A New Ainsworth Baby

I came across this little announcement and thought today was a good day to post it, this being Eldon Harms' 102nd birthday anniversary.


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Hobart News, 3 Apr. 1924.

Above the Harms announcement, another Ross Township birth introduces a name I haven't heard before — Herter. If I've found the right people, Peter and Anna Herter, along with little Indiana-born Madeline, were in Wisconsin by the 1930 Census. I shall see if we get any more news of them before they leave Ross Township.

Random items from the same issue — electricity problems in Deepriver, and isn't it nice to have your own Delco plant? Also, road problems around S.R. 51 and 61st Avenue.


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Hobart News, 3 Apr. 1924.

The Dunes Highway Opens

Construction on the Dunes Highway had started in 1922. By mid-November 1923, the Highway was ready to be opened to public use. The dedication ceremony would be attended by some prominent Hobart citizens.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

The following week's Gazette reported that the ceremony included an odd incident that was resolved with "a bottle" …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 16, 1923.

… which I'm inclined to interpret as a flouting of Prohibition, which (as we know) was not uncommon — but this case would be uncommonly open and public.

The "Local Drifts" of the same issue mentioned that "Paul Bruebach of this city was a member of Perry's Municipal Band that furnished music last Friday afternoon at the dedication of the Dunes Highway."

Incidentally, in spite of the November 9 issue's giving November 14 as the planned date of the ceremony, and the inclusion in the Route 12 Wikipedia entry of a picture of a historic marker also giving November 14 as the date of the highway's opening, the two November 16 items name "Friday," that is, November 16, as the date of the ceremony. So does this article from the Hobart News of November 22, 1923:


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Hobart News, Nov. 22, 1923.

The "Local and Personal" column of the same issue mentioned a few more locals who attended the ceremony: "Paul Emery, W.J. Killigrew, Evan Roper, Leslie Walters, A.J. Smith, O.L. Pattee; and John Dorman and Alex Boyd of Ross Township."

In the November 22 issue above, an article in the second column to the right mentions a "Bootjack extension" that was planned to connect the Dunes Highway and the Lincoln Highway. An online article about the Lincoln Highway in Indiana includes a map from 1924 showing the "Boot Jack Corner" near Rolling Prairie, and even today in that vicinity there is an "East Bootjack Road." Add this to the collection of random facts I have learned accidentally since I started the blog.

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Also in the November 22 issue, we see an announcement of a law-and-real-estate partnership between F.E. Demmon and C.L. Fleming. We've already met Calvin L. Fleming, former cigar-maker and billiard-room operator, now concentrating on real estate. The lawyer would be, I suppose, Floyd E. Demmon, whom the 1920 Census records as a 28-year-old lawyer for an unnamed railroad, living on Cleveland Avenue with his mother-in-law, Harriett Mundell. Floyd had married Alice Mundell in 1918 (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index).

Sudden Deaths

Not two years after Alvah Fisher was killed in an accident at the Lincoln Highway crossing south of Ainsworth, that dangerous intersection took another life.


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Hobart News, Aug. 23, 1923.


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Hobart News, Aug. 23, 1923.

Both articles mention tall corn on the northeast corner blocking the view. I take this to mean that there was no building there yet, at the future site of the Tonegals' business.[1] The article below the main story in the Gazette implies that there was not so much as a stop sign at this intersection.

I can't identify the driver of the local car involved in the wreck. The News gives his name as John Myers; the Gazette gives him no name but says he is the son of John H. Meyer; both describe his home as being in Winfield Township. I've found the death certificate of a John Henry Meyer, gored to death by a bull in Winfield Township in 1927 (Indiana Death Certificates), but I can't find him there in the 1920 Census, or any other census for that matter. The 1920 Census does show a Meyer family farming in Winfield Township, but no John among them.


Speaking of dangerous corners — a couple weeks earlier, a fatal accident occurred near Valparaiso, at a location the Gazette described as "the Clifford turn west of [Valparaiso], called the 'death corner'" ("Auto Accidents," Hobart Gazette, Aug. 17, 1923). "Clifford" was probably a major landowner nearby. If I go looking for Cliffords owning land just west of Valpo in 1923, I find a lot of them. The most dangerous-looking "Clifford turn" is circled in red below on the 1928 plat map (which I'm using because it shows the road better than the 1921 map), on a stretch of road now called Clifford Road:


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Image from https://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1928Plats/Center-1928.jpg.

The intersection and crossing at the southeast end of that road look even more dangerous, but I don't know that they would be linked to the Clifford name. A couple less dangerous corners by Clifford land are circled in green. There must have been more than one fatal accident at the "Clifford turn" to earn it the name of "death corner."

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President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly on Thursday, August 2, 1923, just when he seemed to be recovering from an illness. Eight days later (the day of his burial), a memorial service was held in the auditorium of the Hobart High School on Fourth Street. "The attendance of citizens was disappointingly small. The room should have been crowded but it wasn't. … Attorney John Killigrew, who had met the president on two occasions in 1920, spoke praisingly of his personal attainments as he saw and judged him at those times." ("Hobart Holds Memorial Services," Hobart Gazette, Aug. 17, 1923.)


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[1] The county records state that the building now housing Sharp's School Services was built in 1980, but we know that is incorrect.

Visions of Concrete

The new year, 1923, brought dreams of pavement:


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Hobart News 4 Jan. 1923.

From the Lincoln Highway to Lincoln and Tenth would be the route of today's State Road 51. From the brickyards and the Chicago road to Miller would be Lake Park Avenue.

Speaking of pavement — the next column we find William Raschka winning a lawsuit against the Federal Paving Co. — the same company that had recently lost a court battle with some Ross Township farmers.

The story in the right-hand column about the lecture course interested me mainly because of who was selling tickets — among Hobart's high society, we find Lovisa Chester Nelson in her little house in the village of Ainsworth.

Stop Signs on Main Street

Is it possible that traffic through the intersections of downtown Hobart was not controlled until the autumn of 1922, when Fred Rose, Sr. installed six stop signs?


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Hobart Gazette 3 Nov. 1922.

In the next column we learn that Charles Shults, having quit farming, moved to the Buchfuehrer house on Lillian Street, and I hope someone comes along pretty soon to tell me where that was.

We also learn that Charles' wife had been a Lute. Per the Indiana Marriage Collection, Charles Shults married Lydia Lute in Porter County in March 1897. The same source tells us that William Shults married Vena Lute in February 1896. I wonder if these were two brothers marrying two sisters?

In the far-right column, we recognize our friend, John Killigrew. I believe he won that election.

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Elsewhere in the "Local Drifts" of the same issue, we find this little item:

Jacob Yeager [Yager] and son, Adam, and John Sturtevant of near Deepriver, left Monday in a Ford touring car for Frederick and Baltimore, Md. They were equipped for camping out, and may not return for several weeks.

Jacob Yager was in his mid-60s, John Sturtevant about 52 (1920 Census); if they could stand camping out, well, good for them.

What Was It About Seattle?

The "Local and Personal" column of the Hobart News of October 5, 1922, included this item: "Lee Thompson, residing south of Ainsworth, formerly of Hobart, left Monday evening for Seattle, Wash. where he expects to be employed in the markets in that city."

I think "south of Ainsworth" referred to their rented farm near the Vincent schoolhouse.

Perhaps Lee had heard from the Hazelgreens how great Seattle was. Or maybe there was some boom going on there in 1922 that could draw him out of Indiana.

This might explain why I couldn't find him around here in the 1930 Census; on the other hand, we already know he was back in Hobart by 1940.

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The fact that 60 property owners were petitioning for an "asphaltic concrete top dressing" for Cleveland Avenue in October 1922 suggests that it was still a gravel road at the time … if not a dirt road.


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Hobart Gazette 6 Oct. 1922.

That was the route of the Yellowstone Trail, competing for traffic against the Dunes Highway (still under construction, I think) to the north and the Lincoln Highway to the south. And crews had been at work on the Lincoln Highway during summer of 1922, pouring fresh cement.

The "south road … between Hobart and the Lincoln Highway" refers State Road 51.

Hands Off His Apples!

County Line Road, that orphan road, was getting some theoretical attention from both Lake and Porter County road commissions in July 1922. They were even contemplating building a bridge over the Grand Trunk Railroad, which would not be too difficult since even today the railroad sits in a dip between two rises in the road. Think of it! We might have had a nice rickety wooden bridge like the old Sedley Bridge! — but, alas, no bridge was ever built there.

If you went a little further south to the Lincoln Highway, you could make $4.00 a day doing concrete work.


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Hobart Gazette 28 July 1922.

In other news, somebody has been stealing Owen Nelson's apples. He identified his current residence as the "Parks place." Here is the Parks place as it appears on the 1908 Plat Map.


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I believe that corresponds roughly with the open field lying on the south side of 6th Street's eastern dead end:



Last I heard, Owen and Caroline Nelson had moved onto the "Hoffman farm," which I hadn't clearly identified; but if it was the Hoffman land I marked in Section 32 on the excerpt from the 1926 Plat Book in the linked post, then it would have included the old Parks place.

Lost Sight

This poor kid — he lost the sight in one eye, and no one knew (or cared to tell) more about him than his surname.


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Hobart News 27 July 1922.

The Gazette described him as an "orphan boy." I think he might possibly be the orphaned Raymond Brink whom the 1920 Census shows living in the household of Marcene and Helen Haxton, in Union Township, Porter County. If so, he was about 20 years old at the time of this accident. He had a twin brother, Roy, who has already caused me some confusion.

(At the bottom of that column is an item about the newly established Little Red Hen restaurant, with most of its business from out-of-town tourists, which makes me wonder if it was located along the Yellowstone Trail. Its proprietor was Hobart's first librarian, by this time married to the man with whom she had climbed the water tower.)

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Elsewhere in the same issue of the News, we find Carrie Raschka spending a week at Koontz Lake with her daughters and (I believe) her mother-in-law …


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Hobart News 27 July 1922.

… while Charlie DeWell and the former Anne Fleck (now Mrs. Alfred G. Ingram) were dealing with health problems.

Last and least, drainage was being installed on the east side of the Ainsworth road, now known as Grand Boulevard/State Road 51 — this would be near the township line, where the road had been in a bad condition the previous spring.


Additional Sources:
♦ "General News." Hobart Gazette 28 July 1922.
♦ "Raymond Brink Dies at Age 71." Hobart Gazette 4 Oct. 1973.

Caught in a Speed Trap

After passing through the "Christian utopia" of Zion City, Illinois, on June 9, 1922, Charles Chester and John C. Cavender had nothing good to say about its justice system or its roads.


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Hobart News 15 June 1922.

(You will notice in the left-hand columns of the page above the news of William Devonshire's death. A childless widower, he left everything he had to the Masons.)

The Gazette's telling of the speed-trap story did not turn out quite so well for Charles:


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Hobart Gazette 16 June 1922.

Over in the "Local Drifts" columns, we are reminded that in Hobart, at least, thievery is done in the dark of night rather than the light of day — and not nearly so methodically; and that in Merrillville, work is going forward to keep "dead man's crossing" from claiming any more victims.


Additional Source: "Oldest Mason Dies in Hobart." Hobart Gazette 16 June 1922.

It's a Rich Man's Road and a Poor Man's Tax

These notices to Ross Township taxpayers appeared in April 1922:


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Hobart Gazette 14 Apr. 1922.

In view of recent complaints about the condition of local roads, some road improvements would seem necessary and desirable, even if interest-bearing bonds had to be issued to pay for them.

But by late May the protests of some unnamed "Ross Township farmers" had brought a member of the state board of tax commissioners up to from Indianapolis to look into the proposed work. The general objection was that the costs of construction were inflated. With regard to the Woods road, protesters were suspicious of the fact that the wealthy Gary citizens who used the Gary Country Club (at the site of the present-day Innsbrook Country Club) would benefit from the road while not bearing any of its cost.


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Hobart News 1 June 1922.

Perhaps the awarding of the road-work contract to someone who wasn't local didn't sit well with them either.

I gather from the description in this article that the "Sam B. Woods road" to be improved was only five-eighths of a mile long. My guess at its location is marked in red on this excerpt from the 1926 Plat Book:


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The "Goodrich road" improvement area was 2.5 miles "running south and west from Ainsworth on the Lincoln highway" … so, some unspecified chunk of the Lincoln Highway between Ainsworth and Merrillville?


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Hey, I just like making these little maps.

Visiting the Farm

In May 1922 Julius Triebess came down from Chicago to remind me that he existed, and to visit his farm just south of Ainsworth. I do not know who was living there at this time; the last I heard (autumn 1919) it had been rented to the Harris brothers, but in November 1921 they had held a sale of livestock, machinery, etc. ("Public Sale," Hobart News 17 Nov. 1922) — an event that usually preceded a departure.


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 12 May 1922.

Among the other items that caught my attention was the detour sign "at the Deepriver schoolhouse"; that is, at 73rd and Randolph. So which way did that sign direct travelers? North, I suppose, along Randolph, and thence the motorist would take Ainsworth Road, to County Line Road, and again turn north, and take either the road (450 N) that passes by the site of the Hoosier's Nest, wend their way along the back roads to Wheeler, thence to … no, they'd probably be wiser to stick to main-traveled roads, taking County Line Road north all the way to Cleveland/700 N, then known as the Hobart-Valpo Road.

Speaking of the (former) Deepriver schoolhouse — yet another dance there. It was a lively place.

I have often noticed the dignified two-story brick house on the north side of E. 10th Street, just east of the intersection with S. Hobart Rd. Now I know it was George Lutz's house. Here is his property as it appeared in the 1926 Plat Book:


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"Dead Man's Crossing" and School Plumbing

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Hobart Gazette 19 May 1922.

We've already read of one particularly horrific accident at the Merrillville C&O crossing; that may have been enough, or perhaps there were others, to inspire the "dead man's crossing" nickname.

The description of the new school building about to go up in Wheeler and be plumbed by Lee & Rhodes sounds like the one still standing at Fifth and North (but no longer a school):



I don't know where the "present building at Union Center" was in 1922 — possibly in the vicinity of present-day Union Center Elementary School, but that's just a guess.

Lee & Rhodes were also installing new toilets in the Nickel Plate depot, the old ones having been condemned, along with "a number of other toilets about the city," several weeks earlier by the secretary of Hobart's board of health.


Additional Sources:
♦ "City Council Doings." Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 18 May 1922.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 19 May 1922.

Married 50 Years

Since we've been talking about the Sykes farm, this article about George and Mary (Sykes) Hayward caught my eye.


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Hobart Gazette 5 May 1922.

They were married May 1, 1872 (Indiana Marriage Collection). I'm guessing it was on the Colorado Street Sykes farm, but they probably weren't married in the big brick house, since it wasn't built until 1898 (per the county property records, which don't always tell the story in the way you'd expect). As for their home "south of town," having looked at the 1920 Census and the plat maps, I think they lived on this farm at S.R. 51 and 61st Ave.:


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Image from the 1926 Plat Book.

In other words, all traces of their farm are now buried under hospitals.

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That page of the Hobart Gazette includes a number of small items that also caught my eye.

Well, I'm not particularly interested in Homer Gradle except in that he was the brother-in-law of Eathel Westbay Gradle.

"Casborro" is a misprint for Casbon.

I wonder whether Henry and Anna Harms took a train, or drove a car, up to Chicago to visit Henry Jr.?

Mary Foreman left Ainsworth for Mercy Hospital in Gary. I'm afraid I've already looked in the back of the book and can tell you that this story will not have a happy ending.

Road improvements were planned on the Lincoln Highway through part of Porter County.

And yet another dance at the former Deepriver schoolhouse.

Radiophone

By the spring of 1922, gramophones were common. The next thing in entertainment was the "radiophone."


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Hobart News 27 Apr. 1922.

KYW was the first radio station in the Chicago area.

The real-estate transaction described below that ad was reported in greater detail by the next day's Gazette.


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 28 Apr. 1922.

"Near the Collver place," was it? Well, the only thing I can identify out of all this is the Collver place as it appeared in 1908:


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From the 1908 Plat Map.

I find a Fred Trapp in Gary in the 1920 Census and the 1930 Census. In neither does he describe himself as a carpenter, but I can't find anyone else by that name.


Anyway, just above that item we see that Calvin C. Shearer had started work on present-day S.R. 51, which had aroused so much interest because of its bad condition.

Over in the "Births" column, a second child for John and Lillian Call, and two Halfman babies — news that only reminds me how little I've kept track of the Halfmans of Ross Township. John and Joe were brothers, I believe: sons of Frank Halfman, and thus brothers also of young Carl Halfman, who had died in an Army camp in 1918. Their grandfather was Henry Halfman, who had arrived in Lake County by April 1860 (when his marriage was recorded), but he did not appear in the census that year. He did, however, show up in the 1870 and subsequent censuses. The 1874 Plat Map shows him owning 80 acres at the northeast corner of Broadway and 61st Ave (the parking lot of Ultra Foods, in other words). Henry and his wife, Mary, had three children: Frank, Clara, and William. We shall have news of William soon.

Joseph Halfman was born circa 1889 and married Marian Adler circa 1912-3. The child born in 1922 was either their third or fourth. As for Joe's younger brother, John, born circa 1893, he had married Clara Adler (Marian's sister) in 1915, and the child born in 1922 was their third, a son named Leo. I can't find the Joseph Halfman family in the 1920 census. The John Halfman family was running a dairy farm on rented land near his Uncle William's farm — possibly his grandfather's old place.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1860 Census.
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Mrs. Halfman Dies at Lowell," Hammond Times 4 Apr. 1940. Newspaperarchive.com.

A Rare Treat

Since the Ainsworth-area community had been holdings meetings and entertainments in the W.G. Haan school from the time it opened, I would guess that the entertainment of April 7, 1922 took place there as well, although the article gives no location.


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Hobart Gazette 14 Apr. 1922

Perhaps someone can tell me if "Lola" was Eleanor (Schuelke) Pflughoeft, Herman's wife; if so, she was then about 27 years old. I can't identify "Mrs. Forsberg." Thelma Fetterer was the daughter of Franklin (Sr.) and Harriet, about 24 years old. "Little Margaret Strong" was very little indeed — only about four years old, if I've identified her correctly (which isn't at all certain, since I can find her only in 1930, living with her grandparents in Winfield Township). Ellen Boyd was only a year older, the daughter of George and Addie (Guernsey) Boyd, who farmed near Merrillville.

I'm afraid "the Sunny South Girls," whoever they were, blackened their faces and spoke or sang in exaggerated dialect. Such treats as that were not as rare as we might like to think.


As for the meeting about the paving of what's now S.R. 51, I don't know where it took place. I can only imagine how "interesting and enthusiastic" it must have been, since just the previous month S.R. 51 had been described as "nearly impassable" around 61st Ave.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.

Peck & Ehrhardt

John Naumann's sudden death left behind a prospering auto-repair and tire-vulcanizing shop. Scarcely two weeks later, that shop was bought by Clinton Peck and Nick Ehrhardt (who himself had gone through sudden bereavement just a few months earlier).


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Hobart News 23 March 1922.

To the best of my knowledge, the "Morton block" was at 308-310 Main Street.


A bit puzzled by why, in 1922, vulcanization was still being done in shops and not at the tire factory, I did a little research on it and, while I didn't get an answer to my specific question, I came upon an interesting article about how Charles Goodyear discovered the process (and also one about the "rubber" industry that resulted from this discovery).

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Elsewhere on the same page, we see complaints about the condition of the roads. The "Ainsworth road near the township line" would be Grand Blvd./S.R. 51 near 61st Ave.

Hard Times at the Brickyard

The Kulage Brick Works had gone through some kind of slowdown, if not shutdown, in the summer of 1921; now, in September, the brickyard is shutting down "indefinitely," throwing forty men out of work.


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Hobart News 15 Sept. 1921.

Whoever, in the midst of these hard times, could afford a car would soon have some improved Lincoln Highway mileage to drive it on.

Roads and Rhodes

As September 1921 began, the proposed improvements to Old Ridge Road got underway. Calvin C. Shearer and his son-in-law, Paul Emery, would be doing "all the grading," according to the Gazette article below, but I'm not sure why it was called the "Shearer road," and as for the "Peddicord road" that's somehow involved in this, don't even ask me.


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Hobart Gazette 9 Sept. 1921.

We also find our friend, George Rhodes, moving his family from one place I can't identify to another place I can't identify.

In other moving-to-an-unidentified-location news, we have Paul and Bliss (Shearer) Emery getting out of her parents house into their own home …


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 8 Sept. 1921.

… while Walter Veal seems to have recovered his spirits after his recent bereavement. Franklin Schavey hasn't quite recovered his arm, but that's to be expected. (And how did Mrs. George Hatten acquire a brother with the surname Seider? — I thought her maiden name was Kipp?)

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The News mentioned that the Liberty Highway had been marked as planned, and a surge of traffic resulted: "[f]rom appearances there are now double the number of Autoists over this route than before, when tourists mostly followed the Yellowstone Trail, which took them through Third street and east over the north road to Valparaiso,"* also known as Cleveland Avenue. Here the Liberty Highway was described as "the south road west from Hobart." Earlier the Gazette had described the route as following "the south Hobart-Wheeler road" (as distinct from the "north Hobart-Wheeler road") and then Main Street, leading to "Chicago street westerly" (now known as Old Ridge Road). I do not know what constituted the south Hobart-Wheeler road, or the north one either, for that matter.

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*"Work of Grading Shearer Road Begun Wednesday Morning." Hobart News 8 Sept. 1921.

The Night Man's Early-Morning Adventure

It was helpful of the Wood family to have a big reunion, and so remind us of Woods we've forgotten; and it was kind of John Dorman to come down off the heights of Indian Ridge and work to lure people to travel through Ainsworth; but for thrills, you can't beat Ed Kisela's 4:30-AM adventure.


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Hobart Gazette 2 Sept. 1921.

By the way, my understanding is that the route between Chicago and Valpo via Ainsworth was to be marked but, thank heaven, not named.

Return-to-Hobart Report

Paul and Bliss Emery are back in Hobart, living with her parents, Calvin and Huldah Shearer. John and Mary McDaniel have left her stepson's house and are living with her son, John Chester, while they think about moving back to Hobart.


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Hobart Gazette 5 Aug. 1921.

I found that story about the Kulage brickyard interesting not only because it had shut down for a while, perhaps due to the general hard times the nation was going through, but also because of the "subway" under "Chicago street," by which I suppose they mean the Chicago road, now known as Old Ridge Road.

And, speaking of the Chicago road, it's about to get improved, "from the brick yards west to Gary city limits," according to the article at the top of the right-hand column.