USA > Indiana > Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900; or, A view of our region through the nineteenth century > Part 29
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This road, commencing at present at Kersey, which is on the Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa road, about two miles and a half east of De Motte, runs in a south- easterly direction, crossing the Chicago and Indiana Coal road, as laid down on the map of Jasper County, at Zadoc, and then passes "the villiages of Laura, Gif-
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ford, Comer, Lewiston, and Pleasant Grove," having turned directly south, and will cross the "Monon" nearly south of Wheatfield and about five miles east from Rensselaer.
"Right of way has practically been secured for the extension of the line, via Wolcott, as far south as Mont Moreney. Ties sufficient for ten miles or more are now made, and racked up along the line of road, which will doubtless be used this summer."
"So much of this road as is now built is entirely out of debt, and it is not likely any indebtedness will be incurred in any future construction. Some grad- ing has been done north of the I. I. I., and most of the right of way secured to Orchard Grove, the inten- tion being to carry the northern terminus to the city of Chicago and to push the southern terminus to the coal fields of Indiana."
The future of this railroad is not certain and of course is not yet history ; but it is a grand idea for one man, although a millionaire, to undertake "to make these marshes of Lake, Jasper, and White Counties available to the city of Chicago for garden purposes," and uniting the dredge boat and the locomotive, "the two being," says Mr. Gifford, "the most powerful agents for producing wealth discovered by modern man," "by their means to convert the worthless swamps covering a large area of Northern Indiana into fields the most valuable found within the State, or possibly the United States."
And this work, it is evident, for Jasper County, Mr. Gifford is doing and has already done.
A man who, on the Chicago Board of Trade, makes what they call a "corner" on wheat or oats or corn, may put many thousands of dollars into his own
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pocket, but it has come out from the pockets of others. He has produced no wealth. He has produced noth- ing. He is not a producer. But the man who gets from the dried muck, where a few years ago the water was standing and the musk-rats built their homes, hundreds of thousands of bushels of vegetables and grain, is a true producer. In producing those supplies for the needs of man he produces wealth.
The facts stated above show not only what one man has done for the improvement of Jasper County, but they show for the boys and young men of this generation, what a boy, taking a right course, starting out with no means at thirteen years of age, may ac- complish for himself and for his fellows. In draining "swamp" cr wet lands, in Illinois and Indiana, Mr. Gifford has provided homes for more than a thousand faniilies, and has furnished employment for many thousand men, "no one of whom" he says, "ever worked one day without his pay," which is what somne of the noted city millionaires cannot say ; and putting his own accumulations along with the accumulations of the thousand families for whom he has provided homes, there would appear a large amount of wealth produced by brain and hand labor from what some would have called worthless tracts of land.
Such a man as Benjamin J. Gifford will need 110 marble monument to say that once he lived.
CHAPTER XXX.
ANIMALS AND PLANTS.
OUR NATIVE ANIMALS.
As this is not a scientific work, and as space is quite limited, a short sketch only can be here given of the native, or wild animals, called in the old classifica- tion beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and reptiles. And as a good and a full view of the "fauna of Lake Coun- ty"was prepared by E. W. Dinwiddie of Plum Grove in 1884, and as there are but few varieties in any of the other counties not found in Lake, the salamander, as called in the South and by Webster, "2. A pouched rat (Geomys pinctis), found in Georgia and Florida," seeming to be limited to Newton and Jasper, a kind of abstract of the paper carefully prepared by E. W. Dinwiddie and published in Lake County, 1884, pages 150 to 158, will here be given as including nearly all of the animals native in Northwestern Indiana in the times of the first settlers. The first paragraph is quoted entire: "The peculiar position and varied na- ture of the soil of Lake County probably render it the natural home of more species of animal life than any other region of similar extent in the United States. Lake Michigan, the Kankakee and Calumet
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rivers and marshes, numerous small streams and lakes, swamps, prairie, groves, loam, clay, and sand hills, make a variety of soil and condition suited to the wants of hundreds of species of temperate zone animal life." Quadrupeds named are: By supposi- tion bison, elk, deer, beaver, opossums, musk-rats, mink, raccoon, squirrels, four species, gophers, two species, chipmunks, woodchucks, moles, skunks, rab- bits, badgers, hedgehogs, weasels, wolves, prairie wolves and large gray timber wolves, foxes, wildcats, and two varieties of mice, the field mouse and a white-throated timber mouse.
Birds named are: As a visitor but not probably a native, the white swan; also as visitors, gulls, but as native, among the swimmers, wild geese, brants, ducks, especially "the mallard, blue wing teal, wid- geon, wood-duck, spoonbill, and spike-tail",-and from different data the estimate is reached that in a single year in the county have been killed of these ducks 250,000, one man having himself shot in one season 2, 300, -loons and mud hens; of waders, white and blue sand-hill cranes, other white and bluish cranes, the former sometimes having been seen in flocks of "two or three hundred feeding on the grass or stubble fields, " the latter being solitary birds, "or not more than two together, " thunder-pumpers, jack- snipe, sand-pipe, plover, and rail, and of "the dry land birds," crow blackbirds, crows, red-wing blackbirds (a white blackbird has been seen), pigeons, meadow larks, mourning doves, robins, blue-jays, cat-birds, wrens, thrushes," two species of martins, three of swallows, four varieties of wood-peckers, and several varieties of wild canaries," also humming birds, kill-
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dees, whip-poor-wills, "four species of owls, and two of hawks, grouse, called prairie chickens, quails, pheasants, and eagles. Of fishes some fourteen spe- cies have been found, including some excellent va- rieties for food, but their names are here omitted.
Of insects very many are mentioned, but their names (except moths, butterflies, "many of them very brilliant and beautiful," flies, ten species, gnats, four species, musquitoes, four, and bees, three varieties, and wasps and hornets), must also be omitted. Of reptiles are named four varieties of lizards, three kinds of frogs, two of turtles or tortoises, toads, tree toads, and then snakes, rattle snakes, black snakes, and green snakes. And then of small animals many are referred to, as beetles, fifteen or twenty species, five species of spiders, crickets, katy-dids, locusts, and "unnumbered hosts of small bugs and insects and a great variety of worms."
Animal life was certainly abundant.
NATIVE PLANTS.
In the same year of 1884, and published in the same work, Lake County, 1884, a paper was prepared by T. H. Ball on the "flora of Lake County." Some- thing of an abstract of that will also be given, as, with the exception of the heavy timber growth of La Porte, the vegetation in these counties will be found the same. Little will be found elsewhere in this region that is not found in Lake.
Five varieties of growth were marked out. I. The Calumet Region. Here grew white pine, red cedar, and several varieties of oak, and huckleberries, cranberries, and wintergreens; also sassafras, and some twenty or thirty species of shrubs and bushes
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that cannot be here named. These made parts of the Calumet bottoms, in earlier years, about as impen- etrable as southern jungles, filled with so many tan- gled, running vines, that to pass through in straight lines was quite impracticable. But cities are growing there now.
2. The clay land or woodlands. The original lin- its of this woodland were marked out, naming especi- ally forty-seven sections besides the principal groves of the county. The growth as named was oak, of sev- eral species, hickory, and bordering the prairies "a dense growth of hazel bushes;" also "in some local- ities, crab-apples, plum trees, slippery elm, ash, sassa- fras, huckleberries, wild currants, goose berries, black berries, strawberries, hawthorne, white thorn, iron- wood, poplar or quaking aspen, and, as stragglers perhaps, red cedars, black walnut, and hard or rock maple." In these woodlands also grew many species of small flowering plants. "Among these are anc- mones, spring beauties, butter-cups, sanguinaria or blood-root, several species of blue violets, dog-tooth violets, Indian puccoon, lady-slippers, and very many species" whose names cannot here be given. Produc- ing fruit mandrakes and pawpaws.
3. Plants of the prairies. Next to the true prairie grass are named, as characteristic plants, the polar plant (Silphium laciniatum), of which the botanist, Wood, says, "producing columns of smoke in the burning prairies by its copious resin," and from which the children of the prairies obtained pure, nice chew- ing gum, without paying any pennies, and the prairie dock (Silphium terebinthenacium), also resinous, and with broad leaves, from seven to twelve inches, and from one foot to two feet in length. Then there were,
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in bloom in June, July, and August, some fifty or more species of prairie plants, among them the beautiful meadow lily, and, growing in immense native beds, what the botanists call Phlox. On the 14th day of Oc- tober, 1884, the record reads, were gathered from a little portion of Lake Prairie Cemetery, where the plow had not been, "specimens of twenty-five different species of the original prairie plants," and their full number is estimated to be from two to three hundred. It need not be repeated that the prairies in summer were exceedingly beautiful.
Some statements in regard to the grasses of the county are here quoted, grasses strictly so-called. "Probably from fifty to a hundred species were native here. Some varieties made poor, but many kinds made excellent hay. Some varieties grew about one foot high, some were two and three, some five and six feet in height. Some of the woodland grass was only a few inches in height. Some species had a small, al- most wiry blade, some a broad blade, some varieties had a reedlike stem with blades like the blades of maize. The stem of one variety was three-sided. Wild pea vines growng with some of the grass aided in making excellent winter provender."
4. The wet land growth. First in beauty among these aquatic plants is named the water lily (Nymphaea odorata), of which Wood says: "One of the loveliest of flowers, possessing beauty, delicacy and fragrance in the highest degree." It would not seem that these could grow in greater abundance anywhere. "The yellow pond lily comes next." Then the cat-tail (Typha latifolia), the blue flag, Indian hemp, rushes, sedges, and yet many other aquatic plants.
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5. The Kankakee timber growth. On the islands proper, the soil generally sandy, grow "red oak, black oak, jack oak, hickory, sycamore, maple, pepperidge or gum tree, beech, and black walnut. Also some elm."
Some of the region is swamp.
"In this grow ash, elm, sycamore, birch, willow, maple, and cotton-wood, with a thick growth of un- derbrush or puckerbrush. Through this latter growth neither man nor dog can travel rapidly."
To the native animals may be added, for La Porte County black bears and wild turkeys; to the plants, white walnut and bass-wood.
Notes. I. Mr. H. Seymour of Hebron, who was born February 20, 1808, and who died January 18, 1900, nearly ninety-two years of age, was probably the oldest of the early trappers and hunters, a rather peculiar class of men, who spent many years along the Kankakee marslı. He came, according to his recol- lection, to the vicinity of the old Indian Town, south of Hebron, in 1833. He was quite active, retaining well his faculties, when he was visited a year or two ago. He said that he thought the white cranes and the swan made nests in the marsh region in those early times, but he was not really certain. In regard to the sand-hill cranes, the wild geese, the ducks, herons, and the smaller water fowls of the region, there was, he was sure, no doubt in regard to their nests.
The wild geese, the brants, most of the different species of ducks, and largely the sand-hill cranes, have gone to places more remote from the foot of man and the noise of steam, to make their nests and rear their young ; but in this grand marsh region the nest-
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ing places still remain of the blue heron, of the bittern, of the mud-hen, of various species of snipe, of rail, and of plover. On Red Oak Island are still the nest- ing places of owls, the large horned owls, and other varieties.
The wild geese many years ago made nests upon sections 4 and 5, and 18, in township 32, range 7 west, the name Goose Pond having been given by the early settlers to a portion of water, at the beginning of the present Brown Ditch, on section 4, where the mother geese and their little ones used to swim and get food. On section 18 they had for their swimming place a bayou which the trappers call Hog Marsh.
On section 7, in this same township and range, is a small island where many nests are still made by a marsh water fowl which the hunters call "squaks."
The year 1882 was noted for a great number of wild geese visitors, no longer natives here.
A certain knoll southward from Plum Grove was very attractive that spring to the Kankakee visitors. "From four o'clock in the morning until about nine o'clock different flocks would arrive at this grassy knoll until some five acres would be literally covered with these beautiful water fowls, apparently as thickly crowded as they well could stand."
Of course, unlike some human creatures, they were too polite to crowd. One man has the credit of shooting fifty-nine here in one day.
On "Little Eagle," a small marsh island, now owned by Hon. Jerome Dinwiddie, there was, many years ago, an eagle's nest, built upon a large elm tree. This island is on section 6, township 32, range 7 west, of second principal meridian, in Lake County. The same pair of eagles, it is believed, made a nest or
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repaired one for some twenty years. They left the island about 1880.
Colton in his great and instructive work, "Atlas of the World," 1856, in describing Indiana as then it was-or was supposed to be-says: "Near Lake Michigan the country has extensive sand hills which are covered only with stunted and shrivelled pines and burr oaks." Of cedar trees, of the very fruitful huckleberry bushes and sand-hill cherries that grew on those bluffs, his work makes no mention.
Whatever may have been the growth in 1856, the credit of this region requires the showing that shriv- elled pines were not the original growth.
Solon Robinson says, in his Manuscript Lecture of 1847, now in the possession of Walter L. Allman of Crown Point, that the sand ridges along Lake Michigan were "originally covered with a val- uable growth of pine and cedar, which has been all stript off to build up Chicago." And he adds, in regard to Lake County : "In the northeast the sand hills are very abrupt and have yet some good pine timber, although very difficult to obtain." And General Packard in his history of La Porte County says : "Formerly the region bordering the lake was well covered with beautiful white pine; but this valuable tree has almost wholly disappeared, being cut off for lumber."*
*I am glad that I was on those great piles of sand so often and saw with my own eyes the great pine trees, as early as 1837, before the white settlers had made much impression on the vegetation or the sand hills. Large and delicious were the high bush huckleberries that grew on these high sand hills, and very abundant were the fragrant wintergreen berries. Mr. L. W. Thumpson, now living in Hammond, born July 14, 1814, remembers well the pines and the wintergreens, and he thinks the pines in 1837 were twenty inches in diameter as thelogs were sawed at the City West sawmill. T. H. B.
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The largest and probably the only native pine grove in Lake County is quite peculiarly situated. It is nine miles south of Lake Michigan and six miles south of the Little Calumet, almost exactly south of the mouth of Deep River, and two miles south of Turkey Creek. It is on the southeast quarter of the northwest quarter of section 14, township 35, range 8 west, on land now owned by George Hayward, who says that is covers an area of about ten acres. It is on low and, originally, quite wet ground, so wet that years ago it could well have been called a pine swamp. The trees are quite close together, there must be several hundred of them, and the larger ones seem to be of about the same size, as though they had all been growing not more than sixty or seventy years. Although, according to Gray's Manual of Botany, of the white pine species, there are no majestic trees among them, like those tall, wood monarchs that used to be along the southern sand hills of Lake Michigan in 1837, between Michigan City and the Illinois State line, with which some yet living were then so familiar ; and another peculiarity of this pine grove is, that the soil is not sand, but peat bogs rather, where these trees grow. They are several miles away from any other native pines that have not been transplanted, and to account for their growth where they are and as they are, would surely puzzle an ordinary botanist.
As the large and valuable pine trees of Lake and Porter counties were soon cut down, perhaps on that account some writers have supposed that no such trees grew along our lake shore borders.
A number of small pine groves may now be found, of that Lake Michigan pine, in the rich prairie region north of the Kankakee River, the trees having bee 1
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ANIMALS AND PLANTS.
taken when small, from their native sand hills many years ago. The largest and finest grove of pine na- tive in Europe, to be found now in Lake County, is on what has been known as the Turner Schofield farm, about five miles south of Crown Point. It covers about four acres of ground. The trees are Austrian pine and Scotch pine with some larch. Here is a noted crow roost. A little west of Schererville is a large pine grove of native pine of about a thousand trees, trees that many years ago were taken from their orig- inal locality and set out on that grand sand ridge.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS.
Extracts and statements, quoted and abridged, from an address, by Solon Robinson, delivered before the Lake County Temperance Socety in the log court house in 1847. Historical. Early settlers. I. The Bennett family opened a tavern on the beach of Lake Michigan "near the mouth of the old Calumie," the date supposed to be 1832. 2. The Berry family opened a tavern on the beach in the spring of 1834. 3. Four or five families settled as squatters in the fall of 1834: "Thomas Childers and myself in October. He a day or two before me. His claim southeast quarter section 17, mine northwest quarter section 8." November 1, "Henry Wells and Luman A. Fowler came along on foot." Their horses had been left on Twenty Mile Prairie. "Cedar Lake was then the cen- ter of attraction for land lookers, and they passed on down to that lake without thinking to inquire who kept tavern there." They found lodging in a fallen tree top still covered with leaves, and had for supper "the leg of a roasted 'coon." They found there David Hornor, his son Thomas, and a relative named Brown, who were looking for claims and who settled in 1835. Wells and Fowler returned next day to the Robinson camp, slept that night on "the softest kind of a whte- oak puncheon," bought claims and "two log cabin
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bodies built by one Huntley," on the south half of section 8, paying for these claims $50. Henry Wells went back to Michigan for his family. Luman A. Fowler staid through the winter. "During the first winter we had many claim makers but few settlers."
4. "The first family that came after Childers and myself was that of Robert Wilkinson" of Deep River. "He settled about the last of November, 1834."
5. The next family, that of Lyman Wells, with whom came John Driscoll, settled in January, 1835, on section 25, township 33, range 9. April 4, 1835, "there was a most terrible snowstorm, the weather previous having been mild as summer."
Until March, 1836, the nearest postoffice was Michigan City. Solon Robinson then appointed post- master. His office was named Lake Court House, written usually Lake C. H. Receipts for quarter end- ing in June, 1837, $26.92 ; September 30, $43.50. For the next two quarters $57.33, and $57.39. This last the largest amount while he was postmaster. Next postoffice west was Joliet.
"In the spring of 1836 we were attached to Porter County the commissioners of which divided this coun- ty into three townships." The county was organized in 1837. Log court house built in 1837. "During the summer of 1837 we had preaching several times at our house and in the present court room."
"The Baptist people at Cedar Lake also had fre- quent meetings this year, and I think had preaching at Judge Ball's who settled there this year."
"The summer of 1838 was one of severe drought and great sickness."
Muskrats went to houses to seek water. "One of them came into my house and never so much as asked
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for a drink of whisky," but went direct for the water bucket.
In 1839 the county seat was located at Liverpool. The seat of justice had been fixed by the legislature temporarily at Lake Court House.
In March, 1839, the land sales opened at La Porte.
In June, 1840, county seat re-located. Contest mainly between West Point at Cedar Lake, and Lake C. H.
"The county seat was then permanently located where it now is in June, 1840."
"There are four principal streets runing north and south." "There is a very large common or public square in the center that never can be built upon, and an acre of ground devoted exclusively for the court house and public offices."*
"November 19, 1840, the first lots were sold at auction * * * and from this time the town of Crown Point dates its existence."
"The town is laid out upon sixty acres, twenty acres of Judge Clark's and forty of mine."
A house was soon built in the new Crown Point. "I built it for Elder Norman Warriner in the spring of 1841, and he was the first minister of the gospel set- tled here, and I believe in the county."
"In June, 1841, three individuals made the first effort to form a temperance society here. Your records will show that it was carried into effect, and the celebration of the Fourth of July with cold water and a picnic dinner was the happiest one to some
*The large court house now in the center of that "public square" shows how little founders of towns can control the future of their towns. T.H.B., 1900.
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three hundred men, women, and children, that I ever saw."
"In the spring of 1842 Mr. Mills built his large tavern house in Crown Point, and opened a store in one end of it and a very bad whisky shop in the other. I cannot say that this improvement has ever improved the morals of the place." In 1842 a frame school house, the first, at Crown Point, was built. In 1843 Elder Warriner went to Illinois. M. Allman came to Crown Point. This year two church buildings were crected, the M. E. church at West Creek, the German Catholic on Western Prairie, the latter having a bell.
These extracts give some of the valuable historic facts contained in that quite lengthy address. One, at least, of those who heard it delivered is living yet, and he has not forgotten the circumstances of its delivery, the interest with which many listened to it then, and the value which, we were then told, would, in after years, be attached to such records.
Fifty-three years since then have passed, and little could that then white-haired man have thought that one of his young auditors would, after many years, look over with interest that preserved manuscript, and make a faithful effort to transmit the facts re- corded, as well as a just representation of the one who recorded them, into the coming years of the twentieth century. And not the records of the early years of Lake County alone, but that with them would be com- bined by his then youthful friend, now gray-haired and well advanced in life, what he could find of seven other counties also; to go down, perhaps, to another gener- ation. What use may be made of what is left by any one in manuscript or on printed page no one can tell; and so one lesson plainly is that we should not write,
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