USA > Indiana > Lake County > Encyclopedia of genealogy and biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a compendium of history 1834-1904 > Part 4
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
ing and rich farming community. In 1869 and 1870 new church buildings were erected, making in Lowell four churches. In 1872 Lowell had the largest and best school building in the county, built of brick, a two-story structure, costing, with the furniture eight thousand dollars. The other largest building at that time in the county was also at Lowell, a brick build- ing of three stories, built for a factory, eighty feet long and fifty feet wide. also costing eight thousand dollars. At that time there were in Lowell one hundred and six families. For some years Lowell was the strongest tem- perance town in the county. It had a Good Templars Lodge with one hun- dred and sixty members.
In 1874 there came yet another railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, but it kept so very close to the shore line of Lake Michigan that it added very little. as to any growth in the county. It gave one station called Miller's, among the sand hills of the northeast township now called Hobart, about one mile and a half from the Lake Michigan shore. The Michigan Southern had passed along among those sand ridges in 1851.
The ice business formed for years the principal business at Miller's Station, to which was afterwards added shipping sand, both profitable indus- tries, and requiring no large amount of capital on the part of the men who carry them on. A gravel road has been made from Lake Michigan through this village to the town of Hobart, and there is a good church building and good public school building. The inhabitants are mostly Swedish Lutherans. There is one large store.
About 1869. perhaps 1870, a small industry was commenced on the Calumet River and the early Michigan Central Railroad near the Illinois State line. The place was called the State Line Slaughter House. About eighteen men were employed, and three or four carloads of beef packed in ice were shipped each day to Boston. It was understood that George H. Hammond of Detroit was the head of the company who started this line of business. The men worked seven days in the week for a long time. never stopping for Sunday. As the business increased village life started. In
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
1872 there was one store. one boarding house. After a few families moved in besides the early settler-families (the Hohman. Sohl, Drecker, Dutcher, Booth, Miller, Goodman. Olendorf and Wolf families, of that corner of the county ), a Sunday-school was proposed, organized, and carried on, and then regular Sunday work ceased. Sending beef to Boston soon assumed quite large proportions. The village was becoming a town, and to the town was given the name of Hammond. Could the founders, men from New England, have thought that on those sand hills or ridges and those marshes of 1870 in a few years a city would be flourishing with only an air line between it and the southeast corner of the city of Chicago, they would probably have laid foundations with more care. It seemed far enough away from any Christian civilization in 1870. For a footman on a cloudy day to have undertaken to cross, then, from the slaughter house to the little station called Whiting on the Michigan Southern road, would have been very risky. The distance in a straight line is about five miles ; but the swampy underbrush then was well called impenetrable. This writer tried crossing there once, years after 1870. He failed, and he had been in many a wild.
Hammond continued to grow. The first plat of the town as so called was recorded at the office in Crown Point in the spring of 1875. A growth had already commenced there which soon made Hammond the first place in the county for manufactures, for shipments, for population.
In these years, from 1870 to 1880, there was growth elsewhere also in the county. In 1873 the building of brick blocks of business houses com- menced in Crown Point. The first three large halls were in that year opened. These were: The Masonic Hall, Cheshire Hall, now Music Hall. and the Odd Fellow Hall. In 1874 was organized the First National Bank of Crown Point.
In 1872, on an island in the Kankakee Marsh, a singular enterprise was commenced. The island, called School Grove, as it was on section six- teen, afterward Oak Grove, a beautiful grove surrounded by marslı and water, was an early home for a trapper known as John Hunter. Heath
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
& Milligan of Chicago afterward bought some land on this island, and with eight other Chicago men built in the grove a hunters' home in 1869. It was called Camp Milligan. The entries in their Hunters' Record Book show that no shooting was done there on Sundays, and that eight men in a few days shot five hundred and thirteen ducks. The one who kept this camp. G. M. Shaver. has the record of shooting in 1868 eleven hundred ducks. In 1871 there visited this camp a young man from England, William Parker, said to be a member of a family belonging to the nobility of England and heir to the title of an English peer. With him, in some relation, was an older man called Captain Blake. These were so well pleased with the island and the abundance of wild fowl that. after visiting England. they returned in 1872, laid out quite an amount of money in lands and buildings and stock. The buildings comprised a quite large dwelling house. barns and kennels. They imported from England "some sixteen of the choicest blooded dogs known to sportsmen." and some choice Alderney cows and some horses. Other choice stock they imported or purchased. They had a black hear and some foxes. The establishment was called Cumberland Lodge. \ younger brother of William Parker came with the others in 1872, who was for a time a very pleasant member of Crown Point society . Captain Blake seemed quite communicative to the writer of this sketch. who visited the Lodge and was much interested in examining the kennels and in seeing all the animals that came from England, but the real reason for such a singular investment, which was soon passed into other hands. remains to this day unknown in Lake county. Lord Parker, if that is now his title. if now living. could give the real reasons. Short as was the resi- (lence of these English visitors in the county, they laid out quite an amount of money and so aided the business interests of Lowell. And Lowell ir these years was steadily improving, as also was Hobart. The increasing productions and wealth of the farmers were building up Lowell; manufac- turing was building up Hobart.
In 1875 was organized at Crown Point the Old Settlers' Association:
3
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
in 1876 quite an interest was manifested in collecting specimens of mineral, agricultural. and manufactured products for the Centennial at Philadelphia. A number of the citizens visited Philadelphia that summer. among whom was Wellington .A. Clark. Esq .. who spent twenty-four days viewing that great exposition.
The votes of the county this year as cast for governor were 3.187. showing that there must have been at that time as many as thirty-two hun- dred voters. In this same year a large brick business house was erected by Geisen, Fancher & Groman. And in 1878 a brick block costing about fifteen thousand dollars was built by Hartupee. Griesel. and J. D. Clark. September 15, 1879, is the date on record for the beginning of the occupation of the new court house, the corner stone having been laid in the presence of a large assembly of citizens September 10. 1878. It cost fifty-two thousand dollars.
The year 1880 came and cars began to run on a new road, the Grand Trunk. This road gave a station at Ainsworth which grew into a small village, passed through what became Griffith, and helped to build up no town. But it did what was probably better. It sent a morning milk train over its line of road, stopping at every place convenient for the farmers, to receive their cans of milk. These stopping places, called milk stands. were very convenient for the farmers and their families who wished to spend the day in Chicago, as the train would stop in the evening to put off the empty cans.
In 1880 was erected the central Crown Point brick school building at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. In 1881 brick buildings forming a block or part of a block were put up by John Griesel. Conrad Iloereth, and the National Bank: and another brick building in 1882 by J. H. Abrams: and yet another in 1883 by Warren Cole. The year 1881 was the great year for railroad building in the county, and in 1882 cars were running on three new roads, called the Erie, the Nickel Plate, and the Monon. The Erie passed through Crown Point or near it, and enlarged its business and its bounds; it passed through Hammond and helped that to enlarge; it gave
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
milk stands along its line, and two of its stations. Palmer and Highland, are villages. Highland has a factory and two good church buildings. The Nickel Plate helped Hobart and Hammond. It did little good for Hessville. The Monon made a village of Shelby and gave to Lowell communication by rail and telegraph with all the outside world. It furnished a name and a place for shipment in a neighborhood now known as Creston, where descend- ants of Red Cedar Lake pioneers yet live: and passing along the western shore of that lake it made of it a great pleasure resort, visited by thousands each summer. It passed northward making a station and a town of St. John. and helped Dyer and Hammond. It also sent through the county a morning milk train. It has proved to be for many interests a very important road.
In 1883 a road passed across the south end of the county, as Rev. H. Wason said, "came quietly creeping up the Kankakee marsh," commonly known as the three I's (the I. I. I. ), which probably added some business life to Shelby.
In 1883 Decoration day began to be publicly observed in Crown Point. James H. Ball. Esq .. now Judge Ball of Kansas, delivered the oration. In 1884 Judge E. C. Field. now of Chicago, gave the oration.
At the presidential election in 1884, there were cast for four candidates 4.145 votes, showing that there were then, in the fiftieth year of the county's growth, about forty-one hundred and fifty voters.
THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL.
A semi-centennial celebration of the beginning of permanent settlement of the county was held on the Fair Ground September 3d and 4th. 1884. Con- siderable preparation was made for this event through the Old Settlers' Asso- ciation, and by a large number of citizens much interest was taken in pre- paring for the proceedings and in carrying them out. A volume of 486 pages containing a full account of the proceedings was soon afterwards published, and to that the reader is referred for full details. It is called "Lake County. 1884." It has been for many years "out of print." but is in the libraries of many citizens of the county, and in some large public libraries.
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
It will be sufficient, probably, to state here that a large general committee of arrangements was appointed, thirty subjects named and assigned to writers for historical papers, and six special committees appointed. Of those who were on these different committees eleven are not now living. Also, that an oration was delivered by previous appointment, which by the special influ- ence of the chairman of the committee, George Willey. Esq., was assigned to T. H. Ball, who occupied one hour of time in its delivery : that an address was given to the members of the Association of Pioneers and Old Settlers "by Congressman T. J. Wood": and that a semi-centennial poem was read comprising twenty-five stanzas of eight lines each. The oration, address. also the poem. can be found in full in "Lake County, 1884." Also, that seventy-one relics and antiquities of various kinds, historic and prehistoric. were presented for inspection. Not numbered among these were also twelve either old or curious coins, making the full number eighty-three. Most of these rare, curious, valuable relics and heirlooms are supposed to be still in the county, and some of them can probably be secured for the Association when a suitable room is found in which they can be preserved.
Besides the exercises at the Fair Ground on the two days of Wednesday and Thursday, literary exercises were held on Wednesday evening at Hoff- man's Opera House in Crown Point. the Crown Point Band, that then was, furnishing some excellent music : Willie Cole and Miss Allie Cole giving a flute and piano duet : singing also by a quartette. Benton Wood, Cassius Griffin. Miss Ella Warner, Miss Georgie E. Ball. Mrs. Jennie Young, pianist. On the first day of the celebration the opening hymn was the well known one. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," on the second day the new hymn was sung called "Our Broad Land."
Further features of this celebration cannot here be given, but this writer hopes that thirty years from now. in 1934. a still larger gathering will be found upon the Lake County Fair Ground, when a book now in the Recorder's office is then to be opened. a book presented to the Association by Hon. Joseph .A. Little, and which contains very many signatures of persons present
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
at Lake County's semi-centennial in 1884. A special committee. to be appointed thirty years hence, is to open that at present sealed book. To be called for and to be opened at that same time, by that same committee. there is now sealed up in the Recorder's office a quite large map of Lake county On this map are the names of many children some of whom, as men and women, it is expected will be present then.
On Saturday, September 17. 1887. at four o'clock in the afternoon, the real work began of boring an artesian well on the south side of the public square in Crown Point. One half of the cost was to be paid by the town and one half by the county. The work was carried diligently on, into an immense mass of rock which seemed to underlie the town, until the fall of 1889. when work was given up. as there was no reasonable hope of obtaining flowing water without an outlay of more money than it was considered wise to expend. The depth reached was about 3,100 feet. In the summer of 1887 two steam dredges were busily at work cutting ditches in the Kankakee Marsh. At- tempts to drain that wet land by ditching had been made by state legislation soon after 1852. some large ditches had been dug. but the methods employed were costly and slow in attaining results. The newly employed steam dredges worked busily in 1888 and 1889. and in the latter year, by means of the ditching through the marsh, a road was opened from the Orchard Grove postoffice to Water Valley, on the east line of the town lots laid out that year by the Lake Agricultural Company and called "the village of Shelby." It was found that the sand brought up by the dredge made a good road-bed. and so bridges were built across the ditches that went westward, and a bridge for wagons over the Kankakee River, and at last there was a good wagon- road leading from Lake county over into Newton. Soon there was another road passing by Cumberland Lodge in Oak Grove, and another bridge, and a road running directly south to Lake Village in Newton. It was a new and a pleasant experience, after so many, many years, to be able to ride in a car- riage down to that long line of blue which had ended the view southward in Lake county, and to pass that great barrier of marsh and river, and visit
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
the citizens of Newton county. While as to distance in miles they had been neighbors, as to access to their homes they had been for more than fifty years strangers.
Returning to the history proper of the railroad period in this Compendium or Outline, five other roads are yet to be noticed.
In 1888 the Elgin. Joliet & Eastern road commenced running cars across the county from Dyer to Hobart, but as a belt line, a freight line, adding not much to business or agricultural interests. In the same year, 1888. several miles were built and used of a road called the Chicago & Calumet Terminal. This must have aided much in building up a city the first family in which commenced a residence in 1888. The name East Chicago was given to the locality. and the name of the first resident family was Penman. This locality was truly "in the woods" or the wilderness state in 1888. Sand ridges, and marshes, long and narrow, parallel with the ridges, and thick underbrush of a swampy and not an upland growth, characterize that strip of land north of the Grand Calumet for some miles eastward. It was not an attractive spot on which to build a city. But it was near a great city, and work commenced. The swampy growth was cleared out of the way. Sand ridges were quite easily transferred into the low, wet places. Dwelling houses were erected. manufactured articles were produced soon in the factories, a saw mill fur- nished a large quantity of lumber, various industries were soon starting into existence, and in a little time, almost as it by magic. there were long streets lined with city-like buildings, there were stores filled with goods, there were school buildings and churches and waterworks and electric lights, social or- ganizations, clubs and lodges, a well conducted newspaper, an electric railway line passing through, and the needed adjuncts of a modern city. East Chicago was for a short time an incorporated town, and then, not waiting long there. it became an incorporated city. The Penman family of 1888 soon had around them some three thousand neighbors. Much was done in building up this city by the Terminal railroad.
Another city soon started. There had been for several years a station
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
village called Whiting, on the Michigan Southern road, which in 1872 con- tained fifteen families. Railroad work was the main employment. In 1889 some land was there bought, according to popular report, for one thousand dollars an acre, and nine hundred men were soon employed in erecting a large brick building for what it was claimed would be the largest oil refinery in this country. The estimate was for twenty millions of brick to be used in the construction of the first large building.
This was the beginning of the work of the Standard Oil Company in Lake county. In 1890 about seventy-five votes were cast. In 1895 the town was incorporated. In 1900 about fifteen hundred votes were cast. The town is a city now.
Starting as a town and to become a city in 1899. its growth, like that of East Chicago, has been remarkable. It is located on quite level land on the first low ridge of sand that here skirts Lake Michigan, with no sand hills east- ward for several miles and none westward between it and Chicago. Whiting has some fine resident and business streets, but not much room for_territorial growth, being surrounded by Lake Michigan, East Chicago, and Hammond.
In the winter of 1890 and 1891 there was much excitement in Lake county on account of a strong effort on the part of some citizens of Hammond to secure the passage of a bill by the State Legislature which would lead to the removal of the county seat from Crown Point to Hammond. For fifty years the question of the county seat location had been at rest: but this winter restless and ambitious men were determined it should rest no longer. The citizens of Crown Point and citizens of other counties fought against the bill and its passage was defeated.
In the summer of 1891 Main street and some other streets of Crown Point were paved with cedar blocks. September 10, 1891, at about 6:30 o'clock. electric lights first flashed out in Crown Point. The date of the first electric lights at llammond is not at hand. In fact Hammond, East Chi- cago, and Whiting have grown so rapidly from nothing to cities, that to keep trace of their improvements is almost bewildering.
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
In 1891 was founded the town of Griffith. Its location was excellent, on the Cut Off and the Belt Line. on the Erie and the Grand Trunk. It made a promising beginning. In 1892 it had four factory buildings, one church edifice, two Sabbath congregations, two Sunday-schools: and in these schools were eighty members. Two years before the family of the station agent lived alone in the woods and the undergrowth. It is not yet a city, bright as its first promise was. It has two schoolhouses, some stores, and a good many dwell- ing houses. It has an abundance of room for growth. It needs enterprise and capital.
In 1892 the Wabash line of road was completed across the county. It scarcely touched Tolleston. but passed through East Chicago and Hammond. It added not much to the growth of either of these places.
The year 1893 was one ever to be remembered in Lake county, as the inhabitants so largely had the opportunity of attending the Columbian Ex- position at Jackson Park. Their locality was favorable: the number of rail- roads running near so many of their homes, passing in the morning and re- turning in the evening as the passenger cars did. gave them excellent oppor- tunities for spending the days at the expositon and the nights at home, and well did they improve their opportunities. An effort was made to obtain the exact number of school children that visted Jackson Park. but only a part of the teachers made any report. So the whole number can never be known. There were reported. through the kind consideration of quite a number of teachers, pupils from Hobart graded school 250, from Ross township 47, from Hanover 24, from Crown Point 375, from Eagle Creek township 83, from Cedar Creek 53, from West Creek township 84, making, with a few other small numbers reported. 973. Certainly never before did so many thousands and hundreds of thousands of people cross Lake county as in that very pleasant summer of 1893.
The year 1894 was a very different year. It was noted for great stagnation of business in mining and manufactures, the year of the Pullman boycott, the Debs strikes, and the miners' strikes. and railroad communication with Chi-
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
cago for a time ceased. In Hammond the civil officers were unable to main- tain order and enforce law and United States troops and about eight hundred State militia of Indiana were sent in to secure railroad transportation and the passage of the mails through the city. A gatling gun stood on the platform at the Erie station and the passenger room could be reached only by passing the sentry and the corporal of the guard. The tents, the soldiers on duty with their arms gave to Hammond the appearance of a city under real martial law. Cars on the electric railway were running in the summer of 1894 so that pas- sengers could go into Chicago from Hammond on the electric and elevated roads.
The year in Lowell was noted for much building. Thirty-one dwelling houses and four business houses were erected within the year. Cedar-block paving was laid on nine more streets in Crown Point at a cost of over forty- five thousand dollars.
The Superior Court at Hammond dates from 1895.
Some interesting figures are here inserted. obtained from the County Auditor, then A. S. Barr. The valuation of the taxable property of the county for 1895. without railroad, telegraph, and telephone property, was $15.224.740. The number of polls in 1895 was in North township 1,929. and the number of men over twenty-one years of age was 4,300; number of polls in the county 4,265, and of men 8,216. The trustees reported for the same year school children in North township 4,068, and in the county 9.380. The United States census gave the population of the county in 1890, 23.886.
In May, 1896, was opened for public use the electric railway from Hammond direct to South Chicago between Lake George and Wolf Lake, thus enabling one to go for three fares only into the heart of Chicago. In August of this year the Crown Point Telephone Company began erecting poles and putting up wires. The road improvement for the year was in Hobart township, the road leading from the south line of the township through Hobart and Lake to Lake Michigan.
November 3d of this year, a presidential election, there were votes cast
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
in the county, for Congressman. 8.300; for President, 8,267; of these 3.384 were for Bryan, 4.883 for Mckinley. Also some Prohibition votes. In the county probably 8,100 voters. In 1884 there were about 4,200. The number of voters was doubled in twelve years. Of the 8.300 votes in Novem- ber of 1896 there were in North township 4,328; in Center township 842.
February 16. 1897, made the sixtieth year of the existence of Lake as an independent county, and it happened to be the four hundredth anniver- sary of the birth of the noted Melancthon of the Reformation.
The number of children of school age enumerated this year was 9,834. Of these, in North township were 4,512, Hammond having 3,106, and East Chicago 547. Crown Point had 689, and Lowell 356. Hobart, town and county together, 859. North township, including Whiting then and the county, had the same number, 859. These figures from the official reports are given that the growth and the nature of the population may be more readily seen. In the manufacturing cities there will naturally be more men and more voters in proportion to the children than in the country towns.
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