Lake County IN Archives History - Books .....Lake County Miscellany 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, 2:44 am Book Title: Encyclopedia Of Genealogy And Biography Of Lake County, Indiana LAKE COUNTY MISCELLANY. By T. H. Ball. THE PIONEER CHILDREN AND NATURE. Each generation has, to some extent, privileges, opportunities, and advantages, not bestowed, in the same degree, on other generations. In this short paper the writer proposes to notice the superior advantages which the pioneer children enjoyed in beholding natural beauty, and so, if their opportunities were improved, in securing the two great benefits to be derived from the cultivation of a love for nature, the refinement of the disposition, and the increase of the means of happiness. That a true love for natural beauty, as seen on the earth and in the sky, is refining and may increase largely life's enjoyment, will be taken at present as granted. The proofs, if needed, are to be found abundantly in human observation and experience. And so, realizing and recognizing that some beautiful landscape views may yet be seen in this county, especially in the southern townships, some beauties peculiar to the pioneer times will now be named. First of all among these were the wild prairies, the prairies with their native vegetation and their native inhabitants. Before a furrow had been turned, a shrub or tree planted, a house or fence constructed, in the spring and early summer the carpet of green grass, with a few early flowers scattered here and there, was charming to the eye; but when the warm summer came, with its ever glorious sunshine, and the polar plant, which the children called rosin-weed, attained the height of six or seven feet, the grass then thick and tall, the beds of phlox, as rich as in an Eastern garden, covering large areas, the meadow lilies open to the sunshine, the broad leaves of the prairie dock having attained full growth, and rich colored, true prairie flowers in great abundance, of many varieties, open on every side,—then was the beauty of the prairie enchanting. There were no real weeds till man's plowshare turned over the prairie sod, and richer in color, greater in variety, more abundant even to profusion the flowers became as the summer approached the golden autumn. Then, as one would be riding on horseback amid the green verdure and tall polar plants, for roads and buggies were not then, and only a few venturesome children went out any distance on foot into the wilderness of beauty that lay in its bewildering extent of area before them; here and there would suddenly start up, as from under the very feet of the horse, the pinnated grouse, the chickens of the prairie, the true denizens of all this prairie region, and both horse and rider would be startled as one after another, in quick succession, from ten to twenty of those beautiful wild fowls would fly up on every side and sail away and soon sink down out of sight in that abundant verdure, amid which for many and many a summer their progenitors had been so secure. In that thick, rank, tall vegetation, no eye was likely to see them. Again, sometimes the rider would see not far away some of those other true tenants of the wilds, perhaps two or three prairie wolves, or one alone, seldom only one, on that apparently slow lope or gallop, which nevertheless took them through the grass and over the flower beds quite rapidly, and soon they too would be out of sight. Perhaps, again, the horseback rider would see, on some distant grass covered eminence, forty or more sandhill cranes going through some kind of evolution which the pioneers called a dance. None of these beautiful and entertaining sights which delighted the pioneer children can the children of this generation behold. All that rich beauty and wild life from our prairies has forever gone. Then there were other sights not peculiar to the prairies, the bounding red-deer of the woodlands and the wild pigions in prodigious numbers, which the children of Lake can here never more see. Those pigeons, perhaps, gone forever from all our land, were, in form, in color, in motion, rich embodied beauty. The eyes of none of us will see those thousands of wild pigeons again as once they were in these woodlands, on our few grain fields, and sometimes passing, by hundreds of thousands, in the sky above us. And yet again, the children of those days saw natural streams of water. Cedar Creek and Eagle Creek, winding amid their grassy banks along narrow valleys, were then beautiful streams. They have been turned into ditches now. And so have West Creek and Turkey Creek, and other once pretty water courses, and who ever saw much beauty in a ditch? Doubtless there are children in this county now who never saw one of those ever beautiful objects in nature, a real, purling brook. And how can they appreciate such gems of poetry as this: "The noise as of a running brook in the leafy month of June, Which to the sleeping woods all night singeth a quiet tune." Instead of winding brooks, of which at Plum Grove a part of one is left, our water courses, like our roads and railroads, must now be made, as far as practicable, to go in straight lines. Utility takes the place of beauty. There is beauty yet left on the clouds, and on the morning and evening sky. but houses and barns and orchards and shade trees and shrubbery so obstruct the views that few children now observe or have a chance to see a fair, clear sunrise gilding the prairie and the woodlands with its rich hues of ruby or of gold; or those magnificent sunsets which some of us as children were privileged to enjoy, when huge masses of vapor like distant mountains seemed to be piled up in the west, and the setting sun, seeming to sink down into their fleecy folds, painted on them for a time golden, or purple, or crimson hues, or violet and ruby, the richest coloring,—unless sometimes, once or twice in a lifetime the same may be seen at night on the northern sky,—that nature ever presents to our view. Such sunsets as were seen in this county in the years long past no artist can paint. Such coloring man does not mix. But sometimes, with all the western horizon and blue sky cloudless, the sun would seem to touch the edge of the horizon, and on the line of prairie or behind a few trees, like a large red or golden globe of fire, almost too bright even then for the eye steadily to rest upon, would slowly yet soon disappear from sight, seeming to leave an open doorway into a world of dazzling glory. The rich beauty of pure, unstained light, could at such times be felt. And there was more, much more of animated nature full of beauty then, at which there is no time now to glance. The children of the pioneer days did see what our eyes never can behold. Even the prairie fires, too grand, too magnificent, and sometimes too destructive, to give that sense of delight which beauty gives, were sometimes very pleasing to the eyes of childhood. Into the mouth of one of Ossian's heroes these words are put: "The columns of smoke pleased well mine eyes; I knew not then wherefore the maidens wept.'' And when there was no feeling of destruction children saw with delight the long lines of flame and the columns of smoke when after sweeping through the tall grass of the Kankakee Marsh the flames spread northward upon the prairie. Truly, the children of the pioneer years saw earth and sky with little to obstruct their range of vision. And this region was then, amid all its wild beauty a very fitting great temple in which to worship God. In these our days, much is said of art, something is taught of art. An evening lecture was given not long ago to the assembled teachers of Lake county and the subject was. Art in familiar things. And that was well. But who teaches the children to love natural beauty? Who teaches, "There's beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes could trace it mid familiar things, and through their lowly guise?'' Who teaches the children now, as many pioneer children learned, amid the delightful opportunities and privileges which they enjoyed, to look through nature up to nature's God ? To many of the pioneer children, in their great wilds of nature, before there were cities or towns, or temples for worship as made with men's hands, God was very near. LANDSCAPES. I am unwilling that this large volume of biographical sketches should go out among the later inhabitants of the county, (a county now containing a population of about forty thousand, many more than half of them residing in cities and towns or in villages), without some mention being made in it of our beautiful country views. And so in this chapter headed "Miscellany," is placed a paper concerning our landscapes. Webster gives as his first definition of the word landscape, "A portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all -the objects it contains." Of course a prairie region, a moderately level region such as is Lake county, can have nothing of the grandeur of mountain scenery. The writer of this has stood on the summit of the New Hampshire Mount Washington; has passed through Dixville Notch; has crossed the Cumberland and the Alleghany Mountains; and he knows and admires mountain scenery. But he is sure there have been beautiful views in this sand ridge and woodland, prairie and marsh region of Lake. Some of these he will name. Near the village of Lake Station, from the top of a large sand hill, the northward view, on a clear summer afternoon, is full of interest to a lover of natural scenery. "The eye rests upon a part of the valley of Deep River; and just beyond is the village of Lake, surrounded by hills and woods, the fans for raising water reminding one of Don Quixote's windmills, and the vegetation giving evidence of the beds of sand from which it derives its nourishment." The railroad grounds in this village are large and neat, the finest in the county, and the distance is sufficient to give to the buildings a fine effect. From various hill tops in the north part of the county beautiful views could be enjoyed a few years ago, "the sweep of vision from these taking in a portion of Lake Michigan's blue waters, and the pines, and sand hills, and valleys of the shore. Some very pretty views are found along a ridge of land which separates the Turkey Creek and Deep River localities and valleys, and especially near the once Red School-house or Vincent neighborhood. Looking northward one can see the woodland ridges which run parallel with the Little Calumet River, and southward and westward one can look over a broad area of undulating prairie, the first breadth of prairie upon which Solon Robinson and his party looked, October 31, 1834, the emotions produced by which he called "indescribable." From this ridge also, looking across the prairie and Deep River valley, Crown Point presents, at the right time of day, a very pretty picture standing forth in the sunlight on its prairie eminences with the woodland height for a rich background. Another fine view of the town may also be obtained from an eminence near the eastern limit of the county, the distance being sufficient to give to the woodland on the west that beautiful hue of blue. The main prairie portion of Lake county is in two divisions. The one south of Crown Point is Robinson Prairie; the one in Hanover and West Creek townships is Lake Prairie. The small ones have borne the names of Eagle Creek, Bostwick, Prairie West, and Center. On Robinson Prairie, south of Crown Point, are eminences from which one can look over some miles of prairie, then across five or six miles of Kankakee valley land, once called marsh, and at length the vision ends along a line of blue which marks the course of the Kankakee River, beyond which from no prairie height can the eye see over into Jasper and Newton counties, unless sometimes the steam from an engine may be seen far down on the Monon Railroad. There is yet left a beautiful landscape which one beholds when coming northward from the Lowell and Hebron road, on the west side of the Eagle Creek valley, when emerging from the shrubbery and the grove, suddenly there spreads out before one the prairie and valley courses of Deep River and Eagle Creek as once these were, and the village of Le Roy as now it is, and the open view far northward, once a green prairie in summer, but now dotted over with fields, and houses, and barns, and orchards. But the landscape is beautiful still, and it comes so unexpectedly upon one who has not gone that way before. LAKE PRAIRIE VIEWS. Mrs. Nannie W. Ames, a daughter of Rev. H. Wason, of New England descent and training, a cultivated woman, wrote the following at the time of Lake County's Semi-Centennial: "Lake Prairie has been called the 'Gem of the county,' and certainly it well deserves the fair name. Twenty-five years ago, Professor Mills, of Wabash College, stood on a knoll on Mr. Peach's farm, and looking around till his eye met the woods that encircle the gently rolling land, said: T have been thirty years in the West and have been in every county in the State, and never but once have I seen so beautiful a view.' Other strangers from the East, South, and West have said the same thing." Mrs. Ames continues: "The scene has changed in this quarter of a century but has only gained in beauty. Now, as far as the eye can reach, may be seen comfortable houses and farm buildings, orchards and shade trees, with here and there a bordering of deep green osage; while still farther in the distance the tall windmills point out the homes beyond the range of vision." This writer may be more than commonly fond of the wildness of nature, and, perhaps, partial to Lake Prairie as once it was, and so he will only add here, that he prefers the beauty of sixty years ago, which he knew so well, to the more improved beauty of the present. Also it may be added, that from other eminences, further north than the one mentioned by Mrs. Ames, some beautiful views may be obtained, the range of vision taking in all of that rich prairie, about ten miles from north to south, bounded on the w~est by the West Creek woodlands, by the Cedar Creek woods on the east, on the south, five miles beyond the prairie limit, extending over groves and marshland, reaching to the long line of blue that marks the course of the Kankakee River. LAKE COUNTY CROW ROOSTS. The early settlers of Lake county, Indiana, found crows here, and they have been here ever since. They are probably more numerous now than they were in 1837, for they can now find a greater variety of food and they find it in greater abundance. The Indians no doubt helped them to some food, but the whites help them to much more. Among our black-birds there has been seen a real white one, a true Candida merula, but so far as known all our crows have been black, like those of whom that poem was written called "The Three Black Crows." The main roosting places of our crows in these latter years have been, in number, two. One of these is nine miles northwest from Crown Point; the other is five miles south. The one south is in an evergreen grove which covers an area of about four acres, set out for a wind-breaker in the center of the broad Robinson Prairie many years ago, the trees Scotch pine, Austrian pine, and some larch. This grove, the trees being very close together, makes a grand shelter for any of our birds, and the crows gather there at night by the hundreds, and have been estimated at fully one thousand. The roosting place, northwest of Crown Point, is by the side of the Pan Handle Railroad, on land formerly owned by Mr. A. N. Hart, who would not allow the first crows that came there to be disturbed. They sought near him a quiet resting place and they found it. He allowed no shooting near them. The tract of land came next into the possession of Mr. Malcolm T. Hart, one of the wealthy men of the county, and he followed his father's example, and the number of the trusting crows increased. That large estate is now in the hands of Mrs. M. T. Hart and her daughter, Marguerite M. Hart, and they also are friendly toward the crows. Those that come here for night shelter and rest probably number thousands. They leave in the early morning, going westward and southward and return from their Illinois foraging grounds from sunset time till quite late in the evening. Ever since the raven went out from Noah's ark the black-feathered birds of the raven and crow kinds seem to have been successful in procuring food. AN OLD LANDMARK. As the month of October, 1902, was drawing to a close an old landmark in Crown Point began to disappear. A building on Court Street northwest of the northwest corner of the present public square, had been standing on that spot of ground beyond the reach of memory of most of the present inhabitants of the town. The oldest locust tree of the town stood in front of it, back of it was in 1834 an Indian garden spot, and near by was then a spring of water. There, October 31, 1834, Solon Robinson and family pitched their tent, the Robinson record says, "by the side of a spring." The next day, November 1, 1834, work commenced with axes for erecting a log cabin, and in four days the family left the tent and moved into what they called their new house. New it certainly was, made of the logs of trees that were standing in that grove or woodland four days before. Additions to that first cabin were evidently made in 1835, but whether any portion of the log structure which was afterwards covered with siding and which had been on that spot, in 1902, more than sixty years, contained the first pile of logs is somewhat uncertain. Perhaps the south part of the entire structure, which was removed in November, 1902, to make room for a large livery barn, was the cabin of 1834, and, if so, had been standing for sixty-eight years. Of the part that for a time was left standing, a two-story building, the lower part of logs, the upper story of frame work, no one now living can tell when it was erected. Probably not, at least not completed, till after the log court house was built in 1837, certainly not till after some sawed lumber could be obtained and nails came into use. In the construction of Lake county's first buildings no nails were used. Two only are living who were residents in Crown Point in 1837, and they were then girls too young to know about the building of the Robinson home or the log court house. Three are yet living, who may have seen those buildings in 1837. Mr. William A. Taylor, Mr. Nathan Wood, and Mr. J. Kenney; and one other is living, the writer of this, who was in what is now Crown Point, five or six times in 1837. He probably knows as much about the buildings of that year as any one now living. But whenever built, this oldest house in Crown Point when 1902 closed, some part of the tenement as it was November 5, 1902, dating back to 1835, possibly to 1834, it has an interesting history. And as the home of the founder of Crown Point that history should be preserved. At this home spot, quite certainly not inside of the log walls, was organized "The Squatters' Union of Lake County," the first action here of American citizens in exercising their right of governing themselves. The record which is beyond question as to its accuracy says, this was done "at a meeting of a majority of the citizens of Lake county held at the house of Solon Robinson on the fourth of July, 1836." The record says at the house, but it does not say in the house, and one who was present said the meeting was in the open air, in the grove. In 1837 this home was opened several times by its hospitable owners for religious worship, probably the first dwelling thus used in Crown Point, among the first thus used in all of Lake county. This building was for many years the bright home of the Robinson family, where were born Dr. L. G. Bedell, now a noted physician of Chicago, and her brother Charles, and where with these an older brother and sister spent the sunny years of childhood and of youth; and where sometimes for visiting, sometimes for dancing, would meet the youth and beauty of Crown Point. They who still dance among the young ladies of Crown Point dance in larger rooms now and not on puncheon floors. Marriages and changes took place and the next of our historic families to make that house a bright living home was a member of the Holton family, Mrs. Calista Young, where her son Charles Young, now of Chicago, grew up to manhood; where, in 1884, her aged mother died, and in the same year, after a residence in Crown Point of about five years, her mother's sister's son, Mr. Clement Brown; and where Solon Robinson, with his Florida wife, made a short sojourn on his last visit to Crown Point. After Mrs. Young went to Indianapolis to live with her son, then Deputy Secretary of State, one more representative of one of our historic families found there a home, Mr. William Clark, a grandson of Judge William Clark, the Clark family having been intimately associated with the Robinson family in the pioneer days. Mrs. William Clark opened a millinery store in the log building, which was then becoming old. Some tenants occasionally occupied it afterwards. Thus it has gone through its changes. An inviting home place for one connected family for more than half a century; at last furnishing an office room for Mr. J. S. Holton in a part of the year 1902. Before that year closed the south part, the logs eighteen feet long (in one room of which this writer, then a youth, remembers to have slept as one of the guests of the Robinson family), was all removed, the north part, the logs also eighteen feet long, and apparently all solid, then left standing. One only is known to be living who was in the log cabin of 1834, and she was too young to know much difference between a cabin or a palace. It was enough for her that it was home. The next record for this page is: March 2, 1903, Monday. To-day the remaining portion of the Robinson house was removed to make way for the printing office soon to be erected on this spot by J. J. Wheeler, whose wife is a granddaughter of the old log house builder. And so the spot where for many years was a pioneer home, where ministers of the Gospel have preached, where young people have often met, where births and deaths have been, is soon to be, probably for many years to come, the home of journalism, the abode of printing presses, and the day home for those who do type setting and press work, and who thus will help to enrich with printed thought thousands of living homes. But for the historic page, few would know, in the years that are expected to come, that in this locality was erected one of Lake county's earliest log cabins. 1843. A GOLDEN WEDDING. 1893. Fifty years, as we forward look, Seem as years slow moving and long; Fifty years, as we backward look, From gray haired age to childhood's song, Seem only as yesterdays gone far by. Yesterday! Yesterday! How the days fly! Fifty full years have passed away since that marriage ceremony took place in the northwestern home of the Cedar Lake community whose golden anniversary- brings us together to-day. It will be fitting for me, a youth at Cedar Lake then, an inhabitant here now, and having for many years been giving some close attention to the times that go over us, to the history which we are making, to the changes which every year brings, to place before you, among the thoughts of this hour, some facts connected with that locality and the half century now past. Then, fifty years ago, in this northwestern corner of Indiana, across which so many thousands have this year passed, this year of 1893, going in crowded cars to reach the White City, settlements, homes, institutions, as established by descendants of Europeans, were not only comparatively but actually new. Nine years had seen quite a number of families making homes in the woodlands on lands which the Pottawatomie Indians had but lately vacated. In 1843 we had in all Lake county about as many inhabitants as are now in St. John township alone, or about sixteen or seventeen hundred; we had a few schoolhouses, mostly built of logs; there was a Catholic chapel on the Hack place and a Methodist church building in the Hayden and Hathaway neighborhood; there were three or four postoffices; there were a few stores, a few frame buildings, and one piano. Pioneer families had erected cabins and made homes from the border of the Kankakee marsh northward, in the edge of what became known as the West Creek woods, extending to the head waters of that little stream known as West Creek. Landmarks along that line of settlements were the pioneer homes that bore the names of Torrey, Wilkinson, Wiles, Bond, Hornor, and Greene. That West Creek stream was just called little, but it formed, because of the wide marshy valley through which it flowed and the quicksands along its course, an impassable barrier between the families on the west side and those on the east. As a necessity for travel the Torrey bridge was built, and afterward the bridge on the road running west from Cedar Lake. Of about a dozen pioneer families forming the Cedar Lake neighborhood of the west side of the lake, already, in 1843, some had returned to the Wabash, some had gone westward to the new frontier,—it was becoming too thickly settled for them,—and some had changed their localities. Of these the Greene family, consisting of Dr. Joseph Greene, the early physician of the neighborhood and an expert deer hunter, Sylvester Greene and his wife and children, and a young brother, Edward Greene, had left their home near the head waters of the eastern branch of West Creek, and had settled on the north bank of Cedar Lake; and in their place had come into the woodland, to a cabin home, ROSWELL HACKLEY, then in middle age, with his wife, his son, Edwin, and two daughters, then entering womanhood, Miss Mary and Miss Eliza, healthy, vigorous, enterprising, entering heartily into the few varieties of social life which were enjoyed by that little neighborhood of resolute pioneers. At that time the West Creek woods were alive with deer, beautiful American red deer, browsing in the winter and then lying down on their snowy beds in the rich, sheltered hazel copses, finding water in those ever flowing springs that helped to feed the marshy stream, and in the summer enjoying the fine pasture range of twelve miles of woodland valleys and ravines, of sunny glades and sheltered nooks. Fifty years ago those woods were beautiful, well fitted to be the home of the red deer, the squirrels, the rabbits, and the quails, or of wood nymphs and fairies of the older days. At that time also, while all our native wild game was abundant, civilization was advancing and the conveniences of life were on the increase. Oxen were still largely used as domestic animals, and sometimes the ox teams would convey the families to the places of Sabbath worship. Carriages, covered buggies, or buggies without covers, were few indeed. The members of the Ball and Hackley families would sometimes go up to Crown Point to church together, the place of meeting being then and for years afterwards the log court house. The winter of 1842 and 1843 was a severe one and was called the "hard winter." It commenced in the middle of November and on the eighth of the next May cattle barely found sufficient grass on which to live. Many had perished for want of food. In the spring of 1843 the scarlet fever in a malignant form visited Crown Point, and for the first time the inhabitants found it needful to select a place for the burial of their dead. Fifty years, therefore, takes us far back in our life upon this soil as a civilized community of white settlers. So far as appears in any of our records we celebrate to-day, of those married in Lake county, the first Golden Wedding. In the summer of 1843, on the east side of Cedar Lake, on Cedar Point bluff, a campmeeting was held. Then, how many times before I know not, Mr. Wellington A. Clark met Miss Mary Hackley. He met her several times afterwards. And December 7, 1843, tney were married. Judge Wilkinson, the first probate judge of Lake county (around whom had been, not helping but laughing Indians, when in raising the logs for his cabin walls a heavy one would slide back upon his wife and son and himself), came up along that belt of woodland to the northern home, to conduct the ceremony, "to solemnize" the marriage. He took his rifle along with him, and shot one of those red deer before he reached the Hackley home. Besides the family of five and the bridegroom and the Judge, there were present three guests, making ten in all that day within the cabin walls. Over the fifty years of sacred family history between then and now, with its lights and its shadows, its joys and its griefs, its successes and reverses, I am not to glance. But I may safely and appropriately say that the difference is very great in this county of ours, with its more than one hundred schools, its sixty churches, its dozen railroads, its manufacturing establishments, its many towns and villages, its twenty-five thousand inhabitants, between this World's Fair year of 1893 and that year of 1843 to which we have cast a glance backward to-day. Not only is the difference very great here, but great over all the civilized and all the savage world. Golden weddings should remind us of securing a home in the Golden City. HUNTING WILD HOGS. How deer were hunted is quite well understood, but not many now in Lake county know anything about hunting up wild hogs. A very short account of how this was done ought to be of interest to the boys of the county who may have some of the hunter instincts but have little game to hunt except wild rabbits. The word "up," used above, was inserted for a purpose. Wild hogs, as this writer knew them, were not hunted like deer, to be shot and killed; but were hunted up when autumn came, by those who claimed them, that they might have food and care in the winter. It will appear at once that these hogs were not wild in the same sense in which the deer were wild, for they had claimers, they had nominal owners. In those early years of the settlement of this county all domestic animals were allowed a free range in the woodlands and on the prairies. They had no right to go into the settler's gardens and small grain fields, but sometimes they would do even that. Hogs were to be marked, and this was done by clippings in their ears, and each owner's mark was to be recorded in a book kept at the county seat. While a hog had only two ears it was curious how many marks, all different of course, could be made on the ears, some marking the right ear, some the left, some marking both ears, perhaps one unlike the other, some cutting a little notch, some making a slit, some marking on the top with a little notch cut off and some marking at the bottom, and so in various ways that each man might prove his own. If one hungry family stole a hog the first thing to do was to dispose of the ears. Having this matter understood, that hogs going out from their winter homes, some of them not to be seen again till the next winter was near at hand, carried their marks with them, the readers of this are better prepared to understand what is meant by hunting them up. The readers should also recall to mind the fact that the hogs of those days were not Berkshires, nor Poland China, nor any of the modern improved breeds; but the long bodied, long limbed racers, that could run rapidly, turn on their sides and go through a small opening in a worm fence, and that knew well how to look out for themselves. One illustration now of hunting: A colony of these had lived on the Bond place, in what in different connections has been called the West Creek woods. Some of these were transferred by purchase to the west side of Cedar Lake. They spent the winter contentedly at their new home. In the spring they left, and there was no doubt in the owner's mind that they had crossed Lake Prairie and had gone back to their old haunts in the woods of West Creek. Autumn came. It was now 1840, and the owner, with a young man twenty-one years of age and a youth of fourteen, proposed to hunt them up, those runaway hogs, and bring them back to their new home. Each hunter was quite well mounted. They were all New Englanders and had little experience with such animals. They took corn in their saddle bags with their lunch. The weather was then delightful and to them all, those woods, so new to them and wild, were charming. Along in the afternoon, after a quite long search, some hogs were seen. The horses were tied. The young man and the youth were instructed to keep hid, that is, behind trees out of sight, and the owner, taking some ears of corn, advanced cautiously towards the acorn eating hogs, keeping as much as possible a row of trees between him and them. At length he threw part of an ear of corn. The hogs looked up. It was evident that besides those that had gone away in the spring were many young animals with unmarked ears that had never tasted corn nor seen a man. And they were wild. Wild as young deer or wolves. The older ones were wild too now, so far as coming near to a man. Some more corn was thrown. The younger ones tasted it. They seemed to like it well. Slowly the man came out from behind his tree. The young animals were very wary, but they continued to eat corn while the man who threw it to them drew quite near. Then, unfortunately, the young man thought he could safely come out from behind his tree. The young hogs saw him, they gave a peculiar sound, it was not a squeal nor a grunt, it was more like a bark, there may be some yet living who have heard such a sound, and immediately, not in a minute but almost in a second, there was no hog, no pig in sight. They were seen no more that day, and the disappointed hunters mounted their horses and went home, being sure that they had learned some lessons in hunting and treating wild hogs. It was not considered needful to give up that fine drove of pigs and hogs, for one failure. It would not be good stock-raising. So another visit to the woods was made by the same three hunters. In the course of the day the drove was again found. The same caution and extra caution was used in feeding them. They were more hungry and they liked the corn. They" at length came up close to the one wrho fed them. He reached and at length mounted his horse and kept feeding those young, now trusting shoats, starting eastward for the prairie. The drove followed quite close to the heels of the horse. They went out of the woods, crossed the prairie quite rapidly, the two young hunters on their horses bringing up the rear. They reached their home before nightfall, gave the trusting animals that followed the corn a good place for sleeping and for winter quarters, and the three all felt that they knew something about hunting up wild hogs. SOME CEDAR LAKE INCIDENTS. About 1680 the first white man of whom any trace has been found near the shore of this once beautiful lake, stood upon the well wooded height of the northeastern bank. It is high and wooded now. It must have been high and wooded then. How is it known that a white man was there then? for of his presence there are no written records. Who was he? What could he have been doing there, only some sixty years after the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock? One question at a time, please, and listen to the answers. We know a man was there at some time because he left his mark. A man sinks into the great ocean and leaves no trace. A man, especially a white man, steps into one of our forests called primeval, and he may only sink his sharp axe an inch or two into a tree and for years its impress is left. He camps for a night upon the wide prairie and he may leave there a tin dish or a tent-pin made of iron, and years afterwards the observant pioneer says, as his plowshare touches it, this is not an Indian relic. A white man made it and no doubt a white man left it here. And so we read in the forest or on the prairie the presence once of a white man. The historic fact is this: About 1850 a large oak tree was cut down which had grown upon that wooded height, and near the very heart of the tree was found a piece of steel, a little instrument an inch and a quarter in length, with a round shaft the size of a clay pipe stem, the head, on the top flat and very smooth, and having twelve sides each smooth and well wrought, and the point end not a point but having an edge like an axe. For what use this was made no one knows, but that it did not grow of itself in the tree is very certain. Even an evolutionist could not believe that. Some one drove it into an oak sapling and the wood and bark formed year by year, and as the wood could not crowd the steel out it grew over it, covered it from human view, protected it from rain and frost, and there at length it was found in the heart of a majestic oak. According to the woodmen count and estimate, that tree had been growing nearly two hundred years. The instrument itself, now in the possession of Mrs. M. J. Cutler, a sister of T. H. Ball, shows that it was not the work of an Indian. It came most probably from some European workshop. And almost surely a white man, himself from Europe, placed it, for some purpose, in that young oak. Who was that white man? Knowledge on that point there is none; but conjectures may lawfully be offered. About the time when that large Cedar Lake oak was young and thrifty, men from France were in this then thoroughly wild region, the first white Men, so far as is known, that ever were here. The names of two of these are well known in early American history. One was called Hennepin and the ether La Salle. Louis Hennepin was not a Jesuit but a Franciscan. He accompanied La Salle's expedition of 1679. Passing through the lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan, these with the men who were with them passed in canoes up to a portage on the St. Joseph River, then across to the Kankakee River, and down that river to the Illinois River, and down that river to a place near the present Peoria. In February of 1680 Hennepin, as instructed by La Salle, started in a canoe on a voyage of discovery. He made an eventful voyage. Returned to France, and published in 1683 an account of his explorations. There is no probability that he ever saw the Red Cedar Lake. But there is a record that La Salle started on foot with three Frenchmen and an Indian hunter, March 2, 1680, to return to his fort on Lake Ontario, distant about twelve hundred miles. He had gone down the Kankakee in December, 1679, with thirty-two men and eight canoes. He was now returning on foot with four companions. If there is any record of that land journey this writer has not found it, and so he conjectures that La Salle and his four companions passed between the Kankakee River and Lake Michigan and camped for a night on that wooded high bank of the Red Cedar Lake. It is recorded that before leaving the portage in December of 1679 La Salle caused some letters to be fastened to trees to convey information to others who might pass that way. Possibly then, probably, one might almost say, this little instrument of steel, now in the possession of one who was born at Cedar Lake, was used by La Salle to fasten a letter high up on the little oak. The incident, in connection with which the foregoing was written, was the finding of a curious little steel instrument, by Mr. Ames of Lake Prairie, in the heart of a large oak tree, and his giving it to a teacher of the Lake Prairie school, Miss Mary Jane Ball. In the winter of 1837 and 1838, quite certainly in the latter year, a wild animal of the cat family was chased into a swamp which was then at the head of Cedar Lake. There were no real trees in the swamp, but an almost impenetrable mass of what was called black alder bushes, the water being two or three feet in depth. In the summer these bushes would be covered luxuriantly with wild roses. The swamp was many years ago cleared out and drained, until which time it was known as the wildcat thicket. It took its name from the wild animal that Job Worthington of Massachusetts, then a member of the Ball family, succeeded in capturing and killing, with the assistance of others, in January probably of 1838. Of its dimensions there are no records, but in the eyes of children it was large, and was surely a savage looking animal. There were reports in those early years of other animals of this family, catamounts, perhaps, having been heard at night, making their peculiar cry; but there are no records as yet found of any other having been killed in the county. Two black bears were seen in Lake county in early times, stragglers from the thick woods of La Porte and Porter counties, and in the southeast part of this county have been some large timber wolves; but the native animals of Lake county were seldom dangerous. The bald eagles often visited the Lake of Cedars, and they were grand birds; but they were looking for fish, and not for little children nor for lambs. One lake incident, probably known now, only to this writer, illustrates well the power of imagination. To enable the reader to understand it better it may be needful to state that in 1837 the morus multicoulus or mulberry speculation was at its height in Massachusetts, and that Mr. Lewis Waniner brought some plants or cuttings with him. Cuttings would grow, but needed protection in the winter. Two of the quite young men of East Cedar Lake found one day a little mound of sand at the south end, called the foot, of the lake. They said to themselves, a little Indian has been buried here. Their curiosity was excited. Rather strangely they proposed to dig into it and see. They went to work, digging down into the sand, and my informant reported that soon one of them grew sick. The nearness of the decaying body was too much for him to endure. He quit work and retired to breathe some fresh air. The other young man said he perceived nothing, and kept at work. Soon he reached, buried in the sand for protection from the cold of winter, a bunch of Mr. Waniner's mulberry cuttings. The other youth soon recovered from his nausea. This incident came to the writer so direct that he does not like to question it, knowing as he did so well the actors and the informant, and knowing that one of them had a strong emotional nature. One more incident, slight in itself and yet instructive, presses itself forward for some notice. It is connected with that Cedar Lake Belles Lettres Society which has been named, which Solon Robinson visited, quite surprised to find there some of what Sprague calls "the anointed children of education," instead of the Indians whom not long before he had met there in a conference. There was a youth of the community, somewhat older than the members of the Society who had shown a disposition to make light of their writing everything out, even their discussions and addresses. He did not think he had any need of writing in order to present his thoughts to others. So they invited him to give them an address. He came prompt to the hour, as he no doubt supposed well prepared. He had done no writing. At least he had no manuscript before him. He took his place gracefully upon the floor and opened his address nicely. He proceeded about as far as the off-hand young lawyer who was invited to speak at the opening of a bridge, about two sentences, and then, while all were giving a respectful attention, expecting to hear some oratory, he hesitated, he stopped, he thought, and finally, after one desperate effort, he concluded that undelivered address with the brief peroration, "My thoughts have flown," and sat down. The members were too polite and considerate to show their amusement while he was present, their usual exercises went on, and he made no more fun of those young writers. An attorney-general of the United States once said: "There is no excellence without great labor. It is the fiat of fate from which no power of genius can absolve you." Children learn to skate by trying to skate; they learn to swim by trying to swim; and they learn to speak and write by trying to speak and write. The power to do any of these things well is worth an effort. A man, now no longer living, who was a power for good in Chicago a few years ago, said in substance, that to appreciate beautiful language was partly to command it, and that to command beautiful and forcible language was to have a key, with which no man who wished to rule through opinion could dispense, to the mind and to the heart of man. The Bible itself says, "Words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in pictures of silver." The after life of my young friend, whose thoughts forsook him in his hour of need, was not what man calls a success. And his death, some forty years ago, was peculiarly sad. He had good capabilities, but in times of need they seemed to be of no avail. I certainly will not disclose his name, through my regard for what is due to the living and the dead, but I would here tenderly lay a wreath of mingled respect and grief upon his nameless grave. 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/lakecoun167nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/infiles/ File size: 46.2 Kb