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.


(Click on image to enlarge)
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:


(Click on image to enlarge)
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:


(Click on image to enlarge)
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.

The Mysterious Mr. Fish

Here we have J.V. Johns collecting some money from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate. First, for his services to the estate as a clerk:


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

My transcription:

Redeemed November 18, 1839 of James H. Cassady
Administrator of the Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins
deceased $2.00 in full for services as Clerk of the sale
of Personal property of said Estate, and other writing[?]
for said Estate

J.V. Johns

And secondly, for hay he sold to Jeremiah indirectly:


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

My transcription:

The Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins Dr.
To J.V. Johns Dr.

To 6 Tons of hay used by
the Wiggins, bot by me
of one Fish, who was a
tenant of the land[?] of Wiggins
@ $2.50 dollars per ton $15.00

I have already talked about J.V. Johns a couple of times. To the bits of information we have on him, I want to add this anecdote from Solon Robinson:[1]

J. V. Johns was elected sheriff this August [1839] election, H.N. Brooks was his opponent. The election was contested and created some excitement at the time. … (One witness testified that he would not vote for either, because one was a drunkard and the other a black-guard — too true.)

I'm not clear whether J.V. Johns was supposed to be the drunkard or the blackguard. His elaborate signature, above, looks as if it were written with a steady hand, so maybe he was the blackguard.

The second paper introduces another character — this tenant of Wiggins, whose surname was Fish. Without a first name, or even initial, it's impossible to identify him. Among the early settlers of Lake County listed by T.H. Ball[2] we find E.T. Fish and John Fish, who came here in 1837. But that is the first and last mention of either in any history book I can find. They don't appear in the 1840 census.

I've also encountered a Fish in an 1830s daybook at the Hobart Historical Society museum. This entry, dated September 10, 1837, shows him buying a large number of household items …


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

… and paying for them by selling the merchant 6 tons of hay and a promissory note signed by one of the Wilkinsons.

Fish's first initial is unclear: it might be M or W, or maybe that's just Mr. Fish — meaning the merchant didn't know his first name any better than we do.

Below Mr. Fish, J.V. Johns shows up. That's just coincidence — OR IS IT????


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[1] Lake County 1929 at p. 52.
[2] Lake County 1834-1872 at p. 56.

Echoes of an Ancient Lawsuit

Here is the next episode of "James H. Cassady, Estate Administrator."


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

My transcription:


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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.

♦    ♦    ♦
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.

David Fowler, Appraiser

The estate administrator, James H. Cassady, hired David Fowler to appraise the property of the late Jeremiah Wiggins. David spent a day doing so, and earned $2.00 for it (about $70 in today's money).

This document was submitted to the administrator to claim the $2.00, and David also noted above his signature that he received his pay:


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:

James H. Cassady Dr.
To David Fowler

For 1 Day services appraising the property of Jeremiah Wiggins $2.__

October 1st, 1838.
Red [received] pay't
D. Fowler

For some unknown reason, a separate receipt was made out and signed:



Transcription:

Red Nov. 18, 1839
of James H. Cassady, Two dollars [being?] in full for 1 day's services for appraising the Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins deceased

D. Fowler

[illegible]
J.V. Johns

What the elusive J.V. Johns had to do with this, I do not know. It might help if I could read that word above his name.

Here are the two document backs; I'm not entirely sure which goes with which document.






David Fowler was born in 1797, in New York (1850 Census).[1] From information posted by a user on Ancestry.com, I gather that he spent time in Canada and Michigan. In 1836 he came to Lake County (Lake County, 1834-1872 at 38). He was married and had children, but his first wife, Mary, died sometime after 1830.

In mid-January 1840, he bought 80 acres northwest of Merrillville (Early Land Sales, Lake County at 175). Later that month, he married Rebecca Deyo (Indiana Marriage Collection), about whom I haven't been able to find much information.

Around 1850, the Fowler family moved to a farm northeast of Lowell. There David Fowler died in February 1860. According to the 1860 mortality schedule, he died of "gravel" — kidney stones, I suppose, or complications thereof.

He is buried in Lowell Memorial Cemetery. Rebecca Fowler remarried in 1863, to Alvah Brownell.

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[1] Someone has posted to Ancestry.com the image of a petition dated August 1819 in which David Fowler (whose signature resembles the one on our documents) claims to have been born in Canada.

A Bull Named David Crockett

It's 1844, and a local man has named his bull after David Crockett … a folk hero even in Indiana, it seems.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


H.D. Palmer was Dr. Henry Disberry Palmer, "the first graduate or regular physician to reside in Lake County," according to History of Lake County and the Calumet Region (which also says he was a judge for 17 years). At the approximate location of his home on 73rd Avenue is a historical marker that also credits him with being "a member of the underground railroad aiding escaped slaves." (The Indiana Historical Bureau reviewed that statement and found it unverifiable.[1])

Lake County Encyclopedia has a sketch of Dr. Palmer's life … which brings us back around to J.V. Johns, whose orphaned son Dr. Palmer reared to adulthood.


(And the second page in the image above brings us back to Richard Earle, if I'm not mistaken.)

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[1] Investigating the history of the underground railroad in Indiana (or anywhere) must be frustrating, since this network was very loosely organized, operated in secret and kept no written records.

A Wrench Named Johns

In the Hobart Historical Society's 1835 ledger (which I just finished indexing) are some loose pages tucked into the back of the book. Two of them bear the name Joshua V. Johns.


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




Now I'm thinking back to the breakfasts at Liverpool and wondering if the writer meant — not John's breakfast but Johns' breakfast? That would throw a wrench into the works of my theory that "John" was a first name there.

Joshua V. Johns is an elusive figure. I have found a Joshua Vaughan Johns of LaPorte County, Indiana, buying some land in 1837:


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


In Lake County, Indiana, on June 16, 1845, Joshua V. Johns married Caroline Matilda Demmon:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image via FamilySearch.org.


Beyond that, I cannot find any records of Joshua V. Johns, although he was a pretty busy person around Liverpool in the mid-1830s according to that ledger.

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[1/11/2018 update] Alice Smedstad, who is in the process of researching everyone buried in the Merrillville Cemetery, points out to me that one of her subjects, Dr. John W. Johns, was the son of Joshua and Caroline. Per his biography in Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard), his parents died when he was only eight years old, which helps to explain why they are so elusive, but not, of course, why I can't find them in the censuses of 1850 and 1840.