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Color Code: o Black—Article is complete. o Red—Article needs completed. Copy is not all of article o Blue—Article has photo to be inserted o Green—Word has been changed to reflect proper spelling October 3, 1935—Old Residents Aged More Than 90, “Remember” o Attending Syracuse’s 100th Birthday party will be five ladies who don’t mind admitting they are more than 30 years of age. Each one is more than 90 years of age. They are: Mrs. Minerva Benner, who was 90 last Monday; Mrs. Josephine Woods who is 93; Mrs. Margaret Wehrly who was 90 last summer; Mrs. Jane Bachman who is 92; Mrs. Susan Nicolai, who will be 93 in November. Mrs. Benner, daughter of Preston Miles, St., who died 50 years ago, came with her parents to Syracuse, 82 years ago, by covered wagon, from Miamaburg, O. She remembers the children in the party playing in back of the wagons all day and sleeping in them at night and their parents sleeping beneath the wagons. She said her parents, and her father’s brothers and half brothers and a man named Seese, and their families were in the party. Mrs. Benner said much of the way was cut through timber, before the lake and Syracuse was reached. In 1864 she married James Benner who went to the Civil War. She remembers that at that time Syracuse received mail by wagon from Goshen, but twice a week, and the returning soldiers reached Goshen without word being sent to Syracuse so had to walk to town. She said when they reached the Huntington hill there never was such a shout as they set up, and which residents returned, but when they reached Main street for a community reunion, it was as sorrowful as it was joyful—because there were so many who did not come back. Mrs. Benner remembers the Indians when she first came here, with her parents. She remembers when the first burial was made in the Syracuse cemetery—it was a baby, she said, and the baby was buried at the foot of a tree, because it was thick forest there then, where the cemetery is now located. She said her husband, whose people had come here two years after her parents had made the journey, used to move houses in Syracuse, and that for a long time Mrs. Jane Bachman’s house was the furthest one down Huntington street, but then her husband moved theirs to the present C. E. Brady lot. She said she remembers standing her children on the fence around the yard, to see the “iron horse” go past, as there was nothing to block their viewing the railroad tracks from there. She said she remembers the old logs of Crosson & Ward’s mill standing in the air, after part of the mill had sunk, and that her children used to play on these logs, before these finally went down in the quicksand too. Mrs. Josephine Woods is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Baker, and her parents came to Indiana in a covered wagon, when she was six years old. They settled on a farm which edged on Papakeetchie lake. She was married to Milton Woods in 1861, and lived on the farm which is still known as the Woods farm, on the north side of Lake Wawasee, edging on Johnson’s bay. She too, remembers the Indians. She taught school before she was married, and Rev. George Thomas, one of the early preachers in Syracuse, performed the marriage ceremony when she and her husband were wed. Mrs. Margaret Wehrly was Margaret House when she came from Ohio, 71 years ago. She was married to William B. Wehrly and lived east of town. She remembers this country before the Big Four trains ran to Milford and before the B. & O. railroad went through Syracuse. Mrs. Susan Nicolai was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. David Fry. Mrs. Susan Fry Nicolai was born in Montgomery County, O., Nov. 12, 1843. She came to Elkhart county, Indiana, with her parents, when she was four years old. They first lived in Benton, but only for a short time. Then her father purchased the farm now owned by Carl Stettler and Orba Bobeck, north of town near the Hex school. She lived there with her parents until she was 19 years old, when she married Michael Nicolai, and lived on her father’s farm, all but about a year and a half when she and her husband lived on a farm near Wakarusa. They returned to the old farm home, where she lived until 15 years ago when she came to Syracuse to live with her daughter, Mrs. Fred Hinderer. Mrs. Jane Bachman, aged 91, is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Evan Miles. They came to Indiana from Ohio about two years before Mrs. Benner came with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Preston Miles. She said they rode in a covered wagon, and on reaching Fort Wayne, roads became so nearly impassible that they left much of their equipment there, to be called for on a later trip. Levi Bachman lived at the home of her uncle, Elhanan Miles in Syracuse. When she was 20 years old they were married. Mr. Bachman was a carpenter, so they made their home in Syracuse. They first lived in the house Nathan Insley now lives in, and when they wanted to build a home of their own, could not obtain a clear title to a lot on that street so bought the lot and built the house in which Mrs. Bachman still lives, on Huntington and Carol streets. She said there was a fence which extended across what is now Huntington street; that was as far as the street came. Mrs. Bachman said she remembers attending school in Ohio before coming to Indiana, but after they moved to their farm near Solomon’s Creek, it was several years before she attended school again, and then she came to Syracuse to school. Mrs. Bachman’s grandfather presented each of his children with 80 acres in Indiana, as wedding gifts when they were married, but Evan Miles did not come to Indiana to take up the land for several years after his marriage. Mrs. Bachman can remember her folks killing many deer on their Solomon’s Creek property; she said often they had tubs full of deer meat to eat. She can remember bringing ginseng to town to sell it for medicine, much as “The Harvester,” Gene Stratton-Porter’s story of an early Hoosier. She can also remember when they first moved to Indiana that the family became so ill with ague that sometimes one could not get up to get the others a drink of water. June 10, 1909—A History of the Lake and Town o A year ago last summer, at the annual meeting of the Wawasee Protective Association, a committee to collect and collate the history of the lake was appointed, of which Geo. W. Miles, president of the Association was made chairman, with a view of having it published for the benefit of the association’s members. Mr. Miles has lately taken up this work in earnest, and has agreed to favor the Journal by allowing it to publish the results of his labors, and to include a history of the town and community as well as the lake. Indeed, he says, the two are so bound up together that it would be almost impossible to write the history of one without including the other. We publish on this page this week the second paper furnished us by him. These he promises to continue at intervals until the years from the first settlement of the country down to the present shall have been covered, and he will thank anybody having knowledge of the old settlers and their families to communicate the same to him. The work of writing the history of a community covering seventy or seventy-five years is quite an undertaking, as the collecting of data and personal reminiscences of former residents takes time and patience. Mr. Miles is thoroughly competent to write of matters pertaining to Syracuse, Turkey Creek township and Wawasee lake, and none of our readers can afford to miss an issue of the Journal containing one of his papers, and those who are not now subscribers would do well to become such at once. We are sending out this week sample copies to some of the members the Wawasee Protective Association, who, if they wish to read the history of the lake as we shall April 28, 1910—Further Reminiscences of Henry Conrad—of the Lake as a Summer Resort o Two months ago I gave you a pen picture of Henry Conrad, of Conrad’s Island, Lake Wawasee, as I remembered him. And you will remember that I said that if I had a picture of him I would use it to illustrate my description, but that I doubted whether he had ever had one taken. Within two days after the issue of the Journal appeared in which that paper was printed there was handed to me not only one, but two different likenesses of Mr. Conrad; one by Mrs. Frank Younce, daughter of the late Jacob and Sarah Ott, and the other by Mr. Daniel Searfoss, our efficient night policeman. Little Miss Ott (now grandmamma Younce) was one child who was not afraid of Mr. Conrad. She knew him better than did the rest of us, for he was a frequent visitor at her home, when kindnesses were shown him.