Bertha's Second Marriage: It Was Bad

Even today I still think, sometimes, of that strange and touching poem written (I'm guessing) by Bertha Mueller Bodamer in memory of her husband, Benjamin, who died in 1917. To judge by the emotions that poem conveys, one would think their marriage was very happy.

After Ben's death, Bertha and her sons, Harry, Ralph, and Carlton, continued farming their 35 acres (more or less[1]) on S. Hobart Rd., marked with "BB" on the plat map from the 1926 Plat Book:


(Click on image to enlarge)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, this map fails to show the 34-acre farm of Bertha's brother-in-law, John, bordering on the south side of her land.

In 1928, Ralph married Florence Wyant and set up a separate household close to his mother's; the following year Carlton married Helen Hardesty and moved to Hobart. The 1930 Census records only Bertha's unmarried eldest son, Harry, still under her roof.

By then, Bertha had been widowed over a decade. With her nest emptying, I suppose she was feeling lonely, and perhaps wishing for a pleasant and helpful companion, such as Ben had been. Anyway, somewhere she saw an advertisement by a man seeking a wife, and she answered it. The man was Fred Reuter, a widower living in West Virginia, about whom I know almost nothing. Fred came to Indiana, where he met Bertha. Evidently they liked each other.

Bertha's sons were not happy about this development. I wish I knew why! — did they object to a stranger moving in on what they viewed as their inheritance, or was there something about Fred in particular that they didn't like?

Around this time, possibly in February 1931,[2] Bertha's eldest son, Harry, married Ida Hollett[3] of Valparaiso.

Bertha soon went ahead with her own marriage. In April of 1931, she became Mrs. Fred Reuter (Indiana Marriage Collection). Shortly before the marriage, Fred lent her $2,000 to make improvements on her farm, with Bertha giving him a mortgage on property she owned in Porter County known as the "old Bodamer homestead," shown here on a 1938 plat map:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from https://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1938Plats/Union-1938.gif.

If there was a honeymoon period, it was short. Everything soon started to fall apart. In December 1932, Bertha suffered a personal loss when her son, Harry, died at only 32 years of age, leaving a widow and no children. Fred Reuter failed to provide the companionship and help Bertha wanted; in fact, he left the home (or was thrown out by Bertha's sons) and went to Idaho. Bertha filed for divorce. Fred came back and began proceedings to foreclose on the mortgage he held. The unpleasant details started appearing in local papers in the autumn of 1934.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 19 Oct. 1934.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 26 Apr. 1935.


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Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 28 May 1935.

I can't find any follow-up articles beyond this. But it appears that Fred lost his mortgage case, if the 1938 plat map, above, can be relied on. The local papers soon went back to calling Bertha "Mrs. Ben Bodamer"[4] (notwithstanding the 1938 plat map).

The 1940 Census records a widow, Bertha Bodamer, living with her widowed daughter-in-law, Ida, on the farm. Her son, Carlton, had moved back to her neighborhood with his wife and three daughters, not farming but employed as a truck driver with the WPA. Her other son, Ralph, lived with his family and several relatives in Hobart Township and worked in a steel mill.

Both sons were back in the farm neighborhood for the 1950 Census, both working in steel mills. Bertha, 81 years of age, lived in Ralph's household. Ida was nowhere to be found.

Bertha died the following year — August 16, 1951 (Indiana Death Certificates). She was buried beside her pleasant and helpful companion, Ben, in the Woodvale Cemetery.

I still don't know what became of Ida, whose name is next to her husband's on the family grave marker without a death date.


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[1] The size varies slightly from one plat map to another.
[2] I'm getting the date from a family tree on Ancestry.com that does not cite a source. I cannot find a record of the marriage, nor any mention of it in on-line local papers.
[3] The surname comes from family trees on Ancestry.com, none of which cite a source. Occasionally it turns up spelled Hallett. Her middle name is given as Eve. (Just to make things more confusing, there was a longtime Valpo resident named Ida Mae Hollett, who was considerably older than our Ida.)
[4] E.g., "Hobart," Hammond Times, 13 May 1938.