Mills of Mystery: Dustin

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This is the last in the series, and it's an anticlimax because I can't find much information about Dustin or his mills (and yes, it appears there were two Dustin mills).

To refresh our memory — Solon Robinson said this on the topic:

Walton's saw mill on Turkey Creek, Wood's and also Dustin's on Deep River and Taylor's on Cedar Creek, were all building during this year [1837]. But with the exception of Wood's they might as well never have been built for the good they have done. The same may be said of the one called "Miller's Saw Mill" on Deep river. Dustin's, Miller's and Walton's have been in utter ruins for years, on account of the difficulty of making a dam of dirt stand, and Taylor's is about half the time without water, and the other half without a dam.[1]

Later remarks in the same paper make it clear that that Dustin had abandoned one early mill and then started another that was still operating in 1847:

There are five saw mills in operation in the county, to-wit: Earle's, Dustin's and Wood's on Deep River; McCarty's on Cedar Creek and Foley's on a branch of Cedar Creek. (There are three dilapidated ones, to-wit: Miller's and Dustin's old mills on Deep River, and Walton's on Turkey Creek, the last about being repaired.)[2]

Upon checking Early Land Sales, Lake County, we find several Dustins (or "Dustons") buying land.

Most of the purchases are in Section 29, Twp. 35 N., Range 7 W., shown here on the 1874 Plat Map:



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It's not clear which "parts" of the northeast quarter were involved in the first and third purchases, hence the question marks. But clearly there is a stretch of river through many of those purchased acres where, assuming suitable topography, a Dustin might have built a mill.

We find a couple more Dustin ("Dusten") purchases in Section 16. On July 19, 1842, "Dusten, T.M. and V.E., Jr.," bought just over one acre described as "Lot No. 5." We don't know exactly what constituted Lot No. 5, but we've already seen Benajah Wilkinson buying 38 acres of Lot No. 5 in 1840, probably somewhere near the crossing of the Deep River by present-day Ainsworth Road.

The same pair (T.M. and V.E.) also bought "Lot No. 4" (about 12 acres) in Section 16 on June 15, 1846. I have no theories about where that land was.

Speaking of T.M. Dustin, "T.M." could stand for Thomas McDonough, which would make the 1846 purchase interesting in the light of this sad announcement we find in the New York Evening Post of February 26, 1845, in a column simply headed, "Died":


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"Inflammation of the lungs," whatever that meant in Deep River[3] in January 1845, carried off three members of the Dustin family, all related to Ebenezer Dustin, who might have been Senior or Junior, for all I know. I cannot find records of any of these graves.

Ebenezer Dustin shows up in the 1840 Census …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… which doesn't tell us a whole lot. By the way, Isaiah Beebe (second name below Ebenezer Dustin) married Deborah Dustin in 1839, per the Porter County marriage records.

I can't identify any Dustins or Beebes[4] in the 1850 or later censuses.

I will just add a couple of earlier references I have found: first, Goodspeed and Blanchard tell us that in 1837, T.M. Dustin paid $5 for a license to sell groceries from a store on the Deep River in North Township.[5] Secondly, the same source reprints George Earle's first survey of the town of Hobart, showing that it was acknowledged May 7, 1847, before Ebenezer Dustin, a justice of the peace.[6]

And that's all I've come up with. So, in summary: I don't understand the Dustin family, don't know where they came from (aside from New York State) or where they went; I don't know where either of Dustin's mills were; and I don't even know which Dustin built them.


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[1] "History of Lake County, 1833 – 1847," Lake County 1929, p. 48.
[2] Ibid., p. 59.
[3] The state is abbreviated "Ia." There is a town called Deep River in Iowa, but there is no Lake County, and Iowa did not become a state until 1846, so its abbreviation would have been something like "Ia. Ty. (or Terr.)." Also, the Iowan Deep River did not exist in 1845.
[4] Per Solon Robinson, Isaiah Beebe was living in the spring of 1846 but had died by 1847 ("History of Lake County, 1833 – 1847," p. 46).
[5] Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard), p. 422.
[6] Ibid., p. 525.

A Love Letter and a Mystery

This letter (a recent purchase of mine) was written from Hobart, Indiana, on October 26, 1883, to a brown-eyed, dimple-cheeked schoolteacher in Kansas.


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Here is my transcription (original spelling retained but some punctuation added for clarity):

Hobart Ind Oct 26th 1883

Miss Clara

"My Dear Girl"

Yours of the 21st recd on the 25th. I remained in Chicago several days longer than I should otherwise have done waiting to get a letter from you, before I came out here. I left the City the same day I recd it, and will answer it immediatly, so that it will not be so long between letters. Was sorry to hear of Dr Steelman's death and also of the sad accident to your little niece. Hope she may recover soon.

You must excuse this paper as it is all I have at hand.

Am glad to learn that drouthy Kansas is having lots of rain. This makes my second trip into Indiana since I left home and I shall try my best to make all my collections this time before I return to Chicago. Shall not remain in the City long after I return, am getting anxious to get home, and I suppose the reason is, because there is a little browned eyed dimpled cheake'd school teacher about 14 miles east of St John that I want to see very much, and I hope when I get back to Chicago there will be a letter from her waiting for me. I love that little Brunette and I don’t care if she know's it — — but I don’t think her letters express much of that article for me, but perhaps she is reserving that to tell me when I get back which by the way will be inside of two or three weeks, if nothing happens. Was glad to learn that you were over to the wedding. Wish I could have been there? As it is getting late will close by wishing you happy and well, with much love

Yours &c —

Ross

In spite of some initial frustration,[1] I was able to identify these people. The writer was Elijah Ross Swartz, born in Ohio in 1843; the recipient was Clara Jane McNeil, born in Iowa in 1862. Here is an account of their wedding, from the front page of the Stafford Herald (Stafford, Kans.) of March 6, 1884:


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And here is a photo of Clara Jane McNeil Swartz, which someone has added to findagrave.com:


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Ross lived in this area for a time. We first encounter him in the 1870 Census, farming in Union Township, Porter County and still going by his first name, Elijah.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

He is listed first, as if he were the head of the household, but the family's property is attributed to his mother, the 63-year-old Mary. I have not been able to find out with certainty who his father was and whether Mary was, in 1870, widowed, separated, or divorced.[2]

The earliest map of Union Township that I know of dates to 1876 and does not show the Swartz family owning land, so either they rented the land, or they sold it before 1876. To judge by the names listed near theirs on the census, such as Shearer and Janes, the Swartz family was close to the county line.

In January 1876 (Indiana Marriage Collection), Elijah married Alla Demott, also a native of Ohio and some 12 years his junior. By 1880, Elijah had given up farming in Union Township for dealing hardware in Chesterton.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com.

The family's record does not continue on the next page: he and Alla had no children.

The next we hear of Elijah, or Ross, it's October 1883 and he is courting Clara McNeil. That is the mystery of this post's title: what happened to Alla? I cannot find any record of her death. It's possible that they were divorced, though that would be unusual. Alla simply disappears.

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Ross and Clara remained in Kansas until the early 1890s, when they moved to California. There the 1900 Census records them …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… and there they lived out the rest of their lives.

Ross's death in 1913 was reported back in St. John, Kansas:


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County Capital (St. John, Kans.), 30 Oct. 1913.

Clara died in 1934, and her obituary suggests that all her life she remained proud of her work as a schoolteacher in Kansas.


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Highland Park News Herald (Calif.), 18 Jan. 1934.

She and Ross are buried in California.

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As a postscript, here is a letter Ross wrote for publication in the Porter County Vidette, telling citizens of Porter County why they should move to Stafford County, Kansas.


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St. John Advance (Kans.), 22 Mar. 1883.


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[1] For some unknown reason, Ancestry.com turns up no record of their marriage.
[2] Mary died in St. John, Kansas, in 1892. Her brief obituary does not mention a husband, or any of her children except the one she lived with. ("Obituary," County Capital (St. John, Kans.), 26 Aug. 1892.)

Mills of Mystery: Wilson & Saunders

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Wilson & Saunders were the flies in John Wood's ointment, according to Solon Robinson, who, as we know, said: "The accommodation of the people of the county was greatly increased this year [1847], in getting grain made into bread stuff, by the mill of Wilson & Saunders on Deep River below Wood's (and as he thinks not quite far enough below)." This only tells us that Wilson & Saunders' mill was downstream from Wood's mill, and annoyingly close.

Turning to Early Land Sales, Lake County, we find relevant entries that show "Wilson & Sanders"[1] purchasing Lots 8, 11, and 12, and Robert Wilson purchasing Lot 9, of Section 16, Twp. 35 N., Range 7 W., in December 1844.

I'm sure we all remember Section 16 from our encounter with the Wilkinsons. And as you can see, Wood's mill, in Section 21, lay just below Section 16's southern border:


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Image from the 1874 Plat Map.

The enumerator of the 1850 Census visited the Wilson-Saunders household right after visiting the Wood household:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com.

It would be astonishing if they had actually been neighbors, operating two mills next to each other. (You will notice that Benajah Wilkinson's widow, Prudence, and children are further down on the same page.)

The 1840 Census also records a Robert Wilson near John Wood …


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com.

… which was probably our Robert, but the census gives so little information that we can't know for sure.

I have not been able to trace either Wilson or Saunders before or after the 1840-1850 timeframe.

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Where was the Wilson & Saunders mill? Short answer: I don't know.

Thanks to the trails in Deep River County Park, these days you can walk the whole length of the Deep River as it flows through Section 16, from Wood's mill all the way up to the north side of Ainsworth Road.

You can look around for a spot that might have accommodated a water-powered mill. Such a mill needs not only flowing water but also some high ground on which to perch the mill itself, so it isn't flooded or washed away every time the river overflows its banks.

The topography has to allow for damming the river so that the flow of water on the mill's wheel can be controlled. Wood's mill diverted some of the river's water into a millpond; the Cascade/Huffman mill did likewise. George Earle made a millpond of the river itself.

But a mill also needs a road for customers to use when bringing in raw materials and taking out finished products. Even today the river through Section 16 runs a pretty remote course. In 1847, we know Ainsworth Road and 73rd Ave./Joliet Road were in use. Was County Line Road then usable enough that Wilson & Saunders might have built their mill just below Wood's where the river runs past County Line Road's high ground? That would be very close indeed. There is high ground near Ainsworth Road, too, but we thought that area was reserved for the Wilkinsons, didn't we?

Even if I were able to find a source that showed exactly what land was included in the 1844 purchases — lots 8, 9, 11, and 12 of Section 16 — I might not be very far along, since each of those lots contained 40 acres.

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Here are a few of the entries from the early daybooks at the Hobart Historical Society museum that mention Wilson & Saunders.

The earliest I have found dates to September 7, 1846. It shows (if I understand the entry correctly) a customer at this Hobart store paying here for 100 pounds of flour to be gotten from Wilson & Saunders' mill.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Remember that in 1846 George Earle was operating only a sawmill, so Wilson & Saunders' was probably the closest grist mill.[2] (To judge by all the pills and quinine being bought on these pages, there was a lot of sickness going around in this later summer; also notice that Jesse Albee paid 25 cents to have teeth extracted, and there is no accompanying charge for pain medication.)

Ten days later, some complicated business:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

I chose that one mostly because on the opposite page we find E. Saunders doing various things that include providing shelter and clothing for two orphaned Hodson boys, and it occurs to me to wonder if John Saunders, the miller, was related to E. (Edward?) Saunders. Of course, I don't have a clue.


On this page, dating to July 1847, we find Wilson & Saunders doing business with Saunders & Scales, and I wonder which Saunders that was.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


The latest entries I can find date to September-October 1847, and show Wilson & Saunders making a few lumber purchases from George Earle's sawmill.


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



So, the next time you're walking along the river in Deep River County Park, you can ask yourself where you would put a mill if you were Robert Wilson or John Saunders in 1844. And I suppose you have to remember that weather and erosion have been working on the river and its banks for nearly two centuries since then, so all you can do is imagine.

[To be continued …]

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[1] "Sanders" shows up now and then as an alternate spelling of "Saunders." Maybe "Saunders" is the phonetic spelling of "Sanders."
[2] "There are two grist mills, Wood's and Wilson & Saunders, (three run of stone). Mr. Earle is also engaged at the present time in building another, which will have from 2 to 4 run." Solon Robinson, "History of Lake County, 1833 – 1847," Lake County 1929, p. 59. In a notice dated December 1, 1847 (on display at the Hobart Historical Society museum), George Earle announced that both his mills (saw and grist) were in operation.

Foster a Mama Dog, They Said. It'll Be Easy, They Said

Mama will do all the work, they said. Well, she does a lot of work, but she can't do everything. And this particular mama dog has, shall we say, severe digestive issues.

But she is getting better, and each one of her seven pups is the cutest pup in the world.



(And that's why I'm having a hard time pulling together my next mystery-mill post.)