THE TUSCARAWAS TO WEST CREEK CONNECTION:
BAUGHMAN AND RITTER FAMILIES
modification of two articles written for the Pioneer History column in the Lowell (Indiana)Tribune
At the time of the 1850 census, there were 411 people in West Creek Township, Lake County, Indiana. In the years immediately following, much of the remaining unimproved land was entered and the population grew rapidly--more than doubling by 1860. Most of this growth came from new settlers. As with many migrations, families and neighbors tended to come together. Thus, there were a large group of settlers from New Hampshire, some of whom have been discussed in early articles in the Lowell, Indiana Pioneer History series by Dick Schmal [e.g. "The Abiel Gerrish Family"].
Another place that contributed significantly to the settlement of West Creek was Tuscarawas, Ohio. Specifically eleven closely related families of Baughmans and Ritters came between 1850 and 1854. These included 57 people who had been born in Pennsylvania or Ohio, plus another 21 infants that were born to the original couples after they arrived. Within a few years, the young adults among the new arrivals began to marry members of other pioneer families such as the Wilkinsons, Haydens, Hayhursts, Taylors, Livingstons, and Plummers. These 78 or so Ritters and Baughmans and their grandchildren must have contributed significantly to the population growth of West Creek during the 1850's.
The first documentation of the migration from Tuscarawas, Ohio to West Creek occurred on 23 Sept 1848 when Jacob Baughman sr. purchased land in West Creek--240 acres in section 32. Jacob and his family did not come to Lake County right away, however. In the 1850 census they were in Porter County, Indiana, sharing a household with their recently widowed son-in-law Daniel Fry and grandson Urias. Daniel Fry and Mary Baughman, daughter of Jacob Baughamn and Sarah Ritter, had married in Tuscarawas, but Mary likely died in Indiana. Perhaps her parents came to live with the Frys in Porter County after her death or to help out during her illness.
The Baughmans stayed in Porter County for only a year or two before moving to their land in West Creek in 1850 or 1851. Daniel Fry joined them in the move, as did Jacob Baughman's son John, who had married in Porter County. Jacob and Sarah's oldest daughter Barbara, who had married Edward Knisely in Ohio, remained in Tuscarawas for a few more years before joining her parents in West Creek.
Jacob Baughman was the son of Christian Baughman, and Jacob's wife Sarah (or Sally) Ritter Baughamn was the oldest of six children of John Ritter. Both Christian Baughman and John Ritter were early pioneers of Tuscarawas County. Although it is not known for certain, it is likely that the Ritters and Baughmans had known each other in Bedford County, Pennsylvania before moving to Tuscarawas in the 1810's. Both families were of German descent, popularly known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
John Knisely, the founder of the town of New Philadelphia, Ohio, had encouraged fellow Bedford County residents to come to Tuscarawas County in Ohio, and the Baughmans were part of that migration. A John Ritter jr. listed in the 1800 Bedford County census is probably the same John Ritter who later settled in Tuscarawas. John's daughter, Sarah Ritter married Christian Baughman's son Jacob in Tuscarawas in 1818, even though the two families lived in different townships relatively distant from each other, further suggesting that the two families may have known each other previously.
The Tuscarawas personal property tax records show that when Sarah's brother George Ritter married in 1824 he went to live with or near the Baughmans in Goshen Township. A few years later, Sarah and George's father John Ritter died, and George returned to his parent's farm in Sandy Township. At that time Jacob Baughman transferred the 1/6th share of his wife's father's land that she had just inherited to George Ritter. George then soon sold his 1/3rd share (including his sister's) to the next younger brother Abraham and moved to Lawrence Township in Tuscarawas, where he purchased 100 acres. George Ritter was joined in Lawrence Township by his younger brothers Jacob and John jr. and remained there for nearly two decades.
At about the same time the Baughmans moved to West Creek, George Ritter sold his land in Tuscarawas County, Ohio and purchased land in West Creek, specifically the NW and NE quarters of Section 29 (320 acres total) on 25 Jan 1851. Thus, George joined his brother-in-law Jacob Baughman almost immediately; perhaps they had planned the relocation together. The historical account of the settling of the area says that George Ritter came with his brother "Abram" in 1851. However family and other accounts suggest that Abraham Ritter did not come until 1854. Most likely, George was accompanied by his youngest brother Jacob Ritter. According to the birthplaces of Jacob Ritter's children, he must have come from Ohio to Indiana between 1850 and 1853.
Abraham Ritter had moved from Tuscarawas to Ashland County, OH by 1850, as had Jacob Baughman's younger brother Samuel Baughman. The two may then have made the move to West Creek together in 1854. The migration of Baughmans and Ritters to West Creek thus was one of a long history of joint moves by these two families.
George Ritter's married daughter Louisa and husband Adam Mock came with or soon joined her parents, as did Abraham's married son John Ritter and daughter Mary Jane with husband Harvey Toms. Thus the eleven families that came from Tusarawas to West Creek were Jacob Baughman, his brother Samuel, Jacob's son John Baughman and son-in-laws Daniel Fry and Edward Knisely; Jacob's brother-in-laws George, Jacob and Abraham Ritter, George Ritter's son-in-law Adam Mock, and Abraham Ritter's son John and son-in-law Harvey Toms. There may have been other related families, but these are the ones known. Further details of the eleven families
Within a few short years, the older children from these families began to marry. There were at least ten marriages by children of these families between 1852 and 1859, and many more in subsequent decades. Marriages of Ritter and Baughman West Creek settlers.
Not all of the Baughmans and Ritters were to remain in West Creek indefinitely. In late 1855, Jacob Baughman and George Ritter died, apparently within weeks of each other. Although both men were relatively young (in their 50's), they were the oldest family heads among each of their respectively siblings. The death of the Baughman and Ritter family heads must have loosened the ties that held the Tuscarawas/West Creek families together.
A family story relates that George had caught a contagious disease while visiting a sick member of his congregation. Perhaps there was a lethal epidemic in West Creek at that time. George had been listed as a "Dunkard" (German Baptist Brethren) preacher in the 1850 Ohio census, and it is seems likely that he tried to form a Brethren congregation in West Creek. But with his death, the effort must have failed, and there are apparently no records of a Brethren church ever existing in this part of Lake County. George's wife, Catharine Shaffer Ritter, may have also died, as we have no records of her after the 1850 Tuscarawas, Ohio census. Other members of the Baughman and Ritter families joined various other churches in the area, but George's sons remained Brethren and soon moved to northern Kosciusko County, Indiana, where a large number of families from Tuscarawas had migrated in the 1840's, and where there were several Brethren congregations. George Ritter's brother John jr. had already settled there, as had Peter Hamman, the brother of Jacob Ritter's wife Sarah Hamman. Peter Hamman became a Brethren pastor in Kosciusko and George's son Abraham Ritter left West Creek to marry Peter's daughter Mariah there in 1858. By the 1860's all four of George's sons were in Kosciusko.
George Ritter's daughters remained in West Creek only a little longer, but they all eventually also left. Mary Ritter Ammerman moved with her husband to Iowa, and Cynthia Toms went with her husband to Kansas. Harvey Toms had married Cynthia Ritter after his first wife Mary Ritter (and Cynthia's first cousin) had died in West Creek. The other three daughters of George Ritter soon joined their brothers in Kosciusko, where they also married. By the mid-1860's all of George Ritter's children had left West Creek.
The Civil War proved a turning point for many of the families. George Ritter's sons did not serve, being exempt as conscientious objectors (the Brethren religion, like the Mennonites and Quakers, is one of the historic "peace" churches). However, three of George's son-in-laws joined the Union Army as did his brother Jacob Ritter and several other sons and son-in-laws of the West Creek Baughmans and Ritters.
Adam Mock died in the Mississippi in 1863 and his widow Louisa Ritter Mock (picture) soon moved to Kosciusko to join her brothers. Of those who survived to return home after serving in the Union army, few remained in West Creek for long. Perhaps exposure to the larger world while in the service or perhaps restlessness engendered by the horrors of war contributed to a desire to move on. John F. Ritter, Harvey Toms and Samuel Baughman went to Kansas; Dr. William Ammerman to Iowa; Andrew Livingston and Thomas Baughman to Michigan; John Baughman to Washington State; Wilson S. Baughman to Missouri. Charles Hoevet and his father-in-law Jacob Ritter remained in the area for two more decades but then migrated to Nebraska. They were joined in NE by Charles DeGroff, widower of Abraham Ritter's daughter Catherine, who had suffered a gun shot in the hip while in the Union Army. By 1880, Jacob Ritter's son Samuel Baughman Ritter was already living in Columbia County, Oregon where he worked as a logger.
A letter that Abraham Ritter wrote from West Creek to his son John F. Ritter in 1869 has been saved by family members. (transcription) John had moved to Kansas a few years after returning from the Civil War. In the letter Abraham talks of sickness, cold weather, poor prices for crops, and the death of their milk cow. Abraham notes that "Ant Salley" (Jacob Baughman's widow) had come to live with them after Abraham's wife became sick. Perhaps one reason so many Civil War veterans moved on was that economic conditions were not good in southern Lake County immediately after the War.
Some of the former West Creek families continued the earlier pattern of moving west together. When Harvey Tom applied for a Civil War Pension from Coffey County, Kansas, a neighbor who filed out an affidavit on his account was none other than Jacob Baughman's son Samuel, who talked of knowing Harvey when he was a strong young man in Lake County. Of course Samuel doesn't mention that he was a first cousin of Harvey wife Cynthia Ritter. Charles DeGroff, settled in Clay Co., NE not far from where Jacob Ritter's daughter Elizabeth and her husband Charles Hoevet were living. A few years later, several of Jacob Ritter's married daughters (including Elizabeth and husband) ended up near each other in Dawes County, Nebraska, after having lived in other places in Iowa and Nebraska.
The families who left maintained some contact with each other. Charles Hoevet married Jacob Ritter's daughter Elizabeth (pictures) in West Creek in 1859 and shared a household with his wife's cousin John Baughman at the time of the 1860 census. The Hoevet's then moved to Yellowhead Township across the state line in Kankakee County, where Charles became a county supervisor and a leader in the Republican party. In 1880 he moved to Nebraska, where descendants can be found today. In a letter (transcription) written to his wife's cousin Abraham Ritter (picture) in Kosciusko in 1887, Charles asks who has married since he was last in Kosciusko, asks about Abraham's recent trip to Michigan, and asks whether Abraham had been to visit his land in Missouri. He also notes that Abraham would find southern Missouri more suitable than Nebraska since "you could hardly get along without timber, being so used to it, but we don't miss it for I can fence cheaper & quicker with wire than you can with rails." Clearly, these families remained familiar with each other even when living 900 miles apart.
Although many of the Ritter and Baughman families moved on after the 1850's, a core remained in or near West Creek. Years later, Buelah Plummer Brannon wrote how her grandmother Katherine Baughman Plummer's (picture) home served as the Thanksgiving gathering place for numerous Baughman, Plummer, Knisely and Hayden relatives. Katherine's brother Jacob Baughman spent two extended periods on the West Coast prospecting and mining for gold and silver (see Gold Fever), but always returned to West Creek or Lowell, where he invested his hard-earned mining profits to become relatively wealthy. When he died he left money to his sister's granddaughters as well as his own granddaughter. Buelah Plummer went on to earn a degree from Northwestern University in 1911 and to teach at several woman's colleges before returning to marry and live in Lake County.
Many Hayden-Knisely descendants (from four marrriages between daughters of Barbara Baughman Knisely and sons of early pioneer Nehemiah Hayden) remained in West Creek or nearby Kanakakee. Two of Jacob Ritter's daughters married into the Hayhurst family of Kankakee County, and one granddaughter, Bessie Hayhurst, then married a Hayden and remained in Lowell.
According to one family account, Louisa Ritter Livingston (picture) divorced her husband Andrew to remain on the West Creek land she inherited from her father Abraham Ritter, rather than follow Andrew to Michigan.
The children and grandchildren of the Baughman and Ritter West Creek settlers who remained in the area eventually joined their parents and aunts and uncles in the West Creek, Lake Prairie, or Lowell Cemeteries. When I visited the West Creek Cemetery a few years ago there were flowers on Louisa Livingston's grave. It has been just over 150 years since Jacob Baughman and George Ritter led their families from eastern Ohio to West Creek. Although both Jacob and George died less than five years later, the flowers remind us that after 150 years there are still members of their families in the vicinity of southern Lake County.