Odds and ends, 2-7-2019

The weather keeps changing. The snow melt and rains have raised the river level but it is still below the flood stage. Lake Weston is back. Below is a picture of the fallen tree by Weston Cemetery that will act as a dam if the level rises higher. The picture was taken on Wednesday.

The forecast is for much colder temperatures in the week ahead.

The Rensselaer Park Board met Monday night for a long session even though both the Rensselaer Park Board and the Park Corporation lacked quorums. There was a long and hopefully fruitful conversation about future cooperation with a representative from the Rensselaer Regional Soccer Club. It seems unlikely that the grass on the Monnett fields will be well enough established to have games there next year so plans are being made to plot some fields at Brookside Park for the upcoming year.

The other guests at the meeting want to start a softball team of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders girls this spring. The Rensselaer Schools do not want to sponsor it, perhaps because they do not have the facilities. Undeterred, the parents will do it on their own. They wanted practice space in the parks and were thinking Columbian Field. Because that field will be used by the park leagues for practice in April and May, they were told that Brookside will be a better spot and they were assured that they will have a field for both practice and some home games. The Board should have taken a phone vote by now to make the arrangement official.

What was once the campus of Christian Haven near Wheatfield will be sold at auction this month. Details here.

The historical preservation people have concluded that the long-vacant house on the corner of Washington and McKinley known as the Forsythe-McMahon House is beyond repair. It has been on the list of endangered historical structures for many years.

WLFI reports that Tippecanoe County will ban industrial wind turbines. See here.

Looking for some information on old microfilm, I bumped into two other items that I thought interesting. One was this notice from 1915:

One of the names that is prominent in the early history of Jasper County is Makeever. As far as I know, no one in the area still has that name and I have always wondered what happened to the family. I found an obituary in an August, 1928 Rensselaer Republican that may explain. Sanford Makeever who grew up in Rensselaer and attended Rensselaer high school had died in East Orange, New Jersey. He had studied law at Valparaiso University and gone to Chicago and then on to New York. Below is the paragraph that lists his surviving siblings.