Lake County IN Archives History - Books .....Chapter IV Names Of Women Of Whom Honorable Mention Should Be Made 1904 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/in/infiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com November 22, 2006, 1:13 am Book Title: Encyclopedia Of Genealogy And Biography Of Lake County, Indiana CHAPTER IV. NAMES OF WOMEN OF WHOM HONORABLE MENTION SHOULD BE MADE. NOTE.—In presenting and recording under this heading the names of quite a number of pioneer women, and appending, as I propose to do, to some of them special statements, I am well aware that some fault may be found with this otherwise interesting and important chapter. For I expect that some one will say, after looking over all these names, "The name of my mother (or grandmother) is not here, and she too was entitled to an honorable mention. Why is not her name on this list?" I have considered this criticism, this question, and have endeavored to weigh it well. Of course my reply to the question would be, Because the name of that mother or that grandmother was not in the range of my knowledge, or did not come to mind in my effort to recall the names of our pioneers; certainly not because it was intentionally omitted. So now I ask myself: Shall I omit entirely this list of names of so many of our noble mothers and grandmothers because I cannot make it a full and perfect list? And I answer, No. I will get what help I can; I will do the best I can; (surely no one without the personal knowledge which I possess could begin to do as well as this will be done); and then I will trust to the good sense of our citizens, trusting that very little fault will be found. T. H. B. Mrs. Harriet Warner Holton is the first name recorded here. She came into the county in February, 1835, with her son W. A. W. Holton, a daughter, and with William Clark and family, from Jennings county, Indiana. She was born in Hard wick, Massachusetts, January 15, 1783, a daughter of General Warner. She commenced her active life as a teacher in the town of Westminster. She married a young lawyer, Alexander Holton, about 1804, and leaving New England in 1816 for what then were true Western wilds, in March, 1817, they settled at Vevay in the new State of Indiana, four years after Vevay had been laid out as a town. In 1820 the Holton family removed to Vernon, in Jennings county, where Mrs. Holton again became a teacher. In 1823 her husband died leaving her with two sons and one daughter. In the early winter of 1834 tidings came to Vernon from Solon Robinson concerning the beautiful prairie region he had found far up in the northwest corner of the State, and the Clark and Holton families determined to join him there. They started in midwinter with ox teams. The weather in February, 1835, was severely cold, but they came through, crossing the Kankakee Marsh with their ox teams on the ice. In some respects Mrs. Holton was the most remarkable woman ever in Lake county. She was Lake county's first teacher. Her mother lived to be about ninety-four years of age. She had seven sisters in New England and all died of old age, two while sitting- in their chairs. All the eight were members of the Presbyterian church. Mrs. Holton, a true Indiana pioneer, at Vevay and Vernon and in the county of Lake, lived on, active in church and Sunday-school and social life till old age came upon her. She died October 17, 1879, then nearly ninety-seven years of age. From a record in "The Sunday Schools of Lake" the following sentence is taken: "Such a woman, in such a long" life, the daughter of an army leader, with her native intelligence, her New England training, her granite-like, Presbyterian principle, her devotion, her meekness, her love, must in various ways have accomplished no little good." The second name to be placed on this list is that of Mrs. Maria Robinson, wife of Solon Robinson, the first white woman to live where is now Crown Point. She came to the spring that was, to the grove or woodland that still is, the last day of October, 1834. She was born November 16, 1799, near Philadelphia. She was married in Cincinnati, May 12, 1828, to Solon Robinson, and in a few years they became residents in Jennings county, Indiana. In 1834 she came with her husband, one assistant, and two small children, in a wagon drawn by oxen, to the spot where they settled November 1, 1834. She was not an ordinary woman, although very different in training and character from Mrs. Holton. She had much "executive ability;" she is described by one who knew her well as "always cheerful and vivacious," attending to the needs of the sick and the poor, aiding, as her means permitted, churches and Sunday schools and benevolent organizations. She died February 18, 1872. Two daughters are now living, one of whom, Dr. L. G. Bedell, is now a noted physician of Chicago. Her older daughter, Mrs. Strait, who has children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, now lives in Crown Point, the oldest resident and only original resident of the town. Two names should follow here on this list of worthy pioneer women, but of whom little by this writer is known, Mrs. Childers, the wife of Thomas Childers, the first white woman, so far as known, after Mrs. William Ross, to settle in the county, and Mrs. Clark, wife of Judge William Clark, who came to Lake Court House in February, 1835, which was then known, as the guide boards on the trails testified, simply as Solon Robinson's. Mrs. Clark had sons in her household, two of whom, Thomas Clark and Alexander Clark, were for many years active citizens in Lake county. Other active pioneer women whose names belong on this page were Mrs. Henry Wells, the mother of Mrs. Susan Clark, of Rodman Wells and Homer Wells; Mrs. Richard Fancher, one of the first Presbyterian women in Crown Point, the mother of Mrs. Nicholson, Mrs. Clingan, and Mrs. Harry Church, and the mother who brought up such daughters certainly deserves to be remembered; Mrs. Russel Eddy, who became a very active Presbyterian woman, a leader for many years in that church; Mrs. Luman A. Fowler, one of the few resolute pioneer women, who came as a young wife in December of 1835 to Solon Robinson's hamlet, born in Madison county, New York, in October, 1816, married October 18, 1835, her maiden name Eliza Cochran, and who, as mother and grandmother led in Crown Point a long and useful life; and one more name, that of Mrs. Henry Farmer, coming with her husband from Bartholomew county in 1836, whose daughters became wives of well known citizens, completes this group. To nearly all the women yet named Crown Point as now it is owes very much. Another group of our noble pioneer women, of whom Lake county had a goodly number (and few of their names have ever until now been on a printed page), were these, not grouped in alphabetical order, but as they are associated in the mind of the writer: Mrs. Richard Church, Mrs. Leonard Cutler, Mrs. Rockwell, Mrs. Darling Church, mother of Edwin Church, a grocer for many years at Crown Point, Mrs. Bothwell, Mrs. Owens, Mrs. Benjamin Farley, Mrs. N. Hayden, an active Sunday-school woman in the West Creek neighborhood, active also in the same work, Mrs. Spalding, mother of J. P. Spalding, Mrs. Fisher, and Mrs. Cooper Brooks; also in the same neighborhood, Mrs. Peter Hathaway, the mother of Silas, Abram, and Bethuel Hathaway, Mrs. Lyman Foster, Mrs. Jackson; in another neighborhood, Mrs. Fuller, mother of Mrs. Marvin, Mrs. Blayney, Mrs. Graves, all interested in Sunday-school and church work, also Mrs. Gordinier, who with only one hand accomplished the work done by ordinary women with two hands, Mrs. George Willey, mother of Mrs. J. Fisher, of Crown Point, Mrs. James Farwell, the first white woman known to have set foot on the site of Crown Point, who with her family camped there July 4, 1833, a more than ordinary woman from Vermont, the mother of six sons and one daughter, that daughter becoming the wife of Thomas Clark and the mother of Mrs. Oliver Wheeler, the grandmother of Miss May Brown, of Crown Point; Mrs. Mercy Perry, mother of the first Mrs. Marvin, and Mrs. Solomon Burns. East of there was a small group of 1837 and 1838, the first Mrs. Henry Sasse, Mrs. Herlitz, Mrs. Van Hollen, these by birth Germans and Lutheran by training, and Mrs. Jane A. H. Ball. Mrs. Ball was from Massachusetts, the only daughter of Dr. Timothy Horton of West Springfield, had been educated in the best schools of Hartford, Connecticut, and began as early as 1838 to teach in the small neighborhood, pupils coming from Prairie West, three miles away. As early as 1840 she commenced a boarding and academic school, the first in the county, which continued in some form for many years. She had brought from her father's home quite a chest of medicines and some surgical instruments, which she thought would be needed, and she soon became, not in name, but in fact, the physician and dentist of the neighborhood, her dentistry, however, extending no further than extracting and cleaning teeth. For extracting teeth and for medicine she took some pay, but not any for her time, and she was called from home sometimes in the night as well as in the day. Besides being the first academic teacher, she also was the first who might be called a woman physician of the county. Her own seven children were all educated and two sons and one daughter yet live to cherish her memory. In another group are placed the following names: Mrs. John Wood, also from Massachusetts, a cousin of the noted missionary, Mrs. Sarah B. Judson, born October 13, 1802, married November 16, 1824, the mother of eight children, the oldest of whom, Nathan Wood, is yet living at Woodvale, and dying September 27, 1873. A fine granite monument, about fifteen feet in height, marks the burial place, on which is inscribed, "A true, faithful, loving wife; a kind and affectionate mother; ever toiling for the good of all; and this is her memorial." Mrs. Wood was another of those superior New England women, like Mrs. Holton 'and Mrs. Farwell of Vermont, and others who are yet to be named, with native endowments and a Puritanic training, which fit their possessors so well for frontier life and for laying the right foundations for an enduring civilization. The comfort and hospitality of her home were not excelled by any in those early years. She was one of our unselfish women, and well does her memorial say, "toiling for the good of all." In this group, though living in another part of the county, may be fittingly named Mrs. Augustine Humphrey, one of the very early residents on Eagle Creek Prairie, now called Palmer. She was also from New England and besides caring for her children and attending to home duties she was much interested in church work, a devoted Presbyterian woman. Mrs. Woodbridge was yet another of these well trained New Englanders, an early resident also at Palmer, the wife of Rev. George A. Woodbridge, and near neighbor to Mrs. Humphrey, the two families being connected by ties of kindred as well as by a common religious faith. At their homes was Presbyterian preaching by Rev. J. C. Brown and by Rev. W. Townley. After some years the Woodbridge family removed to Ross and here Mrs. Woodbridge became the Superintendent of the Sunday school. An active, truly noble, intelligent, Christian woman, she spent part of her later years of life, sometimes with her son at Ross, sometimes in Joliet. She lived on, a pleasant and peaceful life allotted to her, until August, 1902, having reached eighty-eight years of age. The name of Mrs. Nancy Agnew may be placed by itself here as belonging to a resolute, earnest woman. A sister of those Bryants who found, and bore back to her in Porter county for burial, the body of her husband who perished from exhaustion and exposure in the stormy night hours of April 4, 1835, she did not yield to her bitter trial, but soon came herself to the new settlement, and on the settler Register for that year stands among the claimants the name Nancy Agnew, widow. To her son, born not long after her husband's death, she gave his father's name, David Agnew. Mrs. Margaret Pearce, who was Margaret Jane Dinwiddie, sister of J. W. Dinwiddie, of Plum Grove, manifested some of her heroic qualities in her girlhood in her experiences with the Indians, then living near her cabin home. Two of the young Indians about her own age were sometimes quite annoying. One day, seizing an opportunity to frighten her at least, they sprang up and threatened her with their tomahawks. Instead of crying out, as they perhaps expected, or turning pale with fright, she simply stood still and laughed at them. Ashamed, it may be they became, at the idea of injuring that bold, defenseless, laughing white girl, and let her pass on unharmed. Well they knew that a blow inflicted upon her would bring upon themselves swift punishment. She was married in 1840 to Michael Pearce, and was the mother of ten children. She was born June 5, 1818, and died in 1894. She was a worthy member of the United Presbyterian church, and exemplified many excellent qualities besides courage in her long home life in Eagle Creek township. A good likeness of this excellent woman, who was of Scotch-Irish descent, is to be found in the Dinwiddie Clan Records. The name of Mrs. Margaret Jeanette Dinwiddie comes next on this page. A member of the Perkins family, she was born near Rome, New York, May 5, 1818, was married to J. W. Dinwiddie August 19, 1844, and died March 15, 1888. She was one of the true and successful Sunday-school workers of the county. Educated at Rome, New York, accustomed to teaching, an experienced teacher, for about twenty-five years she carried on with some others the Plum Grove school, herself generally the Superintendent. To her more than to any other one woman in the county the County organization for twenty-five years was indebted for its success. She was a member of the first Baptist church in Lake county and a member of the North Street Baptist church in Crown Point at the time of her death. In the "Lake of the Red Cedars," and in the "Sunday Schools of Lake," may be found her memorials. Some names are again grouped. Mrs. Sarah Beadle, Mrs. Sarah Wells, Mrs. Sarah Childers, these three Sarahs with their husbands and with J. L. Worley, were the constituent members of the first church in the county called "Christian" or Disciple church with no other designation. This church is located now at Lowell, where there are three Christian churches, one Roman Catholic, one Presbyterian, one Methodist. The Methodist pioneer women were: Mrs. E. W. Bryant, Mrs. Ephraim Cleveland, Mrs. Kitchel, Mrs. Taylor, mother of Mrs. S. G. Wood, Mrs. Wood, wife of Dr. James A. Wood, Mrs. Viant, women all of character and note. Other women among early and active and useful residents in the county were, Mrs. Wallace, born in Vermont, the mother of Mrs. W. Brown, of Crown Point, Mrs. Brown, of Southeast Grove, mother of John Brown and W. B. Brown, Mrs. Crawford, mother of Mrs. Matt. Brown, and Mrs. E. Hixon, Mrs. McCann, of Plum Grove, and Mrs. Hale, Mrs. E. M. Robertson, mother of Mrs. O. Dinwiddie, Mrs. "Ruth Barney, widow," whose name stands thus as a claimant on the Register for the year 1836, Mrs. Sigler, the mother of several sons, Mrs. Servis, mother of O. V. Servis, and Mrs. George Earle. Some of these women were Presbyterians, most of them in fact, Methodists and Baptists being also represented. There are yet other names. Mrs. Banks, two of whose sons are well known at Hobart and Crown Point; Mrs. Sykes, mother of a large family of well known sons and daughters, a woman who has but lately gone from among the living, having spent in this county a large part of a long, active, and useful life, and who like the other women named has left her impress upon this generation; Mrs. Rhodes, wife of Jonas Rhodes, whose daughters are active women now; Mrs. Abraham Muzzall; Mrs. Henry Hayward, younger than some of the others; Mrs. Bartlett Woods; Mrs. Kenney and Mrs. Woodruff, of Orchard Grove; some from New England, some from Old England; and Mrs. Winslow, mother of A. A. Winslow, Consul to Guatemala. Mrs. J. C. Kinyon and Mrs. Henry Sanger both died in 1881. There are yet other names. Five earnest Christian women of West Creek township for a time, who did much to make the central part of Lake Prairie, that gem of the prairie region, "bud and blossom like the rose," were Mrs. M. L. Barber, spending her latest years in Kansas, her sister, Mrs. Burhans, who closed her life in Hammond, Mrs. Little, mother of Hon. Joseph A. Little, and Mrs. Gerrish, and Mrs. Wason; the last three from the Granite State, and all five with granite-like principle. A little group comes in here now of women of foreign birth, who had crossed the broad Atlantic, who had much to learn in regard to language and institutions, but whose well trained children proved them to be true mothers, known years ago among us as Mrs. John Hack, Mrs. Giesen, Mrs. Dascher, Mrs Beckley. Mrs. Hack, so far as known, was the first German woman to find a home in the county. The sturdy sons and tall husband that came with her are gone, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren live at Crown Point. Mrs. Geisen is represented at Crown Point by two furniture dealers and undertakers, son and grandson. Mrs. Dascher came from the old country with a cluster of blooming, well trained girls around her, and one son. Her descendants yet live among us, and some of them are blooming girls now, budding into womanhood. The descendants of Mrs. Beckley, that fervent, sensible, courteous, German Methodist woman, are somewhere in the world, living in a way, it is to be hoped, to do her memory honor. Here are the names of a very different group: Mrs. Calista Sherman, born in Vermont, dying in Crown Point when more than ninety-five years of age, one of our oldest women, who shared largely in the respect and esteem of the community; and connected with her may be named two daughters, Mrs. Farrington and Mrs. J. H. Luther. It is recorded of Mrs. Luther, who had no children of her own, that she was "a mother to some motherless giris, and one of our noblest women in relieving suffering humanity, in avoiding injurious gossip, in kindly deeds of friendship and neighborly regard." The next in this group is the name of Mrs. Rosalinda Holton, a sister of Mrs. Sherman, the youngest of thirteen children of the Smith family of Friends of Shrewsbury, Vermont, born July 18, 1795, dying in Crown Point when nearly eighty-nine years of age, at the home of Mrs. R. C. Young, where she had resided for many years. Next to her name belongs the name of her daughter, Mrs. R. Calista Young, mother of Charles H. Young, of Chicago, who has herself closed up a life not short, a life marked by large unselfishness, by untiring efforts for the good of those connected with her, by a steadfast Christian faith and hope. Five such women are not found in every community as were these two aged sisters and their daughters. Other names: Mrs. Vinnedge, head of a large family, a Methodist when sixteen years of age, an earnest church member through a long life; Mrs. Frank Fuller (Hannah Ferguson), mother of nine children; Mrs. Sarah R. Brown, who became the second wife of Amos Hornor; Mrs. Mary M. Mason, daughter of Henry Farmer, becoming a resident in 1836, second wife of Deacon Cyrus M. Mason; Mrs. Martin Vincent (Mercy Pierce), married in 1837, the head of a well-known family, that is, the womanly head, the mother; Mrs. William Belshaw, born in 1824, a member of the Jones family, and who, then Miss Jones, was a teacher in two of the early log schoolhouses, one near Lowell, one near Pine Grove; Mrs. Lucy Taylor, wife of Adonijah Taylor, born in Connecticut, brought up in Vermont, born in 1792, the mother of nine children, dying in 1869, "a highly respected and estimable Christian woman"; Mrs. Ebenezer Saxton of Wiggins Point and Merrillville, a woman who had a fearful experience with a drunken Indian in the absence of her husband, the Indian, surly and cross, threatening the death of an infant in the cradle, she at length, when the Indian slept, pouring out the remainder of the whiskey from his jug, watching the children through that long night, relieved at last of the presence of the Indian by Dr. Palmer, who came along some time in the morning of the next day. The girls and the mothers of that day had fortitude and courage. A few more names, for this is a grand list, including the names of many who were among the excellent of the earth. Mrs. McCarty, wife of Judge Benjamin McCarty, the mother of six sons and two daughters, was not only an early settler in Lake county but in Porter and La Porte, having a home in the latter county in 1832, 1833, and 1834. She was not young when coming into Lake county, some of her sons were young men, her daughters were young women, intelligent and cultivated all, and at Creston, in a little private cemetery her dust reposes. Mrs. Belshaw, an English Baptist, a mother of sons and daughters, also came from La Porte county, in middle age, to become an early resident in Lake. Hers was for a time a bright home. But death came, and her young daughter, eighteen years of age, was taken away from earth, and she with many of the large family found another home in the then distant Oregon, where one of her sons, who had married Candace McCarty, became a noted wheat raiser in that great wheat state. Other members of the Belshaw family yet remain in Lake county, and her name belongs of right among our worthy mothers and grandmothers. In a different part of the county, in the woodland north of Hanover Center, where was a great resort for deer, was the first home of another worthy woman, a Presbyterian church member, Mrs. Hackley. She was the mother of Mrs. W. A. Clark and Mrs. Pettibone, of Crown Point, and at length she and her husband had their residence at Crown Point with Mrs. Clark. Other names are: Mrs. Robbins, of Brunswick and Lowell, both of whose sons fell as members of the Union Army; Mrs. Dudley Merrill, of Merrillville; Mrs. Krost, of Crown Point, the mother of four sons and two daughters; Mrs. Sohl, of Hammond, an early resident in the old North township, before Hammond was; Mrs. Payne, Mrs. Foley, Mrs. Stringham, the earliest residents on Center Prairie, who did not long remain, but who helped to start civilization before their husbands removed; Mrs. Jones, a later resident than they, mother of Perry Jones, born in October, 1804, who lived among us to be almost ninety-six years old. One of our very aged women. "She retained her faculties well, enjoyed reading, and in her relations in life was an estimable woman." Mrs. Allman, the wife of Rev. M. Allman, spending many useful years in Crown Point, closed her days in Michigan. Mrs. Mary Hill, mother of Dr. Hill, of Creston, and of Mrs. Henry Surprise, a motherly woman indeed, of rare patience and untiring love, lived to complete eighty-four years of life. Mrs. Gibson, an early resident of the old North township of the county, closed her life in Chicago, eighty-seven years of age. The name of Underwood is prominent in Lake county and Mrs. Underwood's name must be recorded here. She was the mother of five daughters, three of whom are yet living; Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Joy, of Hobart, and Mrs. Palmer, of Hebron. She was also the mother of several sons, of whom one is living east of Merrillville. She died many years ago at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Palmer, wife of Dr. Palmer, and was over ninety years of age. Three Later Residents, Not Pioneers. Another of our excellent women was Mrs. Reuben Fancher, who was in girlhood and young womanhood Mary Elizabeth Hawkins. She was born in Genoa, Cayuga county, New York, March 4, 1835. She was baptized February 17, 1856, and became a member of the Methodist Episcopal church September 28, 1856. She spent several years of life in Buffalo, and was active there in Sunday-school work, having charge of a mission class numbering from fifty to one hundred members, which she taught for several years, thus gaining much experience in that grand work. August 17, 1859, she was married in Buffalo to Reuben Fancher, and they soon after came as permanent residents to Lake county, Indiana. She became before long a teacher in the Methodist Sunday-school, and her Christian character and rich experience in that work made her a very valuable teacher to whom that school is largely indebted for the good done in the past. She was in Buffalo and Crown Point engaged in that work for about twenty-five years. She kept a diary as some others in the county have done. January 11, 1897, when nearly sixty-two years of age, she passed from earth, leaving two daughters to follow in her footsteps and do good. The following is one of the resolutions adopted by Lake Lodge, of which her husband and son were members: "Resolved, That by her death Crown Point has been deprived of a highly respected Christian woman, whose character was beautiful, sincere, and pure, and whose home influence merited the emulation of all." Signed, James C. Gibbs, Edward A. Krost, Herman J. Lehman, Committee. Mrs. Lydia F. Flint, a member in girlhood of the large Smith family, was born July 16, 1825, in Franklin county, New York. She was married in Delaware county, Ohio, August 5, 1846, to William Flint. A son, James, was born December 15, 1847. In the fall of 1859 the family came into Lake county, Indiana, where in 1862 her husband and son both died, leaving her a childless widow. She died May 22, 1903, having had a home for thirty years with her sister, Mrs. C. N. Morton. With no descendants to perpetuate her name and cherish her memory, as a good and true Christian woman, her name deserves a place among our honored women. A third one of these later residents was Mrs. Hart, wife of A. N. Hart, of Dyer, mother of Malcolm and Milton Hart and Mrs. Biggs, of Crown Point, the family coming from Philadelphia about 1855, and settling on the State Line at Dyer, while that part of the county was still quite new and wild. Mrs. Hart was not a frontier woman. Accustomed to the life of a city, she was retiring in her habits, and did not feel the necessity that women who had very young children did feel to enter very actively into the work of building up society around her. To her three sons and one daughter she gave much care, and to her diligent training they were much indebted. She had a strong native sense of justice, wishing to see all persons treated justly, without partiality. She loved beauty, and, brought up as she had been, she prized the true refinements of life. She spent the later years of her life at Crown Point, where she had an elegant residence built to suit her taste for beauty in architecture, now the residence of Mrs. Malcolm Hart. While not so widely known as were many other mothers the name of Mrs. A. N. Hart (one son and her one daughter, Mrs. F. N. Biggs, and some intimate friends yet living to cherish her memory) will stand here to represent a very cultivated, refined, and worthy woman. "Aunt Susan." The next name to be recorded here is the name of a very motherly woman, who was not herself a mother, who was never married, but of whom, as doing a mother's part, it may truthfully be said, that many would rise up to do her honor. Susan Patterson Turner was born in Pennsylvania, February 27, 1813. Her fathers family were genuine pioneers. As the oldest child and the only daughter of the family of Samuel Turner of Eagle Creek, she was left in charge of the household through the winter of 1838, while the father and mother returned to La Porte county to find a more comfortable winter abode. She and her brothers passed safely and well through the privations of that winter; and when, in 1871, her aged mother died, the care of the household, in which she as an only daughter had large experience, devolved very fully upon her. To her brothers' children, who delighted to visit the old homestead, she was Aunt Susan, and as years came on, and her motherly capabilities and excellent qualities continued to be brought out she was known as "Aunt Susan" by a large community who highly appreciated her nobility of character. She died July 24, 1899. Mrs. Higgins, coming into Lake county as Diantha Tremper in 1844, was born near Niagara Falls in 1824. She became well acquainted with the families of the early settlers in both Lake and Porter counties. In 1847 she was married to Dr. J. Higgins, who in 1859 settled as a physician in Crown Point. In the earlier years of her life in Crown Point she was an active woman in the life around her. She trained up carefully her only child, now Mrs. Youche, and her one grandson, but in later years impaired health kept her more closely in her home. As a Christian woman her examples and influence were for good on those around her. She died in 1895. In a printed memorial of her it was said: "A woman broad-minded, not taking narrow views in the great interests of humanity, cherishing warmly the domestic virtues, she will have a right to be remembered as one of those connected with our many pioneer women who have finished up their threescore years and ten of life, and have passed on before to the rest and the activities of the unseen world." And here may be added the names of faithful mothers who have lately passed from among us, Mrs. Jacob Wise and Mrs. Seymour Patton, both quite aged women, faithful to duties in their generation, both members of well known and substantial families. Grouped with these also may be the name of Mrs. James Patton, of Winfield, the mother of Mrs. Vansciver, of Crown Point. Mothers of Many Children. Among the mothers of large Lake county families must be placed, first, the name of Mrs. Flint, of Southeast Grove. Among the first settlers of that beautiful Grove were the members of this noted Methodist family. One daughter was the first wife of James H. Luther, one became the wife of Rev. D. Crumpacker, and one, the eighth child, Olive L., was the wife of Rev. Robert Hyde. There were, in all, fifteen children, and Mrs. Hyde enjoyed the distinction of having seven brothers and sisters older and seven younger than herself. Mrs. Hyde died in Chicago, September 3, 1901, about seventy-five years of age. Of her mother, Mrs. Flint, not much is now known, but it is enough for this record that she brought up so large a family on firm religious principles, fitting them for stations of usefulness and honor. As the second among these mothers may be placed the name of Mrs. Scritchfield, of Creston, the mother of thirteen children, having very many grandchildren and great-grandchildren yet living. The third of these mothers is Mrs. Julius Demmon, in girlhood Nancy Wilcox, member of a pioneer family, married in 1850, the mother of six sons, and six daughters, and who in less than fifty years had sixty-one living grandchildren in Lake county. The attentive reader has noticed that many of the earlier mothers had from six to eight or ten children, and it was a pleasant thing to find in those cabin homes wide-awake boys, and cheerful, lively girls. Each of those large homes was a little world of itself. Home then was more like the old patriarchal times than is much of what is called home life now. Some believe it was richer, purer, better than now. A place must be found on this roll of honor for the name of Mrs. Samuel Turner, of Eagle Creek, who was Jane Dinwiddie, born January 19, 1783, a woman of Scotch-Irish blood, of Scotch Presbyterian principle, who was married to Samuel Turner at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in February, 1810, and with him came to a choice location on Eagle Creek, in Lake county, in 1838, becoming a permanent resident in 1839, then fifty-six years of age. Not many now live who knew her in the home circle, but her likeness in the "Dinwiddie Clan Records" shows her to have been an estimable woman, and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Iowa and Indiana show that through her they inherited the blessing of having been "well born," a privilege to which it has been said all children have a right. The very close observer may notice that the first woman whose name is on this list was born January 15, 1783, and that the last one was born January 19, 1783, both born in the year that gave peace after the American Revolution. They were our oldest pioneers. For the most part the women, as well as the men, who came to share privations here and lay foundations were rather young, or in the prime of life. It is claimed as a saying of Napoleon Bonaparte, that what France most needed was mothers. That the mothers have much to do with what the children are and what they became is a well accepted fact. Mothers that were mothers had homes in Lake county two generations ago. And the names of at least some of them have been placed upon these pages. They could make bread and butter and cheese; they could wash and iron; they could sew and knit and spin wool into yarn, and some of them could weave that yarn into cloth; they had spinning wheels and looms; they could mold and dip candles; they could cut out garments and make them up; they could keep domestics, girls and women to help them in their work, having no trouble in trying to reduce them to the position of "servants," for they gave them seats at the family table and places around the fireside, treating them as they would wish their own daughters to be treated; they were mothers indeed, and looked well after all the wants of their households, carrying out well in their living the instructions given to women, and imitating well the model placed before women, in the Bible. They were not what is called in this day "society women"; they were not members of any Clubs or of Secret Orders; they knew nothing of modern "functions." They made visits and had dinners together and sometimes suppers; they had apple-paring bees, and quilting bees, and donation parties; they had much social life, attending camp-meetings and associations and other religious meetings. They were largely keepers at home, yet were they sociable, friendly, hospitable. Such were our mothers and grandmothers, the early settlers here sixty years ago. And when the time came for a thousand of the sons of Lake to go forth, from eighteen hundred homes, containing about nine thousand people, to join the mighty American Army in fighting for the life of the nation, this thousand went from homes where there were mothers with loyal as well as loving hearts. Of our little army of noble pioneer women, probably three or four hundred in number, there are living descendants now in the county to carry out in the life of this generation the rich results of their influence and their virtues. I am not claiming for any of them, those named and those not named, great brilliancy of intellect, fascinating social endowments, or remarkable talents, but I do claim that so long as there is a county of Lake, so long the influence of our noble women will endure. That women have done a large work in the county in promoting education is beyond any question. A deep and lasting impression on education and literature, in this county and outside of its borders, was made by the school carried on for so many years by Mrs. J. A. H. Ball. And from the day that Miss Ursula Ann Jackson, of West Creek, commenced to teach a public school in Pleasant Grove the first Monday of May, 1838, until this present time, women, and even quite young girls, have done a large part of the teaching in the public schools. Rev. Mr. Townley, who conducted a large school in Crown Point from about 1848 till 1856, speaking of his school which furnished many teachers for the public schools, stated in November, 1852, that he had had up to that time nearly five hundred scholars, and that not five young men had gone out as teachers. In later years teachers have received higher wages and more young men have accordingly been willing to engage in teaching. The women in all these years have been prominent in church work, in temperance work, in mission work; and when the time came in 1861 and in the following years to provide relief and comforts for sick and suffering soldiers, then the homekeeping women immediately formed aid societies and sent relief to the hospitals and camps. Two of their number, of pioneer families, Mrs. Sarah Robinson and Miss Elizabeth Hodson, went forth from their homes in Lake to the hospitals at Memphis, and there helped to care for the sick, the wounded, the dying. It is no more than justice, it is not courtesy, that the names, the deeds, the memorials, of our pioneer women should find some room and place along with the memorials of their husbands and their sons. Lake county has been represented by one Christian missionary in distant India. Mrs. Annie Morgan, a daughter of Judge Turner of Crown Point, a member in her childhood of the Crown Point Presbyterian Sunday school, becoming a Baptist and having been married to Rev. Freeman Morgan, a Baptist minister, left her native land with him in October, 1879, bound for Southern Asia, and there both entered upon mission work among the Telugus. Additional Comments: Extracted from: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Genealogy and Biography OF LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA, WITH A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY 1834—1904 A Record of the Achievements of Its People in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation. REV. T. H. BALL OF CROWN POINT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ILLUSTRATED CHICAGO NEW YORK THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1904 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/in/lake/history/1904/encyclop/chapteri166nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/infiles/ File size: 38.0 Kb