Joe's Bees

From the steamer trunk.

Does this picture make you feel bugs crawling on you?


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Postcard images courtesy of E.H.

These critters are identified by a note on the back of the postcard:



"Joe" would be Joseph Mundell. His land lay just south of the Rossow farm; the two families were neighbors and friends.


From the 1908 Plat Map. The "J. Mundell" at this time would have been James, Joe's father.

No date on the postcard. Joseph described himself as a beekeeper from his WWI Draft Card through the 1930 Census. The style of stamp box on the postcard dates it between 1904 and 1918. So I'd guess that the picture dates to between 1910 and 1918.





The two pictures above appeared in a photo collage titled "Industries," in the Hobart High School Aurora yearbook of 1923. Joseph Mundell was then secretary of the Board of Education. He was board president when he place the advertisement below in the 1926 Aurora.

Road Trip News! Also, Baby News

Dr. Clara Faulkner, Mary Kipp, and Mrs. George Hatten returned from their four-week road trip on May 25, 1921, and got a big write-up in the News. (The News seems slightly better informed than the Gazette was about Mrs. Hatten's identity, thus suggesting that I correctly identified her as Ida Hatten, of Hobart.) The well-traveled Dr. Faulkner was impressed with Hobart's new camping ground … or at least she was kind enough to say she was.

Four days earlier, Peter and Hulda Palm had welcomed into the world their first son, after two daughters. That didn't get much of a write-up, of course, because a baby was nothing out of the ordinary. (But at least now I know exactly when Elmer Palm was born.)


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From the Hobart News of 26 May 1921.

The Mystery of Clifford Stolp

From the steamer trunk.


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Images courtesy of E.H.

Here, in his too-large Sunday best, is Clifford Stolp. I love that little half-smile of his. It seems to say he's planning to do something big as soon as they let him out of those glad-rags.

On the back of the postcard is a date — "Apr 9 '16" — which, assuming it's near the date the photo was taken, would put Clifford at about 14 10 years of age.



If I've got the genealogy right, he was a cousin of Minnie Rossow Harms: the son of her mother's brother, Herman Stolp, and his first wife, Katherine Schrankel.

Clifford is maddeningly elusive. The only official record I can find him in is the 1920 Census, where he says he is 18 years old, boarding* at the home of Jennie Clifford in Hobart, and working in a steel mill. (His widowed father and a younger brother were boarding at a home in Chicago.)

Before that, and after that, he is invisible. The only clue we have about his fate comes from Minnie Harms' manuscript, "As It Was Told to Me," in which she says that he "died from wounds during the beginning of World War II," leaving a wife and daughter. But I can't confirm any of that.

Even more perplexing, to me, is that I could have sworn I found, a few weeks ago, some kind of military record on Ancestry.com that gave him name as Edward Clifford Stolp. I remember thinking that I had perhaps found the reason he was so elusive — because his official first name was Edward, but he usually went by Clifford among family and friends. However, I dropped the search at the time, and didn't put that record in my "shoebox." And now I can't find it again, which makes me wonder if I only dreamed that whole episode.

And so Clifford remains a mystery.

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*On Ancestry.com, the word written in the "relationship to head of family" column is transcribed as "stepson," but to me it looks more like "boarder."

Amanda's Son by Her First Marriage

The Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society has a three-ring binder full of notes concerning local families — when they came here, and from where; who married whom and begat whom; and in some cases, little details about their farms or businesses, or what motivated them to settle in this area. I get the impression that this is all oral history, based on the memories of old-timers that (thank goodness) someone took the trouble to collect and organize, more or less.

Anyway, I found some information about the Guernseys, and in particular Otis and his confusing wives and children. According to these notes, the DeWell family archivist was correct in her conclusion that Clarence McDonald was not Minnie's son but Amanda's, by her previous marriage.

So here you go: a whole lot of stuff about the Guernseys:


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Images courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

Bad Times

From the heart-rending down to the merely annoying, bad news packed the front page of the Hobart Gazette of May 20, 1921.


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The Gazette overestimated George Neimeyer's age. The 1920 Census information and the dates on his grave marker indicate that he would have been 13 years old at the time of his death.

I think the "old Scot Burge farm" straddled present-day U.S. 30 on the west side of Colorado Street, as seen on the 1908 Plat Map (Mary Burge being Winfield Scott Burge's wife):



George Niemeyer's parents, Fred and Eda, also had three teen-aged daughters, and a five-year-old son.


The Ridge Road Gardens was a restaurant, and I have the impression that it was near the site of the Black Cat — i.e., on Ridge Road where I-65 now passes over it. "Proprietor" Oleska's first name was Mike, and his wife was Anna.

H.W. Paxton was, I believe, Harry Windle Paxton of Hobart, who worked as a coal and lumber salesman (WWI Draft Cards, 1930 Census).

McAfee's Woods

I haven't yet posted all the material I have from the steamer trunk, and I haven't yet gotten to the bottom of the steamer trunk! — which I was intending to do, a few days ago, while visiting the trunk's owner, but we got distracted by some intriguing scrapbooks and boxes stored in the same spare room.

As a result, we never even touched the steamer trunk that day, but I have begun a couple new collections. The first consists of a number of photos that apparently came to Minnie Rossow Harms from her nephew, Lester, somehow — either he gave them to her in his old age (since she had come to be the family historian) or they came to her after his death, for she survived him by almost a year.

The photos center around Lester, his parents and sister, his extended family, his wife, his friends, the farm that he eventually owned at Colorado Street and Harms Road, and the cars, horses, cows, pigs and dogs that were part of his life.

Those photos were all stored in a flat box, and in spite of a few other photos in there evidently from another source, let's call everything in that box the "Lester Harms collection."

And for our first sampling of the Lester Harms collection — since we were just talking about McAfee's woods, let's see them in 1932:


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Image courtesy of E.H.

Handwritten on the back: "Les hauling logs out of McAfee woods on Cleve. Ave." Clyde and Barney are the horses. Unfortunately, there's nothing here to tell us exactly where McAfee's woods were.

There is some kind of structure back among the trees at right, and it looks vaguely like a picnic shelter, but a lot could have happened between 1921 and 1932, so it may have nothing to do with the Yellowstone Trail camping ground.


… And I still have those scrapbooks of Minnie's, mentioned above, to get to. Folks, I am extremely busy these days.

Ross Township School Commencement

The new W.G. Haan school's first academic year was nearing its end. The auditorium — in the school's basement, I believe — would be the venue for Ross Township's eighth-grade commencement ceremonies in May 1921.


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From the Hobart Gazette, 20 May 1921.

We know the District 2 teacher, Elsie Gruel. I suppose District 2 was the W.G. Haan school, considering the number of graduating students in that district and the distribution of their homes around Ainsworth — for example, Vincent Chester came from the northeast, John Mankey from the southeast, Grace Sullivan from the southwest.

Mabel Henrichs, or Henricks, was Laura's sister.


… Also, a progress report on the Lincoln Highway improvements.