Here Come the Grooms

Aside from the milk-fed turkeys of 1942, I know precious little about the Groom family that inhabited the Ainsworth/Hobart area, but I shall try to remedy my ignorance, now that they have come to my attention again through a little item in the "Local Drifts" column of the Hobart Gazette of February 1, 1924: "Hosea and Claude Groom and the latter's wife were called to DeSoto, Mo., last week by the death of their mother. They will return this week."

The brothers had been born in (or near) DeSoto,[1] Hosa[2] around 1890 and Claude around 1898, to Jefferson and Sarah Ellen Groom. There were eight children in all. The 1910 Census recorded Hosa and Claude still with their family in Missouri, but sometime after that, Hosa left home.[3]

He was in definitely in Lake County, Indiana, by 1916, when he married Hazel Pinson (Indiana Marriage Collection), who was also a native of Missouri. Hosa and Hazel show up in the 1920 Census in Hobart, with no children.

Meanwhile, Claude remained in DeSoto at least until September 1918 (WWI Draft Cards). I can't find him anywhere in the 1920 census (taken in January), but likely he was in this area by then or soon after: in October 1920, he married a Hobart woman, Mary Kisela. Her family and Hosa's were neighbors.


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Image from Ancestry.com.
Somebody at the Hobart Historical Society probably knows where "Earl[e]" street was (and Lightner street, too, which was the next one recorded), but I don't.

Mary was just short of 17 when she married Claude, but it was a lifelong marriage.

Hosa's marriage to Hazel was not.


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Hobart News, 8 May 1924.

The divorce went through, evidently, as we find Hosa a single man in 1930 census. (I don't know anything about Hazel's subsequent life.) In 1936 Hosa married Lola Martin. She had been born, raised, and was living in Illinois when they married,[4] so don't ask me how they met. But this marriage lasted.

Hosa and Lola continued living Hobart, he working in the steel mills and she keeping house. By the 1950 Census, the household included Lola's 21-year-old niece, who was divorced, with a three-year-old son.

Hosa was still living in Hobart when he died in 1951. According to his death certificate, his body was sent back to DeSoto, Missouri, for burial. Lola died in 1979 and is buried with her parents in Palestine, Illinois.

As for Claude and Mary Groom, they were living in Hobart in 1930 (next door to Hosa on Lawrence Street), with two children, Claude and Robert. Claude (Sr.) was a wireman in the steel mills. By 1940 they had moved to Ross Township (the enumerator notes "61st Street"), with another son (David) and Mary's parents (Frank and Barbara) having joined the household. When Claude was selling milk-fed turkeys in 1942, he told buyers to come to him "3/4 mile north of Green Acres at 330" — that is, 73rd Avenue.

I cannot find Claude and Mary at all in the 1950 census. Around the mid-1950s, they relocated to the Tampa area of Florida,[5] where they died in 1986 and 1988, respectively.

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The page of the News, above, where the divorce notice appears, includes an ad placed by Hattie Sizelove, who was selling life insurance from her farm east of Ainsworth. We already know that Hattie knew how to drive a car, so I'm getting the impression that she was quite an active person.

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[1] Hosa so states in his WWI Draft Card; Claude's death notice says likewise ("Obituaries," St. Petersburg Times (Fla.), 30 Aug. 1986).
[2] Yes, his name shows up as Hosa on official documents, even if the Gazette and also the News called him Hosea in the social columns. Which leads me to wonder if his parents intended to name him Hosea and/or that's how he pronounced it.
[3] His 1951 obituary says he left home in 1908 ("Hosa J. Groom, Former Resident, Dies in Indiana," Jefferson Republic (De Soto, Mo.), 5 Apr. 1951). If so, apparently he came back in time for the census.
[4] "New Marriage Licenses," Hammond Times, 26 Mar. 1936.
[5] Mary's 1988 obituary says she moved from Hobart to the Tampa area "32 years ago." ("Obituaries," Tampa Tribune, 14 Sept. 1988.)

Sale on the Howard Smith Farm

For some reason I thought this notice about a sale on Howard Smith's farm in February 1924 was interesting enough to retrieve from the microfilm. Maybe because Howard Smith was dead, and dead people are my favorite people. Anyway, I'm going to slap this up here, because I'm still too busy to do any kind of post that requires research.


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Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.

The last time we saw Melvin Guernsey, it was 1920 and he was planning to leave for Florida. If he did go, he was obviously back, and farming again. Melvin was not planning on quitting farming (unlike Barney Rhoda in the notice below his): he was just moving to the "Wm. Bixenman farm three miles east of Crown Point."[1]

The notice names "M. Hurlburt" as the administrator of Howard Smith's estate. That would be Milan Hurlburt, who was Howard's uncle.

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I did not realize when I was getting this page from the microfilm that the story in the left-hand column quotes Charles Chester of Ainsworth. If only I had! — I would have gotten the whole story, so we could have found out what Charles Chester of Ainsworth said about Calumet Electric company's proposal. Now we'll never know. But at least we now know that in 1924, the Chester farm was getting electricity from its own generating system.

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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.

Calvin Fleming and His Magnificent Cigar Box

In 1958, these two young Hobartites — Dale Schavey and Ruth Ann Fleming — were married.


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Left image: Hobart High School Memories yearbook, 1954.
Right image: Hobart High School Memories yearbook, 1955.
Both via Ancestry.com.

Thus were the Schavey and Fleming families united, and that is why our Schavey descendant also has a couple of Fleming-related photos to share with us.

First, here is Calvin Fleming, in a photo that is undated but is giving me 1930s vibes.


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Image courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

Calvin Lawrence Fleming was born October 23, 1883,[1] in Hobart, to Elias and Harriet (Curtis) Fleming, who both came from Porter County. I don't know much about his early life. Although I can find his family of origin in Valparaiso in the 1900 Census, Calvin is not listed in the household. If this is not a mistake by the enumerator, that means Calvin had left home already, by 17 years of age — which would not be so surprising, given how active and enterprising he proved to be later in life.

In 1905 he married Lillis Thomas (she lived to marry again) and in 1907 Minnie Voltz. Minnie was the mother of Ruth Ann, and died in 1929. There are a couple of subsequent Indiana marriage records involving Calvin L. Fleming: a marriage in 1931 to Blanche Lawrence, and in 1944 to Irene Buckley (I am not entirely sure that the latter was our Calvin). I do not know how those marriages ended.[2]

In 1953 he married Ida Eastin.


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Brownstown Banner (Brownstown, Ind.), 18 Mar. 1953.

They were still married when Calvin died in 1959.[3]


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Brownstown Banner (Brownstown, Ind.), 5 Aug. 1959

He is buried in Michigan City.

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Readers of this blog already know that Calvin's business enterprises included cigar-making. Even those who don't read this blog need only go into the basement of the Hobart Historical Society and view the display of local cigar manufacturers to find out the same thing. Here is a picture I took at the museum:


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You can just see the initials, C.L.F., pasted on this battered wooden box.

But not all his cigars were sold in such plain boxes. The Fleming-Schavey family has one that is a work of art:


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Images courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

And yes, that portrait is Calvin in his younger days.

Even the lid is magnificent:



Imagine how many of those boxes burned in the factory fire of 1917. It's enough to make you weep.

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[1] Per his death certificate; his WWI draft card says October 22, 1882.
[2] I've gotten to the point where using the computer too much is physically painful. Maybe somebody healthier, with more time on their hands, can look into this!
[3] His death certificate describes him as widowed. While the obituary is wrong on several points, including Calvin's middle initial and his father's first name, I think it is right about Ida's surviving Calvin. She died in 1968 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Merrillville Then and Now: 73rd Avenue West of Broadway

Circa 1909, and 2024:


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Second image from Google street view.

"Main Street," also known as the Joliet road, had not yet become the Lincoln Highway when this photo was taken sometime before July 17, 1909. The road is dirt, but electrical wires (or are they telephone?) run along it.

We are standing more or less abreast of the Merrillville school building (now the Merrillville History Museum).

The Burge-Underwood house would be to the left, but just out of range of the camera. The first house visible on the left is the Floyd Pierce home, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville. The next house is the Coffey (or Coffee) house. I do not know what families occupied any of the other houses.

On the right, of course, we can see the steeple of the Methodist Church.

In the distance on the right, I believe you can see a couple of businesses: the Stoltz general store, and next to it the Old California Exchange Hotel:


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The verso includes a postmark, thank goodness, and a friendly message from Howard Walter of Merrillville to Ruth Casbon of Valparaiso:


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It's interesting how he spells the town's name; is that evidence that he pronounced it "Valpo-RISE-o" rather than "Valpo-RAYS-o"?

Howard and Ruth were both about 16 in 1909. Howard was one of the Walter brothers of Merrillville.

Ruth was the daughter of Thomas and Ella (Downs) Casbon. She had been named Mable Ruth but preferred her middle name. She spent her early childhood on a farm in the vicinity of Deep River. Sometime after the 1900 census the family relocated to a Porter County farm, where the 1910 Census, and by 1920 they lived in the city of Valparaiso.

In January 1924, Thomas and Ella held a party to celebrate Ruth's engagement to a man named Joseph Albert Bancroft,[1] a native of Chesterton about 4 years older than Ruth. He had previously been married, in 1914, to Fay Smith (Indiana Marriage Collection); that marriage lasted at least through June 1917 (WWI Draft Cards), but must have ended in divorce at some point, since Fay lived to marry again.[2]

Ruth Casbon and Joseph Bancroft were married in April 1924:


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Hobart Gazette, 2 May 1924.

The marriage was not happy, apparently, as the couple were divorced within two years, according to a Chesterton newspaper item posted to Joseph's Findagrave.com entry.

Joseph moved to Michigan and married again. Ruth resumed her maiden name and lived out the rest of her life as a single woman in Valparaiso. She died in 1989.

For some surprising background information about Ruth, I refer you to the Casbon expert.


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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.
[2] I have come across a record of a 1907 marriage in Lake County between a Joseph N. Bancroft and a Lillian Miller, but the record does not include enough information for me to say that this was or wasn't our Joseph.

Schavey Family Photos

These photos of some of our Schavey friends later in life were sent to me by a Schavey descendant.

This one shows six of the seven children of Henry and Frances (Springman) Schavey.


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Images courtesy of Rachel White Hein.

Front row, left to right: Clarence Schavey, Mabel Schavey Breyfogle, Henry C. Schavey.
Back row, left to right: Loretta Schavey Van Meter, Frank Schavey, Louis Schavey.
Not shown: Julius Schavey.

The photo is undated. Based on the fashions and apparent ages, I would guess that it was taken sometime in the 1950s. [Update: probably 1951-1957; see Heather's comment below.]

The same goes for this photo: undated, but looking 1950s-ish.



Left to right: Clarence, Henry ("Hank"), Louis, Carl, and Frank.


This time of year I am spending all my time and energy outdoors, so I am grateful when people send me material for the blog that doesn't involve me having to do research!

Pond Sliders and Good Girls of Ainsworth

It's turtle-rescuing season again, and this time it was a pond slider that got stuck by my fence.


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The folks in the IN Nature Facebook group are divided on whether it's a red-eared slider or a yellow-bellied slider. Too bad I couldn't get a picture of its face.


Maisie alerted me to its presence. Maisie is a good girl.

Automobile Humor (1924) and the Old Abel Place

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Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.

And I'm sure some people clipped it out and put it on their windshield, and the next time they were out driving, they kept glancing over smugly at their passengers just waiting for them (the passengers) to say something.

This prompted me to investigate the origin of the term "backseat driver." One source found it as early as 1891 in the U.S. The phenomenon had to exist before the automobile; it's just human nature; but I haven't been able to find information about what people called it.

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A social column in the same issue of the Hobart News contained an update on the ownership of the old Abel homestead:

A deal was recently completed whereby the former Abel property, together with a couple of Gary properties, was transferred by the late owner, Steve Dolato of this city, in exchange for a farm of 320 acres located about 8 miles north of Renssalaer, Ind. owned by Michael Jungles, consideration $44,800. The Dolato family, who have resided here for the past seven months, will move the first of the week to Gary, where they have purchased a home at Eighth and Georgia streets and the Jungles family will remove to their new residence, the old Abel homestead, as soon as it is vacated by Mr. Dolato and family.

The new owners' name was actually spelled Jungels. Michael and Josephine (Gerlach) Jungels were both Illinois natives who had married in 1884. After many years of farming in Jasper County, Indiana, they were approaching retirement age and chose the old Abel place, which still had over 10 acres attached to it. A later Hobart News social column (4 Apr. 1924) mentions a couple of their married daughters' surnames …

Mrs. Michael Jungles came Sunday to the old Abel homestead, which she and Mr. Jungles purchased about the first of the year to be occupied by them as a future home. Mr. and Mrs. Otto Ritter of this city, her son-in-law and daughter, motored to Renssalaer for the purpose of bringing Mrs. Jungles back with them to Hobart. Mr. Jungles will join his wife later. Another daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Peer, have resided at the former Abel home since the first of March.

Elizabeth Jungels had married Volney Peer in 1907, and Anna Jungels and Otto Ritter were married in 1916, all in Jasper County; but with this move they and the elder Jungelses would become Hobart residents for decades. It is Elizabeth's name that shows up as the owner of the property on the 1926 Plat Map:


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Let us skip ahead to the end of Michael's and Josephine's residence — they departed Hobart, and this world, within three weeks of each other in March 1952.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 3 Mar. 1952


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 21 Mar. 1952

Elizabeth Peer and Anna Ritter remained Hobart residents to the end of their lives as well. Anna died in 1969, and Elizabeth — who still occupied the old homestead — in 1980.