How Jeremiah Earned Some Money

This summary of amounts owed to Jeremiah Wiggins is in the same handwriting (and spelling) as the Charles Sloat note, but, as we shall see, Charles wasn't involved in these transactions, except maybe as the scribe of this summing-up written well after the transactions took place.


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

My attempted transcription:


(Click on image to enlarge)

This document was a challenge: the copy is bad, the spelling non-standard, and the writer did not start a new line for every item. But this is what I have teased out regarding what Jeremiah did or supplied to earn these amounts:

• eight days' unspecified work by Jeremiah
• work by Jeremiah and his horses for 3 days to help build a house
• boarding (i.e., feeding) Watkins and Wyett, whoever they may have been (we'll get to that below), from April 29 to June 12 of — 1835? (the document is being written in May of 1836)
• washing and mending
• hay for two horses and (almost illegible but looks like) six chickens
• one two-horse harness

All of that is reasonable enough except for the washing and mending. "Washing," I suppose, meant laundry. Now, does a tough frontiersman do laundry and mending by the week for other people? Do tough frontiersmen want their laundry done every week? Maybe my notion of tough frontiersmen is wrong. Or maybe Jeremiah subcontracted that work.

The person owing Jeremiah these amounts set off part of his debt by furnishing to Jeremiah one young pig, two bushels of corn, some pork, and some fish.

Here is the description noted on the back of the document by Solon Robinson, the court clerk:


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

My transcription:

No. 1
Wiggins Estate

Barney's a/c.
Balance due 55.25

Filed March 28th 1839
Solon Robinson
Clk. L.P.C.

So, while the body of the document does not name the debtor, the clerk's description supplies a name: Barney.

This may have been Francis Barney, who was in Lake County by 1836 (Lake County 1834-1872 at 55) and is listed in the 1840 census. Around 1842 he married Amanda Strong (Indiana Marriage Collection). The Barney family, with three children, is listed in eastern Ross Township in the 1850 Census. One of their daughters married Austin Thompson in 1863 and raised a family of five children, all of whom went on to raise their own families in Lake and Porter Counties.[1] I have not been able to trace any other Barney family member beyond 1850 (not that I've tried very hard!).

Let's look again at the two people whom Jeremiah boarded: Watkins and Wyett. I have found two possible matches for those names:

• William Watkins, an early settler of northeast Ross Township, who appears as early as 1837 in records of Hobart merchants, and in the 1840 census
• Thomas J. Wyatt, an early settler of Liberty Township, Porter County (Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) at 38, 209, 211)

But I simply don't have enough information to identify either man positively. As to why Francis Barney would have owed Jeremiah Wiggins the cost of boarding them or any member of their families, I don't have a clue.

_______________
[1] One of their sons, George, was the father of Eva Thompson.

Wolf Scalps

Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) mentions that in the early days of this region's European settlement, the government paid bounties for wolf scalps (pp. 49, 53, 421). A page from one of the Hobart Historical Society's daybooks shows William Watkins taking steps to collect such a bounty in November 1841.


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

He was also doing business with some of the local Wolfs.

Wauhob Lake

I never heard of Lake Wahob, or Wauhob Lake as it seems to be called now, until Charles Lee took a vacation there with family and friends in early July 1922.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 13 July 1922.

Wauhob Lake is in Liberty Township, Porter County:



(Elsewhere on the same page, we find the summer visiting of the Bullock-Killigrew-Halladay crowd.)


Charles and Anna Lee returned from their vacation to show Charles' brother, mother, and sister around Hobart.


(Click on image to enlarge)

I suppose J.W. Lee was the 49-year-old John W. Lee who showed up in the 1920 Census in Hominy, Oklahoma, working as a superintendent at a gas company. The rest of the genealogy I shall have to leave to the Lee family.

On the page above, we see that Henry Harms, Sr. suffered some wind damage to the barn on his farm, then occupied by the Herman and Minnie Harms family.

♦    ♦    ♦
Here's what August 1922 held for Charles' plumbing firm: "Lee & Rhodes submitted a bid of $198.50 for paying 330 feet of water pipe on Linda street, or to do the work for $132 if the city furnishes the pipe. Supt. Wheaton was directed to purchase the material and have the extension made at once." ("City Council Proceedings," Hobart Gazette 18 Aug. 1922.)

The Amazon by Any Other Name

The Gazette noted, around mid-December 1918, that something was doing in the space formerly occupied by The Amazon.* Its saloon fixtures had been removed; people were busy with cleaning and repairing; by all appearances, there might be a new restaurant opening there in the near future.

The next week's paper confirmed it. George Watkins, who had run the Amazon, was about to open a new "short-order lunch room" — name not specified. It might be the "Amazon" again; it might be the "Fooled You, Didn't I?"

______________________
*It referred to the building, on the northeast corner of Third and Center, as the "Stocker building."

Sources: "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 13 Dec. 1918; 12 Dec. 1918.