"Killed By a Fall from a Wagon"

Another entry from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate papers. (We are close to the finish line.)


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

My transcription:

State of Indiana    Lake County
Received of Henry Miller a Noat of two Dollars and fifty Cts payable to mr. Sherman

May the 28 — 1838
        Jere'h Wiggins

The notes on the back establish that Mr. Sherman's first name was William:



I'm not sure I understand how this transaction came about — maybe something like this: Jeremiah owed Henry Miller money but didn't have cash on hand, so he undertook Henry's obligation to pay off a note to William Sherman when it came due. Two and a half months later, Jeremiah was dead and the note hadn't been paid off. Of course, William wanted his money.


William Sherman settled in Lake County in 1837.[1] Various family trees on Ancestry.com say he was born in New Hampshire in 1784 (although I haven't yet found one that cites a source for that). According to T.H. Ball, William married Calista (more usually spelled Celista) Smith in 1807 in New York.[2]

The 1840 Census records William and (probably) Celista, with six other people in the household — their children, I would guess. T.H. Ball said that William was the father of 13 children in total,[3] but some may have been out of the house already, and some yet to enter it.

Tragedy struck in 1843. T.H. Ball quotes, from an unnamed diary, an entry for September 16, 1843: "This morning Mr. Sherman was found dead, killed by a fall from a wagon."[4] He was presumed to have died the previous day, according to his grave marker.

Celista never remarried. She died October 1, 1884 at nearly 96 years of age.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Untitled social column, Crown Point Register, 2 Oct. 1884, p. 3

James Luther was her son-in-law, the widower of her daughter, also named Celista, who had died in 1881:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Crown Point Register, 8 Dec. 1881.

I believe the "old Sherman farm" may have been the southwest quarter of Section 21 (east of Grant Street, south of 129th), which William Sherman bought (160 acres) per Early Land Sales, Lake County (although the sale was dated December 1843, and there was a William Sherman, Jr.).

The younger Celista's obituary gives the impression (doesn't it?) that her parents, native New Englanders, made a detour through Canada before coming to Lake County.

Writing in 1904, T.H. Ball noted that "the living descendants of these Lake county Shermans numbered, a few years ago, fifty-two."[5] I shall not try to account for that many people.

♦    ♦    ♦
The other party to this transaction, Henry Miller, is just a brief blip on the radar. He gets this one mention in T.H. Ball's discussion of the Squatters' Union (quoting I think, from the Union's records):

"1837, March 16. This day an arbitration was held between Denton and Henry Miller and John Reed, who had gone on to Millers' claim and built a cabin, and the Arbitrators decide that Reed shall give up the cabin to Millers, and pay the costs of this arbitration, but that Millers shall pay Reed seventeen dollars for the cabin which he has built."[6]

Then he disappears.

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[1] Lake County 1834-1872 at 56.
[2] Lake County Encyclopedia at 97.
[3] Lake County Encyclopedia at 97).
[4] Lake County 1834-1872 at 89.
[5] Lake County Encyclopedia at 97.
[6] Lake County 1834-1872 at 49.

One Bushel of Buckwheat, One Eternal Mystery

Henry Wells sold Jeremiah Wiggins one bushel of buckwheat in 1837. He also sold him one other thing, but we'll all go to our graves not knowing what it was.



(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.
I had to include the back of the paper just to prove that the amount owed to Wells was $1.00, not $100.

My transcription:



As you can see, if I transcribed "one" correctly in the buckwheat line, then the next line also contains the word "one." But that's the only legible thing in that line.


Henry Willmarth Wells was born in Massachusetts in 1801. Eventually he went west to Michigan, although I do not know when. Solon Robinson describes Henry Wells' coming into Lake County thusly:

On [November 1, 1834], Henry Wells, and Luman A. Fowler, came along on foot, in search of locations. They left their horses back on 20 mile prairie. Cedar Lake was then the center of attraction for land lookers, and thither these, like others, wended their way, without thinking to inquire who kept tavern there. They found a lodging in a leafy tree top, and the leg of a roasted coon for supper. They also found David Horner (father of Amos and Henry), his son Thomas and a man by the name of Brown, looking for claims, upon which they settled the next year, lived there a few years and flitted again. Wells and Fowler came back to our camp next day [in the area of the future Crown Point], so tired and hungry and sick of the country, that they would have sold the whole, Esau like, for a mess of pottage. But after a supper sweetened with honey and hunger, and a night's rest upon the softest kind of a white oak puncheon, the next morning being a bright sunny one, the land looked more inviting, and they bought the claim and two log cabin bodies built by one Huntley upon the south half of Sec. 8, T. 34, R. 8, for which they paid him $50 in cash. Of course cash must have been more plenty with them then than it is now.

Wells went back to his family near Detroit, and Fowler spent the eventful winter of 1834-5 with us in the solitude of the first settlement of what soon became known as Robinson's Prairie. Fowler returned to Detroit in the spring, got married in the fall and returned with his wife and Wells' wife and child, and settled upon their claims. Wells arrived shortly after, and both families have since multiplied after the fashion of all new settlers.

Henry's wife was Adaline (née Witherell, according to family trees on Ancestry.com[1]), but I can't find any records of where and when they married. Together they raised five children.

Henry was very active in Lake County affairs. T.H. Ball notes among his accomplishments: that in 1836 he helped to draw up the constitution of the Squatters' Union (and served as one of its arbitrators); that he was appointed the county's first sheriff upon its organization in 1837, and then went on to serve out the terms of two elected sheriffs before being elected to the office himself for another eight years; that he was one of the commissioners handling funds from the sale of "swamp lands" during the 1850s, but was not implicated in the scandal that arose concerning those funds; and that he was a director of the Lake County Agricultural Society formed in 1851.[2] I believe he was also Treasurer of Lake County at one point.

Here is Henry's obituary, published in the Crown Point Register of May 18, 1876:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Now he sleeps in Crown Point's Maplewood Historic Cemetery, and with him sleeps the secret of what he sold Jeremiah Wiggins, besides that bushel of buckwheat.


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[1] The 1906 death certificate of their son, Rodman, gives her maiden name as Witheral; the 1918 death certificate of his brother, Homer, gives it as Eddy.
[2] Lake County 1834-1872.

A Sad New Year's Day in 1839

On January 1, 1839, Solon Robinson lost his brother and business partner, Milo, to tuberculosis.[1] The settlement of Milo's estate turned out to involve Jeremiah Wiggins' estate.


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

My transcription:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Milo had come out from New York City in November of 1835 to join Solon in Indiana.[2] In the winter of 1836-7, the brothers opened a store — the first in Lake County — in the settlement that would be the future Crown Point. According to Solon, during that first winter,

we … sold about $3000 worth of goods [over $100,000 in today's money] out of that little old log cabin adjoining the one now [in 1847] used as a Court House.

The best of our customers were the Pottawattomies, who then dwelt here in considerable numbers. (With them commenced my first efforts of a temperance reformation.) Of them we obtained great quantities of furs and cranberries, in pay for goods, (while those calling themselves far superior to the poor Indians in all the moral attributes, gave us promises to pay, some which are promises to this day.)

When Milo died two years later, he was about 38 years of age, and unmarried (so far as I have been able to determine).


The administrator of Milo's estate, Oscar Robinson, may have been another brother, born in 1809 and christened Jacob Oscar. It's odd that Solon doesn't mention him in his history, nor does T.H. Ball. An Oscar Robinson shows up in a Hobart merchant's records in October 1836 (buying ague syrup):


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

And a Jacob Robbinson is recorded in the Porter County 1840 census. Then the trail goes cold.[3]


Another character in this episode is likewise mysterious: Wilson L.[4] Harrison, of whom Solon Robinson has this to say:

During the same winter [of 1836-7], the first mill in the county was put in operation by Wilson L. Harrison, so that we were able to get a little oak lumber in the spring of '37 for $15 a thousand.

Beyond that, neither Solon Robinson nor T.H. Ball says anything. The 1840 Census shows a Wilson Harrison heading up a household of four in Porter County, but his age is given as 15 to 20, meaning that if this is the person who put into operation the first sawmill in Lake County in 1837, he was between 13 and 17 at the time![5]

The merchants' records at the Hobart Historical Society museum that I have indexed so far turn up a couple of references to Wilson L. Harrison. This one is from June 4, 1837:


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

And this one is from January 13, 1841:


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

After 1841 I cannot find any record of him. Where he came from and where he went remain a mystery.

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[1] Lake County 1834 - 1872 at 63. The location of Milo's grave seems to be unknown.
[2] Lake County 1834 - 1872 at 34.
[3] Some people on Ancestry.com seem to think he was the Oscar L. Robinson who lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, then moved to Chicago, where he died in 1878 or 1880. By the way, Solon Robinson had a son, Solon Oscar, born in 1831; not that that proves anything.
[4] Lake County 1834 - 1872 at 50 gives his middle initial as S, but no other source does, and in the writing above, the middle initial resembles the L in "Lake County."
[5] Wild hypothesis: the guy in the census is Wilson L. Harrison, Jr., whose father, the mill-builder, had just died. (But none of the history books mentions his death.)

Selling Off Jeremiah's Stuff (Part 3) and That Other Wiggins Again

The administrator of Jeremiah Wiggins' estate held a second sale on March 4, 1839, to dispose of whatever hadn't been sold in October 1838.


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

My transcription:


(Click on image to enlarge)


I can't make sense out of that scribbling in the line detailing what Wiatt Wiggins bought. Does it mean Jeremiah's informal claim to the land? (The official government sale of Lake County land would begin on March 19, 1839.[1]) Does it mean just the house sitting on the land? The $25 Wiatt paid in 1839 was just short of $900 in today's money.

The slay/sleigh that James Cassady bought seems not to have been noted in the original inventory. He paid very little for it — about $56 in today's money — which makes me wonder if I'm reading the word correctly.


As I've said before, Wiatt Wiggins has escaped all notice in the Lake County census and other official records as well as the early local histories. We would not know he existed but for these estate papers.


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[1] Lake County 1834 - 1872 at 64.

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:


(Click on image to enlarge)

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.

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.


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

My transcription:


(Click on image to enlarge)

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.

Ten Dollars Being Passed Around

Here is a nearly illegible item from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate papers:


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



And here is my attempt to transcribe it:


(Click on image to enlarge)

I have no idea what's going on here. All I know is that Michael Steichelman ended up with ten dollars after a lot of fuss. Ten dollars in 1839 would be about $350 today, so I guess it was worth the fuss.

Joshua R. Shedd, and Shedd-Related Tragedies

These two documents from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate tell us of some strange transaction whereby Joshua R. Shedd paid off Jeremiah's account to Robinson & Co.[1] and then filed for reimbursement by the estate.


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

My transcription:

Jeremiah Wiggins Dr.
To Joshua R. Shedd

To the balance of account due the firm
of Robinson & Co. for merchandise — $5.09
Interest from June 5th 1837 to date .87
Lake C.H. Ia. March 2, 1939 $5.96

He was, in fact, reimbursed:


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

My transcription:

Recd of the Clerk of the Probate Court of Lake County
the amount for my account of $5.09 originally due to
Robinson & Co. filed in the office of the said Clerk as a
claim against the estate of Jeremiah Wiggins, deceased.
March 2, 1839

Michigan City Ia. ) J.R. Shedd
Nov. 25th 1839. )

With a full name, including middle initial, not to mention two possible locations (Lake County and Michigan City), you'd think it would be possible to identify him, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. My best guess is that he was the Joshua Rundle Shedd who died in Cook County in 1854 and is now buried in the southern part of the city. But that's just a guess, based on his date of birth and the coincidence of names and middle initial. I can't find anything clearly tying Joshua Rundle Shedd to Lake County or Michigan City.

♦    ♦    ♦
However, in searching Chicago newspapers for any information about that Joshua Shedd, I came across a tragic story involving to the Shedd family of Deep River, so let us talk about them now.

William Henry Shedd was born in 1821 in Massachusetts. I know this from his grave marker. The record of his birth fails to include the date (but does mention an older brother named Joshua Rundle Shedd).


(Click on image to enlarge)
Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).

I can't find any record of him until a possible sighting in 1852, in California:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Ancestry.com. California, U.S., State Census, 1852. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: California State Census of 1952. (microfilm, M/F 144, 6 rolls). Sacramento, California: California State Library.

The age is about right, the birthplace is right. Did our William get caught up in the Gold Rush?

If that's our guy, he left California very soon after being counted. The next record we have of him is in the autumn of 1853, when he married John Wood's daughter, Abbie.[2] William and Abbie had a daughter, also named Abbie, born in 1855. The following year, Abbie (the mother) died.

William married again, in 1859, to Josephine Blachly in Porter County. The 1860 Census shows William and Josephine, with their infant son, William, living in Union Township, while little Abbie lived with her grandparents in Deep River.

William Sr. gave his occupation as merchant. He may have been running his business in the village of Deep River. There was a mercantile partnership around this time, Shedd & Wood, operating in the area; we are told that George Wood, the fifth child of John and Hannah, worked for that partnership as a clerk "in a country store."[3] On this page from the July 25, 1861 issue of the Crown Point Register, we find both "Wm. H. Shedd, Deep River," and "Wood & Shedd, Woods Mills,"[4] offering patent medicines for sale:


(Click on image to enlarge)

I have found such ads in the Register involving the name Shedd as early as 1859 and as late as 1865. By the way, I don't know which Wood was involved in the partnership; my guess is Augustus.

By the 1870 Census, William and Josephine, with sons William and Orton (b. 1861), had moved to Watseka, Illinois. William gave his occupation as cabinet-maker. The two elder Shedds would live out the rest of their lives in Watseka, and are now buried there.

The tragic story I mentioned above involves the eldest son, William Joshua Shedd:


(Click on images to enlarge)
Blue Island Sun-Standard (Blue Island, Ill.), 30 Nov. 1922.


As you will note, the article mentions his birth in Deep River, Indiana. It also mentions that this was not the first such tragedy in the family.


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[1] We will speak of Robinson & Co. in the future.
[2] Indiana Marriage Collection.
[3] Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) at 718.
[4] "Woods Mills" being another name for the village of Deep River, along with "Woodvale."

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.

More Litigious Settlers

Here is another page from James H. Cassady's records of his activities as administrator of the Jeremiah Wiggins estate.


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

My transcription:



The December 19 entry mentions an appearance before George Earle concerning a lawsuit involving two people: Saxton and Merrill.

The first was probably Ebenezer Saxton, Sr. (1797-1877), who came to Lake County in 1837 and eventually settled on Jeremiah Wiggins' farm. The following biographical sketch was written by one of his descendants:

Ebenezer Saxton was the 6th generation of the Saxton family in America. His father (also an Ebenezer) was a Revolutionary soldier from Massachusetts. Ebenezer Saxton was born in Vermont, later (1829) moving to a farm in East Flamboro, Canada at the time of the Patriot War. When the rebellion was brushed in 1837 he sold his farm on credit and hurriedly left Canada to escape the rebel punishment of hanging. On the way to Fort Dearborn (Chicago), his wagon got stuck in the mud in the Turkey Creek area. Spending nearly all of his money to recover his belongings, the family decided to stay in Wiggins' Point (one of Merrillville's early names).[1]

Ebenezer and his wife, Minerva, raised a large family and lived out the rest of their lives on the former Wiggins farm. They are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery.

♦    ♦    ♦
The second name mentioned in connection with a lawsuit was either Dudley Merrill (1814-1890) or William Merrill (1808-1860), brothers who came to Lake County in 1836 or '37.[2] The brothers became prominent citizens of the town then known as Centerville, building homes and operating farms as well as businesses that included a cheese factory, a hotel, and a store. In 1848, the town was renamed in their honor.

They are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery. Dudley's four wives (one of whom had been William's widow) are also buried there.

The Dudley Merrill house, built in 1849 according to Lake County records, still stands at 12 W. 73rd Avenue.

♦    ♦    ♦
The man whose name is written as "M. Steickleman" in the document above was probably Johann Michael Steichelman, whom I have discussed before in connection with these estate papers.

♦    ♦    ♦
Myiel Pierce, Sr. (1801-1847), arrived in Lake County from New York in 1836.[3] He inspired T.H. Ball to playfully date of the founding of Centerville/Merrillville to 1842:

I place the date of the commencement of the village when Miles[4] Pierce built the first tavern here, and pouring out a bottle of whisky or breaking it upon the frame, after the manner of naming ships, called it "Centreville Hotel." Well would it have been for that village and many others, if all the whisky had gone the same way.[5]

In a previous post about his son, Myiel, Jr., I mentioned his early death and the hardship it caused his family.

Three sons of Myiel, Sr., and his wife, Marcia, served in the Civil War, one dying while in the service. Myiel and Marcia, who died in 1889, are buried in the Merrillville Cemetery, along with numerous family members.

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[1] Alice Flora Smedstad, Soldiers & Veterans Memorialized at the Merrillville Cemetery (self-published, 2007) at p. 50.
[2] Lake County 1834-1872 at pp. 38, 301.
[3] Lake County 1834-1872 at p. 54.
[4] Myiel's unusual first name appears in several variants in local histories, including "Miles" and "Milo."
[5] Lake County 1834-1872 at pp. 152-153.

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:


(Click on image to enlarge)

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.

♦    ♦    ♦
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).

♦    ♦    ♦
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

♦    ♦    ♦
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.

_______________
[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.

Horse Drama at Liverpool

Continuing in the Jeremiah Wiggins estate papers, we now come to James Cassady's itemized invoices recording the details of his activities as estate administrator. There are several pages of them, but I can't post them all at once because my brain can't handle it.

I think he wrote these out at the end of his service, perhaps from notes he had jotted down during the year or so that he was working for the estate. In the following list, which seems to be the start of his activities after being appointed administrator in late August 1838, he mistakenly wrote "1839" instead of "1838" at the top of the left column.


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

My transcription:



So his earliest work consisted, naturally enough, of figuring out what Jeremiah Wiggins had owned at his death. Somehow he realized that one of Jeremiah's two bay horses had gotten into the hands of someone not entitled to it, who didn't want to give it up. I'm not clear on whether that someone and the horse were in Liverpool, or Liverpool was the site for such legal business as getting a writ of replevin to allow James to seize the horse.

T.H. Ball tells us that Liverpool became the county seat for a short time in 1839 (Lake County 1834-1873 at 156), but he also tells a story in which Liverpool seems to be the site of legal business in the spring or summer of 1838:

In March, 1838, [Ebenezer Saxton] bought, of a man from Michigan City going to Crown Point, fifteen hundred pounds of flour. He was to pay in team work at two dollars a day. The work was to be done at Michigan City. He went with his team; did one-half of the amount of work, and was ready to do the other half; then the man discharged him, as he wanted no more work. Some time afterward the Michigan City man entered suit at Liverpool for the remainder that was due to be paid in money. A capias came for E. Saxton to appear at Liverpool. He took Wiggins along behind him on his horse. Passing out of Turkey Creek, Wiggins unfortunately slipped off into the water. He did not drown, and remounting, proceeded. The trial came on, the bargain was proved, and the Justice decided fifty cents in favor of the plaintiff. (Lake County 1834-1873 at 332.)

I'd like to know who it was that had Jeremiah's horse and why he or she wouldn't give it back. The last item in the list mentions a suit against one "Stephens" but I don't know if that is the horse suit. (It might help if I could figure out that last word.) I can't identify anyone with the surname Stephens in Lake County in the 1830s.

Another item in the list shows that James had to hire a team of horses to bring back, from some unspecified location, a sled that had belonged to Jeremiah. But the inventories of Wiggins property that we've seen don't mention a sled.

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.

_______________
[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.

Six Dollars, Twelve and a Half Cents

Here we have Jeremiah Wiggins borrowing a couple hundred dollars (in 2025 terms), about two months before his death:


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

My transcription:

For Value received I promis to pay A.L. Ball or bearer Six dollars twelve & Half Cents with use on the first day of September next

June 4th 1838

Jere'h Wiggins

That's Jeremiah's signature, but I think the body of the note may have been written by A.L. Ball — note how similarly he writes his name in it, and here on the back of the document where he's signing the receipt for payment from the Wiggins estate:



Transcription:

N 1
Wiggins Estate
Ball's note

Rec'd of the Clerk of the Probate Court the money for the within note. Dec. 2, 1839

A.L. Ball for John Ball


[written upside down]
I assign the with in note to John Ball
October 29th 1838

A.L. Ball

Here is estate's record of the claim for the unpaid note and its payment:



Transcription:

Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins deceased Dr.

To John Ball

For the amount of a note dated June 4th 1838 given to A.L. Ball for Six 12½/100 dollars with interest thereon, assigned by said A.L. Ball to John Ball

Oct. 28th 1838
John Ball

And the back of the document:



A little fast online research tells me that the U.S. minted a half-cent coin from 1793 to 1857.

♦    ♦    ♦
Amzi[1] Lewis Ball (1783-1860) was born and raised in New Jersey. Sometime after his marriage in that state (1806), he moved to New York. It was there that his son, John (1817-1891), was born.

Concerning their time in Lake County, T.H. Ball has this to say:

The name, Amsi L. Ball, occurs quite frequently in the earliest history of Lake county. He was one of the more mature men active and prominent in laying the foundations of civil and social institutions. He came with his son, John Ball, from the State of New York in 1836. To which band of the large family of Balls emigrating from England between 1630 and 1640 he belonged is not known. In March, 1837, an election was held at his house, also at the house of Russell Eddy and at the house of Samuel D. Bryant, at which election, having received seventy-eight votes for county Commissioner, he was elected for three years; but he resigned this office in the summer in order to be a candidate at the August election for Representative to Indianapolis. Lake county voted for him, but Porter county, with which Lake for some years was united in electing a Representative, did not. He gave up a certainty for an uncertainty and so lost both offices. He was rather tall in person, a fluent speaker, a man capable and ambitious. He was, as the political parties of those days were designated, a Democrat, and Solon Robinson, who had been the "Squatter King" of Lake, was a strong Whig. Politically these two, both ambitious men, were not friendly, and each had the credit in those days of defeating to some extent the political aspirations of the other. Amsi L. Ball, while not holding office, continued to be an influential and prominent citizen, but, about 1851 or soon after, he returned to the State of New York after a residence here of about fifteen years. Of his son's sojourn here but little is known. [Lake County Encyclopedia at 107.]

We have already met A.L. Ball as the builder of the first bridge crossing the Deep River at present-day Ainsworth Road.

He may have gone back east a bit earlier than T.H. Ball[2] remembered, as the 1850 Census shows him farming in New Jersey. So does the the 1860 Census, and in September of that year, he died.

John Ball had married Nancy Glover in LaPorte County, Indiana, in 1836 (Indiana Marriage Collection). The 1850 Census shows John, Nancy, and their family farming in Winfield Township. Sometime before about 1855 they moved to Floyd County, Iowa (1860 Census). They remained there through the 1880 Census, then at some time moved to Oregon, where John died in 1891.

_______________
[1] This spelling appears on his grave stone, but his first name is usually spelled "Amsi" in local history books.
[2] I have not discovered any family relation between A.L. and T.H., but I am not a genealogist.

Epaphras!

This item from the estate papers of Jeremiah Wiggins shows him buying 50 pounds of flour on May 10, 1838, from E.P. Butler:


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

My transcription:

Lake County Ia.

The Estate of Jeremiah Wiggins, De'd

To E.P. Butler, Dr.

For 50 lbs. of Flour, furnished said Wiggins in his life time, to wit, on the 10th day of May, 1838 at $4.00 per 100 lbs _________ $2.00

In his discussion of the earliest Lake County settlers, T.H. Ball mentions an encampment of U.S. surveyors during the summer of 1834, and goes on to say:

After the surveyors came the claim seekers. There is evidence that either before or soon after that week of encampment just mentioned, one Wm. Butler was on this ground before Solon Robinson came, and made four claims, for himself, for his brother E.P. Butler, for George Wells, and for Theodore Wells. He also erected cabins and departed. I find the existence of three cabins recognized by those who are called Lake county's earliest settlers. I think they were the Butler cabins. (Lake County 1834-1872 at 21.)

The E.P. Butler mentioned by Ball was probably the same one in our document. The 1840 Census lists E.P. Butler as the head of a household in Lake County.

The first clue I came across as to his first name was a mention of one Epaphrous P. Butler as a non-resident taxpayer of North Township in 1839 (Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) at 533). Early Land Sales, Lake County has more variations on that name: Epaphenas P. Butler, in 1843, purchased 160 acres west of Merrillville[1]; in 1855, Ephrain P. Butler bought nearly 80 acres northwest of Merrillville.[2]

The 1850 Census shows E.P. and his wife, Jane, farming in Ross Township:


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

Jane died sometime in 1856 (information from Findagrave.com is filling in here where there are no official records or newspaper reports). On December 31, 1856, E.P. married Saphrona Mears (Indiana Marriage Collection), whose name appears in other places as Myars and Miars.

Based on what we see in the 1860 Census, Saphrona must have been a widow with her own children:


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

Judging by the names recorded near them in the census, I believe the Butler farm was in far western Ross Township. Perhaps it was this land that still bore E.P.'s name on the 1874 Plat Map (half of which "Ephrain P. Butler" had purchased in 1855):


(Click on image to enlarge)

But E.P. had been dead for some ten years by the time this map was made. He died in 1864 and is buried in Schererville's Pleasant View Cemetery with his first wife, Jane.[3]

♦    ♦    ♦
Thanks to Findagrave.com and family trees on Ancestry.com, I've been able to look into E.P.'s family. He was the second (I believe) child of Jonathan and Elizabeth Butler of Hartford, Connecticut. His siblings were Jonathan, William, Maria, George, Eliza, and Nathan.

So it was only for this second son that his parents pulled a name out of left field — or, to be precise, out of the New Testament, where an otherwise obscure figure in the early church gets a few mentions in Paul's letters. I'm glad E.P.'s parents had that whim, though, because it makes him easier to identify.

Here is his father's will, written in 1853:


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

E.P. and William seem to be grouped together in their father's mind, and not exactly as favorite children: each gets only $100, as opposed to the $500 given to Maria. In item #4, we learn that these two, well into their 50s when the will was written, still owed their dad money. But he forgave their debts.

William was by then a Michigan resident. If we go looking for him on Findagrave.com, we see that he did not stay long in Lake County, Indiana, after making those early claims, and that he was drawn to settling in wild places.

_______________
[1] Specifically, the northwest quarter of Section 17, Twp. 35 N., Range 8 West (p. 182).
[2] Two purchases dated December 21, 1855, of the SW quarter of the NW quarter, and then the SW quarter of the SW quarter, Section 6, Twp. 35 N., Range 8 West (p. 175).
[3] His second wife died in 1879 and is buried in Merrillville Cemetery as the widow of William Miars.