Sir Thomas Wyatt the Poet

EDMOND J. WYATT. 

The gentleman whose career is briefly sl<etched in the following lines is 
one of the established residents of Auburn and his life has been such as to 
gain the confidence and good will of the people of his community and to make 
him well and favorably known throughout the county of which he has been 
so long an honored citizen. In the highe,st sense of the term, he is a self- 
made man and as such has met with success in material things such as few at- 
tain and made a record which may be studied with profit by the young men 
of the rising generation. 

Ed Wyatt, as the subject of this sketch is popularly known, is a native 
of DeKalb county, Indiana, having been born in Jackson township, on April 
26, 1862, and is a son of John and Sarah Jane (Robe) Wyatt. John 
Wyatt, the son of Nathan and Mary Wyatt, was born in Mercer county, 
Pennsylvania, April 4, 181 1, and came to DeKalb county, Indiana, in 1836. 
He died July 28, 1906, at his home in DeKalb county, aged ninety-three 
years three months and twenty-four days. He was married April i, 1834, in 
Medina county, Ohio, to Eva Kitchen, who died February 12, 1839. Their 
only child, Rachel, was born sixteen months after they came to this county 
and died at the age of fourteen years. On September 12, 1839, Mr. Wyatt 
married Sarah Jane Robe, a native of Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, born 
on October 31, 1820, and who died Januar}- 2'], 1888, aged sixty-seven years 
two months and twenty-six days. It was in the fall of 1836 that Mr. Wyatt 
came to Jackson township to seek a location for a future home. Here, travel- 
ing through the dense woods, which were full of a thick growth of wild pea 
vines, prickly ash, etc., the knees of his pants wore out and his hide too, but he 
bound up his knees and struggled on. He selected government land in sec- 
tion 34, then returned for his family, bringing them here the fall of 1837.

The deed for this land was signed by President Andrew Jackson. In the
spring of 1837 John Wyatt’s father had come from his Ohio home and so
many of the family and relatives accompanied him that the people there
called it the exodus of the tribe of Wyatt. Nathan Wyatt also settled in
section 34 in Jackson township, and for the last forty years of his life was a
member of the Methodist Protestant church, the greater part of the time a
class leader and he was a power for good in the new settlement. John Wyatt
was taken sick soon after reaching his new home, and he hired his brother-in-
law, A. Squiers, to cut logs to make the house, built it with a puncheon floor
and an outside chimney of clay and straw. The following spring he added
a hearth made of mud. They were in comfortable and better circumstances
than some of their neighbors. About the hohdays, winter set in. He had
nothing of any kind to winter the seven cattle he had brought with him.
The poor animals would roam around the house and moan so pitifully at
night that he would cover his head to keep out the sound, but he bought some
corn meal and a barrel of salt (price nine dollars), and that, with browsing
tree tops, brought the cattle out all right in the spring. Of the season of
1838 he wrote: “We ran out of provisions. I managed td get a bushel of
corn and going nine miles to mill liy a zigzag road through the wt^ods, could
not get my grist until the next day and then not, because I would not Iruy a
jug of whiskey. I traveled that road four times and finally, to keep from
starving at home, gave money to fill that jug, got my grist and finished my
well and got good water.” He gave twelve dollars for a barrel of flour, six-
teen dollars a hundred for pork ; drove far and near to get corn, found some
west of Fort Wayne three years old and musty and co\’ered with litters of
rats. It was all he could get and it cost him one d<illar a bushel. Roads
were only a few trails cut through forest and dense underbrush, and much
stuff was hauled up the St. Joe in boats and he had many narrow escapes from
tipping over and losing the cargoes. John Wyatt owned and lived on the
same land for seventy years, a record never equaled in DeKalb county.

Edmond Wratt was reared on the parental farmstead in Jackson tow-n-
ship and completed his educational training in the high school at Spencer-
ville. Reared as he was to the life of a farmer, he pursued this vocation
after reaching his majority and became the owner of forty acres of good land
in Jackson township. In 1891 he sold this tract and lx>ught eighty acres in
Newville township, to the cultivation of which he devoted his attention until
1902, in February of which year he sold his farm and moved to Auburn. In
January, 1903, Mr. Wyatt engaged in the coal business in this city, to which
he has since devoted his attention and in which he has lieen rewarded with
very creditable success. He carries a complete line of hard and soft coal and
coke and is prompt and reliable in his deliveries to the trade. A man of good
business judgment and the strictest integrity, he has won and retains” to a
notable degree the confidence of the people and, because of his sterling quali-
ties and genial manner, he is popular in the circles in which he moves.

On March 8. 18S5. Mr. Wyatt was married to Jane McKinley, who 
was born in 1862 in Ashland coimty, Ohio, being brought the same year to 
DeKalb county, Indiana, by her parents. William and Sarah (Romine) Mc- 
Kinley, the former of whom was a second cousin of President McKinley. 
Her parents were residents of Jackson township, this county, for many years, 
but in later life removed to Butler township, where they spent their last 
days. Mr. McKinley was born in Mifflin county, Pennsylvania, on January 
22, 1820, and his death occurred on February 6, 1896, at the age of seventy- 
six years. He was a good neighbor, kind and considerate to all and was gen- 
erous in his aid to others. His first wife, Mary Shinneman, became the 
mother of four children, and his second wife, to whom he was married on 
January 9, 1851, was born in Putnam county, Ohio, on September 11, 1830, 
and died on April 21, 1900. She became the mother of twelve children, of 
whom eight are living. 

To Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt have been born three children: Franklin 
Dale, born December 30, 1885, married May Milliman, and they have three 
children, Violet Marie, Charles Cecil and Harry Richard ; lea May, born May 
4, 1887, is the wife of Fordyce Newton, of'Auburn : Myrtle, born December 
20, i88g, is at home with her parents. Since May, 191 1. Fordyce Newton 
has been a partner with Mr. Wyatt in the coal business, although his per- 
sonal attention is given to his own trade as a machinist. Fraternally, Mr. 
Wyatt is a member of the Knights of Pythias. 

Mr. Wyatt has always been enterprising and public spirited and ready 
at all times to lend his influence to measures and movements having for their 
object the welfare of his fellowmen. His character has always been above 
reproach, his word as sacred as his bond and all who know him speak in high 
praise of his sterling qualities of manhood and citizenship. He has li\ed 
wisely and his friends, who are legion, unite in the earnest prayer that he may 
be spared many years to bless the world."