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M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02300 1446
LAKE
COUNTY,
INDIANA,
FROM 1834 TO 1872.
1
BY
REV. T. H . BALL, A. M.
----
CROWN POINT, INDIANA.
MDCCCLXXII.
CHICAGO : J. W. GOODSPEED, PRINTER AND. PUBLISHER, LAKESIDE BUILDING.
1873.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by T. H. BALL, .In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washing ton.
SLAKESIDE
PUBLISHING & PRINTING CO.
CHICAGO.
AUTHORITIES.
1149136
THINKING it desirable that the early and rapidly perishing his- tory of the settlement of Lake County should be preserved, and believing myself to possess some peculiar facilities and motives for such a work, and feeling sure that the time will come when there will be many to appreciate its value, I have, amid severe pressures and hindrances, endeavored, as faithfully as the circumstances would allow, to accomplish this object. The authorities are :
I. THE CLAIM REGISTER .- This is a document of 1836, twelve inches by seventeen in size, containing eighty pages, which I acci- dentally found in Kankakee City.
2. ROBINSON'S RECORDS .- This document is in the form of a lecture which was given in the Old Log Court House not long before its author left this State to enter on life in New York.
3. DIARY OF JUDGE BALL, of Cedar Lake.
4. MY OWN DIARY, commenced when thirteen years of age.
5. DIARY OR WEATHER RECORD OF REV. H. WASON.
6. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS, from August, 1837.
7. CONVERSATIONS WITH OLD SETTLERS AND THEIR DESCEND- ANTS.
8. PUBLIC RECORDS AND DOCUMENTS.
To the many who have kindly aided me in furnishing items of information I here return my sincere thanks.
Crown Point, Indiana, 1872.
T. H. BALL.
1
CORRECTIONS.
A FEW typographical errors, from which a first edition is rarely altogether free, will be found on these pages. On page 68, ninth line, for the word opened read speared. In the last quotation, on page. 107, the words received and recovered are transposed. On pages 155, 156, and 157, Liverpool is mentioned as having been on the Calumet .. This is of course a mistake. Please read Deep River. A few other errors the reader will easily correct.
By an oversight of my own two burial places are omitted; one in Hanover, connected with the German Evangelical Church ; the. other at Crown Point belonging to the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Both are well kept.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Locality, Water Shed, Water Courses, Cedar Lake, Con-
PAGES. gressional Townships and Ranges, and Ridges, 5-17
CHAPTER II.
Purchases from the Indians, Early Settlements, Squatters'
Union, Land Sale, -
IS-66
CHAPTER III.
The Pottawatomies,
-
67-84
CHAPTER IV.
Growth, 1840-1849, - 85-95
CHAPTER V.
New Growth, 1850-1859, Rail Roads, Swamp Lands,
1
96-110
CHAPTER VI.
Our War Record, The Crown Point Institute, Teachers'
- 110-136 Institutes,
CHAPTER VII.
Burial Places, - -
- I37-144
CHAPTER VIII.
Towns and Villages,
- - I45-165
4
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
Temperance Societies, Agricultural Society, Sabbath School Convention, College Graduates and Students, Literary Societies, Church Organizations, Physicians, Lawyers, Contrasts, - 166-198
CHAPTER X.
The Nail, Commissioners' Records, Center of Lake, Ten Mile Line, Indian Floats, Mounds, Views, Granges, Weather Record. Timber Stealers, Indian Incident, Long Lanes, North Township, First Things, Schools, Wolves, Wild Cat, White Owl, Bald Eagle, Swan, Peri- odicals, Records of Ministers, Kankakee Detectives, Wells and Springs, South East Grove, Orchard, Plum, Lost on the Prairie, Native Wild Animals, Specimen Poems, - 199-275
CHAPTER XI.
Sketches of Early Settlers, - - 276-347
CHAPTER XII.
Sun Dogs, Ice Cutting, K. V. D. Company, Cumberland Lodge, The Burglar, Concluding Reflections, - 348-364
LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA,
1834-1872.
CHAPTER I.
LOCALITY, GEOGRAPHICAL AND PHYSICAL FEATURES.
I.
LAKE COUNTY is situated in the northwest corner of the State of Indiana. It is bounded on the north by Lake Michigan, and on the south by the Kankakee River. On the east an air line running north and south separates it from the county of Porter. On the west lies the State of Illinois. Its east and west sides are paral- lel, and its width is sixteen miles. Its northern limit, the beach dine of one of the world's most magnificent lakes, is a quite regular curve. Its southern limit is a very irregular line, as marked out by the windings of one of the small but remarkable rivers of our country. The length of this region on the east side is about twenty- seven miles. On the west side it is thirty-six miles. Its
6
LAKE COUNTY.
area is, in round numbers, five hundred square miles. Although not large, yet one of the largest among the ninety-two counties of Indiana, it is twice as large as the ancient Attica, that division of Greece which was "in many respects one of the most interesting regions of the. earth," and which once contained 300,000 inhabitants. It is twice as large as the celebrated island of Malta, which, "anciently little else than a baren rock " has. been made, by the exportation of soil from Africa, so fertile as to support a population of 90,000.
It has about the same area as that division of the Ger- man Empire called Saxe Altenburg, which contains more than 140,000 inhabitants. It is larger than the Friendly Islands, which sustain a population of 25,000.
If possessing no natural features to render it of more than ordinary interest, if not "beautiful for situation,"" as was one ancient spot of earth, it is nevertheless pecu- liarly situated. Its northwest corner is within twelve. miles of the court house in Chicago, and, occupying. that space south of the head of Lake Michigan, across. its territory every railroad must pass which from the east or southeast enters that growing city, evidently des- tined to become the mighty metropolis of the north- west and one of the world's great cities.
Five hundred square miles of surface lying where Lake county does cannot be unimportant.
II
Across its borders runs the water shed which separates the Mississippi Valley from the St. Lawrence Basin.
7
WATER SHED.
This line enters the county from the west in St. John's Township, in Section 36, a mile and a half north of the line due west from Crown Point, passing north of the head waters of West Creek in this section; it runs near the village of St. John's, and passes in a winding south- easterly direction across Hanover Township to a point. half a mile north of the head of Cedar Lake. From · thence it winds along the ridges of that strip of woodland in Centre Township, its main direction eastward, passes. south of Fancher's Lake, between that and the Mill. Pond, comes out upon the prairie about one mile south of Crown Point and enters School Grove. It runs along a ridge in the grove south of the Sherman marsh, and passes in a southerly direction across the prairie to a point not far from Cassville. It then turns northward around the head of that arm of Deep River, and bearing a little: toward the east passes on north between Deep River and Eagle Creek, south of Deer Creek, and still bearing eastward leaves Lake county on a line almost due east from Crown Point, passing north of that little lake which is the source of Eagle Creek. The continuation of this water shed eastward is in a northerly direction, north of all tributaries of the Kankakee, and comes up to the por- tage between this and the St. Joseph River. The dis- tance between these two rivers at this point, across which portage La Salle and Hennepin carried their canoes in their famous exploring expedition of 1679, is only five or six miles. The western continuation of this water shed is yet more singular. From that Section 36, crossing the Illinois line it runs southwest, passing west of Eagle Lake and around the head waters of Thorn Creek, having,
8
LAKE COUNTY.
made of southing some seven miles. It then turns north- ward and runs up to the head waters of the Des Plaines River, between that and the Chicago River, running within some eight miles of the shore of Lake Michigan. This Des Plaines River, running past Joliet, meeting with the Kankakee which has turned its course toward the northwest, as though in haste to meet its sister river, forms there, in conjunction with the Kankakee, the Illi- nois River. The head waters of Thorn Creek, which runs into Lake at Dyer, and the south head of Deep River near Cassville, are the two most southern points in the Lake Michigan Basin; and on both the east side and the west, the Mississippi sends up its tributaries to obtain water with which to swell its mighty current very near to Michigan Lake. And from the center of Lake county, all along this winding line, drops of water start but a few feet apart, one of which will plunge down the cataract of Niagara and flowing through the St. Lawrence Gulf, will ·enter the Atlantic Ocean in latitude 46 deg .; while the oth- er, flowing along the great, muddy, Father of Waters and the Gulf of Mexico, enters the same Atlantic in latitude :24 deg., in the warm region of the Tropic of Cancer. Perchance, after traveling thousands of miles these drops will meet and mingle on the shores of Greenland or of Iceland. The height of the Lake county water shed above the ocean level has never been ascertained ? but how singular, that almost from within sound of Mich- igan's dashing waves water should flow down into the Gulf of Mexico.
9
WATER COURSES.
III.
The principal streams of Lake county are, the Calumet, Deep River, and Turkey Creek, flowing into Lake Michi- gan; and West Creek, Cedar Creek and Eagle Creek, flowing into the Kankakee. The main direction of the first three streams is eastward and westward. The main direction of the last three is southward. Turkey Creek is a small stream which, starting northwest of Centreville, passing near this village, running a little north of east, empties its waters into Deep River a little south and west of Hobart. Deep River has two small sources ; the one near Brown's Point, northwest of Crown Point, which flows eastward, and the other commencing in the marshy ground some six miles southeast of Crown Point which flows northward. These two unite east of Crown Point, three and a half miles and north about two miles, and flow eastward, cut- ting the edge of Porter county. The river then flows northward returning into Lake county, and bears north- west to the mouth of Turkey Creek, having made some three and a half miles westing. It then flows northeasterly to Hobart; and passes from thence northward into the Calumet. The Calumet enters the county from Porter, two miles south of Lake Michigan, and flows westward bearing a little south along a marshy valley across the county. It continues on in the State of Illinois, running northwesterly till it reaches the Blue Island bluff, having made about seven and a half miles westing from the Indiana line. Meeting this bluff it turns back and flows but little south of east, in a line nearly parallel with its westward flow, until it has again almost crossed the county of Lake, and enters Lake Michigan two miles
IO
LAKE COUNTY.
west and two north of its entrance from Porter into Lake. 'This was its original channel. I am told that the Indi- ans, some eighty years ago, opened, with the paddles of their canoes, a new channel for this singular river in the marshy ground between Calumet Lake in Illinois, and Wolf Lake in Indiana and Illinois, both near Lake Mich- igan, and thus turned a portion of its waters into this lake by a northern course of a few miles, beginning two miles west of the state line. The Calumet has therefore now two mouths, some twenty miles apart, one in Indiana and one in Illinois. The eastward and westward flow of these northern streams is produced, evidently, by the pecu- liar ridges crossing the northern portion of the county from east to west. These are, north of the Calumet, ridges of sand, the first ones covered with pines and some cedar trees, also producing huckleberry bushes, wintergreens, and other plants natural to a very sandy soil. Further south a growth of oak comes in, the smaller plants re- maining the same. These ridges of pure sand are com- paratively narrow, their elevation being from ten to thirty or forty feet above the level of Lake Michigan. The water of this lake has an elevation of about six hundred feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Between the ridges are marshes, or narrow, sandy valleys, and north of the Cal- umet these ridges are numerous. They extend also be- tween the Calumet and Turkey Creek, and between this and Deep River, but there is little sand south of Turkey Creek on the eastern side of the county. The last ridge on the western side of the county commences just south of Dyer on the Illinois line, passing northward into Illi- nois in a low, broad ridge of sandy prairie soil, and east-
II
WATER COURSES.
ward, containing some grand sand banks exactly, in appearance, like those now along the beach of Lake Michigan, until it gives way to a prairie ridge east of the village of Schererville. The appearance near Dyer is as though the water of Lake Michigan, a number of years ago, washed this ridge and dashed its waves upon this sand, finding here its southwestern limit, then retiring north- ward, ridge by ridge, reached its present bounds, leaving its old beach to show where once its free waves dashed their spray. The eastward continuation of this appar- ently lake beach is a broad prairie ridge between Turkey Creek and Deep River.
South of Deep River, and especially south of the water shed, the ridges and slopes of the woodland and the prairies cause the streams to flow northward or southward. West Creek, commencing at the water shed on that sec- tion 36, before named, about half a mile from the Illinois line, flows south, bearing a little east, and runs into the Kankakee, passing along a broad, marshy valley, forming, before bridges were built, an almost impassable barrier near the western border of the county. Its length, in a straight line, is nineteen miles.
Cedar Creek is the outlet of Cedar Lake, and winds along a narrow valley, at first eastward and then running southward, reaching the Kankakee at a distance, on a straight line, of about thirteen miles from its out-flow at Cedar Lake.
Eagle Creek starts in Porter county, being the outlet of a little lake lying due east of the north part of Crown Point, but soon crossing the line, as it bears westward ; it reaches the Kankakee about 13 miles from that little lake.
I2
LAKE COUNTY.
One of its main tributaries flows from a marsh at the south end of School Grove.
Besides these six named, there are still smaller water 'courses, as Deer Creek, Duck Creek, Plum Creek, and. Willow Creek. Springs will be hereafter mentioned.
IV
The county is now divided into ten townships. These are, commencing at the north : North, which extends across the country from east to west, and is, therefore, sixteen miles long, and is two miles wide at its eastern limit and twelve on its western border ; St. John's, Ross, and Hobart ; Hanover, Center, and Winfield ; West Creek; Cedar Creek, and Eagle Creek. North and Center are so named from their geographical position. The three southern townships are named from their creeks. These creeks received their names, the first from its position, the second from the lake of which it is the outlet, and the third from an eagle's nest on a tree near its banks, found by the early settlers. This nest was. near the Gregg place, and was shown to Luman A. Fow- ler by Jacob Hurlburt in 1835. Ross was named after an. early settler who was killed by the falling of a tree in 1836. St. John's was named from the Church of St. John the Evangelist ; and Hanover, from the German Hanover, its inhabitants being mostly German, and several coming from that kingdom. Hobart was named after Frederick Hobart Earle, of Falmouth, England, brother of George Earle, an early settler of Lake; and Winfield, in honor of Gen. Winfield Scott.
13
CEDAR LAKE.
V.
The principal lake in the county is Cedar Lake or Red Cedar Lake, five miles southwest of the geographi- cal center. Its eastern shore is in Center Township and its western in Hanover. It was named from the red ce- dar trees growing on its bank. Its length is two and a half miles. Its greatest breadth is one mile. It has no inlet ; is evidently fed by springs; its waters are clear, pure, and soft; and when first seen by the white settlers it abounded in fish, water-fowls, musk-rats, and minks. On its banks the Red Men reared their wigwams; on its waters they paddled their light canoes ; and on its north- ern bank, in the pure sand, close by a high bluff, they buried their dead. As a sheet of water, comparing as it does well in size with some of the noted ones of Eng- land, it is called, by some good judges, very beautiful. Other small lakes are: Fancher's, Lake Seven, Lemon Lake, Sheehan's Lake, and Wolf Lake. Lake George is found on some maps, but, like the mountains of North- ern Indiana, in Cummings' Atlas of 1815, it is more imaginary than real.
VI.
The surface and the soil in this region are quite varied. Darby's Universal Gazetteer, of 1827, says, article Indi- ana : " The country round the extreme S. bay of Lake Michigan has the appearance of the sea marshes of Louisiana. Low flooded prairies intersected by lakes and interlocking creeks. No eminences are seen, one un- broken horizon encircles the eye." There is some low, level, marshy land. There is low and level prairie.
I4
LAKE COUNTY.
"There is rolling prairie with long ridges of woodland. There is rolling prairie with long and graceful slopes and broad valleys, and some prairie with deep and short val- leys equal almost to the rolling prairie of Iowa. There are long and broad ridges and table lands, and hills and dales, and heavy woodland. There are beds of white sand as clean and pure as sand can well be. There are miles of yellowish sand where corn and potatoes will grow quite successfully. There is a whitish clay soil, producing oats, grass, and winter wheat, and rye. There is the rich black soil of the prairie, and the still deeper and richer soil of the high and dry marsh. The large Cady Marsh, the Calumet and Kankakee marshes, and other smaller ones, contain many thousands of- acres of Land that must one day become very valuable. Some of it, once called waste land and "swamp land," already produces large crops of grass and oats.
VII.
Over Lake county and above the line of the Water Shed, the warm vapor from the southern valleys and the slopes, or from the rivers and waters of the South meets with the cooler vapor of Lake Michigan, giving to this re- gion, in ordinary seasons, an abundance of moisture, and causing the atmosphere to be very seldom perfectly cloudless. As, however, late in the season the water of Lake Michigan becomes quite warm, and continues during those golden days of October and sometimes through November which we call Indian Summer, the north wind bringing that vapor and warm air over the ridge and down our southern slope to the Kankakee
I5
RANGES AND RIDGES.
keeps off the early autumnal frosts, and this county is sometimes protected for weeks after the frost appears further west and further south. If the springs, there- fore, are wet and backward occasionally, the autumns are, quite usually, warm, late, and delightful.
VIII.
This region contains, as laid out by the United States surveyor, two entire ranges, Eight and Nine, three rows of sections in Range Seven on the east, and one row of sections in Range Ten on the west. The congressional townships are from Thirty-two to Thirty-seven in each range, some of which, on the north and south, are not full. Ten congressional townships are almost entire. The prairie region covers, probably, about two-thirds of the county. The first prairie, beginning at the northeast of the prairie portion, is just south of the town of Ho- bart, is level, rather low, and was formerly wet. It is now sufficiently dry for successful cultivation. It is
small, not more than two miles in extent. The second, lying west of Deep River, which is here running north- ward, is much larger, quite level, and was formerly wet. As it spreads southward and westward it grows higher and slopes upward along a ridge, that broad prairie ridge south of Turkey Creek. This ridge, and for several miles, is high but not rolling prairie. Southward slopes the broad expanse, spreading also out for miles to the west- ward, of what was called, in early times, Robinson's Prai- rie. Its landmarks were the Hodgeman place, Wiggins, Point, Brown's Point, and Solon Robinson's, afterwards Lake C. H .- that is Court House,-and finally, Crown
I6
LAKE COUNTY.
Point. This large extent of prairie contained some that was low and wet, some high ridges, but very little that could be called rolling. South of the center of the coun- ty the prairie spreads out over nearly the whole width, and having passed the water shed becomes, in the south central part, truly rolling. It is not, to much extent, broken and hilly, but contains magnificent slopes, one succeeding another, gradually descending toward the Kankakee meadow lands, and between these slopes are broad but not deep valleys where armies of ten thousand men in each might form in line of battle. The landmarks here are, School Grove, South East Grove, Plum Grove, Orchard Grove, Hickory point, and Pleasant Grove. Between South East Grove and Hickory Point, and ex- tending southward there is some low and level prairie. West of Pleasant Grove and of Cedar Lake, and extend- ing south to the Belshaw Grove and west to the West Creek timber, lies the gem of the prairie region of Indi- ana, known as Lake Prairie. Robinson's Prairie has more size, Door Prairie more celebrity ; but Lake Prairie possesses, according to my taste, more perfect beauty. Door Prairie is rich and beautiful. It has been called the Garden of the West. It lies on the route of travel. Lake Prairie is seldom seen by travelers' or tourists' ! eyes. South of the prairie proper, extending across the county, lies a belt of marsh or meadow land five or six miles in breadth, interspersed with islands of timber, and bordering the channel of the Kankakee River. A part is: dry, a part is wet marsh. This marsh region makes that river remarkable. A river is known to be there. The blue line of trees marking its course can be discerned from:
I7
KANKAKEE. -
the prairie heights ; but only occasionally, in mid winter or in a time of great drouth, can one come near its water channel. So far as any ordinary access to it from this county is concerned it is like a fabulous river, or' one the existence of which we take on trust. The fowlers, the trappers, and the woodmen have looked upon its slug- gish waters.
18
LAKE COUNTY.
1
CHAPTER II.
1834-1839. SQUATTER LIFE.
I.
In the year 1800 Indiana became an organized territory. Before that time it had formed a part of the almost un- known and trackless wilds of the North-West, slightly explored by some adventurous Frenchmen and penetrated for the purpose of traffic by fur traders. As early as 1679 and 1680 there is evidence that French explorers passed along the border, and perhaps across the very center of what is now Lake county. The first settlement: in Indiana was made by the French in 1690, at Vin- cennes. In 1816 Indiana was admitted into the Union as a State. But the northern part was a wilderness. As late as 1820 it contained only fifty counties, and of these- Wabash had 147 inhabitants, Owen 838, and Martin. 1032. There was then no La Porte or St. Joseph ; there- was no Marshall, or Pulaski, or Steuben; no northern Indiana. Although for four years a State, and contain- ing 147,178 inhabitants, this Lake Michigan region was still the home of the Red Men and the fur traders.
Chicago became Fort Dearborn in 1804, and was a. trading post for corn raised by the Pottawatomies in their corn villages on the Des Plaines and in the Fox River
19
SQUATTER LIFE. .
Valley, of which their adopted chief, Alexander Robin- son, or Chee-chee-bing-way, shipped, in 1809, about 100 bushels ; and also for fur, which the Calumet and Kanka- kee region furnished abundantly. In 1812 took place the Fort Dearborn Massacre. In 1816 the fort was restored. The fur trade was then vigorously carried on, and con- nection, of course, kept up between Fort Dearborn and Detroit.
By the treaty of the United States with the Pottawato- mies in 1828, a strip of land ten miles in width was ac- quired along the northern border of Indiana, which ex- tends in a narrow strip to the extreme southern limit of Lake Michigan. This was the first land purchased from the Indians in what is now Lake county. By the treaty of 1832 the remainder of this county was acquired and all which the Pottawatomies owned in the State.
Up to this time there were no whites in all this region except fur traders, perchance some hunters and trappers,, and the soldiers at Fort Dearborn. In this year took place the Black Hawk War, and a few white settlers came into what is now La Porte county. A route for travel was immediately opened along the beach of Lake Michi- gan. Three men, Hart, Steel, and Sprague, started a. stage line from Detroit to Fort Dearborn, or Chicago, probably in 1833, and four-horse coaches were placed upon the road. And now the stillness of nature and the repose of wild life was broken. White covered wagons came, with white men, and women, and children, white as to race but brown from exposure,-" boys in their sunny brown beauty and men in their rugged bronze,"-to start new echoes in the wilderness, to lay claim to the beauti-
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