Love and Death at the Ainsworth Crossing

For Fred Ahrens, the 1920s started out with grief upon grief. In February 1920, he lost his mother to complications of influenza. In February 1921, his 38-year-old wife, Mollie, died of tuberculosis. Fred was left with a young daughter and son to raise. He moved into his widowed father's house, where his sister, Mary, could help with the children. His former home became a rental property.

In May of 1923, the house got a new tenant, a former Chicago resident named Catherine McManus. She had something in common with Fred: she too had lost a spouse and was raising a daughter and son on her own. Her husband, Matthew, had died in 1918. For a few years after her loss, Catherine had remained in Chicago, working as a waitress and taking in boarders to make ends meet.

Catherine probably was familiar with Hobart long before she moved there. Her married sister was a Hobart resident for some ten years before moving to Gary. Their mother, Carolina (Lena), had been one of the local Springmans by birth. Lena's first husband (Catherine's father) was Nicholas Semmer, whose parents had farmed in Ross Township in the mid-19th century before relocating to Chicago. Her second husband was Fred Maybaum. So Catherine had many local relations, and surely friends and acquaintances too. Fred Ahrens may have been among the latter.

He soon became something more. These two bereaved hearts found solace in each other. Catherine and Fred fell in love, decided to marry, and quietly told their family and friends of their decision.

Since the two of them were an item, it was natural for them to travel together to the surprise birthday party planned for Rollie Sizelove, an Ainsworth-area farmer, on the evening of January 9, 1924. They would drive south from Hobart on present-day State Road 51, cross the Grand Trunk tracks at Ainsworth, turn right onto Ainsworth Road to reach the Lincoln Highway, then west to Colorado and north to the Sizelove farm.

But their journey ended at the Ainsworth crossing.


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Hobart News, 10 Jan. 1924.


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Hobart Gazette, 11 Jan. 1924.

There was no indication that Fred might have been trying to beat the train, as in the case of an earlier accident at this railroad crossing. It seems that he simply didn't notice it in time to react.


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Hobart News, 17 Jan. 1924.


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"General News," Hobart Gazette, 18 Jan. 1924.

A double funeral for Fred and Catherine, held at the Evangelical Lutheran Church, was widely attended.[1] They were laid to rest in the Hobart Cemetery.[2]

The surviving family members thanked their friends and neighbors as one:


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Hobart News, 17 Jan. 1924.

The orphaned children all had relatives willing to give them a home:


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News, 17 Jan. 1924.


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[1] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, 18 Jan. 1924.
[2] Catherine's grave is listed on findagrave.com and in the NWIGS's Hobart Township Cemeteries. Fred's grave does not appear in either source; nor does his wife's (Mollie).

Edward and Tillie (Harms) Niksch

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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

It was Thanksgiving Day 1964, and someone took this photo of Mathilda "Tillie" and Edward Niksch at the celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary.

As I was writing about their purchase of the former Deep River schoolhouse (yesterday's post), I realized that I've scarcely mentioned these folks in the blog, and I had better take some time to make up for that oversight. They were Ainsworthites, after all: Tillie grew up in the Harms farmhouse east of Ainsworth, and she and Edward moved onto the Lincoln Highway/Randolph St. farm in the spring of 1912.

Tillie was born November 12, 1884, so she had just turned 20 when she married Edward Niksch.


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Numerous unnamed Ainsworth-area residents also attended the wedding. (The "bride's home on south Main street" probably refers to Harms house at the southwest corner of Lincoln and 7th.)

Minnie Rossow Harms' family history gives us a brief summary of the next 16 years:

After Mathilda (Tilly) and Ed were married in 1904, they moved into his home on Devonshire street* in Hobart (Leona and son still** live there). Tilly had attended Valparaiso University and worked as a compositor for the Hobart Gazette. Leona was born December 28, 1907 and Laverne April 9, 1909. They had a great desire to go farming and soon Grandfather Harms purchased his Lincoln Highway farm where they raised their family. Donald was born July 3, 1916 and Edward Jr. July 28, 1920.

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I've talked a lot about the Harms family in this blog, but what about Edward Niksch and his people?

Edward was born May 13, 1882, in Hobart, one of ten children of Louis and Minnie (Niemann) Niksch, who by 1891 owned and farmed this land northeast of town:


Image from the 1908 Plat Map.


His mother died in June 1909.



(Yes, it was Edward's sister, Rosa, who had conquered the heart of the redoubtable Michael O'Hearn.)


Louis Niksch followed his wife to the grave in January 1912.



(While the 1900 enumerator recorded Louis' immigration year as 1860, the 1910 enumerator agreed with the obituary on 1854.)


Edward Niksch is described in the 1900 census as a farm hand, living and possibly working on his parents' own farm. Sometime between then and his marriage in 1904, he went to work in the brickyard, and bought that house in town. He remained a brickie through 1910 — probably until 1912, when he and Tillie moved onto the farm. After that, he stuck with farming, even through the Great Depression, as the 1940 census records him still farming on the Lincoln Highway land.

My notes record only pleasant events for the Niksches until 1917, when Edward became ill. Early in November he was in Chicago getting medical treatment for "serious affection of the eyes." The November 15 News included these unpleasant details:

Edward Niksch, who has been suffering with his eyes, underwent an operation at Dr. Dahlman's hospital in Chicago last Saturday for affected glands and another operation on Monday for pus forming on his face and for his jaws being set. Late reports were that he was some better.

In early December the Gazette reported that, after a couple weeks' treatment and much suffering, he was back home:

Edward Niksch who was operated upon Nov. 9th at the South Shore hospital by Drs. Werelius and Dahlberg for necrosis of the upper jaw bone and joint was able to return home the forepart of last week and indications are that he will meet with a full recovery. His head was so bandaged when he came home he was scarcely recognizable, except by voice. He has been returning every third day to the city for dressing of the wound. He says the pain he suffered before the operation was almost unbearable.

Either he recovered in good time or I was negligent in taking notes, as I have no further information on that illness.

So Edward and Tillie quietly got on with life in the neighborhood of Ainsworth, farming and raising their family. In May 1921, their eldest child, Leona, took part in the first commencement at the new W.G. Haan school.

Late that autumn, the Niksches bought the old Deep River schoolhouse, which started this digression.


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*1019 Devonshire, per Polk's Hobart City Directory 1962.
**I believe Minnie wrote this in 1952.


Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ 1940 Census.
♦ "Ainsworth Pick-Ups." Hobart Gazette 2 Dec. 1904.
♦ Harms, Minnie Rossow. As It Was Told to Me. 1952 – 1978. MS. Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 8 Nov. 1917; 15 Nov. 1917.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 16 Mar. 1912; 16 Nov. 1917; 7 Dec. 1917.
♦ "Niksch-Harms Nuptial." Hobart Gazette 2 Dec. 1904.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 25 June 1909.
♦ "Two Pioneers Pass Away." Hobart News 11 Jan. 1912.
♦ WWII Army Enlistment Records.