Half-Buried Historical Car Parts of Ainsworth

Here's me prying a half-buried car part out of the ground where my barn used to be, using a Honeysuckle Popper.


(Click on images to enlarge)

Here is the car part. Looks like something to do with suspension, maybe.



How old is it? It must be at least 37 years old, since I've been here 36 years and I certainly didn't put it in the barn.

I don't use my Honeysuckle Popper on honeysuckle anymore. These days when I want to kill honeysuckle, I cut it off just above ground level and treat the stump with brush killer using my Buckthorn Blaster.

Day of Destruction II: The Barn-Razing

The old barn made it past 100 years but it's not going to reach 104.


(Click on image to enlarge)

The August 11 derecho knocked some big hunks of elm tree onto the barn, smashing the southwest corner. The supporting pillar was exposed and I could see that it was a stack of powder.



Termites? Dry rot? Whatever it was, I didn't think it was safe to leave the barn standing. Especially since my dogs and cats go in there all the time.

It is the end of an era here on the Old Lines Place.

Day of Destruction

Interesting views from the Ainsworth crossing today. To the north, Sapper's Corner is burning.


(Click on images to enlarge)

To the south, William Raschka's 110-year-old grain warehouse is being demolished.

The Ainsworth School Loses Its Principal

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image originally posted to Ancestry.com by user mksrnbsn.

William Shaver was the principal of the W.G. Haan School when he died in 1924 at only 38 years of age.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News, 21 Feb. 1924.

I am not sure the obituary gets the timeline exactly correct. The 1910 Census shows William as a boarder in the home of Edward and Anna Notter near Deepriver, giving his occupation as teacher in a public school. He was only on his second month of marriage, and living apart from his wife. This may have been a matter of convenience for his job, but apparently the marriage ultimately did not succeed, as his death certificate lists his marital status as divorced.

However, William and Grace spent enough time together to have two children: a son, Leslie, born in Valparaiso in 1911, and a daughter, Winnifred, born in Ainsworth in 1913.

The divorce probably happened "some time" previously, about the "some time" when his son and daughter went to live with his mother in Cairo.

I believe that the two men who accompanied William's body to Cairo — Oscar Carlson and John Thiel — were not relatives but fellow members of one of the fraternal organizations to which William had belonged.

Third Street ca. 1929

A recent purchase, and I'm surprised I had never seen this photo before in all these years.


(Click on image to enlarge)

The photographer stood in the intersection of Third and Center, pointing his camera west.

At right is the late, lamented Guyer building. The building just west of it (530 E. Third) must have been demolished or greatly remodeled; the county assessor gives 1963 as the current one-story building's year of construction. But the assessor also says that the next west building, 524 E. Third, was built in 1869, which I don't think is right.

At left is the Union Block, long gone and just a distant memory.


Aside from helping us date the postcard with its 1929 postmark, the verso is not particularly helpful.


(Click on image to enlarge)

These are all people from Goshen, Indiana. The postcard's writer — I believe her to be Lenore Witmer Miller — just happened to be in Hobart, and away from home long enough to feel the need to write to her daughter for news, so maybe there is some family drama there, but we'll never know. It's enough that she bought this postcard and sent it, so that 97 years later we get this view of Third Street.

Kids These Days! (1924)

Some things never change …


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette, 28 Mar. 1924.

… but some things do, let us hope.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News, 13 Mar. 1924.

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

Fire at the Sapper House

History repeats itself, except that this 1924 fire was unintentional. Any fires that may happen on the old Sapper place just lately are intentional, for training purposes.


(Click on image to enlarge)
"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, 7 Mar. 1924.

The bungalow that is still standing (just barely) was built in 1925 per the county records.