Losing Lucy

I missed the good part, back when I wrote up a short bio of Levi D. Jones. The good part is how he lost his third(?) wife in August 1857, half a year after marrying her:[1]


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Crown Point Register, 4 Aug. 1857.

It gets even better: apparently, he got her back for a while, and then lost her again in February 1858.


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Crown Point Register, 16 Feb. 1858.

In case you can't read it:

WARNING

This is to forbid all persons harboring or trusting my wife Lucy Jones, after this date, as she has left my bed and board, without just cause or provocation.

Levi. D. Jones
Ross February 11th, 1858.

I don't think he found her again after that. In the 1860 Census, Levi is living with (I believe) his daughter from the previous marriage, and no one else. Lucy is back home with her parents:[2]


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Notice the three "Jones" children and their ages in the census — George (9), Sydney (4), and Mary (2) — and remember that Lucy married Levi Jones in December 1856. So George can't be the product of that marriage, and Sydney also is questionable.

Let's take a little detour, and speed over to George's death in 1924. According to his death certificate, his parents were Lucy Sly …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… and Jacob Bigelow. I have not been able to find any record of marriage between those two. Nor can I positively identify Jacob Bigelow.[3]

As for Sydney, people on Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com believe he was actually Seneca Bigelow, born to Jacob and Lucy (Sly) Bigelow in November 1853.

But getting back to Lucy — we next catch up with her in July 1864, when she married William Brown in Berrien County, Michigan.[4] That was just an elopement, I believe; their permanent home was Porter County, where we find them in the 1880 Census:[5]


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The interesting thing we learn here (aside from the fact that Lucy is completely illiterate) is that William has a 25-year-old stepson named Simon Bigelow. Maybe the enumerator got Seneca/Sydney's name wrong, or maybe that's his middle name.

William Brown died in 1897. In August 1902, Lucy married Samuel Scott, who was some 35 years her junior. The marriage did not work out:


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La Porte County News (Union Mills, Ind.), 12 Feb. 1903.

Somewhere, perhaps in the next world, Levi D. Jones was laughing.

Lucy died in Michigan City in 1912. Here is her death certificate:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Martha Eckert, the informant, was Lucy's daughter. I find it interesting that Martha didn't know her maternal grandmother's name. Also, Lucy is described as widowed, but Samuel Scott outlived her by 30-plus years.

If you have the urge to stand at Lucy's grave and pay your respects, you'll need to go to Michigan City.

Seneca/Sydney/Simon Bigelow died, alas, in Chicago in 1941, meaning that his death certificate is not readily available and his obituary does not give his family background.

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[1] Per the Indiana Marriage Collection, they took out a marriage license in July 1857, and married in December 1857.
[2] Their farm was probably in west-southwestern Ross Township, based on the few of their neighbors I've been able to find on the 1874 Plat Map. (By 1874, Lucy's parents and married brother Russell had relocated to Michigan, and both parents had died.)
[3] Someone by that name was buying land in Porter County in 1837, but I can't find him in any census in this area. There was also a Jacob Bigelow involved in the planning City West (see Lake County 1929 at 183). I just don't know if that was the man who married Lucy Sly.
[4] Ancestry.com. Michigan, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1822-1940 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
[5] Neither I nor anyone else, apparently, can find them in the 1870 census.

Selling Off Jeremiah's Stuff (Part 1) and a Mystery Wiggins

On October 4, 1838, settlers gathered at Wiggins' Point to buy up the worldly goods left behind by Jeremiah Wiggins, who had died about two months before.

Here is the first page of the record that J.V. Johns kept of who bought what and for how much, and whether they paid in cash or a promissory note.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:


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With one exception, we have seen these names before and turned up whatever information we could about them.

The exception is Wiatt Wiggins. I have not been able to determine whether he was any relation to Jeremiah. In fact, I haven't been able to find out a single thing about him. These estate papers contain the only mention of him I have ever seen. He's absent from the local histories and from the 1840 Census.[1] His name hasn't surfaced in the early merchants' records at the Hobart Historical Society museum — that is, not in the ones I have indexed so far.

If Wiatt were any kind of close relation to Jeremiah, like a brother, I would expect him to inherit Jeremiah's goods, not have to buy them at a sale like any non-relative. On the other hand, I don't know what the Indiana laws of intestate succession were in 1838.

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[1] On Ancestry.com, I found a family tree that included a Wyatt Wiggin whose father was named Jeremiah! But that Jeremiah died in 1876.

Schoolteachers, Fall Term, 1886

While searching for something else, I came across this mildly interesting list of schoolteachers in Lake County for the fall term of 1886.


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Crown Point Register, 25 Nov. 1886.

"Names and addresses," it says at the top, so perhaps the towns are where they lived but not necessarily where they were teaching, although where they lived would seem to be less important.

Many of these names are familiar.

Among the teachers in Ainsworth, if Alice Palmer was living there she must have been teaching there as well; otherwise she would have stayed at her father's home in Merrillville.

I wonder if A.H. Swain was related to our 1904 Grand Trunk station agent, P.H. Swain? I can't find out anything about either of them.

The only Charles Jones I can find in the 1880 Census would have been about 19 years old in 1886 — old enough to teach school. His father was a farmer named James. His mother, in the 1870 Census, is named Eliza, but in 1880 she's Jennie. Stepmother, or just using her middle name? Eliza J. Jones shows up in the 1890 Plat Book owning 142 acres in Section 19. Much of that land, I believe, was later purchased by Michael Weiler. Beyond that, I can't find out anything about Charles or his family.[1]

Kate Marble was the daughter of Horace and Mary Ellen (Booth). In June 1887 she married John Wesley Ott.


I don't have the time or energy today to look into all the names listed under Merrillville and Hobart, many of which are familiar. I will just say that among the Hobart teachers, Mary Sullivan was known to all Ainsworthites, and the Gadsbys were a teaching family, as well as being active in the Union Sunday School: here George is listed with two daughters, Annie and Nettie.

Just for search-engine purposes, I will list all the Hobart, Ainsworth, and Merrillville surnames list that I haven't discussed: Booth, Collins, Cook, Davis, Flick, Frazier, Halfman, Kern, Nash, Parks, Pattee, Smith, Spencer, Spray, Zuvers.


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[1] The 1860 Census shows a 25-year-old Jacob Jones working as a stagecoach driver and living with Lewis Merrill, stagecoach proprietor. The age is right for this to be our James, and of course James is the Anglicized form of Jacob.

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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.]

So Where Was Albert Weiler's Farm?

That was what I asked myself in a recent post.

Albert, like the rest of the Weilers, is still something of a mystery to me. Thus far I've found out that he was born on November 10, 1888* to Michael and Fredericka Weiler (Indiana Death Certificates). Per the 1920 Census he farmed rented land … which might have been a farm of some 120 acres belonging to a Michael Weiler (his father?), shown here in the 1926 Plat Book:


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That farm was next door to William Foreman's, so any roving dogs would not have had far to go to kill geese on both farms in one night. In terms of what's there today — I guess all those times we've visited the Albanese candy factory, we've been walking on the old Weiler farm (just my estimate; I haven't checked the legal description of that land).

Michael Weiler bought that land in late 1899 or early 1900 from heirs of J.P. Jones.** In the 1910 Census, Michael and Fredericka are living on what appears to be the same farm (to judge by their neighbors). Albert, age 21, is still in their household, along with his younger siblings, Minnie, Emory, and Emma.

Later that year Albert married Amanda Henning (Indiana Marriage Collection). Per the 1930 Census, they had two sons: Donald and Gerald. In that census, they seem to be at the same location. Someday I hope to find out exactly when Route 30 came through and bisected their farm; I think it was circa 1937. In the 1940 Census, to judge by their location in the enumerator's report, they seem to have moved a bit southeast — but that's just my guess.

As to Albert's relation to the many other Weilers of Ross Township … that is going to have to wait for some obituaries.

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*Or 1889, if you believe the WWI Draft Cards.
**"General News Items," Hobart Gazette 5 Jan. 1900.

A Menu of Death

This page from the Hobart Gazette of November 25, 1921, offered up varied styles of death, from the horrifyingly sudden to the tragically premature.


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I'm guessing that Bertha Stoltz's mother was Gust Busse's sister (Bertha's maiden name being Heiman, not Busse). Bertha had married Robert Stoltz in 1908, and early in their married life they rented a house on Center Street in Hobart, convenient to Robert's work in a brickyard. By 1920 they had moved into Morgan Township, Porter County, and were farming rented land.

The Gazette's version says the shooting was accidental, but a couple of articles I have tracked down from other sources, including a Wanatah newspaper, say it was intentional, though impulsive.

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Minnie Chase Smith had been born November 9, 1865, on her parents' farm, which I believe I have found on the 1874 Plat Map:


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I wish I had figured out earlier that Sela Smith had this local connection; I could have talked about him more — not that he's done anything particularly interesting, but I think his name has popped up in the newspapers more than his wife's … which isn't saying much. They seem to have led a pretty quiet life. (Minnie's brother, Gust, is the one who would be killed in a car crash in 1927.)

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We saw this coming for poor Harold Guernsey, who had been seriously ill for many months. Incidentally, I have never heard of Putout, Indiana, where Otis Guernsey is described as living, nor can I find any information on such a place. (And "Mrs. Carrie Sondong" in the last sentence is a misprint for "Santonge.")


Additional Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Funeral of Mrs. Sela Smith Held at Her Home Saturday Afternoon." Hobart News 24 Nov. 1921.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Mrs. Robert Stoltz Killed by Shot Gun in Hands of Orphan Boy." Wanatah Mirror 24 Nov. 1921 (newspaperarchive.com).
♦ "Obituary." Hobart News 17 Nov. 1921.
♦ "Youth Slays Woman." Indianapolis Star 23 Nov. 1921 (newspaperarchive.com).

A Minnie of Many Names

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Otis and Minnie Guernsey.
Image courtesy of Victoria Rickey.

OK, here's the thing that surprised me, when I just recently re-learned it, about Otis Guernsey's wife, Minnie: she was born a Schavey, half-sister to Henry and the other Schavey siblings, thus some sort of half-aunt to Mable Schavey Breyfogle. I learned this from her father's 1910 obituary:


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Fred Sr.'s first wife came to this country and then departed this world in between censuses, so I don't even know her given name. The 1870 census shows Minnie in the household with Fred's second wife. (However, my assumption that I've found the right household requires me to believe that the enumerator made a mistake in putting Frederick down as "Philip," and there's also what seems to be an older sister to Minnie, named Augusta, while the obituary has Minnie as the sole surviving child of the first marriage by the time of the second marriage — but in between 1870 and 1910 there was plenty of time for confusion of memories, nor would it be the first time we've seen a mistake in an obituary.) In 1880, Minnie was still at home (and Augusta, whoever she was, was gone).

And then Minnie got married to someone who wasn't Otis Guernsey … but I can find no record of it. We know she was Minnie Jones when she married Otis (and furthermore she had a son, John Jones, who served in France during World War I, and afterward came to the Guernsey farm in July 1919*). I thought there might have been a second marriage pre-Otis, because we've encountered a son of hers with the surname McDonald. However, the Dewell family archivist has done some detective work on that question, and writes:

I started to try to figure out if Clarence really was her son, and came to a negative conclusion.

1) There is a Clarence listed in the 1900 Census living in the Guernsey household. His birthdate is listed as June 1892, which would have been before Otis [Guernsey] and Amanda [Rex, Otis' wife before Minnie] married. Amanda says she had 5 children and 5, including Clarence, were living in the household. So perhaps Amanda was married before or had Clarence 'McDonald' out of wedlock.

It would seem natural that if Minnie raised the children after Amanda ran off and met her horrible end, Minnie would have received notice of Clarence McDonald's death in 1918, being sort of the next of kin.

Now it gets tricky... FamilySearch.org shows a Clarence Edward McDonald getting married in Newton Co IN on 20 Dec 1919 to Amanda Myrtle Parks. And his mother is listed as Amanda Rex! So is it possible that Clarence was resurrected by the US Army? I suppose the name may have been common enough that there could have been a mistake made. Did they have dog tags? What a shocker that would have been!

Clarence has a WWI and WWII draft card showing his birth in Hebron IN on 12 June 1892. SSI records show death in Lake County in Oct 1970.

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Now let's look at some incidents from Minnie's time under the surname Guernsey. Well, she was exposed to the hazards of farm life, as this 1910 incident shows:



Shortly the cow attack, several of the Guernsey kids came down with scarlet fever and the house was quarantined. I believe they all recovered.

In 1913 Minnie had serious problems hinted at in a short news item: "Attorney R.R. Peddicord and Henry Schavey went to Longcliffe Saturday and returned with Mrs. Otis Guernsey, who has been an inmate of the Northern Hospital for the Insane for the past three weeks." That was the only such incident, so far as I know from the newspapers. Three years later, she temporarily left Otis — we can only speculate as to why.


There you have it, a brief summary of the highlights, or the lowlights, in the life of Minnie Schavey McDonald(?) Jones Guernsey.

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* The Dewell family archivist has also found John Jones living in Minnie's household in 1900, 1910 and 1930.



Sources:
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ "Death of Old Citizen." Hobart Gazette 2 Dec. 1910.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 10 June 1910; 1 July 1910.
♦ "Mrs. Otis Guernsey Returns From Northern Hospital for Insane." Hobart News 10 July 1913.
♦ "South of Deepriver." Hobart News 24 July 1919.