Another Day at the Beach

From the Schavey envelope collection.


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

No ID on these young women, but I think perhaps we've seen the one on the right at the beach before, on another day, since she is dressed differently here — well dressed, in frock and hat and probably stockings and shoes; and there in the background are people in bathing suits.

This original photograph has been trimmed in the same odd fashion as the other one linked to above.

Here's Something About Harry

There I was, when I should have been writing something relevant, instead poking around trying to find out where Harry and Mable Schavey Breyfogle have their final resting place. By chance I came across something that actually ties Harry to Ainsworth … well, "south of Ainsworth," anyway — this, from the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger of May 5, 1955:



So I checked Ancestry.com for the Coles. The 1910 Census shows Edward and Ella Cole on a farm in Winfield township; with them lives Harry Breyfogle, an orphan boy of eight, whose birthplace is unknown. The reason my direct searches on "Breyfogle" didn't turn him up is because the enumerator's handwriting caused Ancestry.com's indexer to misread his last name.

I still can't find Harry in the 1920 Census. By the 1930 Census, he was giving his birthplace as Indiana.

Here is the Cole land that lay just below the boundary between Winfield and Ross Townships, as shown in the 1939 Plat Book, with my attempt to mark the 80 acres that lay adjacent in Ross Township:


(Click on image to enlarge)

The Coles were thus neighbors of Sam and Carrie Campbell, whose son Claude married Bertha Nolte, who was born and raised in that tragic house east of Ainsworth. Another Ainsworth connection!

♦    ♦    ♦
… And there went all the time I had for writing. I wish I were one of those people to whom research and writing come easily, but I'm not. I follow one tangent, and waste two hours. Hence all those posts of unidentified people photographed in unknown places on unknown dates: that doesn't take two hours.

A Clean Shirt Forever

It was just ten days into the new year, into the new decade, and our old friend Willard Halsted, the former Ainsworth storekeeper, no longer needed a clean shirt every Sunday.

His death at 62 years of age came as a shock to all who knew him. He had been so active — only the previous summer we saw him doing the carpentry work on a new home for the Dwight Mackey family, and no doubt he had other work not reported on. (I am not sure if he was one of the "Halsted brothers" working on the Chandler barn in November 1919.)

Only recently he had suffered some unspecified ailment (the newspapers being uncharacteristically reticent about its nature) serious enough to warrant surgery at Mercy Hospital in Gary. His operation took place on January 7, 1920; the next day's News reported that he was "doing nicely." Bad news was not expected, but it soon came.


(Click on images to enlarge)

(His daughter, Hazel, had married Byron Findling in June 1917, and his namesake grandson was now just over a year old. Per the News, his surviving siblings were brothers Albert, Wallace and J.M. (James?) of Hobart, and sister Ruby Rhodes of Gary.)

W.O. lies in Crown Hill Cemetery, near the son who had gone before.



Also nearby, the family monument:




Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 8 Jan. 1920.
♦ "Prominent Hobart Citizen Dies Suddenly." Hobart Gazette 16 Jan. 1920.
♦ "W.O. Halsted, Hobart Contractor, Passes Away." Hobart News 15 Jan. 1920.

My Brave Sons

From the Schavey envelope collection.


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

Unidentified, so I don't actually know if they are his sons. The original is done up as a small postcard, with "Correspondence" and "Address" professionally printed on the back, but it was not used.

The man on the right is the same one who stood beside the young woman in the previous photo. I'm still not sure he's a soldier, but the man on the left certainly looks like one, and is that a service banner in the window behind them?

♦    ♦    ♦
[11/2/2012 update] The curator of the DeWell family archives has pointed out to me that the Hobart News of February 20, 1919, included a photo of Frank Schavey in uniform (Frank being Mable Schavey's uncle). Here it is:



That's a scan of a bad microfilm print-out. The original newspaper might be more helpful, if only I could get my hands on it. When I see a resemblance, perhaps I'm seeing what I want to see. At any rate, I've abandoned my Boy Scout/forest ranger/Halloween theory.

Farm Moving Time Again

John Kilmer had finally come home from overseas, from the army, to see again his wife — the former Hazel Price — and to see for the first time his one-year-old daughter, Juanita. By early January, the little family was together again on a farm in Iowa.

F.B. and Carrie Price, John's in-laws in Ainsworth, were making arrangements for him to earn his living much nearer their home. They rented "the George Hayward farm, on the Lincoln Highway," which, if it retained in 1920 its 1908 dimensions, was quite a spread. The plan was for John and Hazel Kilmer to begin farming that land in the spring.


(Click on image to enlarge)
The Hayward farm in 1908; just a stone's throw to the northeast, the land the Prices bought in 1918.

And so it was time for Charles Shults, the Hayward farm's current tenant, to move on. Which he did, eastward to what was still known as the "Springman farm," though by 1920 it may have been already owned by William Springman's son-in-law William Mankey.


The 113-acre Mankey farm as it appeared in 1926; outlined in red, the original Springman 40 acres (per the 1908 map).

♦    ♦    ♦
In other moving news, "Mrs. Gib Bullock" (the widowed Alice Estelle Markham Bullock was offering for sale her "frame barn on Center street." She didn't mention the land it stood on, so perhaps she expected the seller to pick it up and move it.


Sources:
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 2 Jan. 1920.
♦ "All kinds of Wants." Hobart Gazette 9 Jan. 1920.

My Brave Sweetheart

From the Schavey envelope collection.


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

Unidentified, so I don't actually know if that's her sweetheart, or her brother or just some guy she happened to be standing next to, and I don't actually know if he's a soldier or a boy scout, or maybe a forest ranger. Or maybe it's Halloween, and they're dressing up as people from the World-War-I era.

Big Fight Over a Little Land

It was only a half acre, but someone thought it was worth fighting over.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the Hobart Gazette of Jan. 2, 1920.

This excerpt from the 1926 Plat Book shows approximately where the little parcel was located (the red rectangle):



Well, that's right in the heart of the Ainsworth business district! Location, location, location!

The one bit of information I found surprising in this article is that there was once a schoolhouse on that land, and that it was abandoned, not moved. Actually, this is not inconsistent with the 1874 Plat Map (schoolhouse marked in red):



But the little frame building generally considered Ainsworth's first school stood further west along Ainsworth Road.