Resurrecting the Sturtevant Cemetery

Before and after: November 10, 2024 and March 9, 2025



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Images courtesy of Michael White.

We can't say that the Sturtevant[1] Cemetery has been completely lost — it has been visited several times from the mid-20th century to the early 21st by local volunteers who have described its location and transcribed those of its stones that could be found and read, and the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society makes that information available. We can, however, say that the Sturtevant Cemetery has become inaccessible and largely forgotten.

Over the past year or so, local historian Michael White has devoted many hours to the cemetery — not only researching it extensively, but also going out into the woods to locate it and, through a lot of hard physical work, uncovering it from years of neglect. The photos above show the cemetery as he first found it in November 2024, and then again in March 2025, after several clean-up visits with a couple of other volunteers.

I like the sequence below, showing a piece of a grave marker being uncovered from a layer of mud, until you can partially read the epitaph. After more excavation, a full headstone is revealed.




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Images courtesy of Michael White.

Of the epitaph, I could only read the first three words: "Gone to inhabit…" An online search for such an epitaph turned up this one …


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… in a late-19th-century book of epitaphs offered by the Vermont Marble Company.

But the top part of the stone is not legible, so we don't know for whom that epitaph was chosen.


Michael has written up his findings on the history of the cemetery and the Sturtevant family, and presented them to relevant governmental agencies, such as the Lake County Parks Department (which owns the cemetery) and the Ross Township Trustee, as well as two local historical societies. The cemetery is fortunate to have such an energetic advocate. It deserves advocacy, as part of our local history. Its graves are those of early settlers of eastern Ross Township. It is the final resting place of a young Civil War soldier who died in the service. It is even the scene of a possible grave robbery.

With Michael's permission, I am posting the paper he compiled, which contains historical summaries and numerous research sources, and the PowerPoint presentation he prepared for his talks to officials and historical societies.

• The history paper is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MlCNcvZCv2q1XG6i-BHEByYvY4bNZ6-V/view?usp=sharing
• The PowerPoint PDF is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZuvQ-SVIu85Qh-ItiAblIAtagK9SnD-/view?usp=sharing

Michael also took numerous photos documenting the cemetery as he first found it, and as it slowly began to look like a proper burial ground through his (and two other volunteers') clean-up work. The photos above come from this collection. I am sharing the full collection below.

• The initial condition of the cemetery on November 10, 2024: click to view album
• The first clean-up efforts on February 28, 2025: click to view album
• Ongoing clean-up on March 2, 2025: click to view album
• The latest clean-up visit on March 9, 2025: click to view album (also a short video from this visit)

There remains a lot of work yet to be done, to complete the reading and restoration of the grave markers, maintain the cemetery, and, possibly, persuade the Lake County Parks Department to make it officially accessible to the public. Anyone who is interested in helping is invited to contact Michael White at fwmichaelwhite@gmail.com.


Here's a lovely sunset photographed from the Sturtevant Cemetery … or maybe it's a sunrise for the Sturtevant Cemetery?


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Image courtesy of Michael White.


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[1] This family name shows up in several spelling variations. In my blog I have been indexing it as "Sturtevant" just for the sake of consistency.

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.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:


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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.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:


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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:


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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:


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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.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:


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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:


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Images courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.



And here is my attempt to transcribe it:


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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.

Maria Amanda Harvey Castle Lathrop

This obituary appeared in the Hobart Gazette of December 18, 1896:

Maria Amanda, wife of Samuel Lathrop, one of Ross township's oldest and well-known citizens, died at her home[1] about 2½ miles south of Hobart at 4 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 16th, aged nearly 80 years. While Mrs. Lathrop had suffered more or less for the past ten years from heart difficulties her general health of late had been reasonably good for a person of her age and on the day of her death she had been about her home as usual.

The deceased was born in Vermont in February, 1817. By a former husband she was the mother of four children, sons, Lucius, Harrison A., Jackson and A[dmiral] R[odney] Castle, and by her marriage with Mr. Lathrop she was the mother of two sons, Charley and George, all of whom survive her.

The funeral services will be conducted at her late home this afternoon (Friday) at one o'clock and the interment will occur at the Hobart cemetery.

Poor Lysander Castle: he never got his own obituary, and here he's not even named — just "a former husband."

Maria probably placed the monument on his grave. I believe it was placed there before 1895, when the partners making up Kelly and Son both died, as we learn from helpful information posted to findagrave.com. I do not know when the firm started its business. The 1880 Census shows George Kelly as a farmer, and David as a farm laborer. The earliest reference to the firm I can find in the on-line newspapers comes from the Hobart Gazette of August 7, 1890:


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[1] The home where she died is still standing, though severely neglected, on the south bank of the Deep River, overlooking S.R. 51.

Lysander Castle's Lonely Grave

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

The stone in this photo marks the lonely grave of Lysander Castle, who died in 1851. This digital scan of the photo is taken from the computer at the Hobart Historical Society museum. The original physical photo does not seem to be in the museum. No information about its source was preserved with the scan.

In the Chester Cemetery section of the NWIGS' Ross Township Cemeteries, we find the following text, quoted (if I understand correctly) by the 1992 readers, who noted: "This information about Lysander Castle was taken from previous records":

Lysander was actually buried by Deep River. This is a single stone of a later period than the death date. It was installed by Kelly and son. Tradition has it that this is on property originally owned by Nathaniel P. Banks. Present day owners are the Truitt family, though this property was formerly owned by John Knotts. The marker is a few feet south of Deep River, which cuts through the property, on a high bank in an area completely covered with scrub bushes and blackberry briars.

Tradition further tells that the river was so completely covered by snow and overflowing that the pall bearers could not cross the river even after a two day wait, so the casket was buried on this spot. We have placed him in this record since there are other Castles buried in Chester Cemetery.

Perhaps the photo above was taken by the writers of the "previous records," whoever they may have been, and whenever they may have hiked out there along the banks of the river to find the stone. (A photo taken in 1992, I expect, would be in color.)

Here is the 1874 Plat Map of Section 7:


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The 40 acres marked "M.A. Castle" were purchased by Lysander in 1849:


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Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records; Washington D.C., USA; Federal Land Patents, State Volumes, via Ancestry.com. U.S., General Land Office Records, 1776-2015[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

M.A. Castle was Lysander's widow, Maria Amanda (Harvey) Castle, whom he had married in 1837 in St. Joseph County, Indiana (Indiana Marriage Collection), and who had married Samuel Lathrop in 1853.

If the "tradition" quoted in the NWIGS book is correct, Lysander may be buried on the bit of land that Nathaniel Banks owned south of the Deep River and east of Sprout Ditch. Banks would not have owned that land at the time of Lysander's death, as he was then a child of six. I don't know who owned it then; I can't find any record of Lysander buying any other land in Section 7. I am not sure why Lysander's survivors would not have buried him on his own 40 acres. Perhaps they were carrying him along the river, looking for a place where they could cross it (intending, I suppose, to carry him to the Old Settlers Cemetery north on S.R. 51), and just gave up near Sprout Ditch (would they even have tried to cross that?), and buried him there.

The reference to the Truitt family owning the land is not illuminating, as they owned a tremendous amount of land there by 1950. I can't find a plat map showing the Knotts ownership.

I have taken this break from Jeremiah Wiggins to memorialize Lysander, whose lonely grave may soon be paved over for a data center. Or may at least become less lonely, but not in a good way.