Mills of Mystery: Wilson & Saunders

[continued from here]

Wilson & Saunders were the flies in John Wood's ointment, according to Solon Robinson, who, as we know, said: "The accommodation of the people of the county was greatly increased this year [1847], in getting grain made into bread stuff, by the mill of Wilson & Saunders on Deep River below Wood's (and as he thinks not quite far enough below)." This only tells us that Wilson & Saunders' mill was downstream from Wood's mill, and annoyingly close.

Turning to Early Land Sales, Lake County, we find relevant entries that show "Wilson & Sanders"[1] purchasing Lots 8, 11, and 12, and Robert Wilson purchasing Lot 9, of Section 16, Twp. 35 N., Range 7 W., in December 1844.

I'm sure we all remember Section 16 from our encounter with the Wilkinsons. And as you can see, Wood's mill, in Section 21, lay just below Section 16's southern border:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from the 1874 Plat Map.

The enumerator of the 1850 Census visited the Wilson-Saunders household right after visiting the Wood household:


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

It would be astonishing if they had actually been neighbors, operating two mills next to each other. (You will notice that Benajah Wilkinson's widow, Prudence, and children are further down on the same page.)

The 1840 Census also records a Robert Wilson near John Wood …


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

… which was probably our Robert, but the census gives so little information that we can't know for sure.

I have not been able to trace either Wilson or Saunders before or after the 1840-1850 timeframe.

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Where was the Wilson & Saunders mill? Short answer: I don't know.

Thanks to the trails in Deep River County Park, these days you can walk the whole length of the Deep River as it flows through Section 16, from Wood's mill all the way up to the north side of Ainsworth Road.

You can look around for a spot that might have accommodated a water-powered mill. Such a mill needs not only flowing water but also some high ground on which to perch the mill itself, so it isn't flooded or washed away every time the river overflows its banks.

The topography has to allow for damming the river so that the flow of water on the mill's wheel can be controlled. Wood's mill diverted some of the river's water into a millpond; the Cascade/Huffman mill did likewise. George Earle made a millpond of the river itself.

But a mill also needs a road for customers to use when bringing in raw materials and taking out finished products. Even today the river through Section 16 runs a pretty remote course. In 1847, we know Ainsworth Road and 73rd Ave./Joliet Road were in use. Was County Line Road then usable enough that Wilson & Saunders might have built their mill just below Wood's where the river runs past County Line Road's high ground? That would be very close indeed. There is high ground near Ainsworth Road, too, but we thought that area was reserved for the Wilkinsons, didn't we?

Even if I were able to find a source that showed exactly what land was included in the 1844 purchases — lots 8, 9, 11, and 12 of Section 16 — I might not be very far along, since each of those lots contained 40 acres.

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Here are a few of the entries from the early daybooks at the Hobart Historical Society museum that mention Wilson & Saunders.

The earliest I have found dates to September 7, 1846. It shows (if I understand the entry correctly) a customer at this Hobart store paying here for 100 pounds of flour to be gotten from Wilson & Saunders' mill.


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

Remember that in 1846 George Earle was operating only a sawmill, so Wilson & Saunders' was probably the closest grist mill.[2] (To judge by all the pills and quinine being bought on these pages, there was a lot of sickness going around in this later summer; also notice that Jesse Albee paid 25 cents to have teeth extracted, and there is no accompanying charge for pain medication.)

Ten days later, some complicated business:


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

I chose that one mostly because on the opposite page we find E. Saunders doing various things that include providing shelter and clothing for two orphaned Hodson boys, and it occurs to me to wonder if John Saunders, the miller, was related to E. (Edward?) Saunders. Of course, I don't have a clue.


On this page, dating to July 1847, we find Wilson & Saunders doing business with Saunders & Scales, and I wonder which Saunders that was.


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


The latest entries I can find date to September-October 1847, and show Wilson & Saunders making a few lumber purchases from George Earle's sawmill.


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



So, the next time you're walking along the river in Deep River County Park, you can ask yourself where you would put a mill if you were Robert Wilson or John Saunders in 1844. And I suppose you have to remember that weather and erosion have been working on the river and its banks for nearly two centuries since then, so all you can do is imagine.

[To be continued …]

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[1] "Sanders" shows up now and then as an alternate spelling of "Saunders." Maybe "Saunders" is the phonetic spelling of "Sanders."
[2] "There are two grist mills, Wood's and Wilson & Saunders, (three run of stone). Mr. Earle is also engaged at the present time in building another, which will have from 2 to 4 run." Solon Robinson, "History of Lake County, 1833 – 1847," Lake County 1929, p. 59. In a notice dated December 1, 1847 (on display at the Hobart Historical Society museum), George Earle announced that both his mills (saw and grist) were in operation.

The Lost Cemetery of Ainsworth Road

This post is based on research by local historian Michael White, who first pieced together the bits of information from various sources that pointed to an unaccounted-for old cemetery in Ross Township along with its general location. He was kind enough to clue me in.


The Rev. T.H. Ball, our legendary Lake County historian, in 1872[1] compiled a list of all the cemeteries he knew of in each township in the county. In the list for Ross Township, he included six cemeteries, five of which clearly correspond to ones we can identify today and can find in the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society's Ross Township Cemeteries. But one item in Ball's list is a puzzler:

An old burial place near the Wilkinson Ford of Deep River, from which some bodies have been removed, but where many yet remain. This old spot is now part of a cultivated field. It seems a pity that the little ground required to receive the dust of human forms may not remain undisturbed. This spot ought yet to be rescued from the plowshire [sic], consecrated, as it has been, by the burial of old settlers; or the human remains there resting should be removed to a quiet cemetery which is sacred to repose.

Elsewhere in the same book, in listing early settlers of Lake County in the 1830s, Ball says: "The third family arriving was that of Robert Wilkinson, who settled on Deep River, where the only ford known in early times was situated."[2] (I have previously discussed my reasons for thinking that Ainsworth Road was part of the old Sauk Trail, predating white settlement. The indigenous people may have established the trail because there was a natural ford in the Deep River where Ainsworth Road crosses it — a natural ford that the white settlers would then have used as they trickled in along the trail during the 1830s.)

In another of his books, Ball tells us that in the 1830s a bridge "across Deep River at B. Wilkinson's crossing near the Porter county line [was] built by Amsi L. Ball, cost[ing] four hundred dollars."[3] So far we've heard only of Robert Wilkinson; who was B. Wilkinson? To find that out we have to turn to the "History of Lake County, 1833 – 1847" by Solon Robinson, as printed in 1929:[4]

The first family that came after Childers and myself [Solon Robinson] was that of Robert Wilkinson, (at the place where his brother Benijah now lives on Deep River; at that time, the only known crossing place.) He settled about the last of November, 1834. … Wilkinson lived a few years where he settled, when he moved off and his brother took his place.

So "B." stands for Benijah — or, as it is sometimes written, Benajah — and he succeeded his brother Robert on the settlement near the ford of the Deep River.[5]

Robinson's account includes, among a list of bridges built in 1837, a bridge "across Deep River at Benajah Wilkinson's [built] by A. L. Ball, for $400, besides several smaller ones, by means of the 3 per cent fund."[6]

Goodspeed and Blanchard's 1882 county history also mentions this $400 bridge built by A.L. Ball, and specifies that it was in "Section 16, Township 35, Range 7."[7]

Here is that section as it appears on the 1874 plat map:[8]


(Click on image to enlarge)

The only road that crossed the Deep River in Section 16 was Ainsworth Road, aka the old Sauk Trail.

Incidentally, Goodspeed and Blanchard tell us that in 1837 three township trustees were appointed for Twp. 35, Range 7 (Ross Township): John Wood, whom everybody knows; Robert Wilkinson; and William Hodson (whose orphaned sons I believe we've already met).[9] So Robert Wilkinson was still in Ross Township some three years after settling there.

The only early land purchase record I could find pertaining to the Wilkinson brothers and Section 16 shows Benajah buying 38 acres described as "Part Lot No. 5" on July 27, 1840.[10] That may have been the year Robert moved on.

Benajah appears in the 1840 census for the Ross Township area of Lake County;[11] his brother does not.


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

In August of 1849, Benajah Wilkinson died.


(Click on image to enlarge — a bit; sorry about the quality)
Image from Indiana State Library Digital Collections, U.S. Census Mortality Schedule for Indiana, 1850, Counties L-Z.

There is now no record of where he was buried. I am willing to bet that it was in the lost Wilkinson cemetery.

The 1850 census shows his widow, Prudence, and her children still in Ross Township.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com. Evidently the family was in Michigan in 1836 when their daughter, Electa, was born. The first of their children to be a native Hoosier was born in 1839.

Sometime after that they left Indiana.[12] Prudence died in 1885 in Minnesota.

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So where, exactly, is the lost cemetery? It was somewhere along Ainsworth Road, near the Deep River — but how near? which side of the road? which side of the river? I'm thinking that it would probably be on the west side of the river, because on the east side there is a long stretch of river bottom that often floods — but further east the land rises again, and we're back to not knowing how T.H. Ball measured his "near the Wilkinson Ford of Deep River."

It's just possible that his lament about plowing over consecrated ground might have spurred action. I have done a little searching in the on-line newspapers from 1873 onward for any story about relocating the remaining bodies from the Wilkinson cemetery, but I have found nothing.

Some of the land where the cemetery could possibly be now belongs to the Lake County Parks Department. In the years that I have lived here, I have spent many hours walking my dogs all over that land without ever seeing any evidence whatsoever of a cemetery — and, believe me, I am always on the lookout for interesting artifacts in the underbrush.

I suppose this will have to be one of the mysteries of Ainsworth.

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[1] T.H. Ball, Lake County, Indiana, from 1834 to 1872 (Chicago: J.W. Goodspeed, 1873). The Ross Township burial places are listed at pp. 139-140.
[2] Ibid., p. 26.
[3] T.H. Ball, Encyclopedia of Genealogy and Biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a Compendium of History 1834 – 1904 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1904) (hereinafter, "Lake County Encyclopedia"), p. 10.
[4] Lake County Historical Association (John O. Bowers, Arthur G. Taylor, and Sam B. Woods, eds.), History of Lake County, Vol. 10 (Gary, Ind.: Calumet Press, 1929) (hereinafter, "Lake County, Vol. 10"). Solon Robinson's "Lake County, 1833 – 1847" starts on p. 35.
[5] Research on Robert Wilkinson is complicated by the fact that there were two early settlers by that name; in Ball's discussion in Lake County Encyclopedia at pp. 2-3 he mentions both, apparently distinguishing them. The one we're concerned with settled on Deep River for a short time, then gave his farm over to his brother and disappeared from history; the other settled in West Creek Township, and since he was more prominent in society and politics, more is written about him.
[6] Lake County, Vol. 10, p. 48.
[7] Weston A. Goodspeed and Charles Blanchard (eds.), Counties of Porter and Lake Indiana. Historical and Biographical. Illustrated (Chicago: F.A. Battey & Co., 1882), p. 422.
[8] Hardesty's Sectional Map of Lake Co. Indiana (Chicago: Rufus Blanchard, n.d. (the map's date is estimated at circa 1874)).
[9] Goodspeed and Blanchard at p. 421.
[10] Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society, Early Land Sales and Purchases, Lake County, Indiana, 1837 – 1857 (Valparaiso: Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society, 2006), p. 41.
[11] Yes, his name is written as "Benjamin," and no, the census does not specify the township, but among his neighbors are John Wood and some of the people who appeared in the NWIGS' listing of 1840s land purchases for Section 16, Twp. 35 N, Range 7 W.
[12] On Ancestry.com, I have found some records of Prudence Wilkinson buying land in Minnesota in 1860, but I cannot find the family in the 1860 census.