USA > Indiana > Lake County > Encyclopedia of genealogy and biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a compendium of history 1834-1904 > Part 10
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
was very kindly in his ministrations in the rooms of sickness, he had brought relief to many through his knowledge of the healing art, but in November, 1893, soon after the close of the great Columbian Exposition, his own time came to die. For nearly forty years he had been one of the principal phy- sicians of the county and had done much good. He was born in 1825.
Older than he as a resident physician was DR. HARVEY PETTIBONE, whose date of location at Crown Point is 1847. He was in the medical line. His father was a physician before him and his son after him. The Pettibone family came from the East, the father and three sons, Dr. Harvey, D. K., and William Pettibone, all for many years inhabitants of Crown Point. Dr. Pettibone married Mrs. H. S. Pelton and entered amid favorable circun- stances upon a long and successful course of medical practice. He entered into political life once, sufficiently long to represent Lake county in the State Legislature. Years, 1882-1884. He was born in Naples, New York, No- vember 28, 1821, he commenced the practice of medicine there about 1842, and his life ended here August 19, 1898, when he was nearly seventy-seven years of age, having been a physician for fifty-five years.
DR. HENRY PETTIBONE, a son of Dr. Harvey Pettibone, may, like Charles F. Griffin, be properly mentioned after his father. He was born in Crown Point May 31, 1850, was a student with Henry Johnson at the Crown Point Institute, went with him to Hanover College. Indiana, graduated there in the scientific course, returned to Crown Point, studied medicine, secured quite a laige practice, his father gradually retiring, married Miss M. Sauer - man, and died very unexpectedly at a hospital in Chicago, June 26, 1902. He has two sisters, both living, and two daughters.
DR. JOHN HIGGINS is the third of the physicians of Crown Point who were associated together for so many years. He was born in Perry, New York, May 29, 1822. He was a descendant of Pilgrims and Puritans, be- tween whom some persons make no distinction. His Pilgrim ancestor was Richard Higgins, who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1621. His Puritan ancestor was Simon Sackett, who came to the Boston Colony in 1632. His
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
father was David Higgins and his mother in her girlhood was Eunice Sackett from which family was named Sackett's Harbor on Lake Ontario.
Graduating at an Indiana Medical college in 1846. Dr. Higgins was married in 18.47 to Miss Diantha Tremper, a member of a Lake county family of early settlers. Dr. Higgins did not enter fully upon practice in Crown Point till 1859. In 1861 he entered the Union Army as a physician and surgeon, did much hospital work. became an expert surgeon, and resumed practice at Crown Point in 1865. Like his two contemporaries his practice extended over considerable territory, and having a good start financially. like them he continued to accumulate. One daughter came to his home. and as the years passed on a son-in-law came, a young lawyer, J. W. Youche. and in the course of time a grandson came, and then for a few years the domestic happiness seemed complete. The young lawyer rose rapidly in his profession, became a State Senator, a large dwelling house was erected. the Higgins-Youche mansion, and made a home of elegance without and within, and the grandson soon became an intelligent, promising youth. Dr. Higgins was growing aged. He retired from practice. He rode very much in his buggy, having some fine horses, but not to visit patients. Sometimes one meniber of the family would be with him. sometimes another. But changes come to all. They came to him. In November, 1895, the wife who had been with him for forty-eight years passed away from earth. In January, 1901. the son-in-law, Hon. J. W. Youche, still in the prime of manhood, was cut down by the sharp sickle of death. And in the early morn- ing of April 7. 1904, when nearly eighty-two years of age. Dr. Higgins' own time came to die.
The three had all been respected and honored as men and as physicians. and all had met with financial success.
Before leaving this record and these memorials of early physicians two more names are placed on this page. One is the name of W. E. VILMER, a German, whose dates of residence are from 1853 to 1861. Dr. Vilmer mar- ried a daughter of Mr. Lewis Herlitz. of Cedar Lake. His school of medi-
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cine was different from the others who have been named. His professional life was short. He fixed up a pleasant home and left in it. when he went from earth, besides his wife, two sons and one daughter.
The other name is that of Dr. M. G. BLISS, coming here as a retired physician, opening and carrying on for some little time a drug store which was at length destroyed by fire, causing to him a great loss, and then taking a new course of lectures in Chicago, opening an office and acquiring consid- erable practice as a physician of the Eclectic school. He had nothing on which to start and, unlike the others, he did not, he could not. accumulate; but he was for some thirty years here a kind. good-hearted, successful phy- sician, a very pleasant, kindly man, and a school Trustee for many years. He has in Crown Point two sons and two daughters.
A Lawyer's Record.
The first lawyer of the county has been named in different connections, ALEXANDER McDONALD, whose home for some years was on East street, who died in that home in 1866, one of whose daughters is Mrs. Belle Lathrop of Florida, and one Mrs. H. S. Holton, and one is the wife of Dr. Poppe, a physician settling here in 1870 and after some years removing to Chicago, all now living. Lawyer McDonald's date of location in Crown Point is 1839. Before that time he had a residence at or near what became Lowell.
But the next lawyer, and the one whose record was here to be given, was MARTIN WOOD. He was an earlier resident in Crown Point than Major Griffin. The record is, "April 4, 1848, he came among us." The pioneer modes of living were soon to end. but he was well adapted to help on the ending and to press forward into the new. As many a young man had done before his day and as many have since done. he taught for a time in a public school. He opened a law office. His next step was to secure a partner, not for business but for life, and he wisely selected a minister's daughter, Miss Susan G. Taylor, of Pleasant Grove, to whom he was married August 26. 1849. Besides being a lawyer and looking after the interests of his clients, he secured a small farm of fifty-five acres close to the town. having a taste for
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agricultural or horitculturai pursuits. Ten acres he enclosed with ornamenta! trees, as many as twenty varieties he put on his grounds, some of them quite rare varieties, and he set out about eight hundred evergreens, including arbor vitae, red cedar, Norway spruce, Scotch pine, white pine, yellow pine, silver spruce, Austrian pine, Weymouth pine, Siberian arbor vitae, balsam fir, and juniper. He set out fruit trees to bear apples, pears, quinces, and peaches. He gave attention to small fruit. He did not neglect his law business nor political life while doing all this. It will probably be long before Crown Point has such another citizen lawyer as was he. There was force, energy in his voice and movements. He spread a quantity of ink on paper when he wrote. His frame, as to his body, was stoutly built, compact, but not above medium height, and his manner. to a stranger, might have seemed slightly brusk. But he was the very man to contend earnestly for the cause he believed to be right, and was in reality of a kind and gentle disposition. His speeches were not polished, but in them and through them there was force. He acquired a large law practice and entering to some extent into political life he represented Lake county for two terms in the State Legis- lature.
Hon. Martin Wood was born in Ohio, November 26, 1815. He died at his pleasant home Monday morning, September 5. 1892, being nearly seventy- seven years of age. He had four sons and three daughters who are all now living and active in the busy world, making money, gaining honors, doing good.
CLEVELAND. Among the lawyers of Crown Point forty years ago was one who came as a child into this county in 1837, a son of EPHRAIM CLEVE- LAND, whose family were active Methodists and Sunday-school workers at Pleasant Grove in the very beginning of Sunday-school organization in the county. This child, TIMOTHY CLEVELAND, was born November 22, 1829, in the state of New York. and so was about eight years of age when the family came to Lake county. He passed the years of boyhood and youth at Pleasant Grove, settled at Crown Point as a lawyer in 1863, gave some attention to
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journalism and some to farming, published a paper, the Herald, for a short time, and lived to be seventy years of age. He was a man of strong Chris- tian principle, and manifested, when it was called out, a rare Christian spirit. His older daughter, Miss Helen Cleveland, was for several years a prominent teacher in the Crown Point public school and is now the wife of Professor Weems of Valparaiso. The younger daughter, Miss Cynthia E., was married July 17, 1898, to Mr. Joseph Baker, of Valparaiso. One son, CHARLES A. CLEVELAND, is carrying on a printing office at Hammond, and WALTER W. CLEVELAND is a printer in the Star office at Crown Point. Another son, OTIS W. CLEVELAND, married a daughter of J. S. Holton and is living in Crown Point.
The Cleveland family of the east and south is large, but where the Lake county family connects back in the old ancestral line is not here known.
Another genuine Christian lawyer was JAMES B. TURNER, a member also of one of the true and substantial pioneer families of 1838, himself then a youth seventeen years of age. He was a son of Judge Samuel Turner of Eagle Creek and a brother of Judge David Turner of Crown Point. He left the Eagle Creek farm, studied law, settled as a lawyer at Crown Point in 1861, established a reputation as "a very refined and a Christian man," and died in August. 1866. He was married in 1848 to Miss Austria C. Lindsley. They had no children, but adopted a boy who was called Walter Turner.
Hon. J. W. YOUCHE. A later resident than these that have just been named, and a much younger lawyer, was JULIUS W. YOUCHE. He was born March 4, 1848, in Saxony, the son of Frederick William and Wilhel- mine Pfeifer Yonche. He was brought across the Atlantic when two years of age, and the home of his childhood and youth was in the state of Ohio. The Youche family were Lutherans. In that faith he was brought up. He came into Indiana and completed a course of literary studies at the State University at Bloomington. He then came to Crown Point as a teacher ; was principal of the Crown Point public school in 1870, then twenty-two years of age. He went to Ann Arbor in Michigan, graduated at that uni-
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
versity as a law student in 1872. He returned to Crown Point and com- menced the practice of law. January 1, 1873, he was married to Miss Eunice Higgins, the only child of Dr. Higgins, of Crown Point, and in that home, which became the Higgins-Youche mansion, one of the costly and spacious and beautiful residences of Crown Point, he resided for twenty-eight years. He was a model son-in-law ; a good citizen ; an exemplary and devoted husband and father; a man of refined feelings and of cultivated taste. He was scholarly in different lines. As a talented young lawyer he had risen rapidly in his profession. He was a state senator, was vice president of the Crown Point National Bank, was a trustee of the State University, and "was for many years." as said one of the best and most cultivated lawyers of the county, "easily the leader at the bar of this county, and a leader in north- western Indiana." He died January 2, 1901, nearly fifty-three years of age.
Unlike one of our older lawyers he had not opened a little farm and set out trees and shrubbery : but his love for nature was large, and his enjoy- ment of geologic and historic research was keen He had accumulated in his professional life quite an amount of property, and had collected a large and valuable library.
He has left one son. Julian Higgins Youche, now a college student, talented and ambitious, climbing up toward fame and success. To him and to his mother, to Crown Point and to Lake county, the loss of such a man and such a lawyer, in the prime of manhood, has been great. Of him it was said when he first came to Crown Point, that he was an unusually con- scientious and inoffensive young man, and this noble trait, to avoid giving offense, lie retained through life.
Of those representing the earliest pioneer times no one retained the peculiarities of a few settlers more fully than one well known in all Old Settler meetings, AMOS HORNOR.
The Hornor family came from the Wabash region. In the eyes of the New England and New York children they were in appearance, in dress, in language, genuine "Hoosiers." Most of that family in a very few years
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY. .
returned to the Wabash, and the others from that locality, as the large Nor- dyke family, Wiles, Bond, and others, returned or went westward to other frontier regions. But Amos Hornor remained. He was born May 19. 1813. He was of Quaker descent. His father, David Hornor, continued to use the Quaker forms of speech.
In 1834 a few members of the family came up and made claims in Octo- ber and November on the west side of the Red Cedar Lake. In the summer of 1835 more members of the family came up. and Amos Hornor, then twenty-two years of age, came with them. They cut grass for hay, put up some cabins, and returned once more to Tippecanoe county. In November, 1835. the Hornor and Brown families removed to Lake county, and this date established by documentary evidence, the Claim Register, marks the commencement of Amos Hornor's residence in the county. He was quite desirous at one time of being considered the first or one of the first settlers in the county only second to Solon Robinson and a very few others. But no man can go back of the testimony of the Claim Register, on whatever points it gives testimony.
After the return of his father's family to the Wabash Amos Hornor resided for some time at Crown Point. Soon he was married to Miss Mary White, one of the young belles of Crown Point, daughter of Mrs. Sally White. afterward Mrs. Wolf, of Porter county. The marriage took place in Porter county, July 4. 1844. She lived less than a year. And he was again married, June 24, 1849, to a widow woman now, and not a young girl, Mrs. Sarah R. Brown. He made his final home at Ross. and with her he lived many peaceful years. They had two daughters. One is not now living. Mrs. Sarah Horner at length died, and a third wife, Mrs. Amanda M. Co- burn, January 10, 1892, took the vacant place.
In a few years his own time came, and Amos Hornor, of Ross, the last representative of the Hornor and Brown families of 1835, departed from among the living August 25. 1895. nearly eighty-two years of age. For al- mnost sixty years he had trodden the soil of Lake county and amid all the
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
changes of the last half of the Nineteenth Century he retained to a large extent the characteristics of his youth. In all Old Settler meetings at Crown Point and at Hebron he took a large interest and was always ready to rehearse the experiences of early years.
BALL .- The name, AMSI L. BALL, occurs quite frequently in the earliest history of Lake county. He was one of the more mature men active and prominent in laying the foundations of civil and social institutions. He came with his son. JOHN BALL, from the State of New York in 1836. To which band of the large family of Balls emigrating from England between 1630 and 1640 he belonged is not known. In March, 1837, an election was held at his house, also at the house of Russell Eddy and at the house of Samuel D. Bryant, at which election, having received seventy-eight votes for county Commissioner, he was elected for three years; but he resigned this office in the summer in order to be a candidate at the August election for Representative to Indianapolis. Lake county voted for him, but Porter county. with which Lake for some years was united in electing a Repre- sentative, did not. He gave up a certainty for an uncertainty and so lost both offices. He was rather tall in person, a fluent speaker, a man capable and ambitious. He was, as the political parties of those days were desig- nated, a Democrat, and Solon Robinson, who had been the "Squatter King" of Lake, was a strong Whig. Politically these two, both ambitious men. were not friendly. and each had the credit in those days of defeating to some extent the political aspirations of the other. Amsi L. Ball, while not holding office, continued to be an influential and prominent citizen, but, about 1851 or soon after, he returned to the State of New York after a resi- dence here of about fifteen years. Of his son's sojourn here but little is known.
JONES .- LEVI D. JONES, whose name is on record as a grand juror at the first term of the Lake Circuit Court, in 1837, must have been an early settler, but further records concerning him have not been found.
DAVID JONES was an early resident in Porter county and then near the
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Hurlburt Corners, and, retiring from his farm life at length, he lived for many years on East street in Crown Point, an exemplary church , member and a quiet citizen, where he died in 1895. He had several children, of whom one son and one daughter live in Crown Point.
W. G. McGLASHON, who came to Crown Point in 1846, was very closely identified with the business interests of the town for many years. He was some of the time clerk or salesman, and his positions will indicate some of the business houses of former years. In 1850 he became clerk for William Alton, then a leading merchant. Afterward he was clerk for Turner & Bissel. successors to J. W. Dinwiddie; then for D. Turner; for Turner & Cramer : and for Strait. He was in these stores for four years. Then he was in the store of A. H. Merton, successor to Turner & Cramer: then clerk for John G. Hoffman. In these two stores for three years. It was now 1858 and he went into business for himself. In 1860 he bought a stock of goods in Boston and then took in as a· partner M. L. Barber.
He kept the postoffice, and when the railroad came through the town he did the express business. He next bought out M. L. Barber, and at length closed out his business and in 1867 retired to a farm about four miles south of town. In 1871 he returned to the town and to business life. He at last went to the West and died there, a very aged man.
He was rather low in stature and quite portly. A true man. He was born in Quebec, October 19, 1814, was married in Vermont in 1833, and lived to be eighty-two years of age. That Vermont wife, Mrs. McGlashon. is still living with an unmarried daughter in the West. Her great-grand- children live at Hammond, the children of Dr. Turner.
SUMMERS .- Among those who have aided largely in building up Crown Point and the county the name of ZERALI F. SUMMERS is prominent. He was a son of Judge Benjamin Summers, of Ohio, and was born in Ver- milion, Erie county, Ohio, July 16, 1829. He came to Crown Point, where he had several relatives, in November, 1854. He had received a good business education, which included also surveying and civil engineering.
HERMAN C. BECKMAN
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
In 1855 and 1856 he assisted the county surveyor, John Wheeler, who was one of his relatives, and with him in 1857 bought out the Crown Point Herald and issued, August 4, 1857. the first number of the Crown Point Register. He was elected county Clerk in 1859 and held that office till 1867. He also held other offices, as school Examiner, town Trustee, and was appointed real estate appraiser for the county. In 1865 he erected a warehouse near the railroad depot and commenced shipping grain. He also erected a grain building at Le Roy, then called Cassville, and bought and shipped grain. In this grain business he continued until his death in 1879. He had spent several months, probably in 1869 and 1870, as surveyor and civil engineer, on the line of what was then called the Vincennes, Danville. and Chicago Railroad, a business for which he was well fitted. About one half of his life, nearly twenty-five years, was given to different interests in Crown Point and the region around, and the results of his work and influence will long remain.
He took a large interest in the North Street Baptist church, of which he was a Trustee and where his daughters attended Sunday school, and for which, had he continued to live, he would have no doubt done much more.
He came to Crown Point when twenty-five years of age. August 2. 1860. he was married to Miss Margaret M. Thomas, a daughter of Ambrose S. Thomas, Esq., of New York. One son, an only son, Wayland Summers, is living in the West, and a daughter, Mrs. Jennie Webster, lives in Chicago.
In a somewhat lengthy memorial in "The Lake of the Red Cedars" he is well called an active, upright, useful, honorable citizen; a kind, obliging, faithful friend; a loving, generous, tender husband and father; with a very refined and noble nature. In his official and business life he enjoyed very largely the confidence of his fellow citizens throughout the county.
BECKMAN .- The principal merchant in Hanover township, first at Han- over Center and then at Brunswick, was HERMAN C. BECKMAN. He was born in 1822, he came to America in 1846, he was married in 1852, he com- menced business as a merchant in 1855, he was elected county Commis-
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sioner in 1867. he was postmaster at Brunswick for twenty-nine years, he accumulated a good amount of property. and died at Brunswick in 1894, an upright, kindly. highly respected citizen. Ile had several children who became estimable members of society and are living now.
LIVINGSTONE or LIVINGSTON .- Near the beginning of the railroad period there came from Europe to Lake county SAMUEL and JANE LIVINGSTON. There were nine sons, Robert, Jolm, Sam. Joseph, James. William. Hart- ford, Thomas, and Moses. Six of these sons went as soldiers in the Union Army. There were three daughters, in all twelve children, making another quite fair-sized family in the county. The mother, Mrs. Jane Livingston, died in February, 1879, and the father in March of the same year.
ROBERT LIVINGSTON, who was married fifty or more years ago, had ten children, two sons called Sam and Moses, and eight daughters. Many of the daughters became teachers in the public schools of the county, and at length married and became active women in domestic and social and religious life. Robert Livingston, living for many years on a farm a mile west of Crown Point, died October 13, 1895, nearly eighty-six years of age. He was born near Belfast in Ireland, of Scotch-Presbyterian descent. and was a member of the Twentieth Regiment of Indiana Volunteers in our Civil war.
Family Lines from Scotland.
While many of our early settlers were descendants of Pilgrims and Puritans and Quakers or Friends, and of Scotch-Irish, who had lived for several generations in New England and New York and Pennsylvania. there were others whose ancestors came from Scotland but a few generations ago. Three of these closely connected families bear the names of FISHER, BROWN, and WALLACE, and for the genealogy here given I am much indebted to "Lake County. 1884." a book containing many valuable records, but now "ont of print."
FISHER .- Alexander Fisher was born in Ayr. Scotland, in 1801, and came to Montreal in 1818, and soon after went into Schenectady county,
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New York, and there. in 1819, was married to Miss Agnes Brown, who was born at Paisley, in Scotland, and was a daughter of Alexander Brown, who came to the United States in 1805.
Alexander Fisher and Agnes Brown were commencing American life almost in their youth. They had eight children. Three of their sons and one daughter became residents of Lake county, Indiana. One of these, WILLIAM FISHER, born in 1825. is now living at Hebron in Porter county.
THOMAS FISHER became a resident here in 1851. He was married to Miss Mary Brown, daughter of another Alexander Brown, a settler at South- east Grove. He was for many years engaged in the manufacture of brooms at Crown Point. He became quite wealthy. He had no children.
JOHN FISHER, the third of these three sons of Alexander Fisher from Scotland, was born in Schnectady county, New York. in 1832, became a resident in this county in 1855, and was married in 1865 to Miss Joanna Willey, a daughter of Mr. George Willey, of Hanover township. He was a surveyor and held the office of county surveyor for many years. He had many excellent traits of character. He was a generous friend. He took a large interest, as did the Willey family, in the Association of Old Settlers. He became a member, in his later life, of the Presbyterian church. He died March 7. 1897, leaving one son, George W. Fisher, to occupy his place in the Masonic lodge and as county surveyor, in the activities of life, and, per- haps some day, in the church.
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