Miss Margaret and the Woodses of Ross Township

I must have been in a bad mood seven years ago when I wrote the post about Samuel B. Woods: I put so little effort into it. Now Sam's youngest child is getting married, so maybe I should take this opportunity to educate myself a bit more.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News, Nov. 1, 1923.

The home of the bride's parents was stood, according to A Pictorial History of Merrillville, "on West 57th Avenue, near the intersection of 57th and Cleveland Street (Route 55)." That certainly helps me figure out which of the various parcels owned by the Woodses was where they actually lived.


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From the 1908 Plat Map.

Samuel Bartlett Woods was born in Ross Township in 1856 to Bartlett and Ann Eliza Woods. Bartlett Woods was among the early settlers of Ross Township and a prominent citizen; you can read more about him in Lake County Encyclopedia. Ann Eliza Sigler, who became Bartlett's wife in 1847 (Indiana Marriage Collection), was the daughter of Samuel and Ann Sigler, early settlers of Hobart Township.

In 1882, Samuel Woods married Mellue Vilmer.[1] They had three children. The first was a son, Harold, who died in 1908. The second was a daughter, Wilma, who married Francis Malmstone in 1915 and lived with him in Griffith. The last was our Miss Margaret.

Now, Chester Clark and his new wife may have spent some of their early married life on his "large farm" at Carthage, Illinois, but we know from the 1930 Census that within seven years they moved back to live on her parents' farm.

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At the top of the right-hand column on the page above, we find another happy event: at the farm on Cleveland Avenue, Lois Harms turned eight years old. Esther Palm was a neighbor; Ruth and Loretta Schavey were maternal relatives, I'm sure, but I don't know their exact relation.

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Lower down in that same column, another item that interested me was A. Johnson's public sale "at the old Collver place." I've just barely mentioned the name of Collver and identified the Collver property without understanding precisely where it was …


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Image from the 1908 Plat Map.

… and now I'm going to try to figure that out. When I wrote the linked post, in 2015, the Lake County Surveyor GIS website may not even have been online — or if it was, my internet connection was not good enough to use it. But now I can use it, and do, and it's very helpful.

Anyway, we can see from the plat map above that the Collver place was bordered on the south by South Side Addition 2. Per the Lake County GIS, South Side Addition 2 is a strip of land running along the north side of 13th Street, from S.R. 51 east to just past Fleming Street (now occupied by a commercial building and several houses). And we have a pretty good idea where the Sapper land was and still is, don't we? So the Collver place was between the Sapper land and South Side Addition 2. Just north of South Side Addition 2 is a cute little house, built in 1919 per the county records, that must have stood on the old Collver place, and was probably occupied by this A. Johnson — maybe even by the Collver family.

And who was the Collver family? The member we're dealing with today — the auctioneer at this public sale — was born Sylvanus Roy Collver in Canada in 1873, but always went by Roy or S.R. He came to the U.S. sometimes around 1890[2], following his father, mother, and brother. In 1900, the family was living in Chicago. Roy was a fruit salesman. In January 1896 Roy had married Margrete Prendergast (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index); in June of that year they had a son, whom they christened Sylvanus Albert.

Since Roy was in his early twenties when he married Margrete, that was probably his first marriage. It wasn't his last. I don't know what happened to Margrete, but by 1905 Roy was free to marry Mary M. O'Donnell (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index). I think she is the "Mae" who shows up with him the 1910 Census, living in Hobart Township, in their own home. In January 1917, Roy sued Mae for divorce.[3] The divorce must have gone through: in May 1917, Roy married Leah Herman (Indiana Marriage Collection). I can't find them in the 1920 Census, and Roy didn't live to be counted in the 1930 Census. He was still married to Leah when he died in 1927 (Indiana Death Certificates).


I cannot identify the A. Johnson who started all this by having a public sale on the old Collver place.


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[1] I believe that her brother, William E. Vilmer, was a local photographer.
[2] 1893 per the 1900 Census; 1889 per the 1910 Census.
[3] "In the Divorce Courts," Hobart Gazette, January 19, 1917.