"Too Disgusting to Put in Print"

I promised you a story about Nehemiah Huntley, Jr., so here it is.


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Crown Point Register, 23 Feb. 1882.

Don't you wish they'd put those "disgusting" details in print?

Nehemiah had married Mary Palmer in 1868 (Indiana Marriage Collection). They lived on his farm, which, per the 1874 Plat Map, consisted of 40 acres. I believe it covered the land now occupied by Lowe's, Bob's Discount Furniture, and IHOP.

It's a little confusing when we find their household in the 1870 Census including three Huntley children who were all born before the year of their marriage …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… but the 1880 Census makes clear that the three boys were from Mary's previous marriage (and went by their stepfather's surname, as young stepchildren sometimes did). This marriage produced the two daughters, Florence and Helen.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

By 1880 Mary's sons had reverted to their father's surname — was that just a matter of young men asserting their own identities, I wonder, or a reflection of strained family relations?

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Mary, born in 1842, was one of the many children of Jonas and Susan Rhodes, early residents of Hobart Township. We find her in that household in the 1850 Census. From her death certificate and her obituary, we learn that her first husband's name was George Palmer.


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The Times (Hammond, Ind.), 2 Jan. 1913.

Helen Huntley had married William F. Rockwell in 1901 in Cook County, Illinois; also in Cook County, Clarence Palmer married Rose Beynon in 1889.[1] Florence Huntley married Robert Steger in Milwaukee in 1891.[2] (If I've found the right person, Elmer Palmer died in 1899.[3] I can't identify a death record for Clarence.)

The only record I can find that might be of the first marriage shows Mary E. Rhodes marrying George A.W. Palmer in 1857 in Cass County, Michigan (just over the Indiana border). According to the transcription on Ancestry.com, Mary gave her age as 18 — if this is our Mary, either someone made a mistake or someone told a fib; our Mary was really 15. As for George Palmer, his background is a mystery to me.

It appears that Mary and George moved around the country, since their three sons were born in Kansas, Illinois, and California, respectively. I can't find the Palmers in the 1860 census.

George died, presumably, between about 1866 and 1868, but I don't know when or where.

I suppose Mary and her children came to live with her parents. Then she caught the eye of Nehemiah Huntley, Jr., and then came their marriage, and their two daughters, before finally their messy divorce.

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Nehemiah, after winning his divorce in February 1882, seems to have moved to South Chicago within a couple of months.[4] Six years later, he somehow turns up in Kendallville, Indiana, marrying Mary E. Newlin.

That marriage, too, ended in divorce. (I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.)

The next news we have of him is his last disaster, recounted in the Hobart Gazette of October 16, 1896.

Death From Fire

Mr. N.J. Huntley who was suffocated last Sunday night during a fire in his own house in South Chicago, is well remembered by our older inhabitants. The deceased was a brother-in-law of Dan Underwood and at one time was married to a sister of Mrs. Maggie Roper, of Louis Rhodes and also Mrs. Geo. Roper. He went to his room Sunday evening quite late and shortly after the building was discovered on fire in his room.

Mr. Huntley was a G.A.R.[5] and his remains were brought here on Tuesday for burial by that society. The funeral services were held at the Congregational church. He was married twice but was divorced from both wives who still survive him. He also had two children with his first wife.

We understand he lived a secluded life of late years and had accumulated considerable money.

His first wife and one of his daughters administered his estate:


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Illinois, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1772-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

(Incidentally, the third person involved in the estate was probably Edgar Lee Masters, who was then building up a law practice in Chicago and had not yet achieved renown as a poet.)

The 1900 Census shows Mary Palmer living in Chicago with Florence, who described herself as married (but Robert Steger was not recorded in the same household), and the as-yet-unmarried Helen.

The 1910 Census finds Mary and Florence in El Paso, Texas. Both described themselves as widowed.

Mary evidently returned to Indiana after 1910, to visit or to live permanently with Helen and William Rockwell in Gary. And so it was there in 1913 that Mary Rhodes Palmer Huntley died, and all knowledge of what really happened in her marriage with Nehemiah died with her.


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[1] Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
[2] Ancestry.com. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., Marriages, 1838-1911 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018.
[3] Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index.
[4] "Mr. N.J. Huntley, of South Chicago, was in town on Tuesday." The Crown Point Register, 20 Apr. 1882.
[5] As a Civil War veteran of the Union side, he was eligible to join the Grand Army of the Republic.

The Farm Under the Mall

I recently mentioned the Underwood school, so now I'd like to talk about the family for whom the school was named, and the farm they owned for many decades.

The 1874 Plat Map shows 160 acres straddling Mississippi Street, on the south side of present-day U.S. 30, owned by Daniel and Sybil Underwood.


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These days, of course, Southlake Mall sprawls over half of it, the other half teems with restaurants and hotels, and I-65 roars past its western border.



My imagination is not good enough to turn that into a family farm, much less virgin woodland or prairie.

The earliest record I can find of the Underwood farm is the purchase in October 1852 of the west half by Daniel Underwood (Early Land Sales, Lake County). The east half was purchased by Henry Wells[1] in 1854; how it got from him to Daniel I do not know. [Update: I think I was wrong about Henry Wells' purchase.]

Daniel was the son of Harmon and Mary (Mather) Underwood, both natives of New England who had moved to Ohio by the time Daniel was born in 1828. Sometime after 1840 the family moved to Lake County, Illinois, and it was there that, on November 7, 1854, Daniel married Sybil Huntley.

Sybil was likewise of New England stock. Her parents were Nehemiah and Lucy (née Dudley). This family, too, had relocated to Ohio, and eventually to Lake County, Illinois (with a stop in Winnebago County per the 1840 Census). If you look at the 1874 map above, you can find Sybil's younger brother, Nehemiah Jr., owning 40 acres north of Daniel and Sybil's farm.[2]

The 1860 Census shows Nehemiah and Lucy Huntley, along with Nehemiah Jr., living in the household of Daniel and Sybil Underwood and their two young daughters. Harmon and Mary Underwood are living nearby with two of their adult children, John and Ann. Harmon, as we already know, had bought the 160 acres that eventually became the Willy farm in 1852, and sold them to John in 1854.

Between 1854 and 1880, Daniel and Sybil had six children that we know of: Mary, Emma, Florence (or Flora), Clara, Frank, and Jessie.

In 1886, Sybil unexpectedly died.


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Crown Point Register, October 14, 1886.

The location given for Daniel and Sybil's marriage is not consistent with records currently available. The obituary mentions a child who did not survive Sybil; that was Flora, who died in 1884.

Daniel never remarried. He remained on the farm with three of his adult children: Frank and Clara, who were unmarried, and Mary, who was the widow of Jackson Castle. (Jackson had grown up on the old Castle-Lathrop farm north of Ainsworth.)

Findagrave.com tells us that Jackson and Mary had lost a little daughter, but the 1900 Census tells us that a son, Harry, survived and was growing up on the Underwood farm.

The 1910 Census shows Daniel Underwood still on the farm. His household now included another grandson, Willis Saxton, the child of Jessie Underwood, who had married Bertram Saxton in 1895 and died of puerperal fever nine days after giving birth to Willis. (The other surviving child of that marriage was living with Bertram closer to Merrillville.)

Daniel Underwood died in 1912.


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The Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 14 May 1912.

That is the only notice I could find of his death. The Hobart Gazette said nothing about him, which is odd for such a long-time resident. The issues of the Hobart News that might have said something are missing from the microfilm.

The farm apparently passed to Daniel's children, or one of them. Frank Underwood's name is printed on the farm in the 1926 Plat Book, although the 1920 Census seems to place the household of Frank and his two sisters somewhere closer to Merrillville. They might have been living in town, possibly in the Burge-Underwood house, and renting out the farm.

Although the land appears under Frank's name in the 1939 Plat Book, by March of 1940[3] it had been bought by John and Ethel Sunderman.

John Sunderman identified himself as farmer in both the 1940 and 1930 censuses, but he was also involved, along with his father, John Sr., and his brother, Howard,[4] with the Sunderman Construction Company, a prominent local road-building firm.[5] Back in the 1920 Census, John Jr. had given his occupation as a housing contractor.[6] He was then living in Gary with his first wife, Katherine, and their two sons. Within ten years he had taken up dairy farming and moved his family to Ross Township. The enumerator of the 1930 Census records that John and Katherine owned their farm, and from the few landowners who appear near them in the census (there was a lot of farm-renting going on), I gather they were somewhere in the vicinity of the Underwood farm, but I can't find them on any relevant plat map.

The history train will now make an unscheduled stop at Gossip City to pick up some forgotten baggage.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 19 Nov. 1932.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 25 Nov. 1932.

And thus the 1940 Census shows John Sunderman on the Ross Township farm with his new wife, while Katherine is living in Gary with their two grown sons, John and William.


The 1950 Plat Book shows the farm still in its 1874 configuration, owned by J.C. and E.E. Sunderman. The 1972 Plat Book shows a change:



Sometime after 1950, apparently, the Sundermans had sold the west half of their farm, and purchased another half-quarter-section north of U.S. 30.

By 1972, though, John Sunderman was gone; he had died January 31, 1967 (Indiana Death Certificates). And Ethel died on May 17, 1972.

In the summer of 1973, construction of Southlake Mall began.


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Vidette-Messenger, 6 June 1973.

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[1] Possibly this Henry Wells? Early Land Sales, Lake County shows a whole lot of land purchased under that name.
[2] I have a story about him that we will get to some other time.
[3] "Merrillville," The Hammond Times, 28 Mar. 1940.
[4] "Hold Rites For Gary Highway Builder Today," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 6 July 1935.
[5] "The Sunderman company is one of the largest road contracting firms in the state." "Contract Was Not Sub-Let," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 19 Aug. 1931.
[6] In the Occupation and Industry columns, the enumerator crossed out "laborer" and "steel mills" to substitute "contractor" and what looks like "house."

The Underwood and Other Schools

Some time back, I came across a reference to the Underwood school and had no idea where that school was.

Fortunately, Lenore Boyd Calpha prepared a little map showing the location of Ross Township schools, which has been preserved by the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society and is on display at their museum. Unfortunately, the markers on the map are so tiny that I couldn't read some of them behind the glass of the map's frame. Fortunately, one a recent visit to the museum I came across the map out of its frame and was able to scan it at a high enough resolution that I could blow it up on my computer screen and finally read most of the markers.

So here it is.


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Image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

And there it is: #13, the Underwood school, on the northwest corner of the intersection of Mississippi Street and U.S. 30. Per the legend on the right, it was among Ross Township's one-room schoolhouses.

I am not 100% sure about the exact location, as the map is a little quirky: notice #17, the W.G. Hahn school — it's marked on the wrong side of S.R. 51. The Adams school, #7, is shown north of the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks where they cross Colorado Street, while the 1908 Plat Map shows the schoolhouse south of the tracks. The Underwood school is not marked on the 1908 Plat Map, nor is it clearly marked on the 1874 Plat Map, although the latter does seem to have the usual symbol for a schoolhouse (a solid square surrounded by a square outline, with or without "S.H.") in the same location as the Calpha map. At any rate, I think we can rely on the Calpha map for approximate locations.

By the way, the map is not dated, so we don't know what "Present" means in its title. But it refers to the museum building as the Merrillville Town Hall, so the map must have been made after 1971, and before Lenore Boyd Calpha's death in 1995.