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Images courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.
My transcription:
Solon Robinson Clerk of the Probate Court of Lake County.The signature appears to be in different handwriting from the everything else. I'm not sure whose preference was being expressed in that last comment, requesting that the $9.48 claim be treated as $9.50.
Pay the bearer nine dollars and forty eight cents, it being the amount of my account against the estate of Jeremiah Wiggins, allowed at the last term of the Probate Court.
Porter County Dec. 10th 1839.
John G. Forbes
Send 50 change for a $10 bill
The microfilm includes two slightly different back descriptions — but both expressing the same essential facts — as if somebody at one time refolded the document differently and thought the new back needed some writing.
The same year, he was elected as an Overseer of the Poor for Ross Township; he also ran for Justice of the Peace and Constable but was not elected (Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard)). In 1836, he was one of three "viewers"[1] of two new roads being constructed through Ross Township.
With county and township lines in the mid-1830s being not being what they are now, it's not completely clear to me whether John moved east to Porter County, or the boundaries changed. He is named among the first settlers of Union Township, Porter County (Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard)). He is recorded in Porter County in the 1840 Census.
That is the last local record I can find of him. Since the 1840 census did not record any names beyond the head of the household, and no birth locations, we don't have information that would help to identify the Forbes family in later records. If John's middle name was Gilbert and his wife's name was Elizabeth, then it appears the family moved to Decatur County, Indiana, by 1850, and then by the mid-1850s to Iowa, where John and Elizabeth are both buried.
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[1] As I understand it, a viewer would be responsible for supervising the construction of a road, and its maintenance once constructed.
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