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PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS
Gc 977.202 In3mo
INDIANA COLLECTION
GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 01715 4011
Gc 977.202 In3mo Moore, A. Y. History of the Presbytery of Indianapolis
JUL 2 5 66
Natash College HISTORY Cranfabrice
May 26 /9
Presbutere of
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BY
A. Y. MOORE.
Chas. W. Morgan Fund.
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESBYTERY.
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INDIANAPOLIS:
J. G. DOUGHTY, PRINTER, CORNER CIRCLE AND MERIDIAN STS. 18.76.
50
HISTORY
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BY
A. Y. MOORE.
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESBYTERY.
INDIANAPOLIS: JOHN G. DOUGHTY, PRINTER, CORNER MERIDIAN AND CIRCLE STREETS, 1876.
Allen County Public Library 00 Webster Streat PO Box 2270 ørt Wayne, IN 46801-2270
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EXTRACT from the Minutes of the Presbytery of In- dianapolis, in session at Greenwood, September, 1875 :
"Rev. A. Y. MOORE was chosen to prepare a History of the Presbytery, to be read at the Spring meeting."
Extract from the Minutes of Presbytery, in session at Southport, April, 1876 : 1360956
" Rev. A. Y. MOORE read a part of the History he had prepared of this Presbytery, and he was requested to complete the History, and prepare it for publication."
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Church at Bloomington-Rev. Isaac Reed-Bible Society- First Preaching in Indiana-First Churches-Early Times -The State Capital is located and named-Organization of Church at Indianapolis-Chronological Comparisons. ..... 1
CHAPTER II.
Louisville and Salem Presbyteries-Indianapolis as a Mission- ary Field-First Ordination in the State-Ordination and Installation at Bloomington-Organization of Churches at Columbus, Franklin, Greencastle, and Greenwood - Pres- bytery of Wabash-Synod of Indiana-Difficulties with Mr. Bush - Presbytery of Crawfordsville - Difficulties in Presbytery-Difficulties Allayed
16
CHAPTER III,
Presbytery of Indianapolis - First Statistical Report - The Field and its Occupation in 1830-Decision of Presbytery on Representation, Presbytery Resisting Division-Com- plaint against Presbytery - Dissensions from Diversity in Doctrine- Items- Hopewell - Industrial Aspects and In- terests-Southport, Danville, Greencastle, Shiloh, Bethany -The Field at the time of the Great Division of the Church
27
vi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
Action of the Presbytery of Indianapolis in the Great Division of the Church-Action of the Presbytery of Crawfordsville- Greencastle First-Greencastle Second-Putnamville, Pop- lar Spring, Baimbridge, Carpentersville, Bloomington, Co- lumbus 43
CHAPTER V.
Second Church of Indianapolis-Indianapolis Presbytery, N. S .- Enlargement of Presbytery - Ministerial Changes -- Changes in Churches-Missionary Work-Pastoral Relation -Report to General Assembly
50
CHAPTER VI.
Presbytery of Indianapolis, O. S .- Churches Organized-Min- isterial Changes-Lessons from the History of Franklin Church - Ministerial Support-Missionary Work- Organi- zation of White Water Presbytery, and Changes in the Boundaries of the Presbytery
59
CHAPTER VII.
View of the Field from Reports of Indiana Gazetteer-Num- ber of Old and New School Churches, and their Increase in Membership-Progress and Prosperity of the Country .. 71
CHAPTER VIII.
Indianapolis Presbytery, O. S .- Changes in Churches-Minis- terial Changes-State of Religion-Missionary Work-Pres- byterial Authority-First Church of Indianapolis-Second Church of Greencastle-Numbers.
74
CHAPTER IX.
Indianapolis Presbytery, N. S .- New Churches-Second Church of Indianapolis-Fourth Church of Indianapolis-Green- wood-Ministerial Changes-Missionary Work-Danville, White Lick, Greencastle, Putnamville, Bainbridge, Bloom- ington, Columbus.
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vii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
Numbers-Census Report of the Statistics of the different De- nominations in the Field of the Presbytery 92
CHAPTER XI.
Indianapolis Presbytery, N. S .- Greenfield Church-Kingston and Clarksburg-Edinburg-Sixth Church of Indianapolis -Shelbyville-Ministerial Changes-Progress- Reunion- Adjournment sine die-Hendricks County-Putnam County -Bloomington-Columbus-Numbers.
CHAPTER XII.
Indianapolis Presbytery, O. S .- Changes in Churches-Ministe- rial Changes-Deaths-State of the Country-Revivals- Reunion-First Church at Indianapolis-Seventh Church at Indianapolis-Brownsburg and Clermont-Greencastle, Carpentersville, Bloomington-Numbers. 107
CHAPTER XIII.
Indianapolis Presbytery - Its Boundaries, Members and Churches-Changes in Churches-Ministerial Changes- Missionary Work-Woman's Presbyterial Society-Revivals 119
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HISTORY
OF THE
PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
CHAPTER I.
Church at Bloomington-Rev. Isaac Reed-Bible Society- First Preaching in Indiana - First Churches - Early Times-The State Capital located and named-Organiza- tion of Church at Indianapolis-Chronological Compar- isons.
1805-1823.
THE Presbytery of Indianapolis comprises within its limits the following counties : Putnam, Hendricks, Ma- rion, Hancock, Johnson, Morgan, Monroe, Brown and Bartholomew.
The oldest Presbyterian church within this district is that of Bloomington, Monroe county. This church was organized the 27th of September, 1819. One year be- fore this all the rest of the territory now included within the bounds of the Presbytery of Indianapolis, except Monroe county, was in the possession of the Indians. At St. Mary's, Ohio, a treaty was made upon the 3d of October, 1818, by the government of the United States
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HISTORY OF THE
with the Delaware Indians, who then occupied this ter- ritory, by which they transferred it to the United States. In the treaty, the right was reserved to the Indians of remaining in the country, and occupying it as a hunting ground for three years; after this they were to be re- moved by the government of the United States to terri- tory assigned to them west of the Mississippi .* This tract of country purchased from the Delawares was called, in the settlement of the country, the New Pur- chase, and known as such.
The county of Monroe was partly within the limits of the New Purchase and partly within the limits of a pur- chase made of the Indians by General Harrison at Ft. Wayne in 1809 ; a purchase which was one of the chief causes that stirred up the hostility of Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet, and led to the Indian war, which was begun with the battle of Tippecanoe, November 7th, 1811.
The enabling act of Congress which made Indiana a State in 1816, devolved upon James Monroe, the Presi- dent of the United States, the duty of setting apart a township of land for University purposes, in addition to the township that had been already granted to the Uni- versity of Vincennes. The President designated for the State University a township of land in what afterwards became Monroe county. Doubtless this assignment of land for University purposes led to the speedy settle- ment and organization of Monroe county. The county of Monroe, which was previously a part of Orange county, with the county seat at Paoli, was organized by the Legislature of 1818. The county seat was located April 11th, 1818, and named Bloomington. This was
* Dillon's Indiana, p. 575.
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PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
six months before the acquisition of the New Purchase from the Delawares.
The first entrance of a Presbyterian or Congrega- tional minister within the boundaries of this presbytery was, in all probability, made in the fall of 1818. The Rev. Orin Fowler, who spent a year in the State under the direction of the Connecticut Missionary Society, visited Bloomington in the fall of 1818. Mr. Fowler thus writes from Carlisle, in Sullivan county, to Rev. Isaac Reed, then preaching at New Albany : "I have been on a tour to Monroe county, (Bloomington county seat), which was very fatiguing ; have been up the Wa- bash river to Fort Harrison (Terre Haute), and preached in nearly every neighborhood in these several direc- tions."*
In the fall of 1819 the Rev. Isaac Reed, who was then preaching for the church of New Albany, made a mis- sionary tour into the interior of the State to distribute Bibles and to preach. The Bibles, he says, were the re- mains of a society which had been formed at Jefferson- ville by the agency of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills and the Rev. Daniel Smith, during the days of the territorial existence of Indiana, and while Colonel Posey was Gov- ernor. In 1814, Samuel J. Mills and Daniel Smith, under the combined patronage of the Connecticut and Massa- chusetts Missionary Societies, made a journey through the States and Territories of the southwest, preaching and organizing Bible and other benevolent societies. In November of this year, these men visited St. Louis, and " preached the first sermons ever heard from ministers of their denomination in that French village."+ It was to distribute the Bibles of this Bible Society, organized
*Reed's Christian Traveller, p. 97.
+Sprague's Annals of the Presbyterian Pulpit, Vol. IV, p. 506.
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HISTORY OF THE
at Jeffersonville by Samuel J. Mills and his colaborer, Daniel Smith, and to preach the gospel "in the regions beyond," that the Rev. Isaac Reed made, in the fall of 1819, a missionary tour " as far as to the frontier coun- ties of Monroe and Owen." By this thread of influ- ence, slight, yet real, and most interesting and precious, the organization of the oldest church of the presbytery becomes associated with the life and labors of one "whose praise is in all the churches," and to whom is largely due the organization both of the American Board of Missions and the American Bible Society.
The church at Bloomington was " the first church," says Mr. Reed, "formed by my ministry."* Mr. Reed became a veteran missionary, and probably organized more churches in the State than any other man.t
The first record we have of a Presbyterian minister preaching within the limits of Indiana, is of Thomas Cleland, of Kentucky. In the Life of Dr. Cleland we find the following :
" Transylvania Presbytery had no definite limits in a southern direction; it also included Indiana, etc., on the north. In the spring of 1805 I was directed to visit Vincennes and the adjoining regions. It was an unin- habited route I had to go. A small wilderness trace, with only one residence on the way, in the most desti- tute part of the way, to entertain me during the night. Here was my poor animal tied to a tree, fed with the grain packed in a wallet from Louisville, and myself stretched on the puncheon floor of a small cabin, for the night's rest. All passed off, however, without any det- riment or discomfort. The next evening made up for all previous privations. I was welcomed and agreeably
*Christian Traveller, p. 93.
+Historical Discourse, by Rev. J. H. Johnston.
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PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
entertained at the Governor's palace during my stay in Vincennes. The late William Henry Harrison, then a young man, with a Presbyterian wife, was Governor of the Indiana Territory, as it then was. He had recently held a treaty with a certain tribe of Indians, who as- sembled at Vincennes.
"The first sermon I preached-and it was the first ever preached in the place, at least by a Presbyterian minister-was in the council house, but a short time before occupied by the sons of the forest. I preached also in a settlement twenty miles up the Wabash, where were a few Presbyterian families, chiefly from Shelby county, Kentucky."*
It is possible that in Clarke county, which Governor Harrison established by proclamation February 3, 1801, there may have been preaching, either by some Presby- terian or other minister, carlier than the time mentioned by Mr. Cleland, when he preached at Vincennes.
In the Minutes of the General Assembly for 1805, we find that about the time Cleland is threading his way through the wilderness to Vincennes, Mr. Thomas Wil- liamson, a licentiate of the Second Presbytery of South Carolina, is appointed to spend three months in mission- ary services, "in the lower parts of the State of Ohio, and in the Indian Territory as low as Kaskaskia."
By Indian Territory in this minute of the Assembly we must understand Indiana Territory, which was or- ganized in 1800, and embraced all the territory of the country west of Ohio, and north of the Ohio river. When, in 1803, the Lousiana purchase was made, all of the territory west of the Mississippi, and as far south as the southern boundary of Arkansas, was added to the
* Life of Dr. Cleland-Moore Wilstach, Keys & Co., Cincinnati, 1859, p. 87.
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HISTORY OF THE
territorial government of Indiana. In 1805, the terri- torial governments of Missouri and of Michigan were organized. But it was not until 1809, that the Territory of Illinois was established by detaching from the Ter- ritory of Indiana the country which is now embraced in the States of Illinois and Wisconsin, and that part of Minnesota which lies east of the Mississippi. In the Minutes of the Assembly for 1806, we find this resolu- tion : "That Mr. Samuel Scott, of the Presbytery of West Lexington, be a Missionary for three months, in the Indiana Territory, and especially at Vincennes."
In Mr. Dickey's Brief History, this is the year of the date of the organization of the Indiana church, the first Presbyterian church organized in Indiana The second church organized, was one in the vicinity of Charlestown, Clarke county, called Palmyra. It was con- stituted in 1807, by the Rev. James Vance, with about twelve or fifteen members. When the Charlestown church was organized, in 1812, the Palmyra church had become almost extinct, and the few remaining members were embodied in the Charlestown church. The Charlestown church was thus the third church organ- ized in Indiana. The fourth was that of Washington, Daviess county, with seventeen members, in 1814. The fifth, that of Madison, with fifteen or twenty members, in 1815. The sixth, that of Salem, in Washington county, in 1816. The seventh, that of Blue River, in Washington county, with seven members, in 1816. The eighth, that of Pisgah, in Clarke county, with fifteen members, in 1816. The ninth, that of Graham, in Jen- nings county, with seventeen members, in 1817. The tenth, that of New Albany, with ten members, in 1817. The eleventh, that of Hopewell, in Sullivan county, in 1817. The twelfth, that of Jeffersonville in Jefferson
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PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
county, with fourteen members, in 1818. The thirteenth, that of New Lexington, Scott county, with twenty mem- bers, in 1818. The fourteenth, that of Corydon, with seven members, in 1819. The fifteenth, that of Carlisle, in Sullivan county, with nine members, in 1819.
The church at Bloomington was the sixteenth Pres- byterian church organized in the new and, growing State. It consisted at its organization, of nine persons, Henry Kirkham, Mary Kirkham, Dr. David H. Max- well, Mary Dunn Maxwell, John Ketcham, Elizabeth Ketcham, Elizabeth Anderson, Elizabeth Lucus and Patsy Baugh. Of these persons, Dr. David H. Maxwell and John Ketcham were, during their lives, prominent and influential citizens. They both took an active part in the Indian war that begun with the battle of Tippe- canoe. Their families were obliged to seek shelter in forts. Ketcham's fort, in Jackson county, the region of country in which he had first settled when he came from Kentucky into Indiana, was considered far out from the settlements, and greatly exposed to the savages. The fort itself was never attacked by the Indians, though invested one night by a party, who succeeded in driving off the horses belonging to those in the fort. Ketcham and a comrade, on an errand to a neighboring farm, were waylaid by the Indians, and Ketcham received two severe gun-shot wounds, and his comrade was killed. In a scouting party under Gen. Bartholemew, he is again in imminent peril. Again a comrade falls at his side, fatally wounded, and he escapes only by being quicker with the fatal aim of his rifle than the savage foe, who has singled him out for his victim.
It was in April, 1818, that John Ketcham moved to Monroe county. He built the first mill that was built in the county. The meal his family used while the
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HISTORY OF THE
mill was built, was prepared by a hand mill, the only kind at the time in the county. He was, in time, hon- ored with a Colonelcy of the State Militia, because of the reputation he had gained in the Indian war. He be- came an associate Judge, and served several times as Representative in the Legislature. He died February 7th, 1865, at the age of eighty-three.
Dr. David H. Maxwell, moved to Bloomington in the spring of 1819. He was much in public life. He was a member from Jefferson county of the Convention of 1816, which framed the constitution with which Indiana, in December, 1816, was admitted as a State into the Federal Union. He was the mover in the convention of the clause in the constitution, which prohibited Slavery, for the introduction of which, into the new State, as shown in Dillon's History of Indiana, strong and persistent efforts had been made. Dr. Maxwell fre- quently represented the county of Monroe in the Legis- lature, and was the eighth Speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives. He was for twenty-five years a member of the Board of Trustees of the State University, and almost constantly the President of that Board. He was elected an elder of the church in June, 1823, and served the church as such until his death in May, 1854, at the age of sixty-eight.
Of the original members of the church of Blooming- ton, two still survive, Mrs. Mary Dunn Maxwell, the widow of Dr. D. H. Maxwell, and Mrs. Elizabeth Ketch- am, the widdow of Col. John Ketcham. Mrs. Maxwell was born in March, 1788, one year before the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Mrs. Ketcham was born in Rockingham county, Virginia, November 27th, 1781, six weeks after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Uniting with the church when about twenty years of
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PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
age, she has been a member of the church militant for seventy-five years, and in faith and hope, is waiting for her admission into the church triumphant .*
The church at Bloomington was organized in the Court House, a log building erected for temporary use, and of which a pen photograph remains in the contract for its erection, now to be found in the records of the county. It was, according to the terms of the contract, to be built after the manner of double cabins, the first ten feet square, and the second, twelve by twenty, built ten feet apart, with an entry between. It was to be ten feet high, of round logs, all to be neatly butted, then hewed inside and out; the whole to be covered under one roof with four courses of boards on each side; the floors to be out of half timber, well hewed and jointed, and two and a half inches thick when they lay on the sleepers; one door (doorway) in each apartment of said house, with one window in the largest, the doors to be fronting the entry, and shutters made to all and hung on good wooden hinges, the house to be chinked with short blocks, after the manner with stone, and well daubed inside and out and made smooth.
The dwellings of Bloomington were in harmony with its court house. They were log cabins, and dense for- ests occupied most of its streets and lots. In this same year Fort Wayne was vacated by the United States Government as a frontier military post, and it was left a small trading post for bartering with the Indians for their peltries, the same purpose for which it had been first occupied by the French more than a hundred years before.
In 1810, the population of the Territory of Indiana was
* Mrs. Ketcham, since the above was written, has entered into rest, departing this life on Sabbath morning, July 9th, 1876.
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HISTORY OF THE
24,520. But the streams of immigration were beginning to flow in rapidly upon the new country, and a commit- tee had been appointed by the Legislative Council to locate a permanent Capital for the State. This Council also petitioned Congress for permission to locate a cer- tain quantity of the public lands "lying on the main fork of White River," for this permanent seat of gov- ernment. The war with the Indians hindered the con- summation of this work begun by the Legislative Council. In the enabling act of Congress for the organization of the State, four sections of unsold land were donated for a permanent Capital. In January, 1820, a committee was appointed by the legislature to fix the location of the State Capital. They located it in June of the same year. On the 6th of January, 1821, the Legislature con- firmed the action of their commissioners, and on motion of Judge Jeremiah Sullivan, of Madison, afterwards, if not at the time, an elder of the Presbyterian church, the newly established Capital received its name, Indianapolis. In the spring of the same year, 1821, in which the Cap- ital was located, the man, who but two years before was the first settler in the vicinity of Indianapolis, was mur- dered by the Indians upon the place upon which he had settled, and the horses he had owned were driven off by them.
In the course of a few months after the location of the Capital, a population of some hundreds gathered upon the site of the future city. For this population, flour and meal were packed on horses through a path- less wilderness from the White Water settlement at Con- nersville, a distance of sixty miles. This was necessary for several reasons. The season was an exceedingly wet one, and malignant fever and ague so prostrated the in- habitants of the new settlement, that they were unable
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PRESBYTERY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
to tend the corn which had been planted, and which choked by the rank growth of weeds, had brought no fruit to perfection. Indianapolis was not destined to a rapid growth in its early days. George Stephenson had not yet succeeded in securing the device for rapid trav- elling by railway, though working very earnestly and hopefully for it. Indianapolis, before the days of rail- roads, was too inaccessible a point for rapid growth. The first sale of city lots occurred in October, 1821. In 1831, three-fourths of the town site and donation of the government remained unsold. Among the names of the first arrivals of citizens after the locatian of the Capital of the State, are the names of Dr Isaac Coe, Caleb Scudder, James Blake and James M. Ray, names that will ever be held in honored remembrance in the history of the Presbyterian church in Indianapolis.
It is a matter of record, that the Rev. Ludlow G. Gaines, of Ohio, a missionary of the General Assembly, preached in a grove upon the site of Indianapolis, sev- eral months before the lots now covered by the city had been offered for sale. The first settlers of the new city had the gospel preached to them only when some travel - ling minister, overtaken by the Sabbath, paused in his journey. This lack of gospel privilege, it is said, was rapidly tending to obliterate the distinction between the Sabbath and other days. One among the settlers be- came deeply engaged in finding means to arrest the growing desecration. This was Dr. Isaac Coe. His first effort was to organize a Bible class of Christian people. This class first met February 20th, 1822. A Sabbath school was organized April 6th, 1823. It was adver- tised in the Indianapolis Gazette, as the Indianapolis Sabbath School. So it was for five years, the Indian- apolis Sabbath School, the only one. It was organized
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HISTORY OF THE
with thirty scholars, its numbers increasing during the year to ninety-eight, with an average attendance of forty. James M. Ray was its first Superintendent, al- though he was not yet a member of the church. Like- wise, James Blake, an active co-laborer in the Sabbath School, and in all the outward work of the church, was not yet a member of the church. It was in a revival in 1830, that these men became by profession of their faith, members of the church.
The Rev. David C. Proctor, a missionary under the direction of the Connecticut Missionary Society, entered . the State late in the fall of 1821. In the fall of 1822, although there was yet no church organization at Indi- anapolis, arrangements were made with him to preach three-fourths of his time at Indianapolis, while every fourth Sabbath he preached to the little church at Bloomington. Thus the way was prepared for the or- ganization of the Presbyterian church at Indianapolis. The church was organized July 5th, 1823, in Caleb Scudder's cabinet shop, the same place in which the Sabbath School had been organized. The Rev. Isaac Reed, who in the fall of 1822 had moved to Owen coun- ty, writes in his Christian Traveller :
" My first visit to Indianapolis was through many perils of waters by the way, in company with Mr. Proc- tor, the 3d of July. On the afternoon of the 4th, I preached to the Presbyterian friends at a cabinet ma- ker's shop; and at the same place, on the morning of the 5th, I preached as moderator in the formation of the church of Indianapolis. The same day two other min- isters arrived. The next day was the Sabbath, and there were four ministers with this new formed church. The church was organized with fifteen members. Dr. Isaac Coe and Caleb Scudder were elected elders. A church
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