Last weekend’s bike ride was in part to search for places connected with Frederick Garver, who served in the militia from Cass County during the Black Hawk war. I’ve started a WikiAtlas page for him

The Cass Counties have information about him. Actually, it’s Frederick Garver Sr. that they have information about. It was probably his son who served in the militia. But I don’t have any information that says where he lived. He owned a fair amount of land, so it’s hard to narrow it down.

I tried to play detective using plat maps that were made long after he was gone. A map from 1860 shows residences. Garver was gone for 25 years by then, but the site of his old log cabin might have become the site of one of the residences then existing, and some of those homes are still standing.

I can no longer retrace my original line of reasoning, but somehow my attention was drawn to this particular location on what is now Redfield Road. In 1860 it was owned by a Bacon; the man Garver had sold out to was a Bacon. Bacon also had extensive land holdings, so it was hard to say which building site he lived at.

But a 1928 plat map showed only one parcel still owned by a Bacon, and it was this same one I had already had my eye on. I was thinking that maybe the descendants had over the years sold off the land except for the home place. And if that was a site good for Bacon’s home, maybe it was one that had been first picked out by Garver.

It was a pretty flimsy line of reasoning, but it was good enough for a bike ride to check it out. The morning of day two had been an unsuccessful search for Garver’s grave site in Elkhart County, Indiana. In the early afternoon, I got to Redfield Road and found that sure enough, there was still an old house at this location. It’s an old Greek Revival house that looks very much like it predates the U.S. Civil War.

I didn’t see anyone out and about to ask about it, though. Whether or not it has anything to do with Frederick Garver, I called this one a success.