Bastardy in Merrillville

Local historian Michael White, who has already contributed some interesting material to this blog, has been working at the Calumet Regional Archives and has shared some items he came across that relate to Hobart and Merrillville.

Among them is a disturbing transcript from 1846 of George Earle's interrogation, as a justice of the peace, of a 27-year-old woman named Rachel Campbell. Rachel had brought a complaint of bastardy against William Merrill (one of the brothers who in 1848 gave Merrillville its name). That is to say, of course, that she accused him of fathering her illegitimate child. As we get into the transcript, we find that her testimony brings up an even more serious accusation.

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William Merrill, born in Vermont in 1808, came to Lake County with his younger brother, Dudley, in 1836,[1] settling in the area that eventually became Merrillville. In 1842, he married the 20-year-old Caroline Campbell.[2] That is the earliest vital record I have been able to find for Caroline. From later censuses, we know she was born in Pennsylvania.

Rachel Campbell was also born in Pennsylvania, circa 1817. Her family left Pennsylvania sometime after 1839, and was living in Indiana by about 1846 (or perhaps earlier), as we see by the 1850 Census recording them in Portage Township, Porter County:


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The reason I believe this to be the Rachel Campbell in question is because the trial testimony states that she had a brother named Stephen; also, Rachel's age in 1850 agrees roughly with the age she gives in her 1846 testimony.

The two families are linked in other ways. Another brother listed on the 1850 census, Henry, turns up in Caroline Campbell Merrill's household in 1870. According to A Pictorial History of Merrillville, Caroline eventually sold her farm to Venila, listed as 11 years old in the 1850 census (and who in 1855 married Samuel White).

While it's impossible to establish with certainty the family relationship between Rachel and Caroline, since I can't trace either of them back any further than the early to mid-1840s, I believe they were sisters.

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The transcript of the questioning is a little spotty, but it establishes that the trial is taking place in August of 1846. Rachel starts her testimony with September 1845.


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Image from the Calumet Regional Archives (via Michael White).

At that time, Caroline Campbell Merrill was about six months' pregnant[3] and ill, though not bedridden.[4] Rachel was on an extended visit in Merrill house, probably to help Caroline with her two-year-old daughter and housework. The Merrill house, as Rachel describes it, sounds like a settler's cabin that had been added on to over the years: two sections, east and west (perhaps just two ground-floor rooms), with an upstairs room reached by a staircase in the east room. There was no interior door: to go from one room to the other, you had to walk outside.

One night around the middle of September 1845, Rachel testifies, she had gone to bed alone in the west room around 8 o'clock. (William and Caroline Merrill slept in the east room, and Orrin Pierce,[5] also staying there, slept in the upstairs room.) About an hour later, just as Rachel was drifting off to sleep, William Merrill came into her room, and to her bed. That night, she said, he had sex with her three times over the course of about two hours. Here are Rachel's responses to George Earle's questions:

Question   Had you and he made any previous bargain that he was to come there?

[Answer] No.

Question   Did you make any noise?

[Answer] Not a great deal.

Question   Did he ask you if he might have connection with you?

[Answer] I told him no.

In her laconic way, she is saying he raped her.

There is nothing in the testimony indicating that Rachel told Caroline about this incident. At some point she did tell her mother that William had had sex with her.

Rachel remained in the Merrill house for several more weeks, then apparently left, but returned in the latter part of October. Around the 18th or 20th of October, she says, William came to her in the middle of the night, this time in the east room, and woke her out of sleep to have sex with her again. That was the last time.

She later gave birth to a baby girl, whom she said had been fathered by William.

In another part of her testimony, we learn something interesting about Rachel.

Question   Are you married?

[Answer] I am not.

Question   Were you ever married?

[Answer] Never.

Question   Did you ever have any children before?

[Answer] One.

She had already had one child out of wedlock, at a time when this carried significant social stigma. Rachel was already bearing a social and emotional burden before September 1845. I do wonder how George Earle knew to pursue this line of questioning. Had William Merrill given him information that Caroline had told him privately? Or was Rachel's past indiscretion known among the locals?

At one point in the transcript, the writer notes that it is William ("the defendant") asking Rachel a question ("How old are you?"). I think it is possible that William is asking questions at other times that are not noted. If George Earle is the one asking the questions, evidently he is already familiar with William's defense to the charge of bastardy: namely, that someone else was the baby's father. William may have counted on Rachel's precarious social status to support his implication that she was sexually promiscuous. The questioning introduces two mysterious figures, Mr. Vandermark and Mr. Rowdabaum.

Question   Do you know a person by the name of Vandermark?

[Answer] I do.

. . .

Question   Did you and Mr. Vandermark stay in a house alone during any time between the 15 of September and the 20th of October last?

[Answer] No, at no time.

Question   Did you or did you [not?] stay alone with Mr. Vandermark in a house alone between the 15th day of September and 20th of October last?

[Answer] I did not.

Question   Did you or did you not go with Mr. Vandermark up to his house about the 25th day of October last?

[Answer] I went but don't know the time.

. . .

Question   Who went with you that night?

[Answer] My brother Stephen.

Question   Was Vandermark['s] wife at home?

[Answer] She was not home that night.

Question   Who slept in the room that night?

[Answer] Vandermark, Stephen and Rowdabaum & wife.

Question   Who slept with you?

[Answer] No body.

Question   Did Mr. Vandermark lay on the foot of your bed that night?

[Answer] He did not.

Question   Had you connection with Mr. Rowdabaum that night?

[Answer] I had not.

No doubt these two men existed, since Rachel says so herself, but I have searched in history books, censuses, and other records, using these names and variations I could think of (e.g., Van der Mark, Raudebaum) and failed to find the slightest bit of information about them.

We have nothing directly from William Merrill's side of the case. I do not know if he entirely denied ever having sex with Rachel, or rather said that it would be unfair to deem him the father when, as he seemingly argued, there were at least two other candidates.

Nor do we know the verdict in this case.


The original handwritten transcript, courtesy of the Calumet Regional Archives (via Michael White): click here

My transcription, with some punctuation and spelling altered for clarity: click here

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I am inclined to believe Rachel — maybe because I tend to root for the underdog. William Merrill was 38 years old, a family man, an established businessman, a justice of the peace,[6] among the most prominent citizens in his small town. Rachel was a 27-year-old single woman with skeletons in her closet, from an obscure farming family.

I do not know if this Campbell family was related to the more prominent Campbells of Porter County, some of whom also came from New York, like Rachel's father, Henry.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

That is to say — I assume Henry is her father. I should learn not to make assumptions, though. When I first started researching the case and found this family, I assumed that this census listing, like so many others I've seen, recorded a father and his six children. And I wondered what had become of Rachel's children! Now I realize they are probably hiding in plain sight, right there. Semira is four years old, just the age to have been born in 1846 to Rachel. And Venila, 11 years old, was born back in Pennsylvania when Rachel was about 22 years old: it is certainly possible that Venila was Rachel's first child.

As I've said, there were some Campbells in Porter County whose lives and deaths are recorded. These Campbells are not among them. These Campbells seem to have come out of nowhere and, for the most part, slipped away into the unknown: for example, Rachel's mother — I don't even know her name — who evidently was living in the 1840s, when Rachel told her of the incident with William, but who is nowhere to be found in the 1850 census. I cannot find any recorded death notice or grave for her.[7] Likewise, Henry Campbell (the elder), after the 1850 census, simply vanishes.

As for Rachel's brother, Stephen — well, I can find numerous Stephen Campbells after 1850, including some in Indiana, but none that I can positively connect with this family. The same goes for "Lou," the 22-year-old sister noted in the margin of the 1850 census — never positively identified again.

Rachel's brother Henry (and Rachel herself) may be at the Porter County Poor Farm in the 1860 census.[8] By 1870, Henry was in the household of Caroline Campbell Merrill. As you may know, William Merrill had died in 1860.

In 1875, Caroline married William's brother, Dudley (3 months after the death of his third wife). Their cozy household in 1880 does not include Henry Campbell. He, I believe, was in the Lake County "Asylum," aka the Poor Farm, which lists a 46-year-old native of Pennsylvania by that name among its inmates in the 1880 census. I can't trace Henry further than that. He may be lying in an unmarked grave on the former poor-farm grounds. Caroline, on the other hand, lived another nine comfortable years, dying in 1889.

While trying to trace little Semira Campbell of the 1850 census, I was surprised to find another young woman of about the same age, with the same unusual name; but the other Semira Campbell was born in Vermont, not Indiana. So the story of our little four-year-old is uncertain.

Rachel herself can be traced as far as 1860. If she was indeed in the Porter County Poor Farm in June 1860, when that census was taken, by the time the Lake County census was taken in July, we find her in Venila Campbell White's household, in Center Township, Lake County:


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

After that, I cannot find her living or dead.

Aside from Caroline, Venila is the only one whose life story I can follow to the end. In 1855, when she was about 16, she and Samuel White slipped over the border to Berrien County, Michigan, to be married. As we just saw above in the 1860 census, they came back to Center Township to farm and begin a family. I expect they were somewhere local in the 1870 census, though the search function on Ancestry.com can't find them. In 1880 they were farming in Ross Township. By 1900, they were living in the Merrillville area, no longer farming, but well fixed enough for Samuel to describe himself as a "capitalist." In 1908, Samuel died. The 1910 census shows Venila in Merrillville, living alone on her own income. In the spring of 1915, she decided to move to Cozad, Nebraska[9] to join her daughter, Sarah — her only surviving child — who in 1877 had married Byron Dutton. The following year, Venila died, and was brought home to Merrillville for burial.


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Cozad Local (Cozad, Dawson County, Nebr.), 25 Feb. 1916.

In all the censuses that asked for parents' birthplaces, Venila gave, as both her father's and her mother's birthplace, Pennsylvania — not New York, as she should have said if Henry Campbell, Sr., was her father. Now, this may reflect the inability of a stressed family to pass along its own history, or confusion in Venila's memory … but maybe she was right.


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[1] Lake County 1834-1872 at 38.
[2] Indiana Marriage Collection. She was his second wife, according to a family genealogy on Ancestry.com, his first having died circa 1836 after bearing two children. One of those children, George, is listed in the household of William and Caroline in the 1850 census.
[3] Caroline and William's son, John, was born December 30, 1845 (Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index).
[4] I am drawing this and the following information from the transcript, which I will append in full below. The questioning is hard to follow — it jumps from topic to topic, including topics that have no seeming relevance — so I have to piece together the various incidents as best I can.
[5] Orrin Pierce (1813-1895) came to Lake County from New York sometime in the early to mid-1840s; in June 1845 he married Ruth Vincent in Lake County.
[6] This we know from a document relating to another (less sensational) 1846 case involving William Merrill.
[7] There is one interesting stone in the Hebron Cemetery that is just legible enough to make out the surname Campbell and the death date in August 1850 (the census was taken in October).
[8] There is a listing in Center Township, Porter County, of a Henry Campbell who is approximately the right age, and a pauper at the Porter County Poor Farm, along with a Rachel Campbell, who is not the right age — but then whoever gave the enumerator his information did not even know where the two Campbells were born.
[9] "Merrillville," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 17 Mar. 1915.

Fannie Wheeler Smith

I have been meaning to post this ever since I wrote about Frank and B.E. Smith.

This is the obituary of their mother, Fannie Wheeler Smith.


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Hobart Gazette, 22 Sept. 1899.

I never cease to marvel at how much people traveled in the days when traveling was hard, slow, and miserable.

Fannie's husband, Henry, may have been fairly comfortable financially, if he handled his mill earnings and his Gold Rush money wisely, so perhaps when he died in 1856, he did not leave her in dire financial straits with four young children (or three children and a pregnancy). Nonetheless, the 1860 Census shows her working as a seamstress. By the summer of 1866, as we learn from B.B. Bale's obituary, she and her eldest surviving son, Frank, were operating a hotel together (although the article about the Bales' 60th wedding anniversary describes it as a "small boarding house").

The 1870 Census lists Fannie's occupation as "keeping house." She had only one minor child still at home, but also her 23-year-old daughter, Mariam Brock — who may have been widowed by then — and a little granddaughter. Still, it seems she no longer felt the need to earn money.

As I've mentioned before, I can't find her in the 1880 Census.

I do not know Fannie's middle name. If it began with E., her grave in Hobart Cemetery is marked. If not, then, apparently, it isn't.

Incidentally, Fannie's surviving sister, Mrs. M.H. Earle of Pasadena, was the divorced first wife of John Earle (George's son). They had been married in Lake County on April 12, 1854. I do not know when they were divorced.

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While I'm at it, here is the obituary of Mariam Smith Brock from the Hobart Gazette of November 6, 1909.


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Subtract 37 from 1909 and you get 1872 as the year her husband died; however, the writer did say "about thirty-seven years," so it's possible she was widowed when the 1870 Census recorded her living with her mother. I haven't been able to locate any record of John Brock's death.

Mariam was laid to rest beside her mother, says the article, and the NWIGS' book of Hobart Township cemetery listings records M.N. Brock next to F.E. Smith in row W4 of Hobart Cemetery. Neither stone has any information about birth or death or anything else.

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7/5/2023 update — Thanks to Suzi at the Hobart Historical Society for finding Fannie and Mariam in the 1880 census:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Fannie kept house, while Mariam worked as a dressmaker. Mariam now has a seven-year-old son as well as a daughter, so perhaps I was wrong in guessing that she had been widowed by 1870.

Letters to Fonso

It's 1897, and B.E. Smith has left Hobart to work as a teamster in Chicago. His older brother, Frank, remains in Hobart, dealing in groceries and writing business-like letters to B.E.


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The first is dated January 2th, 1897.

Fonso I shiped you 27 bush & 30 lbs at 22 per bush. You can get it Thursday & be shure & send the bags rite back & you speak a bout sum Potatoes if they are good you can send a Baral & I would like a barel of good onions & a baral box of good celery if good & cheap but don't want no frosen stock but if you can't send them as well as not let them go but if you can send them send them rite a way & if you want more corn send sacks & I will try & get sum more
Yours Resp[ectfully] F. Smith
If you could send Bbl of parsnips

The second is undated, but seems to involve the same 27 bushels, along with some advice about how B.E. should feed his horses:

Fonso I Paid the freight 144 [illegible scrawl]
If you ar feading oates be carfal in changing fead a little corn with the oate & salt well un till they get youst to the corn
Now if you can get me sum Potatos & sum good onions & sum good celer[y] jest as well as not & [illegible] or Rhodab Rhudabages they are jest the same to me
27 B 30# at 22 X  604
freight                    144
                                 748

That make the corn stand you a bout 27 per Bushul then let me no what it is worth then [or "there"?] is there ena [any?] saven [or "sance"?] in it
Cr BE S. 3.50

I will try to interpret these: Frank has sent Fonso 27 bushels plus 30 pounds of corn at 22 cents per bushel. He has shipped the corn in sacks and wants his sacks back right away. At least some of the corn is for Fonso's horses (he's a teamster, remember?); Frank is concerned that if Fonso has been feeding his horses oats, the sudden switch to corn will upset their stomachs, so he advises mixing the corn gradually into the oats.

Apparently Fonso, up in Chicago, is able to scout out good produce in the various wholesale markets, so Frank wants him to send a barrel of potatoes, a barrel of onions, and a box of celery, so long as it's not frozen (which was a possibility in January[1]). Oh, and a barrel of parsnips. Also, some [illegible] or some rutabagas; Frank doesn't care, [illegible] and rutabagas are just the same as far as he's concerned. (Part of the [illegible] looks like "bananas" to me, but in what universe are rutabagas and bananas just the same to anyone?)

All these barrels of potatoes, etc., would be resold in Hobart, I'm guessing.

The "and Son" part of this business was probably Frank's son, Henry Sylvester (born ca. 1879 and named for his grandfather).

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Frank's obituary, printed in the Hobart Gazette of January 21, 1927, gives some of the family history going back to Hobart's earliest days.


(Click on image to enlarge)

This part about Frank's father is interesting:

Henry S. and Fannie (Wheeler) Smith, natives of Pennsylvania, … emigrated to Ohio and later to Michigan in pioneer days. Mr. Smith visited City West as early as 1838, where he became a great friend of the Indians and learned their language, ways, customs and desires. The Smiths and the Wheelers came to Hobart together and were active in its early growth. This pioneer Smith built the first sawmill for the late George Earle and also the first gristmill which gave service to the community in those early days. When the Mexican War broke out, Mr. Smith became an Indian interpreter for the government and was with Gen. Freemont [sic] in the west. He later entered the gold rush to California but soon returned to Hobart where he died Aug. 5, 1856.

Henry Sylvester Smith is buried in the Old Settlers Cemetery.

It's also interesting that Frank's older brother, Charlie, was probably the first fatality of the Hobart sawmill. That accident would have occurred in 1846 if Frank was then two years old. I do not know where young Charlie is buried.

Nor do I know where Frank's three wives are buried. We know from the obituary that Clara Loague Smith died in 1913 and her death certificate states that she was buried in Hobart, but I can't find a record of her grave. Harriet Ferrin Smith died of tuberculosis on February 6, 1887, [2] but again I can't find a grave. In the case of the first wife, Rosana Eastwood Smith, I don't even know when she died.

As a Civil War veteran, Frank lies beneath a military marker that has nothing to say about his birth or death, only his service.

I've identified only five of the seven children that the obituary attributes to Frank. One was Almantha Smith Bullock, born ca. 1882. The others are Henry Sylvester (b. ca. 1879, as mentioned above), Eugene (ca. 1884), Charles (ca. 1897), and Loleta Smith Havrilla (ca. 1901).

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[1] To be perfectly honest, I don't know how they would prevent freezing during winter shipping in 1897. I'm profoundly ignorant of how wholesale produce was handled in Chicago in 1897.
[2] "Hobart Items," Crown Point Register, 10 Feb. 1887.

Jeremiah's Estate Administrator and His Evaluating Assistants

Following up on my earlier post about the contents of Jeremiah Wiggins' estate — I wanted to research the other names that came up on those inventory pages.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Image above and image below courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.



The administrator, James H. Cassady, is a mystery. The estate papers tell us that in addition to his administrator duties, he was a justice of the peace, so he must have been a fairly prominent citizen. But beyond these papers, I can find no evidence that he ever lived in Lake County, Indiana, though he did own land here: Early Land Sales, Lake County shows him, in 1839, buying some 120 acres in Township 36 N., Range 9 W., Section 18 — i.e., what is now south Hammond. Still, I can't find him in any census or other record. He's not mentioned in any of my usual local history books, nor does he show up in any of the Hobart-area ledgers I've indexed thus far.

But he's all over these papers, and apparently was a friend of George Earle: this page, from the Wiggins papers, records that James Cassady and George Earle posted $400 bond to ensure that they "truly & faithfully discharge the duties" of administrator of Jeremiah's estate.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

Note how James uses the old-fashioned long s. And below that, we see George Earle's familiar signature.


The first of James' assistants is Charles Walton. We have met him before, under sad circumstances. I still can't find him anywhere except the 1840 Census of Lake County, which doesn't tell us much about him, and the indexed ledgers, where he shows up only in 1839 and 1840.


Next we have Levi D. Jones. According to the Hobart ledgers, he was in this area by the summer of 1840, but I can't find him in the 1840 Census. He does show up in 1850 and 1860, farming in Ross Township. In the 1850 Census he is married to Elizabeth (Vanvolkenburg), whom he married in 1847 per the Indiana Marriage Collection. There are two children in the household, one of whom, a seven-year-old boy named Homer, could not be a child of this marriage. The other is a year-old girl named Louisa. In 1856 Levi D. Jones is recorded marrying Lucy Sly in Lake County; if that is our Levi, I wonder what happened to Elizabeth? When the 1860 Census comes around, we find Levi D. Jones farming in Ross Township, living with an 11-year-old girl, Mary L., whose relation to him is not described, while Homer Jones is now living in the household of Abram Vanvolkenburg. Elizabeth, Louisa,[1] and Lucy are nowhere to be found. And that is as far as I can trace any of them.


The third assistant, David Fowler, shows up in the Hobart-area ledgers as early as October 1836, and makes appearances through 1841 (at this point in my indexing). The 1840 Census also records him, in a household of 11 people, in what appears to be western Ross Township — the same area where he, circa 1843, purchased 80 acres of land.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the 1874 Plat Map. By that time, David Fowler's land was owned by George Nicholson.

The Indiana Marriage Collection records David Fowler marrying Rebeca Deyo (or Dezo) in 1840, and the 1850 Census places them, with two children, in Cedar Creek Township, where apparently David died in 1860.


The last of these assistants is Michael "Stieckelman," but we will use the spelling on his grave marker in the Merrillville Cemetery: Steichelman. He was born in Germany in 1800, and there married and began a family. According to a findagrave.com biography of his daughter, the family came to the U.S. circa 1835 and to Indiana about 1837. It was a relatively small family for those days: just Michael, his wife Margaret, and their two children, Mary and John. The 1840 Census shows five people in the household, so one is unidentified.

Here is a page from an unknown Hobart-area merchant's ledger showing Michael purchasing nails and thread in 1840.


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

If he ever bought land here, I have not found a record of it. That record may be hidden by some creative spelling of his name; I have seen many variations.

By the 1850 Census the family had moved to Illinois. So I don't know why, when Michael died in 1851, his remains were brought back here for burial. According to a note on the findagrave.com entry for Michael's wife, Margaret, she died in 1880 and was buried in the Merrillville Cemetery, but later her remains were moved to the cemetery in Iowa where their daughter is buried. The only other Steichelman in the Merrillville Cemetery is a little girl, Hattie, born to Michael and Margaret's son, John. He had married Mary Towl in 1855. After John was killed in the Civil War, Mary remarried and is now buried in Kansas.


Well, it was interesting to look into these names, but I didn't learn a whole lot. How these people flitted through our early local history, leaving so few traces! They didn't know, apparently, that the purpose of their lives was to furnish material for amateur historians' blogs.


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[1] [Jan. 2026 update: Now that I think about it a little more, I bet that Louisa from the 1850 census and Mary L. from the 1860 census are the same person. But I still don't know what happened to her after 1860.]

Running Earle's Mill

When I wrote about John Premer earlier, I noted that he gave his occupation in the 1850 Census as "miller." This page from the daybook I'm working on now shows George Earle hiring John in February 1850 to run the Hobart grist mill for him.


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

In July 1850, for some reason the A. Spencer who'd been boarding George Earle along with the orphaned John and Philip Hodson "left keeping house," and his boarders had to find a new place to stay. John and Philip went to "Mr. Premer" — John Premer, I suppose, in the "miller's house" mentioned on the page above.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society. The "J. Butler day book" mentioned in this entry has not been digitized yet.

George Earle went to board with a Mr. Turner. I think that was probably J.L. Turner, whose name turns up in the ledgers a few times around 1850 and 1851, and whom we find in the 1850 census[1] in Hobart:


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

Odd that the enumerator writes "Unknown" for all the family members' birthplaces. The Turner family is elusive: I can't find any of them before or after 1850.

As we've previously seen, by the time the 1850 census was taken in October, George Earle and the two orphan boys were back in the same household.


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[1] The enumerator recorded J.L. Turner's household right next to John Premer's, not that that proves anything.

George Earle and the Orphans

On this page of the 1848 daybook, we find some clues to the identity of its keeper.


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

On October 22, 1849, the writer made an agreement with Mr. Spencer whereby the writer, along with John and Philip, will board at the Spencer place (and wash their quilts) for $2.50 per week, including the use of the household soap and some of the household potatoes, while John will chop wood for the stove. But as for candles, "G.E." agrees to supply his own — now, who could that be but George Earle?

And indeed, when I went looking in the 1850 Census for households that contained both a John and a Philip, I found the George Earle household:


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

George himself is listed as the head of the household. Mary is his wife (and Charles Devonshire, listed last, is probably Mary's father). John G(eorge) E(dward) is George and Mary's son. Mary Ann may be one of George's twelve siblings.[1]

But who were these Hodson boys, John and Philip, and why were they living in the Earle household?

Looking in my index, I find I've encountered the name Hodson before, most significantly in an earlier daybook. In the autumn of 1845, we find the writer dealing with the estate of W. Hodson:


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

This is apparently a crop of oats that W. Hodson did not live to harvest — 7 bushels to "G.E."; 24 bushels to E. Saunders; the money to the Hodson estate.

In October 1848, we find the writer making another payment to E. Saunders to cover boarding two of the Hodson boys, William and Philip:


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

I am convinced that Mr. Saunders' first name was Edward, and that he bought part of the farm that had belonged to the estate of William Hodson, Sr.

William Hodson was in LaPorte County for the 1840 Census, apparently, but by 1843 Early Land Sales shows him buying two parcels in Ross Township. One parcel of 40 acres, the northwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 8, R. 7 W., lies north of Big Maple Lake and is now owned by the Lake County Parks Department. The other parcel was the full southeast quarter (160 acres) of Section 12, R. 8 W. — which eventually passed into Bullock and Markham hands, and was the site of the Bullock homestead. But earlier, in 1845 (according to Early Land Sales) the west 80 acres of that latter parcel was purchased by Edward Sanders.[2]

To try to fill in the rest of the story, we have to turn to information supplied by anonymous people online — specifically, information on findagrave.com and a family tree compiled on Ancestry.com. According to these anonymous online sources, William Hodson, Sr. was born in England in 1800, and there, in 1830, married Ann Lister; they then set sail to America. A daughter was born at sea;[3] some three children were born in Pennsylvania, including one of these sons we've found mentioned in the daybooks — John, born in 1835. The last two boys were born in Lake County, Indiana: William, Jr. in 1841 and Philip in 1844.

In 1845, both parents died — Ann in February and William, Sr. in March. Both are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery.

Then Edward Saunders, also an Englishman by birth, bought some of the Hodson land, and I suppose it was logical enough for him to agree to board some of the orphaned children. What I'm wondering is — why did George Earle take on the responsibility of arranging and paying for their board, whether with Mr. Saunders or Mr. Spencer? Was there some family connection? Was it his duty as executor of the estate? Or was he just acting from the kindness of his heart?

There were also three surviving daughters, ranging in age from 15 to 8, who (so far) have not been mentioned in the daybooks. If I had more time, I'd trying to trace them.[4]


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[1] Most of what I know about the Earles comes from Dorothy Dunning Ballantyne's pamphlet, George Earle and Family of Hobart, Indiana (Hobart Historial Society, 1972). Copies can be purchased at the Hobart Historical Society museum.
[2] Early Land Sales designated that land and hundreds of nearby acres as "Canal Land." I don't know the story behind that, and I haven't got time to research it.
[3] William and Ann married in May 1830, their first child was born in June 1830 and survived. Also, according to the family tree on Ancestry.com, that child (among others) is buried in Ainsworth, Iowa.
[4] According to Lake County Encyclopedia (p. 145), during the Civil War a Miss Elizabeth Hodson went from Lake County to nurse the sick and wounded at a military hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; I think this is the daughter born at sea in 1830. That is all I know of the daughters' histories.

Lumber for the Lake County Courthouse, 1849

I have begun indexing the daybook of the "Hobart Mills," which begins in 1846.


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

On February 9, 1849, we find this entry for "lumber delivered and hauled to Crown Point for the Court House."



This frame court house was being built to replace the old log structure that had served as a courthouse since 1840, when Crown Point became the county seat.

The builder of the new courthouse was Jeremy Hixon, who appears on the February 9 entry as the recipient of the lumber. The courthouse's architect was George Earle himself.[1]

I have found only one image of this frame courthouse …


(Click on image to enlarge)

… which comes from Courthousehistory.com, where you can also find an image of the old log courthouse, as well as early images of the 1878 brick courthouse that we all know and love.

The "J. Premer" who hauled the lumber to Crown Point was probably John Premer — I have seen that name often throughout the 1840s (and as early as 1837) in the ledgers I have indexed. I shall write a little about him and his family in another post.

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[1] T.H. Ball, Lake County, Indiana, From 1834 to 1872 (Chicago: J.W. Goodspeed, 1873), p. 163, https://books.google.com/books?id=TjvWAAAAMAAJ.

A Mill Saw for George Earle

This receipt dated April 13, 1846 was among some loose papers stored in a merchant's daybook from the 1840s belonging to the Hobart Historical Society. It shows "Mr. Matthews" making some purchases in a Chicago store: a mill saw and other building hardware (nails and a hammer, screws, door handles, sashes, a can of putty, and rectangles of glass).


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Notes on the back of the receipt bring George Earle into it.



The last line gives an amount "due P.G.M." I believe that is the Mr. Matthews of the receipt — Peter G. Matthews, who shows up now and then in the daybook's entries. One entry records his coming to board with the keeper of the daybook in February 1846. Here, in an entry from May 16, 1846, Peter is being reimbursed because he spent some of his own money on purchases for someone else in Chicago:



In another entry on the right-hand page, P.G. Matthews buys a pair of boots for $2.00.

So this person was in the Hobart area, it seems, and was involved somehow in the building of George Earle's saw mill at Hobart; but I cannot identify him in any local census, or any other official record anywhere. An inscription on the flyleaf of another daybook (which I haven't even begun indexing) indicates that he came from Canada.



Adding that information to the search on Ancestry.com doesn't help me. Peter G. Matthews remains a mystery.

Tent to Tent in Three Generations

Maybe Grandpa George Earle did not actually sleep in a tent when he first came to the Liverpool area in the mid-1840s, but I'm sure he "roughed it" to some degree out of necessity. Here's Grandson George Earle, visiting the same area and roughing it for fun in 1923.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette, May 18, 1923.

Does anyone know where Pine Street was (or is)? I can't find it on the present-day map.

Over in the right-hand column, we see that the campgrounds on the Yellowstone Trail (Cleveland Avenue) were open for another tourist seasons.

Richard Earle

Here are a couple of pages from the 1835 Liverpool ledger where I encountered a new (to me) name: Richard Earle.


(Click on images to enlarge)
This image and the one below courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.




I thought that his presence in this brand-new town with George Earle meant that there must be some family relation, so I started poking around, and fell down a rabbit hole.


The Hobart Historical Society has a genealogical file on the Earle family, and also sells a 1972 booklet by Dorothy Dunning Ballantyne: George Earle and Family of Hobart, Indiana. Both sources state that George Earle had a brother named Richard. Anonymous typewritten genealogies in the file give Richard's birth year as either 1811 or 1814. (In either case he would have been old enough to be doing business in Liverpool in 1836.) One genealogy in the file, entitled "Kinship of John Earle," further states that Richard had at least two children, Joseph (b. 1839) and Edwin (birth year unknown).

Then we look in Hobart's census records. The only place we find a Richard Earle is in the 1860 Census. He is in the household of John and Miriam Earle (George's son and first daughter-in-law). Richard, who is relatively prosperous, is described as a builder, born in England, 40 years old — not quite right, but close (as you might expect if you're getting your information from a nephew).


(Click on image to enlarge)


Here's where things get confusing. A couple of Ancestry.com users have compiled family trees that include Richard Earle. These users think Richard was living in Iowa in 1860, and they have evidence to back that up: the census of Westfield Township, Fayette County, Iowa records a Richard Earle, 45 years old, born in England, a "laborer" but slightly more prosperous than the Hobart Richard Earle.


(Click on image to enlarge)


And among his children are sons named Joseph and Eddy — which could be Edwin, thus making this information agree with the genealogy at the Hobart Historical Society.

It's possible that Richard was counted twice, if he split his time between Iowa and Indiana.

In a statewide business directory published in 1862[1] we find evidence that Richard Earle was still doing business in Hobart at that time:


(Click on image to enlarge)


It's interesting that he is listed as a cabinet-maker, because one of the Iowa family trees on Ancestry.com includes this image of a "guide" for cabinet-makers and upholsterers, on which one Richard Earle of Falmouth [England], where George Earle was born, proudly wrote his name in 1835:


(Click on image to enlarge)


The records compiled by the Iowa contingent show that soon after making his appearance in our ledger in 1836, Richard left Indiana. In 1838, in Stephenson County, Illinois, he married a Catherine Brown.[2] The 1850 Census finds the couple and their young children still in Stephenson County, in the town of Freeport; Richard describes himself as a carpenter. The next census, as we've seen, records Richard and his family in Iowa (and Richard alone in Hobart). In the 1870 Census of Westfield Township, Fayette County, Iowa, Richard gives his occupation as miller.

This 1878 History of Fayette County, Iowa, records that Richard Earle got into the mill business in a town called Albany:



Albany has been wiped off the map even more thoroughly than Ainsworth. I found a website devoted to its history; towards the bottom of the site are some excerpts from "Chats with Old Timers" (a series that ran in a local paper in the 1930s-40s, I gather) that include someone's misremembering the mill owner as George, not Richard, Earle.

Richard was appointed postmaster of "West Albany" (which may have been something like "East Ainsworth") in 1872[3], thus finally matching George on that score, too.



Richard died in 1879 and is buried in Fayette County, Iowa.

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I wish I knew what the point of all this is, because I just spent about two solid days gathering this information and writing it up.

In conclusion, I will just say: I think you should name towns after all your living brothers, or none of them. Playing favorites is not nice.


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[1] Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011: Third Edition of Geo W Hawes and Co's Indiana State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1862-63.
[2] Ancestry.com. Illinois, Compiled Marriages, 1791-1850 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1997. Original data: Dodd, Jordan, Comp.. Electronic transcription of marriage records held by the individual counties in Illinois.
[3] Ancestry.com. U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971. NARA Microfilm Publication, M841, 145 rolls. Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group Number 28. Washington, D.C.: National Archives.

Updated Index to Ledgers, with Bonus George Earle Autographs

I finished indexing the ledger that begins in 1835, so I have posted an updated index to the Index page.

And here's a page from that ledger with George Earle's autograph (four times).


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


The reason I think that is his autograph (as opposed to the ledger-writer's signing his name for him) is that these receipts are among several others on the latter pages of the ledger, each of which has a name signed in distinctive handwriting, e.g.:



The first receipt on this page is made out to "Nath Davis," which could be an abbreviation of "Nathaniel Davis." That might explain the confusion between Timothy H. Ball and the other sources on Liverpool history as to whether the Mr. Davis who was there at the town's beginning had been christened John or Nathaniel — there were two Mr. Davises attending the birth of Liverpool. Both of them show up in this ledger.

One Pair of Boots for George Earle

Here's another image from the account book that begins in 1835.


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


I don't know why the transaction had to be so complicated, but I hope Mr. Earle got his boots and was happy with them. Perhaps he needed them to muck around with a team of oxen for half a day.

On the top of the right-hand page, the book-keeper wrote "Liverpool Sep 27 1837." The previous page covered September 25-27, 1836. The next page (not reproduced here) begins September 29, 1836. I think that 1837 is a mistake … but I'm trying very hard not to make assumptions. So I indexed it as 09/27/1837?. I'm really wondering what was going through the writer's head that caused him to specify Liverpool when he hadn't on the other pages and it was just another day of business in 1836.

Breakfast at Liverpool

It's April of 1836, and "Dr. Merchant" has left LaPorte, apparently, as he notes at the top of a fresh page (on the right-hand side) in his account book: "Town of Liverpool."


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


A little history, from Howat's A Standard History of Lake County, Indiana, and the Calumet Region (1915):

Either in the later part of 1835, or the fore part of 1836, two Philadelphia men, John C. Davis and Henry Frederickson, and a Western promoter, John B. Chapman, blocked out the town. … The new town on Deep River obtained such notice that during the first sale of lots, which covered three days in 1836, the proprietors realized $16,000. Among the purchasers was John Wood, the builder of Wood's Mill on Deep River. He and a friend bought nine Liverpool lots for $2,000; and many years afterward, when Liverpool had been almost as completely erased from the county map as Indiana City, he would bring forth the deed to his "city property" as a unique relic. The paper was written by John B. Niles, then an attorney, and acknowledged before Judge Samuel C. Sample, of Porter County.

Goodspeed (1882) mentions the same three people — Davis, Frederickson, Chapman — and reprints a survey of the town dated January 30, 1836, by a Newton K. Smith. Ball (1904) gives Mr. Davis' first name as Nathaniel, not John — don't know what to make of that.

The first entry on the account-book page above is "To expenses down to Survey Town — [$]15." That suggests to me that the writer might have been one of the people involved in getting the town surveyed, i.e., John/Nathaniel Davis, Henry Frederickson, or John Chapman.

A few items further down, we find this entry from May 25, 1836: "John's Breakfast 18 ½ [cents]." We've already identified several Johns who could be at the nascent town of Liverpool in the spring of 1836 … but who among them needed his breakfast paid for by someone else? And who among them would have been referred to by his first name, at a time when first names were reserved for use by family members or close friends?

We know, of course, that George Earle had a son named John, who would have been about 3 years old in 1836. We also know that George Earle arrived in Liverpool in 1836 (per Ball) … but would he bring his toddler son to such a place?

If we go back a few pages in the account book, to LaPorte in 1835, we find transactions with "H. Fredrickson," "J.B. Chapman" and "J.C. Davis." Which suggests that the writer wasn't any of these three, but knew them.

… But I've gone off on a tangent and delayed my indexing work, so I'll shut up now. Mystery unsolved.

Timber Required for a Grist Mill

For the Hobart Historical Society's digitizing project, we were photographing what I described as a "day book (owner unknown) recording sales of merchandise, payments on accounts, workers' hours and wages, other miscellaneous information, 1836-1846." Among other loose scraps stored between the leaves of the day book, we found this list of "timber required for a grist mill."


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

"The timber to be hewn square and free from Bark & of a uniform size so as to answer without counter hewing."

On the other side, we find a date of May 20, 1846 …



… which I suppose would put it in the time frame of the planning stages for Hobart's famous old mill. I'd like to think that here we have the recipe for the old mill in George Earle's own handwriting, but of course I can't say for sure!

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[1/19/2018 update] After more indexing work with the ledgers, especially those dating close to 1846, I am feeling more confident that the grist-mill recipe above is indeed in George Earle's own handwriting. I certainly could be wrong — I am not a handwriting expert, and I had to make assumptions and comparisons that could be mistaken.

Here is what I used for comparison: first, I had posted what I believed to be George Earle's signature, which I found in the ledger that begins in 1835. The signature has a distinctive style, especially in the way he forms his G. As for the text above each signature, I didn't know if that was in George Earle's hand, but was inclined to think not.

While indexing the daybook that begins in 1836 — the one where I originally found the list of "timber required for a grist mill" — I came across another interesting loose piece of paper:


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


There's that distinctive signature again, only this time, I think the same hand wrote the text above the signature as well. The writing just looks the same.

Comparing this loose sheet, as well as the signatures we saw earlier, to the list of timber above, I see some clear similarities in the writing — particularly in the style of the capital G and M, as well as the general slant and the joining of the letters.

But as I said, I am not a handwriting expert, and I could be wrong. If we ever get our hands on some writing that is definitely known to be George Earle's own, we will be in a better position to compare.

Before It Was the McAuliffe Farm

The reason George Earle had 80 acres to sell to Timothy McAuliffe, Sr., in 1867 was because he had bought those 80 acres from the State of Indiana in 1854:


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Jocelyn Hahn Johnson.

(The verso can be seen here.)



(The verso can be seen here.)

So it was considered swampland, apparently, when George Earle bought it.

I Can't Understand, Either

Here's some kind of rant about George Earle's grandson, William, and while I don't understand exactly what the problem is, it's interesting to note the lack of reverence (in 1922) for the son and grandsons of Hobart's founder.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Hobart News 2 Mar. 1922.

Timothy McAuliffe, Sr. Buys the Farm

Here we have Timothy McAuliffe, Sr., buying 80 acres from George Earle in 1867:


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Jocelyn Hahn Johnson.





And Timothy Sr.'s 80 acres, from the 1874 Plat Map:


(Click on image to enlarge)