People I've Been Ignoring

The first thing that caught my eye on this page was the announcement about Henry Paulus and the premiums he awarded to lucky locals on July 28, 1923.


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Hobart News, Aug. 2, 1923.

Of course we know who John Miller was, and Mrs. Ernest Sitzenstock might be Mrs. Ernest Sr. or Mrs. Ernest Jr. But Mrs. Frank Steiner? — why don't I know who she is? After poking around in the records, my best guess at her identity is this: she had been Bertha Grosch, who shows up in the 1910 Census at the age of 27, living with her aunt and uncle in Chicago, working as a saleslady in a department store. Somehow she met and fell in love with Frank Stiener[1] (Jr.), who in 1910 was working as a hired man on a farm in Eagle Creek Township, Lake County, Indiana. He was the son of Frank (Sr.) and Susan Stiener, Austro-Hungarian immigrants and farmers in Winfield Township.

Frank Stiener, Jr. and Bertha Grosch were married December 20, 1911, and they came back to the farmland of northwest Indiana. In the "Personal and Local Mention" column of the Hobart News of November 18, 1915, I find this item: "The 3-months-old baby of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Steiner [sic], living south of Ainsworth, is seriously ill with bronchial pneumonia." In the 1920 Census, we find Frank and Bertha living on rented land in southern Ross Township, operating a dairy farm. They had three children under the age of seven: Frances, Robert, and Clayton. And now, 1923, they have an aluminum kettle.

Moving along … the Argo orchestra is still a mystery.

We've met Clinton and Ida Peck before. Linus Peck was their son, born ca. 1897 (1910 Census). In 1919 he had married Martha Frame[2] in Chicago (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index), and they lived in Hobart.

We know Ezra Gilpin and we know he worked the Lake Street "J" crossing. Somebody else can investigate Patrick Glynn.

Just below that, another new (to me) name. Martha Schiesser was the daughter of Michael and Catherine Wehner, a farming family. In the 1900 Census, they lived in Center Township, but by 1908 had moved to Ross Township and owned 148 acres surrounding Lottaville:


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Image from the 1908 Plat Map.

On May 11, 1920, Martha married Frank Schiesser (Indiana Marriage Collection). He was one of the many sons of Adam and Mary (Dumbsky) Schiesser, who owned land in Ross Township as early as 1900, though I can't find it on the 1908 Plat Map … but Adam's father, I believe, died young, and his mother, Catherine, took as her second husband Nickolaus Thiel, which might explain why the land owned by Cath. Thiel in the 1908 map above would end up in the hands of A. Schiesser in the 1926 Plat Book. The land north and east of it, belonging to Chas. L. Merrill in 1908, would belong to B. Schiesser by 1926, but that's another story.

I interpret the statement about her being buried at Turkey Creek to mean Ss. Peter and Paul Cemetery, but findagrave.com lists her in Calumet Park Cemetery.


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[1] The censuses and other records usually spell it Stiener (as does the record of his grave on findagrave.com, though I have not been out there myself to see the grave marker), while the only two newspaper references I have noted spell it Steiner.
[2] Her parents were Newton and Annie Frame, and I have no idea if these were any relation to the various Frames who are all over the "South of Deepriver" columns.