USA > Indiana > Lake County > History Of Lake County (1929) > Part 15
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Away back in the distant past, when what is now Lake County, was a township by the name of Ross, in Porter Coun- ty; long before the advent of railroads in the central west, and when the total railroad mileage of the United States scarcely exceeded a hundred miles; when Chicago was yet a struggling village in the swamps; when the Indian trail was the only road, and the ox-cart and the stage-coach were the only means for the over-land transportation of passengers in this new domain; when the supper-table was lighted with a lamp made from an iron spoon, containing a strip of cloth for a wick and melted lard for oil; when the surrounding country was composed of primeval forests and trackless marshes cov- ered with wild rice and other tall grasses; when there were yet but a few white settlers within the territory comprising the county of Lake; before bridges were built across the streams, and when rivers were crossed by ferries, one John Chapman, and two associates by the names of Frederickson and Davis, conceived the idea that this location at the junction of the Deep and the Little Calumet rivers, then about the head of navigation for boats, would be a good site for a great city that might overtake the little village in the marshes surround- ing Fort Dearborn. The government engineers had just re- cently completed the survey of lands in this locality into town- ships, six miles square, and sections within the same a mile
177
HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
square; but the government had not yet exposed the lands for sale, and therefore the settlers could not yet purchase lands directly from the United States. A few white settlers had ar- rived and located upon lands as "squatters," who afterwards designated their claims in a book which they prepared and called "Claim Register." But they were simply "squatters." The lands had theretofore belonged to the Indians of the Pottawotamie Nation, in common, but by the treaty of 1832 these lands had been ceded to the United States, and under the treaty, certificates commonly called "floats," were issued to certain of the Indians individually, entitling them to select and enter upon designated quantities of land allotted to them, such as sections or quarter-sections, thus to obtain title to specific parcels in severalty. Chapman was eager for the great adventure-the founding of a city on the frontier. He did not want to wait for the government sale, the date of which was then neither announced nor known. He evidently wanted to start while the starting was good. He obtained a "float" from an Indian named Quashma, a beneficiary under the second treaty of Tippecanoe for section 24, Township 36 North, in Range 8 West, and proceeded to plat about 160 acres of the land, without waiting for a patent from the Unit- ed States for the land. This was in January, 1836. Lands in Lake County south of the Indian Boundary line were not op- en to sale until March 19, 1839.
These promoters were doubtless not only ambitious to be the founders of a city bearing a name already famous, but, like most real estate promoters, had in mind the value of a name as a "selling point !"
We may assume that they were not unmindful of what is known as the unearned increment-commonly called profits on land. So, keeping in mind the magic of a name, they called their plat "Liverpool." Of the streets thereon they had their Broadway, their Market Street, their Chestnut Street, Michi- gan, Indiana, and others of like dignity and rank, some of which were 100 feet in width. One block was designated "Pub- lic Square;" another "Market Square;" another "Church Square." Then there were 40 blocks subdivided into lots, 435 in number. Through this city to be, flowed the waters of Deep River, then described upon the plat as being 14 feet in depth, there being 18 blocks north of the river and 23 south.
178
IVERPOOL
IN SECTION 24-3G-8.
RECORDED - MAY 17, 1836. BOOK OF DEEDS - PAGE 34.
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DREAM CITIES OF THE CALUMET
This was 16 years before the whinny of the iron horse was heard on the marshes.
Times were good. Historians record that the years 1834, 1835 and 1836 were distinguished by the wildest methods of speculation throughout the west. With rosy tales of rich prospects speculators were able to command fabulous prices for lots in "towns" and "cities" which had no existence, ex- cept upon paper. Liverpool was no exception. Lots here found ready sale. It is recorded by Lake County's leading historian that during three days in the month of July of the last-men- tioned year the proceeds of the sale of lots aggregated $16,000, a large sum of money in those days when a rail-splitter re- ceived fifty cents a hundred for splitting rails, and often walked many miles for the job. Prospects here were bright; the town was booming, houses were being built, and hopes were running high. In this year (1836) the counties of Porter and Lake were created from territory taken from La Porte County ; the boundaries of these two new counties were de- fined; Porter was organized as an independent county, but Lake remained attached to Porter, for civic purposes, until the 16th day of February, 1837, upon and after which date it was authorized to organize as an independent county. This creation and organization of a new county gave rise to new ambitions upon the part of Liverpool, for a county-seat was needed for the county. Why not locate the county-seat at Liver- pool ?
The new county was eager to be organized. Mails were slow, very slow. A special messenger was sent to Indianapolis for an appointment or commission of some one as sheriff to call and hold an election. The messenger returned with the ap- pointment of one Henry Wells, a citizen of the new county, as sheriff. An election was held in March, 1837, there having been three polling-places in the county. It will be remembered that the settlers, mainly "squatters," were still very few in number, for less than 80 votes were cast in the entire county. The polling-place nearest to Liverpool seems to have been at the settlement subsequently called Crown Point-then probab- ly known as the Robinson settlement, or Lake Court House.
The county having been fully organized, the location of a county-seat became imperative. Three little settlements as- pired to the distinction. They were Liverpool, the Robinson
179
HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
settlement, then sometimes called Lake Court House (now Crown Point), and the settlement at Cedar Lake. Mr. George Earle, an educated and talented gentleman from Philadelphia, formerly from Falmouth, England, had located at Liverpool, acquired large interests in and around the new town, and thereupon became the leader on behalf of Liverpool in the "Court-house fight." Solon Robinson, one of the first settlers of the county, and one of the most active and prominent, the "squatter king," pressed the claims of the above mentioned Lake Court house. Dr. Calvin Lilley, of Cedar Lake, on be- half of the settlement at that point, presented its advantages for the seat of justice. The commissioners appointed by the legislature to determine the site reported on the 11th of May, 1839, in favor of Liverpool. The promoters of Liverpool at once began the erection of a frame house, and the perman- ence and the distinction of Liverpool seemed assured. It had become the county-seat, though yet without a county-building for county officers ; and the hopes and ambitions of the found- ers appeared to be on their way to realization. But, alas! the spirit of discontent was present. The citizens of the central and of the western parts of the county were dissatisfied with the location as fixed by the commissioners. They made their dis- satisfaction known to the legislature of 1830-1840. A new commission was appointed by that legislature, and the same three places again aspired to the coveted honor. The new com- mission filed its report on the 12th day of June, 1840, locating the county-seat at the place then commonly called Lake Court House, but afterwards changed to Crown Point.
But troubles to the adventure came not singly ; the panic of 1837 had arrived; the property of the original proprietors had been sold by the sheriff of the county, Mr. George Earle hav- ing been the principal purchaser. With the location of the county-seat at Crown Point, the last fair prospects of Liver- pool faded; the exultation of success had given place to the despondency of failure. According to Timothy Ball, the court- house at Liverpool, which had never been entirely finished, was sold, and moved on a scow down the Deep and Little Calumet rivers to Blue Island, Illinois, for use as a hotel or tavern. Some persons dispute the story of the removal of the court-house. Some say the building stood on the north side of the stream, although the Public Square designated upon the
180
DREAM CITIES OF THE CALUMET
plat was located south of the river. According to the present best available testimony it was located north of the river near or at the present site of Camp 133.
After the lapse of a few years Mr. Earle founded and moved to his new town-building venture, which he named Hobart, in honor of his brother. For many years the deserted buildings withstood the assaults of the elements, but suffered the natural consequences. Sometimes they were used as cor- rals for the sheep herded in the locality. Finally the arch enemy of wooden structures appeared and demanded its toll, and only ashes remained to mark the site of the once ambi- tious and hopeful project. Thus ended the dreams of Liverpool.
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John B. Chapman was a resident of Indiana, but to state accurately of which county requires some explanation. Dur- ing the years 1833 and 1834 he had been a prosecuting attor- ney of or for a judicial circuit comprising the counties of Allen, Carroll, Cass, Elkhart, Jay, LaGrange, St. Joseph and La Porte, which group constituted the entire north end of the state. According the certain deeds executed respectively by or to Chapman in the year 1836, he was described as being a resident of Elkhart county, Kosciusko county and of Lake county. In those dizzy, hectic days of the early 30's, immedi- ately following the Tippecanoe treaties, when paper cities, canals and new highways were the order of the day, develop- ments were so rapid and counties were organized so fast and frequently that a settler might have had his political resi- dence changed with the recurrence of the four seasons with- out any change in his geographical residence at all. So, in the fall no one could say of what new county he might be a resident in the spring. Liverpool having been in La Porte county in January of 1836, when the plat was prepared, and Porter county having been organized in June, 1836, with the boundaries of Lake defined and its area having been attached to and put under the jurisdiction of Porter county, pending the organization of Lake, which occurred in March, 1837, it became necessary in the swift succession of events to file the plat of the Liverpool town-site in the three counties.
It is probable that Chapman and his wife Margaret lived for a time in the new town of Liverpool. He had purchased other tracts of land from Indians who had obtained reser- vations, or float certificates. The writer has been informed
181
HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
that his last resting place is at Edwardsburg, Michigan.
Another dream City was Indiana City. It was located on the beach of Lake Michigan, at the old eastern mouth of the Grand Calumet. Apparently two plats were filed-one for the land lying between the Old Indian Boundary Line and the lake, and one covering the land just south of the former. The plats bore date May 13, 1837.
The promoters, it has been said, were from Columbus, Ohio. Few, if any, lots were sold, and few houses, if any, were built. It had an attractive location, but it was never more than a "paper city." The general financial depression of the succeed- ing period doubtless cast its shadow here as elsewhere in the region ; but even as late as 1846 the state legislature memor- ialized congress for an appropriation for this project.
Another of the dream cities which may fairly be considered within the scope of this story was old City West, whose history by tradition and otherwise has long been handed down. Some activities began as early as 1836, but the plans and location were not fully apparent until the following year. The "city" was laid out along the south-easterly shore of lake Michigan, at, or just south of, the mouth of Fort Creek. The place is now known as Waverly Beach. Fort Creek, named for an old French fort, was only a small stream, but the promoters of the project envisaged a harbor at its mouth, for, it was said, sur- veys and soundings made at the time, disclosed superiority of this site over the site of its infant sister, Michigan City, a few miles away, for harbor facilities, at which place a small appropriation had theretofore recently been made for a har- bor to be established at the mouth of Trail Creek, a stream scarcely larger than Fort Creek.
During the fall of 1836 and the spring of 1837, Hervey Ball, who had just arrived from Massachusetts, and who afterwards became a resident of Lake county, surveyed the ground and laid out the town site. The plat or draw- ing was entitled "City West" and was signed by "J. Bige- low, President of the Michigan City and Kankakee Rail- road Company." The first and main plat bore date July 12, 1837, and was filed in the office of the Recorder of Porter county two days later. A second plat was filed a few days thereafter which was entitled "Addition to the town Plat of City West," the land so platted having been contiguous to
182
LAKE
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DREAM CITIES OF THE CALUMET
the land covered by the former plat. This plat was signed by Leverett Bradley and Joshua Hobart, bearing date August 12, 1837. These plats or drawings, containing about ninety blocks and hundreds of lots, represented Fort Creek as a stream of considerable size. A canal was represented on the plat bearing the name Michigan City and Kankakee Canal, which canal, according to plans, was to connect with the Little Calumet (Calimic) river at the mouth of Salt Creek. The principal promoters were Jacob Bigelow, Leverett Bradley, Joshua Hobart and William Morse. They had a great ambition to found a real city which they hoped would surpass Chicago, then a village, and become the metropolis of this region. They were seeking an appropriation by the United States Govern- ment for the construction of a harbor at the mouth of Fort Creek, for the vision of these dreamers comprehended a city with a harbor-a mart at which vessels sailing the lake might anchor, and at which boats and barges might enter a con- necting canal. These promoters, having had great faith in their project, had invested heavily in surrounding lands. The prospects seemed bright and hopes were high; settlers were coming; houses were being erected; but the building of har- bors, even in that far day, required money-far more money than the promoters collectively could raise. Congress in its subsequent appropriations favored Michigan City to the ex- clusion of City West.
The panic of 1837, the worst and most disastrous in the history of the country, was on, and the battle for City West was lost. Prices almost vanished. Fortunes disappeared. Hopes, once bright, were extinguished. Obligations could not be met. The property of some of these promoters was administered for the benefit of creditors in the Bankruptcy courts, under the Act of 1841, and land which at the peak of the boom was rated at hundreds of dollars per acre was sold by an assignee in bankruptcy at a cent per acre. Such dire disaster defies de- piction, and my poor pen capitulates.
A few of the houses of the original "city" were moved away -some to Chesterton (formerly Calumet or Coffee Creek) and it is said, one to Wheeler. One of these moved to Chesterton, and known as Central Hotel was consumed by fire in the spring of 1908, thus suffering the fate common to many of its original associates. In an issue of the Chesterton Tribune
183
HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
immediately following the catastrophe in a story concerning the fire appears also a graphic account of old City West, doubt- less written by its able editor of that day, Hon. A. J. Bowser. Omitting those portions pertaining to the origin and the ef- fects of the fire, I quote so much as applies to the projected city, for certainly no narrative of mine could surpass this in diction nor in details. I quote:
"The last vestige of City West, the once hopeful rival of Chicago for the mercantile supremacy of the west, was wiped out early last Tuesday morning when fire laid waste to the Central Hotel in Chesterton.
"The Central Hotel figures conspicuously in the early history of northern Indiana, in fact, so closely identified was it to the early hopes and ambitions of this locality that its pass- ing into oblivion entitles it to at least a brief obituary, which the Tribune herewith chronicles. As a sort of introductory note, it must be chronicled that the pioneer hosterly was at one time a structure of City West, one of the three rivals of Chicago in the pioneer days. In 1850 the building was moved to Chesterton by a man named Hopkins, and as a result, es- caped the devastation by fire that swept City West a few years later, and which wiped from existence evidence of the sanguine expectations of those pioneers of over half a century ago."
Three hopeful rivals had Chicago in Indiana when com- merce first sought a harbor at the head of lake Michigan, and two are forgotten, while the third, no longer a rival, is a very pleasant and comfortable little city among the sand dunes at the mouth of Trail Creek. In the thirties, when ox-teams mired in the marsh mud of Chicago's main street, and when small schooners anchored outside the bar to discharge their cargoes by lighters, it was not unreasonable for far-sighted men to look upon other and more solid spots as equally prom- ising of municipal greatness, if creeks were present and cap- able of improvement. So far as men could see, Chicago had no cinch at the outset.
"But City West, dear, romantic old City West-Ah! there is a tale worth telling, albeit the end is a record of disappoint- ment and oblivion! Barely a year it flourished, the scene of business activity, domestic felicity and social gaiety, just long enough to absorb the energies that might otherwise have cen-
184
DREAM CITIES OF THE CALUMET
tered at Indiana City ten miles to the west, not long enough to prevent its own dissolution through the growth of Michigan City, an equal distance east. Once sufficiently important to attract a visit from Daniel Webster, it now escapes the at- tention even of cartographers of Porter county, wherein it spread its ephermal wings.
"Hardly a man or woman is now alive who dwelt in the en- chanted precincts of old City West in those few glorious days, but there is one who in the royal light of childhood, saw the rise and fall of its ambition, and in the background of old age wrote lovingly of its bright and brief career, this being Timothy H. Ball, already referred to, the historian of north- western Indiana.
"Old City West and Indiana City were platted and exploit- ed coincidentally in 1836. Morse, Hobart, Bigelow and Bradley were authors of the former and, unlike the Ohio gentlemen re- sponsible for the latter, they made their homes in and gave their personal attention to the city of their hopes. Fort Creek is an inconspicuous rivulet of three forks, the longest less than three miles in length, carrying to the lake the surplus water of half a dozen once marshy sections in the north of West- chester township, and at the mouth of this stream, where it breaks through the coast range of shining, yellow sand moun- tains, old City West was spread out upon the sandy floor formed by the washings from two sentinel dunes between which the creek debauches. The yellow hills thinly clad with green pines face the blue expanse of open lake and divide it from the neutral tints of the marsh and underbrush behind. To the hopelit eyes of those who sought it out in 1836, the spot was not unlovely, all solitary and desolate as it was and still is.
"It was not supposed that Fort Creek in itself would furn- ish the expected harbor, it being but a modest little brook, but the design included a short canal equal to the Calumet not far southward. Actual surveys and soundings made in 1837 showed the superiority of this location over that of Michigan City for harbor purposes. The beach stage route ran through the place and a few miles south, reached by a newly con- structed road, lay the old Chicago road following the ancient Sac trail connecting the Illinois country with Detroit. Congress had already, in 1836, appropriated $20,000 for the Michigan
185
HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
City harbor and certainly when informed of the conditions, would at least be as liberal with City West. In fact, no reason- able man could doubt that the national legislature must aban- don its attempt to convert Trail creek into a refuge for ships and confine its expenditures to the more practicable enter- prise at City West, the future great port of Indiana.
"So Morse dammed the creek and built a sawmill to convert the pines into lumber for the stores, hotels and dwellings that were erected that fall, and in the season of 1837 Hervey Ball surveyed the town-site and located lots for the newcomers, and that winter the village led a busy, joyous life.
"The spring of 1837 found all things in readiness for a sea- son of great progress. Great piles of lumber had been sawed out, the lots had been cleared of underbrush and streets had been laid out, many people had visited the place and listened to its story of golden promise, and a few families already liv- ing there knew that before another winter closed in, great changes would be seen. Large gardens were put out betimes and a stranded sloop furnished a good supply of potatoes. Cur- ious Indians, always peaceable, came up along their trails from the interior, or by water in their birch canoes and camped on the beach nearby to watch the operations of the whites and gather in such supplies and firewater as might fall their way.
"That season the population increased to something like twenty families, all comfortably housed. Several of the dwell- ings were quite costly, place and period considered. A large store and warehouse occupied a prominent position, a black- smith shop was opened, the ordinary handicrafts were re- presented and all was life and bustle. Morse's residence, the finest in the town was completed and Bigelow built a hotel, called the Exchange, containing twenty-two rooms, the larg- est tavern in all that region. Other smaller hotels were built, for many prospectors stopped at City West and with the com- mencement of work on the harbor, many new families would need to be cared for, pending the erection of their dwellings.
There were not enough mechanics, nor was there time to think of providing quarters for the purpose of education and religion, nor was there a teacher or preacher in the town, not- withstanding the fact that the inhabitants were educated and religious people. It was simply that the time had not yet come for these things, and they were postponed until the next year.
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SITUATED IN SEC. 13, JUP. NO 39 NORTH, RANGENO 6 WEST - LAID OFF AND PREPARED JUNE 10, 1857 BY JACOB BIGELOW, PRES. OF MICHIGAN CITY AND KANKAKEE RAILROAD CO., AND HELD IN TRUST FOR THE USE AND BENEFIT OF SAID CE
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DREAM CITIES OF THE CALUMET
Some of the children were instructed by their mothers in their homes.
"Death, however, did not stay his hand because the people had so much work to do; he visited the growing hamlet more than once that season and forced a cessation of their labors each time for the funeral. Avoiding the old Indian burial ground that occupied the crest of a sand knoll by the creek and between the village and the beach, in which some of the mounds were marked by rudely split boards inscribed with puccoon root, the whites buried their few dead in a lonely spot back of the sand ridge and simple rites were conducted by some citizen who was accustomed to pray in public. The site of this early cemetery was lost many years ago.
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