The Old Fire Truck Again

I have a couple more photos of the old Camp 133/V.F.W. fire truck, last seen on July 4, 1947.

This one was taken in August of 1957, during Eldon and Norma Harms' housewarming party on the old Fox-Harms place.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

At left you can see the fire truck's steering wheel, and the worn upholstery of driver's seat. As to who Bob, Jane and Buck were, your guess is as good as mine. From the looks of it, that housewarming party was a whole lot of fun.


In this photo, the fire truck is a little girl's playground.

"A Menace to Any Community"

We are destined to know no more of the mysterious Nathan Bosen, it seems, now that he has skipped town.


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Hobart Gazette 15 Dec. 1922.

Elsewhere on the same page — a Ross Township community meeting, and an improvement in Alice Paine's health.

Not Tillie, SUSIE!

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Image courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.

This is Mathilda "Tillie" Prochno with two horses, Daisy and Beauty. Judging by her apparent age (and she was born in 1911), I would date the photo to around 1920. The location may be the Prochno farm, but it is not identified.

As we know, at some point Tillie stopped being Tillie and became Susie or Sue, and it seems that someone felt pretty strongly about the name change — strongly enough to obliterate "Tillie" and write in "Susie" on this old photograph.

Trench Mouth and a Twice-Broken Leg

In early December 1922 we find disease and an accident in the Ainsworth area. Alice Paine had to suspend her schooling while she battled a case of trench mouth, which sounds rather unpleasant. In the Goldman household, little Reva, only a few months after coming to America, was hospitalized. (And in the left-hand column we see that the Goldmans' store was going to be open every evening until Christmas!) On the former Otis Guernsey farm, James Jeffrey had broken the same leg twice.


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Hobart Gazette 8 Dec. 1922.

Happier news comes in the "Births" column — a new Wesley baby. I haven't completely ignored the Wesley family, but I have pretty well ignored this particular member of it. I had to go checking on Ancestry.com to get some basic information about William Wesley. Thanks to William's death certificate, I now know that his mother (his father's first wife) was Augusta Miller.

William was born in 1890 and named, apparently, for his grandfather (1900 Census). In 1917 he married the 18-year-old Pearl Auton (Indiana Marriage Collection), daughter of Harvey and Elma (Smith) Auton (1900 Census).

Per the 1920 Census, William and Pearl owned their own farm, somewhere in southeastern Ross Township. It may have been this small parcel shown in the 1939 Plat Book.


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(The 1926 Plat Book shows that land owned by "J.W." — probably John Wesley, William's father.)

By 1920 they had one little boy, Howard. The daughter born in 1922 was named Helen. They would have another three daughters (Thelma, Betty, and Elsie Mae) by the time of the 1940 Census.

Lydia Margaret Schnabel Clifford

Today's guest post is by Suzi Emig.


Lydia Margaret Schnabel Clifford was my paternal great-aunt and the second oldest of twelve children born to Jakob (Fred) Schnabel and Catherine Reichert Schnabel in the family home at the intersection of 61st and Colorado west of the creek on the south side of the road. A cousin told me that the family called her Liddy or Aunt Lid. She married relatively late in life, as you know to, Frank Clifford. They are both interred in Crown Hill Cemetery.

Her illness was rather well documented in the local press and she was hospitalized for months before her death. She suffered from pemphigus. I had to research the disease not having heard of it before. It is a rare autoimmune disease that affects the mucous membranes and the skin, causing blistering of the skin which in turn causes the skin to slough off and turn into open sores which can lead to infection. It wasn't until the 1960's and 1970's that an understanding of and the nature of this disease was published. There are three types of pemphigus which vary in severity. From the accounts of her illness in the obituaries, it appears that she may have had the least common and severest form of the disease. She was apparently diagnosed about 5 or 6 months prior to her demise. Since no autoimmune drugs, steroids, or antibiotics existed at that time, treatment consisted of comfort measures and pain relief. The prognosis was grave.

As far as I know Frank never remarried.

I have a copy of the Adams School picnic from 1895 with her and many of her siblings in it. She would have been about 18 at the time and may have been a teacher.



Lydia and Frank's wedding photo, from 1911:


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Their marriage announcement states they will reside on the Heck farm. Evidently they rented. The Hecks and Schnabels were related by marriage.

I think the home northwest of Ainsworth was a house on the Schnabel property between Liverpool Road and Colorado St. and was owned by the family, so again they may have rented it. The plat map of Ross Twp. in 1908 shows the owner as Fred Schnabel, Lydia's older brother. The house is located just a little west of the old Elks on the south side of the road. I don't know the address. It is white with four pillars in the front on the porch that goes all the way across, a fenced pasture to the west and a little barn and garage on the east.


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This image from Google street view shows the house on 61st Avenue that Lydia and Frank may have once occupied.

Evidently Frank had another house built in "Hobart Park" where Lydia died. From what I have figured out the house sat on the north side of 3rd St. in Hobart back from the road. This is about 50 yards from my house. My Dad said that the family used to graze cattle in this area and did own several plots here. So again, the land was most likely owned by the Schnabels.

To Build an Ice Cream Factory

Somehow I thought Sherman Henderson's ice cream factory had always been there … I was too busy making assumptions to check the Sanborn maps. It first shows up on the 1922 map. But it wasn't even begun until November 1922:


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.

Martha Wood

Martha Beatty Wood has been so quiet all this time that I don't believe I've yet mentioned her name in this blog — though her husband, William (and indirectly her son, Raymond, who helped to run the Wood garage), and her daughter, Olive, have made several appearances.

Now it's November 1922, and Martha has quietly slipped away.


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.


In the left-hand column, we learn of the death of Lydia Clifford — another person I've never mentioned, but I have posted about three of her sisters: Mrs. Matilda Demmon, known as Tillie, had married Walter Demmon, who built the store in Merrillville; Carrie Chandler, with her husband Eugene, lived on a farm on Liverpool Road; and Emily had married Fred Shults (whose brother just recently quit farming).

Going by the 1920 Census and judging by their neighbors, I gather that Frank and Lydia Clifford owned a farm northwest of Ainsworth, but I haven't been able to find it on any plat map.