Similarly honored

In November of 1834 John Adams came to Johnson Township and entered his land, on the fifteenth. The county history published in 1882 records that, and then adds something in brackets.

entering his land (on the shore of the lake that took its name from him)

That is all of it. The book does not stop to explain. It knew, so it said so, in a parenthesis, and went on to Levi Wright's cabin.

The county's books do this with lake names. When they know, they say it in so many words. When they do not, the grammar changes, and it changes in the same few ways every time.

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In Newbury Township the 1882 history lists the early settlers near the site of the Dunkard Church.

James Cotton, a carpenter, who gave his name to Cotton Lake, and Samuel Hood, who is similarly honored.

Two lakes in one sentence, the second on the strength of the first. The same chapter says it again in general terms: Cotton, Hood and Cass lakes "commemorate the names of the earliest settlers near them."

That sentence has a man missing from it. Cotton is James Cotton and Hood is Samuel Hood, but no settler named Cass appears in any of the four books. Every Cass in them is somebody else: Lewis Cass on the ballot, or a railroad company's man in a dispute over bonds. The book gives the reason for the name and cannot produce the person.

The 1920 history does the same for Springfield Township from the other side. In the biography of Stratton L. Appleman it says

A lake in Springfield Township, LaGrange County, takes its name from a pioneer of the family

and does not say which pioneer. Leonard Appleman was in the township before 1839 and laid out the village of Springfield in 1842. John H. Appleman put everything he had, sixty dollars, down on eighty acres there in 1840. Either would do, and the book does not choose.

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Then the verb changes.

Robert J. Oliver built the Oliver House in LaGrange and ran it as a hotel until 1892. The same building was still a hotel under another name in 1910. His sketch in the 1893 county atlas says his parents brought him to the county in 1838,

settling in Johnson township on what was henceforth known as Oliver Lake.

Henceforth known as. The atlas does not name his parents, and it does not say the lake was named for them. It says that after they came, that is what it was called.

Daniel Martin was in Johnson Township in the fall of 1834 and helped raise Levi Wright's cabin, alongside John Adams. The 1882 history adds that "he entered no land." The 1920 history, in the biography of his grandson Arthur W. Stoner, says he acquired land in the township

on the banks of the lake always afterward known as Martin Lake.

Always afterward known as. The 1882 book had the other form to hand. It used it for John Adams in the same passage, and did not use it for Daniel Martin.

Andrew J. Atwood and his wife Sarah came from New York in 1853, and in the 1920 history they

settled on the shore of a little lake which for many years has been known as Atwood Lake.

The 1882 history already calls it Atwood Lake. The 1920 one does not say whether the lake had that name before they arrived or took it after.

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Below that, the books stop connecting the name to the lake at all, and only put a family near it.

William Dallas came from Ohio to Clearspring Township in October of 1836 with his sister and fourteen motherless children, and in 1837 built a grist mill on the river near his home. The home stood near where the Elkhart comes out of a group of lakes, "the largest of which is called Dallas Lake." Is called. Not took its name, and not known as.

Michael Westler bought 104 acres in Section 29 of Johnson Township in 1848. The 1882 history gives his farm, his milling, his lumber trade and his three marriages. It names Westler Lake in its first chapter. It never puts the man and the lake in the same paragraph.

The Clines came to Bloomfield Township in 1854, and William Cline bought 320 acres. The 1882 history names Cline Lake in the same township, and says nothing about where the Cline land lay or whether the lake had the name before them.

Allen Blackmun came to Milford Township in the spring of 1839. Blackmun Lake is in Milford. The book gives both and joins neither.

And in the 1882 list of Johnson Township settlers before 1840, between Thomas Higgins and James Oliver, is "Mr. Olin." No first name, and nothing more about him. The lake beside Oliver is Olin Lake, which the same book spells Olen. The man and the water are a few lines apart and nothing joins them.

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Sloan Lake is in Bloomfield Township, and there is no Sloan in Bloomfield in any of the four books.

There was a W. D. Sloan, a justice of the peace in Clearspring Township in 1849, and there was a Sloan schoolhouse in Clearspring and a burying ground beside it that people called Sloan's. None of it is in Bloomfield. The lake has a name, and the books have nobody to give it.

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There is one lake the books are certain about, and it is the one where they are least certain of everything else.

Shipshewana Lake is named for the Potawatomi chief. The 1882 history says so twice and the 1920 history once, and none of the three hedges the name. Every one of them hedges the grave.

who sleeps on the north shore of the lake which commemorates him, some say, although it is claimed by others that his grave was some distance east of the lake.

That is the 1882 book's first chapter. Its Newbury chapter says he is buried somewhere on the banks, and that a woman who claimed to know the place had died and taken it with her. The 1920 book says he is

said to be buried around the lake at some now unknown spot.

For the settlers, the books knew where they had lived and were careful about the name. For Shipshewana they knew the name, and nobody could say where he was.