The Foundling of Schererville

I thought I'd have some time to do research this week, but I thought wrong, so here's a story that I don't know anything about. I stumbled across it some time back, and while it has nothing to do with Ainsworth, it intrigued me, as I wondered if somewhere there's a family with a story handed down about how their great-grandfather, as a baby, was found on a porch in Schererville one day in May 1918.


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Lake County Star (Crown Point, Ind.), 17 May 1918.

I have no idea who this "Mr. Thomas" was who won the fight over the foundling. According to an article in the Crown Point Register that I didn't note the date of ("Found on Door-Step"), Judge McMahan advised that the "baby be cared for without formal adoption for the present, and that if later no trace of its parents could be found, it could then be placed for adoption."

New Utility Poles of Ainsworth

This is how they unload the new utility poles nowadays.


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I wonder how they did it the first time poles were ever placed along Ainsworth Road? Probably sometime in the 1910s. But the poles in those days were not as tall, were they?

I just have to get through this crazy week, then maybe I will have time to blog again.

The Girls in Their Summer Dresses

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

I've had this photo for years but didn't post it because I had so little information about it, and couldn't even definitely place it in Hobart beyond oral tradition. However, just recently I came across an article in the Index-Commonwealth of March 26, 1936, entitled, "Mitchell's Restaurant Sold to E. Gary Couple," which named the buyer as Henry C. Bass, "who formerly operated the Bass Confectionary and Lunch Room on Park[update] Street in East Gary [Lake Station]." Not named in the article was his wife, Martha, who is standing in the restaurant's doorway in this photo.

The seller was Flora Belle Mitchell, who went by her middle name. She had been operating a restaurant in Hobart since 1930, perhaps earlier. She and her husband, Tymon, had left farming in Porter County (1900 Census) to open a restaurant in Valparaiso by 1910 — the "Farmers Restaurant," according to a 1911 directory. [1] Presumably Belle was involved in operating that restaurant, although she had some seven children to look after as well. After moving to Indiana Avenue, the Mitchells left Valpo in 1916 to relocate to Gary;[2] but the 1920 Census shows Tymon managing a hotel in Wheatfield, Jasper County. Tymon died in 1928. The 1930 Census finds the widowed Belle in Hobart, "cook and manager" of a restaurant, located at 231 Main Street per our 1930 directory. The 1936 article about the restaurant's sale gives its address as 216 Main Street.

And now I have spent so much time talking about the Mitchells that I shall have to leave Martha and the rest of the Basses for another time.
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[4/30/2022 update] I forgot to add that Ainsworth's vintage-car expert thinks that the car parked in front of the restaurant is probably a 1935 or '36 Pontiac.

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[3/29/2023 update] Fred Ols tells me that Parke Street in Lake Station was much closer than Park Street to the Basses' home, and also that Martha did not drive a car. It's quite possible that whoever wrote the article for the Hobart paper confused Parke and Park Streets in Lake Station.
[1] Valparaiso, Indiana, City Directory, 1911. Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
[2] "Do You Remember the Day?" Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 16 Apr. 1931.