Sudden Deaths

Not two years after Alvah Fisher was killed in an accident at the Lincoln Highway crossing south of Ainsworth, that dangerous intersection took another life.


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Hobart News, Aug. 23, 1923.


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Hobart News, Aug. 23, 1923.

Both articles mention tall corn on the northeast corner blocking the view. I take this to mean that there was no building there yet, at the future site of the Tonegals' business.[1] The article below the main story in the Gazette implies that there was not so much as a stop sign at this intersection.

I can't identify the driver of the local car involved in the wreck. The News gives his name as John Myers; the Gazette gives him no name but says he is the son of John H. Meyer; both describe his home as being in Winfield Township. I've found the death certificate of a John Henry Meyer, gored to death by a bull in Winfield Township in 1927 (Indiana Death Certificates), but I can't find him there in the 1920 Census, or any other census for that matter. The 1920 Census does show a Meyer family farming in Winfield Township, but no John among them.


Speaking of dangerous corners — a couple weeks earlier, a fatal accident occurred near Valparaiso, at a location the Gazette described as "the Clifford turn west of [Valparaiso], called the 'death corner'" ("Auto Accidents," Hobart Gazette, Aug. 17, 1923). "Clifford" was probably a major landowner nearby. If I go looking for Cliffords owning land just west of Valpo in 1923, I find a lot of them. The most dangerous-looking "Clifford turn" is circled in red below on the 1928 plat map (which I'm using because it shows the road better than the 1921 map), on a stretch of road now called Clifford Road:


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Image from https://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1928Plats/Center-1928.jpg.

The intersection and crossing at the southeast end of that road look even more dangerous, but I don't know that they would be linked to the Clifford name. A couple less dangerous corners by Clifford land are circled in green. There must have been more than one fatal accident at the "Clifford turn" to earn it the name of "death corner."

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President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly on Thursday, August 2, 1923, just when he seemed to be recovering from an illness. Eight days later (the day of his burial), a memorial service was held in the auditorium of the Hobart High School on Fourth Street. "The attendance of citizens was disappointingly small. The room should have been crowded but it wasn't. … Attorney John Killigrew, who had met the president on two occasions in 1920, spoke praisingly of his personal attainments as he saw and judged him at those times." ("Hobart Holds Memorial Services," Hobart Gazette, Aug. 17, 1923.)


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[1] The county records state that the building now housing Sharp's School Services was built in 1980, but we know that is incorrect.