Jeremiah's Estate Administrator and His Evaluating Assistants

Following up on my earlier post about the contents of Jeremiah Wiggins' estate — I wanted to research the other names that came up on those inventory pages.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Image above and image below courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.



The administrator, James H. Cassady, is a mystery. The estate papers tell us that in addition to his administrator duties, he was a justice of the peace, so he must have been a fairly prominent citizen. But beyond these papers, I can find no evidence that he ever lived in Lake County, Indiana, though he did own land here: Early Land Sales, Lake County shows him, in 1839, buying some 120 acres in Township 36 N., Range 9 W., Section 18 — i.e., what is now south Hammond. Still, I can't find him in any census or other record. He's not mentioned in any of my usual local history books, nor does he show up in any of the Hobart-area ledgers I've indexed thus far.

But he's all over these papers, and apparently was a friend of George Earle: this page, from the Wiggins papers, records that James Cassady and George Earle posted $400 bond to ensure that they "truly & faithfully discharge the duties" of administrator of Jeremiah's estate.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

Note how James uses the old-fashioned long s. And below that, we see George Earle's familiar signature.


The first of James' assistants is Charles Walton. We have met him before, under sad circumstances. I still can't find him anywhere except the 1840 Census of Lake County, which doesn't tell us much about him, and the indexed ledgers, where he shows up only in 1839 and 1840.


Next we have Levi D. Jones. According to the Hobart ledgers, he was in this area by the summer of 1840, but I can't find him in the 1840 Census. He does show up in 1850 and 1860, farming in Ross Township. In the 1850 Census he is married to Elizabeth (Vanvolkenburg), whom he married in 1847 per the Indiana Marriage Collection. There are two children in the household, one of whom, a seven-year-old boy named Homer, could not be a child of this marriage. The other is a year-old girl named Louisa. In 1856 Levi D. Jones is recorded marrying Lucy Sly in Lake County; if that is our Levi, I wonder what happened to Elizabeth? When the 1860 Census comes around, we find Levi D. Jones farming in Ross Township, living with an 11-year-old girl, Mary L., whose relation to him is not described, while Homer Jones is now living in the household of Abram Vanvolkenburg. Elizabeth, Louisa, and Lucy are nowhere to be found. And that is as far as I can trace any of them.


The third assistant, David Fowler, shows up in the Hobart-area ledgers as early as October 1836, and makes appearances through 1841 (at this point in my indexing). The 1840 Census also records him, in a household of 11 people, in what appears to be western Ross Township — the same area where he, circa 1843, purchased 80 acres of land.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the 1874 Plat Map. By that time, David Fowler's land was owned by George Nicholson.

The Indiana Marriage Collection records David Fowler marrying Rebeca Deyo (or Dezo) in 1840, and the 1850 Census places them, with two children, in Cedar Creek Township, where apparently David died in 1860.


The last of these assistants is Michael "Stieckelman," but we will use the spelling on his grave marker in the Merrillville Cemetery: Steichelman. He was born in Germany in 1800, and there married and began a family. According to a findagrave.com biography of his daughter, the family came to the U.S. circa 1835 and to Indiana about 1837. It was a relatively small family for those days: just Michael, his wife Margaret, and their two children, Mary and John. The 1840 Census shows five people in the household, so one is unidentified.

Here is a page from an unknown Hobart-area merchant's ledger showing Michael purchasing nails and thread in 1840.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

If he ever bought land here, I have not found a record of it. That record may be hidden by some creative spelling of his name; I have seen many variations.

By the 1850 Census the family had moved to Illinois. So I don't know why, when Michael died in 1851, his remains were brought back here for burial. According to a note on the findagrave.com entry for Michael's wife, Margaret, she died in 1880 and was buried in the Merrillville Cemetery, but later her remains were moved to the cemetery in Iowa where their daughter is buried. The only other Steichelman in the Merrillville Cemetery is a little girl, Hattie, born to Michael and Margaret's son, John. He had married Mary Towl in 1855. After John was killed in the Civil War, Mary remarried and is now buried in Kansas.


Well, it was interesting to look into these names, but I didn't learn a whole lot. How these people flitted through our early local history, leaving so few traces! They didn't know, apparently, that the purpose of their lives was to furnish material for amateur historians' blogs.

Inside Jeremiah's Cabin

The estate administrator drew up an inventory of the late Jeremiah Wiggins' property, along with an appraisal of each item's value. This inventory lets us see into Jeremiah's home, and gives us an idea of his day-to-day living.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

Here is my attempt to decipher this list:

1 Pair cotton sheets 1 pair [illegible] blankets
1 old coverlid
1 straw tick and pillow
1 barrel with some pork[1]
8 old bags
1 tea kittle 1 dish kettle 1 frying pan 1 axe
all right to his house and improvements
a lot of logs

It's interesting to note what's not recorded: for example, a table and chairs. Pioneer homes sometimes lacked these luxuries; when people wanted to sit, they sat on beds or trunks. But Jeremiah didn't have a trunk either, it seems. No bedstead is listed, but you'd think he'd come up with something to avoid sleeping on the floor: he had an axe, and there were plenty of trees around. He might have stuck poles into the walls of his log cabin to fashion a crude platform for his straw tick.

No clothing is mentioned. Perhaps he was buried in his only suit, but surely he had a coat, at least, for cold weather, and a hat, and gloves or mittens.

No decorative items. No books. But no liquor, either.

Other property, of a more outdoor nature, was recorded on another sheet.



This one is even more difficult to read; here's my attempt:

1 Breaking Plough
1 [illegible]
1 set whippletrees & neck yoke
1 spade
1 Axe
1 Waggon [illegible]
1 Broad Axe
1 Bay horse(?)
1 " do " do[2]
1 old harness without bridling(??)
1 Knife
1000 Rails at $1.50 per hundred

It all added up to a value of $115.87 ½ — much more than the domestic inventory.

No firearm is listed here, but as we will see later, Jeremiah did own one.

Other items as well may not have made it onto these two lists — but not many, I suspect. Jeremiah had the basics of transportation, of farming, of building a shelter, and of cooking enough food to stay alive. That was all he needed, and perhaps all he wanted.

I'd like to look into the people involved in this inventory, but that will have to wait for another post.


_______________
[1] I expect this was salt pork.
[2] Probably another bay horse; "do" is a 19th-century abbreviation for "ditto."

Sawyer Beetle

I think this is some kind of Sawyer Beetle.


(Click on images to enlarge)





It flies like it's drunk.

Body about one inch long. Antennae a whole lot longer.

This concludes today's nature lesson.

Spiny Oak-Slug Moth

Found a moth I'd never seen before. It was just hanging out on my garage.


(Click on images to enlarge)





It gets its name, Spiny Oak-Slug Moth, from its larval form, which is spiny (and venomous) but does not feed exclusively on oak trees.

Kitten Break

Since I'm still overloaded with work and have no more news about the Berghoff roadhouse, here's a picture of some of my foster kittens.

Back to the Berghoff Again

Whenever I'm overloaded with work, it seems, I resort to posting about the Berghoff roadhouse.

Since my last post on the subject, wherein I couldn't figure out if the Berghoff was on 37th or 39th, I came across this article, which says that the Wurffel gas station, previously described as being built across the road from the Berghoff, was on 39th.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette, June 24, 1924.

Now that the water of knowledge has been poured over that burning question, we can at last rest easy. Or we could, if we didn't have so much work to do.