One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XXVIII  

WALLE

The WALLE family deserves attention at this time and place, since its members are closely linked with those of the BUSART family. MARY WALLE was the wife of Joseph BUSART.

Looking back into the past, we find that Nicholas WALLE and his wife Mary both came from Germany in 1852. They came to Now York by sailing ship, and from New York by rail to Buffalo. There was no railroad west of there then. Thence they traveled by boat on the Great Lakes to Chicago, and from Chicago overland to Marshall County. They brought a big family with them; ten, the narrator thinks.

When they got to Chicago, they were broke. They did not have another dollar. In that raw and quite primitive city, they happened to meet an old German friend, who accommodated NICHOLAS WALLE by loaning him some money to come out here to Marshall County. With that money, Nicholas hired an ox team and wagon and drove out to this region over trails that tried the stoutest of wagons and the stoutest of riders (who did not ride a great deal of the way). Here he decided to settle, close to the lake that was called Maxinkuckee. The emigrants from afar got their first sight of the blue waters of that lake in about the year 1853.

When he bought his land, NICHOLAS WALLE got what is now the LEW ZECHIEL stock farm of 160 acres at the South end of the lake. He built a log house there, and he and his wife lived all their lives on that farm. NICHOLAS WALLE died there suddenly in 1876. His wife lived till about 1890, when she was way past eighty years old.

The children of NICHOLAS and MARY WALLE are on record as eight in number, five boys and three girls:

Nicholas (the oldest)
Joseph

Joseph bought forty acres adjoining, his father's farm and lived on the same land for a good many years. He married ELIZABETH LINTZ. Both are deceased.
Mathew blacksmith by trade, and lived and died in Indianapolis
John blacksmith by trade, and lived and died in Indianapolis
Nicholas (the younger) lived and died in Pulaski County
Mary (the oldest girl)
Anna
Elizabeth

There were two sons by the name of Nicholas. One was called "Big Nick" and the other "Little Nick." It seems that the older boy having the same name came to America four or five years before his father. He liked the new country so well that he induced his father to sell out in the old country and come over, too. When the first Nicholas left the family in Germany, his parents thought they might never see him any more, so they named the new baby, the youngest son, the same as the oldest.

So it was that the oldest WALLE boy came to America by himself, which was an undertaking demanding no small amount of grit and fortitude.

Nicholas bought a farm of eighty acres or thereabouts adjoining his father's farm in Union Township. He married MARY HARTMAN of Monterey. Both are now dead.

Now, regarding the children of these children:

Nicholas and Mary had two sons and two daughters,

Peter - living
John - living. John is on the home farm. Anna - living
Margaret - living

Joseph and Elizabeth had three boys and four girls,:

Peter is living in Hammond
Frank
Frederick
Mary
Barbara
Emma
Katherine

Matthew married and had children.
John married and had children.
Nicholas - the younger, married and had children.

Regarding the, daughters of the pioneer Nicholas and his wife Mary:

The oldest, Mary, married JOSEPH BUSART,

their family having already been enumerated in the history of the BUSART family.
Anna, the next WALLE girl,

married JOSEPH BAUER. Both died at Logansport.
Elizabeth married JOHN HOOVER, and both died in Pulaski County.

In the 'seventies the WALLE lands a bit southwest of Lake Maxinkuckee are shown on an old map. The nearest to the lake is the eighty acres of "J. Walley," the name being so spelled on the map. FARRAR T. REDDEN also had the land adjoining the WALLE land to the east.
Adjoining it to the west were older WALLE lands, forty acres in the name of N. J. WALLE, the father, and 39.75 acres in the name of N. WALLE, the son. The Albright Church stood in the southwest corner of the latter plot.