Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Conclusion)

(continued from Part 7)



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My last entry in this series is a disappointment, because I simply can't identify any Bessie (or Elizabeth) Switzer with any clear connection to Ainsworth.

Checking my notes, however, I do find a local connection to the surname Switzer in this "General News Item" from the Hobart Gazette of September 20, 1907:

A family reunion in which fifty-two people participated was held last Sunday at the home of Chas. Maybaum, Sr., south of Ainsworth, in honor of his sister, Mrs. Rudolph Switzer, and her daughter Carrie who are here from Ness City, Kas., visiting relatives for a few months. Those present from Hobart were Mrs. Geo. Stocker who is a sister of Mrs. Switzer and Jacob Kramer, Jr., and family. The day was very pleasantly passed.

And in the Indiana Marriage Collection we find Rudolph Sweitzer marrying Augusta Maibaum in Lake County, Indiana, on March 4, 1871. Rudolph first shows up in Hobart in the 1860 Census (age 11) with his parents, Daniel and Anna, both of whom died within a few years and are buried in Hobart Cemetery. Rudolph also makes some appearances in the Union Sunday School record books and the Hobart Township Trustee's ledger between 1869 and 1875, though I can't find him in the 1870 Census.

However, Rudolph and Augusta Switzer were in living in Kansas from the 1880 Census onward, and as far as I can tell they never had a child named Bessie.

Valpo Dummie at the Pennsy Station, 1977

Here's another addition to my collection of Depressing Photos of the Pennsy Station, this one from a slide imprinted with the date April 8, 1977.


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According to handwritten notes on the slide, standing on the track is the "Valpo Dummie," a commuter train that ran between Valparaiso and Chicago.

I have no idea what the correct spelling of dummie/dummy is. If a colloquialism like that could be said to have a correct spelling.

Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 7)

(continued from Part 6)



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Maybe I should have recognized the name, Wert; I've mentioned with it a couple of times before in the blog — but only in passing, and without bothering to find out much about the family.

Ella Wert was born in 1880. In December 1900, she became Mrs. Edward Cole. She and Edward had two daughters (Evelyn and Edna), and also a foster son named Harry Breyfogle.

Ella's father, Emanuel Wert, shows up in Ross Township as early as the 1860 Census. His parents, Martin and Mary, with their numerous children (nine by 1870), farmed in southeastern Ross Township. This image from the 1874 Plat Map shows the Wert farm, which included 40 acres just over the Winfield Township line.


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You'd think, with so many children, the Wert family would have more of a presence locally, but my newspaper notes include only a few mentions of them. (Which may be due to my lack of attention.)

Also on the image above, outlined in green, is the Hooseline and Tabor farm. That, I believe, has some connection to Ella's mother, Mary Hooseline, whose obituary describes her as the child of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Hooseline. The 1870 Census shows Michael and Laura (Tabor) Hooseline living in southeastern Ross township, possibly on that farm. But Michael is not old enough to be Mary's father: he must be her brother.[1] Her father, then, was Michael Sr. I am not sure who her mother was — Mary's death certificate has "unknown" in that space. The 1860 Census shows Michael Sr. and his wife (one infers) Rebecca living somewhere in Union Township, Porter County, with Mary and her siblings. Michael Sr. was 58 and Rebecca 35; I suspect she was his second wife. Michael Sr. died in 1862.

In 1878 Mary Hooseline married Emanuel Wert. Ella was their only child — at least, the only one to survive infancy — and the Wert marriage was cut short when Emanuel died in 1886, as we learn from his grave marker in Deer Creek Cemetery. I have no idea what happened to him.

I cannot find the family in the 1880 Census. The 1900 Census shows Mary and Ella living in or near the village of Ainsworth (to judge by the names recorded close to theirs). And later that year came Ella's marriage.

♦    ♦    ♦
That's all the time I have right now to devote to the Werts. Just one last thing — I took a look at the satellite view of the Wert land in case their house might still be where the 1874 plat map seems to indicate: on the east side of Grand Boulevard, just north of the Ross-Winfield Township line. But now there is only an empty plowed field, and some buildings south of the township line.


[to be continued]

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[1] Michael Jr.'s entry on findagrave.com gives a little background about him and his family.

Back to 1923 Temporari-Lee

I still have a couple of items from the 1923 newspaper, from back in the good old days when you didn't need an appointment to go to the library. May those days return soon.

Speaking of returning, that is what Lee Thompson, our barber, has done — from Seattle, where he had gone in October 1922. He was just in time to meet his brand-new niece.


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Hobart News, Nov. 29, 1923.

Below that, a surprise birthday party for Asa Strong, who was 54 years old. Born November 24, 1869 (Indiana Death Certificates) and named for his grandfather, he was the first child of Augustus and Sarah (Culver) Strong, who had been married in 1868. In 1900, Asa had married Ida Roper. They lived in Hobart (1920 Census). Mrs. Ross Graham was the former Ruby Roper.

Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 6)

(continued from Part 5)


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I can find no reference in my notes to the surname Selen, but a search on Ancestry.com easily turns up the 1900 Census, which shows Peter and Freeda Selen, with their four children, farming rented land in Ross Township — probably southeast of Ainsworth, to judge by their landowning neighbors: Larson, Wojahn, and Yager can all be placed along 73rd Avenue between S.R. 51 and Randolph between the 1891 Plat Book and the 1908 Plat Map.

Annie, born in Illinois in 1888,[1] was about 10 years old during this school year. She had a brother, Albert, born 1891, who ought to have been in school with her; also a sister, Ester, born 1892; and then in June 1897 along came little Alexander.

Peter Selen had come to this country from Sweden in the mid-1880s. In 1888, he married Fredericka Dorette Ellene "Freeda" Wilkens, a German immigrant. They lived in Illinois through Ester's birth in 1892, at least. Why they came down to farm in Ross Township, I have no clue. The 1910 Census shows the family living in Chicago, Peter working as a carpenter — but they had lived in Indiana through about 1907, when their youngest child was born.

Per the Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index, Annie Selen died, unmarried, on February 12, 1919.

[to be continued]

_______________
[1] Her death record says September 17, 1888; the 1900 Census says September 1887; her parents' marriage (if I've found the right people) took place April 7, 1888.

Just Whistle!

I bought this bottle thinking (mistakenly) that the Hobart Historical Society didn't already have any like this. They did. So now they have another.


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The bottle has "Hobart Ind" stamped on the bottom:



Whistle was an orange-flavored soda introduced to mass marketing sometime circa 1920; sources vary on exactly when. This source says 1920s; another source says the soda was formulated in 1916 but not sold until 1925. However, I have found a flurry of ads in Indiana newspapers in 1919, like this one:


Kokomo Daily Tribune, Aug. 20, 1919.

Here's one from a local paper in 1921:


Lake County Times (Hammond), Apr. 22, 1921.

And here's a little ad from 1957 in Terre Haute:


Terre Haute Tribune, Sept. 23, 1957.

I have no idea when Whistle soda ceased production.

I can't really date this bottle, either. The Hobart Historical Society's display dates a similar bottle to around 1940, but an online source dates another to circa 1926.

The agonizingly slow process of reading microfilm may yield more information.

Ainsworth School-Year Souvenir, 1897-98 (Part 5)

(continued from Part 4)


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Now I shall deal with the names Glattli and Mankey, because I think they are related. Why do I think that? First, here is Edward Mankey's 1963 death notice:


Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), May 6, 1963.

Who on earth (I asked myself) was this surviving sister, Mrs. Louise Mounts? The only Mankey girl I knew of was Sophie Mankey Triebess. So I went looking for Louise, and eventually found her death certificate.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Louise's mother was Dorothea Mankey.

Dorothea had become a widow in 1889, when her husband, William, died. William was the father of Henry, Eddie, and Willie, as well as Sophie.

William and Dorothea are elusive. I can't find them in the 1880 Census or any earlier one, nor can I find a marriage record for them. They likely were married around 1880, if Sophie, born in 1881, was their first child. Her birthplace was Indiana, while the boys all were born in Illinois (William, 1883; Edward, 1885; Henry, 1888). Dorothea had a local connection here: her sister, Minnie Brockmiller, became Mrs. Christ Passow in 1885 and resided in Hobart. That marriage had taken place in Cook County, Illinois, so perhaps the Brockmillers lived in the Chicago area.

After William's death, apparently Dorothea married Carl aka Charles Glattli — but again, I can't find a record of that marriage. According to a family tree someone compiled on Ancestry.com, Anna Glattli was born in November 1890, so Dorothea may have been her mother. (Anna died in Illinois in 1920; her death certificate is not online.) That would account for the Anna Glattli on our 1897-98 souvenir. Then Louise Antonie Glattli, the future Mrs. Mounts, was born in 1891.

Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli died in 1899 and is buried under the Mankey name. (She died in Chicago, but her residence was Ainsworth, Indiana, per the Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index. I cannot find a death notice in the local newspaper.) Carl/Charles Glattli survived her, and apparently remarried soon and moved to Chicago, if I've found the right people in the 1900 Census (and if the enumerator made a mistake in the "How many years married" column).

The Mankey children did not go to Chicago with their stepfather. The 1900 Census shows them scattered. While I can't find Sophie at all, I suspect she was living with relatives in Chicago, where she married Julius Triebess in 1901. William, age 16, was a hired farmhand living in the household of Michael and Mary Foreman. The 14-year-old Edward was living in the home of a Calumet Township farmer named William Gallagher; Eddie is described as a "servant" but is also "at school." I can't find their younger brother, Henry, in 1900, but in the 1910 Census he turns up in Hobart, in the home of Aunt Minnie and Uncle Christ, employed in a brickyard.

William married Lena Springman in 1906, and they farmed in Ross Township through the 1920 Census, but it looks as if they moved to Chicago by the 1930 Census.

Edward married Alvina Koeppen in 1911. They farmed in Porter County through the 1940 Census, but then moved to Hobart.

Henry got out of the sticks, married and resided in Chicago, but had moved to Calumet City by 1974, when he died.

Anna Glattli married a man named Charles Mosel in 1911 and lived out the rest of her short life in Blue Island, Illinois.

Louise Glattli married a Joseph Jackson in Blackford County, Indiana, in 1916, and after his death in 1937, married the Rev. Claude Mounts in Gary, Indiana, in 1938.

I can't believe how many hours of my life went into figuring this all out.

Finally, here is the death notice of Dorothea Brockmiller Mankey Glattli's mother, from the "Mortuary Record" column of the Hobart Gazette of March 31, 1905:

Mrs. Dora Brockmiller, mother of Mrs. Christ Passow, Jr., of this place, died suddenly at 3948 State street, Chicago, on Tuesday, March 28, 1905, aged 71 years. Services were held at the late residence at 12:15 yesterday and the remains were shipped to Hobart on the Milk Train and taken to the German Lutheran Church where services were conducted by Rev. Schuelke. The interment occurred in the Hobart cemetery.

The deceased is mourned by three children, Mrs. Minnie Passow, Henry Brockmiller and Mrs. Ida Quade.

No mention of the daughter who predeceased her, the ever-elusive Dorothea.

[to be continued]