Saloon Building to Come Down

The "dilapidated structure" that is the subject of this Times article is the Sauter saloon building. The work begun last fall has long since been abandoned. The building has been sitting empty, with a big hole in the roof and an unlocked door, so nature and vandals have been free to do as they please. Now it's a wreck. Historic — 115 years old — but a wreck.

Since I moved to Ainsworth, we've lost the blacksmith shop and the general store. The train depot and the original school were gone before I got here. Now the saloon is about to go. Ainsworth is disappearing.

Visiting the Swamp Milkweed (Random Pointless Photos)

Yesterday I noticed that this swamp milkweed near my garden had a couple of visitors. Up on the blossoms, this guy:


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I think that's an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, but I'm no butterfly expert.


And down on the leaves, this caterpillar:



… which I think is someday going to be a Monarch butterfly.


Aside from being tasty, the swamp milkweed blossoms are just so darn pretty.

On the Ainsworth Stone Road

We know it as Grand Boulevard or State Road 51, but to the 1920 census enumerator it was the "South Hobart Road to Ainsworth," and to editor of the Hobart News, writing in 1921, it was the "Ainsworth stone road." Edwin and Carry Humes had been living in a rented house along that road, with their four children, when the 1920 Census recorded them. In June 1921 they bought that house — the "Hettie Ryan residence," which was in Hobart Township, but since the plat maps don't show parcels of three acres, I don't know exactly where.

Further south on the same road, in Ross Township, the Grabowskis continued their improvements to the old Carlson place. My current theory is that the red brick house on the west side of S.R. 51, on the north bank of the Deep River, is the old Carlson place, but that's just my current theory.

Also, the Yellowstone Trail got re-routed through the heart of Hobart …


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 16 June 1921.

… and a Buick report.

On the Water Wagon

From the steamer trunk.


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Images courtesy of E.H.

This card was mailed in 1913, when the phrase "on the water wagon" and its variations were already in common parlance when alcohol was being discussed — as it was so often in those days.

Someone sent this card to Herman Harms, but I don't know who.



Herman did not have a little sister. The handwriting and the general style don't look like Minnie Rossow's, and as for signing her initials "M.H." — that was far in the future. I can only suppose that Herman had some cousin or friend in Chicago whom he treated like a little sister.

Auto Mayhem Report

Side by side in the Hobart Gazette of June 3, 1921, two happy escapes, and one sad ending:


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The story on the left mentions the names without explanation, as if the Gazette's readers should know them, but I can't identify those exact people.

As for poor Dan Slachelska, he was indeed buried at Porter County's expense, in Crown Hill Cemetery. "It is said," the Gazette commented, "he possessed no means nor friends to defray burial expenses" — or to buy a marker for his grave, apparently, as none was found by the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society's readers. Unless some family or friends later turned up to claim his remains, perhaps he sleeps there anonymously to this day. ("Additional Local News," Hobart Gazette 10 June 1921.)

Update to Land Ownership Page

I have added to my Land Ownership page (under "Pages" in the right-hand column of this blog) scans of Ross and Hobart Townships taken from:

(1) 1950 Map of Lake County, Indiana Showing Ownerships compiled by Samuel E. Brownsten, Lake County Surveyor and Engineer ("1950 Plat Book"). This plat book is so big that I had to scan each township in sections.

(2) Lake County Indiana Plat Book & Index of Owners. Town & Country Publishing Co., Inc. (La Porter, Ind.), 1972 ("1972 Plat Book"). Bless the author's heart, he/she managed to fit each township on an 8.5" x 11" page!

Jackson Hendrix

From the Rainford collection.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

We've seen "Jack" before in a group photo; now here he is on his own, at about four years of age, circa 1915.

He was the first child born to his parents, Charles and Ida (Rossow) Hendrix.