Biography of Edmond J. Wyatt, pages 746/747/748.  History of 
DeKalb County, Indiana; B. F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 
Indianapolis, 1914.



The gentleman whose career is briefly sketched 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 had been so long an honored citizen. In the highest sense 
of the term, he is a self-made man and as such has met with 
success in material things such as few attain 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, 1811, 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 1, 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 January 
27, 1888, aged sixty-seven years two month 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, 
traveling 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 
section 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 
holidays, 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 provision. I managed to get a 
bushel of corn and going nine miles to mill by a zigzag road 
through the woods, could not get my grist until the next day 
and then not, because I would not buy 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, sixteen dollars a hundred for 
pork; drove far and near to get corn, found some west of 
Fort Wayne three years old and musty and covered with litter 
of rats. It was all he could get and it cost him one dollar 
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 Wyatt was reared on the parental 
farmstead in Jackson township and completed his educational 
training in the high school at Spencerville. 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 bought 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 been 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 judgement and the strictest integrity, 
he has won and retains to a notable degree the confidence of 
the people in the circles in which he moves.  On March 8, 
1885, Mr. Wyatt was married to Jane McKinley, who was born 
in 1862 in Ashland county, Ohio, being brought the same year 
to DeKalb county, Indiana, by her parents, William and Sarah 
(Romine) McKinley, the former of whom was a second cousin to 
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 generous in 
his aid to others. His first wife, Mary Shinnerman, 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 there children, Violet Marie,  
Charles Cecil and Harry Richard; Ica May, born May 4, 1887, 
is the wife of Fordyce Newton, of Auburn; Myrtle, born 
December 20, 1889, is at home with her parents. Since May, 
1911, Fordyce Newton had been a partner with Mr. Wyatt in 
the coal business, although his personal 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 time to 
lend his influence  to measures and movements having for 
their object the welfare of this fellowmen. His character 
has always been above reproach, his word as scared as his 
bond and all who know him speak in high praise of his 
sterling qualities of manhood and citizenship. He has lived 
wisely and his friends, who are legion, unite in the earnest 
prayer that he may be spared many years to bless the world.

Submitted by:

Arlene Goodwin

Auburn, Indiana

Agoodwin@ctlnet.com