have absolutely no evidence that he ever tried doing business in Deep River!

I think our postcard-writer is going to be a mystery forever.

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[1] Source. Unfortunately, that source doesn't cite its own sources, and I could not find any other source giving even a general date for Fig Rye's introduction, nor any newspaper ads for it prior to the late 1890s.

Mary Munch's Sentence

The Gazette of November 2, 1923, carried a sympathetic follow-up to the previous month's moonshine story.


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The son mentioned in the story had died in December 1922.

In the next week's Gazette we find Mary trying to sell off some of her property quickly.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

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The November 1 Hobart News had also carried a short article on Mary's fate. In the column next to it was another story I found interesting, about the use of "ready prints" by small-town newspaper publishers.


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Mary Munch's Moonshine

When Mary Munch was caught with a still back in February 1923, she had claimed it wasn't hers. Seven months later, caught with two stills and 15 gallons of moonshine, she apparently didn't think anyone would buy the same story.


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Hobart Gazette, Oct. 19, 1923.

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In the "Local Drifts" column above, we find a couple of locals leaving the countryside to become town dwellers.

While we've encountered the name Hooseline in several "South of Deep River" columns, I've looked into the family only in connection with the suicide of John's father-in-law. But looking a little more closely now, I gather that John's father, Michael Hooseline, came into this area with his parents (Michael Sr. and Rebecca) sometime between John's birth in 1842 (Maryland) and the 1860 Census of Union Township, Porter County.[1] By the 1870 Census, Michael Jr. had married Laura Tabor and moved to Ross Township, Lake County. Our John was born in the south-of-Deep-River countryside in 1871. The 1874 Plat Map shows the "Hooseline & Tabor" farm straddling Randolph Street at the divide between Ross and Winfield Townships, but from the 1891 Plat Book on, I can't find any land under the Hooseline name in Ross Township.

Here is John Hooseline's obituary from 1944:


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), Feb. 28, 1944.

The article fails to mention John's first wife, Rhoda Smith, whom he married in 1896. Rhoda was the daughter of Homer and Rachel Smith, although the 1880 Census doesn't list her (unless she is the "Rudie" whom the enumerator called a son; the birth dates match). Rhoda bore John Hooseline two sons, Harold and Hubert/Herbert (1900 Census), and died in 1902. In 1904 John married Emma Carbein Phillips. Their children were Kenneth and Velma (1910 Census, 1930 Census).


The other country-dweller getting out of the country was Simon Small, of Small's Crossing. From what I can find in the census and death records, he was a son of John and Mary (Riley) Small; odd that he wasn't mentioned in Mary's obituary. His children were all by his first wife, Cora Deardoff, whom he married in 1883 (Indiana Marriage Collection) and who died in 1902. He married his second wife, Anna Bean, in 1906 in Cook County, Illinois, where he may have been living already, as he was in the 1910 Census and 1920 Census. Apparently he moved back to Small's Crossing after 1920 just to leave it a few years later.

Here's his obit from 1945:


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), Nov. 20, 1945.

I wonder if this leaves any Smalls at Small's Crossing? The Union Township plat maps shows that the old Small farm changed its name between 1921 and 1928.

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[1] That's assuming the enumerator made an error in recording John's age.

Drunks Upon the Streets

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Hobart Gazette, Aug. 31, 1923.

We do not know what the commentator meant by "formerly" — before Prohibition? two months ago?


In more constructive news, the Fifield ice-cream parlor has been doing very well, it seems.


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Hobart Gazette, Aug. 31, 1923.

Fowl Fraud

I don't know why I thought this story about a poultry-related scam was worth printing out … but print it out I did, and I'm not going to let 15 cents go to waste.


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Hobart Gazette, Aug. 3, 1923.

Maybe I printed it out for the sake of the next story down, about Hobart travelers to Valparaiso being advised to take the Ainsworth route rather than the Yellowstone Trail, which was undergoing repairs.

The story in the middle column about the Gary hospital has so many familiar names that I can't talk about them all, but the one that jumps out at me is "W. Wagoner" — this reminds me that while reading the March 28, 1913 Gazette on microfilm recently (looking for other stuff), I came across the mention of Wilmont Wagoner, which in turn reminded me of that mysterious W.N. Wagoner who briefly operated the Ainsworth saloon and whose first name has eluded me. Well, now I have a theory: "W.N." = Wilmont Nelson. Can't prove it, of course, but who cares? Here's Wilmont Nelson Wagoner's death notice from 1938:


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Hammond Times, Sept. 11, 1938.

That story about the giant still at McCool is pretty interesting, too.


But getting back to the 1923 newspaper — over in the next column, George Hagerty's obituary reminds me that I've been seeing that name (Hagerty) here and there without really knowing who those people were. I think the son Albert is the one who lost his young wife to the Spanish influenza in January 1919. I wonder if this family has a connection to the George Haggerty/Hegerty who worked in the Reuben Bridle household in 1910 and attended Reuben's funeral in 1922? — but the age of that George in 1910 (24) doesn't match up to George Hagerty's son mentioned in the obituary, who was born in 1902 per the 1910 Census (which shows George Sr. living and working on his own farm).

Below that, Albert Orcutt's father has died.

Hit-and-Run on the Lincoln Highway

Two accounts of a serious accident that happened on July 8, 1923, along the Lincoln Highway just west of Randolph Street.


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Hobart News, July 12, 1923.


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Hobart Gazette, July 13, 1923.

Donald was the son of Edward and Tillie Niksch, who had turned the former Deep River schoolhouse, on the northwest corner of Randolph and E. 73rd Avenue, into a dance hall.

I find that casual hospitality interesting: strangers from Gary traveling along the Lincoln Highway just happened to stop at the Niksch place for water, and for the lady to amuse herself playing the piano in the dance hall, though no dance was going on. Then she got thirsty again and gave the little boy a dime(!) to fetch her another glass of water. That's when everything went bad.

But little Donald recovered from his injuries and went on to live a full life.

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Below that story in the Gazette we find another accident, caused by drunk driving, involving Charles and Etta (Sohn) Kisela, who were a few weeks short of their first wedding anniversary.

The story in the News about camping along the Deep River mentions Camp 133, which we know about, but also some other camps that I've never heard of. The early summer's hot weather probably helped drive people out of their stuffy homes and into tents by the river.

Two Drunks and an Idiom

Following the close of the big liquor trial, we get a tidbit of information about the incident involving the Springman brothers — dating back, I suspect, to March 1921 — that somehow led to the parties involved getting mixed up with all those real wrongdoers in Gary.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News, April 5, 1923.

I had never before heard the expression "to clean house" being used in this way, meaning … I'm not sure exactly what. To trash the place? To fight?


Elsewhere in the same column, some news of our acquaintances. James Chester went to a horse auction. Ezra Gilpin began standing watch at the Lake Street crossing of the EJ&E Railroad — we have already seen the pictures.

And Alfred Pierce found his final resting place in California.

Now, About All Those Other Guys

Mayor Sherman Henderson's instructions to Police Chief Fred Rose in early April 1923 testified that, in spite of all those recent acquittals, plenty of people in Hobart were selling and buying vice in the form of liquor and gambling.


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Hobart News, April 5, 1923.

I had to ask Professor Google what punch boards are. In his letter, His Honor sounds as if he were still mad about losing money on them.[1]

In the left-hand column, we find another type of eradication underway, as local cattle were getting tested for tuberculosis, and many failing.


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[1] I'm kidding.

Drinking Age

In March 1923, we get some news out of Indianapolis about the big trial following the mass arrests of Prohibition violators. When we get to the Hobart testimony, what really strikes me is that Christ Springman (Jr.) testified that he had bought liquor at the Traeger saloon when he was 12 years old …


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Hobart Gazette, March 23, 1923.

… but that was circa 1911, before Prohibition, so it didn't count for purposes of the trial. Anyway, he may not have been buying the liquor for his own use. I've heard Prohibition-era stories from my mother's side of the family about youngsters being sent up the street to buy some homemade whiskey or beer for Papa.

Over in the right-hand column, we find Tony and Christ Springman returning home from their trip to Indianapolis.

Mary Munch's Sorrows

I can't figure out Mary Munch. In my notes I find a report[1] from the autumn of 1922 that the barn at her home "in South Hobart" had burned, although the fire department managed to save the house and the chicken coop; the fire was allegedly caused in her absence by her son-in-law burning rubbish. If she had a son-in-law, she must have had a daughter. But I can't find her daughter in a census.

A few weeks later, Mary traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to bring her son to a hospital in Gary.


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.

Her son's surname being Wilson suggests a previous marriage, but in the 1910 Census, Mary Munch is described as being in her first marriage, and having no living children. In the 1920 Census, Mary was widowed and no questions about children were asked.

Joseph Wilson died December 23, 1922 (Indiana Death Certificates). The informant was Mary Munch, who gave her maiden name as Mary Maurice and Joseph's father's name as Paul Wilson. I can't find the Wilson family in the 1900 Census, the earliest place I would have any hope of finding them (since Joseph was born in 1891). The death certificate states that Joseph was married to a Josephine, about whom I know nothing.

After the loss of her son, Mary had a little more than a month of peace before she was caught up in a Prohibition raid.


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Hobart News 22 Feb. 1923.

According to the next day's Gazette, Mary claimed she was only storing the unused still on her place as a favor to Nick Drakulich.[2] If that was true, then she suffered for a crime without having had the fun or the profit from it.

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Over in the right-hand column of that Feb. 22 News, we see that Mary was not the only one having bad times that week. The old Wesley Spencer homestead may have been on Center Street near the Nickel Plate tracks — that location seems to be associated with the Spencer name. And I never heard of Thomas Scott before, but I can't help but be interested in a suicide whose wife, according to her death certificate, died of "acute alcoholism."

I'm a bit confused about what Paul Newman was planning to build (left-hand column above). That sounds like the building on the southeast corner of Third and Center, but the county records don't give 1923 as the year it was built. The 1922 Sanborn map shows a substantial building already there.

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[1] "Barn Burns in South Hobart," Hobart Gazette 3 Nov. 1922.
[2] "Locate Two Stills," Hobart Gazette 23 Feb. 1923.

Everybody Is Under Arrest

When federal marshals swooped down on Lake County Prohibition-flouters in January 1923, the News thoughtfully provided a separate listing of those Hobart residents caught up in the dragnet.


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Hobart News 25 Jan. 1923.

Apparently all the liquor violators in Ainsworth got away with it, this time.

I do not know exactly why "the Springman brothers were arrested by Marshal Rose at the Traeger place," but I wish I did. It sounds interesting. I wonder if it could be that incident back in March 1921?

Incidentally, I cannot find a William Bussey in Hobart, and I suspect this may be Adeline Busse's brother Bill.


Another story a couple weeks later explained that the conspiracy charge against the Hobart citizens had been dismissed, but the charges of violating the federal liquor law would proceed to trial (except in the case of Mike Drakovich, who had already pled guilty).

Wedding Bells for Mabel and Harry

Isn't it lovely? — our friends have gotten married.


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Hobart News 31 Aug. 1922.

(Below that, a wedding involving Charles Kisela, which may or may not interest the Kisela-related person who contacted me a few years ago. Also, I did not know that Terre Haute was the standard by which Indiana bootlegging was judged in 1922.)

A Busy Season at the Yellowstone Trail Campground

The last I heard about Lee & Rhodes' public fountain was in April 1922, when it had been put in working order. Evidently by August it had gotten out of working order and people were going thirsty under the glaring sun.

While the story about Yellowstone Trail campground doesn't say so, I suppose that the registration box had been set out there when the camp officially opened on May 6, 1922.


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Hobart Gazette 25 Aug. 1922.

I don't know where exactly the Harmon house was, but it doesn't matter since apparently you couldn't get any moonshine there. (I wonder if the Harmon who lived there had any connection to the Rush Harmon who had been hanging around with Carrie Peas.)

And lastly, the bereaved Alfred Ingram and Anna Fleck left to close up the empty house in Boston.

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.


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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.

Bad Conditions

During the "City Council Proceedings," as related by the Hobart News of June 8, 1922, Dr. Louis M. Friedrich, now on Hobart's Board of Health, reported "a considerable amount of trouble about chickens among neighbors." He also "reported having made an investigation of the Mike O'Hearn place and found it in very bad condition," but the News gave us no further details.

The same issue of the News had a story about Mike O'Hearn finding someone else in a bad condition:


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Hobart News 9 June 1922.

The Chicago road, as you may remember, was Old Ridge Road.

The Wheat and the Check

Based on this brief summary, it sounds as if William Raschka did not get a fair shake, if he didn't at least get his $500 back.


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Hobart Gazette 20 Jan. 1922.

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Elsewhere in the same issue of the Gazette, we find a "School Notes" column written by Wayne Nelson, the youngest of Lovisa Chester Nelson's children; and a spirited letter from "Canada":