52 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



keepers on the beach of the Lake, in the spring of 1834. 

 There was also another of these beach tavern built this 

 year I believe, but whether within our present county 

 limits, I cannot say. 



They were all temporary settlers, located for the pur- 

 pose of administering to the necessities and not much to 

 the comfort of emigrants that began to flock into Illinois 

 by this only known route along the Lake Shore. I have 

 myself slept with more than 50 others in and around one 

 of these little log cabin taverns, and paid $3 — a bushel 

 for oats to feed my horses, and as for my own food I had 

 it along with me, or should have had none, as the tavern 

 had not a mouthful of meat, butter, milk, sugar or any- 

 thing eatable but flour & coffee. And this was a stage 

 house. For in those days, a flourishing line of four horse 

 post coaches were in operation upon this route. Some- 

 thing of the kind had been in operation the season pre- 

 vious along the Old Sac trail, from Detroit to Fort Dear- 

 born. About four miles West of the State line I saw, soon 

 after I came here, where the contractors had built a sta- 

 ble for their horses, but whether the passengers lodged 

 in the same, I cannot say. So much for early staging in 

 this county. And at that time if one had predicted that 

 within a dozen years there would be a daily line of steam- 

 boats from Buffalo to Chicago, he would have been called 

 as visionary as I have been by some, of my present audi- 

 ence, who in those days used to laugh at my predictions 

 of what a dozen years would bring to pass in Lake 

 County, and yet time has proved that the half was not 

 told them. 



In the summer of 1834, most of the land in the county 

 was surveyed by the United States Surveyors, and set- 

 tlers began to "make claims", and four or five families 

 settled that fall. 



One of these I found in October, 1834, in a little shed 

 roof cabin on Sec. 6, T. 35, R. 7, at a place afterwards 

 known as "Millers Mill." His name is already among 

 those that once were, but now are forgotten. 



