Spring Piglets

Early in June of 1922 we find the Nolte brothers selling piglets born on April Fool's Day (or thereabouts); Mrs. Gilbert Robinson (whoever she was) selling her spring chickens; and Fremont B. Price selling a tractor and plows … maybe his insurance business was doing so well that he wasn't going to pretend to be a farmer anymore.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 8 June 1922.


On June 4 James and Effie (Spencer) Chester attended a Spencer family reunion.


(Click on image to enlarge)

The guest of honor was the owner of the famous sidesaddle, and the label on that sidesaddle just saved me a lot of snooping around on Ancestry.com.

The late Eleazar Spencer owned a lot of land. On this image from the 1926 Plat Book, I have marked in red his land as it appeared in the 1891 Plat Book (the parcel marked in green belonged to his brother cousin(?), Orsemus):


(Click on image to enlarge)

I believe the house at 3194 County Line Road (built in 1882 according to the county records) is the Eleazar Spencer residence.

Mrs. Robert Roper had been born Jessie Spencer circa 1879 (1880 Census) and married Robert Roper in 1899 (Indiana Marriage Collection). Mrs. Duffy DeFrance had been Myrtle Belle Swanson, daughter of Helena (Spencer) Swanson, and mother of Verva (DeFrance) Johnson.

Eunice Rhodes

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

I was hoping Eunice might be related to our plumber, George Rhodes, but if she was I haven't found evidence of it.

She was born in July 1894, and in the 1900 Census, we find her family farming in Calumet Township, neighbors of William and Antonia Rossow, as well as the George and Ellen Roper family and the Gottlieb family.

So it's natural enough that Eunice would be a friend of the Rossows, and that her photo would end up in Minnie Rossow Harms' steamer trunk.

Bad Conditions

During the "City Council Proceedings," as related by the Hobart News of June 8, 1922, Dr. Louis M. Friedrich, now on Hobart's Board of Health, reported "a considerable amount of trouble about chickens among neighbors." He also "reported having made an investigation of the Mike O'Hearn place and found it in very bad condition," but the News gave us no further details.

The same issue of the News had a story about Mike O'Hearn finding someone else in a bad condition:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 9 June 1922.

The Chicago road, as you may remember, was Old Ridge Road.

Two Views of the Old High School

Here's a dreamy-looking view of the old Hobart Township High School on Fourth Street, on a postcard in the 1901-1907 style. "I have marked my room," the writer says, and if you look closely you can see an X on the upper pane of the first-floor window furthest to the left.


(Click on images to enlarge)

I can't identify this LaVerne Bailey, either in the census records or the index of Hobart-High graduates.

The postmark doesn't show a year.



I do find a Ralph Cutts in Shabbona, Illinois, in the 1910 Census. He was born in September 1898 per the 1900 Census, which recorded the family living in Willow Creek, Illinois.

♦    ♦    ♦
Here is a slightly later view of the High School building.



This card hasn't been used, so there's no postmark to help us date it. All I can say for sure is that the card was printed in the post-March-1907 style, and that, compared to the earlier view, the building has been enlarged.

Back in '02, When the Vincent School Burned

Here's an interesting little event that I didn't know enough to pay attention to the first time I was reading through the 1902 microfilm.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette 28 Feb. 1902.

So when Gust Lindborg "bought the old Sullivan schoolhouse" in 1912 — assuming "Sullivan" and "Vincent" are two names for the same school — it wasn't really all that old, was it? — nine or ten years.

The property records for the former Vincent schoolhouse still standing at Clay St. and Harms Rd. give a construction date of 1925. If that's correct (and assuming Sullivan = Vincent), why was the Vincent school building available for purchase in 1912? Were they building a new wooden one then? This is getting complicated.

I wish the story had identified "Miss Burge" better. In the 1900 Census, (Winfield) Scott and Mary Burge had six daughters and two sons living at home. I suppose either of the two eldest daughters, May (born circa 1881) and Bertha (born circa 1882), could have become a teacher by 1902, and maybe even the next eldest, Libbie (born ca. 1885). The census shows the Burges owning their own farm; my guess at its location is marked on this image from the 1908 Plat Map, which also shows how conveniently close for the burned-out students the Goodrich house was.


(Click on image to enlarge)

The yellow X marks the present location of the brick house that used to be the Vincent schoolhouse. This map places the 1908 schoolhouse* on the north side of present-day E. 83rd Ave.

The Goodriches were Charles and Caroline. They had five children of their own who likely attended the Vincent school: Cora, Ida, Arthur, Clarence, and Harold. (The two youngest would later go to war, and Harold would not come home.)

___________________
*Which would be the one that ended up as the Lindborg home on Ainsworth Road, as I currently understand it all.

Love on Wheels

When I first mentioned the Crystal Roller Rink, I never dreamed I'd someday have photographic evidence of the wedding that (people tell me) took place there.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.



On the back of that first photo, someone has jotted down what I think is the groom's name, Davy Smyth (pronounced with a long i).



I could not get any additional information, such as the bride's name or the date of the wedding, from the usual on-line sources.


Update: Thanks to the kindness of relatives/descendants of this happy couple, I have learned that the wedding of David Smythe and Margaret Yager took place on December 18, 1948.

William Prochno's Death Notice

One thing I know about this blog is that it's never going to reach 1958 by its usual agonizingly slow weekly progression. So I'll just post this now — from the Gary Post-Tribune of June 2, 1958:


(Click on image to enlarge)

I do not know if "his home" at the time was still the farm. Perhaps someday I will try to find a 1957-58 Crown Point directory at the library.