Myron F.'s Forgotten Life, Part III
Myron Fitch Barbour
This is Part III of my tale of the life of my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour, from Family, Fort Wayne and Forgotten Stories: The Life of Myron Fitch Barbour.
On Myron’s Trail
There’s a gap in Myron Fitch Barbour’s whereabouts. Seventeen at his father’s death, in 1829, he was old enough to depart for college. Did he stay for awhile to help his stepmother Sophronia on the farm? Since at no point in later life he ever reported even attending college, he almost certainly did not make use of his father’s money, or possibly it was never freed up from the estate, or had been used up before Roswell’s death.
Five years after she was widowed, Sophronia remarried, to someone Myron knew well. It was Harlow Barber. He was twelve years younger than she, and he was her brother-in-law; her sister Elsie’s husband. For the last twelve years, he was also her nephew, since Harlow was Roswell’s nephew. The story was that as Elsie lay dying, with her youngest child only two, she begged her sister to marry her husband so they could raise the children together. Their marriage was talked-about, of course. But by this time, Myron was no longer living under her roof anyway.
Where was Myron? In the 1830 census, a Myron Barber was living in Portage, Ohio. There was distant family there; Myron’s cousin Rosetta Pettibone Snow, for one, who was married to a respected community leader, Oliver Snow. [1] His aunt Cynthia Barber Sadd lived in Ashtabula. Could this be the same Myron?
In 1833, a Myron F. Barbour was enumerated an early Michigan census in St. Joseph County, Michigan. The following year, during the winter of 1834-35, a Myron F. Barber was teaching school in a log cabin in adjoining Cass County, in the hamlet of Edwardsburg. Edwardsburg is about thirteen miles from South Bend, Indiana, and 100 miles from Fort Wayne. There were other Myron Barbers/Barbours in the country, but Myron’s choice of occupation at this time, and the proximity to where he settled – Fort Wayne, Indiana, makes it highly likely that the teacher in St. Joseph County and Cass County, Michigan, is “our” Myron.
A word is in order about the spelling of Myron’s surname. Myron’s maternal Uncle John, known as John III, was the first in the family to change the name from “Barber” to “Barbour.” It was an affectation, meant to “look more French.”[2] Myron decided to make the change from the plain, English Barber. His brother Milo did not. Likewise, Harlow Barber and his children did not.
Edwardsburg, Michigan, was similar to the Sheldon of his father’s pioneering days. Founded in 1828 and platted in 1831, it was a rough village surrounded by woods. While Myron’s moves can’t be tracked precisely in the years after his father’s death, his trail is definitively picked up in his next move, the most important move of his life, in 1835. Myron was 24 years old when he arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Becoming a Hoosier
A newcomer, John Dawson, described his first impression of the raw, backwoods town around the time Myron first saw it. Making his way through dense forest, he came upon a large plat of ground, just cleared by the town’s leading citizen, Judge Samuel Hanna, with a ‘multitude of stumps so thick as to make horseback riding unsafe through the plat.” When Myron arrived, this area hadn’t yet been cleared.
Local historians would say the town was “not of an imposing character. At best, it would have to be described as straggling and unkempt.” The shops were unattractive, housed in dark and dingy rooms protected by board awnings. “The courthouse square did not include a single imposing building.”
Dawson would later work as a newspaper editor in Fort Wayne, and his detailed description of the town in 1838, three years after Myron arrived, is the best contemporary account of the town. He wrote of what had not changed since earlier accounts: “much evil prevailing, owing to the unscrupulousness resulting from Indian trading, rum drinking, etc.” There was a row of “shed-roofed yellow shanties…rented to obscure families who often made the neighborhood offensive by their quarrels and uncleanness.” There was a trading house “overrun by Indians.” Others reported the pathetic state of the Indians, reduced to drunkenness and depression by the destruction of their way of life. What was new was there were also hundreds of Irish canal diggers working on the Wabash and Erie Canal running through the town; an unsavory lot regarded with suspicion and prejudice wherever they worked. In other words, in some ways things hadn’t changed much since William Suttenfield built his log cabin.
This begs the question: What made Myron decide to try his luck here?
Canal Days
On July 4th that year, with great ceremony, a 32-mile section of the Wabash and Erie Canal between Fort Wayne and Huntington opened, bringing with it a steady stream of commerce and visitors. Boats lined up along the canal bank in the center of town unloading cargoes of whiskey, flour, bacon and potatoes hauled from Dayton and Piqua, Ohio. Rev. James Chute, the first Presbyterian minister in town, wrote in the early 1830s, “This place seems destined by nature to be a place of considerable importance,” adding that most who came there were more concerned with “worldly considerations” and eagerness for the completion of the canal than they were for the salvation of their souls.
There had to be a feeling of great promise, the dream that any enterprising young man could get in on the ground floor and make, if not a fortune, a good living. Myron would have known the impact of the Erie Canal on his home state. And Fort Wayne was livelier than sleepy Sheldon, which lacked a waterway. With a population of 300, Fort Wayne already had a Masonic Hall, billiards room, whiskey shops, brewery, two taverns and a church. There was a tannery, a gristmill, dry goods store, drug store, doctors’ and lawyers’ offices and a new newspaper office.
For all the earlier commentary on the negative aspects of Fort Wayne life, there was something else appealing about the village that Dawson and others noted. The people were very welcoming. “It was a most agreeable place to live in, for true hospitality was a marked feature of society,” Dawson wrote.
A Methodist minister, Charles Titus, who’d come to Indiana from Maine wrote of a trip to the little town where he visited a minister friend. “The inhabitants of Fort Wayne…are exceedingly open-hearted and hospitable. I have never, in all my wandering, spent the same number of days in a strange town so pleasantly as I did here,” Titus said. “There is no cold formality or unnecessary ceremony, but a frank warm-hearted reception wherever I called or was introduced. Never shall I forget the noble people of Fort Wayne. I felt that I was at home and could willingly die with them.”
Myron settled in to make Fort Wayne his home. Now to earn a living. The Indiana State Legislature required all Hoosier counties to open county “seminaries,” as schools were called, but as was often the case in education, it was an unfunded mandate. In Allen County, where Fort Wayne is the county seat, a brick building was constructed for a school back in 1825, and the town council appointed a man to employ teachers on “terms advantageous to the corporation.” But there lay the problem. It was difficult to find teachers.
Teaching was still an entrepreneurial affair. Parents contracted for what and how much they wanted their children to be taught. They also paid for the wood to keep the schoolhouse warm. One of the teachers doing business at the school before Myron charged $9.50 for the school term, which included stove rental and fuel. [3]
These men may have saved money by “boarding ‘round,” as the Yankee women schoolteachers who replaced Myron did.
Myron taught for a single term, in 1835-36. Teaching was regarded as a temporary occupation for a young man until something better came along. It’s unlikely that he “spared the rod” when it came to classroom discipline, as it was noted that when the first female schoolteachers came to town in 1836, they did not discipline by force – in contrast to the men.[4]
But though his days as a Hoosier schoolteacher were brief, he was remembered fondly as “a popular and successful teacher” nearly fifty years later in a volume of town history. He would remain interested in educational issues and would work for the creation of public schools in town. But as was expected, something better did come along.
One thing is clear about Myron: he did not want to be a farmer like his father. Roswell’s will hinted that Roswell knew this was not the path his younger son would take. To be an educated man, a gentleman, one who did not earn his living by his hands and a strong back– that seems to be the route Myron wanted.
Many of Myron’s Sheldon relatives followed him to Indiana, all settling on farms in counties in northwestern Indiana. They included his brother Milo and wife Miranda; his sister Nancy and her husband, Richard Adams,[5] his step-mother Sophronia and her husband, Myron’s cousin Harlow Barber, along with all of Harlow’s children and Myron’s sister Pleaides (Elcy passed away);Uncle Chauncey and Aunt Cynthia Barber Sadd, and cousin Gurdon Hurlburt. If he wanted to farm, he could’ve taken the same path as all these relatives. Clearly, he did not.
Myron instead got a job as a land clerk for the Wabash and Erie Canal Company. His new job existed because of congressional action. Congress encouraged canal building by granting states land. Construction was to be funded, in part, by selling swaths of land on either side of the future canal. It was Myron’s job to staff the land office and keep the records. When Dawson described his first view of town, cataloging the businesses, he singled out Myron.
“There was a boat yard, the canal being dug. Low shanties with the poor were along Barr [Street.] The shanties were very poor indeed, and in most of them lived a hard crowd. In one was a grocery and provisions store. In another was kept the Canal Land Office, with M.F. Barber, clerk.”
Did Myron get a place to sleep in his office shanty in this rough neighborhood? Or did he board with a family? In such a small place, with only about 300 residents, he must’ve met Jane Suttenfield, a tavern-keeper’s daughter, soon after his arrival.
Maybe Myron stayed in Suttenfield House when he first got into town, meeting Jane there. Or he could have met her when attending the town’s only church, First Presbyterian.
What stories Jane could tell of her frontier childhood, had she written them down! Her obituary said she enjoyed telling stories about life in early Fort Wayne, but unfortunately, none of them were shared in the press. While she received some schooling,[6] her days were primarily spent helping her mother with the endless tasks of running a frontier household, and with the inn, Suttenfield House.[7]
Jane hosted at least one party at her father’s “ballroom” - the second story of the log cabin inn -- on April 1, 1835, complete with invitations from a print shop.[8] Her friend Susan Clark, from Myron’s home county, Genesee County, New York, and a schoolteacher herself, helped host the party. If Myron was already in town, he was surely there.
Their courtship could have involved the popular pastimes of the day, as described by yet another Yankee schoolteacher who arrived in Fort Wayne a year or two later, Susan Mann. Sleighing parties, singing parties and tea parties were popular.
Myron and Jane were married less than a year after the “ballroom” party, on March 14, 1836. She was 20 and he, 25. Maybe their wedding day was something like that of Jane’s friend Susan.[9] Susan married in a silk brocade dress with a matching parasol. Even in a little backwater town, young ladies wanted to be up on the latest fashion. Could “Colonel” Suttenfield afford silk for his daughter?
When Susan Mann came to town in 1837, many – if not most – residents still lived in log cabins “which had been chinked and white washed until perfectly smooth on the outside, and were covered with climbing prairie roses,” she wrote in a reminiscence about sixty years later. She paints a very pleasant picture of Fort Wayne homes.
“In the interior there were nice carpets and furniture, the bed in every room with white dimity hangings, tied up with bright ribbons. The open fireplaces with bright brasses were arranged all ready to light, for it was considered healthful to have a fire every evening. Generally two cabins were built near enough to have a hall boarded up between them; over the front doorway was usually a porch covered with vines and arranged with rustic seats. The wild Michigan rose bloomed the whole summer.”
She also wrote of the congeniality of the town, how warm and friendly people were, how quick to welcome the newcomer.
Did Myron and Jane set up housekeeping in a log cabin? Given the housing stock available, especially for a young man just starting a career, it is likely.
Nine months after their marriage, Jane’s father died. Her mother Laura was left with three children still to raise, aged eleven to four, and 16-year old Ann. Laura later described her life as one of “unremitting hardship.” Maybe she struggled to operate the tavern on her own for a few years. Sometime after Ann married at age 18, Laura went to live with Ann and her new husband Ochmig Bird. She would live with them for most of the rest of her long life, moving in with Myron and Jane after Ann and Ochmig passed away.
Meanwhile, her sister Eliza Hanna became the town’s richest woman, living in a Greek revival mansion with twin porticos, on a park-like ten acres. She had as many as five live-in servants and a carriage always at the ready. Why didn't she and her husband help Laura more? Family dynamics can be complicated.
In the absence of first-person accounts, one can imagine Myron and Jane’s early life in a cozy log cabin, attending First Presbyterian, enjoying the social life of the small isolated town. There were lectures given by “traveling scientists or the most intellectual gentlemen residing in the village,” according to Susan Mann, and public debates. Balls and parties were frequent.
What Myron and Jane lacked was something nearly every couple had within a year or year and a half of marriage: a baby.
Early-Married Life ...... Church and Finances
Church was an important social outlet, especially in a very small, “far west” town. Based on Myron’s Congregationalist upbringing and later proof of his church involvement, there is every reason to believe that he and Jane were active participants. But Fort Wayne was settled by fur trappers and traders, and those exploiting Indian trade – people not especially known for their piety. Frontier Fort Wayne, a time defined from about 1790 to the early 1830s, was a raw hamlet with lots of whiskey and no permanent minister for fifty miles. A minister from Jane’s childhood lamented the lack of regularity with which the town folk turned out for Sunday services.
The 1830s were a time of rising anxiety about Catholicism spreading in America. There was a determination among Yankee Congregationalists and Presbyterians to send ministers west to plant churches, and to be sure America did not become a Catholic nation.
When Myron arrived, he met the first man appointed permanent minister, Rev. James Chutes, a Presbyterian. An energetic New Englander, Chutes held services in the courthouse and the Masonic Hall. He struggled to make a living on a very modest stipend from the American Home Missionary Society, a group with the purpose of aiding congregations on the frontier until they could support themselves. Chutes reinstated a moribund Sunday school, started a weekly Bible class, organized a reading room, a choir that met Friday nights for practice, and a tract society. He worked to build up an existing temperance society and doubled its membership. [1]
(Fort Wayne at this time had two temperance societies, one advocating total abstinence from alcohol, and the other calling for moderation.)
The Barbours were involved in church activities, and possibly in one of the temperance societies, as early as the 1830s. The temperance issue was a complicated one especially in such a small town. Church membership was also more complicated in this era than today. It meant agreeing to several strictures, and being censored by a committee of elders if one failed to live up to them. Therefore, some men chose to attend church without becoming members.
Jane’s father, “Colonel” Suttenfield, was one of 44 men in town who pledged money to support Chutes, though Chutes surely felt a bit disillusioned when not a single man actually paid even one dollar toward his support six months after his arrival. The ‘colonel’ was probably not a member of the church since he made his living operating a tavern, and therefore, selling whiskey and other spirits. Jane’s powerful, prominent uncle Samuel Hanna also resisted joining. For him, joining meant risking censure if he indulged in the political toasting that was expected of politicians. And he did indulge.
In 1836, Judge Hanna and his oldest son were carried home after a champagne binge following an election. In a gossipy letter, Susan Mann, who was a member of First Presbyterian, wrote, “Mrs. Hanna has been weeping almost constantly since the election, and as Judge Hanna repents of his conduct, I think he will not give her occasion again.” [2]
Rev. Chutes formally organized First Presbyterian, and a church was constructed on Berry Street, though he did not live to see it. Chutes died of a severe cold on the heels of “bilious fever” in December the year Myron arrived in town.[3] The town then went twenty months without a permanent minister before the remarkable Alexander Rankin was called to the pulpit.
Rankin was described by a contemporary as “undoubtedly the most controversial and controversy-provoking Protestant minister of the period.” Mather describes him as a “fearless advocate of the temperance cause…and the first leader in Fort Wayne to publicly advance the antislavery movement.” Rankin was the brother of noted abolitionist Rev. John Rankin, and an operator of the Underground Railroad. Both published anti-slavery tracts and lectured on the abolitionist cause. Just six months before his arrival in Fort Wayne, Alexander Rankin was beaten by an anti-abolition mob in Dayton. Six months after his arrival, he became a founder of the Indiana Anti-Slavery Society.
The congregation had to know who they were getting before he arrived. Indiana was a deeply conservative state sympathetic to slave owners, but of course this did not rule out anti-slavery advocates. In 1839, construction on the canal halted when the state could not pay contractors, who in turn could not pay laborers. No one was buying canal land. How did this impact the Barbours?
Rev. Rankin wrote it 1840, “It appears as if there was no money in the county. Not one in ten of the people is able to meet his engagements.” Six months later, he reported that things were even worse. “The general distress in money matters here is unparalleled in the history of the country. There is an entire prostration of businesses of all kinds. It has been impossible to collect my salary for the past year.”
Perhaps because of these hard times, these were the years when Myron’s relatives moved to Indiana. His older brother Milo brought his family to Kosciusko County in 1838. Myron’s stepmother Sophronia and cousin Harlow settled in Whitley County. His sister Nancy and her husband Richard Adams moved to Wabash County. A maternal aunt, Cynthia Barber Sadd, settled in the same northeast corner of the state as all the others, as did several cousins, including two whose husbands were Presbyterian ministers sent by the American Home Missionary Society.
During these difficult years, Myron and Jane were still childless. Possibly Jane suffered a series of miscarriages. But at last, in 1840, their first living child was born, a little boy they named William, after Jane’s father. How heartbroken they must’ve been when little William died just days short of his first birthday. William was obviously never forgotten. Nearly fifty years later, they paid to have his body exhumed and moved to Lindenwood Cemetery, a fashionable “upgrade” from the old city cemetery.
Jane was expecting another baby when she buried William. But this one would live. Myron and Jane had been married for over five years when Lucius Taylor Barbour was born. After Lucius, they rapidly completed their family: Sylvia Sophia, born in 1843, Myron Cassius and Ella “Elsie” Ann,[1] born in 1846, and Eliza Jane, “Lida,” in 1849. Jane was only 31 when her last child was born.
Jane lived during a time when women were expected to stay firmly in their “sphere,” as “angel of the house,” and mother. Hopefully, she found happiness in this circumscribed role. She would be tested when Myron would leave her as a single parent for a while at the end of the decade.
As the nation recovered from the economic depression, Fort Wayne thrived and grew dramatically. Change was in the air. The Barbours were witness to fascinating events. In the summer of 1846, town residents gathered on the canal banks as they always did when boats arrived. This time, they saw something different than the usual freight or arriving passengers. Myaamiia - the Miami Indians - had resisted dictates of the Indian Removal Act that had already forced the Pottawatomies from the area. But that summer, soldiers gathered five hundred Miami in Peru, Indiana at gunpoint and forced them onto canal boats. Many of the Miami were weeping, clutching handfuls of soil in their hands. The newspaperman, John Dawson wrote, “Many a bystander was moved to tears by their evident grief.”
There was another departure that year for the Barbours. Jane’s brother, Asa Moore Suttenfield, left for the Mexican-American War. There was a dramatic, patriotic town gathering at the canal to see the men off. Asa Moore would return safely, his unit never seeing battle.[2]
In 1848, Myron and Jane made a bold move from First Presbyterian to the recently-formed Second Presbyterian. This move gives us insight into their beliefs. The Barbours were responding to a split that occurred nationally in the Presbyterian Church, between what was known as Old School and New School. These designations were exactly what they sound like. Old School held to traditional Calvinist views and disapproved of revivals, which were so popular during the Second Great Awakening. New School Presbyterians saw value in revivals, and had a “reconstructed” Calvinism, one that emphasized God’s love rather than His wrath. Later, one of the points of contention was abolition, with the New School firmly on the anti-slavery side, advocating a strong role for the Church in the elimination of the “peculiar institution.”
In 1844, Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother, soon to be “the most famous man in America,” came to Fort Wayne to conduct a revival and create a new church, specifically a New School church. The church was first led by his brother, Charles Beecher, who introduced lively violin-playing during services - a real novelty.
Charles Beecher was a maverick and champion of social justice. He preached tolerance and stressed that there was more than one way of looking at religious truths. He led his congregation in ministering to the poor, and organizing singing schools and discussion groups – welcome diversions in pre-electronic days.
And as Rev. Rankin did, he spoke out against slavery and unjust treatment of blacks in the north. This was at a time when Allen County, seeking more laborers, petitioned the state to encourage German immigration – and voted to exclude “Negroes.” Also at this time, the state adopted a new constitution requiring all “negroes and mulattos” who had arrived in the state prior to November 1, 1851 to register with their county officials. Those arriving afterwards would have to pay fees of not less than $10. The majority of abolitionists did not see a contradiction between opposing slavery and treating blacks as second-class citizens. But Charles Beecher did. This minister really was different.
The Barbours didn’t join his new church right away. Joining meant standing in front of the entire congregation and making promises. It was a solemn ceremony only performed four times a year. Myron and Jane joined in 1848, leaving family and friends behind at First Presbyterian, including Jane’s powerful uncle, Judge Hanna.
There were other big events that year. Jane’s brother-in-law, Ochmig Bird, was elected to the state senate. Fort Wayne was booming, as its population grew from 300 in 1830 to what would become over 16,000 in 1850. The town gained a more cosmopolitan flair as a synagogue opened, and ground was broken for a second Catholic church. Most exciting, the telegram arrived, just four years after its invention. Originally a single wire was strung, one that was frequently down due to weather. What a marvel it must have seemed!
Now, of course, national news could be spread faster. Northeastern Indiana newspapers were soon reporting an historical event in far-off California: the discovery of gold. And Myron was not immune from gold fever.
[1] Also noted as Ella in other sources, including her grave, and a death notice in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Her birth date is given as the same year as Myron C., which would make them twins, or it is listed as a year after him. Since there is no mention anywhere of them being twins, most likely she was born a year later.
[2] Asa Moore left Fort Wayne for at least a decade, settling in Missouri, where he met his wife and where his children were born. His sister Sylvia left Fort Wayne for good after her first marriage in 1833, where she went to Texas. Sometime in the late 1840s, she brought her much younger sister Mary Frances to Texas with her. Mary Frances, her husband and baby son left Texas for the gold rush. She lived out her life in California.
[4] Rankin was also vigorous in taking up the temperance cause, and was disturbed that there was a second group advocating moderation. For him, there could be no compromise. Like the other ministers in town, as there were others by then, he opposed dancing, an activity the Suttenfields enjoyed. [1]
In the fall of 1837, the Presbyterians finally had their new building. It was a forty-foot-square wooden structure with a bell tower and two separate entrances, one for women and one for men. Jane was probably part of the Female Sewing Society, which worked to raise funds for the church’s construction. Yet the building was not paid off, and this became a serious problem when the Panic of 1837 threw the country into a deep economic depression.
This depression meant many men saw their dreams of riches crash to the ground after a period of wild land speculation. The country would not recover till 1841. Adding to the townspeople’s problem was a severe drought in northern Indiana in 1838. Nothing could grow; crops were a complete loss. The water level in creeks dropped so low that flatboats could not pole down to the town with goods. Yet there was enough water in the canal for boats to get through, saving the town from actual starvation.
[1] Not only did William and Laura host dances in their log cabin “ballroom,” but Laura fondly described a July 4th celebration in the army fort featuring a dance.
[1] Temperance was an important cause in an era in which Americans consumed three times as much alcohol as they do today. Later, Myron would have a very personal reason to be involved in temperance issues, as his oldest son struggled with alcoholism.
[2] Mrs. Hanna was Eliza Taylor Hanna, Laura Suttenfield’s younger sister. While Laura later described her life as one of “unremitting hardship,” as noted earlier, Eliza’s husband became the richest man in town. She lived in a grand mansion with many servants. Samuel Hanna would not formally affiliate with the church until 1843. Afterwards, he became a prominent leader in the temperance movement and was president of the Allen County Temperance Society.
[3] Several children were left orphaned when Rev. Chute died, as his wife preceded him in death by two years. The oldest was Richard, who at 15 had already worked for Samuel Hanna for three years at S. & H. Hanna, traders with Indians and dealers in fur. Eliza Hanna took in at least one of the other children, Samuel H. Chute. She and her husband were probably the ones who made it possible for him to graduate from Wabash College, and become a doctor. The oldest sibling, Richard, continued to work in the fur trade, and with Samuel became “dealers in real estate, mill sites and water power” in Minnesota. They both did very well financially.
[4] The Indiana Constitution banned slavery in 1816, but it took an Indiana Supreme Court ruling, Polly vs. Laselle, in 1820 to free all remaining slaves in the state. There were 198.
[1] The Snows were among the earliest converts to the Mormon Church. Their son Lorenzo Snow eventually became president of the church, and the their daughter Eliza Roxcy Snow was considered the most important female leader in the church in the nineteenth century.
[3] This teacher, Jesse Auginbaugh, would be (briefly) Myron’s brother-in-law, who married Jane’s sister Sophia. However, they may never have met. Jesse and Sophia moved to Texas in 1835.
[4] In 1837, a year after Myron’s teaching career came to an end, Indiana passed a law that teachers had to sit before a Board of Examiners to receive a teaching certificate. Curriculum was of lesser importance than the teacher’s ability to maintain order in the classroom. “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” was definitely the prevailing point of view.
[5] Richard was also employed as an engineer for the Wabash and Erie Canal. He was in charge of regulating the introduction of water, and prevention and repair of breaches, along with someone who became part of Myron’s family, a brother-in-law Ochmig Bird.
“Each has under his care 70 miles of canal over which he travels almost constantly. The compensation allowed is three dollars.” [Source: Report of Milton Stapp, Esq., Late Fund Commissioner of Indiana to the General Assembly, December 1841. Indianapolis: Dowling and Cole, State Printers, 1841.
[6] The town built a small brick school in back of the jail known as the County Seminary. This was the building Jane probably attended some school, from male teachers as women teachers didn’t arrive until 1836. A history of Allen County notes that, “Here, for many years, were the young of the place taught to make them wise, and “thrashed” may be, to make them sweet-tempered.”
[7] Suttenfield Street in Fort Wayne is named after William.
[8] See p. 330 in The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne.
[9] Susan Angeline Clark married Samuel S. Morss, who was elected mayor of Fort Wayne in 1847. A year older than Jan, she was from Genesee County, New York – the same county as Myron.
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