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.