Moonshine Again

It's the winter of 1924. In spite of the cold weather, local entrepreneurs are busy supplying consumers' wants.


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Hobart Gazette, 11 Jan. 1924.

The article is worded for an audience that already knows where this is — "the road," "the farm." I suppose "the road" is Lake Park Avenue, but that's just a guess. I do not know how many roads the New Chicago area had in 1924. And I'm guessing that "the farm" was the C.J. Smith farm as shown in the 1926 Plat Book:


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I cannot identify John Kopek (spelled Kopack in the story below), except possibly as John Kopec, a Polish immigrant (born mid-1880s, arrived in the U.S. circa 1909) residing in Gary in the 1920 Census but later moving to Hobart. He was married, as described in the article below, and old enough to be running a booze operation. But I can't be sure that's our guy: all the vital records I have found thus far show only that this John Kopec lived the blameless life of a steel-mill employee, and now rests from his labors.

As for the other guy, his name was probably Szymanski, but he lived out his life in Gary, so he's Gary's historical problem.

They were found guilty:


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Hobart Gazette, 15 Feb. 1924.

In the next column over is an item about several Rossows attending the funeral of Mrs. Herman Borck — Christina Kummerow Borck — about whom I know almost nothing except that she was the mother of "mom's godmother." The weekend after the funeral, Ella Rossow came down from Chicago to visit her parents (William and Antonia), bringing along August Rolff,[1] whom she would marry in June of that year.

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Here's a near-death experience involving liquor:


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Hobart News, 21 Feb. 1924.

The idea of taking the midnight train to Valparaiso seems so evocative. I guess I've heard too many songs about midnight trains. Actually, I'm surprised there even was a midnight train to Valparaiso.

To the right of that story, we find that on Valentine's Day, Lena Maybaum Barney, who had lost her first husband in 1921, married Henry Schavey, who had lost his first wife in 1920.

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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 14 Feb. 1924.

A Dance Hall in Disguise

Back when I posted the Deep River Christian Church history as it appeared in the Hobart Gazette in 1975, I lamented that the article wasn't clear about which house the church bought for a parsonage in 1967 — a house I found particularly interesting because it was said to have been a dance hall.

Now comes a reader to tell me which house it was.


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Image courtesy of Cheryl Jones.

This was the home of Rudolph ("Rudy") and Lillian Wencl, at 9411 Old Lincoln Highway. Rudy and Lillian were the great-uncle and great-aunt of our correspondent.

They were both natives of Illinois, married there in 1937, but were living in Menominee County, Michigan in the 1940 Census. Sometime in the mid-1940s, they moved back to Illinois, and then in the latter 1940s, to Indiana — as we can tell from looking at the birthplaces of their children in the 1950 Census:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

You will notice that Annie Anders, the lady of many cats, was recorded near them.

The enumerator noted "on right" for the Wencls, "on left" for Annie, but also that she (the enumerator) was proceeding west from the township line along the old Lincoln Highway, heading toward S.R. 51. Thus the Wencls should have been on the left. I'm confused, or maybe the enumerator was confused. We know where Olive Wood lived: that's on the right if you're going west.

My 1962 phone directory lists the Wencls on a rural route, no street address.

The house at 9411 Old Lincoln Highway was built in 1924, according to the Lake County records. I have not seen anything in the 1924 microfilm about who might have built it. It does look as if it were built originally as a family home, not a commercial building. Could it have been abandoned by the time it became a dance hall? Or maybe the people living there just shoved their parlor furniture against the walls for occasional dances.

Just west of Deep River, remember, was the schoolhouse-turned-dance hall. The newspapers circa 1924 often advertised dances at "Deepriver hall," which I have been taking to mean the former schoolhouse. Even earlier, before the house in question was built (assuming the county records are correct), there had been a dance hall at an unknown location in Deep River.


As for Rudy and Lillian Wencl, their hearts were in Michigan, it seems. After selling their Deep River home, they moved back to Menominee County, where they are both buried.

Maps! All Kinds of Lake County Maps!

Local historian Michael White has shared with me his "pathfinder bibliography of maps of Lake County, Indiana, that are digitized and available online to view for free." In it he has pulled together links to a variety of online historical paper maps (digitized, of course) as well as different ways of viewing the contemporary landscape — including LiDAR!

This is a great resource for historians. I am linking it below and will link it permanently on my Pages sidebar.

Lake County Maps Pathfinder Bibliography

Here Come the Grooms

Aside from the milk-fed turkeys of 1942, I know precious little about the Groom family that inhabited the Ainsworth/Hobart area, but I shall try to remedy my ignorance, now that they have come to my attention again through a little item in the "Local Drifts" column of the Hobart Gazette of February 1, 1924: "Hosea and Claude Groom and the latter's wife were called to DeSoto, Mo., last week by the death of their mother. They will return this week."

The brothers had been born in (or near) DeSoto,[1] Hosa[2] around 1890 and Claude around 1898, to Jefferson and Sarah Ellen Groom. There were eight children in all. The 1910 Census recorded Hosa and Claude still with their family in Missouri, but sometime after that, Hosa left home.[3]

He was in definitely in Lake County, Indiana, by 1916, when he married Hazel Pinson (Indiana Marriage Collection), who was also a native of Missouri. Hosa and Hazel show up in the 1920 Census in Hobart, with no children.

Meanwhile, Claude remained in DeSoto at least until September 1918 (WWI Draft Cards). I can't find him anywhere in the 1920 census (taken in January), but likely he was in this area by then or soon after: in October 1920, he married a Hobart woman, Mary Kisela. Her family and Hosa's were neighbors.


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Image from Ancestry.com.
Somebody at the Hobart Historical Society probably knows where "Earl[e]" street was (and Lightner street, too, which was the next one recorded), but I don't.

Mary was just short of 17 when she married Claude, but it was a lifelong marriage.

Hosa's marriage to Hazel was not.


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Hobart News, 8 May 1924.

The divorce went through, evidently, as we find Hosa a single man in 1930 census. (I don't know anything about Hazel's subsequent life.) In 1936 Hosa married Lola Martin. She had been born, raised, and was living in Illinois when they married,[4] so don't ask me how they met. But this marriage lasted.

Hosa and Lola continued living Hobart, he working in the steel mills and she keeping house. By the 1950 Census, the household included Lola's 21-year-old niece, who was divorced, with a three-year-old son.

Hosa was still living in Hobart when he died in 1951. According to his death certificate, his body was sent back to DeSoto, Missouri, for burial. Lola died in 1979 and is buried with her parents in Palestine, Illinois.

As for Claude and Mary Groom, they were living in Hobart in 1930 (next door to Hosa on Lawrence Street), with two children, Claude and Robert. Claude (Sr.) was a wireman in the steel mills. By 1940 they had moved to Ross Township (the enumerator notes "61st Street"), with another son (David) and Mary's parents (Frank and Barbara) having joined the household. When Claude was selling milk-fed turkeys in 1942, he told buyers to come to him "3/4 mile north of Green Acres at 330" — that is, 73rd Avenue.

I cannot find Claude and Mary at all in the 1950 census. Around the mid-1950s, they relocated to the Tampa area of Florida,[5] where they died in 1986 and 1988, respectively.

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The page of the News, above, where the divorce notice appears, includes an ad placed by Hattie Sizelove, who was selling life insurance from her farm east of Ainsworth. We already know that Hattie knew how to drive a car, so I'm getting the impression that she was quite an active person.

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[1] Hosa so states in his WWI Draft Card; Claude's death notice says likewise ("Obituaries," St. Petersburg Times (Fla.), 30 Aug. 1986).
[2] Yes, his name shows up as Hosa on official documents, even if the Gazette and also the News called him Hosea in the social columns. Which leads me to wonder if his parents intended to name him Hosea and/or that's how he pronounced it.
[3] His 1951 obituary says he left home in 1908 ("Hosa J. Groom, Former Resident, Dies in Indiana," Jefferson Republic (De Soto, Mo.), 5 Apr. 1951). If so, apparently he came back in time for the census.
[4] "New Marriage Licenses," Hammond Times, 26 Mar. 1936.
[5] Mary's 1988 obituary says she moved from Hobart to the Tampa area "32 years ago." ("Obituaries," Tampa Tribune, 14 Sept. 1988.)

Sale on the Howard Smith Farm

For some reason I thought this notice about a sale on Howard Smith's farm in February 1924 was interesting enough to retrieve from the microfilm. Maybe because Howard Smith was dead, and dead people are my favorite people. Anyway, I'm going to slap this up here, because I'm still too busy to do any kind of post that requires research.


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Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.

The last time we saw Melvin Guernsey, it was 1920 and he was planning to leave for Florida. If he did go, he was obviously back, and farming again. Melvin was not planning on quitting farming (unlike Barney Rhoda in the notice below his): he was just moving to the "Wm. Bixenman farm three miles east of Crown Point."[1]

The notice names "M. Hurlburt" as the administrator of Howard Smith's estate. That would be Milan Hurlburt, who was Howard's uncle.

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I did not realize when I was getting this page from the microfilm that the story in the left-hand column quotes Charles Chester of Ainsworth. If only I had! — I would have gotten the whole story, so we could have found out what Charles Chester of Ainsworth said about Calumet Electric company's proposal. Now we'll never know. But at least we now know that in 1924, the Chester farm was getting electricity from its own generating system.

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[1] "Local and Personal," Hobart News, 31 Jan. 1924.