USA > Indiana > Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900; or, A view of our region through the nineteenth century > Part 18
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LAKE COUNTY'S FIRST COUNTY SEAT.
On Colton's Map of Indiana, compiled from "au- thentic sources," published in 1853, among other towns located upon it may be found these five: Chi- cago, Indiana City, Liverpool, City West, and Michi- gan City. Indiana City was at the old mouth of the Calumet, on the shore of Lake Michigan, town lots having been there laid out and that name having been given to the place by a company of men from Colum- bus, Ohio. No evidence has been found that it ever had any inhabitants ; but the statement may be taken as quite reliable, that. in 1841 the place was sold for fourteen thousand dollars. It seems to have been made a city on paper, in 1836.
In this same year, or perhaps in 1835, John C. Davis and Henry Frederickson, of Philadelphia, and John B. Chapman called a Western man, laid out some town lots for a new city on Deep River, near its union with the Calumet, and to this was given the aspiring name of Liverpool. In 1836, for three days, lots were sold, and the sales amounted to sixteen thousand dollars. A deed of nine of these city lots, written by John B. Niles, then an attorney, acknowledged before Judge Samuel C. Sample, was preserved for
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many years by John Wood the builder of Wood's Mill on Deep River. He and a friend bought lots amount- ing to two thousand dollars. As early as 1835 or 1834 a ferry boat had been placed on Deep River at this locality, the "pole bridge" in Porter County being then the place for crossing the Calumet.
In the year 1836, George Earle, of Falmouth, Eng- land, came with his family from Philadelphia, settled at this new city of Liverpool, and, having quite an amount of means, soon became the owner of a large part of the surrounding territory. His large owner- ship of so much of Lake County, then wild land, laid the foundation for the large wealth of his son, John G. Earle, now of Chicago. For some time the stage line, started in 1833 along the beach of Lake Michi- gan from Detroit to Chicago, had its route of travel changed to pass through Liverpool, perhaps, in 1836; but, probably finding too much deep sand to pass through, the stage line of travel was put back upon the more northern road.
This Liverpool on Deep River, some four miles from Lake Michigan and three from the Porter County line, became the county seat of the new Lake County in 1839. It would seem almost needless to state that it did not there long remain.
It is worthy of note that the land, on which this first county seat was laid out, was an Indian reserva- tion, or perhaps, more accurately, was land selected under an Indian float. "In the Recorder's office is a copy of the patent, signed by Andrew Jackson, Pres- ident of the United States, June 16, 1836, conveying to John B. Chapman section 24, township 36, range 8, being 603.60 acres, in accordance with the third ar- ticle of the treaty made on the Tippecanoe River with
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the chiefs and warriors of the Pottawatomies in 1832."
This same John B. Chapman also bought of Re-se- mo-jan, or Parish written also Parrish, as the deed says, 'once a chief but now an Indian of the Pottawa- tomies," section 18, township 36, range 7, for which he paid eight hundred dollars. It would have cost him from the United States Government just the same. These sections, with some ten others, including the localities where are now Lake Station and Hobart, came into the hands of the final proprietor of Liver- pool. .
In Lake County are now two incorporated cities Hammond and East Chicago, and four incorporated towns, Crown Point, the county seat, Whiting, Ho- bart, and Lowell; also twenty-two other towns and villages; making in all twenty-eight, and with two post-office stations not yet exactly villages, Lottsville and Winfield, making thirty town localities for Lake County.
Brief notices of these are here given. The order is one of convenience rather than of age, size, or com- parative importance.
I. Dyer. Population 400 .- A settlement was quite early made near the Illinois line on Thorn Creek, where is now the town of Dyer. In 1838 a tavern or hotel, the first "State Line House," was there. In 1855, there were two places where travellers could stay, and a few other houses. In 1857 was opened a store, and village life commenced.
About 1855, A. N. Hart, who had been a book pub- lisher at Philadelphia, settled with his family, three sons and one daughter and his wife, on the State line at Dyer. His enterprise and business operations contributed largely to the building up of the town.
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His business manager for many years was Henry J. Prier, a young man of large business qualifications, of integrity, and fidelity. His management was ex- cellent. He afterwards was connected with the Mc- Cormick Company in the sale of agricultural imple- ments, and is now doing business in the same line at Indianapolis, where he has a pleasant residence with his wife and two daughters just east of the city limits.
A. N. Hart, besides carrying on through others a large business in Lake County, for some years was engaged in real estate business in Chicago. He had entered and purchased a large amount of what was called swamp land, east of Dyer and elsewhere in the county. In 1892 he held some fifteen thousand acres and its estimated value was one-half million of dol- lars. One thousand acres of it was sold in 1891 or 1892 for one hundred thousand dollars. A big ditch leading out of Dyer, extending five miles to the Calu- met River, is known as the Hart Ditch, and it quite effectually drained what was once called Lake George, lying between Dyer and Hartsdale and Schererville.
Adding much to the business life of Dyer were also the Davis families, from England, settling later, one of the three brothers, George F. Davis, becoming one of the large stock raisers of the county.
In 1898 was erected a large, substantial and fine looking brick school house, with two stories and a basement. There are two church buildings; one a large Roman Catholic; the other, a small, neat Pro- testant church.
There are two quite large stores, one is a brick building owned by L. Keilman & Son; the other is a frame building, proprietor A. W. Stommel.
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The great industry is the creamery, commenced in 1893. In 1899 the average amount of butter was about four thousand pounds a month, the average price about twenty cents a pound, and there was paid to the farmers for milk an average of one thou- sand dollars each month.
Dyer has had many years a steam flouring mill, but it is not doing so much work as in former years.
This has been a large shipping point, situated on what is called the Joliet Cut Off, connecting with the Michigan Central at Lake Station. The Elgin Belt Line also now runs parallel with the Cut Off from Joliet to Griffith, and then passing east to Hobart.
2. Schererville. Population estimated at 250 .- Near the eastern limit of the southern ridge of sand that ex- tends out from Dyer into Lake County, on a slightly curving road that marks the line, to some extent, of the old Sac Trail, is the village that bears the name of one of its early settlers. Along the wagon road, along that slightly curving ridge of sand that seems once to have been washed by the waters of Lake Michigan, thousands of emigrants have passed, on their way to the westward. This was for many years the great thoroughfare for western travel. Coming from the eastward through La Porte and Valparaiso tlien on the line of the old Sac Trail, crossing Deep River at Wood's Mill, now Woodvale, and then pass- ing Wiggins Point, now Merrillville and going out of Indiana at Dyer, the lines of white covered wag- ons passed on to Joliet. Only those along that road, which was four miles north of Crown Point, had much idea of the amount of travel that passed over it.
In 1866 village life at Schererville commenced, and for a time its growth was rapid. It now has two
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stores, a large, two story brick school house, and a large Roman Catholic church building. Sixty fam- ilies are connected with this church.
3. St. Johns, or St. John. Population estimated 250. -The post-office department name for this place is "Saint John." In the county usage is divided. Some write St. John and some St. Johns. For euphony's sake the added s seems desirable. Southeast from Dyer four and a half miles village life commenced about 1846. Like Schererville, it is a Roman Catholic town. It has a large brick church, and had, about 1870, the largest Sabbath morning congregation in the county. It is near where the first German immigrant in the county settled, John Hack, and near where was erected in 1843 the first chapel.
The leading business men here are, Keilman, near the church, and Gerlach, near the station. Both of these men have done a large amount of business.
A large creamery has for several years been in suc- cessful operation changing milk into excellent butter. St. Johns is distant from Crown Point six miles.
4. Hanover Center, population about 50 commenced village life in 1855. H. C. Beckman opened here a quite large store, but afterward removed two miles west. There is still a store here; a large church, (known as the Church of St. Martin, connected with which are five acres of land and a cemetery, also a good parsonage), is a center of religious life in Han- over township; a school house is near; and other buildings belonging to a village, help to keep up civil and social life.
5. Brunswick, population about 65, two miles from Hanover Center and ten from Crown Point, and one from the Illinois line, began to be a business center
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when a store was established there in 1858. For many years H. C. Beckman carried on here a large business, for a country store, having bought in a single day three thousand and seven hundred eggs and about three hundred pounds of butter. After his death, in 1894, his son, John N. Beckman, continued the same business, both father and son having been for some years interested also in raising Jersey cattle and in other home pursuits.
6. Klaasville, population about 50, some twelve miles from Crown Point, is a true Lake County village on the Grand Prairie of Illinois. It is a half-mile or less from the State line, and is on a prairie eminence from which a view can be obtained as far as the eye can reach, over that broad prairie that extends to the Mississippi River. H. Klaas settled there in 1850, a solitary German for a time. And as other families set- tled around him, and school and church life com- menced, the locality became Klaasville.
These three places, Hanover Center, Brunswick, and Klaasville, are on no railroad, and their growth is slow.
7. Creston, population about 75, is on the Monon line of railroad, one mile south from Red Cedar Lake, and one-half mile west of the early center, where, in 1850 or earlier, village life commenced with a store, a postoffice, a blacksmith shop, and a school house. At that school house the Cedar Lake Sunday School and Cedar Lake church held their meetings for some years, the postoffice also bearing the same name, Ce- dar Lake. There were several families on their farms within the distance of a mile, but no compact village. At the railroad station, now called Creston, are two stores, a church, and a good school house. There are
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near the station, about eighteen families. The fam- ilies of this community are largely connected by blood relationship and marriage, being descendants of the large Taylor and Edgerton families that were pioneers in 1836 on the east side of the lake. Some grain is bought at Creston for shipment and there is a hay barn where large amounts of hay have been bought, pressed, and from which it has been sent to the great markets of the country. John Love ships the hay, and A. D. Palmer and Cassius Taylor are the merchants.
8. Shelby. Population 250 .- In July, 1886 there was laid off into streets, avenues, and town lots, by a sur- veyor, under the direction of William R. Shelby, Presi- dent of the Lake Agricultural Company, the south- western quarter of section 28, township 32, range 8, and ten acres joining this on the northeast and fifteen acres of section 33, on the southeast, and the whole was called "The Village of Shelby." But village life, several years before, or soon after 1882, had already commenced, and the "Big House" was built, ice houses were put up on the river, the south adja- cent area being then called Water Valley, and a large boarding house was opened by the Fuller family. Slowly for a time, in the last few years more rapidly, improvements were made and new families came in; and now Shelby has a large hotel building, two stores, also the Fuller Hotel, and a good school house with two rooms and two teachers. Hay, gathering mush- rooms, milk, putting up tortoises, ice, have been the paying industries, and now has commenced sugar- beet culture.
9. Le Roy. Population 100 .- The railroad station bearing this smooth-sounding name is about six miles southeast from Crown Point. It was started as a
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shipping point when the Cincinnati Air Line, now called Pan Handle or Pennsylvania Line went through Lake County in 1865, and a good shipping point it has proved to be. While supporting only three stores and containing about one hundred inhabitants, it has a good brick school house, two good church buildings, one Methodist, one United Presbyterian, maintains two good Sunday schools, has no saloon, and there were shipped from August, 1898 to August, 1899, fully four thousand tons of hay and a large amount of grain. Love Brothers alone ship over three thousand tons of hay. Le Roy has been growing in the last few years and it is surrounded by a grow- ing hay and grain region.
IO. Merrillville, population 100, at first called Cen- terville, was one of the early villages of Lake County. Started as a center of settlement, and so called Cen- terville, by a few families who settled on and around the old Indian village locality known as Mc-Gwinns, among these the Zuvers, Pierce, Glazier, Saxton and Merrill families, and J. Wiggins without a family, it received its later name from the Merrill families, who soon became prominent in the growth of the village. From Wiggins, who made his claim where the Indian dancing floor and burial ground were, which became soon the home of the family of Ebenezer Saxton, the woodland grove was called Wiggins' Point. This lone man died in the summer of that very sickly season, the year 1838, and his name has not been perpetuated. A few yet living have heard of Wiggins' Point.
The growth of the early Centerville was slow. When the railroads came they passed west of it, and north of it; but at length its citizens determined to make a neat town of it without a railroad. A good two
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story brick school house was built, and then a brick church, and some dwelling houses of better style than the first ones, houses of modern style, were erected, a cheese factory was established, and with one store, one hotel, and a food-mill, containing now thirty fam- ilies, Merrillville has become one of the substantial inland towns of the county. In school, Sunday school, and church life, its citizens take good rank. A maca- dam road now passes through it from Crown Point, through Ainsworth and Hobart and Lake Station, to the beach of Lake Michigan.
II. Palmer, population 85, is on the Chicago & Erie Railway, one mile from the Porter County line. It received its name from Dennis Palmer, who was a farmer in that locality for many years, now residing in the town. It became a station and so village life began in 1882.
It has a good brick school house, no church build- ing, two stores, and is a place of some business.
12. Woodvale, population 50, became the early home of John Wood and family his own date being 1835, the family a year or two afterward. In 1837, a saw-mill was put in operation and in 1838 the grist-mill com- menced its busy work, the only one for very many miles in any direction. This mill did for many years a large custom work. It finally became a large mer- chant flour mill.
Members of the Wood family have been for these sixty-three years the principal inhabitants of what may be called the family villa. Some of the second and third generations are carrying on the mill and other business interests now. The brick residence of Na- than Wood, the oldest son of John Wood, was con- sidered to be in 1872 "one of the most city-like dwell-
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ing houses in the county." The Wood family came from Massachusetts and brought with them New Eng- land intelligence and cultivation. Mrs. Wood, a very estimable woman, was a cousin of that Sarah Hall, who became the noted missionary Mrs. Boardman, and afterward the second Mrs. Judson.
The quarter section of land on which was the mill seat, the northeast of section 21, township 35, range 7, was patented as an Indian reservation to Quashma, and cost Mr. Wood one thousand dollars. He re- fused to lay out and sell any town lots, designing in that way to keep out saloons, and in that he was in his lifetime very successful.
13. Ainsworth, on the Grand Trunk railway, be- coming a station in 1880, is quite a shipping point for milk, has some other business interests, with a popula- tion now of about fifty, fourteen families. It has a school house but no church.
14. Griffith. Population estimated 100 .- This new railroad town had a good start. Founded by Jay Dwig- gins & Company, then of Chicago, where the Chicago & Erie, the Grand Trunk, the Joliet Cut Off, and the Elgin Belt Line roads all crossed, the grandest rail- road crossing in Lake County, about half-way be- tween Crown Point and Hammond and at the time of ·a great real estate "boom" as it was called, in the north part of the county, some two years before the Columbus Exposition of 1892 and 1893, it had for two of three years a remarkable growth. Dwelling houses, business houses, factory buildings were erected, and it seemed for a time that it would become a city indeed. Work commenced in some of the factories, furnishing employment for many persons; two church congre- gations were organized and two Sunday schools, one a
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Methodist and one Baptist, a Good Templars' Lodge was started, hundreds of people were there, and the prospect for permanency was promising. But some disappointments began to come; the large works stopped ; something evidently clogged the wheels of progress ; and soon many of the inhabitants scattered almost as rapidly as they came.
To the staid dwellers at Crown Point, who had seen their town growing for fifty years with the slow growth of a burr oak, a gnarled one even and knotty, it seemed astonishing how, for a time, Griffith did grow; it seemed almost magical how large buildings went up and people came flocking in; but the growth was more like a vine than an oak, more like Jonah's gourd vine "which came up in a night, and perished in a night." It seemed for some years that Griffith was almost deserted, but those connected with work on the railroads remained, a few other families re- mained, and for the last two years the place has as- sumed a more cheerful and promising aspect. There are two or three small stores; the school is prosper- ous ; its location is good ; and it may yet become quite a town.
15. Ross .- Population 75. As a village Ross dates from 1857. It is a station on the Joliet Cut Off road. An area of land consisting of forty acres on the south side of the railroad was laid out into town lots. For many years it was the residence of Amos Hornor, Esq., one of the noted pioneers of Lake County, whose early claim was in the edge of the West Creek woodland, known for some years as the Amos Hornor Point. At Ross also resided for a number of years, from 1860 until his death at an advanced age, the Rev. George A. Woodbridge, a pioneer minister, one
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of the most thoroughly educated that Lake County has ever had, a native of Connecticut, a graduate of Yale College, the possessor of a large library, who first made his Lake County home on Eagle Creek Prairie, near the present village of Palmer, in 1839. One of the Haywood families and also the Holmes family, were residents at Ross for several years, and there a peculiar religious interest was awakened in 1876, which will be elsewhere noticed. Yet while a place of note in the county it has never attained much size. It has one store, a school house, and a church building, and quite a number of dwelling houses, but is not a place of much business. Some descendants of the early families still remain and school and church life prosper.
16. Highland .- Population 50, is on the grand sand ridge extending from Lansing, in Illinois, almost di- rectly east near to Hobart, and on the line of that early stage road that passed from Liverpool west- ward to Joliet and northward to Chicago. A few resi- dences were in pioneer times along that sand ridge and that road, but no village life commenced until the Erie and Chicago road established a station where the road builders cut through that broad ridge of sand (on the south of which was the Cady marsh and on the north the Calumet bottom lands or broad val- ley), in 1882. A store and postoffice, a good brick school house and two churches, twelve families, and a factory make the present village of Highland. It is distant from Hammond about five miles. Two miles north is Hessville, and in high water time the flood water of the Little Calumet covers nearly all the ground between. It is one broad sheet of water, like a clear, silvery lake. Highland, and the neighborhood
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east of it are now, in 1900, growing with much promise.
17. Passing west from Highland three miles, hav- ing crossed the second cut in the sand ridge through which the Hart ditch has worn a deep gorge-like channel, one will find the line of settlement of the Hol- lander village fully commenced, a village of one street, four miles in length, along which reside sixty-four Hollander families ; and from the school house, post- office, and store in the center bearing the name of Munster, the whole line, four miles in length may be called the village of Munster. The founders of this Hollander settlement, Dingernon Jabray, with his family, three sons among his children, Antonie Bonev- man, his son-in-law, Eldest Munster, with two sons, Jacob and Antonie Munster, crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1855, in the ship "Mississippi," landing at New York, and in August reached Lake County. The large Swets family and many others followed, 1111- til sixty or more families, with about one hundred and fifty children, now comprise this Hollander- American village of Munster. On the long street there is another store and, as a matter of course, a church. The building was erected about 1876. Value of church property, including parsonage, $1,500. It is a beautiful walk from Lansing, just over the State line, eastward to the school house, the broad sand ridge on the south, the rich Calumet valley on the north. This land the villagers cultivate, raising large crops of vegetables for the city markets. It is not a manufacturing nor a commercial, but an agricultural village. The passing stranger might well call it a "Happy Valley." Across this village street, one-half mile from the Illinois line, passes the "Monon" rail-
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road, making the third cut through this broad ridge of sand (a ridge covered with a growth of wood), and thus giving some railroad facilities without a regular station to these industrious and thrifty Hollanders.
18. Hessville, population 80, on what is often called the Nickle Plate railroad, is on a broad belt and ridge of sand north of the Little Calumet. Joseph Hess, a German, settled on that locality in 1850, just as pioneer life was closing, but before railroad possi- bilities were imagined ; before, long before, any one could have believed Hammond, East Chicago, and Whiting, to become realities before the nineteenth century closed. Its first half was closing then. Joseph Hess kept and raised cattle. He opened a store in 1858, for the Michigan Central railroad had passed one mile north of him. Through deep sand for a mile he "carted" his goods, but not on a cart. Families gathered around him. In about twenty years his vil- lage contained twenty families. He was elected town- ship trustee of North township, which then ex- tended to Porter County north of the Little Calumet, and became the head man of that township, his little village its capital, his will con- trolling affairs almost as though he was a king. The families of the township were mostly German im- migrants, late arrivals, and as late as 1872 it was true, as was then written, "the most of North township is as yet sparsely inhabited." His office and his large control, Trustee Hess held for many years, until Ham- mond became quite a little village, and then the influ- ence and importance of Hessville began to decline. It had a dangerous rival and was in a few years en- tirely eclipsed. When the young Hammond began to grow Hessville was a center of influence no more. In
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