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USA > Indiana > Lawrence County > Mitchell > History of Mitchell and Marion Township, Indiana > Part 1
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HISTORY OF MITCHELL
AND MARION TOWNSHIP INDIANA
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
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Gc 977.202 M69E EDWARDS, JAMES W. 1853-1923. HISTORY OF MITCHELL AND MARION TOWNSHIP, INDIANA
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HISTORY OF MITCHELL
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Marion Township INDIANA
By James W. Edwards
Reprinted From The Mitchell Tribune 1916
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C OULD one have witnessed all the changes which have taken place in this community since its first settlement a little over one hundred years ago, its former ap- pearance would seem as a dream or romance. We find it difficult to realize the features of the dense wilderness which was the abode of our parents and grandparents.
One hundred years ago my grandparents on my father's side left their mountain home in North Carolina to make their fut- ure home in what was then the territory of Indiana. They brought with them my father who was then but a small child.
THE FIRST SETTLERS
It is not from personal recollection that I shall write these items of local history, but from facts and incidents as I gathered them from old settlers in years long since gone by. Often in my boyhood days have I listened to the old pioneers, my father and grandfather in particular, relate their early experiences and describe the condition of the country as they found it a century ago; so often that I sometimes imagine that I can see conditions as they were and the country as it was then.
THURSEY WAY
Oldest person in Lawrence county and perhaps the oldest continuous resident of the state. She is nearing her 105th birth- day and at this time (June 1916) is quite active in both mind and body.
It should be remembered that at the be- ginning of the last century there was not a single white inhabitant in what is now Law- rence County, and for several years after, none in that part of the county embracing what is now Marion Township and while this part of the county had always belong- ed to, or at least claimed, so far as we have history to guide us, by various Indian tribes, the first settlers found but little ev- idence of any of them having lived here. This part of the country it seems had been claimed by several tribes but permanently occupied by none. The early settler found no remains of Indian villages, nor was any land cleared to indicate that the red man had ever lived here. Occasionally the re- mains of a wigwam was found and the abundance of Indian arrow-heads and In- dian axes found would indicate, however, that roving bands of Indians had been here perhaps, during the hunting seasons. And while we have but little evidence from which to conclude that this community was ever permanently occupied by the red man, we have still less evidence that it was ever
inhabited by that prehistoric race called Mound builders. So we can but conclude that the first settlers were those people who came here in the early part of the last century to make this their permanent home. Previous to the year 1813 there was not a permanent settler, so far as I have ever heard, in what is now Marion Township.
The first settler was a man by the name of Phillips, who built a cabin in the year 1813 on the hill above and a few hundred yards west of the spring which is the head- water of Rock Lick creek. Phillips after- ward entered the land where he built his cabin and made his home for many years. It should be noted that until the year 1813 all the land, comprising what is now Marion Township, belonged to the govern- ment. So the first settler could choose his own location.
THE FIRST HOMES
Beginning with the year 1815 and for several years after. quite a number of home seekers arrived in this locality to make their home in this unbroken wilderness; a country covered with a primeval forest of
the finest timber; everywhere a heavy growth of poplar, oak, ash, walnut, hickory, in fact, all kinds of deciduous trees; a country in its pristine glory. To destroy this fine forest was the first work of the pioneer after building his rude cabin. To build the cabin I speak of, was the work of but very few days. Usually a shack, or as they called it those days, a "make shift cabin" was built. As your readers have perhaps never seen a cabin of this kind I shall give a short description of one as I remember the way it was described to me. A place having been selected which was al- ways near a spring of water, a large tree was chopped down and a log cut from it to make the back part of the cabin. At a distance of eight or ten feet from the log or back of the cabin two stakes were set in the ground a few inches apart and at a dis- tance of eight or ten feet from these, two more stakes were placed to receive the poles which were to form the sides of the cabin. The whole slope of the roof was from the front to the back. The roof was made of rude slabs, or if the building was
ELI AND ISOM BURTON
Pioneer citizens of Marion township. They were twins and the fathers of Dr. Isom Burton and Martin A. Burton, who have been two of Mitchell's prominent citizens and business men. In the above portrait Eli wears the white trousers (tow linen) the cloth probably woven by his mother. He is the father of Dr. Isom Burton.
done in the Spring, bark peeled from hick ory trees was used. The front was left en- tirely open. If the weather was cold, a fire was built directly in front of the opening; the cracks between the poles were filled with clay; dry leaves were secured for a bed and the cabin was ready to occupy. This kind of a domicile was as a rule, re- placed by a better one in a short time, though some families spent at least one winter in this kind of a shack before a bet- ter one was built in regular log cabin style.
As I stated previously a fire was made in front of the cabin, or shack in winter to keep out the cold. I should have added that a fire near the cabin at night was al- ways necessary to frighten the wild beast away. All species of wild animals are eas- ily frightened by fire. If the early pioneer had occasion to go very far from his cabin at night he always carried a torch for fear he would meet one of the wild beasts that were then plentiful in this community. HOUSE BUILDING
After building the temporary cabin that I have described and having rested a few
days from the fatigue of his long journey from his Virginia or North Carolina home the settler looked around for a location for a better cabin where he expected to make his permanent home. If the spring and surroundings where he built his shack suit- ed him, he located there, if not he selected a more desirable place in the near neighbor- hood. As I have previously said he prac- tically had his choice of location; I am speaking now of the time when but little of the land in this community had been enter- ed. Having decided upon a place to build the house which was perhaps to be his home for many years, he proceeded to cut the timber and clear the underbrush from a spot a few feet in circumference. He also cut down any tree that leaned over the place where he had decided to build. He then cut the logs that formed the walls of his cabin and selected a tree four or five feet in diameter from which he made boards for the roof. The boards were usually four feet long and rived with a frow. These boards were used without planing or shav- ing. Next, puncheons for the floor were
prepared. This was done by splitting logs from trees about twenty inches in diameter and hewing the faces of them with a broad- ax. After preparing the building material described and hauling it on a sled to the place he selected, he is now ready for the house raising. He invited the few scatter- ing neighbors who lived within a radius of several miles. When the neighbors assem- bled two of them were selected for end men whose business it was to notch and saddle the logs and put them in their proper place. The roof was formed by making the end logs shorter until a single log formed the comb of the roof. On these logs the boards were placed and instead of being nailed, they were held in place by long poles as weights. The walls were built solid, that is they had no openings for a fireplace or windows. The doorway, the cabin seldom had but one, was made by cutting the logs on one side so as to make an opening about three feet wide A similar opening, but
wider, was cut at the end for the chimney which was built of logs to the height of about five feet and made large so as to
admit of a back and jambs of stone. The remainder of the chimney was built of sticks and clay. The door was made of slabs that had been split from a tree and smoothed with a drawing knife. The only nails in the entire building were used in making the door. For a window a section of a log, four or five feet long, was cut out and a piece of greased paper pasted over the opening.
THE FURNITURE
As the early settler brought no furniture with him, it was necessary to make it from such material as he could find. A table was made of a split slab and supported by four round legs set in auger holes. Three legged stools were made in the same man- ner. Bedsteads were made by setting up a stout post in a corner of the cabin about four and one-half feet from one wall and six and one- half feet from the other with two large holes bored into the post about two feet from the floor; then holes were bored into the logs of the walls and poles were inserted. On these poles, lengthwise, rails were laid and across the rails split
boards were laid and the bedstead was com- plete. On the boards a rough tick, filled with dry leaves or corn husks completed the bed.
Cooking utensils consisted of a skillet, a baking pot or Dutch oven, as it was called, one or two iron pots and a large iron ket- tle, gourds being used as cups and dippers. Stoves were unknown and all cooking was done about the fire of logs in the fireplace.
The cabin being completed and furnished the family moves in. The excitement of the long journey from their former home and the novelty of plunging into an un- known forest being over, what a feeling of lonesomeness must have come over these pioneers I imagine that the most promi- nent feature of these wilderness homes was its solitude.
WILD ANIMALS ABOUND
The solitude of the night was interrupted by the hoot of the ill-boding owl, the howl- ing of wolves or the frightful scream of the murderous panther. Often the growl of the bear was heard at the cabin door, or the blood shot eye of the catamount was seen
peering through the openings of the cabin. The days if possible, were more solitary than the nights. The gobbling of the wild turkey, the cawing of the crow, the woodpecker tapping the hollow tree, or the drumming of the pheasant did not enliven the scene, nor was the situation without its dangers. The settler as he was going about his work, or, while engaged in the hunt, did not know at what tread he might be bitten by the poisonous copper-head, or rattlesnake; nor at what moment he might meet the hungry bear. If out at night, he knew not on what limb of a tree over his head the blood- thirsty panther might be perched ready to spring upon him. Exiled as they were from society and the comforts of life the situation of the settler and his family was perilous. The bite of a serpent, a broken limb, or a siege of sickness in the wilderness without medical skill was not pleasant to contem- plate. Such was the situation which con- fronted those brave people who built the first cabins in this community.
I deem it proper just here to say that there is but one living witness to the early
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conditions that I have described and that is Aunt Thursey Way who has lived in this community more than one hundred years. This aged veteran is plodding feebly by the last milestone of life. Eternity will soon close around her and then the only know- ledge of early times and deeds will be from fragmentary sketches of history. Mrs. Way is past 103 years. There may be others living in Indiana who are as old but per- haps not one who has lived as long in the place he now lives and who has seen as much Hoosier history made as has Mrs. Way.
The settlement of a new country in the immediate vicinity of an old one is not at- tended with many difficulties because sup- plies can be obtained from the older settled community, but the task of making new homes in a wilderness, as remote from civil- ization as this, was quite different, because food, clothing and other necessities were obtained with great difficulty, and while these pilgrims of the forest could feast their imagination with the romantic beauty of their new surroundings, they had difficulties before them which required the bravest heart to overcome.
They were exiles from society, schools and church. The clothing they brought with them soon became old and ragged. The scant supply of meal they had provided un- til a field could be cleared and a crop of corn raised, was soon exhausted. It was not uncommon for a family to be without bread for weeks or even months. The lean meat of the deer and the white meat of the wild turkey were used as a substitute for bread. The flesh of the bear and the squirrel was the only meat, and that often had to be eaten without salt. At the time I mention, salt could not be obtained near- er than Louisville, Ky. It was sold by the bushel and the price was sometimes seven dollars for a bushel weighing eighty-four pounds. To provide food for the few do- mestic animals they brought was also quite ¿ problem. Many of these died of actual starvation during the first winter. I am speaking now of the winter of 1816 and 1817. We have neither record nor tradi- tion of any families having spent the winter in this community previous to that time. Two cabins had been built here before the
dates mentioned, but it is said the owners did not spend the winter here. The two settlers I refer to were Lewis Phillips, of whom previous mention has been made, and Samuel G. Hoskins, who built a cabin in 1815, on Rock Lick creek near the old Crawford homestead. It should be noted that Phillips and Hoskins, with their fam- ilies, were the only settlers in the territory of Marion township at the close of the year 1815.
During the year of 1816 as many as twenty five or thirty families arrived here and most of them built cabins and made this their permanent home. I cannot name them all but will give the names of a few and tell where they located: Jacob Piles built a cabin on the south-west corner of the farm now owned by Oscar Gaines. George Sheeks located on Rock Lick creek, near the Finger cemetery. John Sutton and his father-in-law. Thomas Rowark, set- tled on what is known as the Denton Sheeks farm. William Erwin built a cabin on what is known as the Widow Dodd farm. My grandfather, William Edwards, settled a
short distance south of what is now the Edwards cemetery. Neddy Edwards built a cabin about one-half mile south of this on the farm now ow ned by Noble L. Moore. Charles Toliver, the father of Aunt Thursey Way, located on the south-west corner of the farm now owned by Isom L. Burton, near the residence of John Isom. Aunt Thursey has lived for nearly a century within about a mile of the place where her childhood days were spent. John McClean a school teacher, located near the residence of the late John Murray. About one-half mile south of the last named place James Fulton built a cabin and a few years later a distillery. Zach Spurling built a shack, in which he lived for several years, about two miles west of where Mitchell now stands. Thompson Conley built a cabin not far from the Bryantsville and Hamer's Mill road and near the Elkin spring. This was afterward the home of the Rev. David El- kin, who preached Lincoln's mother's fun- eral. Joel Conley located on the old Con- ley homestead, near the Conley cemetery. William Maxwell and William Baldwin lo-
cated on what is now the Reuben Miller farm. There were a number of other fam- ilies located here during the year 1816 and whose names I cannot give.
A majority of the settlers entered the land where they located within a year or two after their arrival, but some of them occupied the land for years before acquir- ing a title to their homes. Perhaps this question is asked. Where were these pion- eers from and why did they leave homes of plenty to build new homes in the wilder- ness? It was the voice of opportunity, the lure of land and the ambition to do some- thing for their children, were the leading in- centives that prompted these hardy people to leave their former homes and endure the hardships and privations in a new country. So strong is the tie of property, especially in land, that men will endure almost any kind of hardships to secure it. Nearly all the families who came here to find homes during the years 1816 and 1817 were from Ashe county, North Carolina, or Grayson county, Virginia. These two counties, although in different states, are separated
only by an imaginary line. Thus it will be seen they were people who had lived under the same environments before emigrating here where all were necessarily surrounded by the same conditions.
What I shall say of the civilization of the pioneers will also apply to those who followed them for several years afterward. It is a prevalent opinion that people who are the first inhabitants of a wilderness country, such as this community was dur- ing the first few decades of its settlement, were of the ignorant and lower class. This is far from being true. In this electric light, automobile and railroad age, the early pioneers living or dead, receive but little credit for the actual intelligence possessed. History must do justice to the noble men and women who braved the hardships that our foreparents endured. In spite of their rude surroundings these people were given to hospitality and as freely divided their rough fare with a stranger as with their neighbor, and would have been offended had they been offered pay. Other characteristics were industry,
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honesty, candor and steadiness of deport- ment For quite a period of time they knew nothing of courts, lawyers, magis- trates, sheriffs or constables. They were a law unto themselves. Every one was at liberty to do whatsoever he thought was right in his own eyes, It is the history of all sparsely settled communities where all are well known to each other, public opinion has its full effect, and to some extent, answers the purpose of legal government. That was especially true of this community. The turpitude of vice and the majesty of morality were then more apparent than now. The crime of theft was almost un- known. Our fore-fathers, so far as I have ever heard, had a kind of hereditary de- testation of a thief. Gambling with cards, and such games as progressive euchre and five hundred were then unknown. They are some of the blessed gifts of modern civilization.
CLEARING OF THE VIRGIN FOREST
The early settlers usually arrived here either in the summer or early fall. Nothing could be done in the way of planting a crop
JAMES W. EDWARDS
the first year on account of the lateness of the season and also on account of the country being covered with timber. The pioneer selected and marked off a piece of ground that would make a suitable field; this selection was usually near his cabin. Any of the older men now living will tell you that to go into a primeval forest and clear a field even with the improved tools in use at the present day is no small task. Our grandparents knew of but two tools to use in clearing, the axe and grubbing hoe; cross cut saws were not in use then The first step in clearing the ground was to cut away the under growth. Then a few of the straight grained trees were cut down and made into rails to make a worm fence around the field before planting a crop of corn. The remainder of the timber was either chopped down or deadened by girdling or burning. To clear a field of ten or twelve acres was the work of the first winter.
LOG-ROLLING
By the next spring the settler was ready for his first log-rolling. A day was set for
the rolling and the neighbors for quite a distance were invited On such occasions as house-raising and log-rollings, each neighbor was expected to do his duty faith- fully. If he failed to do so without an excuse, when it came his turn to need like help from his neighbors he felt the punish- ment in their refusal to respond to his call. As some of the young people who read this perhaps have but little idea of what a log- rolling consisted of, I will describe one. First, the logs were cut or burned off so they were not more than twelve or fourteen feet in length. This was done previous to the day fixed for the rolling. Each man who was to take part in the work armed himself with a hand spike made of dog wood or sassafras. One of their number was selected as captain whose duty it was to direct the work. If the logs were very thick on the ground the captain would direct that four logs be placed side by side, then three smaller ones on top of these, then two more on top of the last three. A single log on the top of these would com- plete the pyramid, Usually all the logs in
an ordinary clearing, as the first fields were called, could be piled ready for burning in a single day, but if more time was required it was freely given. Men would go miles to help and often worked three or four weeks in this kind of work. After the logs were piled it required several days to burn the log heaps and brush and get the ground ready, as we would say, for the plow. But the kind of plow then in use, which con- sisted of a small piece of steel fastened to a wooden mould board, could be but little used in a new field. So the preparation of the ground for the first crop of corn, as well as the cultivation, had to be done mostly with the hoe. This was a slow and laborious method, but necessity knows no law.
OBTAINING FOOD
When the corn was nearing the roasting ear stage a battle royal would begin be- tween the farmer and the varmints, as the squirrels and raccoons were called, as to which was entitled to the corn. These animals were very plentiful and both were very destructive to growing corn. The
children, as well as the men and women, every day in the week would march around the field making all the noise possible with cow-bells, horns, clap-traps and dogs to scare away the squirrels. At night fires were built all around the field to frighten the raccoons and other animals away. In spite of all this much of the corn was destroyed before it was ripe enough to gather. As has been previously noted, many families had been living for some time without bread and had become sickly and, as they expressed it, tormented with a sense of hunger How eagerly these people must have watched the growth of the corn. How delicious must the roasting ears have tasted. What a jubilee they must have had when the corn had acquired a sufficient hardness to be made into Johnny cakes by the aid of a tin grater. The question will be asked. "What is a grater and how could meal be made with it?" A grater is a circular piece of tin perforated with a nail or punch from the concave side and nailed by its edges to a block of wood. The ears of corn were rubbed on the rough edges of the holes
while the meal fell through them on the block to which the grater was nailed. This was indeed a slow way of making meal, but it was the best they could do. When the corn was too hard to be ground with the grater, the hominy block was used. This was made of a large block of wood about two feet long with an excavation cut or burned in one end, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom so that the action of the pestle on the bottom threw the corn up the sides toward the top of the excavation from whence it continually fell down into the center. Thus the whole mass of grain was equally subjected to the strokes of the pestle. In the fall of the year while the corn was soft the block and pestle did fairly well, but this method was very slow when the corn became hard. As the mills for grinding grain, which were built in this part of the country after a few years of its early settlement. were usually located on small streams which, in dry or very cold weather, could not run on account of the lack of water, the grater and hominy block were used at intervals for many years. For several years after the first settlement the farmers did not attempt to raise wheat, so that corn meal was their only de- pendence for bread
PLOWING, PLANTING, HARVESTING AND THRESHING.
Previous to the last sixty years, wheat as well as all other small grain, was sown broadcast and usually covered over with a wooden tooth harrow or with a brush pull- ed around by horses or oxen.
For the first fifteen or twenty years after this community was settled. all reaping was done with the historic sickle. It seems in- credible to think that almost all the im- provements that have been made in agri- cultural implements, have been made dur- ing the last seventy-five or eighty years.
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