John and Faye Shults

This sad news from November of 1923 …


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

… inspired me to look into John and Faye Shults, to try to figure out if they were related to the Ainsworth-area Shultses.

The answer is: I think so. John's parents, like William's and Charles', were Charles (born in Sweden) and Caroline (born in Germany) Shults, and the date of his birth (1887 or '88) was within the lifetimes of the Charles and Caroline. The only reason I don't say definitely is that all these names were so common.

The 1880 Census shows Charles Sr. and Caroline ("Lena") living in LaPorte County, Indiana, with three children: William, Charles Jr., and Emma. Charles Sr. died in LaPorte County in 1899. Then, in the 1900 Census, Caroline shows up in Union Township, Porter County, in a rented home, with four more children — Edward, Mary, John, and Freddie. To judge by the few of her neighbors who owned their land, I think she was near Union Center, thus not far east of Deep River.

In February 1910, John married Faye Ella Smithers in Lake County (Indiana Marriage Collection).

The 1910 Census shows John and Faye on a rented farm, apparently north of Merrillville in the Turkey Creek area, to judge by the fact that they were recorded near the Schillo family. By August of 1919 John and Faye were renting the farm that Peter and Hulda Palm bought.[1]

In the 1920 Census, John and Faye are recorded on a farm on the "southwest road out of Hobart past the green house," which sounds like west 10th Street, the "green house" being the Kellen greenhouse where present-day Lake Park Avenue/Grand Boulevard meets 10th Street.

In the 1930 Census, they are again on 10th Street, owning a farm. I can't find a Shults parcel on 10th Street in either the 1926 Plat Book or the 1939 Plat Book, so their farm may have been one of the smaller parcels (10 acres, perhaps) where the owner's name is not marked.

John, unfortunately, didn't live to be recorded in the 1940 census. He was killed in an accident on his 10th Street farm in 1939.


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Hammond Times, July 2, 1939.

This obituary also tells us that John was connected to the Hillcrest Dairy.

Faye was still living on the same 10th Street farm when the 1940 census came around. She described herself as a "farm manager." The only other person in the household was a 20-year-old farm laborer who boarded there. Her surviving child, Howard, had married and moved out.

Faye never remarried, I gather. When she died in 1971, she was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery with her husband and daughter.


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[1] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, Aug. 1, 1919.

Unidentified Disgruntled Teenager

Another of the three photos I recently bought in Hobart. Also unidentified and from Showman's Gallery, so dating circa 1893-1898.


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I'd guess this boy's age at about 14 years. The Sunday-best clothing, the corsage, and the little book he's holding up make me think he's just been confirmed in a church, or maybe graduated from the eighth grade. Either way, he's less impressed with his accomplishment than his parents are (who made him dress up and pose for the photographer), and he can't wait to get out of that high, stiff collar.

The suit jacket looks like a hand-me-down from his older brother, but the trousers look new — maybe his first long pants?

Survived by His Sisters and Brothers

I didn't miss this article the first time through the 1919 microfilm, but for some reason I didn't put it in the blog at the time.


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Hobart News, July 24, 1919.


Lynne was the illegitimate son of Sarah Jane Carey and an unknown man. What strikes me about the few records we have of his short life is how well his grandfather, William H. Carey, and William's second wife and step-family of Rossows seem to have accepted this child whose coming was, at first, such an unpleasant surprise.

In the 1910 Census (the only census Lynne lived to be counted in), William H. Carey claimed this boy as his own son.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

The Careys seem to be naming William's second wife, Augusta, as the boy's mother – note that she claimed to be the mother of only one child, although she had seven from her previous marriage to Henry Rossow. (The enumerator, Charles Blank of Miller, may have made this mistake, not being a local.)

And then, in the 1919 News death notice, Augusta is described as Lynne's "foster mother," and Augusta's children are called his sisters and brothers — though in fact they were his step-aunts and step-uncles.[1] Lynne was living with two of his "sisters," who had long since moved out of the Carey home, when he left for that ill-fated trip to Michigan.[2]

And the survivors bought a stone to mark his grave, which is more than his mother or grandmother got.


When Charles Hendrix (husband of Lynne's "sister," Ida) went to Michigan to bring the boy home, he kept the family secret, according to the death certificate:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Charles may not have known who Lynne's mother was — was it he who gave the name "Leonard" for a boy who had always been called Lynn? Or maybe Charles knew, but thought it nobody's business except the Carey family's.

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We have only one known photo of Lynne.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Both the News and the Gazette agreed that he had been born on October 29, 1904, so the handwritten note on the photo, giving his age as 16, is probably an error.

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[1] The Gazette simply called Lynne the "grandson of the late Wm. Carey" and noted that Lynne had "made his home in Hobart with Mrs. Carey," but did not name any survivors — thus being correct, discreet, and a bit cold, if you ask me. ("Hobart Boy Dies in Michigan," Hobart Gazette, July 25, 1919.)
[2] The death notice does not mention any of Lynne's uncles or aunts on the Carey side; I wonder if that omission means anything?

Unidentified Young Man Working on a Mustache

Three old photos recently popped up for sale locally. This is one of them.


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There is no identification on this photo. Since it was done by Showman's Gallery, we can estimate its date between 1893 and 1898.

This young man's mustache may be wispy, but his suit is well made, and his collar and shirt are crisp and snowy white.

He's wearing some kind of stickpin on the lapel of his vest. The horizontal stripes suggest an American-flag theme, which could mean it's a political pin, but I certainly can't recognize any face on there, or read any name.

The Story of the Store: The Prequel

Just recently stumbled across this tidbit of information, and I'm wondering how I missed it the first time I read through the 1919 microfilm. For our purposes, the most interesting part is the last sentence.


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"Deaths for the Week," Hobart Gazette, Feb. 21, 1919.

Here's a photo of Frank as a prosperous businessman, circa 1915:


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That photo comes from History of Lake County and the Calumet Region, which includes a biographical sketch of Frank and the ups and downs of his career.

'Way back when I first started getting into the history of the Ainsworth general store, I was theorizing that perhaps W.O. Halsted was the first storekeeper; apparently that's wrong. Nor would Frank have been the first storekeeper, if the 1915 bio is correct in saying that he bought the store.

But I find the early history in the 1915 bio questionable. According to that source, Frank moved to Crown Point in 1875, spent nine years as a contractor — which brings us to about 1884 — then three years at a wood-working mill in South Chicago, which brings us to roughly 1887 and the purchase of the Ainsworth store. However, in other records, Frank shows up as postmaster at the Ainsworth post office in 1885.


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Ancestry.com. U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971. NARA Microfilm Publication, M841, 145 rolls. Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group Number 28. Washington, D.C.: National Archives.

We know from the 1880 Census that Frank was living in Crown Point, with his wife, Elizabeth (née Hutton), and their young family. So it must have been sometime between June 1880 and September 1885 that Frank moved his family to Ainsworth and became the village storekeeper and postmaster.

Frank is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Hammond.

I have pretty thoroughly neglected the Clintons so far. I shall have to remedy that.

Grace Wood Mundt

Since my previous post mentioned Grace Mundt, daughter of John Warren Wood and Margaret Hollett, I'm posting the only portrait of her contained in the Wood/Vincent photo album.


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Grace was born in 1884. In this photo she looks about 14 years old, so we can estimate that it dates to 1898 or thereabouts. The style of her dress (what little I can see of it) seems consistent with that. Unfortunately, there is no photographer's name on the photo.

She is identified by a handwritten caption.



On June 8, 1906, Grace married Dr. Gustoff Henry Mundt in Chicago. His obituary, from 1962, gives you some idea of what sort of people they both were.


Suburbanite-Economist (Evergreen Park, Ill.), April 4, 1962.

Grace's entry at findagrave.com includes a photo of Grace and Henry and two children.

The Death of Margaret Hollett Wood

A member-by-marriage of the Deep River Wood family died on November 4, 1923.


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Hobart Gazette, Nov. 9, 1923.

Her late husband, John W. Wood, had been born to John and Hannah (Pattee) Wood in 1838, after they came to Lake County, Indiana. He was given the name of a brother who had died in childhood, back in Massachusetts.

Margaret was the daughter of Thomas and Deborah Hollett, natives of New York. The 1860 Census is the first that records them in Porter County, farming in Porter Township. It is also the last one that records Margaret under her maiden name. The following year she married John W. Wood.

John gave his occupation as house painter in the 1870 Census, which shows him, Margaret, and their five-year-old daughter, Anna M., living in Valparaiso. By the 1880 Census, John had gone into the grocery business — and stayed there, apparently, since he still gave his occupation as grocer in the 1900 Census. Sometime after 1900 he retired and moved (according to his obituary) to Chicago, and there he died in 1907.

I can't find Margaret in the 1910 Census. The 1920 Census shows her living in Chicago with her daughter, Grace, who was by then the wife of Dr. Henry Mundt and the mother of two young children.

The niece in Gary at whose home Margaret died, Mrs. Otis B. Nesbit, was the Alice Vincent Nesbit who (I suspect) owned the Wood-Vincent photo album.

Margaret's entry on findagrave.com also lists her children who did not survive her.