Two More Views of the Nickel Plate Bridge

A few years ago I posted a circa-1906 view of the Nickel Plate Railroad bridge over the Deep River. I have on hand a couple of similar views, dating just three or four years later.

This one is postmarked 1909.


(Click on images to enlarge)

The photographer stood south of the bridge on the east bank of the river and pointed his camera toward town. Through the supports of the railroad bridge you can see the Third Street bridge, a small structure in comparison. That big smokestack is one of the brickyards, and to the left of it a lot of smaller chimneys bristle up. Between the smokestack and the tree in the foreground is the old mill, and among the branches of that tree is the steeple of Trinity Lutheran Church at Main and Second Streets.

Here's the verso. I know nothing about the sender or recipient.




The photo from the card postmarked 1910 shows the Nickel Plate bridge from the opposite side.



I suppose the photographer stood on the Third Street bridge, or near it. Those houses in the background are on Water Street, I believe. If you look through the bridge supports toward the right of the picture, you can see that somebody has a nice big boat-house right on the river's edge.

We have already met the sender of this postcard — Eathel Westbay Gradle.

Letters from Elma's Mama

Eathel Westbay was born May 25, 1888, to Leander and Jerusha Westbay of Lake County, Indiana. On January 7, 1907, she married Forrest Gradle, an 18-year-old railroad section hand. The May 1910 census found them living in Porter Township, Porter County. By then Eathel had borne two children, but only one survived — their daughter, Elma.

I would never have heard of any of them, I suppose, had I not happened to buy a couple of letters Eathel wrote in the winter of 1910-11, to her own mother. In them, she tells little stories about the two-and-a-half-year-old Elma, on whom she clearly dotes, and on her now 21-year-old husband, Forrest. The letters were mailed from Merrillville, so I suppose the Gradle family had moved there sometime after May 1910.

The first letter was postmarked December 10, 1910.

Gradle letter 12-10-1910 by AinsworthIN

The fourth page of the above PDF is just the reverse of the third page of Eathel's letter, on which someone has scribbled the address of Eathel's sister, Alice. (The 1910 census, taken in April, showed Alice in Meridian, Mississippi, teaching in a "mission school"; evidently she had moved on to Alabama by December.) I think Alice is the "Auntie Awus" whom little Elma points out in the picture. Goodwin and Philenus are Eathel's brothers. I have not been able to identify the "Uncle Goodwin" whose death Eathel asks about.

The second letter was dated January 5, 1911.

Gradle letter 1-5-1911 by AinsworthIN

Eathel died November 22, 1956. Here is her obituary from The Vidette-Messenger of November 23.