USA > Indiana > Lake County > A standard history of Lake County, Indiana, and the Calumet region, Volume II > Part 55
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On June 30, 1913, he married Miss Mary Ibach, a daughter of Judge Joseph G. Ibach, of Hammond. She was a graduate of DePauw University with the class of 1908 and was valedictorian of her class. She was a Phi Beta Kappa and Kappa Alpha Theta. Mr. Sohl is a member of the Presbyterian Church and belongs to the college frater- nity, Phi Delta Theta.
WILLIAM SOHL. As one of the objects of this publication is to give individual mention to as many as possible of the leading pioneers of the Calumet District, it is especially appropriate to recall the name of William Sohl, who was one of the first settlers in what is now the thriving City of Hammond. Though his own life work was accomplished before the modern city hardly began its growth, as one of the largest land owners he did his share of development and what he began his descendants have carried on and continued under the changing condi- tions brought about within the last thirty odd years.
William Sohl was born at Kistel, Hesse, Germany, in 1821. He left Germany in early manhood and removed to the City of London, Eng- land, where in 1849 he married Miss Louisa Isabella Sibley. In 1854 he brought his family to America, and by purchase acquired a farm on the Joliet Road, Maryville, Lake County. He also bought some busi- ness property at Crown Point. In 1859 William Sohl sold his farm and business property, and at that time expected to identify himself with the City of Chicago. During a visit to Hammond with the Hohman family, Mrs. Hohman being a sister of Mrs. Sohl, Mr. Sohl learned that a section of good land was for sale, in what is now the center of Hammond City. He bought this tract of land, settled there, and man- aged it largely as a farm for a number of years. It is now occupied by many blocks of business and residence houses. William Sohl con- tinued to live in Hammond until his death, which occurred in 1877.
C. H. MALONEY. A small plumbing shop started in one of the shacks which were the typical form of architecture in the business district of Gary seven or eight years ago, was the modest beginning of what is now the most extensive plumbing and heating business service in the city. Mr. Maloney, its proprietor, is the example of a business man who, starting to earn his living when he was well into his teens, by sheer force of industry and native ability has made himself master of the situation and become independently successful.
C. H. Maloney was born in the City of Detroit April 18, 1871, a son of John and Margaret Maloney. His father was a carpenter and farmer. With a limited education in the parochial schools, Mr. Maloney began at the age of twelve years to learn the plumber's trade, and after his apprenticeship and several years of employment as a journeyman opened his first shop in 1899 at Goshen, Indiana. He soon afterwards had a branch shop at Elkhart, and that became the larger of the two, and the business at Goshen was closed. During his career before coming to Gary Mr. Maloney did plumbing work all over the United States, install- ing heating and plumbing equipment in residences, schools and other public buildings, and one of the largest jobs was the plumbing and heating plant at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Indiana.
Mr. Maloney moved to Gary April 1, 1907, only a few months after
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the Steel Corporation had founded the city, and took his tools into a little shack and thus began business. Later he had his headquarters at 9 East Fifth Avenue, and in December, 1911, bought the present location at 548 Washington Street, where he has a building 25 by 65 feet, occupy- ing the ground floor and basement for his business and renting the flats above. Mr. Maloney brought his family to Gary and established his own home in the city in 1909, their residence being at 816 Van Buren Street.
A list of the contracts handled by Mr. Maloney includes among the more important the following: The heating and plumbing equipment of Emerson School Building, the Jefferson School, the Holy Angels Church and School, the heating plant in the Froebel School, the plumb- ing and heating for the Gary Theater Building, the Croatian Catholic church and parsonage, St. Hedwig's Polish Convent, the Gem Building, the Mercy Hospital, the equipment for 100 houses erected by the Steel Corporation and 130 houses built by the Bridge Company, the First National Bank Building, Dodd Building, the Grand Building, the Miller Building, the Given & Ellian Building, the Washington Hotel, and others too numerous to mention. At certain rush seasons Mr. Maloney has employed as high as seventy skilled workmen, and there is no other plumbing contractor in the city whose volume of business approaches his.
On October 31, 1894, Mr. Maloney married Jennie M. Kirven, of Jackson, Michigan. Their children are: William; Robert; Margaret, deceased ; Mary ; Annie; Rose Mary; and Charles H., deceased. The family are all members of the Catholic Church, and Mr. Maloney was one of the organizers of the Knights of Columbus in Gary, served as grand knight in 1908-10, and was one of the charter members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He is also affiliated with the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He belongs to the Gary Commercial Club and in politics is republican. One of the prominent members of his trade in Indiana, he served as president of the State Association of Plumbers in 1911-12, and during the same time was on the national legislation committee for the plumbers' organization.
M. D. LIEBERMAN. Another successful Gary business man who had his birth and training in Russian Europe is M. D. Lieberman, who has one of the first-class drug stores of the city, and at twenty-five years of age has already laid a substantial foundation for a bright future.
M. D. Lieberman was born in Russia March 4, 1889, a son of Israel and Pearl Lieberman. The family emigrated to the United States and arrived at New York September 3, 1906, locating in Chicago, where the parents engaged in the cleaning and dyeing business. M. D. Lieberman was educated in Russia, and graduated from the Government Commer- cial School of Ismael in Bessarabia. After coming to the United States he studied pharmacy, and passed the state board of pharmacy exami- nations in 1911. In the same year he came to Gary, opened his store at the corner of Twenty-second and Broadway, and has since made his establishment popular with the trade and has a nice and growing business.
On May 16, 1912, Mr. Lieberman married Rose Porges, of Chicago. They have one son, Fred. Mr. Lieberman is a socialist in politics, and affiliates with the Modern Woodmen of America, the Independent West- ern Star, and the Progressive Order of the West.
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F. T. FETTERER. During his practice of about eighteen years in the Calumet District, Mr. Fetterer has been both a successful and distin- guished lawyer, whose talents and hard-working ability have enabled him to serve the interests of many and important clients and who both as a citizen and business man has been prominent in this section of Northern Indiana. Mr. Fetterer's success and achievements have been chiefly in the field of corporation law, and of the many large concerns that he has served he still retains official connection with several. His enter- prise has been of the valuable factors in the growth and prosperity of Hobart, which city has been his home since 1908.
F. T. Fetterer was born at Newton, Iowa, May 28, 1873. During his infancy his parents moved to LaSalle County, Illinois, and that was his home until 1884. His father, Aaron B. Fetterer was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is now sixty-six years of age, and has long been in business in Chicago, where he and his wife, who is sixty-two years of age, still reside. Mr. Fetterer whose early education was supplied by country schools in LaSalle County, Illinois, began the study of law in a somewhat unusual way. A blind man, named Edwin J. Nolan, who was subsequently head counsel for the traction interests of Chicago, employed the boy to read to him, and this reading was in the nature of a thorough course of instruction in law, and from that introduction to the exact science he spent three years in the Northwestern University. In 1894 Mr. Fetterer moved to Valparaiso, Indiana, entered the university, and was graduated from the law department in 1897. In the previous year, 1896, he had been admitted to the bar, and during the first ten years was engaged in a successful practice at Valparaiso. He served that city as city judge, and soon after Gary was established moved to that new community and opened an office in partnership with Edgar J. Hall. While at Gary Mr. Fetterer drafted the first by-laws and rules for the administration of the city government. In 1908 Mr. Fetterer moved his family to Hobart, and in a short time his interests had become so exten- sive as to justify a dissolution of his partnership at Gary and the transfer of practically all his practice to Hobart, though he still retains a number of old Gary clients. His offices over the American Trust and Savings Bank are among the best equipped and have one of the best law libraries in Lake County. Corporation law and real estate law have been the special branches in which Mr. Fetterer has gained his suc- cess. He has organized and incorporated some twenty or more large companies in Northern Indiana. Among these the Lake County Security and Investment Company, of which he is president and a director, capitalized at $20,000, and owning twenty acres of subdivisions at Hobart, besides twenty-five lots at Gary and some other property. Mr. Fetterer is counsel for the Gary, Hobart & Eastern Electric Railroad. He secured the incorporation papers for the Town of East Gary, opened the first system of the town books, and was also first city attorney. The American Trust & Savings Bank of Hobart is also indebted for its technical organization and incorporation to Mr. Fetterer, who still re- mains as secretary and trust manager. About twenty corporations employ his services as attorney. He is counsel for the Earl's estate, and recalls the fact that George Earl, the oldest inhabitant of Hobart, some forty-five years ago had predicted the great industrial development which modern years have witnessed in the Calumet region.
On June 19, 1896, Mr. Fetterer married Harriet B. Edwards of Valparaiso. They are the parents of five children, three sons and two
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daughters, all of whom are in school except Hobart, the youngest. Mr. Fetterer affiliates with the Masonic Order, the Independent Order of Foresters, the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen of Amer- ica. He is sergeant major and a staff officer under commander in chief of the national organization of the Sons of Veterans. Politically Mr. Fetterer has always been known as a man of positive convictions and in- dependent ways of thinking. His affiliation was with the democratic party until 1896, and he was a campaign speaker under the auspices of the Silver League of Chicago in the interests of W. J. Bryan. Certain conditions existing in the party alienated him from the organization, and he subsequently became a republican, and it was on the republican ticket that he was nominated in 1904 for city judge of Valparaiso over five opponents. Since locating at Hobart he has been one of the most aggressive factors in the upbuilding and promotion of all enterprises for the welfare of that community. It is his conviction that Hobart within fifteen years will be a city of 20,000 people. He is an enthusiastic motorist and loves outdoor life, and often takes fishing and hunting excursions.
FREDERICK H. WOOD. Besides his important position as president of the Co-operative Construction Company, Mr. Wood is also president of the Steel City Home Builders Company. This company, which began activities in May, 1912, has constructed fifty-two houses in Gary. Its business is the improving of lots with homes, and then selling them on favorable terms to buyers. The company has developed three subdi- visions and two and a half city blocks in Gary. The subdivisions are known as South Laporte, Garyton, and Riverside. The offices of the company are in the Gary building, and besides Mr. Wood as president, Charles W. Chase is vice president and L. G. Woodward is secretary and treasurer.
Frederick H. Wood is a native of Illinois, born at Belvidere, Novem- ber 2, 1859. The year following his birth his parents moved to Chicago, and his father, William H. Wood, who was an attorney, for a number of years had charge of the large Couch estate. Mr. Wood after attend- ing the public schools and Beloit College in Wisconsin engaged in the real estate business in Chicago, and has been one of the most influential men in locating and interesting capital and in promoting general develop- ment work in Gary and vicinity. He became identified with the Gary & Interurban Railway in 1905, and a few years ago moved his family from Chicago to Gary. In 1884 he married Lettie B. Gustorf of Oak Park, Illinois. They have three children: Frances Ruth, Prudence L. and William A. Mr. Wood affiliates with the Royal Arcanum and is a member of the University Club.
II. H. HARRIES. The H. H. Harries Company has been an institu- tion at Gary since the sand waste and scrub oak barrens along the lake shore were redeemed and employed as the site for the most remarkable industrial city of America. Mr. H. H. Harries, besides being at the head of this real estate, investment and mortgage banking concern, has fol- lowed with an insistent public spirit all the fortunes and progress of Gary, and everything that means a better and greater city appeals to his patriotism and pride.
Mr. Harries was born in Lake County, Northern Illinois. His father in the early days operated a chain of elevators north and west of
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Chicago. Mr. Harries was educated in the public schools, and after com- pleting a business college education took up the study of chemistry and metallurgy and the reduction of ores. With his diploma in these arts he went to New Mexico and Arizona in 1879, before the railroads were com- pleted in that country, and engaged in the business of prospecting. The Southwest at that time was no place for weaklings, and even the strongest had many trying experiences. Half a dozen years passed before the final subjugation of the Apache and other Indian tribes, who, when Mr. Harries first went there, were almost constantly evading the restrictions of the reservation and were on the war path. Mr. Harries has a medal which he won at the battle of "Hell Canyon," New Mexico, in one of the Indian outbreaks against the settlers of the Rio Grande Valley. With 100 men from the mining district of which he was the recorder and bounder, with 100 lead horses, he went out after a band of 350 Apaches and drove them 250 miles across the border into Old Mexico. Mr. Harries located and surveyed seventeen mining prop- erties, after which he returned home and engaged in various commercial pursuits and later as junior member of the firm of the Goodwin-Harries Company became one of the largest growers of garden and field seeds in the country, having at one time nearly twenty-five thousand acres under cultivation, with warehouses in Illinois, Wisconsin and California.
In 1902, in the interest of himself and associates, Mr. Harries went to Mexico to examine 1,800,000 acres of land, 30,000 acres of big timber and twenty-five mining properties. Ile outfitted in Chihuahua, Mexico, and with a pack train of seventeen animals, four mozoaes, three guides, and his own civil engineer, started toward the "promised land." His route was the high Indian trail through the most remote regions of the States of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Sonora. Forty-eight days later he saw the waters of the Gulf of California, and his little caravan camped on the shore of Topolobampo Bay. There he abandoned his pack train and nine days later boarded a Spanish steamer for home, firmly convinced that there was no "promised land" in Mexico.
Mr. Harries was in California at the time of the great earthquake in April, 1906, and received at that time what he describes as the greatest nerve shock he ever experienced. During the following June he left California and came direct to Gary and engaged in the real estate busi- ness as the H. H. Harries Company, with offices in the Security Building, Broadway and Sixth Avenue. From that day until March, 1914, when he moved his general offices to Chicago, he was closely identified with the best development of Gary, and was one of the largest operators in that region of most wonderful growth and action.
In 1908, two years after the founding of Gary, Mr. Harries published under his own copyright a handsome brochure under the title, "The Story of Gary as Told by the Camera," and also containing an appro- priate text as a running commentary upon the many interesting and valuable and historical pictures of Gary, showing its evolution from a sand waste into an industrial and civic center at the stage of develop- ment reached in 1908, which was six years ago. This is only one instance of the many ways Mr. Harries has taken to influence and promote development in this most wonderful City of Gary.
In 1909 Mr. Harries was one of the stockholders in the organization of the Northern State Bank of Gary, and was cashier from its organiza- tion up to the spring of 1914. In March, 1913, he completed what is known as the Harries Block, 561-567 Broadway, one of the best and most modern additions to the business district.
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He enjoys an unblemished reputation for honesty and integrity and fair dealing in all his business transactions. Mr. Harries is married and has one child, a daughter. He is vice president of the Northern State Bank of Gary, member of the Gary Commercial Club, president of the Fair Oaks Park Cemetery Association of Chicago, and a member of the Hamilton Club of Chicago.
WILLIAM FREDERICK HOWAT, M. D., of Hammond, was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 2, 1869, and is the son of John Alexander and Mary (Rogers) Howat. He received his higher literary education at Prince of Wales College, from which he graduated in 1888, and in 1892 completed his medical course and obtained his professional degree at the University of Pennsylvania. In the same year he also married Miss Alice A. Webb, of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and located at Packerton, Indiana. In 1895 he moved to Hammond, where he has established a large practice and a substantial reputation.
In 1900-08 Doctor Howat served as president of the Lake County Medical Association and in 1912 as head of the Indiana State Medical Association. He is also identified with the following professional and learned bodies: American Medical Association, Mississippi Valley Medi- cal Association, Northern Tri-State Medical Association, National Asso- ciation for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Royal Society for Encour- agement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, American Anthropological Society, American Academy of Political and Social Science, American Sociological Society, American Association of Labor Legislation. He is, further, a Mason of the thirty-second degree and a member of the Hammond Country Club. In his public capacity as a citizen he was president of the Hammond Public Library Board from 1903 to 1911, and from 1913 to 1914, and a member of the school board from 1903 to 1910. 6
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HECKMAN BINDERY INC.
NOV 89 N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA 46962
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