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Gc 977.2 B21n 1572574
I. P. Brown Private Library Book
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 00827 1832
..
1
T. H. BALL.
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA
FROM 1800 TO 1900
.... OR ....
A VIEW OF OUR REGION THROUGH THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
... BY ....
T. H. BALL,
ACTIVE MEMBER OF INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF WISCONSIN STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY; HOHORARY MEMBER OF TRINITY HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF TEXAS; AUTHOR OF LAKE COUNTY, 1872; LAKE OF THE RED CEDARS; POEMS AND HYMNS; ANNIE B .; NOTES ON LUKE'S GOSPEL; HOME OF THE REDEEMED, ETC.
CROWN POINT, VALPARAISO, LA PORTE, KNOX, WINAMAC, MONTICELLO, RENSSELAER, KENTLAND.
1900
Copyright, 1900, BY T. H. BALL.
"It is well for every form of organized society, from the family to the nation, to pause occasionally and devote itself to a review of the past, recalling whatever of persons and events may be worthy of recollection, aud placing on permanent record so much of the gathered results as ought to be preserved."
DR. BARON STOW.
DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY, PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO.
1572574
DEDICATION.
To the memory of my FATHER and my MOTHER, who were true PIONEERS in Lake County, and from whom my earli- est and best impulses in the line of literature were received; and to the memory of OTHER PIONEERS, good and true men and women, hundreds of whom made homes in this North- western Indiana in the early pioneer days; as a memorial of their privations, their energy, their success; this volume is affectionately dedicated.
T. H. BALL.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Introduction 5
1. General Outlines 11
2. The Indians 21
3. The Early Settlers 35
4. What the Early Settlers Found. 61
5. Pioneer Life. 79
6. County Organizations .. 98
7. Our Lakes and Streams 112
8. Lake Michigan Water Shed. 117
9. Townships and Statis- tics 121
10. Railroad Life 124
11. Political History 148
12. The War Record 164 32. Court Houses 476
13. Religions History
178
14. Religlous History 201
15. Religious History 221
16. Sunday Schools. 234
17. Towns and Villages of Newton and Jasper ... 246
18. Towns and Villages of White, Pulaski and
19. Villages, Towns
and
('ities of Lake
275
PAGE.
20. Villages and Towns of Porter 308
21. Villages, Towns and
Cities of La Porte.
330
22. Early Travels
352
23.
Public Schools
361
24. Private and Parochial Schools 386
25. Libraries 392
26. Our Industries. 402
27. Social Organizations 421
28. The Kankakee Region .. 436
29. Draining Marshes 439
30. Animals and Plants. . .
448
31.
Miscellaneous Records.
458
33.
Archaeological
Speci-
mens.
485
34. Birth Places of the Pio- neers 491
35. MeCarty 497
36. Attempts to Change 502
37.
Altitudes
507
38. Miscellaneous Records. 510
39
Some Statistics
536
Starke.
260
40.
Weather Record
541
Conclusion
564
Separate maps of Lake and Jasper Counties will be readily found. The map or chart of Indiana showing date of purchases was copied by permission from an official chart issued by the State Auditor. Lake County on the larger map is not filled out because there is a separate map of that County.
INTRODUCTION.
This work will include, in the term North-Western Indiana, all the area between what is known in the United States survey as the Second Principal Meridian and the Illinois State Line, from township 26, north- ward to the Indiana Boundary Line. The width of this region is thus nine ranges and about one section, or fifty-five miles, and its length is nearly twelve town- ships, or about seventy-two miles, making an area, including a part of Lake Michigan, in even numbers, of 3,960 square miles.
In this area are seven entire counties and parts of two others, but only a very small part of Cass County, and the counties to be included in this history, as forming North-Western Indiana, are Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Starke, Pulaski, and White, and Newton and Jasper.
It will thus, at the southeast corner of the parallel- ogram, barely touch the Wabash River a few miles from Logansport. The Tippecanoe, the Iroquois, the Yellow, the Kankakee, and the Calumet, are its prin- cipal rivers.
In thus taking the second principal meridian as the limit eastward of North-Western Indiana there are left for North-Eastern Indiana fourteen ranges, or thirty miles more than one-half of the full width of the State.
The entire history of this region, in much detail, could not in a volume of this size be given; but in-
6
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
teresting and certainly valuable facts connected with its early settlement and growth, will here be found, some of which can be found nowhere else; and the author believes that the condensed and the detailed history and the gathered facts and incidents, as ar- ranged in this book, will be an acceptable and a valu- able addition to the accumulating store of our historic treasure, as we are in Indiana, closing up one century of progress and closing up at the same time the Nine- teenth Century of the Christian Era.
In regard to the sources of information for the statements contained in this work, the author can claim, in the first place, some personal knowledge de- rived from his own observation, as he has had a home in this region since 1837, coming here from the State of Massachusetts in the spring of that year, when eleven years of age (old enough to observe, and, as he had then studied Latin and Greek in academies and high schools, cultivated enough to discriminate and make records); and since 1875 he has been the Historical Secretary of the Old Settlers' Association of Lake County : and, in the second place, he has availed himself of the helps furnished by different County and State publications. Especially from an Illustrated Historical Atlas of Indiana, published in 1876, by Bas- kin, Forster & Co., he has taken many statements of early times and of settlements in counties which his personal knowledge did not reach, statements in re- gard to those early years which could not now be ob- tained. That historical atlas is a valuable work for Indiana up to 1875.
That some corrections would need to be made, and that room would be found for desirable additions, in the historical writings of those who have gone before
7
INTRODUCTION.
him in giving county history, might naturally be ex- pected, and from his long residence in this region, while most of those writers referred to have been non- residents and strangers, and on account of his special training and the line of work which for many years he has pursued, the author of this book believes that the readers will find here some carefully prepared and quite accurate history, and he cherishes the hope that it will become a recognized authority, in its special lines of treatment, concerning North-Western In- diana.
It is hoped that no apology is needed for inserting here the rather lengthy extracts that follow.
Well said Dr. Baron Stow, of Boston, at a large religious semicentennial in 1864, speaking of the dis- position of aged persons to give reminiscences of their youth, "this tendency to retrospection and historical narration is not merely an accident of human decline ; it is a beneficent arrangement of Divine Providence. In all education, experience renders an important service, and for its teaching there is no substitute. 'Thou shalt remember all the way in which the Lord thy God hath led thee.' 'One generation shall praise Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts.' The past is thus brought forward into the pres- ent ; the stream of tradition is kept running ; and, while the less valuable facts may be precipitated and left by the way, the more important are borne along as ma- terials for the continuous history of our race.
The world and the church of our times do well to un- derstand how much they are indebted to the memories of the more aged as the successive reservoirs of facts, and how much also, to what are thoughtlessly called the garrulities of age, for the communication of those
8
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
facts. If it is an ordering of Providence that every generation shall create a portion of history, it is equally intended that every generation shall convey to its successor all that is worthy of transmission. * * * The successive generations overlap one another in precisely the way to form a continuous channel for the traditionary current." ["The Missionary Jubilee." Pages 91, 92.]
THE PLAN OF THIS BOOK.
In giving a view of North-Western Indiana for one hundred years, or through the Nineteenth Century, it is not proposed to give a continuous history of this region, county by county and township by township, as it is now divided and subdivided; but, while recog- nizing these divisions as they now exist, it is proposed to give the history of the region as a whole, to show its early settlement, its growth, and what it now is, by treating in separate chapters, as topics or subjects of interest, the various particulars which belong to its topography, its physical features, and its general his- tory. The reader who will look over the chapter head- ings as given under the word "Contents," will see what these particulars are supposed to be, and so he will know what to expect in the book itself. Especially he will find, in making up the hundred years of his- tory, some thirty years of Indian life; twenty years of white pioneer life, ten of that being white in connec- tion with Indian life; and then fifty years of railroad growth and the modern civilization and progress be- longing to the last half of the Nineteenth Century in the United States of America. When the reader has gone over these various chapters, has considered by
9
INTRODUCTION.
itself each subject, each topic, he will see what North- Western Indiana once was, and what in seventy years of civilized life it has become.
T. H. BALL,
Crown Point, Indiana, 1900.
Note. The county histories which I have ex- amined are these :
I. "History of La Porte County, Indiana, and its Townships, Towns, and Cities, by Jasper Packard." 1876.
This is an excellent and very reliable work.
2. History of La Porte County, C. C. Chapman & Co., Chicago, publishers. 1880.
Writers names not given.
This work has not dealt quite fairly by General Packard. From his valuable and carefully prepared history it has taken not the substance only, but the very wording, at times, sentence by sentence, with no marks of quotation, no apparent acknowledgment; yet, as a very much larger work,-it weighs four and a half pounds-it contains interesting material and is valuable for reference.
3. Counties of Porter and Lake, Indiana. 1882. F. A. Battey & Co., Publishers. Weston A. Good- speed and Charles Blanchard, Editors.
This is also a large book, weighing four pounds and an eighth, and with some blemishes and some large faults is a valuable reference book.
4. History of Pulaski and White Counties, by the same company as the above.
5. History of Jasper, Newton then included, Ben- ton, and Warren counties, by the same, F. A. Battey & Co., Chicago. 1883.
These four works, written by various persons, not
10
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
generally residents of the counties, are about the same in size, four pound books, and gotten up in the same style. They are all valuable, but too heavy for pleasant reading.
6. It is almost needless to mention "Lake County," 1872, by T. H. Ball, and "Lake County," 1884, from which some extracts are taken, both now out of print.
I have also looked into a Biographical History of the counties of Tippecanoe, White, Jasper, Newton, Benton, Warren, and Pulaski, by the Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, 1899, two large volumes, costing the subscribers fifteen dollars. And I have examined with care a late History of Indiana, 1897, by W. H. Smith, in two good sized volumes. This is an interest- ing and a valuable work, but contains very little in regard to Northern Indiana.
T. H. B.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL OUTLINES.
The history, proper, of this book commences with the year 1801.
It would be interesting to look back over even this small portion of our great and growing country, along the three hundred years between 1800 and the time of Christopher Columbus, and glance at the Indian oc- cupancy of this region and at its connection with Spanish, French, and English explorers and colonists.
Its position as to railroads is peculiar now ; its po- sition as to Indian migrations, hunting expeditions and wars, and as to explorers, must have been some- what peculiar then. North of it extended the whole length of Lake Michigan, a distance of about three hundred and forty miles; east of it were the immense forests and the mountain ranges extending to the Atlantic coast, distant about one thousand miles ; west of it lay that great prairie region reaching to the river which became known as the Mississippi, distant nearly two hundred miles; and southward lay the great Wabash Valley, and then, beyond a stretch of forest, the greater Ohio Valley, and, south of that, forests and rivers, and at length that great southern slope, drained by what are now called the Black Warrior and Tombigbee, and by the Alabama which receives the waters of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, a slope which, passing the great pine belt, terminates at length at the waters of the Bay and the great Mexican Gulf. By
12
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
passing through forests and crossing rivers, Indians, explorers, and traders could pass from the shore of Lake Michigan to those Southern waters, a distance of some eight hundred miles. How many Indian parties ever made that journey before the days of Tecumseh there are no means of knowing; but prob- ably the unwritten history of these three centuries would show some connection between our lake region and its Indians and that earlier explored region in the early Spanish and French times. That, in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, La Salle and other French explorers passed over this lake region is quite certain. At the close of the "Old French War," 1763, the two British provinces of Illinois and West Florida met on the line of latitude 32.28; a line passing from the mouth of the Yazoo River eastward to the Chatta- hoochee, crossing the Alabama just below the union of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, so that in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century the claimants of the two contiguous provinces must have had some connection established between the two. But at the Indian life in these great forest regions, and the life of French and English traders and trappers as they journeyed between our Great Lake and the Southern Indians, we are not to look. Those three hundred years, from 1500 to 1800, were years of strange life in American wilds, when the red men and white men were meeting each other in commerce or in conflict, sometimes mak- ing treaties and smoking the pipe of peace.
We commence with a later date.
When the hour of midnight came, on December 3Ist, of the year called 1800, the Eighteenth Century was completed; and in the next moment of time, as 1801 dawned upon the world, the Nineteenth Century began.
13
GENERAL OUTLINES.
The close of the one century of the Christian Era and the opening of the other was not a peaceful time among the European nations. Napoleon Bonaparte had been declared First Consul, December 5, 1799; on June 14, 1800, he defeated the Austrians at Marengo; and the strife was going on which led to his being proclaimed Emperor of the French, May 20, 1804. The waves of European strife crossed the Atlantic and struck upon our shores, and war with France seemed for a time inevitable.
John Adams was the American President. Wash- ington died December 14, 1799; in 1800 the national capital was removed from Philadelphia to Washington City, and Thomas Jefferson was elected to be the next President of the United States. And on October I, 1800, by the treaty of St. Ildefonso, Louisiana was ceded or re-ceded by Spain to the so-called French Republic, which placed that large territory including the present Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Indian Ter- ritory, and parts of Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyom- ing, in shape to be purchased by the United States April 30, 1803, "for fifteen millions of dollars."
In 1800 took place another event of interest to the dwellers in this State of Indiana, the formation, as a new political division of the young and growing Union, of Indiana Territory.
It was, as already mentioned, the closing year of the Eighteenth Century, a century which among other changes had seen at its beginning Detroit founded and Queen Anne's War begun, and, after the stormy events of the Revolution, which saw before it closed Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee, admitted as States into the new Union, when on May 7, of 1800, Indiana Territory was organized.
14
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
Soon after the close of the American Revolution, in July, 1787, the North-West Territory had been established. The French had then in what became in 1802, Ohio, no settlement, the first permanent Eu- ropean settlement in Ohio having been made at Mari- etta in 1788, Dayton having been settled in 1796; but in that part of the Territory which became Indiana the French had trading posts, and Vincennes had al- ready become "a flourishing town," these trading posts dating from 1683 to 1763, while Indiana formed a part of the French domain called New France. At the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, at the close of the "French and Indian War," these French posts and settlements passed into the nominal possession of the English, and when the War of the Revolution closed, they were in this wild and then largely unknown re- gion belonging to the territory of the new United States.
In what became Indiana some early American set- tlements were made, but the record concerning them is, that "from 1788 to 1814 the settlements were much engaged in hostilities with the Indians."
The North-West Territory, which has been men- tioned, of which Indiana Territory was a part, included the area west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi. Some colonial claims to the possession of parts of this territory were ceded to Congress, by New York, in 1782, by Vir- ginia, in 1784, by Massachusetts, in 1785, by Connec- ticut, in 1786. In 1787 an ordinance was framed for its management and government, passed September 13, which provided that land should not be taken up by white settlers until it had been purchased from Indians and offered for sale by the United States ; that
15
GENERAL OUTLINES.
no property qualification should be required for vot- ing or holding office; that the territory, when settled sufficiently, should be divided into not less than three nor more than five States; that these should always remain a part of the United States; that their form of government should be republican ; and that in none of them should slavery exist. It will be seen that the first of these was not fully observed in Northern In- diana, and, to some extent, slavery did exist in South- ern Indiana till after 1840. The credit of excluding slavery is due largely to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of Massachusetts, agent of the Ohio Company.
What our region was in 1800 when it was the home of the Indians may be quite well determined from the condition in which it was found by the first white set- tlers. The native red men made little changes in its natural appearance, in its animal races, in its vegetable productions. So we may safely assume that as the earliest settlers found it so it was in 1800.
As a part of what was then the great and almost un- known West, it was a rather low, in most parts level, quite well watered region, in parts well wooded, in other parts open, undulating prairie and broad, level marshes, fifty-five miles in breadth from east to west, and averaging about sixty-five miles from north to south, containing a land area of 3,575 square miles.
The northeastern part was heavily timbered, com- prising some genuine "thick woods," the growth maple, beech, walnut; also ash, elm, bass-wood, and other species. Along Lake Michigan, for a few miles out, grew pine and cedar. South of this sandy belt, along the lake, and extending in a southwesterly direction into the Grand Prairie of Illinois, a stretch of fertile prairie in six divisions passed from the eastern
16
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
to the western limit. Each of these was separated by woodland or groves from the others, and three of them became, as settlers went upon them, noted for their wonderful native beauty. It is not probable that in all the prairie region east of the Mississippi River the beauty could be exceeded of what afterwards were called Rolling Prairie, Door Prairie, and Lake Prairie.
It has been said that this region was well watered. As will be seen on the map attached to this book a number of rivers crossed it, and there were as tribu- taries to these many small streams which the map does not show. Along the largest of these rivers, known as the Kankakee, flowing in a south- westerly direction, was a broad strip of marsh land, originally covered with water. South of this river was quite an extent of marshy land, also of broad sand ridges, two considerable water courses, the Tippecanoe and the Iroquois, and prairie and woodland between the river valleys.
The native fruits were abundant, if not of so many varieties as in some parts of the land. The principal ones were, huckleberries, cranberries, crab-apples, plums, some strawberries, wintergreen berries, sand- hill cherries, and grapes. Huckleberries and cranber- ries grew in great abundance. Hundreds of bushels, even thousands of bushels, of huckleberries and cran- berries must have been eaten by the Indians and wild fowls or have gone to waste each year. The quantity of these two varieties of wild fruit growing on these sand ridges and marshes, is almost incredible to one unacquainted with the real facts. So late as 1896, when much of the native growth would naturally have been destroyed, there were marketed, it is said, in what is now Pulaski County, four thousand bushels
17
GENERAL OUTLINES.
of huckleberries, two thousand in Starke County, by one shipper in a good season; and many years ago, from a single railroad station in Lake County, there were shipped a thousand bushels, picked by women and children, in one season. Cranberries grew very abundantly in many marshes when the first settlers came. Hundreds and hundreds of bushels were gathered by them and sent off in wagon loads to the nearest markets. The Indian children, it is certain, could have had no lack of wild fruit in the summer and fall, from July Ist till frost came. As late as 1837 the two varieties of wild plums, the red and the yellow, were excellent in quality-the red very abundant ; and of crab-apples, although they were sour, yet large and nice, there then was no lack. There were nuts, too, in great abundance in the autumn time-hazel nuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, white and black, and beech nuts. In the northeastern part, where the hard or rock maple trees were so large and of so dense a growth, "thick woods," the Indians in the spring time could make which they did make, maple sugar, to sweeten their crab-apples and cranberries .*
Whether as early as 1800 the honey bees had arrived to furnish the Indians with honey is not certain. They are said to go a little in advance of the white man, the heralds of his coming footsteps. Here, as early as
*Among the Indians in the northeastern part of La Porte County was a petty chief called Sagganee.
"When the Indians were removed, Sagganee went to Southern Kansas with them, but soon returned, saying that he could not live there-there was no sugar tree. He had been in the habit of making maple sugar."
Like the whites, he had become attached to the "forest nectar." He continued to live and died in Indiana. He would not live where there was no sugar tree.
18
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
1835 the early settlers found them in trees then well stored with honey. Solon Robinson, Crown Point's earliest settler, mentions "a dozen honey trees to be cut and taken care of" during his first winter, the winter of 1834 and 1835.
The Hornor party, camping in 1835, cut a bee tree, from the contents of which they filled a three gallon jar with strained honey, a wash tub and a wooden trough with honeycomb, and estimated all at at least five hundred pounds.
It is quite probable that, while fond of sugar, the Indians had also learned the taste of honey. Leaving fruits and sweets, which, without much labor on the part of the Indians, nature furnished in this favored region, some of the native animals may be noticed. Among those to be classed as game were black bears, probably not numerous, deer in vary large numbers, rabbits also and squirrels, the large fox, the smaller black, gray or cat, and red squirrels. For the presence of buffalo or bison on the prairies north of the Kankakee River, the evidence is very slight. One who was born at the Red Cedar Lake, in Lake County, who is a very close observer and a very ac- curate observer of nature, and of the traces of men and animals, accustomed to the wilds, who has trapped beaver and found traces of Indian encampments in South Alabama, encampments that had been tenant- less for some seventy-five years, who shot many buffalo on the great plains of Texas in 1877 and 1878, Herbert S. Ball, has found on these Indiana prairies no traces of the existence liere of buffalo. The traces which they leave he knows well. But there probably were some small, straggling herds here once. Yet, all the historic evi-
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