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I have found the following information about the Nathan Lake family, early settlers in Allen County, Indiana:
NATHAN LAKE, son of Curtice S. and Margaret Clerry Lake, was born July 18, 1793, in Stratford, CT, and died April 22, 1857, Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana. He married JERUSHA MELLISSA SHELDON on October 5, 1817, in Shelburn, VT. JERUSHA was born on March 13, 1791, in VT; she died May 24, 1866, in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana. (An Israel Sheldon is among the Revolutionary War soldiers of Charlotte, VT, who is interred in Vermont, along with Phineas Lake.)
According to Valley of the Upper Maumee River, with historical accounts of Allen County and the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Volume I, by P. S. Robertson (1889, not in copyright), “Nathan Lake and his family came to the vicinity of Cuba [Indiana, suburb of Ft. Wayne] in 1838,” which was apparently located in Springfield Township, where settlers started to live by 1836. (Springfield Township occupied the northeast corner of Allen County.) A pioneer named Ezra May built the first grist-mill in 1837-38, and the next year, the year the Lakes arrived, Mr. May opened a blacksmith shop. Mr. May’s house was used for religious meetings, which began that same year. Six families had settled there by the time the Lakes arrived, and in November, 1838, the first [white] child was born. By 1840, many settlers were arriving.
This same book says:
Nathan and Jerusha (Sheldon) Lake [were] both natives of Virginia. They moved to Vermont when aged eighteen or twenty years, and there married and remained until 1835, when they left Vermont in search of health, the husband being consumptive [having or inclined to have tuberculosis].
It was a common practice for families to move west in hope of finding better health. However, their trips often were so difficult that they did not survive. Valley of the Upper Maumee River, with historical accounts of Allen County and the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Volume I, continues this about the Nathan Lake family:
He came with his family of eight children by boat to Maumee City, and then took wagons and struck the Black Swamp where it required three days to travel seven miles. [In a different part of that book, it says, “. . . they went to work to clear away the forest, and the parents lived until they and the children succeeded in creating a comfortable home. On the way here they had lost all the goods and clothing they possessed, which increased their hardships."] They settled in LaGrange county, but after eighteen months removed to Allen county and settled where Fort Wayne now stands. [Another page says in 1936, “Nathan Lake, of Vermont, and his family, having come in 1835, settled on section 3” in Milan Township.”] During the first years there he cultivated forty acres of corn within the present city limits. In the spring of 1838 he removed with his family to where Cuba now stands, built his wigwam covered with bark and moved with his family upon his entry of 120 acres made in 1837. There the father [Nathan] died in 1853. [The above says 1857]
History of Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana, 1700-2005, Volume I, John D. Beatty, ed., recorded that the Nathan Lake family was among the earliest settlers, and they set out to carve a life for themselves out of the densely wooded land, all by hand, of course.
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