Isaac Nathaniel Sweet

The last blog presented the rather strange relationship between Isaac and Jennie (Sanders) Sweet. Now an industrious family history researcher, Terry Bullock, has sent me some newspaper articles that gives the probable source of the apparent division. Isaac’s behavior was, to say the least, highly questionable.

The first known problematic behavior occurred two years before Isaac married, on 24 Oct 1890, when Isaac “terribly stabbed” his cousin George Cline (Isaac’s father, Austin, and George’s mother, Mary Jane, were children of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Sweet) at Mt. Pleasant Church  in Martinsville Twp. Isaac pleaded self-defense. His next known escapade occurred over a quarter century later, when “Isaac Sweet, former constable,” was fined $100 and cost and given ninety days on a penal farm for liquor law violation. This was not all that big a transgression. After all a lot of people, many respectable, were violating the Volstead Act in the 1920s. But more serious things were to come. On 13 Apr 1929, again designated a “former constable,” Isaac was arrested in Terre Haute for forging an assignment of title in the sale of an auto. (Though it has apparently nothing to do with this, just two days earlier, in Terre Haute, Isaac’s brother, Austin, had been killed by a constable, see Austin Sweet Jr.)

Conviction for automobile fraud carried a fine of $1,000 to $5,000 and imprisonment of two to ten years. Isaac was paroled by circuit court judge John P. Jeffries under the condition that he return to his former home in Illinois and stay out of Terre Haute. But despite the restriction, on 28 Aug 1930 Isaac was arrested in Terre Haute on a charge of “hog stealing” and turned over to the Sheriff of Marshall, the theft having apparently occurred in Clark Co. Then on 30 Apr 1932, again in Terre Haute, Isaac was arrested for assault and battery with intent to kill after stabbing a grocery clerk in a quarrel over the purchase of a bottle of pop. Isaac’s known malfeasances started and ended with a stabbing, indicative of an anger management problem. Surprisingly, not one of Isaac’s escapades can be found in a Clark County newspaper.

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