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Author: clawsons
Surnames: McGeorge, Hatton, Richardville, Langlois
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.indiana.counties...
Message Board Post:
I suspect that the trading post was there when the first white settlement began in
Sheffield township in 1823. I think this is why it began where it did, because the
settlers could buy necessities from the trading post and because the Indians who lived in
the nearby village were mostly half French. It seems to have been owned by Peter Langlois.
Several circumstances suggest that there was a trading post at Wyandot, and that it was
owned by Peter Langlois, to use the anglicized spelling of the time. Already mentioned is
the possibility that the presence of a post would explain why white settlers chose the
site as destination. In 1827, McGeorge listed "J Page" (the already mentioned
James Paige) and "Langlois" as sureties on a bid to build a house and shop for
the Indians on Tippecanoe River. The association of McGeorge and Paige with Langlois
further connects Langlois with the area. Again, the business association of these men
suggests they may have lived or worked near each other. Alameda McCollough, curator
emeritus of the Tippecanoe County Historical Society for whom the library is named, in a
talk prepared for delivery in 1978, quoted Thomas Waters, pioneer of Tippecanoe County, as
saying that in 1828, when he married Elizabeth DeHart, he was employed by Peter Longlois
at his trading post at the Wyandot village!
. In a Waters family biography published in DeHart's Past and Present (1909), the
employer is called Simion Langlois, half breed and chief of the Potawatomi. Eleanor
Ilgenfritz in 1934 reported that "Longlois the Indian chief" had a trading post
there at the east end of the Wyandott Cemetery.*** Ilgenfritz also reports that
"Longlois the Indian chief" was foreman for a year at a "corn
cracker"**** located at Wyandott. This would have been about 1828-30 (Reser). In a
January 10, 1939 letter, Elmer Waters reports that "Simon Peter Langlois took up his
residence in Wyandotte in 1827 or 28," abandoning the trading post on State Road 25.
Waters also refers to his grandmother's accounts of the Potowatomi and Langlois (qtd.
in "Historical Markers"). About the same time Thomas Waters, Peter Goldsberry,
and a Mr. Eaton claim to have had a government contract to deliver meat to the Indians,
who valued the hides as much as or more than the meat (Ilgenfritz; DeHart).
It is not clear who operated the trading post. It was probably not Peter Langlois himself.
It might have been one of his sons or even Thomas Waters.
In 1829 Samuel McGeorge purchased the reserve. In 1832 the residents built a fort there
for protection during the hysteria surrounding the Black Hawk War, but there was no
activity in the area. It is thought the Indians, probably Pottawatomi, left about 1837-38
when that tribe was relocated. Living where they did, they would not have been required to
go, but it seems they did.
There were a grist mill and a saw mill along the Wild Cat creek near the Indian village.
The white settlement of Wyandott grew around the grist mill and the saw mill and
prospered into the 1860s. A post office was established in 1849. There was a meat packing
operation that shipped products through Lafayette. Other businesses included stores,
coopers, and blacksmiths. There was a cemetery at the top of the hill, with a brick yard
nearby. The district school was also at the top of the hill. The prosperous community
began to decline when it was bypassed by the railroad and the milling business faced
competition from more modern steam mills. The mill closed in 1871, the post office in 1872
(Hatton; Grimes and Ricks). The last vestiges of the town disappeared in the early 1900s.
Today the area is a patch of woods among the homesites and fields of the modern community.
Housing development is growing along the high ground above the location of the old town,
and will probably eve!
ntually return to the old town site.
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