A Unique Utility Pole

[This post is by guest blogger Lloyd Puchek.]


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I found this downed utility pole at the address of 501 N. Colorado Street in Hobart laying along side of the Pennsy rail road tracks just west of the Wisconsin Street railroad crossing. When I saw this, I was totally stunned. I knew approximately what time period this pole came from and when this utility pole was in use. The two story house on the property of 501 N. Colorado St. is unusual in itself. The front door of this house faces the railroad tracks. The house itself was built in the year 1938. As you look at the second photo take a look at the utility poles in this photo, they are the exact same type of utility poles as the utility pole in the first photo.


From Mildred Lindborg's photo album, courtesy of N.B.

Dacre Nelson and a Corner of Tonagel's

I received this photo at the same time and from the same source as the cabin Cozy Camp photo, but neglected to post it.


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Image courtesy of a friend.

Here we have Dacre Nelson in 1939, standing outside Tonagel's grocery store. And would you believe this is the first glimpse I've ever had of Tonagel's when it was Tonagel's? Nowadays, it's Sharp School Services.

Notice the bay window behind Dacre — the present-day building has bay windows too, but they are different in design, and none of them appear as close to the corner as the one in the picture.

♦    ♦    ♦
When I wrote my first Tonagel post in November 2009, the 1940 census hadn't been made available yet. I have updated that post to reflect the information from 1940.


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From Ancestry.com.

On His Toes!

John and Lillian Call had been living in a rented home in Hobart when the 1920 census came around and, I suppose, when their first child was born. In the spring of 1921 they bought their own house and their own lot, but it seems the two were not at first in the same place. It was easier to bring the house to the lot than vice versa … which is not to say it was easy to move the house.


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Also, a little news of other people we know, including a new way to spell Grabowski, but we're going to stick with the old way. And Theodore Rossow's little daughter was sick. Who (I asked myself) was Theodore Rossow? I believe he was "Uncle Theodore" to our Minnie Rossow Harms, being her father's brother … only I don't know what his family was doing "southwest" of Hobart, since the censuses (1910 through 1930) show them living on their own land in Union Township, Porter County; the 1921 plat map of Union Township shows this Rossow farm in the northwest corner of Union Township, which is southeast of Hobart. Perhaps the "southwest" in the News item was a misprint.


To return for a moment to the Calls' house-moving — while the item above suggests it was expensive, we must go to a second item on another page to find out that it actually cost John much more than he'd expected:




Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 5 May 1921.

Railroad Maintenance: The Saga Continues

Activity on the Canadian National tracks near the Ainsworth crossing this morning.

This truck is similar to the one we saw on the tracks, but it's off the tracks.


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Here's our old friend, the ballast regulator.








And here's the economy-sized version of "How to Distribute New Ties Along the Right-of-Way."

Hurlburt's Corners

From early on in my reading of the microfilm, I've seen mentioned some place called "Hurlburt's Corners," and could not figure out where it was.

At last, a Hurlburt descendant has clued me in. What was Hurlburt's Corners is now the intersection of Randolph Street and E. 93rd Avenue. If you go back to 1874, you find the whole west side of that intersection owned by J. Hurlburt.


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From the 1874 Plat Map.

I believe J. Hurlburt was Jacob, and the M. Hurlburt owning 80 acres on the north line of Jacob's land was Milan, his son.

The little square marked "S.H." is the Hurlburt schoolhouse. This map shows it on the southeast corner; a hand-drawn map at the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society museum shows in on the northwest corner.

Hurlburt's Corners is distinct from the lost village of Hurlburt, which is, or was, in Porter Township, Porter County, along the Chicago & Erie Railroad. See this 1895 plat map, showing both Hurlburt and Boone Grove, and the 1876 plat map, showing about 320 acres in that vicinity owned by a C. Hurlburt — first name unknown to me. Still, I would not be surprised if both the village and the corners got their name from members of the same extended family.

This large family began with Reuben and Rachel Hurlburt, who came to Porter County in the spring of 1834, according to Goodspeed and Blanchard. If we can trust that source, the family first lived in Portage Township, later moving into Porter Township, where Reuben and Rachel died.

In 1850 their son Jacob and his wife, Susan, were farming in Porter Township with their seven children, the youngest being one-year-old Milan. By 1860 they had moved into Ross Township, and among their neighbors were Guernseys and Bragingtons; this leads me to suspect they were already at the place that would come to be called Hurlburt's Corners.

In 1873 Milan married Mary Ann Guernsey. The 1880 census shows them farming in what seems to be southeastern Ross Township. The young Hurlburts had two children, Jacob and Jennie. Goodspeed and Blanchard, writing in 1882, list their children as "Jacob (born January 1, 1874), Jennie (born March 3, 1877), and Chester (born August 8, 1880)" — Ethel is ever elusive!

… Well, no, she's not quite as elusive as she used to be. I just took the trouble to read through the 1900 census of Ross Township, and found the Milan Hurlburt family, which Ancestry.com's search function couldn't do. While their listing is not the most legible, Ethel is there, and (reading it as best I can) I think she's 10 years old. Now I wish I could remember what inspired me to say she was sixteen years old at her marriage, in that earlier post. Evidently I was wrong. She was nineteen.

I have finally found out a little about Ethel's older sister, Jennie. In August 1898 Jennie married William G. Fisher. They lived in Winfield Township at first, but by 1909 were back in Ross Township, living on her father's land.

Here's a little story from 1909 about Jennie and her son, Lester.


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Lester "got along" well enough to be counted in the 1910 census, which shows the Fishers farming rented land — probably her father's. Just before the 1920 census, they lost their son Richard to complications of influenza. They were left with seven surviving children.

… And that is all the Hurlburt genealogy I can handle in one day.


Sources:
♦ 1850 Census.
♦ 1860 Census.
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Auto Injures Boy." Hobart Gazette 20 Aug. 1909.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard).

WPA on Third Street

[Today's post is by guest blogger Lloyd Puchek]



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I went walking on 3rd Street in Hobart, Indiana. I happen to see these three letters stamped into the concrete. What do these three letters mean? How did these letters get there? Also who put them there? With the vast amount of history of Hobart, Indiana, the history of the United States is directly tied into these three letters into this photo. In the year 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt became President of the United States. During this time in history our country was going through the Great Depression. When the Great Depression began on October 29, 1929, this Great Depression shook our country and the entire world we live in right off its axis. Whatever job anyone had then, was gone. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, during his first one hundred days in office it brought about a lot of changes to our country. With him and the congress they worked diligently hard at helping to put people back to work by putting people back to work through government projects. One such project was the WPA. These three letters WPA stand for Works Progress Administration. People were hired to work and were paid by the federal government. On both sides of 3rd Street, the concrete was poured and formed to make the sidewalks. Underneath the asphalt street of Hobart is concrete. This concrete was laid to make the road bed and was also poured and set by the people who worked for this government project. It was through this government project called the WPA, that this area of Hobart now has sidewalks. Through the WPA here in the year 1935 in Hobart, our Post Office was built along with the building of the Bath House for the people who were swimming in Lake George that once stood where the public library is now in downtown Hobart. Also the Roosevelt Gym that once stood next to the original Hobart High School was built at this time too through the WPA. Neither the city of Hobart nor the state of Indiana paid for any of these construction projects during this time at all. When the concrete sidewalks were poured and set the three letters WPA were stamped by the workers into the concrete sidewalks to tell future generations of Americans here in Hobart, Indiana that employment and labor are the backbone of our country. The late great President Franklin D. Roosevelt firmly believed that, when he signed into law called the National Recovery Act. When he signed this bill into law it was the foundation of putting Americans back to work. When I saw these three letters stamped into the concrete sidewalks on 3rd Street here in Hobart, I stopped to show my wife. I was stunned, because I knew how those letters got there. The WPA will long be remembered as a monument to employment and labor in our country.

Lloyd Puchek

Merrillville From the Air, 1939

Here we have two aerial photos of Merrillville from 1939.


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Images courtesy of the Indiana Geological Survey, I.U. Bloomington.



I got these thinking they would clarify the location of the railroad depot, but I was wrong. There are two rectangles in that vicinity and we're not sure which is the depot.