Mills of Mystery: Walton

[continued from here]


Regarding Walton's Mill, Solon Robinson gives us only the surname and the general location, "on Turkey Creek." Turning to Early Land Sales, Lake County, we find a Charles Walton, in 1840, purchasing the east half of the southwest quarter of Section 2, Township 35 N., Range 8 W.:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Screenshot from Google Maps.

As you can see, this parcel of land lies over Turkey Creek, and on its eastern side, Liverpool Road — a main-travelled road in those days — provided a way for customers to reach a commercial venture like a mill.[1]

I believe we have already met this Charles Walton before in this blog: in 1838, when he appraised part of Jeremiah Wiggins' estate, and in 1839, when he came to a Hobart-area store to buy opium and then a coffin for his brother. So he was already in this area before 1840. In fact, Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard) tells us that Charles Walton arrived in Ross Township in 1837 [p. 544], and continues: "In 1837 or 1838, a good saw-mill was built three miles northeast of Merrillville by Charles Walton" [p. 551]. That description of the mill's location fits the Liverpool Road/Turkey Creek area.

Goodspeed/Blanchard goes on to say that Charles Walton "sold to Louverman,[2] who ran [the mill] until 1848" [p. 551]. Returning to Solon Robinson's history up to 1847, we find this comment:

There are five saw mills in operation in the county, to-wit: Earle's, Dustin's and Wood's on Deep River; McCarty's on Cedar Creek and Foley's on a branch of Cedar Creek. (There are three dilapidated ones, to-wit: Miller's and Dustin's old mills on Deep River, and Walton's on Turkey Creek, the last about being repaired.)[3]

If the mill was dilapidated and undergoing repairs in 1847, and the mysterious Louverman stopped operating it in 1848, it must have had a short working life in the 1840s.

♦    ♦    ♦
I have found a few more related references in the early daybooks at the Hobart Historical Society museum that I have indexed thus far. Most of them appear below.

The earliest, from November 1836, may not refer to our Charles, but I find it interesting:


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

The way the storekeeper wrote that entry seems to say: "I didn't catch his first name, but I know he's a miller." (He could not have been from the town of Miller because it didn't exist in 1836.)


The first clear reference to Charles doesn't come until the summer of 1839. He is all over these two pages, selling cut lumber to the store, and receiving $6.00 in cash:


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


This water-damaged page of the same daybook shows Charles, in the winter of 1840, selling lumber to the store, and buying a saw:


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

The first entry under his name reads: "55 ft of lumber hauled by Watkins and left on causeway of ferry." I suppose that was the ferry over the Deep River at Liverpool, about 3.5 miles from Charles' mill up the Liverpool Road.


Here's a non-lumber transaction from May of 1840: Charles purchases some household items (including a "rummer" — a drinking glass) and pays part of their price with 10 and a half pounds of butter and a raccoon skin.


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


In July of 1840, Charles comes in and buys half a gallon of whiskey.


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

That same summer (exact date unclear but seems to be in August), Charles furnished lumber for the building of a boat:


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

Beyond the summer of 1840, I have not found any transactions involving him. The three account books from which I have taken these images go up to 1837, 1846, and 1849, respectively. That boat-lumber may have been Charles' swan song on Turkey Creek, or at least one of its verses. Even if the Waltons remained on the land for some time yet, the mill probably was abandoned soon after 1840: I would expect that several years' neglect were needed for it to become "dilapidated," as Solon Robinson described it, by 1847.

♦    ♦    ♦
As I mentioned in one of those earlier posts about Charles, I have not been able to find any census or other official information about him outside of the 1840 Census, where he and his household appear:[4]


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

Between 40 and 49 years of age, one male and one female — Charles and his wife, I suppose. That would put their birthdates at about 1795, give or take five years. All the other household members are children under 15 years of age, two boys and three girls. Without names for the wife and children, it's pretty much impossible to determine if any one of the Charles Waltons who turn up when you search on that name and that approximate birth year is our Charles.

As for his brother, whose name is unknown except that it started with S — it's possible that when he died in 1839, he was simply buried on the family's land. To this day, perhaps, his body is still resting somewhere near the spot where Liverpool Road crosses Turkey Creek.


[To be continued …]

_______________
[1] Early Land Sales, Lake County includes a few other purchases by people with the surname Walton (different first names), but none of them bought land on Turkey Creek.
[2] I have failed to turn up any records at all of this Louverman.
[3] "History of Lake County, 1833 – 1847," Lake County 1929, p. 59.
[4] Notice the neighbors listed near him: a who's-who of early Hobart and Merrillville settlers.

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.


_______________
[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.]

A Tragedy in Two Purchases

Here is a page from a daybook I have been indexing, which shows transactions in 1839. Among some familiar old-settler names — Sigler, Mundell, Pierce — we find a Charles Walton who, in early September 1939, made two purchases telling a grim story:


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


You can fill in the blanks.

I do not know the full name of the deceased brother. Charles Walton does show up among the locals in the 1840 Census, but that census gives so little information that I cannot trace him any further.