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.
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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).
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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
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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.
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[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.
