Car Wreck Caught on Camera (1915)

Considering that this happened circa 1915, it was against all odds that the photographer happened to be there beside the road with a camera to capture the moment of impact:


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I have not been able to find out anything about this accident. It was not reported in the Hobart newspapers — surprising, since there must have been injuries, at least to the two men ejected from the car.

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OK, I've had my little joke. Here's the verso:



This gag postcard was made by Alfred Stanley Johnson, the same photographer who created the two 1912 postcards we saw earlier, sent by Herman Harms to his very good friend, Minnie Rossow. I suppose the senders picked this one up on a stop in Ainsworth.

This card is postmarked April 12, with no year. We know the year must be 1915 or later, from the copyright date on the front.

It is addressed to Frank Henning. He had been born in 1880 to Theodore Henning and his first wife, Mary.[1] In 1904 Frank married Bertha Gauger in Lake County, Indiana (Indiana Marriage Collection). Subsequent censuses, 1910 through 1940, show them farming in Union Township, Porter County, so the "Hobart" in their address referred to the post office that handled R.F.D. route #2. Here is their farm in the Union Township plat map of 1921:


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

Their house is still standing. Its address is now 609 W 450 N. It was built in 1921, per the Porter County Assessor's records, so there must have been an earlier house where they lived when they first moved there. An outbuilding dates to "1900," which in assessor parlance tends to mean "a long time ago but nobody remembers exactly when."

Frank and Bertha farmed that land for upwards of three decades. They had two children: a daughter, Margaret, born in 1905, who died before her second birthday; and a son, Elmer, born in 1906. Around 1931, Elmer married Florence Mounce. The 1940 Census showed the young couple, and their son, Harold, living on the farm with Frank and Bertha. By the 1950 Census all had left farming: Frank and Bertha retired to Hobart; Elmer and Florence moved to Valparaiso where both took jobs.

Frank died in 1953 …


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 3 Jan. 1953.

… and Bertha in 1962:


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 3 Feb. 1962.



The postcard's senders were probably Frank's half-sister, Amanda, and her husband, Albert Weiler, whom I talked about in an earlier post.

Albert died of injuries he suffered in an accident on his farm in 1944:


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Hammond Times, 18 Jan. 1944.

A few months later, Amanda sold the farm and its contents:


Hammond Times, 13 Apr. 1944.
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The description of the farm's location sounds like the old Michael Weiler farm shown in my previous post, linked above. It had lost about ten acres — some of that, likely, when the new U.S. 30 bisected the farm.

Amanda survived her husband by 16 years, dying in March 1960. She also survived one of her sons.


We[2] don't know exactly who "Uncle & Aunt Holmstrom" were. I have found a record of a Louise Hennings marrying a Carl Holmstrom in Chicago in 1875, but can't find enough information on her to determine if she was related to our Hennings.

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[1] She and Theodore had been married in Cook County in 1877 and lived in Chicago. Mary died in 1881, before Theodore came to Ross Township.
[2] The Henning family genealogist and I.