Lake County IN Archives History - Books .....Chapter III Memorial Sketches Of Early Settlers - Brief Records 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 21, 2006, 1:20 am Book Title: Encyclopedia Of Genealogy And Biography Of Lake County, Indiana The names of several early citizens of Crown Point are placed in this group with only short notices or brief records, as of some their residence here was brief, and of others not much is now fully known. MILO ROBINSON, a brother of the founder of Crown Point, joined his brother here in November, 1835. He came from New York city, was with his brother in the first store, he kept the first hotel, was a Justice of, the Peace, and, as did his brother Solon, solemnized marriage, but died in 1839. H. S. PELTON, an early resident, came into possession of the Robinson store about 1840. An active business man in Crown Point for a few years, he died May 26, 1847, and his goods passed into the ownership of Carter & Carter of New York, and soon after into the possession of J. W. Dinwiddie, who for a time was a merchant in Crown Point. JOSEPH P. SMITH came from New York and "settled July 5," 1836, in Crown Point. For several years he was a leading business man, and also the principal military man. He led a company of men to the Mexican war and returned with some of them. He was the second county Clerk holding office from 1843 to 1847. After some years he went into the then wild and yet new West, and was shot at and was killed by those noiseless but often deadly weapons, Indian arrows. Captain once of the Monroe Blues in the city of New York, a man quite fond of military life, it seemed strange that he should fall while at work in his field by the hand of an unseen American Indian. JUDGE CLARK. William Clark was born about 1788, probably in New York or New England, in what was called "the East," and became a quite early settler in Jennings county, Indiana. His wife was Miss Ann Campbell, for whom inquiry was made at Crown Point a few years ago in order to fill up a genealogical record. In February, 1835, the Clark family came with ox teams from Jennings county to Lake county. They came with three sons, Thomas, Alexander, and John F., and two daughters, Margaret, who was married to an early settler at Crown Point, W. R. Williams (a descendant according to family tradition, of Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island), and Mary M., who was married to Benjamin Kellogg. Judge Clark was active and prominent, along with Solon Robinson, as one of the proprietors of Crown Point, where his log cabin remained for some years near the present East and South streets. He afterward lived two miles east on a farm. He died in 1869. He had a stout, vigorous frame, but was not tall in person. THOMAS CLARK, his oldest son, was married by Judge H. D. Palmer, January 23, 1839, to Miss Harriet Lavina Farwell, whose home was on the west side of West Creek, south of the present village of Brunswick. The marriage party, some on foot and some on horseback, which passed up the next day to Lake Court House, was, for those days, quite an event. The writer of this is probably the only living witness. They were active members of society in their day, keeping for a time the hotel known as the Mills and then as the Rockwell house, and for a time living on the farm two miles east where Mrs. Farwell, Mrs. Clark's mother, died, and a burial procession passed over that same road back to the cemetery south of Brunswick. Both Mr. And Mrs. Clark closed up life many years ago. Some of their descendants yet live in Crown Point. ALEXANDER CLARK, Judge Clark's second son, born in Jennings county, November 4, 1822, was married to Miss Susan Wells (a pioneer child of December, 1835), November 5, 1848. He became an enterprising and prosperous farmer, living two miles east of Crown Point, where he died in 1879. Mrs. Susan Clark and her daughter, now Mrs. John M. Hack, still reside on the farm, near a cluster of grand oak trees which must have seen more than one generation of Indians pass away before the white settlers came. HOLTON. Associated with the Clark and Robinson families in Jennings county, and associated with them here in starting a settlement and a village and at length a town, were the members of the Holton family of 1835. The two sons were, J. W. HOLTON, commonly called Warner Holton, and W. A. W. HOLTON, usually called William Holton. The following is their line of descent from their English ancestor: 1. William Holton came from England in the ship Francis in 1634. He died in 1691. 2. John Holton, his son, died in 1712. 3. William Holton of the third generation died in 1757. 4. John Holton of the next generation died in 1797. 5. Joel Holton was born in 1738. 6. Alexander Holton, the lawyer, the father of Warner and William, was born in 1779. 7. J. W. Holton (Warner) was born in 1807. The two brothers became, with their mother, of whom in another chapter a record will be found, and with their sister, members of the little hamlet formed in the center of Lake county in 1835. They were connected with learned and cultivated men of the Holton line, and, of their mother's seven sisters,—that mother was Harriet Warner of New England—one was Mrs. Robinson, wife of the wealthy governor of Vermont, one was Mrs. Stuart, wife of the wealthy Judge Stuart of Vermont, one was Mrs. Bradley, wife of a Vermont lawyer, one was Mrs. Brown, wife of a Massachusetts lawyer, and yet another, Mrs. Hitchcock, was also wife of a Massachusetts lawyer. With such family connections and in such a line, the Holtons would be expected to be intelligent, if they were early Indiana pioneers, and intelligent they all were. W. A. W. Holton was the first Recorder of Lake county. He was also School Examiner and could examine a candidate for a teacher's license in fifteen minutes, finding out very readily whether one was intelligent or ignorant. Prominent and useful citizens of the county in its earlier years, Warner Holton at length removed to Arkansas and there died, and W. A. W. Holton closed his quite long life in Oakland, California. His father and mother both born and spending their early years not far from "the Bay where the Mayflower lay," and into which the ship Francis sailed, he spent his last years where the great Pacific dashes its waves upon our golden West. Jonathan Warner Holton (J. W.) was the first white owner of the land where is now the Crown Point public school building, making his claim on the southeast quarter of Section 5. Thirty years after his settlement, in 1835, when the ground was secured for the Crown Point Institute, in 1865, the old orchard was standing. RICHARD FANCHER, an explorer here in 1834, a settler in 1835, lived for a short time on the bank near the little lake where he first made his claim, but finding an Indian float on all of Section 17, he was soon counted in with the families of the village. He was born in 1800. He had' five daughters, and these became Mrs. J. C. Nicholson, Mrs. Alton, Mrs. Sanford Clark, Mrs. J. Clingan, and Mrs. Harry Church. Excepting himself the family were Presbyterians. He lived to a good old age and died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Clingan, in 1893. RUSSELL EDDY, born in Pittstown, New York, in April, 1787, son of General Gilbert Eddy who commanded some of the New York troops in the war of 1812, himself at the same time a paymaster in the army, afterward a merchant in the city of Troy, married to Miss Ruth Ann Wells, of Massachusetts, coming to Michigan City in 1836, became a resident of Lake Court House in 1837. His was one of the first if not the very first frame dwelling house, and it is probable that in his home was the first piano in the county, one being there in 1838. He was for many years an influential citizen, the family having, for those years, abundant means, his wife a leader in the Presbyterian church and her home a resting place for ministers, a home for some time for the first resident Presbyterian pastor, Rev. W. Townley; and in that home a young, beautiful, and refined daughter, Ruth Ann. She married young and died young, leaving no children. And neither in Lake county, nor yet out of Lake county, are there any bearing the name of Eddy to claim descent through Russell Eddy from General Gilbert Eddy of New York, and hold the position in society that once was theirs. Some families have a large increase in members and in wealth in two or three generations; some fail to keep up their ancestral position; some lose the ancestral name. FOWLER. Another true pioneer, and in fact one of the earliest dwellers in the hamlet that grew into the county seat was LUMAN A. FOWLER. He was born in Berkshire county, Massachusetts, October 1, 1809. He came with Henry Wells in the fall of 1834 and spent one night with some explorers on the wooded bank of the Lake of Red Cedars. He returned to the camp of Solon Robinson and with his small company, six in all, himself making seven, he spent the winter. There were two other families before the winter closed, twenty-one persons in all, that made up the hamlet. In 1835 Luman A. Fowler went to Michigan, then a territory, and in October was married to Miss Eliza Cochran, born in New York October 27, 1816. In December they came to the hamlet where he had spent the last winter. Travelling in those days was more expensive than it is now, for the Fowler record of expenses for the first year has this item at the head of the list: "Amount of money paid out from the time of starting to the landing on Robinson's Prairie is $83.00." Their first child was born in October, 1836, Harriet Ann, and eight other children, four sons and four daughters, followed her into the household. These eight all married and their descendants are many, some in Lake county, some are out of the county. Luman A. Fowler became fully a public man. He was elected Sheriff of Lake county in 1837, in 1847, 1849, in 1859, 1861, thus holding the office for ten years. One of his sons, born in Crown Point and still residing in Crown Point, has held the office of town or city marshal. A Manufacturer. MAJOR C. FARWELL, a son of James Farwell, an early settler on the west side of West Creek, while not among the earliest was quite an early settler and resident of Crown Point. He had learned to work iron and soon left his father's home, went into School Grove, put up a blacksmith's shop and made plows. In 1841 he moved into Crown Point, then the new county seat, and in 1842 built a hewed log shop, stocked plows, and began to make wagons. He also made a few buggies and some cutters. About 1851 he sold his establishment and went "westward" on the direction which it is said "the star of empire takes." Somewhere on the other side of the Mississippi, it is probable his dust is sleeping. He spent some five years in Colorado and Idaho and Montana, and afterward resided in Carthage, Missouri. He may be called Crown Point's first plow, wagon, and buggy maker. BARTLETT WOODS. No history of Lake county could be complete, no memorial records of the founders and builders of Lake county would be sufficiently full, without some mention of one known in later years as Hon. Bartlett Woods. Born July 15, 1818, in Winchelsea, England, brought up in that noted cinque-town called Hastings, where his father was postmaster for some forty years, in 1837 he crossed the ocean with a brother, Charles Woods, and came to this newly organized county, being then nineteen years of age. He little knew then what was before him, but events proved that until May, 1903, his life was to be closely interwoven with the growth and the interests of the county of Lake. He became a farmer. He was married to Miss Ann Eliza Sigler, who was born in 1827, and who died October 6, 1900. He resided for many years on his farm between Merrillville and Ross, and at length retired with his wife and youngest daughter to Crown Point. He had received in England an education such as became a postmaster's son, but had not taken a Rugby or an Oxford course of study. He was through his life, here a reader and a thinker, and became a public speaker and a writer. His public, political life commenced in the fall of 1848, when he was thirty years of age. The event was "the first free soil meeting in Lake county." The following influential and then active citizens are named as having been present: "Judge Clark, Alexander McDonald, Wellington Clark, Alfred Foster, Dr. Pettibone, Luman A. Fowler, William Pettibone, John Wood, of Deep River, Bartlett Woods, Jonas Rhodes, Samuel Sigler, David K. Pettibone, and Dr. Wood of Lowell." Besides these who are named there was an audience filling the room of the Log Court House. Judge Clark was chosen to preside and W. A. Clark and Bartlett Woods were Secretaries. After this quite enthusiastic meeting held September 16, 1848, Mr. Woods made arrangements to go out with Alexander McDonald, the lawyer of Crown Point, and deliver free-soil speeches. Into this campaign he entered heartily, and he wrote in 1884, "From this time on, Lake county's free-soil idea grew in strength. It was the germ from which the Republican Party sprung." (Lake county had been strongly Democratic rather than Whig). He adds: "Its large Republican vote attests this. Its vote for Fremont, for Lincoln, and for Grant and Colfax, and for Colfax all through his congressional course, gained for it the honor of being one of the banner Republican counties of the State." In 1861 and in 1865 he was elected State Representative. Besides his interest in political affairs, he took a large interest as a farmer in the Grange movement and in farmers' institutes. As a pioneer whose date of residence here went back to the year of the organization of the county he was thoroughly interested in the Association of the early settlers, and was an officer for many years of that organization. And as a friend of what he regarded as right, the older supporters of law and order passing one by one away, he came more and more to the front, in conflicts of opinion or of interest, ready to confront what he thought was wrong and to advocate what he believed was right, until he became for Lake county what John Quincy Adams became for Massachusetts, "the Old Man Eloquent." And not only with his voice but with his pen, which he freely used, he set forth the views which he held and advocated until he was about eighty-four years of age. He has four sons living and three daughters, and a number of grandchildren. JAMES H. LUTHER. While not at first a resident within the area that became Lake county, James H. Luther passed "back and forth" along the Lake Michigan beach as early as 1835 and 1834, his father's home then being in Porter or La Porte county, himself being nineteen years of age when he made his first trip around the south border of the great lake. He came into Lake county in 1840 and became a resident or a visitor long enough to become deeply interested in a Lake county girl. Miss P. A. Flint, a member of that large Methodist Flint family, yet to be mentioned, of South East Grove, whom he married, two Methodist ministers selecting wives also from that large cluster of attractive girls. He went back with his young wife to Porter county but became a resident of Crown Point in 1849. That young wife soon passed away from him and went over the unseen river, leaving him with some young boys that needed care and training. About 1852 he married a widow, Mrs. M. M. Mills, and until 1854 kept the hotel then known as the Mills and afterwards as the Rockwell house. The second wife proved to be a good mother for his own and for other motherless children. In 1860 he was elected county Auditor and held the office for eight years. His material interests prospered year by year and he at length became one of the capitalists of Crown Point. He was a generous, kind-hearted man, of refined feelings and sympathies, a man also of good judgment, a man to make an excellent member of any organization, and one to be selected as a good neighbor and friend. For some reason or for no reason that could be named, from the first time that they met as strangers to each other in 1853, when he did a large kindness, until the very last year of his life in 1893, he seemed to take, amid all the changes of forty years, a large and peculiar interest in the welfare of the writer of this memorial record. And this friendship as marked by deeds was the more singular on account of the great difference between the two in their religious beliefs. An earnest, active member of the Old Settler and Historical Association, for some years its Treasurer, James Henry Luther was in his eightieth year when he passed to the unseen world. He has one son yet living, John E. Luther, and a sister, Mrs. Allman, both having homes in Crown Point. Another citizen of the county, who like Mr. James H. Luther, passed around the south shore of Lake Michigan in early days, was JAMES ADAMS, of Rose township. His name is given to a schoolhouse east of Merrillville toward Hobart. He was a stage driver on the line from Detroit to Fort Dearborn, on the road opened in 1833. He was born in Manlius, New York, September 11, 1814. In 1837 he was sent from Detroit to Fort Dearborn, now Chicago, in the month of January, by Governor Mason and General Brady, as a messenger to have the soldiers from the fort sent to Detroit. It was the time of the Patriots' War in Canada. The sleighing was then good. Warmly clad, furnished by General Brady with good fur gloves, carrying instructions to have the best horse furnished for him at each stage house, he was to make the distance, 284 miles, in twenty-four hours if possible. The stopping places where he could change horses were from twelve to fourteen miles apart. He gave the attending hostlers only a few moments to change horses, requiring each time the best horse in the stable, and he reached Chicago or the fort in twenty-eight hours, leaving Detroit at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and reaching the fort at 8 o'clock on the next afternoon. Ten miles an hour for stage horses was very good speed. They were not race horses. In 1842 this experienced driver, horse-man, in a good sense of the word, he quite surely was, settled on a farm in Ross township, and there lived a useful farmer life till July 31, 1896, then nearly eighty-two years of age. A daughter with her mother, her husband, and two children, still hold the Adams farm. An Early Explorer. JAMES HILL, born in Kentucky, May 29, 1810, was not one of the earliest settlers, but he was an early, a very early visitor and explorer in this region, and his name is entitled very justly to a place among these memorials of a past generation. He was one of the few of our citizens born south of the Ohio River. His father, William Hill, was a Captain of militia in the State of Kentucky and died in 1822. The young James Hill soon after made his home with the family of James Lloyd, and in 1827 they removed to Decatur county, Indiana. Here, in 1838, James Hill was married to Miss Mary Skinner of the State of New York, and here he became acquainted with William Ross, a resident in Decatur county. In February of 1834, then twenty-three years of age, four years before his marriage, James Hill made an exploring expedition into the new IndianPurchase, this Northwestern Indiana. He found a few white families, he saw the Indians in their wigwams, and, coming into what became Lake county, he found, already settled, William Ross and family, who as early as 1833 left Decatur county and had established a home among the Indians and amid the wild denizens of the Deep River woodlands and the not distant prairie. But finding the snow-covered prairies and the leafless oaks and the Indian wigwams not sufficiently inviting to induce a lone young man to settle then, he returned to Decatur, county, was married, commenced farm life, and deferred his actual settlement in Lake county till 1853, when the delightful pioneer years had passed. In Cedar Creek township, near what is now called Creston, he bought three hundred and twenty acres of land and there lived for many years, a prosperous, useful, faithful citizen. He was a very noble-hearted man, patient amid many trials, kindly and true and generous in the different relations of life. One daughter is living, Mrs. Henry Surprise, a kindly and a noble woman, and two sons, William J. Hill of Oregon for some years, a great wheat-raiser, and now in the mining region of the West, and Dr. Jesse L. Hill of Creston, both possessing some of their father's excellent traits of character. Of promising grandchildren there are more than a few. Into that same Creston neighborhood, then called Tinkerville, a name which if not classic does not need to be forgotten, there came from the Southern part of Indiana, before the railroad period began, another very useful and worthy family, LYMAN THOMPSON, his wife Lucinda Thompson, a daughter, Laura, and two sons, Orrin and Amos Thompson. They came about 1847. The father and mother and daughter were active and valuable members of the Cedar Lake Baptist church, but the father did not live long enough to do a large work in building up the community. The two sons yet live, one at Lowell, one at Creston, good and useful men. Lyman Thompson died May 9, 1852. SHERMAN.—WILLIAM SHERMAN, who was married at Saratoga, New York, in November, 1807, to Miss Calista Smith, a native of Vermont, came into Lake county in 1837. He was evidently an Eastern man, a native probably of New England. He was the father of thirteen children and died in 1843. Mrs. Sherman, who will be elsewhere mentioned, lived in Crown Point until October, 1884. Some one is preparing the Sherman Biography, which, it is expected, will soon be published. The living descendants of these Lake county Shermans numbered, a few years ago, fifty-two. Some have gone, some have come, and there are probably more now. It is a lesson which genealogic records teach over and over that some families increase and some become extinct. GRIFFIN. Another name, although not of an early settler, claims a place on this page. ELIHU GRIFFIN came to Crown Point as a lawyer. He was working well up in his profession when the war of 1861 commenced. He entered the Union Army. He was appointed a paymaster. This gave him the title of Major. He returned to Crown Point, obtained a lucrative position in locating what was called the Vincennes, Danville, and Chicago Railroad. Disease came upon him. For many months he was laid aside entirely from the business affairs of life. He after some time resumed his office life, but never regained health. He had three sons, Horace, Charles F., and Cassius. CHARLES F. GRIFFIN, brought up in Crown Point, adopted his father's profession, studied law, began practice in the office with his father, and from 1887 to 1891 was at Indianapolis having been elected Secretary of State. After his term of office expired he located as a lawyer in the young city of Hammond, and after a prosperous course of business and sharing other honors, honors connected with the Sons of the Veterans, his life ended at Hammond on Saturday, December 20, 1902, while he was only in the prime of life, about forty-six years of age. "Ambitious and successful in obtaining several desired positions, never having vigorous health, he passed rapidly through a comparatively short life." No other Lake county boy has yet reached so high a position in civil or political life. His wife, who was Miss Edith Burhans of West Creek township, and a son and daughter, still live in Hammond. His form was laid away in the Crown Point Cemetery. He had been Superintendent of the Crown Point Presbyterian Sunday-school and was a member of the Presbyterian church. 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/chapteri371gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/infiles/ File size: 24.6 Kb