Martha Moll

From the Busse autograph collection.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

While I fail to see any connection between the color of pine needles and the choice of friends, evidently this little poem was popular in this place and time for autograph albums — we shall see it again.

Martha was 14 years old and the middle child of Gustav and Huldah Moll. The 1910 Census shows the family of eight — counting Huldah's elderly mother — living on Kelly Street (possibly neighbors of our friends Charles and Anna Lee). Gustav worked as a section foreman for one of the railroads.

At this point I don't know what became of Martha. The 1920 Census shows her still single, still living with her parents, and I think I've found a 1925 phone directory that shows her working as a bookkeeper in Gary, still living in Hobart … and beyond that I can't trace her.

Here she is in a formal portrait that is undated, but I would guess it was taken within a few years of her signing Lena's album.

Update! More Photos of Caroline

Another update to the Caroline Sapper autograph post — three beautiful photos of the young Caroline.

Many thanks to Marilyn for contributing these.

1947 Telephone Directory

So I finally got through scanning that 1947 phone directory I bought on Ebay and uploaded it, for your reading enjoyment. It includes Valparaiso, Chesterton, East Gary, Hobart, Kouts, Ogden Dunes and Wheeler.

Click here to view PDF directory.

I shall have to add a permanent "Directories" page to the Downtown Hobart 1979 blog one of these days. And then I shall have to get my hands on more directories to scan so the title won't be a lie.

State-of-the-Roads Report

Random road-related items, from mid-April to mid-May 1920 …

South Main Street is getting paved, but not fast enough for this fruit truck; a team of horses finally saves the day.


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In this ad, Goodrich makes bad roads a selling point for its tires.



The Gazette of April 23, 1920, was just full of road tidbits.



The last News of April added: "The work of grading Indiana and Lillian streets is about completed ready for the pavers."

By early May 1920, the Lake County commissioners were considering a proposed cement road running from Gary to Miller, then north to Lake Michigan and east to the Porter County line, thus cutting across northern Hobart Township. (According to, e.g., the 1926 Plat Book, Hobart Township extended north to Lake Michigan at the time.) The proposed road would consist of two 20-foot-wide cement lanes divided by a 20-foot median. From the heights of Indiana Ridge, John Dorman wrote an open letter supporting the proposal, as it would help make Hobart "a high class suburb to Gary."



Of course, everyone favors good roads, but not everyone favors paying for them; and when the county commissioners met on May 10 for a vote, they had before them a remonstrance signed by "several hundred" Hobart Township citizens who protested that the road's $250,000 cost was more than the township could afford. And in the end the commissioners voted down the road proposal.


Sources:
♦ Advertisement. Hobart News 22 Apr. 1920.
♦ "John F. Dorman Favors Good Roads." 7 May 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 15 Apr. 1920; 29 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 23 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Road Petition Denied." Hobart Gazette 14 May 1920.
♦ "Who Will Pay?" Hobart Gazette 23 Apr. 1920.

Updated with Photos … and a Story

Caroline Sapper's autograph page has been updated with photos and a story contributed by the DeWell Family archivist.

Cider Press

Photos taken inside the Hobart Historical Society museum.


(Click on images to enlarge)







Looks like an awful lot of work, to get a little apple juice. Why didn't they just go to the supermarket? [Facetious remark.]

Continuing in my quest to master the art of bad photography, I've discovered another technique that I've neglected: the vignette. So here goes:



Doesn't it just bring tears to your eyes?

Caroline Sapper

From the Busse autograph collection.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

We already know that six years after she signed Lena's album, Caroline became Mrs. Owen Nelson.

♦    ♦    ♦
[2/6/2013 update] From the DeWell Family Archives come the following two photos of Caroline Sapper Nelson. The first is undated.


(Click on images to enlarge)

This next one was taken in 1980, on the occasion of Caroline and Owen's 65th wedding anniversary. From left to right: Caroline, Owen, Howard Ewen, Ruth Schavey Ewen, and Annabelle Schavey Larson.



Ruth and Annabelle were Caroline's nieces (the daughters of her sister Louise Sapper Schavey DeWell by Louise's first husband, whom she lost to the Spanish influenza). Howard Ewen was Ruth's husband.

The archivist tells us this story:

The Sappers lived in Chicago when the kids were young. Their dad owned a grocery near the Pullman area. My mom remembers hearing that Aunt Caroline, and her brother Uncle John (of the farm market in Hobart) were little scrappers. They said they had to fight their way home every day from school through a line of other kids (probably the German Sappers vs. the Italians or Irish). Caroline and John probably barely topped five feet as adults, but I have no doubt they were tough!

Many thanks for these contributions!

♦    ♦    ♦
[2/9/2013 update] Thanks to Marilyn (granddaughter of Caroline Sapper), we now have some images of Caroline in her youth.

This first one is not dated, but I'm guessing circa 1900, since she looks roughly five years old here, and she was born in 1895.


(Click on images to enlarge)

We have tried to decipher these handwritten notes on the back of the original:



Here's my interpretation thus far:



It seems to be a description of the details of Caroline's portrait that would be lost in the black-and-white version. I wonder if perhaps her mother gave instructions to the photographer to produce another version, retouched with some color?

Moving along, here is Caroline's confirmation class at Trinity Lutheran Church, undated, but we're guessing circa 1910. Caroline is in the middle row, third from the right.



No one else is identified — a pity, since it's a great photo. Perhaps someday there will be time for research on that.

Last but not least, we have Caroline's wedding photo, taken February 14, 1915:



She was a beautiful bride, but she seems to be staring down the photographer … while Owen is gazing dreamily off-camera. (I have also added this photo to the previous post about their wedding.)