Thursday, September 24, 2020

Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 6)

(continued from Part 5)

2020-09-24. Selen. Ainsworth school souvenir 1897-98 b
(Click on image to enlarge)


I can find no reference in my notes to the surname Selen, but a search on Ancestry.com easily turns up the 1900 Census, which shows Peter and Freeda Selen, with their four children, farming rented land in Ross Township — probably southeast of Ainsworth, to judge by their landowning neighbors: Larson, Wojahn, and Yager can all be placed along 73rd Avenue between S.R. 51 and Randolph between the 1891 Plat Book and the 1908 Plat Map.

Annie, born in Illinois in 1888,[1] was about 10 years old during this school year. She had a brother, Albert, born 1891, who ought to have been in school with her; also a sister, Ester, born 1892; and then in June 1897 along came little Alexander.

Peter Selen had come to this country from Sweden in the mid-1880s. In 1888, he married Fredericka Dorette Ellene "Freeda" Wilkens, a German immigrant. They lived in Illinois through Ester's birth in 1892, at least. Why they came down to farm in Ross Township, I have no clue. The 1910 Census shows the family living in Chicago, Peter working as a carpenter — but they had lived in Indiana through about 1907, when their youngest child was born.

Per the Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index, Annie Selen died, unmarried, on February 12, 1919.

[to be continued]

_______________
[1] Her death record says September 17, 1888; the 1900 Census says September 1887; her parents' marriage (if I've found the right people) took place April 7, 1888.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Just Whistle!

I bought this bottle thinking (mistakenly) that the Hobart Historical Society didn't already have any like this. They did. So now they have another.

2020-09-17. Whistle soda bottle 1
(Click on images to enlarge)

The bottle has "Hobart Ind" stamped on the bottom:

2020-09-17. Whistle soda bottle 2

Whistle was an orange-flavored soda introduced to mass marketing sometime circa 1920; sources vary on exactly when. This source says 1920s; another source says the soda was formulated in 1916 but not sold until 1925. However, I have found a flurry of ads in Indiana newspapers in 1919, like this one:

2020-09-17. Kokomo Tribune, Aug. 20, 1919 (p. 8)
Kokomo Daily Tribune, Aug. 20, 1919.

Here's one from a local paper in 1921:

2020-09-17. Hammond Lake County Times, Apr. 22, 1921 (p. 12)
Lake County Times (Hammond), Apr. 22, 1921.

And here's a little ad from 1957 in Terre Haute:

2020-09-17. Terre Haute Tribune, Sep. 23, 1957 (p. 10)
Terre Haute Tribune, Sept. 23, 1957.

I have no idea when Whistle soda ceased production.

I can't really date this bottle, either. The Hobart Historical Society's display dates a similar bottle to around 1940, but an online source dates another to circa 1926.

The agonizingly slow process of reading microfilm may yield more information.

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 5)

(continued from Part 4)

2020-09-09. Ainsworth school souvenir 1897-98 b - Glattli, Mankey
(Click on image to enlarge)

Now I shall deal with the names Glattli and Mankey, because I think they are related. Why do I think that? First, here is Edward Mankey's 1963 death notice:

2020-09-09. Mankey, Edward, Valparaiso Vidette Messenger, 05-06-1963, p. 6
Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), May 6, 1963.

Who on earth (I asked myself) was this surviving sister, Mrs. Louise Mounts? The only Mankey girl I knew of was Sophie Mankey Triebess. So I went looking for Louise, and eventually found her death certificate.

2020-09-09. Mounts, Louise Glattli - Death Certificate
(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com.


Louise's mother was Dorothea Mankey.

Dorothea had become a widow in 1889, when her husband, William, died. William was the father of Henry, Eddie, and Willie, as well as Sophie.

William and Dorothea are elusive. I can't find them in the 1880 Census or any earlier one, nor can I find a marriage record for them. They likely were married around 1880, if Sophie, born in 1881, was their first child. Her birthplace was Indiana, while the boys all were born in Illinois (William, 1883; Edward, 1885; Henry, 1888). Dorothea had a local connection here: her sister, Minnie Brockmiller, became Mrs. Christ Passow in 1885 and resided in Hobart. That marriage had taken place in Cook County, Illinois, so perhaps the Brockmillers lived in the Chicago area.

After William's death, apparently Dorothea married Carl aka Charles Glattli — but again, I can't find a record of that marriage. According to a family tree someone compiled on Ancestry.com, Anna Glattli was born in November 1890, so Dorothea may have been her mother. (Anna died in Illinois in 1920; her death certificate is not online.) That would account for the Anna Glattli on our 1897-98 souvenir. Then Louise Antonie Glattli, the future Mrs. Mounts, was born in 1891.

Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli died in 1899 and is buried under the Mankey name. (She died in Chicago, but her residence was Ainsworth, Indiana, per the Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index. I cannot find a death notice in the local newspaper.) Carl/Charles Glattli survived her, and apparently remarried soon and moved to Chicago, if I've found the right people in the 1900 Census (and if the enumerator made a mistake in the "How many years married" column).

The Mankey children did not go to Chicago with their stepfather. The 1900 Census shows them scattered. While I can't find Sophie at all, I suspect she was living with relatives in Chicago, where she married Julius Triebess in 1901. William, age 16, was a hired farmhand living in the household of Michael and Mary Foreman. The 14-year-old Edward was living in the home of a Calumet Township farmer named William Gallagher; Eddie is described as a "servant" but is also "at school." I can't find their younger brother, Henry, in 1900, but in the 1910 Census he turns up in Hobart, in the home of Aunt Minnie and Uncle Christ, employed in a brickyard.

William married Lena Springman in 1906, and they farmed in Ross Township through the 1920 Census, but it looks as if they moved to Chicago by the 1930 Census.

Edward married Alvina Koeppen in 1911. They farmed in Porter County through the 1940 Census, but then moved to Hobart.

Henry got out of the sticks, married and resided in Chicago, but had moved to Calumet City by 1974, when he died.

Anna Glattli married a man named Charles Mosel in 1911 and lived out the rest of her short life in Blue Island, Illinois.

Louise Glattli married a Joseph Jackson in Blackford County, Indiana, in 1916, and after his death in 1937, married the Rev. Claude Mounts in Gary, Indiana, in 1938.

I can't believe how many hours of my life went into figuring this all out.

Finally, here is the death notice of Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli's mother, from the "Mortuary Record" column of the Hobart Gazette of March 31, 1905:
Mrs. Dora Brockmiller, mother of Mrs. Christ Passow, Jr., of this place, died suddenly at 3948 State street, Chicago, on Tuesday, March 28, 1905, aged 71 years. Services were held at the late residence at 12:15 yesterday and the remains were shipped to Hobart on the Milk Train and taken to the German Lutheran Church where services were conducted by Rev. Schuelke. The interment occurred in the Hobart cemetery.

The deceased is mourned by three children, Mrs. Minnie Passow, Henry Brockmiller and Mrs. Ida Quade.
No mention of the daughter who predeceased her, the ever-elusive Dorothea.

[to be continued]

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 4)

(continued from Part 3)

2020-09-02. Ainsworth school souvenir 1897-98 b - Kleine
(Click on image to enlarge)

Let us move on to — Kleine, which I can't say is completely new to me, since I've already referenced it once in the blog, but I've never paid much attention to the Kleine family.

Our Edgar Kleine is neatly summed up in his obituary:

2020-09-02. Kleine, Hammond Times, March 26, 1940
(Click on image to enlarge)
Hammond Times, Mar. 26, 1940.


Edgar's parents, Richard and Fredericka, were born in Germany. Their early married life was spent in Wisconsin, apparently, since that is where their eldest child, Bruno, was born circa 1867. The 1870 Census records them here in Ross Township, as does the 1880 Census.

The 1874 Plat Map shows the Kleine farm on the Joliet Road (E. 73rd Avenue) — I believe so, anyway, although the surname is spelled Kline and the first initial is hard to read.

2020-09-02. Klein, R.M., 1874
(Click on image to enlarge)

And the 1880 census enumerator recorded the Kleine family close to such names as Bullock, Harper, Ragen, and Smith, which suggests that the "R?. M. Kline" of the 1874 map is indeed Richard Maximillian Kleine.

You will notice that O.L.E. Kleine owns a big parcel just touching the southeast corner of Richard and Fredericka's farm. I believe O.L.E. was Richard's older brother, Oswald. The 1880 Census records Oswald living in Hobart with their mother, Christina; but apparently he later moved (back?) to Wisconsin, where he died in 1899. He was the Oswald Kleine involved in George Chester's action to quiet title.

But getting back to Edgar's family — after the close of the school year, perhaps, they moved to Porter County, where Richard died in December of 1898. The 1900 Census shows the widowed Fredericka still farming in Porter County, with the help of the three sons old enough to work the farm (they ranged in age from 32 to 17); there was also a 15-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a toddler born in August 1898.

In 1901, Edgar married Lillian Frailey in Porter County.

Fredericka died in 1902.

[to be continued]