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.

First Installment of Ledger Index

I have finished indexing one ledger, so I have added a new page over there on the right with the beginning of the index.

Some Guy On an Aermotor Windmill

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

This man could be Roney Sauter's saner cousin — I don't know; he is not identified. But the photo was among Eva Thompson's, so he may be a Thompson.

Eldon Harms told me that the windmill on the old Harms homestead was 65 feet tall, and when he was a kid he'd once had to climb the ladder like the guy in the photo — and then climb out onto an arm, too — to retrieve a kite tangled up in the framing.

To my surprise, the Aermotor Co. is still in business. Here is a video of a 1935 Aermotor windmill in action.

Ice Storms of Ainsworth

Here's an artsy photo to commemorate the Great Ice Storm of '17.


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… OK, it wasn't that great.

John George Hoffman

John Hoffman came into Ross Township without so much as clothes on his back, and left it as the owner of four farms.


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Hobart Gazette 17 Nov. 1922.

We've already found one of his farms, in northeastern Ross Township: one-time home of the Sonntags, later owned by son Henry.

I'm not sure what counts as a farm, but the 1908 Plat Map seems to show five Hoffman farms just in the Turkey Creek area. But perhaps "J.G." wasn't John George.


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Blogging Break

My desktop had a breakdown and is in the hospital. I'm taking a break.

George with Scates

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Handwritten notes on the back of the original identify this young fellow as "George with scates" — no other information. Evidently this boy loved ice-skating.

The photographer being A. Haase, we can date the photo to sometime between late 1902 and 1913.

The Hobart area was crawling with young Georges during the first decade of the twentieth century, so I'm not even going to guess at his surname.

The painted backdrop looks similar to the one we've seen behind a couple of baseball players, which suggests they too might have been photographed by A. Haase. But I can't see enough of the backdrop to say whether it's identical, and again, we haven't answered the question whether such a backdrop would likely be unique.

There Goes Charles Peterson

Here and there in my notes there will be a name that I've come across in my reading in connection with the Ainsworth area, and without understanding who that person was, I just catalog the reference and leave it up to chance that I will eventually come across something to enlighten me. In this case it was the announcement that Charles Peterson was leaving Ainsworth forever that enlightened me.


Hobart Gazette 17 Nov. 1922.

In this item we learn that he lived on the Halsted farm south of Ainsworth:


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Hobart Gazette 17 Nov. 1922.

And where might that be? This image from the 1926 Plat Book shows a farm south of Ainsworth owned by Barbara Halsted:*


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The 1908 Plat Map shows that land owned by Barbara's husband, W.O. Halsted.

As you can see, the Halsted farm is conveniently near the farm of Frank Peterson. A brief item in a later Gazette[1] tell us that Frank was Charles' brother. So was John Peterson of Hobart. Charles had come into the area in 1885 with his parents and resided locally ever since. But now he was leaving Indiana for Illinois, and farming for carpentry — a transition that stuck, apparently, as I can find him carpentering in Rockford, Illinois, through the 1940 Census.

You will notice I have highlighted the name Bragington, east of the Halsted and Peterson farms. I did that because the earliest mention of Charles in my notes has him repairing buildings on the "old Bragington farm" in 1910.[2] In January 1911, we come upon this:

Antone Peterson who has lived upon and operates the Bragington farm south of Ainsworth for the past eight years has decided to move back to Chicago next spring. He will dispose of his personal property at public sale. His brother Chas. the carpenter who lives upon the same farm contemplates moving to Hobart to reside.[3]

So there was another Peterson brother.

It seems Charles did indeed leave the Bragington farm, as he rented the "H. Scholler cottage on East street" in Hobart.[4]. The next time Charles and family show up in my notes is in February 1918, when they are again living "south of Ainsworth,"[5] which may have referred to the Halsted farm.

And now Charles and family are leaving, and the Halsted farm is being rented by S.E. Bowman. Who S.E. Bowman is, I don't know, but I hope eventually to come across something that will enlighten me.

♦    ♦    ♦
Let's look at the Gazette page from November 1922 that contained Charles Peterson's public sale notice — it includes a couple of other interesting (to me) things …


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Hobart Gazette 17 Nov. 1922.

… regular Wednesday night dances at Deepriver Hall (which may have been the former schoolhouse), evidently well enough attended that it was worth Clarence Howell's (who??) time to operate bus service between Hobart and the hall.

(And below the dance item, another mention of the old Lutz house's new life.)

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[1] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 1 Dec. 1922.
[2] "Ainsworth Pick-Ups," Hobart Gazette 24 June 1910.
[3] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 20 Jan. 1911. The third brother's name also shows up spelled "Anthon" (e.g., "PublicSale," Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1911).
[4] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 17 Feb. 1911.
[5] "Births," Hobart News 21 Feb. 1918.