"Too Disgusting to Put in Print"

I promised you a story about Nehemiah Huntley, Jr., so here it is.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Crown Point Register, 23 Feb. 1882.

Don't you wish they'd put those "disgusting" details in print?

Nehemiah had married Mary Palmer in 1868 (Indiana Marriage Collection). They lived on his farm, which, per the 1874 Plat Map, consisted of 40 acres. I believe it covered the land now occupied by Lowe's, Bob's Discount Furniture, and IHOP.

It's a little confusing when we find their household in the 1870 Census including three Huntley children who were all born before the year of their marriage …


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

… but the 1880 Census makes clear that the three boys were from Mary's previous marriage (and went by their stepfather's surname, as young stepchildren sometimes did). This marriage produced the two daughters, Florence and Helen.


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

By 1880 Mary's sons had reverted to their father's surname — was that just a matter of young men asserting their own identities, I wonder, or a reflection of strained family relations?

♦    ♦    ♦
Mary, born in 1842, was one of the many children of Jonas and Susan Rhodes, early residents of Hobart Township. We find her in that household in the 1850 Census. From her death certificate and her obituary, we learn that her first husband's name was George Palmer.


(Click on image to enlarge)
The Times (Hammond, Ind.), 2 Jan. 1913.

Helen Huntley had married William F. Rockwell in 1901 in Cook County, Illinois; also in Cook County, Clarence Palmer married Rose Beynon in 1889.[1] Florence Huntley married Robert Steger in Milwaukee in 1891.[2] (If I've found the right person, Elmer Palmer died in 1899.[3] I can't identify a death record for Clarence.)

The only record I can find that might be of the first marriage shows Mary E. Rhodes marrying George A.W. Palmer in 1857 in Cass County, Michigan (just over the Indiana border). According to the transcription on Ancestry.com, Mary gave her age as 18 — if this is our Mary, either someone made a mistake or someone told a fib; our Mary was really 15. As for George Palmer, his background is a mystery to me.

It appears that Mary and George moved around the country, since their three sons were born in Kansas, Illinois, and California, respectively. I can't find the Palmers in the 1860 census.

George died, presumably, between about 1866 and 1868, but I don't know when or where.

I suppose Mary and her children came to live with her parents. Then she caught the eye of Nehemiah Huntley, Jr., and then came their marriage, and their two daughters, before finally their messy divorce.

♦    ♦    ♦
Nehemiah, after winning his divorce in February 1882, seems to have moved to South Chicago within a couple of months.[4] Six years later, he somehow turns up in Kendallville, Indiana, marrying Mary E. Newlin.

That marriage, too, ended in divorce. (I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.)

The next news we have of him is his last disaster, recounted in the Hobart Gazette of October 16, 1896.

Death From Fire

Mr. N.J. Huntley who was suffocated last Sunday night during a fire in his own house in South Chicago, is well remembered by our older inhabitants. The deceased was a brother-in-law of Dan Underwood and at one time was married to a sister of Mrs. Maggie Roper, of Louis Rhodes and also Mrs. Geo. Roper. He went to his room Sunday evening quite late and shortly after the building was discovered on fire in his room.

Mr. Huntley was a G.A.R.[5] and his remains were brought here on Tuesday for burial by that society. The funeral services were held at the Congregational church. He was married twice but was divorced from both wives who still survive him. He also had two children with his first wife.

We understand he lived a secluded life of late years and had accumulated considerable money.

His first wife and one of his daughters administered his estate:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Illinois, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1772-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

(Incidentally, the third person involved in the estate was probably Edgar Lee Masters, who was then building up a law practice in Chicago and had not yet achieved renown as a poet.)

The 1900 Census shows Mary Palmer living in Chicago with Florence, who described herself as married (but Robert Steger was not recorded in the same household), and the as-yet-unmarried Helen.

The 1910 Census finds Mary and Florence in El Paso, Texas. Both described themselves as widowed.

Mary evidently returned to Indiana after 1910, to visit or to live permanently with Helen and William Rockwell in Gary. And so it was there in 1913 that Mary Rhodes Palmer Huntley died, and all knowledge of what really happened in her marriage with Nehemiah died with her.


_______________
[1] Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
[2] Ancestry.com. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., Marriages, 1838-1911 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018.
[3] Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index.
[4] "Mr. N.J. Huntley, of South Chicago, was in town on Tuesday." The Crown Point Register, 20 Apr. 1882.
[5] As a Civil War veteran of the Union side, he was eligible to join the Grand Army of the Republic.