Selling Off Jeremiah's Stuff (Part 3) and That Other Wiggins Again

The administrator of Jeremiah Wiggins' estate held a second sale on March 4, 1839, to dispose of whatever hadn't been sold in October 1838.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:


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I can't make sense out of that scribbling in the line detailing what Wiatt Wiggins bought. Does it mean Jeremiah's informal claim to the land? (The official government sale of Lake County land would begin on March 19, 1839.[1]) Does it mean just the house sitting on the land? The $25 Wiatt paid in 1839 was just short of $900 in today's money.

The slay/sleigh that James Cassady bought seems not to have been noted in the original inventory. He paid very little for it — about $56 in today's money — which makes me wonder if I'm reading the word correctly.


As I've said before, Wiatt Wiggins has escaped all notice in the Lake County census and other official records as well as the early local histories. We would not know he existed but for these estate papers.


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[1] Lake County 1834 - 1872 at 64.

Selling Off Jeremiah's Stuff (Part 2) and a Liverpool J.P.

This is the second and last page recording the sale of October 4, 1838.


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

My transcription:


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The final amount looks like $111.26 on the page, but the figures add up to $111.64, as spelled out below. But the $111.26 error is repeated in the sideways notation.

There is only one new name here: P. Russel, the justice of the peace before whom J.V. Johns swore that this is a true account.

I believe that is Peyton Russel (or Russell): in 1837, he was elected justice of the peace for North Township, which at the time was one of only three townships comprising Lake County.[1] He spent only a short time in Lake County. Solon Robinson, writing in 1847, said: "[He] lived at Liverpool and like the town, has gone to parts unknown."

A native of Maryland born circa 1806 (1850 and 1860 censuses), Russel first shows up in the Indiana records in February 1836, in Elkhart County, where he married Susana (or Susan) Rooney (or Roney, or Raney). Later that year he arrived here: a Hobart-area merchant's daybook records him buying a bottle of "ague syrup" in October 1836:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

(The ague syrup was probably some concoction intended to treat malaria; whether it involved quinine is up for question. Also, that's likely Peyton on the opposite page buying — what, ammunition? But with only a first initial, we can't know for sure.)

This February 1837 entry, if I understand it correctly, records him paying $5 to have his wife delivered of a baby:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

The baby may have been his son, Byron Homer (or was it Homer Byron?).

The Russell family was not counted in Lake County in the census of 1840 because by then they had relocated to Wisconsin. Peyton and Susan spent the rest of their lives in Janesville, and both are buried there.


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[1] Lake County 1834-1872 at 51; Lake County 1929 at 46.

Selling Off Jeremiah's Stuff (Part 1) and a Mystery Wiggins

On October 4, 1838, settlers gathered at Wiggins' Point to buy up the worldly goods left behind by Jeremiah Wiggins, who had died about two months before.

Here is the first page of the record that J.V. Johns kept of who bought what and for how much, and whether they paid in cash or a promissory note.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:


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With one exception, we have seen these names before and turned up whatever information we could about them.

The exception is Wiatt Wiggins. I have not been able to determine whether he was any relation to Jeremiah. In fact, I haven't been able to find out a single thing about him. These estate papers contain the only mention of him I have ever seen. He's absent from the local histories and from the 1840 Census.[1] His name hasn't surfaced in the early merchants' records at the Hobart Historical Society museum — that is, not in the ones I have indexed so far.

If Wiatt were any kind of close relation to Jeremiah, like a brother, I would expect him to inherit Jeremiah's goods, not have to buy them at a sale like any non-relative. On the other hand, I don't know what the Indiana laws of intestate succession were in 1838.

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[1] On Ancestry.com, I found a family tree that included a Wyatt Wiggin whose father was named Jeremiah! But that Jeremiah died in 1876.

Ten Dollars Being Passed Around

Here is a nearly illegible item from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate papers:


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Images courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.



And here is my attempt to transcribe it:


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I have no idea what's going on here. All I know is that Michael Steichelman ended up with ten dollars after a lot of fuss. Ten dollars in 1839 would be about $350 today, so I guess it was worth the fuss.

Maria Amanda Harvey Castle Lathrop

This obituary appeared in the Hobart Gazette of December 18, 1896:

Maria Amanda, wife of Samuel Lathrop, one of Ross township's oldest and well-known citizens, died at her home[1] about 2½ miles south of Hobart at 4 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 16th, aged nearly 80 years. While Mrs. Lathrop had suffered more or less for the past ten years from heart difficulties her general health of late had been reasonably good for a person of her age and on the day of her death she had been about her home as usual.

The deceased was born in Vermont in February, 1817. By a former husband she was the mother of four children, sons, Lucius, Harrison A., Jackson and A[dmiral] R[odney] Castle, and by her marriage with Mr. Lathrop she was the mother of two sons, Charley and George, all of whom survive her.

The funeral services will be conducted at her late home this afternoon (Friday) at one o'clock and the interment will occur at the Hobart cemetery.

Poor Lysander Castle: he never got his own obituary, and here he's not even named — just "a former husband."

Maria probably placed the monument on his grave. I believe it was placed there before 1895, when the partners making up Kelly and Son both died, as we learn from helpful information posted to findagrave.com. I do not know when the firm started its business. The 1880 Census shows George Kelly as a farmer, and David as a farm laborer. The earliest reference to the firm I can find in the on-line newspapers comes from the Hobart Gazette of August 7, 1890:


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[1] The home where she died is still standing, though severely neglected, on the south bank of the Deep River, overlooking S.R. 51.

Lysander Castle's Lonely Grave

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

The stone in this photo marks the lonely grave of Lysander Castle, who died in 1851. This digital scan of the photo is taken from the computer at the Hobart Historical Society museum. The original physical photo does not seem to be in the museum. No information about its source was preserved with the scan.

In the Chester Cemetery section of the NWIGS' Ross Township Cemeteries, we find the following text, quoted (if I understand correctly) by the 1992 readers, who noted: "This information about Lysander Castle was taken from previous records":

Lysander was actually buried by Deep River. This is a single stone of a later period than the death date. It was installed by Kelly and son. Tradition has it that this is on property originally owned by Nathaniel P. Banks. Present day owners are the Truitt family, though this property was formerly owned by John Knotts. The marker is a few feet south of Deep River, which cuts through the property, on a high bank in an area completely covered with scrub bushes and blackberry briars.

Tradition further tells that the river was so completely covered by snow and overflowing that the pall bearers could not cross the river even after a two day wait, so the casket was buried on this spot. We have placed him in this record since there are other Castles buried in Chester Cemetery.

Perhaps the photo above was taken by the writers of the "previous records," whoever they may have been, and whenever they may have hiked out there along the banks of the river to find the stone. (A photo taken in 1992, I expect, would be in color.)

Here is the 1874 Plat Map of Section 7:


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The 40 acres marked "M.A. Castle" were purchased by Lysander in 1849:


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Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records; Washington D.C., USA; Federal Land Patents, State Volumes, via Ancestry.com. U.S., General Land Office Records, 1776-2015[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

M.A. Castle was Lysander's widow, Maria Amanda (Harvey) Castle, whom he had married in 1837 in St. Joseph County, Indiana (Indiana Marriage Collection), and who had married Samuel Lathrop in 1853.

If the "tradition" quoted in the NWIGS book is correct, Lysander may be buried on the bit of land that Nathaniel Banks owned south of the Deep River and east of Sprout Ditch. Banks would not have owned that land at the time of Lysander's death, as he was then a child of six. I don't know who owned it then; I can't find any record of Lysander buying any other land in Section 7. I am not sure why Lysander's survivors would not have buried him on his own 40 acres. Perhaps they were carrying him along the river, looking for a place where they could cross it (intending, I suppose, to carry him to the Old Settlers Cemetery north on S.R. 51), and just gave up near Sprout Ditch (would they even have tried to cross that?), and buried him there.

The reference to the Truitt family owning the land is not illuminating, as they owned a tremendous amount of land there by 1950. I can't find a plat map showing the Knotts ownership.

I have taken this break from Jeremiah Wiggins to memorialize Lysander, whose lonely grave may soon be paved over for a data center. Or may at least become less lonely, but not in a good way.

Abbie Shedd Rice

In my last post, I mentioned Abbie, the daughter of William and Abbie (Wood) Shedd, so I thought I'd post these photos of her from the Wood-Vincent family album.


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I scanned this one in color to show how someone has tried to hand-tint the cloth draped over the table she's leaning on.

Abbie was born in 1855, as we know, and in this photo she appears perhaps five years old, which would date the photo to about 1860. She is wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, a style popular for children from the 1840s through mid-1860s. Her short hair is not all that unusual for the era.

She was just "Abby Shedd" when someone wrote her name inside the photographer's imprint on the back …



… but someone has written her full married name below the photo in the album:




Likewise on the other photo:



By now she is a young lady, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties.



That would place the photo around 1875. The style of her clothing is consistent with that timeframe.

This photo was also taken in Valparaiso.



Both of Abbie's photographers are discussed in Steve Shook's blog.


I believe Abbie grew up in the home of her grandparents, John and Hannah Wood; that is where we find her in the censuses of 1860 through 1880. After Hannah's death in 1873, Abbie kept house for her grandfather. In 1882, she married Edwin Rice of Valparaiso. They had two daughters (that I have been able to find out about, and that was not easy).

Abbie was only 45 when she died on December 1, 1900. She is buried in the Woodvale Cemetery.

Her husband, Edwin, died in Chicago in 1910. His body was brought to Deep River for burial beside Abbie.

This death notice says that at one time he traveled to Central America with his wife's half-brother, William Joshua Shedd:


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"Whiting and Environs," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 5 Oct. 1910.


Their daughter, Georgia, died young. It is from this death notice that I first hear of her sister, Mary.


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Porter County Vidette (Valparaiso, Ind.), 16 May 1917.

I have not been able to find out anything at all about sister Mary.

Joshua R. Shedd, and Shedd-Related Tragedies

These two documents from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate tell us of some strange transaction whereby Joshua R. Shedd paid off Jeremiah's account to Robinson & Co.[1] and then filed for reimbursement by the estate.


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

My transcription:

Jeremiah Wiggins Dr.
To Joshua R. Shedd

To the balance of account due the firm
of Robinson & Co. for merchandise — $5.09
Interest from June 5th 1837 to date .87
Lake C.H. Ia. March 2, 1939 $5.96

He was, in fact, reimbursed:


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

My transcription:

Recd of the Clerk of the Probate Court of Lake County
the amount for my account of $5.09 originally due to
Robinson & Co. filed in the office of the said Clerk as a
claim against the estate of Jeremiah Wiggins, deceased.
March 2, 1839

Michigan City Ia. ) J.R. Shedd
Nov. 25th 1839. )

With a full name, including middle initial, not to mention two possible locations (Lake County and Michigan City), you'd think it would be possible to identify him, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. My best guess is that he was the Joshua Rundle Shedd who died in Cook County in 1854 and is now buried in the southern part of the city. But that's just a guess, based on his date of birth and the coincidence of names and middle initial. I can't find anything clearly tying Joshua Rundle Shedd to Lake County or Michigan City.

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However, in searching Chicago newspapers for any information about that Joshua Shedd, I came across a tragic story involving to the Shedd family of Deep River, so let us talk about them now.

William Henry Shedd was born in 1821 in Massachusetts. I know this from his grave marker. The record of his birth fails to include the date (but does mention an older brother named Joshua Rundle Shedd).


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Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).

I can't find any record of him until a possible sighting in 1852, in California:


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Ancestry.com. California, U.S., State Census, 1852. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: California State Census of 1952. (microfilm, M/F 144, 6 rolls). Sacramento, California: California State Library.

The age is about right, the birthplace is right. Did our William get caught up in the Gold Rush?

If that's our guy, he left California very soon after being counted. The next record we have of him is in the autumn of 1853, when he married John Wood's daughter, Abbie.[2] William and Abbie had a daughter, also named Abbie, born in 1855. The following year, Abbie (the mother) died.

William married again, in 1859, to Josephine Blachly in Porter County. The 1860 Census shows William and Josephine, with their infant son, William, living in Union Township, while little Abbie lived with her grandparents in Deep River.

William Sr. gave his occupation as merchant. He may have been running his business in the village of Deep River. There was a mercantile partnership around this time, Shedd & Wood, operating in the area; we are told that George Wood, the fifth child of John and Hannah, worked for that partnership as a clerk "in a country store."[3] On this page from the July 25, 1861 issue of the Crown Point Register, we find both "Wm. H. Shedd, Deep River," and "Wood & Shedd, Woods Mills,"[4] offering patent medicines for sale:


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I have found such ads in the Register involving the name Shedd as early as 1859 and as late as 1865. By the way, I don't know which Wood was involved in the partnership; my guess is Augustus.

By the 1870 Census, William and Josephine, with sons William and Orton (b. 1861), had moved to Watseka, Illinois. William gave his occupation as cabinet-maker. The two elder Shedds would live out the rest of their lives in Watseka, and are now buried there.

The tragic story I mentioned above involves the eldest son, William Joshua Shedd:


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Blue Island Sun-Standard (Blue Island, Ill.), 30 Nov. 1922.


As you will note, the article mentions his birth in Deep River, Indiana. It also mentions that this was not the first such tragedy in the family.


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[1] We will speak of Robinson & Co. in the future.
[2] Indiana Marriage Collection.
[3] Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) at 718.
[4] "Woods Mills" being another name for the village of Deep River, along with "Woodvale."

The Mysterious Mr. Fish

Here we have J.V. Johns collecting some money from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate. First, for his services to the estate as a clerk:


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:

Redeemed November 18, 1839 of James H. Cassady
Administrator of the Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins
deceased $2.00 in full for services as Clerk of the sale
of Personal property of said Estate, and other writing[?]
for said Estate

J.V. Johns

And secondly, for hay he sold to Jeremiah indirectly:


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

My transcription:

The Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins Dr.
To J.V. Johns Dr.

To 6 Tons of hay used by
the Wiggins, bot by me
of one Fish, who was a
tenant of the land[?] of Wiggins
@ $2.50 dollars per ton $15.00

I have already talked about J.V. Johns a couple of times. To the bits of information we have on him, I want to add this anecdote from Solon Robinson:[1]

J. V. Johns was elected sheriff this August [1839] election, H.N. Brooks was his opponent. The election was contested and created some excitement at the time. … (One witness testified that he would not vote for either, because one was a drunkard and the other a black-guard — too true.)

I'm not clear whether J.V. Johns was supposed to be the drunkard or the blackguard. His elaborate signature, above, looks as if it were written with a steady hand, so maybe he was the blackguard.

The second paper introduces another character — this tenant of Wiggins, whose surname was Fish. Without a first name, or even initial, it's impossible to identify him. Among the early settlers of Lake County listed by T.H. Ball[2] we find E.T. Fish and John Fish, who came here in 1837. But that is the first and last mention of either in any history book I can find. They don't appear in the 1840 census.

I've also encountered a Fish in an 1830s daybook at the Hobart Historical Society museum. This entry, dated September 10, 1837, shows him buying a large number of household items …


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

… and paying for them by selling the merchant 6 tons of hay and a promissory note signed by one of the Wilkinsons.

Fish's first initial is unclear: it might be M or W, or maybe that's just Mr. Fish — meaning the merchant didn't know his first name any better than we do.

Below Mr. Fish, J.V. Johns shows up. That's just coincidence — OR IS IT????


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[1] Lake County 1929 at p. 52.
[2] Lake County 1834-1872 at p. 56.

Angle-Worm Oil On His Knee

We interrupt the Jeremiah Wiggins show to bring you a report from Israel Pierce. A veteran of the Civil War, Israel applied for an invalid's pension in the early 1880s because he was partially disabled by rheumatism contracted during his service in the Union Army. Investigation ensued. Much paperwork, many depositions.

This particular deposition, taken in October 1882, brought to my attention something I had never heard of before in all my life: angle-worm oil.


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



My transcription:

Israel R. Pierce being sworn says he is applicant for pension, claim No. 349856. That for 5 years immediately preceding his enlistment he lived in Ross Township, Lake County, Indiana and was occupied as a farmer. That from the date of his discharge and return home from the army said Ross Township, Lake County, Indiana has been his residence all the time and is now. That he claims pension on account of Rheumatism contracted at and near Atlanta, Ga. in or about June 1864 caused from very great exposure and hardships, hard & forced marches, getting wet & other hardships incident to the service. That he was treated by Surgeon W. Butterworth & also Hospital Steward M.J. Whitman[?] prescribed for him in the army for his Rheumatism but so long a time has elapsed they are unable to remember his case. That he was wasn't treated by Drs. Poffenberger or Robinson of the 99th. That Dr. Vincent of Hobart, Ind. treated him from his discharge until 1870 since which time he has received no medical treatment but has used some liniments of home manufacture such as angle worm oil & skunk's oil which he procured himself & used to limber his right knee joint. He has also tried St. Jacob's Oil. He respectfully asks the acceptance of neighbors Banks & Ragen's testimony filed herewith as to existence of his rheumatism since 1870. They are his nearest neighbors. He also asks their testimony be received proving his soundness at enlistment for the reason that he was at said time an able bodied man and perfectly free from Rheumatism & never required or had the attendance of a physician at said time. Has had no disease since discharge [except] Rheumatism. That from the date of his return home from the army until the present time he has lost 1/3 of his time each year by reason of Rheumatism.

So Israel was treating his rheumatism with oil of angleworm, which is another name for earthworm. And that of home manufacture. How do you manufacture earthworm oil? For a recipe, please consult the Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. We can imagine Israel (or his wife, Calista) collecting earthworms from their yard, boiling them in wine on the kitchen stove, and rubbing the resulting concoction on his stiff and painful knee.

My first impulse is to declare that the stuff had to be completely useless, aside from the possible placebo effect, but a little internet research turns up articles suggesting that extracts of some species of earthworms might help with skin wounds or inflammation and fever. In Israel's case, however, the stuff was completely useless, or nearly so, since his rheumatism persisted.

I'm trying to find a recipe for skunk oil. "Boil the fat of several skunks and add a couple of tablespoons of male skunk glandular secretion before the oil coagulate[s]," says the Wisconsin Historical Society. Israel would have had to trap or shoot the skunks himself, I suppose. Skunk oil as folk medicine seems to have been used more for diseases of the respiratory system than for sore joints. In Israel's case, again, it didn't cure anything.

And neither did the commercially manufactured St. Jacob's Oil.


Someday I hope to have time for more posts about Israel Pierce, his endless paperwork, and his tragic death.

More Litigious Settlers

Here is another page from James H. Cassady's records of his activities as administrator of the Jeremiah Wiggins estate.


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

My transcription:



The December 19 entry mentions an appearance before George Earle concerning a lawsuit involving two people: Saxton and Merrill.

The first was probably Ebenezer Saxton, Sr. (1797-1877), who came to Lake County in 1837 and eventually settled on Jeremiah Wiggins' farm. The following biographical sketch was written by one of his descendants:

Ebenezer Saxton was the 6th generation of the Saxton family in America. His father (also an Ebenezer) was a Revolutionary soldier from Massachusetts. Ebenezer Saxton was born in Vermont, later (1829) moving to a farm in East Flamboro, Canada at the time of the Patriot War. When the rebellion was brushed in 1837 he sold his farm on credit and hurriedly left Canada to escape the rebel punishment of hanging. On the way to Fort Dearborn (Chicago), his wagon got stuck in the mud in the Turkey Creek area. Spending nearly all of his money to recover his belongings, the family decided to stay in Wiggins' Point (one of Merrillville's early names).[1]

Ebenezer and his wife, Minerva, raised a large family and lived out the rest of their lives on the former Wiggins farm. They are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery.

♦    ♦    ♦
The second name mentioned in connection with a lawsuit was either Dudley Merrill (1814-1890) or William Merrill (1808-1860), brothers who came to Lake County in 1836 or '37.[2] The brothers became prominent citizens of the town then known as Centerville, building homes and operating farms as well as businesses that included a cheese factory, a hotel, and a store. In 1848, the town was renamed in their honor.

They are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery. Dudley's four wives (one of whom had been William's widow) are also buried there.

The Dudley Merrill house, built in 1849 according to Lake County records, still stands at 12 W. 73rd Avenue.

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The man whose name is written as "M. Steickleman" in the document above was probably Johann Michael Steichelman, whom I have discussed before in connection with these estate papers.

♦    ♦    ♦
Myiel Pierce, Sr. (1801-1847), arrived in Lake County from New York in 1836.[3] He inspired T.H. Ball to playfully date of the founding of Centerville/Merrillville to 1842:

I place the date of the commencement of the village when Miles[4] Pierce built the first tavern here, and pouring out a bottle of whisky or breaking it upon the frame, after the manner of naming ships, called it "Centreville Hotel." Well would it have been for that village and many others, if all the whisky had gone the same way.[5]

In a previous post about his son, Myiel, Jr., I mentioned his early death and the hardship it caused his family.

Three sons of Myiel, Sr., and his wife, Marcia, served in the Civil War, one dying while in the service. Myiel and Marcia, who died in 1889, are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery, along with numerous family members.

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[1] Alice Flora Smedstad, Soldiers & Veterans Memorialized at the Merrillville Cemetery (self-published, 2007) at p. 50.
[2] Lake County 1834-1872 at pp. 38, 301.
[3] Lake County 1834-1872 at p. 54.
[4] Myiel's unusual first name appears in several variants in local histories, including "Miles" and "Milo."
[5] Lake County 1834-1872 at pp. 152-153.

Crazy Legs, but Those Aren't Legs

I came across this guy in my garden last June.


(Click on images to enlarge)

My insect ID app was stumped. I just thought of him as "Crazy Legs."

Just recently, somebody on the "All Bugs Go To Kevin" Facebook page posted the same creature, and that's how I got an ID: it's a Crowned Slug caterpillar.

And those crazy legs aren't legs. They are stinging hairs. I'm glad I didn't try to pick him up and find that out the hard way.

He has probably already turned into the moth he was destined to be, but I will always think of him as Crazy Legs.

Here's a side view:



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I have been getting my new computer up and running, with all my huge stock of images, documents, and conveniences. It's a process. I hope to be more productive once I don't have to wrestle with a computer that operates in GEOLOGICAL TIME.

Echoes of an Ancient Lawsuit

Here is the next episode of "James H. Cassady, Estate Administrator."


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

My transcription:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Looking at the differences between the handwriting in the body of the document and the signature at the bottom, I am not at all sure that James H. Cassady himself wrote anything but the signature.

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We have already met the clerk at the estate sale, J.V. Johns. I have only to add that I have done the math involved in this passage from his son's 1882 biographical sketch …

JOHN W. JOHNS, M. D., was born in Lake County, Ind., in 1845, and is a son of Joshua V. and Caroline M. (Demmons) Johns, the former a native of Pennsylvania, the latter of Vermont. Dr. Johns was a common school scholar until he was eight years of age, when his parents died and he went to live with Dr. Henry D. Palmer, of Merrillville, by whom he was reared to manhood.[1]

… to figure out that Joshua V. and Caroline (Demmon) Johns both died circa 1853. The circumstances of their deaths and the locations of their graves remain unknown.

♦    ♦    ♦
George Zuvers, who collected the payment of the amount won from the lawsuit against the estate, was born probably around 1795 (per unsourced information in family trees on Ancestry.com), was a veteran of the War of 1812, and "a cabinet-maker and carpenter by trade."[2] In 1822, he married Winnifred Branhan in Bartholomew County, Indiana, and there they spent the early years of their marriage. They had nine children who survived to adulthood. In June of 1836 George came into Lake County with his eldest son, Solomon,[3] who was then about 14 years old. George probably brought the rest of his family here later.

The Zuvers settled in the short-lived town of Liverpool, where George at various times operated a store and a hotel.[4]Apparently, he also bought and sold land; between 1840 and 1842 he is recorded buying over 100 acres of farmland north and south of Hobart as well as numerous town lots in Liverpool.[5]

George died in 1845.[6] The 1850 census shows Winnifred remarried, but she was again widowed by the 1860 census. She died sometime after 1880. Her final resting place, like George's, is unknown, but they may both lie in the Merrillvillle Cemetery (Smedstad 2007 at 60).[7]

The estate papers do not include anything that would tell us what George Zuvers' suit against the Wiggins estate was based on.

Incidentally, George's son, Solomon, was the father of Silas E. Zuvers, who had a long connection with Ross Township schools, including the Ainsworth school. Solomon was described thus, in 1882:[8]

The second house built in [Merrillville] is still standing, and is occupied by Solomon Zuvers. It is a log structure, and is now weather-boarded. This Mr. Zuvers is an eccentric character. According to his own account, he grew to manhood in the almost exclusive society of the Indians. He ate, drank, slept, worked, trapped, traveled and traded with them. He learned Indian as he did English, and talked it as fluently. At one time, he employed eight or nine Indians to trap for him, and found them trusty and true — more so than most of the whites. Mr. Zuvers has been twice across the continent, and his " By golly, stranger," and his "By George, neighbor," doubtless often ring in the memory of many who have met him, as it does in ours.

According to A Pictorial History of Merrillville, the Zuvers log cabin stood on 73rd Avenue but was "removed" in 1946 (p. 93).

♦    ♦    ♦
We have very little information about James Prentice, who was apparently the estate's opponent in the lawsuit. He probably came into Lake County in 1836 and laid claim as a squatter to some land north of the future Crown Point,[9]and he served as a juror during the October 1837 term of the Circuit Court.[10] After that, he disappears from the records. I cannot find him in the 1840 census. Early Land Sales, Lake County does not list him as having purchased his 1836 claim from the U.S. government

♦    ♦    ♦
The last person named in the document above, John M. Stevens, is a mystery. He does not appear in the early histories of Lake County, the land sales records, or the 1840 census.

_______________
[1] Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) at 729.
[2] Ibid. at 686.
[3] Ibid. at 544.
[4] Ibid. at 524, 525.
[5] Early Land Sales, Lake County at 173, 199, 219.
[6] Goodspeed-Blanchard at 686.
[7] Alice Flora Smedstad, Soldiers & Veterans Memorialized at the Merrillville Cemetery (self-published, 2007), at 60.
[8] Goodspeed-Blanchard at 546.
[9] Lake County 1834-1872 at 38.
[10] Goodspeed-Blanchard at 423.

Awesome Crab Spiders of Ainsworth

This crab spider seems to be saying, "Just look at me! I'm so flippin' awesome!"


(Click on image to enlarge)

Or maybe she's saying, "What? You got a problem with me?"

She might be a Goldenrod crab spider. They have the ability to change color, between yellow and white, to better blend in with the plant where they are sitting and waiting for prey. But they can't turn green to blend in with green onions.

Not sure why she chose to sit there. The insects that make up her diet don't generally hang out in the middle of green onion stalks. Maybe she just wants to stand out, in all her awesomeness.

Horse Drama at Liverpool

Continuing in the Jeremiah Wiggins estate papers, we now come to James Cassady's itemized invoices recording the details of his activities as estate administrator. There are several pages of them, but I can't post them all at once because my brain can't handle it.

I think he wrote these out at the end of his service, perhaps from notes he had jotted down during the year or so that he was working for the estate. In the following list, which seems to be the start of his activities after being appointed administrator in late August 1838, he mistakenly wrote "1839" instead of "1838" at the top of the left column.


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

My transcription:



So his earliest work consisted, naturally enough, of figuring out what Jeremiah Wiggins had owned at his death. Somehow he realized that one of Jeremiah's two bay horses had gotten into the hands of someone not entitled to it, who didn't want to give it up. I'm not clear on whether that someone and the horse were in Liverpool, or Liverpool was the site for such legal business as getting a writ of replevin to allow James to seize the horse.

T.H. Ball tells us that Liverpool became the county seat for a short time in 1839 (Lake County 1834-1873 at 156), but he also tells a story in which Liverpool seems to be the site of legal business in the spring or summer of 1838:

In March, 1838, [Ebenezer Saxton] bought, of a man from Michigan City going to Crown Point, fifteen hundred pounds of flour. He was to pay in team work at two dollars a day. The work was to be done at Michigan City. He went with his team; did one-half of the amount of work, and was ready to do the other half; then the man discharged him, as he wanted no more work. Some time afterward the Michigan City man entered suit at Liverpool for the remainder that was due to be paid in money. A capias came for E. Saxton to appear at Liverpool. He took Wiggins along behind him on his horse. Passing out of Turkey Creek, Wiggins unfortunately slipped off into the water. He did not drown, and remounting, proceeded. The trial came on, the bargain was proved, and the Justice decided fifty cents in favor of the plaintiff. (Lake County 1834-1873 at 332.)

I'd like to know who it was that had Jeremiah's horse and why he or she wouldn't give it back. The last item in the list mentions a suit against one "Stephens" but I don't know if that is the horse suit. (It might help if I could figure out that last word.) I can't identify anyone with the surname Stephens in Lake County in the 1830s.

Another item in the list shows that James had to hire a team of horses to bring back, from some unspecified location, a sled that had belonged to Jeremiah. But the inventories of Wiggins property that we've seen don't mention a sled.

Insects Impersonating Other Things

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"Thick-headed" fly! Ha ha ha ha ha!

But seriously, I wouldn't call them thick-headed — they are pretty clever. This one knew how to impersonate a wasp well enough to fool me (but not my insect ID app). And they make other insects raise their kids for them.




Here's another clever insect:



The camouflaged looper, the larva of the Wavy-lined Emerald Moth, decorates itself with bits of vegetation so it looks like part of a plant instead of the tasty morsel of protein that it really is.



One of these days, I have to get back to Jeremiah.

Orange-Spotted Pyrausta and Other Excuses

Yes, I've been working on another Jeremiah post, but then I had to do a whole bunch of work outside, which is how I got a crappy phone pic of an Orange-Spotted Pyrausta …


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… also known as the Orange Mint moth, because the larvae feed on plants in the mint family. This tiny moth, maybe 1/3" at its widest, was on some tansy by my garden.

Then I had to clean up some tree limbs knocked down during our latest storm. This dragonfly kept hanging around on the dead limbs:



The insect ID app I was using (PictureInsect) said this was a Ruddy Darter, but when I look those up on the internet, I'm told they live in England, not Indiana. Maybe it's an Autumn Meadowhawk?


Anyway … then the Humane Society of Hobart asked me to take a new foster:



He just had a leg amputated, and he will be recovering from surgery at my house for another 10 days. He's all by himself in the foster room, so I have to spend time with him. And time I spend with Charles is time I can't spend with Jeremiah.