Abbie Shedd Rice

In my last post, I mentioned Abbie, the daughter of William and Abbie (Wood) Shedd, so I thought I'd post these photos of her from the Wood-Vincent family album.


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I scanned this one in color to show how someone has tried to hand-tint the cloth draped over the table she's leaning on.

Abbie was born in 1855, as we know, and in this photo she appears perhaps five years old, which would date the photo to about 1860. She is wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, a style popular for children from the 1840s through mid-1860s. Her short hair is not all that unusual for the era.

She was just "Abby Shedd" when someone wrote her name inside the photographer's imprint on the back …



… but someone has written her full married name below the photo in the album:




Likewise on the other photo:



By now she is a young lady, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties.



That would place the photo around 1875. The style of her clothing is consistent with that timeframe.

This photo was also taken in Valparaiso.



Both of Abbie's photographers are discussed in Steve Shook's blog.


I believe Abbie grew up in the home of her grandparents, John and Hannah Wood; that is where we find her in the censuses of 1860 through 1880. After Hannah's death in 1873, Abbie kept house for her grandfather. In 1882, she married Edwin Rice of Valparaiso. They had two daughters (that I have been able to find out about, and that was not easy).

Abbie was only 45 when she died on December 1, 1900. She is buried in the Woodvale Cemetery.

Her husband, Edwin, died in Chicago in 1910. His body was brought to Deep River for burial beside Abbie.

This death notice says that at one time he traveled to Central America with his wife's half-brother, William Joshua Shedd:


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"Whiting and Environs," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 5 Oct. 1910.


Their daughter, Georgia, died young. It is from this death notice that I first hear of her sister, Mary.


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Porter County Vidette (Valparaiso, Ind.), 16 May 1917.

I have not been able to find out anything at all about sister Mary.

Joshua R. Shedd, and Shedd-Related Tragedies

These two documents from the Jeremiah Wiggins estate tell us of some strange transaction whereby Joshua R. Shedd paid off Jeremiah's account to Robinson & Co.[1] and then filed for reimbursement by the estate.


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:

Jeremiah Wiggins Dr.
To Joshua R. Shedd

To the balance of account due the firm
of Robinson & Co. for merchandise — $5.09
Interest from June 5th 1837 to date .87
Lake C.H. Ia. March 2, 1939 $5.96

He was, in fact, reimbursed:


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Image courtesy of Alice Flora Smedstad.

My transcription:

Recd of the Clerk of the Probate Court of Lake County
the amount for my account of $5.09 originally due to
Robinson & Co. filed in the office of the said Clerk as a
claim against the estate of Jeremiah Wiggins, deceased.
March 2, 1839

Michigan City Ia. ) J.R. Shedd
Nov. 25th 1839. )

With a full name, including middle initial, not to mention two possible locations (Lake County and Michigan City), you'd think it would be possible to identify him, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. My best guess is that he was the Joshua Rundle Shedd who died in Cook County in 1854 and is now buried in the southern part of the city. But that's just a guess, based on his date of birth and the coincidence of names and middle initial. I can't find anything clearly tying Joshua Rundle Shedd to Lake County or Michigan City.

♦    ♦    ♦
However, in searching Chicago newspapers for any information about that Joshua Shedd, I came across a tragic story involving to the Shedd family of Deep River, so let us talk about them now.

William Henry Shedd was born in 1821 in Massachusetts. I know this from his grave marker. The record of his birth fails to include the date (but does mention an older brother named Joshua Rundle Shedd).


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Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).

I can't find any record of him until a possible sighting in 1852, in California:


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Ancestry.com. California, U.S., State Census, 1852. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: California State Census of 1952. (microfilm, M/F 144, 6 rolls). Sacramento, California: California State Library.

The age is about right, the birthplace is right. Did our William get caught up in the Gold Rush?

If that's our guy, he left California very soon after being counted. The next record we have of him is in the autumn of 1853, when he married John Wood's daughter, Abbie.[2] William and Abbie had a daughter, also named Abbie, born in 1855. The following year, Abbie (the mother) died.

William married again, in 1859, to Josephine Blachly in Porter County. The 1860 Census shows William and Josephine, with their infant son, William, living in Union Township, while little Abbie lived with her grandparents in Deep River.

William Sr. gave his occupation as merchant. He may have been running his business in the village of Deep River. There was a mercantile partnership around this time, Shedd & Wood, operating in the area; we are told that George Wood, the fifth child of John and Hannah, worked for that partnership as a clerk "in a country store."[3] On this page from the July 25, 1861 issue of the Crown Point Register, we find both "Wm. H. Shedd, Deep River," and "Wood & Shedd, Woods Mills,"[4] offering patent medicines for sale:


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I have found such ads in the Register involving the name Shedd as early as 1859 and as late as 1865. By the way, I don't know which Wood was involved in the partnership; my guess is Augustus.

By the 1870 Census, William and Josephine, with sons William and Orton (b. 1861), had moved to Watseka, Illinois. William gave his occupation as cabinet-maker. The two elder Shedds would live out the rest of their lives in Watseka, and are now buried there.

The tragic story I mentioned above involves the eldest son, William Joshua Shedd:


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Blue Island Sun-Standard (Blue Island, Ill.), 30 Nov. 1922.


As you will note, the article mentions his birth in Deep River, Indiana. It also mentions that this was not the first such tragedy in the family.


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[1] We will speak of Robinson & Co. in the future.
[2] Indiana Marriage Collection.
[3] Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed-Blanchard) at 718.
[4] "Woods Mills" being another name for the village of Deep River, along with "Woodvale."