USA > Indiana > Lake County > History Of Lake County (1929) > Part 3
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REPORT OF HISTORICAL SECRETARY
er Park at Highland was dedicated as a war memorial, with elaborate ceremonies, by President Coolidge in 1927.
Movements are under way looking to the purchase of South East Grove, and a tract on the east side of Cedar Lake for County parks. The Lake County Fair Grounds at Crown Point has become a Mecca for small picnic parties and family gatherings. Country clubs and golf courses are to be found throughout the county. The more recently established of these are: Lake Hills Country Club at St. Johns; Oak Knoll Golf course and Crown Point Country Club at Crown Point; Turkey Creek Country Club at Merrillville; Castlebrook Golf Course at Lowell ; Surprise Park and Cedar Lake Country Club at Cedar Lake. East of Creston, Cedar Creek has again been dammed up on the site of the original Taylor-McCarty dam, later owned by Anton Carstens, and a beautiful lake created. This lake has been named Dale-Carlia after a territory in Sweden which is noted for its beautiful lakes. The winding shore-line, the wooded banks, the water-fall at the dam and the absence of unsightly buildings, all unite to make this one of the beauty spots of Lake County.
One of Lake County's institutions which is enjoying a re- markable growth in exhibits, attendance and receipts, is the Lake County Fair, which is held annually in the Lake County Fair Grounds at Crown Point.
The local fair now ranks second to the Indiana State Fair within our state. Some of the most noted live stock breeders of the Middle West were numbered among the exhibitors this year.
Fred A. Ruf, the efficient secretary, is authority for the statement that the receipts of the Fair have increased from $6200 in 1919 to $34,238.49 in 1929. No comparison can be made as to attendance for all school children are now admitted to the grounds free of charge.
As stated in a former paragraph our industrial immigration has created some serious problems which bid fair to remain with us for many years. Before the World War we were faced with an ever-increasing immigration from southern Europe. These new-comers settled in national groups and were extremely reluctant to adopt our language and customs and to obey our laws. Sensing the danger that confronted us, Congress wisely passed immigration restriction laws.
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
Now that foreign immigration is restricted, education and intermarriage will eventually work out a solution of this problem. In solving the foreign immigration problem we have developed another that may remain with us for many years.
The demand for unskilled labor still continues. As I stated in a former paragraph, the place of the foreigner is being tak- en by negroes and Mexicans. The old foreign district in Gary is gradually being occupied by negroes. Negro aldermen now sit in the city council and their petty litigation is adjudicated by a negro justice of the peace.
Our laws, no doubt wisely, prevent intermarriage of the negro and caucassian races. With many white people there is an inherent prejudice against the colored people.
This prejudice and the rapid increase of the negro popula- tion, much of it from the lower strata of their society, are rapidly increasing the magnitude of the problem. It is hardly conceivable that the northerner will deny the ballot to the negro and, on the other hand, if the negro votes at our elections he will in time demand recognition as an equal. The difficulty at the Emerson school in Gary is an illustration, in a small way, of situations which will develop and that may not be adjusted so easily in the future.
Among the events which have attracted widespread atten- tion during the past five years, we probably should mention the Federal liquor trials of 1924-1925.
In that year a large group of Gary citizens, some of them city officials and ex-county officials, were brought to trial before Federal Judge Geiger of Milwaukee, in the U. S. Court at Indianapolis. This trial resulted in the conviction of some sixty-three defendants on the charge of conspiring to violate the national prohibition law.
As this book goes to press, another federal grand jury in- vestigation of law violation in the Calumet District has re- sulted in the indictment and arrest of a large number of East Chicago and Gary people together with a number of officials of East Chicago and police officers of both of the above men- tioned cities.
Much of the difficulty in enforcing the prohibition law can be traced to our proximity to a great metropolis with a diver- sified and cosmopolitan population who have never been edu-
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REPORT OF HISTORICAL SECRETARY
cated as to the harmful effects of alcoholic liquors.
Another problem that must be solved is: the need for wider concrete highways to take care of the ever increasing auto- mobile traffic. This is being solved on the Dunes' Highway, which extends from Gary to Michigan City. A viaduct over the railroad at Baileytown has been built, and one at Miller is about completed. East Chicago, by building a street viaduct over Kennedy Avenue at one of the busy street crossings has done much to speed up traffic at that point. The railroad cross- ings on Hohman street in Hammond are the cause of many delays to automobilist and the street car passenger as well.
The need of a sewage disposal plant for the Calumet Dis- trict cities must soon be provided for. As it is now the sew- age from these cities is emptied into Lake Michigan together with the waste by-products of the various factories. As these same cities secure their water supply from Lake Michigan, it is apparent that to safeguard the health of the citizens some plan must soon be worked out to remedy this condition.
Politically, Lake County has fared well during the past five years. W. C. McMahan of Crown Point, was re-elected as judge of the Appellate Court of Indiana and is now serving as chief justice of that body. Otto Fifield of Crown Point, was elected to the office of Secretary of State of Indiana at the last election, being the second Crown Pointer to hold that office, the first being the late Charles F. Griffin. Col. Robert P. LaMont of Chicago, who has been connected with the in- dustrial life of the Calumet region for a long time, is the new Secretary of Commerce, in the cabinet of our new President, Herbert C. Hoover.
The memory of General Casimir Pulaski, hero of the Amer- ican Revolution was honored by the citizens of Indiana on October 20, 1929, this being the one-hundred-fiftieth anniver- say of the general's death. The exercises were held in Gary and were participated in by delegations from East Chicago, Hammond, Whiting, Michigan City, Gary, Hobart, South Bend and Crown Point.
The program in the afternoon opened with a parade and this was followed by exhibition drills and hurdle-jumping by cadets of the famous Black Horse Troop of Culver Military Academy of Lake Maxinkuckee.
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
Memorial services were held in the Gary Public Schools Memorial Auditorium in the evening, presided over by W. P. Gleason, chairman of the Lake County Pulaski Sesqui-Cen- tennial Commission.
Addresses were made by Senator William F. Hodges; Ed- mund Kalenski of Chicago, vice-consul of Poland; Norman Imrie of Culver, Indiana; Rabbi Garry J. August of Gary; Ignatius Werwinski of South Bend; and ex-congressman Fred- erick J. Landis of Logansport, Indiana. The government of Poland sent Colonel Sergius Zahorski, chief of cavalry of the Polish Army as its representative.
The day of the pioneers in Lake County is slowly but sure- ly passing. The memory of their privations and hardships, suffered during the early settlement of our country, is still re- called to memory or brought to knowledge at reunions of their rescendants. Each year finds more and more of the descendants of these pioneers meeting together in family gath- erings. Among these groups are the following: Craft, Cris- man, Dickinson, Dinwiddie, Einspahr, Frame, Fuller, Guern- sey, Hayden, Hoffman, Meyer-Borger, Ragon-Tilton, Shirley, Taylor and Wagenblast.
Solon Robinson in his excellent history of Lake County, written in 1847 gives a vivid picture of life and conditions of early Lake County. After reading this article contrast that period with the present and then try and visualize the future. Will there be as great a contrast between Lake County in 2011 and the present as there is between 1929 and 1847? Let us venture the prediction that there will be far greater changes. Greater Chicago will have absorbed all that section of Lake County now spoken of as the Calumet District? Great ocean vessels will dock in our harbors. Mighty Zeppelins will seek hangars in our suburban cities. Tall skyscrapers will pierce our northern horizon. Distance will have been almost anni- hilated through the inventive genius of man. The biologist will have isolated the hormones controlling the behavior of man and the span of human life.
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History of Lake County, 1833 - 1847
BY SOLON ROBINSON
First Authentic Story of County From 1834 to 1847 -Written by Solon Robinson, Read at Old Settlers Meeting. Found in Effects of the Late Amos All- man-Early Incidents Full of Interest.
The early history of most communities, great or small, is wrapped in obscurity. Within a few years past great ef- forts have been made to rescue the early history of some of the towns of Massachusetts and other places from the dark- ness in which they were enveloped. Circumstances that in their day excited no curiousity, after the lapse of a couple of centuries, are sought after and read with avidity. What has been may be again. The trifling every day occurrences in the first settlement of this county, one hundred years hence may be sought after with the same interest; but where shall their history be found recorded? Shall I attempt the task? I have done so, and I now lay them before you in the form of an address, not so much for your edification, as to ask you to correct my errors and continue the record. I assure you that the time will come when such matter will be interesting. I shall proceed in that familiar style that I should do in writ- ing a letter to a distant friend, or as if all my facts were as strange and new to you as they will be to those that fill our places one hundred years hence.
I have lately read the travels of Stephens, in the southern part of North America, among the vast fields of ruins of temples and places, of a people that have left no written language to tell of the wonders which the traveler sees around him. Here, we have no monuments of stone, but yet we can leave a more enduring remembrance behind us upon these few sheets of paper.
Fancy then, that this is the year 1947 instead of 1847, and let us call up the days and years of "Auld Lang Syne," and display before us the early history of Lake county, Indiana.
By the treaty of the United States with the Pottowattamie Indians in 1828, a strip of land ten miles wide on the North
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
line of the State was acquired, which extended in a very nar- row strip to the extreme south bend of Lake Michigan, which is on Section 35, in Township 37, of Range 8. This was the first purchase from the Indians in what is now Lake County, not yet nineteen years. By the treaty of 1832 the remainder of the land was acquired, together with all that that tribe owned in the State, except some small reservations. Previous to this time no whites but the hunters and trappers of the American Fur Company and the soldiers of the garrison at Old Fort Dearborn, had ever trod the fertile soil of these broad prairies. This was the year of the celebrated Black-Hawk War. At that time there was a garrison and a few Indian traders living at a place on Lake Michigan, about 12 miles from the Northwest corner of Lake County called Fort Dear- born, and this almost unknown and far remote frontier post 15 years since, is now the City of Chicago. There were also a few settlers in what is now La Porte County, in 1832. Some- time in the year 1833, I believe, the first settlement of a white family was made within the territory of what is now Lake County, near the mouth of the old Calumic, by a man by the name of Bennett, for a tavern, for the accomodation of the increasing travel along the beach of the lake, then the only road. Though I believe that the old Sac trail began to be trav- eled the same year from LaPorte to the Hickory Creek settle- ment, but an incident that I shall soon relate, will show that it was but a blind path of the widerness. The next family was by the name of Beary, [or Berry] also tavern keepers on the beach of the lake, in the spring of 1834. There was also anoth- er of these beach taverns built this year I believe, but whether within our present county limits I cannot say. They were all temporary settlers, located for the purpose of administering to the necessities and not much to the comfort, of emigrants that began to flock into Illinois by this only known route along the lake shore. I have myself slept with more than 50 others in and around one of these little log cabin taverns, and paid $3 a bushel for oats to feed my horses, and as for my own feed, I had it along with me, or should have had none, as the tavern had not a mouthful of meat, butter, milk, sugar, or anything eatable but flour and coffee. And this was a stage house. For in those days, a flourishing line of four-horse post-coaches, were in operation upon that route. Something of the kind had been in operation the season previous, along the old Sac
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1833 - 1847
trail, from Detroit to Fort Dearborn. About four miles west of the State line I saw, soon after I came here, where the contractors had built a stable for their horses, but whether the passengers lodged in the same, I cannot say. So much for early staging in this county.
And at that time, if one had predicted that within a dozen years there would be a daily line of steam boats from Buffalo to Chicago, he would have been called as visionary as I have been by some of my present audience, who in those days used to laugh at my predictions of what a dozen years would bring to pass in Lake County, and yet time has proved that the half was not told them.
In the summer of 1834, most of the land in the county was surveyed by the United States Surveyors, and settlers began to "make claims," and four or five families settled that fall.
One of these I found in October, 1834, in a little shed roof cabin on Sec. 6, T. 35, R. 7, at a place afterward known as "Miller's Mill." His name is already among those that once were, but now are forgotten.
I am inclined to think that an old man by the name of Ross, also settled on the same section that fall. This man was killed by the falling of a tree near Deep river in 1836. (I believe King Alcohol was there to see, and it happened on a Sunday.) An old man by the name of Winchel, from Laporte county, made a claim, built a cabin, and commenced work on a mill near the mouth of Turkey Creek, and had part of his family there sometime in the summer of 1834, but afterwards aban- doned his claim without settling upon it permanently.
In October of that year, Thomas Childers and myself made claims and moved on to them; his on the SE 1-4 of Sec. 17, T. 34, R. 8, near where C. Volney Holton now lives, and mine on the NW 1-4 of Sec. 8, same township; a spot that will con- tinue to be known while the county seat remains in its present location.
My first house is still standing. It is that little, old, black, log cabin upon the lot occupied by Mr. Pelton. I arrived upon this spot with my family the last day of October, 1834; Child- ers a day or two before.
On the next day, Henry Wells, and Luman A. Fowler, came along on foot, in search of locations. They left their horses back on 20 mile prairie. Cedar Lake was then the center of
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
attraction for land lookers, and thither these, like others, wended their way, without thinking to inquire who kept tav- ern there. They found a lodging in a leafy tree top, and the leg of a roasted coon for supper. They also found David Horner (father of Amos and Henry), his son Thomas and a man by the name of Brown, looking for claims, upon which they settled the next year, lived there a few years and flitted again. Wells and Fowler came back to our camp next day, so tired and hungry and sick of the country, that they would have sold the whole, Esau like, for a mess of pottage. But after a supper sweetened with honey and hunger, and a night's rest upon the softest kind of a white oak puncheon, the next morning being a bright sunny one, the land looked more in- viting, and they bought the claim and two log cabin bodies built by one Huntley upon the south half of Sec. 8, T. 34, R. 8, for which they paid him $50 in cash. Of course cash must have been more plenty with them then than it is now.
Wells went back to his family near Detroit, and Fowler spent the eventful winter of 1834-5 with us in the solitude of the first settlement of what soon became known as Robin- son's Prairie. Fowler returned to Detroit in the spring, got married in the fall and returned with his wife and Wells' wife and child, and settled upon their claims. Wells arrived shortly after, and both families have since multiplied after the fashion of all new settlers.
During the first winter we had many claim makers, but few settlers. The majority of those making claims were doing it for the purpose of speculating out of those who might come afterwards with the intention of becoming actual settlers.
The first family that came after Childers and myself was that of Robert Wilkinson, (at the place where his brother Benijah now lives on Deep River; at that time, the only known crossing place.) He settled about the last of November, 1834. The next family was that of Lyman Wells; (afterwards well known as "Lying Wells.") With him came "Irish Johnny", now known as John Driscoll.
They came in January, 1835, and settled on Sec. 25, T. 33, R. 9, near where Driscoll now lives. Driscoll was then single, but has since obeyed the scriptural command to multiply and replenish the earth.
Wells had a wife and 4 or 5 children. He lived a few years
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1833 - 1847
here and moved further west, and his wife died, and some say the world would not have suffered much loss if he had died too. Wilkinson lived a few years where he settled, when he moved off and his brother took his place.
Next after Wells, came William Clark and family and William Holton and mother and sister, about the middle of February, and in a few days after came Warner Holton and wife and child. These families are still with us. Clark first settled on the NW 1-4 of Sec. 8, and Warner Holton right north on the next quarter, and William still lives in the same old cabin which he built on his first visit to the county in December, 1834.
The arrival of these families gave us considerable pleasure, for they had been our old and intimate acquaintances and neighbors in the south part of the state.
The fore part of the winter had been mild and pleasantly cold but in February came on the most severe weather that I have ever seen since I have lived upon this prairie, and as we had reason to believe they were on the road, we naturally felt considerable anxiety for them as they were to come by the way of Momence, the upper rapids of the Kankakee, at that time a much more desolate and unsettled region than it is now.
Some of the perils that they endured may be aptly alluded to, as connected with the history of the settlement of this county. The marshes south of the Kankakee were covered with ice, upon which night overtook them endeavoring to force their ox-teams across. There was no house, and they were unprepared for camping out, and one of the most severe cold nights about closing in upon them, surrounded by a wide field of ice, upon which the already frightened and tired oxen re- fused to go farther and not a tree or stick of fire wood near them.
I allude to this to show those that think they meet with great hardships now, that the pioneers met with more severe ones. These families upon this night might have perished, had they not providentially discovered a set of logs that some one had hauled out upon a little knoll near by to build a cabin with, and with which they were enabled to build a fire, to warm a tent made out of the covering of their wagons, and which en- abled them to shelter themselves from the blast that swept
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HISTORY OF LAKE COUNTY
over the wide prairies almost as unimpeded as over the moun- tain waves of the ocean. The next day, by diverging ten miles out of their course, they reached a little miserable hut of an old Frenchman, who lived with his half Indian family on the Kankakee. Here they stayed two days and nights; such was the severity of the weather that they dared not leave their un- comfortable quarters; and when they did so they had to make a road for the oxen across the river by spreading hay upon the ice and freezing it down by pouring on water.
They then had near 40 miles to drive to reach my house, but fortunately for them one family had settled about half way upon the road, or rather Indian trail, a few weeks pre- vious where they spent one night, and from there with one ac- cident in crossing West Creek, that came near causing them to lay out another night, they reached us sometime after dark. (To enable them as well as others to find our lone cabin, where there were no roads, I had put up several guide-boards upon the different trails, giving the course and distance thus: "To Solon Robinson's 5 miles north." One of these solitary guides upon a very faint path of the wilderness, had been found by our emigrants just before dark, and I appeal to them to say if they ever hailed a guide board with greater pleasure.)
While our friends are made comfortable around the cabin hearth, (some of you that are now complaining of want of room, think of that-3 large families made comfortable in that little log cabin) let us inquire how fare the cattle where there is not a cock of hay or straw within 20 miles. So far, I had wintered a horse, or rather an Indian pony, and yoke of oxen upon hazel brush and a scanty supply of corn; for that as well as every other supply for man or beast, hazel brush excepted, had to be obtained from LaPorte, by hauling it through marshes and bridgeless streams, and through al- most a trackless wilderness. Indeed, Mr. Fowler and Lyman Wells, during this eventful winter while engaged in this very business of obtaining provisions, exposed themselves to the most imminent peril and danger of loss of life. A graphic ac- count of one of the scenes in which Mr. Fowler was engaged, has been read by many thousand under the title of "The First Trip to Mill." It is printed in the Albany Cultivator, in June, 1841. Allow me to read it as part and parcel of our history.
At a subsequent period, Mr. Wells, in coming from Wilkin- son's crossing of Deep River after dark, missed his course,
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RESIDENCE OF SOLON ROBINSON, CROWN POINT (Log structure at left.)
1833 - 1847
for there was no path, and got onto Deep River somewhere about south of the Hodgeman place and broke through the ice, and with great difficulty succeeded in getting his horses loose, and in undertaking to get back to a house on 20 Mile Prairie, riding one horse and leading the other he came unexpectedly to a steep bank of the river in the dark, and pitched headlong down a dozen feet into the water and floating ice. He clung to one horse and succeeded in reaching the other shore, and get- ting near enough to the house to make himself heard by the loud cries he gave as the only means of saving his life.
About noon next day he found his other horse on a little island near where they made the fearful plunge, but it was near night when he found his wagon.
At a time previous to this, his family got out of provisions and made a supper of a big owl, and were on the point of roasting a wolf, when a supply arrived.
During this winter, the Legislature named the territory lying west of LaPorte county, and north of Township 33, Porter county; and south of that, Newton county. We were previously attached to St. Joseph for representative, and to LaPorte for judicial purposes.
At the session of 1835-6 the territory north of the Kanka- kee was divided into Porter and, Lake, and the former was organized, and the latter attached to it, Lake county being 16 miles wide and about 32 long and contains about 500 square miles, and is the northwestern-most county in the State of In- diana. Of its organization, I shall speak by and by. I will return now to the progress of the settlement.
In the fall of 1834, after I settled here old Mr. Myrick and his sons, Elias and Henry, and Thomas Reed made claims which they moved onto the next season. In the spring of '35 the "Bryant Settlement" was made, and a Mr. Agnew, who married a sister of Elias Bryant, perished with cold in the month of April, on the prairie east of Pleasant Grove, having been night-overtaken in coming from Morgan Prairie with a load of stuff preparatory to moving his family into his new claim. Not deterred by this sad misfortune his widow after- wards moved into her new home, the making of which had proved so disastrous to her husband. On the 4th of April of this year there was a most terrible snow storm; the weather pre- vious having been mild as summer. But in the spring of '35,
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