USA > Indiana > Lake County > History Of Lake County (1929) > Part 11
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Mr. Wood was of sturdy English stock, whose progenitors date to a landing in America in 1632, or possibly 1629. He was born in Massachusetts on October 28, 1800 and was the son of Moses and Sara (Barker) Wood, the former being born May 25, 1748, and the latter July 14, 1756. His father died when he was quite young and his mother placed him with a friend of the family, where he remained five years, when he learned the tanners trade and started in business for himself. On November 16, 1824, he was married to Hannah E. Pattee, and to them were born eight children; Nathan, born August
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
24, 1825; Augustus, May 26, 1828; Abbie M., June 24, 1830; John W., December 18, 1832; George, March 10, 1835; John W., March 13, 1838; Mary, March 23, 1840; and Oliver S., April 15, 1842. The children all married and they and their wives all are now deceased except Mrs. Mary Vincent, daugh- ter, and Mrs. Charity Wood, widow of Oliver, both of Gary, and Mrs. Jane Wood, widow of George, who lives at Deep River, who are privileged to be present with us today.
His good wife, Hannah Pattee Wood, was born in Salem, N. H., October 13, 1802, died September 27, 1873 at Deep River. She was a daughter of Eliphalet Pattee, a son of Seth Pattee, a revolutionary war officer. She is described by one of her daughters-in-law as being "The sweetest woman, al- ways doing good turns for people, a real peace maker and to her is due credit for no saloons being allowed in the village while her family was growing up. She was a good wife and mother, truly loved by all." She was a Unitarian in religious belief.
Before speaking of Mr. Woods' advent to this particular spot where we are now assembled, it might be best to remind ourselves and recall to memory that in 1828, by treaty, the United States government acquired from the Pottawatomie Indians a strip of land 10 miles in width along Lake Michigan in Indiana and was the first land purchased from the Indians in what is now Lake County. By treaty in 1832, the remainder of the county was acquired and in fact all that the Pottawat- omies owned in the state. In 1834, U. S. surveyors laid out the land in Lake County into sections, range and township lines having been previously run according to the scheme connived by Col. Mansfield in 1804. To this wild, unsettled section came John Wood in 1835, alone. It was still the home of the Red Man and the fur trader. He was accompanied as far as Michigan City, a trading post, by a cousin, one John Barker, who concluded to stay there and locate a foundry, later becoming the principal owner of the Car Works, while Mr. Wood pressed onward in search of a millsite and found the ideal spot at this place. The stream was wide and deep and later became known as Deep River, which has its source near Crown Point and its mouth near Liverpool, being navigable in those early days as far as this spot. After build- ing a log cabin on the east side of the river in the fall of 1835,
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WOOD'S MILL, DEEP RIVER (Second structure.)
JOHN WOOD
he went to Laporte to enter his claim, which was in Decem- ber of that year. The price was $200. He then went back East to get his family, consisting of his wife and five chil- dren. As near as is known, the family went as far as possible by rail, then by the Erie Canal to Detroit and then by wagon on the old Detroit-Chicago road to Michigan City, leaving there on July 4, 1836, for the new mill-site. It appears that during the absence of Mr. Wood, Gen. Tipton of Fort Wayne, a U. S. Senator had laid a "float" upon this particular claim in the name of an Indian, Quash-ma. The land as a mill-seat was not properly subject to an Indiana "float", but Mr. Wood de- sired this particular tract of land and instead of paying $200 he paid $1000 and secured the Indian's deed and signature.
Mr. Wood erected a saw mill in 1837 and the following year built a grist mill, the first in Lake and Porter counties. The grist mill did a large amount of grinding and was patronized by settlers coming many miles, at length it became a fine flouring mill, operated for many years by Nathan Wood, the eldest son.
Soon after the Wood family came to the new home of their adoption, John W., a lad of only four summers, sickened and died, and was laid to rest on a sightly knoll, near the east bank of the river, known thereafter as the Wood's family burial place at Deep River. It seems quite certain that this burial was the first of a white person in a recognized burying ground in Lake County.
Mr. Wood served on the first grand jury convened in Lake County, following the first term of the Lake County Circuit Court held in October 1837, Judge Samuel C. Sample presid- ing. At the regular session of the legislature in February 1843, John Wood was appointed one of the viewers to locate a state road running from Porter County through Deep River westward and northwesterly towards Chicago, and this road as laid out with his assistance is supposed to be in part or in whole the present Lincoln Highway passing through Lake County.
As the years passed, Mr. Wood reared his family and sev- eral of his sons became active in business affairs at Deep River. Nathan Wood became the miller and operated the mill until his retirement. Augustus Wood became a merchant and
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
for thirty years operated a store at Deep River. George Wood became a tiller of the soil and lived his life upon the farm a few stone throws from where we are here assembled. Oliver S. Wood became a prominent physician and practiced his profession many years in Valparaiso. John W. Wood, like his brother Augustus, also became a merchant and located at Valparaiso.
Mary married Dr. A. A. Vincent who became the village doctor and druggist.
George and Oliver served in the Civil War as Union soldiers.
The log cabin that first domiciled this pioneer family soon became too small, and he erected more substantial buildings on the west side of the river, but reserved a two-acre tract of land west of the mill, which he dedicated as a public com- mons and is still kept as such. Around this commons were built the dwellings, the store, a blacksmith shop and a shoe shop. It was not long until others joined the "family circle" and the community numbered fourteen families.
Mr. Wood did not give all his attention to the community so truly his creation. When Liverpool was proposed as the county seat of Lake County, he invested in a number of lots and later purchased a tract of unimproved land in the north part of the present city of Hobart, which he subdivided into acre and half lots. This subdivision bears his name.
The Masonic record of this distinguished pioneer was hon- orable and worthy of notation. It will soon be 100 years since he was admitted to membership in this ancient and modern fraternity. A certificate, on parchment, signed by the grand master and the grand secretary of the grand lodge Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Massachusetts, states that he was admitted to the Third Degree, the Sublime degree of a Master Mason, in Jordan Lodge of that jurisdiction on September 8, 1824, where he held his membership until he assisted in the organization of the first Masonic Lodge in Porter County and was a charter member of this first lodge No. 49, which was organized in 1840 or 1841, but soon sur- rendered its charter for "lack of money and a room in which to meet" according to history.
In 1850 he was a charter member of Porter Lodge No. 137 organized in Valparaiso.
126
JOHN WOOD
In 1853 he was a charter member of Lake Lodge, No. 157 organized at Crown Point, being the first Masonic Lodge in Lake County.
In 1866 he was a charter member at the organization of M. L. McClelland Lodge, No. 357, at Wheeler, Porter County, which was moved to Hobart the following year where he re- tained his membership until death in 1883 summoned him to the celestial lodge beyond. He was faithful in attendance at meetings and filled different stations. At his passing in 1883, he was honored with a Masonic burial.
Mr. Wood was reared a Universalist, but was liberal in his religious belief, and for some years attended a Community Church at Wheeler, but when the Unitarian Church was organized in Hobart on October 26, 1874, he was a charter member of that organization, and throughout the remainder of his years he and his family were faithful in attendance.
The evening of his days was spent in quietness, in peace and happiness in the village he had founded, among members of his family as he fully desired, and when on December 1, 1883, the curtain of death fell over this happy home, it round- ed out a life well spent and one worthy of the tribute now being paid to his memory by over one hundred forty living decendants (seventy being Lake County residents at this time) and by the Lake County Old Settlers and Historical Association. August 16, 1924.
127
A Pioneer Account Book
By HENRY S. DAVIDSON
A little account book, yellow with age, appearing among the papers of William Vater tells many a forgotten item in the early history of Whiting. It was kept by John Friedrich Karl Vater, who in the "roaring forties" had come to America and Chicago. Vater had seized the first job offered him in a lumber yard but in a few years had saved enough money to start a business of his own. His first store was at 240 North Franklin Street.
On the fly leaf of the book, in a round hand, is the name of Lamporsdorf, the Saxon town from which the Vaters had sprung. Here are the names of John Vater and his brother William Ernst Vater. Turning to the accounts, the first charge is "for the gun, 1.00" and on the same page a record of 1 Pound Shot 8 cents, and 1 box caps 8 cents. The sale of ammunition runs through all the accounts.
The gun was important, for Vater and his friends were enthusiastic hunters. Southeast of Chicago stretched the un- spoiled Indiana wilderness. No railways or highways dis- turbed the deer and birds. Vater and his friend, Heinrich D. Eggers would walk the twenty miles to the district where Whiting and East Chicago now stand and hunt for venison till they were tired out.
Both the young men loved the wild country and in 1850 they decided to obtain some of the land. Vater bought for a price of about $75.00 a "Military Land Warrant", which entitled the owner to 160 acres of government land. This land war- rant was given to "Willoughby I. Davis, Captain Bucks Com- pany, First Regiment, North Carolina Volunteers" as a bonus for his service in the Mexican War. This document might be transferred to any buyer. It was necessary for this script to be presented at the land office at Winamac, Indiana and there located on any public land desired. Vater was busy in the store and hence Eggers made the trip to Winamac alone, al- though it was agreed that the land should be divided between the two men. Eggers was short of money, evidently, as can be read from some of the charges which appear against Eggers in the old account book :
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A PIONEER ACCOUNT BOOK
October 18, 1850 baar gelt geliehen $9.00
October 18, 1850, 2 gl Wiskie at 25c .50.
October 26, 1859 to go to Land Office $10.00.
This is the famous trip that established two prominent pioneer families in the Whiting district.
Another charge against Eggers in the same month is Octo- ber 15, 1850, 6 bls oads at 25c $1.50. This raises a question. If Eggers was buying oats he must have owned a horse, and if he had a horse we would expect him to make the trip to Winamac on horseback. Now it is the family tradition that Eggers walked the entire distance on his stout German legs. But however the trip was made, he went to Winamac and selected three parcels of land that had a frontage on Lake Michigan of about three quarters of a mile, all in the Berry Lake district.
The account books show that Eggers had made the trip and had returned to Chicago in about three weeks. The record shows :
November 19, for Joseph Strobel $5.00
November 20, 406 feet common bords 3.63
November 26, 125 feet Cull Bords 6-1/4 .81
November 26, 81/2 M Shingles 4.70
These entries show Eggers building a house on his land with great promptness. The house was of logs cut on the spot, but the floors, roof and partitions were of lumber. The labor was probably largely donated and we find an entry as follows :
Decbr 17, for Wiskie $9.80
The usual price for Whisky was 25 cents a gallon and Eg- gers evidently bought a barrel to treat the men who came to help him build the house. The last of the lumber purchases were
January 1, 1851, 400 feet com bords 81/2 $3.40
January 5, 1851, 18 Ligth Sash 21/2 cts .45
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
Evidently windows were priced according to the number of panes of glass. The usual price was three cents for each pane, but Eggers received a cut rate. The house was now finished and stood in a grove of cedar trees. The door was low and Eggers, who was a tall man, had to stoop to enter.
The old account book also shows how Eggers paid his lumber bill which he owed to Vater.
Decbr 14, 1850 412 Card Wood $14.75
March 14, 1851 By 31 Ceder Post 1.86
July 7, 1851 By 282 Cedar Posts 21.33
March 24, 1852 1265 Ceder Posts 4c 50.60
March 25, 1852 108 feet square tember 7.00
Eggers hauled into the Chicago market enough Cedar posts and timber to pay his debts. Eggers now moved in, together with his father, mother, brothers and sisters. Before this time Vater had become brother-in-law to his friend when he married Georgina Eggers and shortly after the removal to Indiana, Eggers married Amelia Vater who had lately come from Germany.
Eggers was now well settled in the hunters' paradise and Vater would regularly come down from Chicago for a day's shooting. They had little interest in the ducks which darkened the September sky or in the fish that filled the lakes.
Their passion was for deer, and a pair of antlers glimpsed through the trees could stir the blood beyond anything else. The land lay in long ridges which were separated by narrow swales. When the hunters had discovered a fresh trail on a ridge, one of them would make a long detour and beat up the underbrush in order to drive the deer back over its trail to an ambush where the other was waiting.
On one early occasion before the removal to Indiana, Eg- bers was the beater, and after a walk of miles, drove before him a fine buck to his waiting friend. Vater had hidden him- self in an oak tree, resting on a low projecting branch, with his gun nearby on the ground. Whether he had dozed off during the long wait history does not say, but he did hear a slight noise and, looking down, saw the deer with its beauti- ful horns immediately beneath him. It was Vater's most em- barrassing moment. The deer recovered first from the sur-
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A PIONEER ACCOUNT BOOK
prise and bounded away to safety. Vater scrambled for his gun but his shot missed. The distance was too great.
Eggers soon came up and expressed his disgust without any reticence and tramped away home, refusing to speak to his friend during the whole twenty miles walk to Chicago.
The deer remained for years after this, but the railroad came in 1853 and too many hunters made deer a rarity. The book's last record of hunting activities is an undated entry of 1854 (probably December). Eggers had killed a deer and brought the carcass to the Chicago store where he sold it to Vater
fur einem Hirsch $7.00
Vater's store had a wide variety of goods. William Gaunitz, for instance, on April 15, 1850 bought
2 Bushl Mitling .40
2 lb Nails .08
1 lb Tobacco .10
On April 21, he bought Shweinefleisch 1.00
On May 3, Gaunitz bought hardware, window glass, liniment, a pair of shoes, feed for his horse, meat for his family and dressing for his boots. Shoes were cheap.
May 3, 1852 ein Baar Schuh .63
ein Stein eisen .25
ein bottle einzuseiben .12
Drei Fenstersheiben .09
June 10, 1852 ein baar Schuh
1.25
3 bushle oads .84
Sugar was high.
April 3
4 P. Sugar 71/2 .30
3 1/4 P. Powder
.10
7 1 bbl flour
4.25
Lumber was very cheap and so was meat, both being local products. Manufactured articles were relatively much high- er than now. Sales of meat were for large pieces that would last a man's family for perhaps two weeks.
William Gaunitz obtained meat on March 21, 1852 for a
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
dollar and bought pork on April 26, also for a dollar and on May 3 he needed more meat which he bought for $1.25. No weights are given or prices by the pound. Gaunitz' gun prob- ably added additional meat.
Labor appears in the book at $1.00 per day. In the account of Walker and Day. A weekly record of wages is shown
Decbr 4 6 Days $6.00
11
6 Days 6.00
18
5 Days 5.00
25
5 Days
5.00
House rent was moderate. Philip Pfeifer rented a house for two dollars a month on November 22, 1852 and furnished it on credit with
stove and bettstad
$8.75
George Horn rented another house for $4.00 per month.
Fever and ague was a curse of the times as Vater in his record shows a sale to Friedrich Eggers
May 18, 1852 for Fieberstrobfen .50
One sufferer, a laboring man, was accustomed to drape him- self over a worm fence when he felt the periodical chills com- ing on and would there writhe and twist until the attack had passed. William Vater, when a small boy, just before the civil war saw a gruesome remedy administered to this man. Three live bed bugs were placed in the skin of a raisin which was used as a capsule. The man was induced to swallow them by the amatuer doctors, who believed that the bugs had the power to absorb the disease and effect a cure.
The account book has no records after 1854 but we know that Vater moved to the settlement of Ainsworth (now South Chicago) and conducted a general store near the present corner of 92nd Street and Commercial Avenue where he had obtained five acres of land. The building was of logs about 30 x 100 feet in size. Vater's title was based on tax claims. He had occupied the property for eighteen years when the Canal and Dock| Company attacked his title in a spectacular manner, and employed squatters to live in five shanties on each of the five acres of land. All other settlers met with the same treatment. Vater and most of the settlers were discour-
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A PIONEER ACCOUNT BOOK
aged and resigned their claim. The Zirnkeble family alone went to court in defence of their land near the 92nd Street bridge. The land they successfully defended contained the burial place of some of the members of the family and these lone graves have afforded travellers an opportunity for much wonderment, contrasting mightily with the giant blast furnaces, towers and cranes surrounding them.
At the time when Vater thus lost his land and houses in Ainsworth he was living in Chicago, having moved back in Civil war days to the Franklin street store. He remained there, until 1868 when he moved to Whiting into the Berry Lake neighborhood. After his removal to Whiting Vater be- came a Notary Public and a Justice of the Peace. With his son William he conducted a successful gravel business, oper- ating from the Berry Lake beach. He died in 1885 and his widow followed him in 1904. Vater was born October 27, 1824. Hence he was 61 years old when he died.
His friend Eggers died in June 1892.
The land secured in 1850 as a refuge for hunters became within five years necessary to the railroads. In later years, other corporations pressed in, and the land which cost about $75.00 at the beginning was sold to railroads, oil interests, steel interests and elevator interests for a total sum of about $150,000.00.
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
dent concerning him which is reported to have occurred in the court room, and is by no means to his discredit, for the law- yers had to laboriously write out by long hand all their manu- scripts, the typewriter machine not having at that time been invented. His clerk or an attachee in the court-room, had handed him a document, hastily written, which he could not read and in his pleasant though gruff voice he expostulated : "Who wrote that?" and the attendant answered "Yourself, Mr. Wood"! whereupon, the latter, not to have his penman- ship discredited, replied, "Oh yes! I see, I see, plain enough for anybody."
The public square with it's circus bill-boards and the highly colored posters thereupon were more attractive to us young- sters than the National Art Galleries are to us to-day. The base-ball diamond, and the rings on the ground for the marble games are cherished memories, and Tom Wilmarth-the lum- ber-man, kicking Crown Point's first foot-ball so high and far that it landed on the roof of Cheshire Hall-later Central Music hall, will never be forgotten.
The Rockwell and the Hack houses were the main taverns. The prevailing rates were about $1.00 per day, American plan, three good meals and a comfortable room for a night's lodg- ing. Few farmers could afford that luxury, however, and most of them would bring a "Snack" from home, or get a lunch-of cheese and crackers and eat at the grocery. Then was when people knew the value of money and treasured it. The porch of the Rockwell hostelry was the gathering place of the sages about town, who sat in the old fashioned arm chairs tilted back against the wall and spun their yarns by the hour. Tim Rockwell and his worthy wife were the pro- prietors, and in fancy we can still see their kindly faces and figures.
The Rockwell house stood facing Court street on the North side of Joliet road.
Do you remember that in those early days Lake County supported four weekly newspapers published at Crown Point, viz. The Lake County Star, The Crown Point Register, The Gosmos and the Frie Presse? The last named was printed in German. Two public school buildings, the brick on South Court street, and the frame Institute on the North Side. The
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CROWN POINT IN THE 1870's
First National bank here was the only one in the County, and the late John Brown was at the head of it. Churches of all main denominations thrivingly existed, and afforded the best of wholesome instruction and entertainment. As stated, the North side of the square was occupied by the court-house and County offices. To the North and adjacent to the frame jail was a tall brick building which then housed the Crown Point Register. A Mr. Frank Bedell was the publisher, or was con- nected with it's publication. The Bedell family had the town mansion at that time, which was on the West side of North court street-a block and a half from the public square. It was a real showy place at that time, and the spacious gently sloping flowered grounds around it were blooming bowers of beauty. On the east side of the business district, observing from the North end, we recall the Cosmos printing office con- ducted by the venerable Mr. Millikan, where some of the boys about town liked the job of folding the papers as they watched the handpress work. The Whipple photo studio, the Tillotson Livery, the Hildebrandt Tailor Shop, Griffin and Son's law Office, Geisens furniture store were among other business es- tablishments in this block. Shoulter's drug store, Coffin's meat market, Meyer and Berlin's grocery were in the next block South, and a barber-shop with the first colored barber in fact the first colored man we had ever seen. So impressed was your narrator then 4 or 5 years old with his color, that upon my return home from down-town I proceeded to black up with shoe blacking, and when Mother inquired what in the world I was doing I replied: "I'm going to be Hardesty's nigger" !
The bakery and Sauerman's harness shop, States Williams' shoe store, Clark and Pinney's grocery, First National Bank, Hartupee's hardware, Griesel's Furniture and Schlem- mer's Dry-goods stores are also remembered. The Miller and Heiser hotels at the intersection of Main and Joliet streets, and the Hack House, well conducted by some of the family, we especially commemorate to-day, and Rod Wells' Livery was adjacent on the Southwest across Main street from there was the Post Office, with Mr. Farley as Postmaster and Horn's Tailoring shop.
Schwartz's drug-store, Krinbill's dry goods and clothing and Church's grocery, with one other store made up the occupancy
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
of the ground floor of the brick block on the South side of the Square, while Eder Brothers, Tobacconists, Minas Brothers, Harness, etc., Ruschli and Simon, Meats, Jake Houk shoes and Strike Conway Shoe repairer, Wise, the Tinner, and John Prier, Agricultural Implements, occupied the frame business buildings in order there as mentioned.
Across the street on the West side of the square was Dr. Harvey Pettibone's M. D. office, and the Rockwell House as stated, and Paul Raasch's Flour and Feed store, with his Livery in the rear, and Smith Conway's blacksmith shop. Thus, the then business district has been described, with prob- ably a few, none the less important exceptions, omitted, which we hope some other narrator will cover.
These former sights and scenes recur to our minds, when revisiting the County-seat, and about them are clustered many amusing and cherished memories.
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