The sheriff's granddaughters

My step-grandmother's grandfather Samuel James Lowe (1798-1851), an immigrant from England, was sheriff of Cook County in the 1840s. He had two wives and thirteen children.

In the September issue of Indiana Genealogist, I tell the story of his two youngest daughters -- Mary Alice (Lowe) Amerman 1848-1943 and Kate (Lowe) Gilbert 1850-1928. They grew up in Onarga, Iroquois County, Illinois, and spent most of their adult years in and near East Chicago, Lake County, Indiana.

They were among the pioneers there: Kate's husband published the first newspaper and was the first postmaster, and was involved in a real-estate boom that somehow passed them by. Northwest Indiana was a lightly settled frontier 117 years ago, but a frontier with a difference: it was just a train ride away from Chicago's Loop.

This family has a lot more stories but they won't fit into an article!


“Pioneering in Chicago, Onarga, and Northwest Indiana: Lowe, Amerman, and Gilbert Families,” Indiana Genealogist 28 (September 2017): 5-16.

Remembering the Lincoln Highway

Arcadia Publishing has published Cynthia Ogorek's The Lincoln Highway around Chicago, and she'll be talking about it Saturday, May 10, at a meeting of the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association in Schererville (Lake County), Indiana. Details at Region Roots: Northwest Indiana Genealogy, a blog from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville.

Blogging in the act of finding ancestors

If I actually read all the good blogs that describe the proprietor's own research struggles, I'd never get any work of my own done! But ever since I read this post from Jennifer's "But Now I'm Found: Genealogy in Black and White" from Chicago/NW Indiana, I've kept her widget on my protopage home page collection for easy checking:

"I am so excited!" she wrote. "I received an email from someone who had the actual receipt naming my great-great-great grandfather."

Actually, the receipt doesn't just name her great-great-great grandfather Solomon; it's a receipt for him acknowledging his being sold.

Read the whole thing.