The Law or the Shotgun

William Rossow knew who was stealing his corn, I think, but considered it wiser to address him through the newspaper than at his front door.


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Hobart Gazette 12 Oct. 1921.*

And our old friend Charles Lee is under the weather.

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*This issue of the Gazette is erroneously dated "Friday, Oct. 12, 1921." Friday was the usual day for the Gazette to come out, but that week's Friday fell on the 14th.

Some Women We Know

I think this is a companion photo to the men we know — that tree in the background is the same in both photos.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

The notes identify these women only by their first names (and two of them not at all), so I'm going to have to try to figure this out. My guesses are in brackets.

Front row, L to R: Mary Mae [née Vetter; married Martin Ols]; unidentified; unidentified; Alphie [dau. of Christ and Alpha (Struble) Ols].

Back row, L to R: Catherine [née Yandow, married Herman Ols]; Emma [dau. of John and Sophia (Ols) Baessler]; Bertha [née Wischman, married Henry Ols]; Jenny [dau. of Christ and Alpha (Struble) Ols]; Sophia [née Ols, married John Baessler]; Evelyn and Caroline [daus. of Christ and Alpha (Struble) Ols]; Mary [née Ols, married Wm. Thiede]; Minnie [dau. of Wm. and Mary (Ols) Thiede]; and Liz [dau. of Henry and Bertha (Wischman) Ols].

I got the family relations from the genealogy compiled by Fred Ols, but I jumped to my own conclusions about how the surnames related to the women in the photograph.

No date on this photo either. As for the fashions — well, I'm seeing styles I'd place at around 1920, plus two or three dropped waists, which I wouldn't expect to see until circa 1923. Looking at the men's photo, I guessed circa 1926 based on one person's apparent age, but here I'm inclined to revise my estimate downward, maybe circa 1923 or '24.

Death of a Deep River Boy

Since coming to the village of Deep River, members of the Cullman family had survived a train wreck and a bout of influenza, but in the autumn of 1921 the middle child, Walter, fell ill, and this time there was no lucky escape.


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Hobart News, 6 Oct. 1921.

His 16th birthday had been on September 16, not quite three weeks earlier. Walter was a sophomore at Hobart High School, I suppose, having graduated from the Deep River school in May 1920.


Additional Source: "Boy Dies at Deepriver." Hobart Gazette 7 Oct. 1921.

The Mystery of Harriet

Ever since I started looking into the Henry Chester family, I've been puzzled as to why there was no gravestone for his first wife, née Harriet Perry, in the Chester Cemetery. Obviously their marriage had ended — he did take a second wife — and the usual way of ending marriages in those days was death.

It took some detective work by one of Henry's descendants, Linda Pearson, to establish that Henry's first marriage had likely ended in the unusual way: divorce.

We knew that Henry had married Harriet, daughter of Ezekiel Perry of Porter County, in 1859. But Linda has tracked down a biography of Sylvester Casbon (whose fine brick house we have already seen), which states that after his first wife died in 1868, Sylvester married again, to "Miss Harriet Perry, daughter of E. Perry." Per the Indiana Marriage Collection, Sylvester married Emmeline H. Perry on October 21, 1869; I guess we know what the "H." stood for.

Back in 1913, when Henry's will was being contested, I was mystified by the mention of "Mrs. Etta Wood" as a daughter of Henry, since I had never seen, in census or newspaper article, any daughter named Etta. However, Linda points out that there is a Henrietta Chester in the 1870 census, in the household of Sylvester Casbon:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Unlike later ones, this census does not help us by listing each person's relationship to the head of the household. But now we can deduce that Henrietta was Sylvester Casbon's stepdaughter. Her age means that she was born circa 1862, too late to appear in the 1860 census, where we find Henry and Harriet and their two small daughters, Mary (who went on to become Mrs. Marchant), and Olive (who died in infancy and now rests in Chester Cemetery). "Etta," then, is likely short for Henrietta (but at present I can't explain any Wood connection).

The marriage of Sylvester and Harriet ended in the usual way, and a lovely stone marks Harriet's grave in Mosier Cemetery.


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Image courtesy of Linda Pearson.

Henrietta Chester went on to marry a Charles Stroman, according to the 1918 marriage certificate of her son, Martin:


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Image courtesy of Linda Pearson.

Martin Stroman was Linda's grandfather; he was also described by the Hobart News in 1913 as the son of Mrs. Etta Wood, who was the daughter of Henry Chester.

I'd like to know how the surname Wood got in here, but otherwise I'm convinced we've solved the mystery of Harriet. Many thanks to Linda Pearson, History Detective!

How About Saturday Night?

This young lady looks very demure until you get down to where she's flashing her leg. Racy stuff!


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.


The summer of 1913 was on the wane as Minnie Rossow invited her friend for an evening's visit.

City of Gambling and Moonshine

The question whether Hobart should become a city, which had been much debated for a couple of years, at last came to a vote in the fall of 1921. Of an estimated 1,400 to 1,600 citizens eligible to vote, less than half did.* The city proposition won by about 218 votes.

The News commented:

Some of the things which those in favor of a city have been working for and anxious to see achieve, are good water for Hobart, and an enforcement of the law which would stop gambling and bootlegging of moonshine. It is figured a mayor can do this better than a town board as a whole.

Now the interested citizens of Hobart could start campaigning to be elected to the new city offices.

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*698 if you believe the News, 727 according to the Gazette, and that's as far as I intend to go in researching this.


Sources:
♦ "City Plan Wins by Good Majority." Hobart News 6 Oct. 1921.
♦ "Hobart City Now a Reality." Hobart Gazette 7 Oct. 1921.

Some Men We Know, or Would Have Known Sooner If I'd Been Paying More Attention

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.

Notes on the back identify these men (left to right) as "John Ols (Chris's son), Charley Ols, John Baessler, John Thiede, Henry Bodamer, Martin Ols, Grandpa Henry Ols, Henry Thiede, Chris Ols."

We already know the Christ Ols family; son John was born circa 1906. Charley and "Grandpa" Henry Ols were brothers of Christ. And Henry Ols was Martin's father.

John Baessler had married Sophia Ols in 1888, so he was brother-in-law to Christ, Charles and Henry.

Henry Bodamer had married Minnie Baessler (John and Sophia's daughter) in 1915. Henry was a son of George and Freeda Bodamer, born in 1891. We encountered him once before, I believe, as a nine-year-old schoolboy, but I don't know how he is connected (if at all) to the Bodamers who have figured in more prominently in this blog (Benjamin and Bertha, and Alvah and Vernon).

Now, as for the Thiede family — I have done a good job of ignoring them. The name has popped up in the microfilm now and then, but I've rarely made note of it and only once mentioned it in the blog, when William Thiede bought a Water Street house from Charles Maybaum. At the time I had no clue who William Thiede was, but since then I have learned that he entered the Ols family way back in 1881, when he married Mary Ols (sister of Christ, Charley, and Henry). The two Thiede men in this photograph were children of that marriage: Henry was born in 1882, John in 1890.

So, I hope we have all that straight now!

The only information we have about the date of this photo is that it was taken before 1930. Most of these men have reached that middle point in life where you must guess their age within a range of decades, not years. But John Ols (at the far left) looks to be in his late teens or early twenties, which would place the photo roughly around 1926.