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Second image from Google street view.
"Main Street," also known as the Joliet road, had not yet become the Lincoln Highway when this photo was taken sometime before July 17, 1909. The road is dirt, but electrical wires (or are they telephone?) run along it.
We are standing more or less abreast of the Merrillville school building (now the Merrillville History Museum).
The Burge-Underwood house would be to the left, but just out of range of the camera. The first house visible on the left is the Floyd Pierce home, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville. The next house is the Coffey (or Coffee) house. I do not know what families occupied any of the other houses.
On the right, of course, we can see the steeple of the Methodist Church.
In the distance on the right, I believe you can see a couple of businesses: the Stoltz general store, and next to it the Old California Exchange Hotel:
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The verso includes a postmark, thank goodness, and a friendly message from Howard Walter of Merrillville to Ruth Casbon of Valparaiso:
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It's interesting how he spells the town's name; is that evidence that he pronounced it "Valpo-RISE-o" rather than "Valpo-RAYS-o"?
Howard and Ruth were both about 16 in 1909. Howard was one of the Walter brothers of Merrillville.
Ruth was the daughter of Thomas and Ella (Downs) Casbon. She had been named Mable Ruth but preferred her middle name. She spent her early childhood on a farm in the vicinity of Deep River. Sometime after the 1900 census the family relocated to a Porter County farm, where the 1910 Census, and by 1920 they lived in the city of Valparaiso.
In January 1924, Thomas and Ella held a party to celebrate Ruth's engagement to a man named Joseph Albert Bancroft,[1] a native of Chesterton about 4 years older than Ruth. He had previously been married, in 1914, to Fay Smith (Indiana Marriage Collection); that marriage lasted at least through June 1917 (WWI Draft Cards), but must have ended in divorce at some point, since Fay lived to marry again.[2]
Ruth Casbon and Joseph Bancroft were married in April 1924:
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Hobart Gazette, 2 May 1924.
The marriage was not happy, apparently, as the couple were divorced within two years, according to a Chesterton newspaper item posted to Joseph's Findagrave.com entry.
Joseph moved to Michigan and married again. Ruth resumed her maiden name and lived out the rest of her life as a single woman in Valparaiso. She died in 1989.
For some surprising background information about Ruth, I refer you to the Casbon expert.
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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.
[2] I have come across a record of a 1907 marriage in Lake County between a Joseph N. Bancroft and a Lillian Miller, but the record does not include enough information for me to say that this was or wasn't our Joseph.
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