Dr. Friedrich's Instruments

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Dr. L.M. Friedrich circa 1955.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Photos taken inside the Hobart Historical Society museum.

The museum has a collection of medical instruments that belonged to Dr. Louis M. Friedrich, whose building still stands on Third Street.


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They look scary.





I have no idea what any of these things are. My understanding is that Dr. Friedrich practiced dentistry as well as general medicine, so that widens the range of possibilities.



Don't you get a thrill when you come across a fingerprint on something old — thinking that perhaps it's the fingerprint of the original owner? Totally irrational, of course, but still …

Adeline's Autograph Album

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The front cover of Adeline's autograph album.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


Let us begin a new set of images, taken from an autograph album belonging to Adeline Busse. I believe she received it as a gift for her 13th birthday, January 11, 1909. She wrote on the front flyleaf:


Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The only photograph I've been able to find of Adeline, or Lena as she was known to family and friends, is this blurred one from her childhood:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.
(Lena is at right. At left is her older sister, Bertha.)

The album was a gift from Lena's father, as we know from this inscription inside the back cover:


Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

"Papa" was Gustav John Busse.


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The caption doesn't indicate which is Gust Busse; for the moment I'm assuming he's on the left.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The sad thing is that less than one year after he gave Lena the album, "Papa" died.

Ex-Marshal Dies

Ex-Marshal Gustav John Busse who has been conducting a saloon in Hobart for several years died suddenly Sunday morning, Jan. 2, 1910, at his home on Main street. Apparently Mr. Busse had been enjoying reasonably good health and New Year's evening while eating supper with his son-in-law, Emil Scharbach, he sustained a stroke of apoplexy which caused him to become unconscious within a short time and died about six o'clock the next morning, never having regained consciousness. Dr. Gordon was called within ten minutes after he was stricken and remained with him all night and Dr. Bulhand was called in consultation but nothing could be done to help his condition.

Mr. Busse was born in Germany on June 13, 1854, and came to America in 1877. In Oct. 1882, he was married to Miss Augusta Hundt at Laporte. Four years later he moved his family to Glen Park and there had charge of a section for the Nickel Plate until 1891 when he moved to Hobart and engaged in the saloon business, which he since followed except for seven years that he was Town Marshal.

Mr. Busse was a kind-hearted and liberal citizen and was never known to refuse a friend an accommodation. He had been a supporter of and a member of the local German Ev. Lutheran church for twenty-four years and from which edifice the funeral was conducted by Rev. Schuelke on Tuesday of this week at 2 o'clock. The interment took place at Crown Hill.

He is survived by a wife, one son and six daughters, besides a brother, Herman Busse, who lives near Knox, Ind., and six sisters, Mrs. Wm. Stoltz, of Wanatah, and the balance who live in Germany.

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In April 1910, the census-taker found the widowed Augusta running a boarding-house on Main Street. In addition to the four of the Busse children still at home — William (20), Edith (18), Bertha (16), and Adeline (14) — the house was crammed with ten male boarders.

Lena's story had a sad ending, as she died quite young.

Death of Miss Busse

Miss Adeline Busse who had been ailing for about five weeks and was operated upon Feb. 14 for gangrenous appendicitis passed away at 7:30 on Monday evening, Feb. 25, 1918, at the Mercy hospital in Gary. The remains were conveyed the same evening by Undertaker Wild to the saddened home of her mother on Center street.

Miss Busse was the youngest daughter of Mrs. Augusta and the late Gustav Busse and was a most highly respected young lady. She was born in Hobart and was 22 years old the 11th of last January. The many friends of the family sympathise with them in their dark hour of affliction. Her death in the prime of girlhood is extremely sad.

Besides her mother, she is survived by five sisters — Mrs. Emma [Emil] Scharbach of Hobart, Mrs. Martha [Fred] Gardner and Miss Minnie Busse of Chicago, Mrs. Edith [Kelly] Norris of Hobart, and Miss Bertha Busse who lives at home, and one brother, William, who resides in Chicago.

The funeral was held yesterday (Thursday) at 3 o'clock at the German Ev. Lutheran church and the burial was made at the Crown Hill cemetery.

Lena's little grave marker is fading into illegibility.


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… Having spent so much time on the background, we will leave the autographs for the future.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Death of Miss Busse." Hobart Gazette 1 Mar. 1918.
♦ "Ex-Marshal Dies." Hobart Gazette 7 Jan. 1910.
♦ "Funeral of Miss Matilda Adeline Busse Held This Afternoon." Hobart News 28 Feb. 1918.

Plumbing and Chickens

For early spring 1920, something new — a new ad from Lee & Rhodes — and something old — the health officer's yearly warning to pen up the chickens.

And the old five-and-ten-cent store, renewed after the fire and ready to re-open.


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From the Hobart Gazette of March 26, 1920.

Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine

Photos taken inside the Hobart Historical Society museum. Today, in honor of our close examination of the stitching on those sunbonnets we recently looked at, I present to you a Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine. (It's merely an association of ideas. I am not suggesting that this sewing machine made either sunbonnet.)

The museum gives no date for this machine. A quick search on the internet turns up a site that has everything you ever wanted to know about Wheeler & Wilson. From there, I gather that this model, No. 8, would probably date to the late 1870s or early 1880s. I must admit that until I came across this one, I never heard of Wheeler & Wilson.

I hope that this first photo, showing other items for a sense of scale, gives you an idea of how small this machine is compared to modern ones.


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This decorative drawer pull on the cabinet caught my eye.



Some of these old machines are housed in exquisitely beautiful cabinets — which makes sense, since the modest middle-class homes in which the ladies of the house did their own sewing would probably not have the space for a separate sewing room. The sewing machine would be part of the furniture in a parlor or spare bedroom, and expected to be attractive as well as useful.

The Time of Reaping

From the Schavey envelope collection.


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Handwritten on the back of this photo: "Mable & Harry Breyfogle/Union St., Hobart." Here they look a good deal older than in the 1920s-era photos we've been looking at. If the Breyfogles ever had a farm, I haven't learned of it yet; so the wheat (or oats, or whatever) may not be their own harvest, but the still-holding-hands-after-decades-of-marriage … that is their harvest.

Another, unidentified photo may show the same field.



And with these two photos, folks, we have brought in the harvest of the Schavey envelope. It's time to move on to some other excuse for not reading microfilm.

Lincoln Highway Work

From the Hobart Gazette of March 19, 1920:


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No, I don't have a clue about the "tailrace" configuration (which sounds as if it would be north of the mill, doesn't it?), or the location of the bridge that was to be replaced. And surely the bridge standing there now can't be the one about to the built.

Sunbonnets

Photos taken inside the Hobart Historical Society museum.

In honor of yesterday's sunbonnet-wearing woman, here are a couple of sunbonnets on display in the museum.


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They look much the worse for wear — as you might expect, since sunbonnets were work clothes, and on the head of a woman who worked a farm or garden, or washed or hung clothes to dry outdoors, the bonnet would have spent hours under the glare of the sun, wet with sweat, blown about by the wind, speckled by dust and insects until it had to be washed and then hung out on the line to dry … in the sun and the wind.

Yes, these could have been costume bonnets made expressly for the 1947 centennial festivities, but that checked one is so badly faded that I'm inclined to think it was a working bonnet.

It appears to be fashioned with a blend of hand- and machine-stitching.