USA > Indiana > Lake County > Lake County, Indiana, from 1834 to 1872 > Part 2
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LAKE COUNTY.
ful prairies, and plant all over, where savages had reared their wigwams and buried their dead, the seeds of a Chris- tian civilization. In this same year of 1833 a man named Bennett settled with his family on this stage route, in the limits of our county, near the old mouth of the Calumet, then called Calumic, and opened a house of entertain- ment, a new country tavern. The Old Soc Trail, began also to be traveled about this same year, leading from La Porte to the Hickory Creek Settlement in Illinois, and past Cedar Lake to the Rapids of the Kankakee. It was but a trail, requiring a pioneer's eye, or an Indian's sa- gacity, to enable one to follow it safely. A family by the name of Farwell, afterwards becoming settlers on West Creek, a well-known family among us, then from the Green Mountain State, were endeavoring to follow this trail to Hickory, missed the way, and spent the 4th of July 1833, where Crown Point now stands, amid an un- broken solitude, while a messenger returned eastward for a guide. Mrs. Farwell, therefore, a decidedly superior woman, was the first white woman, so far as is known, ever on this spot of ground, where on festive occasions the crowds now gather. Indian with his pony could not now follow that Soc Trail; but a multitude of movers' teams annually pass along near its track, on the Joliet Road.
In the spring of 1834 another tavern was opened on the beach of Lake Michigan by a man named Berry. The accommodation at these log cabin taverns was suf- ficiently scanty to show the borders of civilization, some- times as many as fifty sleeping at night in and around the mudded walls, and the food was flour and coffee, without
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SQUATTER LIFE.
meat, butter, milk, or sugar, and the price of grain and provisions sufficiently high to satisfy an ordinary land- lord, oats for horse feed costing three dollars a bushel at one of these stage houses.
During the summer of 1834 United States surveyors laid out most of the land in Lake county into sections, the range or township lines having been previously run. This party of surveyors camped, for a week in June or July, in that part of the grove now owned by Dr. Petti- bonea, in the town of Crown Point. One who accom- panied this party, J. Hurlburt, an old settler of Porter, remembers no cabin and no settler at that time in any of our central groves. As yet the squatters were not here. He remembers some cabins along the stage road on the lake beach and thinks that Goodrich, in the place of Bennett, then kept the tavern at the mouth of the Calu- met. Burnside had this job of surveying from the Gov- ยท ernment, but the work here was done by St. Clair.
After the surveyors came the claim seekers. There is evidence that either before or soon after that week of en- campment just mentioned, one Wm. Butler was on this ground before Solon Robinson came, and made four claims, for himself, for his brother E. P. Butler, for George Wells, and for Theodore Wells. He also erected cabins and departed. I find the existence of three cab- ins recognized by those who are called Lake county's earliest settlers. I think they were the Butler cabins. I now reach more certain data.
In September 1834, Richard Fancher, Charles Wilson, Robert Wilkinson and two nephews, left Attica on the Wabash, three in a wagon and two mounted on good 2
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LAKE COUNTY. .
horses, to look for claims in the newly surveyed north- west corner of the State. They crossed the Kankakee at the head of the rapids, crossed West Creek at a place , which was selected at once by Wilkinson for a home, and came up to Cedar Lake. They camped at its head near the old inlet. They found on that sand ridge an Indian burial ground. They kept their headquarters at the lake. R. Fancher and Charles Wilson, being well mounted, traveled considerably over the county. They were at the South East Grove and at all the central parts. The surveyors had just been over the region. They found no settlers. They saw no Indians, but found signs of late Indian occupancy. R. Fancher se- lected a part of section 17, and his claim gave the name to that little lake. Wilson and the other two made claims near Cedar Lake. Charles Wilson selected that quarter section afterwards bought by Jacob L. Brown and then by Hervey Ball. They saw a black bear in the woods west of Cedar Lake. They stayed about three weeks, broke up their encampment, returned to the Wabash and waited for the spring.
The October sunshine came, the large fields of maize at Indian Town had ripened, when a family from Jen- nings county, Indians, crossing the Kankakee south of La Porte, finding J. Hurlburt for a guide to show them that central grove where the surveying party had camped for a week, entered, as settlers seeking a home, on the borders of Lake. They passed Porter sand ridges, and the timber that skirted Deep River, they came out on a broad expanse of prairie and looked admiringly round. He who was to give that prairie name, who was
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SQUATTER LIFE.
to map out the county, count its sections, keep its first records, now stood upon its soil,-SOLON ROBINSON,-who was afterwards called "The Squatter-King of Lake." I will let him speak for himself here. I quote from "The Cultivator," published at Albany, New York, Vol. VIII, page 19 : "It was the last day of October, 1834, when I first entered this 'arm of the Grand Prairie.' It was about noon, of a clear, delightful day, when we emerged from the wood, and, for miles around, stretched forth one broad expanse of clear, open land. At that time the whole of this county scarcely showed a sign that the white man had yet been here, except those of my own household. I stood alone, wrapt up in that peculiar sen- sation that man only feels when beholding a prairie for the first time-it is an indescribable, delightful feeling. Oh, what a rich mine of wealth lay outstretched before me. Some ten miles away to the southwest, the tops of a grove. were visible. Toward that onward rolled the wagons, with nothing to impede them. Just before sundown we reached the grove and pitched our tent by the side of a spring. What could exceed the beauty of this spot ! Why should we seek farther ? Here is every- thing to indicate a healthy location which should always influence the new settler. After enjoying such a night of rest as can only be enjoyed after such a day, the morning helped to confirm us that here should be our resting place. In a few hours the grove resound- ed with the blows of the axe, and in four days we moved into our 'new house.'"
In that same October two, perhaps three, from the Wabash region, also coming by way of La Porte, passed
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LAKE COUNTY.
on horseback to the northwest bank of Cedar Lake. There were Dr. Brown, David Hornor, and probably, also, Thomas Hornor.
On the first day of November, Henry Wells and Lu- man A. Fowler, having left their horses on Twenty Mile Prairie, came to Solon Robinson's tent. They, too, passed on to Cedar Lake and found the three just mentioned there. Hungry and tired, they partook of some roasted raccoon meat for supper, lodged "in a leafy tree top," and returned the next day to the Robin- son camp. The little party from the Wabash made several claims, on the west side of the lake, and then re- turned to their homes, to be ready for removing in the coming spring.
There is in my possession the original Claim Register, containing not only a record of the claims, when made. by whom, where the settlers were from, with date of set- tlement, but also the General Record and Constitution of the Squatters' Union of Lake County. This docu- ment I have had occasion quite thoroughly to examine.
According to the Register, claims were made in the year 1834 by the following persons :
E. L. Palmer, in April, for himself and for J. B. Cox, 1 .. Cox, and E. Cox; (The timber connected with these was not 'claimed till December 8, 1836, and they are all afterwards marked " forfeit." They lie in the western tier of sections in Range 10. I conclude that none of these settled in 1534, and in April the sections were not laid off by the U. S. surveyors.) Wm. S. Thornburg' Thomas Thornburg, Wm. Crooks, and Sam'l Miller, in June ; Robert Wilkinson, Noah A. Wilkinson, Noah B.
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SQUATTER LIFE.
Clark, R. Fancher, Thomas Childers, Thomas Hornor, Solon Robinson, and Milo Robinson in October; T. S. Wilkison, Robert Wilkison, B. Wilkison, Thomas Brown, Jacob L. Brown, Thomas H. Brown, Wm. Clark, J. W. Holton, H. Wells, David Hornor, L. A. Fowler, J. B. Curtis, Elyas Myrick, Wm. Myrick, Thomas Reed, in November; and W. A. W. Holton, Harriet Holton, widow, Jesse Pierce, David Pierce, John Russell, and Wm. Montgomery, in December.
I find none of these settling in 1834 except Childers, S. Robinson, Crooks and Miller, L. A. Fowler, Robert Wilkison, and Jesse and David Pierce. The fact of the settlement, in this year, of Crooks, Miller, and the two Pierces, rests only on the somewhat uncertain data given in the Register - uncertain, because intentions were there recorded as facts, and men then as now could not always accomplish their intentions. The date of the claim in the Register is certain ; of time of settlement, slightly uncertain.
I have inserted two names as claimants of land in 1834 which I do not find thus registered, R. Fancher and Thomas Childers; but both these were on section 17, upon which was laid an " Indian float." The following is, according to Solon Robinson's Records, the order of settling of the first few families in Lake.
In October, 1834, Thomas Childers and family settled on the South-east Quarter of Section 17, in the edge of School Grove. His name and that of his wife must therefore stand on this record as the first known settlers in the central part of the county. On the last day of October Solon Robinson and family settled in that point
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LAKE COUNTY.
of the timber which now forms such a well known part of the town of Crown Point.
To Solon Robinson must be awarded the honor of being first in Crown Point, and second only, as a resident, in the central part of the county. It is said, on good au- thority, that he once gave great offense to Thomas Chil- ders by remarking that his wife, Mrs. Robinson, was the first white woman settling in Lake county. The word white was understood to be in contrast, not with red, de- noting Indian women, but with dark or swarthy, thus cast- ing a reflection on the complexion of Mrs. Childers.
The third family arriving was that of Robert Wilkin- son, who settled on Deep River, where the only ford known in early times was situated.
This family settled late in November. In January, 1835, Lyman Wells, and with him an unmarried man, John Driscoll, settled a little south-east of what is now the town of Lowell. Lyman Wells had a wife and four or five children.
About the middle of February, coming from Jennings county, Indiana, William Clark and family, and with them W. A. W. Holton, and mother, and sister, reached the hospitable home of Solon Robinson, making the fifth and sixth families, and increasing to eight the number of men as settlers. I count here eight, as a young man was that winter domiciled with the Robinson family whose name was afterwards well known to the inhabitants of Lake. This was Luman A. Fowler. A few days afterwards the seventh family arrived, the fourth for the Robinson `settlement, J. W. Holton with his wife and child. In the spring Richard Fancher with his family reached his claim
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SQUATTER LIFE.
on the bank of what has since been called Fancher's Lake. Ceasing now to name the families in their order, I insert some of the incidents connected with the winter trip of the Clark family.
The route by way of the rapids, of Sugar, and Bun- kum, and Parrish Grove, to the Wabash, was dreary enough and desolate in the early fall of 1848, when I first tried that road to Indianapolis; but what must it have been in mid-winter in 1835 ! That February was a winter month unusually severe. The wagons drawn by ox teams, which most of the settlers then used instead of horses, had slowly wended their way, bearing one family with several children, the father and mother then in the full prime of life, the other family a widowed mother with a son who had entered manhood and a daughter also grown up, and having crossed the bleak open prairie north of Sugar they came to the Kankakee marsh. This was " 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 refused to go fur- ther, and not a tree or stick of firewood near them. 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 enabled them to shelter them- selves from the blast that swept over the wide prairie
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LAKE COUNTY .
almost as unimpeded as over the mountain 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 uncomfortable 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." The name of this French trader who so kindly gave them shelter was pronounced Sho- bar. He lived where now is Kankakee City, forty miles from their destination. They found at Yellow Head one family. Stayed there over night. Came to West Creek, following a blind Indian trail. The oxen broke through the ice of this stream, and were extricated with difficulty. At length the wagons were brought over, and the trail leading across Lake Prairie was followed up. On differ- ent trails Solon Robinson had erected guide-boards, and these voyagers just before dark found one which they gladly hailed : "To Solon Robinson's, 5 miles North." Soon after night-fall they reached his lone but hospitable cabin. There are those yet among us, Thomas Clark and Alexander Clark, who remember well the severities of that winter trip. The pioneers in every part of this country, whether they came amid the snows and ice of winter or the flowers of summer, or, as the family of which I was a member came, amid the deep mud, and crossing the bridgeless streams of December, knew the meaning of privations and of hardships. But all seem to have borne them with great cheerfulness. The hardy
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SQUATTER LIFE.
came, the intelligent came, men and women mostly young or in the prime of life, and happy, light hearted children. Years afterwards the Pierian Society at Crown Point, some of them descendants of these early pioneers, adopted for their motto, Per aspera ad astra; that is, Through difficulties to success. Then were some difficulties, in the squatter period of our history ; and now, as our respected citizen, A. CLARK, looks at the young, growing city two miles from his home, hears the whistle of the cars, looks over his well cultivated farm, and at his spring in the meadow that will furnish water daily for a thousand cattle, enjoys the facilities that have come into being since those days of his boyhood, he enjoys with others the success.
I return to the winter of 1834. Four families were on sections 8 and 5, at its close, one was in School Grove, one near Lowell, one probably on Deep River, one on Turkey Creek, and three or four, it is probable, were scattered among the sand ridges of North Township. Gladly would I record all their names on this page of history could I only rescue them from the oblivion which has already come. Some incidents of the first winter are pressing forward for a record.
The oxen lived on browse and a little corn, and that was more than the deer had. But the oxen grew hungry and became lean. Food for the children became scarce. Corn bins and mills were forty miles away. Provisions gave out in L. Wells' family and they made a supper of a big owl, and were on the point of roasting a wolf when a different supply arrived. At a later period this same Wells, returning from a mill in La Porte county, " com-
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LAKE COUNTY.
ing from Wilkinson's crossing of Deep River after dark, missed his course, for there was no path, and got on to Deep River somewhere about south of the Hodgman place, broke through the ice, and with great difficulty succeeded in getting his horses loose ; and in undertak- ing to get back to a house on Twenty Mile Prairie, riding one horse and leading the other, he came unexpectedly to a steep bank of the river in the dark and pitched head- long down a dozen feet into the water and floating ice. He clung to one horse and succeeded in reaching the other shore and getting 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."
Solon Robinson's account of " the first trip to mill " from his cabin, published in the Cultivator in 1841, Vol. VIII, page 67, was one of those sketches which gave to him his earlier celebrity as a writer.
It is too lengthy to be reproduced here. I give, how- ever, a few sentences. December had arrived. It was found that the supply of food would last five or six days only, when " a trusty and persevering messenger was dis- patched " to obtain a new supply. "Never were such appetites seen before as those which daily diminished the fast failing stock of provisions of our little family in the wilderness." The meal was exhausted, "the knife had scraped the last bone for breakfast," on the sixth day after + the messenger's departure. A small bag of wheat bran was found. No lard, no butter, no meat, no milk.
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SQUATTER LIFE.
"Bran cakes and cranberries sweetened with honey then were sweet diet. Although the owner of a gun that rarely failed to perform good service, it seemed that every living thing in the shape of game had hid up in winter quarters." "On the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth days, anxious and watchful eyes scanned the prai- rie by day, and tended beacon fires by night, for this pre- caution was necessary, as there was nothing to guide the expected teamster home, should he undertake the peril- ous passage of the prairie just at night fall. It was about midnight of the last day, and I had tired of watching and had laid down, but not to sleep." A sound was heard as of steps on the frozen ground. Soon a voice was heard. "What joyful sounds! But the joy was soon damped, as it became manifest that he drove a team without a wagon. Where is that? was the first question. 'Fast in the river a few miles back on the prairie.' 'Do you know we have nothing in the house for your supper ?' ' I expected so, and so I brought along a bag-full; here is both flour and meat.'" Then the hickory logs began to blaze, and soon there was a supper. 'Such scenes of excitement, of pain and pleas- ure, often occur to the western emigrant." "And it is because the emigrant's life is full of such exciting scenes, and because the days of pleasure are long remembered, when those of pain are buried in oblivion, that induces thousands annually to add themselves to that irresistible wave of emigration that is rolling onward to the Pacific ocean." Many other families had their mill trips in the few next succeeding years, some of which may find their' place in this record. If some were hungry, none starved,
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LAKE COUNTY.
and no one died during the first winter spent by squat- ters in Lake.
In the spring of 1835 settlers began to come in more rapidly. In March, Richard Fancher again entered the county, with two assistants, and erected a cabin on his claim. He brought up a load of provisions and goods, drawn by two yoke of oxen, deposited them at Solon Robinson's, and returned for his family. He arrived with them and settled in April. In the same month Wayne Bryant, Simeon and Samuel D. Bryant, a brother- in-law named Agnew, and David Bryant, commenced what was known for years as "the Bryant . Settlement." Elias Bryant also joining them in the Fall. To E. W. generally called Wayne Bryant, is attributed the naming of the grove where they settled. His wagon reached a grove in the afternoon. They camped there for the night. In the morning the bright spring sunshine of April shone over the broad prairie lying eastward, and gilded the trees westward, then putting on their green foliage. The little birds, which had been accustomed to sing only for the Indian children and the deer, were no doubt flitting amid the green boughs, and as the white family looked around that morning and listened, they said, "How pleasant. We will stop here." And they gave it the name which it has ever since borne, of " Pleasant Grove." But a trial came upon them in that early springtime. On the fourth of April there came "a most terrible snow storm, the weather previous having been mild as sum- mer," and the brother-in-law, Agnew, overtaken by night on the prairie east of Pleasant Grove, perished with the cold. This was the first death among the settlers; no
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SQUATTER LIFE.
places had been selected for burial ; and these remains were deposited in a cemetery on Morgan Prairie, in Porter county.
The Agnew family, nevertheless, took possession of the claim and the settlement went on.
In May the Myricks came, Elias and William, and Thomas Reed, and commenced the "Myrick Settle- ment." Robert Wilkinson took possession of his claim on West Creek; and in the month of May S. P. String- ham and J. Foley settled on Centre Prairie.
Cedar Lake was not forgotten. A party of seven, Dr. Thomas Brown, Jacob L. Brown, David Hornor and four sons, Thomas, George, Amos, and Levi, came from the Wabash region, in the month of September, and camped near the bank on the west side of Cedar Lake. They took up more claims, erected cabins, put up hay, staid about two weeks. During this stay they found a bee tree in the grove a little north of their camp, which tree they cut down. They filled a three gallon jar with strained honey, they filled a wash tub full, and made an ash trough and filled that, all from the contents of this tree, which was estimated to yield at least five hundred pounds of good honey. The honey-bee is known to
precede the white man. The early settlers cut a good many bee trees; Solon Robinson speaks of "a dozen honey trees to be cut and taken care of " during his first winter ; but few probably yield as much honey as this one on the Brown claim.
This party was fortunate in securing food. Passing out of the county, returning home, they saw on the Illi- nois prairie seven wild turkeys. They unharnessed the
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LAKE COUNTY.
four horses from their wagon, and four of them mount- ing, gave chase, taking care to keep the turkeys from en- tering the wood. They captured five out of the seven without firing a shot. They paid two for their meal at the next stopping place. Lacy, the landlord here, was the only settler on the route between Parrish Grove and But- terfield's. His hotel was about twelve feet square. On a rainy night the floor and the very hearth-stone would be covered all over with men seeking repose.
In October, this party returned with their families, and the Hornor settlement was now made. On the west bank of Cedar Lake was Jacob L. Brown, and next north of him was Aaron Cox. In the edge of the grove west was Thomas Hornor, and in the West Creek woods the cabin was situated containing the large family of David Hor- nor. About half way between the cabin of Thomas Hornor and that of Robert Wilkinson, Jesse Bond settled during this summer, and south of him, Thomas Wiles. There also came in this year Robert Hamilton; John Wood, from Massachusetts, came and made a claim ; Milo Robinson from New York city joined his brother Solon in November; and in December, Henry Wells, of Massachusetts, became a resident of Lake.
I cannot find sufficient data for tracing out all the settlers of the summer of 1835; yet, the claim register being authority, they were not very numerous ; although Robinson's record says, "In the fall of 1835 we had grown into so much importance that the tax collector from La Porte came up to pay us a visit, which was about as welcome as such visits generally are."
I return to the Robinson settlement, the spring of 1835.
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SQUATTER LIFE.
Four families, it will be remembered, from Jennings county, were settled near together.
The prairie sod was not favorable for an early garden, but an old Indian corn field furnished a garden spot which the four families divided out and cultivated, and on which they raised their first vegetables. A breaking plow was started May 12th, and the first furrow turned was across the quarter section where now Main street runs, beginning at the present line of North street and ending on South street, or at the Eddy place. Twelve acres of oats were raised, and some corn and buckwheat. Some of this buckwheat sent to mill by the Clark family, was probably the first grist sent from Lake county. The mill was forty miles distant. The first speculation made was in oats. Wm. Clark and Wm. Holton had bought oats in the spring of '35, in La Porte county, intending them for seed, for fifty cents a bushel. Thinking it too late to sow when they reached their claims, they hauled the oats back and sold them for one dollar and fifty cents a bushel. The price had gone immediately up. Oats, corn, and wheat, then, all sold for the same price.
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