"Too Disgusting to Put in Print"

I promised you a story about Nehemiah Huntley, Jr., so here it is.


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Crown Point Register, 23 Feb. 1882.

Don't you wish they'd put those "disgusting" details in print?

Nehemiah had married Mary Palmer in 1868 (Indiana Marriage Collection). They lived on his farm, which, per the 1874 Plat Map, consisted of 40 acres. I believe it covered the land now occupied by Lowe's, Bob's Discount Furniture, and IHOP.

It's a little confusing when we find their household in the 1870 Census including three Huntley children who were all born before the year of their marriage …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… but the 1880 Census makes clear that the three boys were from Mary's previous marriage (and went by their stepfather's surname, as young stepchildren sometimes did). This marriage produced the two daughters, Florence and Helen.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

By 1880 Mary's sons had reverted to their father's surname — was that just a matter of young men asserting their own identities, I wonder, or a reflection of strained family relations?

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Mary, born in 1842, was one of the many children of Jonas and Susan Rhodes, early residents of Hobart Township. We find her in that household in the 1850 Census. From her death certificate and her obituary, we learn that her first husband's name was George Palmer.


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The Times (Hammond, Ind.), 2 Jan. 1913.

Helen Huntley had married William F. Rockwell in 1901 in Cook County, Illinois; also in Cook County, Clarence Palmer married Rose Beynon in 1889.[1] Florence Huntley married Robert Steger in Milwaukee in 1891.[2] (If I've found the right person, Elmer Palmer died in 1899.[3] I can't identify a death record for Clarence.)

The only record I can find that might be of the first marriage shows Mary E. Rhodes marrying George A.W. Palmer in 1857 in Cass County, Michigan (just over the Indiana border). According to the transcription on Ancestry.com, Mary gave her age as 18 — if this is our Mary, either someone made a mistake or someone told a fib; our Mary was really 15. As for George Palmer, his background is a mystery to me.

It appears that Mary and George moved around the country, since their three sons were born in Kansas, Illinois, and California, respectively. I can't find the Palmers in the 1860 census.

George died, presumably, between about 1866 and 1868, but I don't know when or where.

I suppose Mary and her children came to live with her parents. Then she caught the eye of Nehemiah Huntley, Jr., and then came their marriage, and their two daughters, before finally their messy divorce.

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Nehemiah, after winning his divorce in February 1882, seems to have moved to South Chicago within a couple of months.[4] Six years later, he somehow turns up in Kendallville, Indiana, marrying Mary E. Newlin.

That marriage, too, ended in divorce. (I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.)

The next news we have of him is his last disaster, recounted in the Hobart Gazette of October 16, 1896.

Death From Fire

Mr. N.J. Huntley who was suffocated last Sunday night during a fire in his own house in South Chicago, is well remembered by our older inhabitants. The deceased was a brother-in-law of Dan Underwood and at one time was married to a sister of Mrs. Maggie Roper, of Louis Rhodes and also Mrs. Geo. Roper. He went to his room Sunday evening quite late and shortly after the building was discovered on fire in his room.

Mr. Huntley was a G.A.R.[5] and his remains were brought here on Tuesday for burial by that society. The funeral services were held at the Congregational church. He was married twice but was divorced from both wives who still survive him. He also had two children with his first wife.

We understand he lived a secluded life of late years and had accumulated considerable money.

His first wife and one of his daughters administered his estate:


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Illinois, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1772-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

(Incidentally, the third person involved in the estate was probably Edgar Lee Masters, who was then building up a law practice in Chicago and had not yet achieved renown as a poet.)

The 1900 Census shows Mary Palmer living in Chicago with Florence, who described herself as married (but Robert Steger was not recorded in the same household), and the as-yet-unmarried Helen.

The 1910 Census finds Mary and Florence in El Paso, Texas. Both described themselves as widowed.

Mary evidently returned to Indiana after 1910, to visit or to live permanently with Helen and William Rockwell in Gary. And so it was there in 1913 that Mary Rhodes Palmer Huntley died, and all knowledge of what really happened in her marriage with Nehemiah died with her.


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[1] Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
[2] Ancestry.com. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., Marriages, 1838-1911 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018.
[3] Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index.
[4] "Mr. N.J. Huntley, of South Chicago, was in town on Tuesday." The Crown Point Register, 20 Apr. 1882.
[5] As a Civil War veteran of the Union side, he was eligible to join the Grand Army of the Republic.

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.

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.

I Say, "Jump," You Say, "Woof Woof"

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

According to the notes with this photo, it was taken somewhere near Wheeler, Indiana, around May 1904. The man at right is Herman Rossow, son of Henry and Augusta Rossow, and brother of Ida Rossow Hendrix, whose grandson owns the original.

In 1904, Herman was about 22 years old. I can't find him in the 1900 census, but in 1910 he was living in Hobart in the same household with three sisters and a brother, and working as a driver for a brewery. (In As It Was Told To Me, Minnie Rossow Harms mentions that Augusta's daughters did not get along with her second husband, William Carey, whom she married in 1903; the young women moved out of the Carey home and got their own place in Hobart. In 1910 their brothers lived with them. All five siblings were then single, and Herman would remain so.)

The man at left, who has persuaded the dog to jump, is Herman's friend Perry Palmer. Perry was about 28 years old in 1904, married for some five years, father of three children (with more to come), earning his living as a bricklayer. He had moved his family from Hobart to Wheeler sometime between 1900 and 1910. Later they would move to Gary.

The photo below appears to have been taken in the same place on the same day.