Nickel-Plate Nostalgia

On March 19, 1923, Thomas Maloney turned 71 — who, you ask? Good question. I never heard of him before, but he takes us back to old times, to the coming of the Nickel Plate through Hobart in 1881 (so the article says and I don't have time to research that). While constructing the railroad, Thomas boarded at the Morton building, eating the home cooking of one of those spirited Shearer sisters: Nora (aka Elizabeth) Shearer Ensign.


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Hobart News 22 March 1923.


Since first looking into Nora's history, I have learned that she was divorced from Fred Kappelman in 1903.¹ The marriage had been a mistake from the start, apparently, since it happened in 1899 and by the 1900 Census they were living apart. I still haven't been able to find out when her first husband, William Ensign, died.

Elsewhere on the page above, we learn that Hobart was hit with a late-winter blizzard in March 1923. A natural curiosity about the low temperature, and the kids' leaving their toys on the porch, cost Mrs. Charles Koeppen a broken knee. She was the former Tena Rohwedder — daughter of Hans and Margaret (Thune),² sister of Edward. The Charles Koeppen farm lay just at the eastern outskirts of Wheeler:


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Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1921Plats/Union-1921.jpg.


Finally, 'way out in New York, Ellsworth Humes hears of all those liquor-related arrests in Lake County.

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[1] "Court Doings," Hobart Gazette 6 March 1903.
[2] Indiana Death Certificates.