Puppy Vacation …

This is my life right now.



Sneetch and Grinch are on loan from the Humane Society of Hobart until January 3. They are cute, smart, affectionate, and energetic … oh, so energetic …


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Happy Christmas

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This postcard shows that the "Happy Christmas and Merry New Year" message I posted last year was not necessarily facetious. Apparently, people used to wish you a happy Christmas in perfect accord with religion and decorum.

Sending this happy wish was a lady with a sick baby:



Transcription:

Dear Aunt I heard you was sick hope you are better. My baby was very sick she is some better the Dr. don't come eney more. wish you and Uncle John a most Joyfull Xmas. Bertha M.

The year in the postmark is not really legible, but it has to be 1922 or later, based on that 1922 Christmas seal (sold by the National Tuberculosis Association).

I believe the writer, "Bertha M.," was Bertha Mueller, the daughter of Uncle John's sister, Pauline, and her husband, August Czerwonke. Bertha had been born in Germany in 1882, brought to this country later that decade, and grew up (as far as I can tell) in LaPorte County, where she married August Mueller in 1909. By 1910, the young family was in Hobart. The sick baby was probably Lucy Frances, who had been born December 10, 1921.

Here is the family in the 1930 Census:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Not listed is their eldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth — who, in a sad twist of fate given Bertha's support of the anti-tuberculosis crusade, would die in 1936 at the age of 26 from pulmonary tuberculosis.[1]

Bertha died in 1962, surviving her husband by four years.

As for Aunt Agnes and Uncle John, they lived out their lives in Wanatah, and are buried in Porter County.

And a Happy Christmas to you.

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[1] Her death certificate gives her occupation as nurse, so in 1930 she may have been away from home training or working in that field.

Resurrecting the Sturtevant Cemetery

Before and after: November 10, 2024 and March 9, 2025



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Images courtesy of Michael White.

We can't say that the Sturtevant[1] Cemetery has been completely lost — it has been visited several times from the mid-20th century to the early 21st by local volunteers who have described its location and transcribed those of its stones that could be found and read, and the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society makes that information available. We can, however, say that the Sturtevant Cemetery has become inaccessible and largely forgotten.

Over the past year or so, local historian Michael White has devoted many hours to the cemetery — not only researching it extensively, but also going out into the woods to locate it and, through a lot of hard physical work, uncovering it from years of neglect. The photos above show the cemetery as he first found it in November 2024, and then again in March 2025, after several clean-up visits with a couple of other volunteers.

I like the sequence below, showing a piece of a grave marker being uncovered from a layer of mud, until you can partially read the epitaph. After more excavation, a full headstone is revealed.




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Images courtesy of Michael White.

Of the epitaph, I could only read the first three words: "Gone to inhabit…" An online search for such an epitaph turned up this one …


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… in a late-19th-century book of epitaphs offered by the Vermont Marble Company.

But the top part of the stone is not legible, so we don't know for whom that epitaph was chosen.


Michael has written up his findings on the history of the cemetery and the Sturtevant family, and presented them to relevant governmental agencies, such as the Lake County Parks Department (which owns the cemetery) and the Ross Township Trustee, as well as two local historical societies. The cemetery is fortunate to have such an energetic advocate. It deserves advocacy, as part of our local history. Its graves are those of early settlers of eastern Ross Township. It is the final resting place of a young Civil War soldier who died in the service. It is even the scene of a possible grave robbery.

With Michael's permission, I am posting the paper he compiled, which contains historical summaries and numerous research sources, and the PowerPoint presentation he prepared for his talks to officials and historical societies.

• The history paper is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MlCNcvZCv2q1XG6i-BHEByYvY4bNZ6-V/view?usp=sharing
• The PowerPoint PDF is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZuvQ-SVIu85Qh-ItiAblIAtagK9SnD-/view?usp=sharing

Michael also took numerous photos documenting the cemetery as he first found it, and as it slowly began to look like a proper burial ground through his (and two other volunteers') clean-up work. The photos above come from this collection. I am sharing the full collection below.

• The initial condition of the cemetery on November 10, 2024: click to view album
• The first clean-up efforts on February 28, 2025: click to view album
• Ongoing clean-up on March 2, 2025: click to view album
• The latest clean-up visit on March 9, 2025: click to view album (also a short video from this visit)

There remains a lot of work yet to be done, to complete the reading and restoration of the grave markers, maintain the cemetery, and, possibly, persuade the Lake County Parks Department to make it officially accessible to the public. Anyone who is interested in helping is invited to contact Michael White at fwmichaelwhite@gmail.com.


Here's a lovely sunset photographed from the Sturtevant Cemetery … or maybe it's a sunrise for the Sturtevant Cemetery?


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Image courtesy of Michael White.


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[1] This family name shows up in several spelling variations. In my blog I have been indexing it as "Sturtevant" just for the sake of consistency.

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.


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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.