USA > Indiana > Lake County > Encyclopedia of genealogy and biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a compendium of history 1834-1904 > Part 7
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GEORGE EARLE was born in Falmonth. England, date of birth not known. He became a resident of the city of Philadelphia, and came to the town of Liverpool, on Deep River, in 1836. That once noted town was on
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
land selected under an Indian float. President Andrew Jackson, in June. 1836. - see copy of patent in the county Recorder's office-conveyed to John B. Chapman one section of land. George Earle was talented like Solon Rob- inson. He was a cultivated Englishman. He had means. Ile did not be- come a squatter. He soon became prominent among the settlers. He began to secure Indian lands. He sought for the location of the county seat at Liv- erpool in 1840, but in this was not successful. After the location at what Solon Robinson had named Lake Court House, he, with Solon Robinson, named the place Crown Point, a name which he evidently suggested. Ile was appointed immediately County Agent and performed well the duties as- signed to him in that relation. He continued for a time to improve his town of Liverpool, bought more land. securing at length in that part of the county some ten or twelve sections. He commenced building a mill, at what became the town of Hobart. in 1845, removed with his family, a wife and one son, to that place in 1847. Laid out the town in 1848. In 1854 he returned to Philadelphia, leaving his son, John Earle, now considered a millionaire in Chicago, to manage the interests in Lake county. He returned to England, for a visit, in 1855. again in 1865. and yet again in 1868. He caused to be erected there a home for the poor and aged of his native town, which cost thirty thousand dollars, and this he gave to the town. He also visited Lake county, erected an art gallery in Hobart in 1858. and placed upon the walls about three hundred pictures which he himself had painted in Philadelphia. It was said of him in 1872: "He is tall in person, dignified and courteous in manners, manifesting the bearing of an American and English gentleman." His name is fully written in the early history of the county, and his influence will long be felt.
BENJAMIN MCCARTY. The third competitor for the county seat in 1840. may well be named next. His individuality was as marked and distinct as was that of the other two. Like theirs his family influence in the county yet re- mains. The place of his birth, the time of his birth, his lineage, are alike un- known. He is first found, having come from an okdler county in Indiana. as 5
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
ยท the acting sheriff of La Porte county in 1832. As Probate Judge he solem- nized marriages there in 1833 and 1834. In 1836, having chosen in Porter county a central position, he secured there, on his land, the location of the Porter county seat. Not satisfied to remain there he came with his large fam- ily into Lake county, obtained what was known as the Lilley place, where had been a hotel and a store, laid out a town, named it West Point, and, in 1840, made effort to secure the Lake county seat. In this he failed. He was not in the geographical center, as, very nearly, Solon Robinson was. His oldest son, E. S. McCarty, reopened the store and also, in 1840, made brick, putting up the first brick kiln burned in the county. Changes in population took place and Judge McCarty removed to the prairie a few miles south, bought what is now the Hill place, and became a farmer. He had six sons, E. Smiley, Wil- liam Pleasant. Franklin, Fayette Asbury. Morgan, Jonathan, and two daugh- ters, Hannah and Candace. He had for his older sons some of the finest saddle horses then in the county. His home at West Point was a center in 1840 for religious meetings, and, for a short time, for a literary society. Some of his sons were teachers in the public schools. Until his death the family influence was large, but after that the family scattered. one son only remaining in the county. Some of his descendants are living in Creston.
Judge McCarty was friendly, intelligent, a man who knew something of frontier life before he reached Lake county, and was a man of good position in social life. Of those who knew him intimately none are living nou.
Dr. H. D. PALMER is considered to have been the first graduate or regu- lar physician of the county. He was a graduate of a medical college in Fair- field, New York, in 1834, and in the winter of 1836 he located as a physician two miles west of the present town of Merrillville. He also commenced farm- ing life, combining the two very successfully. He did yet more. He was elected Associate Judge in 1838. and held this office with Judge Clark and afterward with Judge Samuel Turner for about thirteen years. It is said that twice in this term of years, in the absence of the presiding judge, he conducted the en- tire business of the court. Ordinarily the associate judges of those years did
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
very little real court business. They were not expected to be thoroughly versed in law. Their judgment was consulted on matters between man and man. In 1841 Dr. Palmer erected the first frame dwelling house in that part of the county. As a physician his rides extended from Dyer to Hobart and Lake Station. His most extensive practice was in the years between 1850 and 1860. He continued his farming life and in connection with Solon Rob- inson brought the first Berkshire pigs to Crown Point.
He was twice married. After the death of his first wife, who was the mother of one son and one daughter, he was married to Miss Catherine Under- wood, a sister of John Underwood, the poet of Lake county. Miss Hattie Palmer, druggist at Hebron, is one of her daughters, and the other is Mrs. Alice Feiler, of Winfield. Both share in the Palmer and Underwood talent. Mrs. Palmer lives at Hebron with her daughter. Dr. Palmer built a fine country residence on his farm about 1870.
In this home of intelligence and of abundance was brought up an adopted son, Dr. S. W. JOHNS, the son of J. V. JOHNS, the latter elected Sheriff in 1839, a young pioneer from Philadelphia as early as 1836. who possessed an excellent counting-house education. His name soon disappears from the early records, and it is supposed that he had but little opportunity to use his good abilities. But the son, S. W. Johns, studied medicine in Dr. Palmer's office, settled as a physician at Dyer, was prosperous in his practice, and, in the midst of his life of usefulness, was unexpectedly called away from the ac- tivities of life, leaving a wife. Mrs. Johns of Dyer, and a young daughter. Katie Johns, now residents of Zion City.
Jony WOOD came into this region. looked over the land. and made a claim in 1835. He spent one night. in making examination of land, with Dr. Ames, of Michigan City, and three or four others, in the cabin of Jessie Pierce on the bank of Turkey Creek. His visit thus affording evidence that Jesse Pierce was a settler there as early as 1835. John Wood was a native of east- ern Massachusetts. He returned home and came with his family in 1836, leaving Michigan City on July 4th of that year. "He found that during his
HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
absence General Tipton of Fort Wayne. United States senator. had laid a float upon his claim in the name of Indian Quashma." The land was suitable for a mill seat, and so according to law or usage was not properly subject to an Indian float. But the float had been laid and laid by a senator: the location was very much wanted by the claimant, and so he purchased the land from the Indian, paying him for the quarter section one thousand dollars, instead of paying to the Government, as he had expected, two hundred dollars. The deed with Quaslima's signature must still be in the possession of some of the Wood family. In 1837 a saw mill was erected there, and in a year or two more a grist mill, which for some years did a large amount of grinding for the farmers of both Lake and Porter counties. The place was soon known as Wood's Mill, but its proper name now is Woodvale. The Wood family home. at first on the east side of the river ( where also the family cemetery now is), but in a few years removed to the west side of that river, was a very pleasant home for the children that grew up there, and for friends who visited there.
The founders of that home have passed away, but a large flouring mill is still where the Indian float was laid, and in Woodvale, in Hobart, and in Valparaiso, are many descendants to show the results in character and busi- ness life of the Wood family of Massachusetts.
While genuine pioneers they never became "squatters." as they located in 1836, three years before the Land Sale, not on Government land, but on land purchased from an Indian. Not many "floats" were located in Lake county, but there were a few that caused to white settlers considerable dis- appointment. The line of descent of this family, goes back to Moses Wood, born in 1748, who had three sons and eight daughters, the youngest of the eleven children being John Wood, born October 28. 1800, and then to Nathan Wood, born in 1721. and then to Jacob Wood, the date of whose birth is not exactly known. He was probably the second of the line born in America. One of the nine children of Nathan Wood, son of Jacob Wood. was named Sarah, and two dates are found for her birth. The one is
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
October 7th, the other October 21st, of 1750. As New Style commenced in England in 1752 the 3d of September of that year being called by Act of Parliament the 14th day, the change from Old Style to New may have led to some confusion in the Wood family record. The 7th of October O. S. would properly have been October 18th N. S. No child was born in Old England or New between September 3d and September 14th, in 1752, as no such days existed in English records and history.
HERVEY BALL, a descendant of Francis Ball. of West Springfield, Mas- sachusetts, of Jonathan Ball. born in 1645. of Benjamin Ball, 1689, of Charles Ball. 1725, of Lieutenant Charles Ball. 1760, was born in the old town of West Springfield, now Holyoke, October 16, 1794. He was a graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont, of the year 1818, studied law in Vermont for two years, and in 1820 made his first home in Columbia county. Georgia, a member of what was called the Augusta Bar. Here he practiced law till 1834, and was for a time Colonel of a cavalry company and attended
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
the musters of the Georgia state militia, having always fine horses in his possession.
In 1836 he was at City West in Porter county, Indiana, laying out town lots as surveyor for a company who were proposing to start a city. In the spring of 1837 he brought his family from Massachusetts to City West ; but in July he bought a claim at the Red Cedar Lake in Lake county, and before the year 1837 closed the family settlement had there been fully made. Through the remainder of his life, now forty-three years of age and a retired lawyer, he gave much attention to farming and to keeping honey bees and raising some choice domestic animals. He held for some time the office of County Surveyor, also of Probate Judge, and in his later years was Jus- tice of the Peace. He was Clerk of the Cedar Lake Baptist church, Super- intendent of the Sabbath school at the lake for many years, Clerk and also Moderator of the Northern Indiana Baptist Association, and a trustee of Franklin College. In his college and in his professional life he had mingled to quite a large extent with the gay, and the busy, and the cultivated, was familiar with leading men of Georgia, and knew what life was among the wealthy planters of that day. The results of his New England training and of his Southern professional life were of large benefit to his children and the young people connected with them; and his home became and con- tinued to be for several years a religious, an educational, a literary, and a social center. Ministers of different denominations found there a welcome, and the home was always full of healthful life. The Puritanic and the true Western spirit blended well together. The family library was quite large, large for pioneer days, and periodicals, agricultural and political, literary and religious, found their way to the home in abundance, so that the seven children and their classmates and visitors all were readers. Judge Hervey Ball lived thirty years in Lake county, building up good institutions, and died on his farm October 13, 1808.
LEWIS WARRINER was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, in the south parish, now the town of Agawam, in June. 1792. He was a member
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
of an old and well established Massachusetts family, the line running back through several generations. Coming from the same town as did the Ball family and in the same year, he settled on a claim on the southeast side of the same beautiful lake, November 9, 1837.
He had represented his native town four times in the Massachusetts Legislature and had filled other positions of honor and trust in his native state.
In that sickly season of 1838 much of the light and joy departed from his home in the persons of his wife and young daughter; but the father, two sons and a daughter, older than the other yet only a child herself, still kept up their frontier home with courage and with hope. In this same year a postoffice was established at this home, Lewis Warriner postmaster, the second or third one in the county, and this position he held till 1849. In 1852 he was re-appointed and held the office till 1856. In 1839 lie was elected a member of the Indiana Legislature; he took the United States census of the county in 1840; and was again elected representative in 1848.
He was one of the constituent members of the Cedar Lake Baptist church in June, 1838, he and his wife having both been members of the Agawam Baptist church in Massachusetts. It was said of him that "as a man he always commanded the highest respect and confidence of his neigh- bors and acquaintances in all the walks of life, both public and private, and was always ready to give his influence and support for every object tend- ing to benefit or improve his fellow-man;" and that "as a Christian he was active and sincere, both in his church duties and in his every-day life and examples, the influences of which were felt and acknowledged by his neigh- bors and associates."
He has no children living, but some grandchildren and great-grand- children are yet active in this busy world. He himself died in Arkansas, May 144, 1869. almost seventy-seven years of age.
He acted at one time as literary critic of that once noted organization, the Cedar Lake Belles Lettres Society, of which his daughter and one son
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
were inembers, to which Society Solon Robinson gave one of his charac- teristic addresses; and probably no better, no more judicious literary critics have since been in the county than were Judge Hervey Ball and Hon. Lewis Warriner. Their work in that line, as in many others, will never die.
HENRY WELLS was another native of Massachusetts who passed a long and active life in Lake county. His name stands among the earliest inhab- itants of Crown Point. He held office as Sheriff for many years, and was for eight years County Treasurer, and was also Swamp Land Commissioner. Four of his sisters also became residents of Crown Point, Mrs. Russel Eddy, Mrs. Olive Eddy, Mrs. Sanford, and Mrs. Gillingham. He lived to be quite an aged man and to see many changes. His two sons are Rodman H. Wells and Homer Wells, and one daughter is yet living, Mrs. S. Clark.
WILLIAM N. SYKES is a name that was prominent in what are known sometimes as the squatter records. as early as 1836. He who bore that name was a man "of fine appearance, neat in dress and person, gentlemanly in bearing, intelligent, and possessing a native refinement of mind." He was a descendant of an ancient English family, some of whom had been Quakers or Friends since the days of that noted man known as Fox. He was, him- self. a native of New Jersey. Circumstances brought him at different times to the home of the Ball family at the lake so that he became to them quite well known. He was appointed County Surveyor in May, 1837. He was afterward one of the County Commissioners. His active life was cut short by death in 1853. He was never married. Ilis burial place is in the Merrill- ville Cemetery. There is one monument to his memory, and here is another ; that one erected by liis kindred, this one written by his once young friend.
SAMUEL TURNER, of Scotch-Irish descent, was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, in March, 1782. He was married at Gettysburg in 1810, came to LaPorte county in 1833, selected a location on Eagle Creek in 1838, and became there a permanent settler of Lake county in 1839. Other settlers near hin at that time were, D. Sarjeant. John Moore, A. D. McCord. George Smith, A. Goodrich, Mrs. Mary Dilley.
DAVID TURNER
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
Samuel Turner was soon elected Justice of the Peace, and about 1842 Associate Judge. The following statement is quoted: "For several years there was no cabinet shop nearer than Valparaiso, and having learned the use of carpenter tools he was called on to make all the coffins used in the neighborhood, frequently taking lumber from the chamber floor of his cabin for that purpose, and always without any charge." His residence in the county was brief. Kind and obliging, useful, respected, and honored in the new community which he was helping to shape, he died in 1847. His wife and children remained to carry on the grand work of building up a virtuous community.
DAVID TURNER, a son of Judge Samuel Turner, having held several public positions in Lake county, may himself well be classed among the pio- neers. He was born in Trumbull county, Ohio, in December, 1816; came from Pennsylvania with the family to LaPorte county; was one of the "young people" who held the Eagle Creek claim in the winter of 1838; and was married to Miss Caroline Bissell in 1844. He began early in life to hold office. He was elected Justice of the Peace to succeed his father about 1842. He was elected Probate Judge in 1849, State representative in 1854, State Senator in 1858, and was appointed United States Assessor by Presi- dent Lincoln in: 1862. As would be expected from his Scotch-Irish lineage on both his father and his mother's side, he was a man of firm principle, a member of the United Presbyterian church, an earnest supporter of Sun- day-schools, a friend to all public virtue. His was a very active and useful life for many years in the town of Crown Point, and no one has yet come forward to make good his vacant place. Two sons are living, and five daughters, and several grandchildren. The name TURNER is securely writ- ten in the county history.
JOHN W. DINWIDDIE was born in Trumbull county, Ohio. October 1. 1813, and the family tradition is, that, on the day of his birth, his father killed fifteen wild turkeys, four deer, and one bear. As that father was Thomas Dinwiddie. a well known early settler in Porter county, and as it is
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
on a reliable record that one of the Lake county marksmen in 1882 shot fifty-nine wild geese in one day, no one should stop to question that family tradition.
John Wilson Dinwiddie's family line goes back through Thomas Din- widdie, his father, and David Dinwiddie, his grandfather, to David Din- widdie, his great-grandfather, a Scotch-Irish settler at Marsh Creek, Penn- sylvania, about 1740. Members of the old Dinwiddie family of Scotland were pioneers in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in LaPorte county, Indiana, in Porter, and in Lake. J. W. Dinwiddie lived for some time with his father and sister at Indian Town, but afterward made his home at Plum Grove. where he obtained quite a large tract of land. He spent a few years in business life at Crown Point, but as the pioneer days closed and the railroad period of new life commenced he made his final home upon his Plum Grove farm and commenced farming work there on quite an extensive scale. His prairie land and marsh land consisted of about three thousand and five hun- dred acres. He was married August 19. 1844, to Miss M. J. Perkins, of Rome, New York. They had three sons and two daughters. Their home was well supplied with material comforts and with books and periodicals, and in that home was done a large amount of reading.
The father held for some time the office of township trustee, and built, for that day three large, good frame schoolhouses. It was said of him in a memorial record: He "was recognized as one of the most energetic, and prudent, and thorough business men and farmers in the county, an excellent manager, firm in principle and successful in carrying out his plans, and was rapidly advancing in the accumulation of property, when sickness came unexpectedly upon him and then death. He died April 12, 1861, being forty-seven years of age."
The descendants of his sons and daughters are many, and his influence through them will live long in northwestern Indiana. They are members, active and enterprising, of two large organizations, the Dinwiddie Clan of Lake and Porter countics and the Old Settler and Historical Association of Lake county.
JOHN W. DINWIDDIE
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
MICHAEL PEARCE. of Eagle Creek township, was a quite early settler. He located a claim about 1838, before the Land Sale. He was born in Ohio, February 20, 1808. He was married in 1840 to Miss Margaret Jane Din- widdie. He was a farmer, but held the offices of Justice of the Peace and of School Trustee. He died .April 4. 1861, of typhoid pneumonia, and his death, at that exciting time in the history of the country, made, with that of his wife's brother. J. W. Dinwiddie, a great loss to the community. He has three sons now living and four daughters. Also many grandchildren.
The attentive reader may notice that one cluster of families in the county have the name written PIERCE: the other. these Eagle Creek families, write PEARCE.
EBENEZER SAXTON, a native of Vermont, who had resided in Canada for some time. in the year of the Patriot War. 1837, sold his farm in Canada on credit, and in a wagon drawn by oxen started with his family for Detroit, distant four hundred miles. That journey was safely made. Following the westward movement. in that year of very large migration, the Saxton family passed onward from Detroit toward Fort Dearborn, or the young Chicago, taking no doubt the then well traveled stage road. till they reached Deep River at the new town of Liverpool. Here they found a ferry boat, and eight families, it is said, went on board with their ox teams. The boat sank. The families were at length taken across the river, the boat was raised, refitted for service, and the ox teams were ferried over.
The Saxton family started southward into the new Lake county, their means now reduced to five dollars in gold. Reaching Turkey Creek the oxen for the first time on that long journey were stuck fast with their load in the deep mud. Two dollars was the sum of money paid here to some man for helping them out. He ought not to have taken anything. [It is in the knowledge of this writer that the streams of Lake county were full of water and mud, or perhaps quick-sand. in the spring and early summer of 1837. He had abundant reason to know.]
The Saxton family, with three dollars remaining, passed on to what
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY.
was the old McGwinn Indian village and burial ground and dancing floor, then known as Wiggins Point, where they found the Wiggins cabin and sought shelter and rest; and where at length, for many years, they made their abode.
This family brought into the county a sea shell called a conch, which according to family tradition came over with Ebenezer Saxton in the May- flower, and has been handed down from one generation of Ebenezer Saxtons to another till it reached the one who came to Wiggins' Point. He met with more than the ordinary trials and disappointments of frontier life, but passed through them as became a descendant of a Mayflower family, was a prominent citizen of what became the village of Merrillville, and lived to a good old age. He has left at Merrillville some worthy descendants.
SIGLER .- SAMUEL SIGLER chose, in 1837, a location, as some others clid. on the sandy soil north of the prairie belt. His log cabin remained for many years on a "sand hill north of the Sykes' place." He was another of the early settlers who had reached middle age. He had four sons. Samuel. Eli, Daniel, and William, all of whom became merchants. He had three daughters, one of whom became the wife of Hon. Bartlett Woods. The father of these seven children, the living one of whom is aged now. died at Hebron about forty years ago.
WILLIAM SIGLER was a merchant for many years at Lowell. He was born December 31. 1822, in Clarksburg, which is now in West Virginia. and so was fifteen years of age when the Sigler family settled in this county. In May, 1848. he was married to Miss Margaret Lee. In 1881 he removed from Lake county to Englewood and afterward to La Grange, where he died in 1902, nearly eighty years of age. .
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