The Chilcotes

One of the names in Weston Cemetery that has long intrigued me is Mordecai Chilcote. Both first and last names are strange. Mordecai is a biblical name, the name of a major character in the book of Esther. I have never seen the name Chilcote other than the Rensselaer family. The grave marker for Mordecai is small, one of the stones that mark the grave of a veteran of the Civil War. However, its location makes it hard to miss. When one comes up the hill from the creek, it is directly in front of one when the road tees.

Doing some searching, I found that Mordecai was the son of another Mordecai Chilcote. He was born in Ohio and moved to Michigan with his family. When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted and rose to the rank of Captain. He married the sister of Judge Edwin Hammond, one of Rensselaer's prominent early citizens. Like his brother-in-law, he became a lawyer.  Below is his ad from The People's Pilot of March 19, 1896. (The Pilot was a short-lived Rensselaer paper.)

Mordecai and his wife had two sons, Gaylord and Fred. Gaylord left Indiana for the West Coast and drops out of the local story. Fred left Rensselaer but hung around Indiana and had a series of short-term jobs before getting the job as a mail clerk on a passenger train. After that he was an insurance agent. He died in South Bend but is buried in Weston Cemetery with his wife, mother-in-law, and an unmarried daughter who died in 1989 and lived in Rensselaer as a child. Their plot is located east of the creek where the road turns east to follow the river.

Another Chilcote grave is west of the creek, along the middle east-west road. This grave belongs to a brother of Mordecai, John Calvin Chilcote, and is also marked by a stone that indicates the grave of a Civil War veteran. After the War, he farmed a while in Jasper County before heading west to Kansas for about five years, and then returned to Jasper County. His wife died while in Kansas and is undoubtedly buried there. He had three daughters and is buried next to the one who stayed local. Sarah Chilcote Sigler spent most of her adult life in Mt Ayr where her husband was a banker.

As I searched for information about the Chilcotes, I discovered one more member of the family buried in Weston Cemetery, Addeline Chilcote Merry. She is buried just a few yards away from Mordecai, in the north corner of the road T. She married Dr John Merry who was Mt Ayr's doctor (and dentist and pharmacist). There is a brief mention of him in the book History of the Jasper-Newton Co., Indiana, Amish Settlement and the Miller Amish Cemetery by Sharon Julia Leichty:

One Amish resident, David D. Milller, heard the following after a tooth extraction: "This tooth doesn't have a cavity. Get back in the chair. I will get the right tooth." This followed with an additional extraction.

Addeline had two daughters who survived her. Neither married and both are buried in the family plot. Elizabeth Blanche was appointed as the State Attendance Officer, an office that still seem to exist. Below is a picture of Jessie Merry from the 1922 Chaos yearbook. She does not seem to have taught at Rensselaer after 1922 and probably moved away with her sister. The two women were living together near Indianapolis in the 1930 and 1940 Censuses. Jessie died in 1970.

There were several other Chilcotes who lived in Jasper County but who are not buried here. Elizabeth, mother of Mordecai, John, and Addeline, lived here for about twenty years and died in Mt Ayr in 1902 but her body was sent to Michigan to be buried next to her husband. Another brother, William, lived for a number of years in Jasper County with his family. It appears that he and his wife divorced before 1900 and his wife and children moved to Minnesota. He is buried in Marion National Cemetery in Marion, Indiana.

Although members of this family were still being buried here in 1970 and 1989, the last member of the family who lived here seems to be Sarah Chilcote Sigler who died in 1953.