Ladies Who Wear Hats

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

One of these young women is Ruth Bullock Mackey. Another is Isabelle Rowe Black. We know this from handwritten notes on the back. Unfortunately those notes don't tell us which is which, nor who the other two women are or when this photo was taken. (I would estimate roughly around 1910.)

A Timely Baby

Nine months to the day after Clara Sauter Rowe married Frank Severance, they became the parents of a son.

In looking at the census to get the baby's name (Franklin), I see that Frank must have been married before, as he then had a 22-year-old son. Since he was 19 years older than Clara, he'd had plenty of time for a first marriage.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 10 Nov. 1916.

New Love For That Other One, Too

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Handsome fellows, aren't they? … These young Hobart women are in costume for some sort of performance (date unknown).
Back row, left to right: Edith Wood Parker, Ruth Nitchman, Clara Sauter Rowe, Bess Hayward, Elsie Mummery.
Front row, left to right: Unknown Wilson, Carrie Bullock, unknown, Mabel Rowe Black.

Clara Sauter seemed always a few steps behind her little sister Lizzie, in joy and in sorrow. She was three years behind Lizzie in becoming a wife and three months behind her in becoming a widow. She was still a widow when Lizzie remarried in July 1915, but she too was on her way to new happiness.

After the death of her husband John in 1910, Clara had remained in Hobart, living quietly, occupied with caring for her little son. When her brother George opened a store in partnership with Armen Meckeldey in the summer of 1913, they hired Clara as their bookkeeper. She held that position for two and a half years, but as 1915 turned to 1916 she resigned, and the Gazette commented: "Dame Rumor says she is to be married the coming month."

Dame Rumor was right in this case. On February 1, 1916, Clara married Frank Severance. He farmed just east of Hobart in Porter County (and I don't know if or how he was related to the Ross Township Severances). Because he lived in Porter County, he and Clara thought they were acting properly in going to Valparaiso for their license, but there officials turned them away on the grounds that the bride's residence was in Lake County. So they had to make the trip to Crown Point. There they were quietly married, and quietly returned home, not even having planned any reception.

That evening a group of relatives and friends showed up at their "beautiful country home" to throw a surprise reception for them. (Clara had also been surprised a week earlier by a shower, organized by and held in the home of her mother, Augusta (Mrs. John Fiester).)"Both are popular and well known in this vicinity," said the Gazette, "and their many friends will wish them a prosperous and happy companionship."

If her father, Ed Sauter, was present at any of these events, no one saw fit to mention him.


Sources:
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 31 Dec. 1915; 28 Jan. 1916.
♦ "Personal and Local Mention." Hobart News 6 Jan. 1916.
♦ "Severance-Rowe Nuptial." Hobart Gazette 4 Feb. 1916.
♦ "Severance-Rowe." Hobart News 3 Feb. 1916.

A Sad Year for the Sauter Girls

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The wedding portrait of Warren Boyd and Lizzie Sauter, 1904. (Image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.)

Clara and Lizzie Sauter, the daughters of Ed and Augusta, can't be said to have much of an Ainsworth connection: they spent about five of their teenage years here, that's it. But as far as I'm concerned, once an Ainsworthian, always an Ainsworthian. And I had such hopes for Clara and Lizzie. Whatever the financial troubles of their family were, whatever the less-than-ideal state of their parents' marriage may have been, the two Sauter girls seemed destined for greater happiness.

They both married well. In April 1904, Lizzie married Warren Boyd, of the Merrillville Boyds, and the young couple went to live on his farm. In February 1907, Clara married John Rowe, Jr., a popular young man from a respectable Hobart family, who worked as a foreman at a steel company. They set up housekeeping in Hobart. All was going well.

And then came 1910.

In December 1909, Warren Boyd had fallen ill with pneumonia. For over a month he could not even leave the house. He recuperated slowly and by February 1910 was able to get around again. Then he suffered a relapse, but this time it was tuberculosis, the fast kind. He died on May 12, only 26 years old.

Ed Sauter, now living separately from his wife, came down from Chicago for the funeral.

Lizzie was left a widow with two little sons, Harold, age 4, and Elmer, just two and a half. I don't know what her financial condition was. Warren's estate, including Holstein dairy cattle, Poland China pigs, a horse, buggies, wagons and tools, as well as household furniture, was all sold at auction by his administrator, N.P. Banks. It should have raised a decent amount of money for Lizzie, if there were no debts to be paid. But when she came back to Hobart to live — to be near her own mother, I suppose — she took a job clerking at Scheidt and Keilman's store.

You'd think that one young mother widowed would be grief enough for one family in one year, wouldn't you? But Death didn't. It came back for a visit in the summer.

After a brief illness, John Rowe died on August 3. He was 36 years old. He had been a member of several fraternal organizations, including the Masons, and a remarkable number of people attended the funeral, held in his Lillian Street home.

Now Clara was a widow, too. Their son, Robert John, was about one year old. He would probably have no memory of his father.

As I said, 1910 was a bad year, even for people with only a slender Ainsworth connection.



Warren Boyd's grave marker, in the Merrillville Cemetery:


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John Rowe's grave marker, in the Hobart Cemetery:





Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Administrator's Sale." Hobart Gazette 17 June 1910.
♦ Clemens, Jan. A Pictorial History of Merrillville. Hobart: Review Printers, Inc., 1991.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 1 Mar. 1907.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 4 Feb. 1910; 9 Dec. 1910.
♦ "Married in Hobart." Hobart Gazette 22 Apr. 1904.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1910.
♦ "Warren Boyd Passes Away." Hobart Gazette 20 May 1910.

"Yes, I'm a Blacksmith": Ed Sauter in Ainsworth

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The Ainsworth blacksmith shop and dance hall built by Edward Sauter. Date of photo unknown, but probably between 1904 and 1910. (Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.)

Before Ed Sauter built his saloon and blacksmith shop in Ainsworth in 1899, he had run a saloon in Hobart "in the O'Boyle building on Third Street," wherever that might be. In October 1899, closing his Hobart saloon, the 38-year-old Ed moved his whole family — his wife, Augusta; their teenage daughters, Clara and Lizzie; and their young sons, George and Edward — to Ainsworth.

While Frank Miller of Deep River ran the Ainsworth saloon for him, Ed set up as a blacksmith here. He'd done blacksmithing before, and perhaps a little during, his Hobart days, but he'd been keeping a saloon for so long that he seemed to think people would be skeptical of this change of occupation, as he ran this announcement in the November 10, 1899 Hobart Gazette:

Yes, I'm a blacksmith and horseshoer. I did blacksmithing before some people were born. I understand shoeing horses right and I can prove it. You bet I don't take a back seat for any one when it comes to horseshoeing. I can prove what I say in my shop at Ainsworth. Ed. Sauter.

Two years later, his business was coming along well enough that he felt able to expand. He added a frame addition to the west side of the blacksmith shop, with storage space on the ground floor, and on the upper floor a dance hall.

The May 10, 1901 Hobart Gazette carried this announcement:

Ed. Sauter will initiate his hall at Ainsworth next week Thursday evening, May 16th, by having a grand ball. He will employ good music and will insure all his friends who attend of having a good time. The dancing hall is 24 by 50 feet and the room contains a fine hardwood floor, the pride of any dancer. He invites all his old Hobart friends to attend and join in the festivities at the grand opening.

The Hobart Cornet Band provided the music.

By November Ed had gotten the hall plastered and was painting it to be ready for the New Year's dance. Other dances followed, only some of which were announced: a mask ball in February 1902, an April dance, a September dance with music by the Balatka orchestra of Chicago, a "Married Peoples'" dance in December 1902, a "sheet and pillow case masquerade ball" in March 1903, followed the next month by an Easter dance, and so on.

Some of the Ainsworth news items in the Gazette were, I suspect, reported and shaded by their subjects, such as this March 1902 item: "Ed. Sauter has recently purchased a lot adjoining his property from John Miller. Ed. is a hustler and is branching out in his various industries in that burg. He has also put down a town pump, for public use." Or this, from August 1903:

One has only to go to Ainsworth to realize what a busy little burg the place is. Two stores, postoffice and Ed. Sauter's various industries constitute the business features there but one will be surprised if they visit the place to see what a lively business center it is. Mr. Sauter besides satisfying the wants of the inner man supplies him with all kinds of farm implements and vehicles, shoes his horses and attends to all manner of general blacksmithing and recently has employed Paul Schillo of this place to attend to the woodwork department. His is a busy place and Ed. with his three helpers is kept at work early and late.

The "wants of the inner man," of course, were satisfied in the saloon. The saloon building was a two-story terra cotta structure, 20 feet wide and 34 feet deep. The upper floor and the back part of the lower floor were taken up with living quarters. The saloon itself occupied only the front room of the first floor, 20' x 15', with a nine-foot bar and (in 1905, at least, when this description was written) two tables and six chairs for customers' use.

As we know, early in 1904 Ed sold his saloon to Claus Ziegler, building, business and all, for $2,100.

In April 1904, Lizzie Sauter married Warren Boyd and the young couple moved to his farm in Merrillville. Later that year Clara Sauter took a job clerking at the Spot Cash Store in Hobart.

Ed continued operating the blacksmith shop and dance hall. If we can believe the newspaper reports, business was good; in May of 1904 he had "installed a new gasoline engine" in his shop and was "doing a rushing business"; in the last week of December he shod eight teams. January 1905 was a busy month in his dance hall: one Saturday evening 119 ducks and 27 geese were raffled off to the music of a Chicago orchestra, and a couple weeks later came a big entertainment and social event with "real calcium and Bengal lights." April brought an announcement of a series of dancing parties organized by two local residents.

And that's why it came as a shock when I read a one-line announcement in the Gazette's "General News Items" of November 24, 1905: "Wm. Raschka the Ainsworth merchant has been appointed receiver for the Ed Sauter estate at Ainsworth."

Was Ed bankrupt? Dead? What on earth happened?

As it turned out, he wasn't dead. Apparently some disaster befell his "rushing business." Perhaps it wasn't so rushing after all, or he mishandled his money, or perhaps the young men who fell from his staircase in May 1904 sued him into oblivion — but no such suits were ever mentioned by the Gazette, nor any other explanation ever given. All I know is that Ed somehow got over his head in debt to the First State Bank, and the bank foreclosed on his property.

On February 17, 1906, a sheriff's sale was held at the east door of the Court House in Crown Point, offering seven years' "rents and profits" from Ed's property — or, if that would not bring a sufficient price to pay Ed's debts, then the property itself. The Gazette noted that some time earlier Ed had refused an offer of $2,800 for his property, and "[t]he bank's claim and costs in the foreclosure proceedings amount to about half of that price."

At that sale, the First State Bank itself bought the property, and then turned around and advertised to sell it. When they couldn't sell it, they rented it — to Claus Ziegler, who now intended to live in Ainsworth.

In April 1906, the Gazette reported, "Mrs. Ed Sauter has moved upstairs in the Rohwedder house on our Main street," which sounds as if husband and wife were now living apart. (No word of where the children were staying.) In June came the announcement, "Edward Sauter . . . is working now in South Chicago and is looking fine." The irrepressible Ed was apparently back on his feet, or wanted to give that impression.

When Clara Sauter married John Rowe, Jr., in February 1907, her parents were described as "Mr. and Mrs. Edward Sauter," without further comment. (The announcement added that the young newlyweds "have the best wishes of a large circle of friends, in which the Gazette heartily joins.")

The 1910 Census shows an Edward Sauter living in Chicago, married but apparently living apart from his wife in a boardinghouse, and working as a blacksmith in a factory. In the 1920 Census, he is listed as single. I don't know what ultimately became of Ed and Augusta.

Well, that's rather depressing, isn't it? I may find out more as I go along with reading. I don't know if I ought to write open-ended stories like this, but if I waited until I read enough microfilm to get the full story, it would be a long time between blog entries.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Additional Locals." Hobart Gazette 10 Nov. 1899.
♦ "Ainsworth Pick-Ups." Hobart Gazette 30 Dec. 1904; 6 Jan. 1905; 13 Jan. 1905.
♦ "Application for License." Hobart Gazette 22 Sept. 1905.
♦ "Buy Sauter Property." Hobart Gazette 23 Feb. 1906.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 29 Mar. 1901; 21 Mar. 1902; 5 Sept. 1902; 3 Oct. 1902; 19 Dec. 1902; 6 Mar. 1903; 10 Apr. 1903; 15 May 1903; 14 Aug. 1903; 6 Nov. 1903; 4 Dec. 1903; 29 Jan. 1904; 6 May 1904; 28 Oct. 1904; 25 Nov. 1904; 7 Apr. 1905; 24 Nov. 1905; 22 June 1906; 1 Mar. 1907.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 14 July 1899; 18 Aug. 1899; 13 Oct. 1899; 27 Oct. 1899; 29 March 1901; 10 May 1901; 29 Nov. 1901; 7 Feb. 1902; 5 Feb. 1904; 26 Feb. 1904; 11 Mar. 1904; 16 Mar. 1906; 20 Apr. 1906.
♦ "Married in Hobart." Hobart Gazette 22 Apr. 1904.
♦ "Sheriff's Sale." Hobart Gazette 2 Feb. 1906.