USA > Indiana > LaPorte County > Michigan City > History of Michigan City, Indiana > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25
Gc 977.202 M580 1420930
ivi. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
L
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 02302 3200
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017
https://archive.org/details/historyofmichiga00ogle_1
The Century Publishing. & Engraving Co Chicago
John Becker
HISTORY
-OF ---
MICHIGAN CITY
INDIANA
BY ROLLO B. OGLESBEE And ALBERT HALE
ILLUSTRATED
Published by EDWARD J. WIDDELL 1908
Copyrighted 1908 By Edward J. Widdell
LA PORTE PRINTING COMPANY LAPORTE, INDIANA
1420930
PREFACE
J N THE preparation of this book, as a perusal of its pages will reveal to the experienced reader, a more extended research has been pursued than is customary in writings of this character, and far more than can be profitable to the authors in the way of money returns. There is a satis- faction, however, greater than money can give, in the knowledge that some, at least, who have had opportunity to examine advance sheets of the book, feel that an effort has been made to give in accessible form the interesting and instructive story of the origin and developments of Michigan City.
There are few Indiana cities of which so much can be written as of this, and the problem of selection of material has been a serious one, for in the state and national records there is a vast quantity of writings pertaining to the mouth of Trail creek and the commercial and industrial interests that center here. Indeed, when the investigator has patiently explored the city and county archives, and has extended his search to Indianapolis and Washington, not forgetting the matter that is to be found in the records of adjoining counties, he will still find that he is not at the end of his pursuit, for in Quebec, Paris and London there are filed away many musty documents, some open and others not available to the student, bearing on the history of this spot.
It is a matter for deep regret that the most valuable repository of local chronicles of the period since the town sprang into existence-the files of local newspapers-cannot now be consulted. They have been permitted to slip out of existence, and the occasional copy that may now be treasured away by some holder as a keepsake is merely an aggravation because of the incompleteness of the view it affords. In the absence of these weekly records of current events in the olden time, the authors have had recourse to such private letters and papers as could be obtained, and, in the most cautious way, to the recollections of old inhabitants, a species of information that is universally found to be the least reliable. It is of suggestive value, of course, and as such has been eagerly wel- comed, but every possible effort has been made to verify the facts received from such sources before embalming them in type.
In such a work as this, if it is honestly performed, recourse must be had to a multitude of persons. It would be impossible and unprofitable to name here all of those who have been called upon with gratifying results; but to every one of the very many who have opened up their treasures for the purposes of this history, the thanks of the authors are here extended with a profound appreciation of the kindness they have met in their inquiries. Besides the private citizens, whose scrapbooks, letter files and other collections have been laid open, there are librarians, public officials and others, who, personally or by correspondence,
have furnished material or guided the authors to places where information could be had, and to all of these acknowledgments are now tendered. It is important in this connection that specific acknowledgment of certain special services be recorded: Rev. E. D. Daniels of LaPorte gave free access to the mass of material collected by him in his laborious preparation of the "History of LaPorte County," a monumental volume, which will always be the standard of authority for the period covered by it. Samuel J. Taylor of the Haskell and Baker Car Company, Michigan City, himself a student of local history, and a collector of matter bearing thereon, gave much of value from his collection. Arthur B. Reed, who in the beginning was interested in the business end of this publication, and Louis Wheeler, city cditor of the Michigan City News, have been of great assist- ance in many ways.
This History was undertaken by R. B. Oglesbee in the latter part of 1905. Business engagements impeded his progress in the writing and finally, in May, 1907, made it necessary for him to obtain help or abandon the enterprise, in which a great deal of labor and considerable money had already been invested. At this juncture Albert Hale, a long-time friend of Mr. Oglesbee, was occupied in seeing through the press his recent volume, "The South Americans," and, having the time to spare, he kindly volunteered his services in completing this book. Nearly the whole of this material had been collected and something more than half of the work was in manuscript when Mr. Hale entered npon the task of finishing the volume.
As a final acknowledgment, and as a simple matter of history, it must be said that without the thoughtful encouragement and the liberal financial aid of Mr. John H. Barker, this work, which in a large way is his contribution to the permanent collection of historical material pertaining to his native city, would have been impossible. .
It is impossible to refrain from remarking that a public duty rests upon every citizen to deposit in the City Library for permanent preservation, either during life or by will, every scrap of printed or written material he possesses or can secure bearing on the history of the pleasant little valley of Trail creek and its queen city. In this country family archives and heirlooms seldom survive the second generation, and the only safe repository of such matters is the Library, where they can be cared for and immemorially preserved.
Out of the exigencies of printing this volume has grown the necessity for placing the table of contents in the back part of the book.
The authors are hopeful that the inaccuracies that will inevitably be found in such a work will be counterbalanced by the mass of material that has not here- tofore been accessible to students of Michigan City history.
The " History of Michigan City" was written with the purpose of showing the historical influences, almost world-wide in some of their phases, which after centuries of operation, ultimately settled a city at the mouth of Trail Creek, and of showing the narrower influences which guided the development of that city. Among these influences not the least interesting or essential are those which located a car factory at this spot and then made that factory itself a center of ยท influences affecting the growth and development of the place for more than half a century. The book, therefore, becomes to some extent a memorial of the car factory and of the two Barkers, father and son, who made it what it was and what it is.
History of Michigan City
CHAPTER ONE.
Under the Lillies of France.
"The great river Canada," quaintly wrote Purchas in his "Pilgrimage" three centuries ago, "hath, like an insatiable merchant, engrossed all these water com- modities, so that other streames are in a manner but meere pedlers."
As Trail creek still empties its small store of waters through the St. Law- rence, so, in the beginnings of its service to civilization, it sent its tribute of furs through the same channel and was in- (leed but a "meere pedler" in respect to the quantity of such commodities that the Indians and French traders shipped from its marshy borders. No names or dates are found bearing on the traffic of this little stream when the region it drains was a part of Canada, nor is there any record that French or English ever established a trading, military or relig- ious post on its banks, or even set up a temporary village or encampment there. The most that can be said is that certain things must have taken place at that point because of what is known to have been going forward in the near vicinity.
The beautiful and significant name of the stream, Riviere du Chemin, of which the name Trail creek is an exact transla- tion, dates back to the period of the French occupancy, and the rivulet itself is clearly delineated on very early maps, as early as the Franquelin map of 1688. The names Dishmaw, Dismaugh, Dys-
man, and the like, by which Trail creek was referred to seventy-five years ago, indicate the struggles of the American pioneers with the French language until some one able to make the translation came along. The ancient trail from which the name is derived originally crossed the county from near the mouth of the creek to Hudson lake, where it struck the old Sac trail connecting Rock Island, Illinois, with Detroit-this path was in use long before any white man ever saw either of those places-and it bowed about three miles to the south in its course to avoid the marshy head- waters of the Galien river. It later took the Sac trail near the center of section twelve, a mile east of Rolling Prairie, and when the first settlers began open- ing up the roads they gave the junction the name Bootjack because of the acute angle formed there. The two waters alluded to were called by the French Riviere du Chemin and Lac du Chemin -the river by the trail and the lake by the trail-names that were applied until after the organization of the county. It is a curious circumstance that the name as attached to the lake, and phonetically converted into Dishmaugh, was set back into the French as Des Moines by some French-speaking person who was unac- quainted with the original name, and so Hudson lake came near going on the
6
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
map as Des Moines lake, the lake of the monks, and it does so appear in some of the early record and in one of the state gazetteers.
The French made their way westward from Montreal to Lake Huron through the rivers of Canada, avoiding Ontario and Erie and especially their southern shores because of the deadly hostility of the fierce and implacable Iroquois. The region surrounding Lake Superior and the northern parts of Lake Michigan and the Wisconsin river portage to the Miss- issippi were thus well known before Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and the eastern portages were discovered. In the sum- mer of 1634 Jean Nicolet, an explorer in the service of Champlain's fur company, discovered Lake Michigan and pushed his frail canoe southward to Green bay. Thirty-five years later Father Claude Allouez, a Jesuit missionary, made the acquaintance of the Pottawattomies in their then home in the Lake Superior country. June 14, 1671, these Indians, with delegates from thirteen other tribes, went into council at Sault Ste. Marie with Saint Lusson and agreed to a treaty of friendship with the French by the terms of which Louis XIV was to hold sovereignty in the regions about Lakes Huron and Superior. Never after did the Pottawattomies succeed in shaking off the grip of the white man placed upon them that day in the presence of Louis Joliet, Nicholas Perrot the interpreter. the Jesuits Allouez, Andre, Dreuilletes and D'Ablon, and a little group of trad- ers, though many were the efforts they made in the century and a half ensuing.
In the meantime LaSalle, it is reason- ably established, had in 1669-70 travers- ed the Ohio along the southern boundary. of Indiana. In 1671 or 1672 he passed through Lake Michigan to its southern extreme and ascended the Kankakee, doubtless to the South Bend portage. Of these journeys no satisfactory details
have been recovered, but he probably voyaged along the west shore of the lake and he certainly traveled through La- Porte county and was the first European to do so. Joliet and good Father Mar- quette were next to visit the south shore of Lake Michigan, descending the Miss- issippi from the Wisconsin river portage and ascending the Illinois and Des- Plaines to the Chicago portage, then coasting the west shore to Green bay in the latter part of 1673. There Father Marquette lay sick all winter, but in the spring he returned to Chicago and spent there another winter of sickness and suf- fering, preaching nevertheless to the In- dians who came long distances from In- diana and Illinois to see him, and early in 1675 he pursued his journey to Kas- kaskia. Again his strength failed him and he was taken northward by his two canoemen, Pierre and Jacques, and sev- eral faithful converts to die. In May the party embarked in canoes at Chicago and sailed along the eastern coast of the lake until he died near Marquette, Mich- igan, May 27, 1675. On this voyage, the first along that shore of which there is any record, stops were made at short in- tervals at the mouths of streams for rest. and it is not a violent stretch of the imag- ination to think of this good man as re- posing for a night under the protection of Hoosier Slide, the first civilized per- son to set foot on the sands of Michigan City. On such occasions, it is recorded. the attendants would draw the dying priest's canoe gently upon the beach and hastily erect a shelter of boughs under which they would lay him tenderly on a couch of dried grass. His only food was coarse corn meal mixed with water and baked in the ashes, with an occasional morsel of game broiled on the coals. To the wondering Indians of the neighbor- hood, who flocked to his encampment, he would not fail to give instruction in the Christian mysteries while he had strength
STREET AND PARK VIEWS
8
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
so to do, and so it is not unlikely that the first Christian prayer ever uttered on the soil of LaPorte county proceeded from the lips of that sainted priest.
To Claude Allouez was assigned the missionary work dropped by Father Marquette and until his death on the St. Joseph river in 1690 he traveled and preached all through the territory ad- jacent to the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Doubtless many of the French geographical names in that region were conferred by him. possibly LaPorte and Du Chemin among them. He must have been familiar with the old Sac trail and its branch to Trail creek and Chicago and probably followed them many times, but the names and de- scriptions used in accounts of travel and adventure in those days are vague and disappointing. He wrote that he visited the Indians "at the sand hills," which might, as the old trails lay, relate to Hoosier Slide or the mouth of the Calu- met, or almost anywhere between.
In November, 1679, LaSalle and sev- eral companions paddled their frail bark canoes down the west shore of the lake and around the head to the mouth of the St. Joseph river where they met Tonty. "the man of the iron arm," and his party, and where they built Fort St. Jo- seph, Father Hennepin, the Recollet missionary, being with them. During the next four years LaSalle and French- men in his service were often at St. Jo- seph and they thoroughly explored the main-traveled trails all through northern Indiana. It is at this time that was made the first certain record of a white man's visit to the mouth of Trail creek, and it is LaSalle himself, most romantic and most practical of all dreamers of visions, whose name is entitled to the honor. December 21, 1681, LaSalle sent Tonty, his trusted lieutenant, with an advance party from the mouth of the St. Joseph to Chicago by canoes. On the
28th he followed them on foot, taking the shore of the lake, and on the 29th or 30th he crossed the mouth of Trail creek. That is all that is known about it. He left no description or even mention of the spot, and it cannot be stated whether or not he camped there, as it is possible he did, but at that time, in the midst of a severe winter, he passed through the limits of what is now Michigan City. Twice before, in December, 1680, and March, 1681, LaSalle traveled from Chi- cago to the mouth of the St. Joseph and it is conjectured that he followed the margin of the lake both times, but the fact is not definitely stated, and so the record stands as it is given here.
It is not to be supposed that no Euro- pean preceded the hardy voyagers that have been named as visiting the south end of the lake. It is nearly certain that Nicholas Perrot was as far down as the Chicago river in 1671, and Father Mar- quette, on his arrival at that point in 1674, found two French traders estab- lished in cabins there, Pierre Moreau, alias La Taupine, and a companion call- ed the Surgeon, who had explored the region of the Kankakee and Calumet rivers and may have visited Trail creek. These two were irregular and unlicensed traders, outlawed under the orders of the king, and they did not care to make any record of their adventures ; and some of LaSalle's servants abandoned him and embarked in the same traffic in defiance of the law. Some were arrested, others adopted the Indian mode of life and were never heard of more, and no writing re- mains to inform the historian what they did or where they did it. Moreover, it is charged by some respectable writers that the clergy, who made most of the records of those early explorations, took to them- selves undue credit for their own labors and minimized the achievements of oth- ers, so that the traders and soldiers who preceded the priests are in great part
9
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
lost to history. This imputation cannot justly be placed upon Father Marquette, for in his writings he gave the credit to Joliet as the commander of the expedi- tion to the Mississippi, but there is every reason to fear that Father Hennepin, who accompanied LaSalle in 1679-80, sought to rob that great man of some portion of the laurels that he laboriously earned.
"Many discoveries had been made to the Northward before Monsieur de la Sale's Time ; because there being Plenty of very good Furs, the traders of Que- beck and Montreal, by Means of the Adventurers call'd Wood-Men (coureurs de bois), from their traveling thro' the Woods, had penetrated very far up the Country that Way; but none had ad- vanced far towards the South or South- West, beyond Fort Frontenac, which is on the Lake Ontario, the nearest this Way of the five great Lakes. However, upon the Report of the Natives, it was supposed, that great and advantageous Discoveries might be made. There had been much Talk of the rich Mines of St. Barbara, in the Kingdom of Mexico, and some were tempted to give them a Visit. Something was known of the famous River Mississippi, which it was supposed might fall into the South Sea, and open a Way to it. These Conjectures working upon Monsieur de la Sale, who being zealous for the Honour of his Nation, design'd to signalize the French Name, on Account of extraordinary Discoveries, beyond all that went before him; he form'd the Design and resolv'd to put it in Execution. He was certainly very fit for it, and succeeded at the Expense of his Life ; for no Man has done so much in that Way as he did for the Space of twenty Years he spent in that Employ- ment. He was a Man of a regular Be- haviour, of a large Soul, well enough learned, and understanding in the Math- ematicks, designing, bold, undaunted, dexterous, insinuating, not to be dis- courag'd at any Thing, ready at extricat- ing himself out of any Difficulties, no Way apprehensive of the greatest Fa- tigues, wonderful steady in Adversity, and what was of extraordinary Use, well
enough versed in several Savage Lan- guages."
The foregoing extract from the jour- nal of Henri Joutel, written more than two hundred years ago by one who was intimately associated with the man in his last voyage, is, for the present purpose, sufficient characterization of Rene a Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, whose eventful and intensely dramatic career forms a fitting close to the heroic period of French and Spanish explora- tion in North America. The adventures of this man and his companions and con- temporaries in the great valley of the Mississippi are among the most interest- ing and thrilling in all history and it is well to remember that he led the way for white occupancy in the valley of Trail creek.
In the summer of 1805 Captain Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, sailed the little sloop Gjoa from Atlantic into Pacific waters, the first time that feat was ever achieved. This voyage of today com- pletes the solution of the problem which started Columbus on his cruise into the unknown west, and in the chain connect- ing the two events LaSalle's illustrious career forms an important link. From very early, times there was trade and war between Europe and the Indies, or the far east. The routes between the two regions, whether overland or by in- side waters, were difficult and infested by robbers and pirates. Gradually, out of the geographical ignorance that was universal, there emerged a suspicion that an outside route by ocean waters might be found, and as trade increased and marauding became more common it became necessary to investigate the pos- sibilities in that direction. Throughout Europe men were asking, Can there be such a thing as an ocean route to the eastern land of gold and jewels and spices and silks? "A more startling question has seldom been propounded,"
IO
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
says Fiske, "for it involved a radical de- parture from the grooves in which the human mind had been running ever since the days of Solomon. Two generations of men lived and died while this question was taking shape, and all that time Cathay and India and the Island of Spices were objects of increasing desire clothed by eager fancy with all manner of charms and riches. The more effectu- ally the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the stronger grew the impulse to venture upon unknown paths in order to realize the vague but glorious hopes that began to cluster about those remote countries. Such an era of romantic enterprise as was thus ushered in, the world has never seen before or since." It was directly through the interest that Europe felt in Asia that America was discovered and explored, and out of the problem under- taken by Columbus grew the questions that led LaSalle and his contemporaries into the valley of the Mississippi an:1 the basin of Lake Michigan.
Columbus died in the belief that he had reached the Indies. The great dis- coverers who followed him were long in finding out that the land barriers they so constantly fell upon in sailing west on the Atlantic constituted a hemisphere in- stead of a succession of islands and they could not think there was no way of get- ting around through open seas. Vasco da Gama, in 1499, doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached Hindustan by that route, which served to incite further and harder efforts toward finding a shorter and easier westward passage. In November, 1520, Ferdinand Magellan passed the strait bearing his name and when he "sawe the way open to the otli- er mayne sea (the Pacific), he was so gladde thereof that for ioy the teares fell from his eyes." West and still west he sailed and yet he did not reach the Indies until in 1522, long after he had discovered the Philippines. The vast
distance and the difficulties of the strait made that route impracticable and there- after the problem resolved itself into the existence of a northwest passage, a ques- tion that was never solved until long after it had ceased to be of commercial importance. Hopefully the coasts of the northeast were scrutinized and every opening entered and explored. The St. Lawrence was navigated and then the great lakes, and at the head of these inland seas Indians were found who told of a "great water" just a little farther to the west, meaning the Mississippi but understood as referring to the western ocean so eagerly longed for. When it became known that the "great water" was a river it was still desirable to ex- plore it in the hope that it might flow into the western sea and provide a route to the Indies. For commercial reasons both England and France were deeply concerned in finding such a route, but France was much more enterprising in the west than was England and led the way. As the details of the continent came to be known it was seen that the northwest passage, if one existed, must lie in the forbidding regions above the Arctic Circle and the problem lost its commercial importance and was left to the geographers for solution, with the result that the passage has now been nav- igated for the first time, though it was traced by land by Captain Robert L. Mc- Clure, in 1850.
Joliet's journey in 1673, when, as has been seen, he was accompanied by Mar- quette, was ordered by Count Frontenac to verify the opinion that the Mississippi discharged its waters into the Mexican gulf, and Frontenac reported to his gov- ernment Joliet's belief on his return that water communication could be found leading to the Pacific by means of the Missouri river, which he discovered. La- Salle named his western post La Chine (China) as expressive of his expectation
RES OC
RES. R.D. COUCH
1)
RES, MAY
RES. C.E.ARNT.
12
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.