The following is what the Cass County history published in 1882 had to say about him.

F. Garver, a native Virginian, who moved his family into this township in 1827 or 1828, was possessed of many of the-superstitious and idiosyncrasies possessed by our forefathers.’ He lived in his log cabin for nearly a month without any roof, subject to the rain and inclemencies of the weather, waiting for the moon to be in the right position in the zodiac before shingling his cabin, so that the shakes would not warp up. In 1834, he disposed of his farm of nine eighty-acre lots, to Cyrus Bacon, for $6,000, and moved to the thick wood in Indiana, miles away from any habitation, for he loved solitude, and the numerous neighbors in this township, coupled with the fact that a road was surveyed past his dwelling, was so distasteful to him that he sold out. One house within five miles, and that a tavern, where whisky could be obtained, constituted his idea of a paradise.

Just on the face of it it doesn’t seem plausible. Of the 720 acres he owned, he bought 440-some from the government at $1.25 an acre. He probably made a good profit if he sold all his land for $6,000. He doesn’t sound like a loner who was going to let superstition and eccentricity keep him from managing his property well. He had a large family. He doesn’t sound like the anti-social, hard-drinking recluse the writer is portraying him to be.

There may yet be more to be learned from a careful reading of the county history. In particular, I’m curious about that business with the road. I wonder if the person telling these tales about Frederick Garver didn’t himself have something to do with the road commission.

When he left Cass County, Garver didn’t go far — only 16 miles as the crow flies.

As best I can tell, this is the location of his farmstead. The area may have been wooded, but it’s only 5 miles from Goshen, which already by 1832 had enough settlers to build a fort for protection against Indians. It’s not as though he had gone all that far away from people.

He would have had a couple of streams to cross to get to Goshen. This farm is on the west edge of the Yellow Creek valley, and Goshen is the east bank of the Elkhart River. So that may have isolated him somewhat.

Here’s a view from the bridge over Yellow Creek. The farm is in the distance. It’s a pretty setting for a farm, no? That bottomland probably has grown some good crops over the years.

Whatever the rest of the story about Frederick Garver, he seems to have picked a nice setting for his new farm.

The destination for the second day’s ride from Bremen was on the south edge of LaGrange county, 50 miles from camp if I went the short way, which I did not.

First I wanted to look for the grave of Frederick Garver, west of Goshen. I had come here back in early June and had looked at a lot of cemeteries, but I somehow neglected to ride an extra mile to the place where he had actually lived.

On the way I saw this Amish ballfield. At least I presume it’s Amish. There were some Amish homes right next to it. (The farm in the background of the photo is not one of them.) And Amish people sometimes play baseball. (What was new to me this year was seeing several basketball courts in Amish schoolyards. But I later discovered from this blog entry that maybe it was new only to me.)

What is the contraption in deep centerfield, though? An Amish batting cage? That’s my best guess.

Speaking of guessing, it was just a couple of miles before reaching this point on my ride that I had stopped at an intersection to refold my maps in preparation for my exploration of Frederick Garver country. An older man on a moped stopped to ask if I needed help, and we got to talking. (I like roads where one can stand out in the middle and talk without there being any cars to get out of the way of.) I told him about my search for cemeteries in the area, and he had some useful information for me.

At one point he said, “You’re about 60, aren’t you?” I told him not quite, but that I would be 59 in another month. That was a pretty good guess just the same. He said he was 65. It has happened too often, though, that older guys guess my age too high. I remember the time when I had just turned 40 and a much older man at work was surprised — he had thought I was 50.

One of the reasons I do long-distance bicycle riding is it makes me feel young again. It doesn’t exactly help the cause when I hear things like that.

So I was pleased Friday in the lunchroom when a young woman — one of the grad students — said, “How old are you, anyway? I didn’t think you were that old!” And one reason she gave was my bicycling.

She asked because in the question-and-answer period after the morning seminar I had mentioned that the techniques now being promoted were exactly the same as what was being promoted in the teaching methods classes I had taken 39 years ago. So I told the young woman that I had been 20 at the time. I also thought to thank her for the mistake. Her question was a welcome change, because there were times this past spring when bicycling didn’t make me feel younger.

I’ll get back to Frederick Garver in the next post or so.

Actually, I’m not sure the issue is “like.” Ten years ago on a ride I met an Amish man at a historical house. He was out trimming trees in the front yard. I asked if he was the owner, expecting that he was not. He wasn’t. Later, after I had a tour of the house, he and I got to talking. When he learned where I was from, he asked if I had seen the photo in the paper of Amish men clearing trees and preparing a site for a new apartment complex. He seemed quite proud of the fact that he was pictured in the paper. He told me which one was him. “That was me!”

Later I asked if he would mind being in some photos I was going to take of the house, thinking I could do it in such a way that he and his kids (who were with him) would be inconspicuous in the background. But no, he said they do not care to have their photos taken, because it would make them too full of pride. (I don’t remember the exact words, but he used the word “pride.”) He probably knew whereof he spoke.

Another item: On Saturday’s ride I stopped at a gas station at Etna Green to get water. (I had forgotten my water bottles at home, and it was a hot day.) An Amish buggy and open cart was pulled up at one of the gas pumps. A small boy and girl were minding the horse, the boy holding it by the bridle (if that’s the right term for it) while the father was inside paying for his purchases. I presume he wasn’t filling the horse with gas. There was some sort of metal barrel in the wagon. But people were staring. Etna Green is on Hwy 30, which is almost like an Interstate there, so it’s a place that would get plenty of non-local customers. I think that’s where some of the staring was coming from.

In some ways it isn’t as much fun taking photos of the countryside just now, though I’ve been taking lots of them anyway. But with the corn and soybeans so tall (as well as the roadside weeds), you can’t see the contours of the earth as well. It’s like trying to do girl-watching on a campus in one of our northern universities in mid-winter. With them bundled up and wearing those thick jackets, it just isn’t the same.

Which reminds me of some more Amish scenes. In some of the communities near here, the women wear the usual long, loose dresses but the men’s pants are form-fitting like you’d never be able to buy off a rack. They are more form-fitting than a tailor would ever fit them for you, too. These are probably some of their dressier, go-to-down pants, because I can’t imagine doing farm work in those.

Another one. One hot July Sunday afternoon several years ago, in the vicinity of Reading in Hillsdale County, Michigan, I stopped at a gas-station/convenience store for the usual. Ahead of me in line were a couple of young woman who had taken quite some liberties with the “no shirt, no shoes” rule, at least as seen from behind. That was interesting enough, but behind them in line was a middle-aged Amish woman. I tried to watch everyone at once out of the corner of my eye, but mostly I remember watching her. The Hillsdale county Amish are people who dress more conservatively than some of the others, and she had on her thick layers of dress and a heavy Sunday bonnet, all in black. She was a big, strong-looking woman who towered above the two scantily clad girls. If you ever needed a woman to wrestle a horse to the ground, she’d be your person. (Not that you’d ever do such a thing to a horse, or want to. But that’s the type of person she struck me as being.) Her face was somewhat red with the heat – I imagine there is only so much getting used to all those clothes. I wanted to see what she thought of those young women in front of us, but her face was almost expressionless — perhaps just a bit prim. (I’m not sure what an Amish woman was doing in a store on a Sunday, but I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday. And that wasn’t her everyday dress.)

And that brings me to the last item. Back in June I was on a ride that took me between Colon and Burr Oak in St. Joseph County. There are a lot of Amish people in there. I came across one place where a nice-looking young woman came walking around the side of a barn, and the wind blew her dress tight against her just for a moment. Oh, my! I had no idea that any Amish women came in that shape. She smiled and gave a little wave as I rode by, looking to me like someone who was quite comfortable with being noticed by men.

Soon I’ll be back to posting photos – of other scenes.

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.