Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900A regional history written by Timothy H. Ball . . . .
Source Citation:
Ball, Timothy H. 1900.
Northwestern
Indiana from 1800 to 1900 or A View of Our Region Through the Nineteenth Century.
Chicago, Illinois: Donohue and Henneberry. 570 p.
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA FROM 1800 TO 1900
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE.
Lake County
came quite near losing about seventy square miles of area in the fall of 1860.
From the records of the Commissioners' Court of
Lake County, it appears that on Friday, September 7, 1860, according to Order
No. 19. George Earle presented a petition duly signed in which the petitioners
asked that a part of the territory of Lake County be set off to Porter County.
The boundaries were thus described: Commencing at the southeast corner of
section 4, township 35, range 7 west, thence west to the southwest quarter of
section 3, township 35, range 8, then north on the section line to the northwest
corner of section 34, township 36, range 8, then west to the range line between
ranges 8 and 9, then north to Lake Michigan, then along the lake easterly to the
line between Lake and Porter Counties, then south to the place of beginning.
There were present at that session only two Commissioners, John Underwood and
Adam Schmall. The petition was ordered to be filed and the case was continued.
December 7, 1860, only the same two Commissioners were present. Order No. 12
says, in regard to this petition, there being a difference of opinion be-
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tween the two members of the Board who were present, the
decision was deferred until the March term of 1861. And it is said in the
records, "See Revised Statutes, Vol. 1, Chap. 20, section 8, page 225."
From information furnished by Mr. John Underwood,
who is not now living, the decision of the case was postponed by his suggestion,
as he was not in favor of granting the petition, and in the winter the situation
of affairs was brought to the attention of the representative
from Lake at Indianapolis, probably Hon. Bartlett
Woods, a man ever true to what he regards as the interest of Lake County, or
Hon. E. Griffin, and by act of the Legislature the law as it then stood, which
authorized such a setting off from one county to
another, was changed, -- see act March 1, 1861, -- and when the Commissioners
met March 6, 1861, they passed the following: Order No. 18. "It is ordered that
said petition be dismissed."
Thus ended the effort to form, it was supposed, a new county, presumably with
Hobart for the county seat.
According to that History known as "Porter and Lake," (page 56), an effort had
been made in 1859 to form a county to be called Linn,
from territory then being a part of Porter and a part of La Porte
counties, Michigan City to be the county seat. Petitions signed by more than two
thousand citizens were presented to the Porter County Commissioners requesting
this setting off of a part of Porter into a new county.
This the Commissioners declined to do. "The Commissioners of La Porte County
disposed of the
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question in a similar summary manner and the plan was abandoned." "Porter and
Lake," page 57.*
As years have passed along there has been something printed, something said, in
regard to the removal yet again of the county seat of Lake County.
The following paragraph is from the report made at
the Old Settlers' anniversary in 1891:
"In the winter of 1890 and 1891 a strenuous effort was made by some Hammond
citizens to have a bill passed through the State Legislature leading to a
removal of the county seat to Hammond. Crown Point citizens and some in other
counties, especially in La Porte County, worked diligently against the bill, and
it was at length defeated. No little excitement was awakened in the county by
this attempt of the young manufacturing city to take,
from the center of the county to the border of the city of Chicago, the
county seat of Lake."
An effort to quite materially change Commissioners' districts in Lake County was
made by some young men of Hammond.
This is the record, also from a report made at an
Old Settlers' anniversary:
"In March of this year, 1898, a petition from
Hammond with 734 signatures was presented to the County Commissioners asking for
the re-districting of the county so that the three Commissioners' districts
__________
*I have had no access to the records in Porter County to verify the above
statement; but as the law was in 1859 the Commissioners had not much
discretionary power. At least it was Mr. Underwood's opinion that, if the law
had not been changed, the Lake County Commissioners would have been obliged, in
March, 1861, to grant Mr. Earle's petition. Only two Commissioners being present
in December, 1860, and the action of one of them in the matter, saved to Lake
County what is now Hobart Township and a large part of Calumet. T. H. B.
505
should run north and south through the county in strips about five miles wide
and thirty miles long, instead of continuing, as they have done, to run across
the county from east to west. A day was set by the
County Board for hearing the matter and W. B. Reading of Hammond advocated the
measure. Remonstrances were presented signed by 1,311 citizens of one central
and southern parts of the county; the Commissioners' Court room was well filled
with interested citizens; Hon. B. Woods spoke against, the petition in behalf of
the remonstrants; and the Commissioners declined to grant the petition."
Hon. Bartlett Woods, a native of England, becoming a citizen here in 1837, now
over eighty years of age, has been for many years the foremost man in Lake
County to advocate, even if he stood alone, what he believed to be just and
right. A number of good and true men whom Lake County has sadly missed in her
civil and political affairs, have passed away, leaving him, among men in public
life, almost alone of his generation; but in this particular of battling bravely
for what he regards as right, he may quite well be called "the noblest Roman of
them all."
Some disposition in past years was manifested in a part of La Porte County for
the removal of the county seat from the center to
a corner, from La Porte to Michigan City but
although Michigan City became a larger place than La Porte that has not seemed
to be any good reason for removal. Good judgment, and that common sense that
lets "well enough alone," seem likely, in La Porte County, to prevail.
The question of changing the location of the county seat has also had some
disturbing influence in Newton County; but here the apparent propriety was quite
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different from what
it was in Lake and La Porte, as here the suggestion was to remove
from near a corner to a
locality nearer the center, that is, from
Kentland to Morocco. Kentland has a much finer court
yard than Morocco could furnish, but the buildings are not much, and the town is
not specially growing. In general, public sentiment is not favorable to such
changes which must injure the interests of some while promoting the interests of
others.
If communities, as well as individuals, would carry out in all such matters the
principle of the "Golden Rule," would actually do to others as, in a change of
circumstances, they would like to have others do to them, there would be much
less strife and discord in communities and neighborhoods.
Some one once wrote, "Oh! it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is
villainous to use it like a giant." It is not necessary always for big fish to
eat up little ones. But if they do, large towns should not wish to injure
smaller ones.
NAVIGATION OF
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA FROM 1800 TO 1900
FRONT MATTER AND DEDICATION
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
- GENERAL OUTLINES
CHAPTER 2
- THE INDIANS
CHAPTER 3
- THE EARLY SETTLERS
CHAPTER 4
- WHAT THE EARLY SETTLERS FOUND
CHAPTER 5
- PIONEER LIFE
CHAPTER 6
- COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER 7
- OUR LAKES AND STREAMS
CHAPTER 8
- LAKE MICHIGAN WATER SHED
CHAPTER 9
- TOWNSHIP AND STATISTICS
CHAPTER
10 - RAILROAD LIFE
CHAPTER
11 - POLITICAL HISTORY
CHAPTER
12 - THE WAR RECORD
CHAPTER
13 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
14 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
15 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
16 - SUNDAY SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
17 - TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF NEWTON AND JASPER
CHAPTER
18 - TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF WHITE, PULASKI AND STARKE
CHAPTER
19 - VILLAGES, TOWNS AND CITIES OF LAKE
CHAPTER
20 - VILLAGES AND TOWNS OF PORTER
CHAPTER
21 - VILLAGES, TOWNS AND CITIES OF LA PORTE
CHAPTER
22 - EARLY TRAVELS
CHAPTER
23 - PUBLIC SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
24 - PRIVATE AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
25 - LIBRARIES
CHAPTER
26 - OTHER INDUSTRIES
CHAPTER
27 - SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER
28 - THE KANKAKEE REGION
CHAPTER
29 - DRAINING MARSHES
CHAPTER
30 - ANIMALS AND PLANTS
CHAPTER
31 - MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS
CHAPTER
32 - COURT HOUSES
CHAPTER
33 - ARCHAEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS
CHAPTER
34 - BIRTH PLACES OF PIONEERS
CHAPTER
35 - McCARTY
CHAPTER
36 - ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE
CHAPTER
37 - ALTITUDES
CHAPTER
38 - MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS
CHAPTER
39 - SOME STATISTICS
CHAPTER
40 - WEATHER RECORD
CONCLUSION
Transcribed by Steven R. Shook, April 2012