Jeremiah's Autograph

Here is another item from the estate papers of the late, unlamented Jeremiah Wiggins, or, as he himself wrote it, "Jere'h Wiggins."


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

This tells us that Jeremiah was literate (at a time when contracts were sometimes signed with a mark — "X" — by people who could not write their own names). But it's a plain, unpracticed signature, not as if Jeremiah took any pride in his penmanship.

Judging by the handwriting of the body of the note (we will get to that next), most of it was written by the creditor, Charles W. Sloat. It reads (original spelling retained):

Lake CO India may the 28 – 1838
for value received ipromise to pay Charles W. Sloat or barer the some of twenty five Dollars on or be fore the fifteenth of Awgust next with youse[?] given from Onder my hand

According to an online inflation calculator, $25 in 1838 would be about $712.03, owed by Jeremiah to Charles.

I can't positively identify Charles W. Sloat in any census. Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard) found him in an 1837 assessment, living in southern Center Township. Early Land Sales, Lake County shows a Charles Sloat buying land in 1839 and 1840, in southern Lake County — possibly our guy.

He did receive his money, with interest, from Jeremiah's estate on December 7, 1839:



Someone handling the estate wrote out the acknowledgment of receipt, and then Charles signed it. You can see that the distinctive way he signed his name here matches the way he wrote it in the note above.