USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 1
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NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 3 3433 08181991 8
he New York "un'ic Library
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IVD (fairy De La Munia
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PERRY COUNTY
t.
A HISTORY
BY
THOMAS JAMES DE LA HUNT
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THE W. K. STEWART COMPANY INDIANAPOLIS 1916
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 735681 ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 1916 L
COPYRIGHT 1916 BY THOMAS JAMES DE LA HUNT
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TO A NATIVE OF PERRY COUNTY To WHOSE INSPIRATION THIS BOOK OWES ITS EXISTENCE ..
MY MOTHER
ISABELLE HUCKEBY DE LA HUNT
IT IS DEDICATED AS A LOVING MEMORIAL
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"To make the past present, to bring the present near" -Macaulay
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FOREWORD
As an author's privilege is conceded him the right to speak of difficulties met with, of obstacles overcome, in the preparation of his completed work.
Yet is it not more agreeable to recall the pleasures encountered along the roadside, the cordial assistance so cheerfully given, the spirit of ready helpfulness which ever brightened the most toilsome research ?
While individual acknowledgment of such favours cannot possibly be made, it is hoped that none among those whose aid has contributed toward the material of this volume will, on such score, deem its writer un- appreciative.
So marked has been the kindness shown, so encour- aging the words of loyal confidence expressed, that the twelvemonth of its actual writing has taught its writer in many unexpected ways the genuine quality of Perry County friendship, which reaches across all boundary lines to lend a helping hand.
It is believed that this same warmheartedness will make every allowance due for unavoidable shortcomings or omissions in the story now offered each one who may care to read.
Virginia Place
December, Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Exploration and Organization 1
CHAPTER II
Pioneer Settlers of Each Township
8
CHAPTER III
First Circuit Court and Officers at Troy.
28
CHAPTER IV
Removal of County Seat to Rome
35
CHAPTER V
Revolutionary Veterans and Soldiers of 1812.
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42
CHAPTER VI
Brick Court House and Early Residents at Rome_ 53
CHAPTER VII
Lafayette's Steamboat Wreck at Rock Island. __ 61
CHAPTER VIII
Lincoln Family in Perry County
CHAPTER IX
Early Residents, Schools and Churches-Derby __ 74
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x CONTENTS CHAPTER X
Mining Developments at Coal Haven and Can- nelton 85
CHAPTER XI
Original School Laws and System
94
CHAPTER XII
Founding of Leopold by Father Bessonies
104
CHAPTER XIII
Rono and Northeastern Portion of County
113
CHAPTER XIV
Lawyers, Judges and First Newspapers
121
CHAPTER XV
Manufacturing Enterprises at Cannelton
130
CHAPTER XVI
Churches and Schools at Cannelton
145
CHAPTER XVII
Second Relocation of County Seat.
156
CHAPTER XVIII
County Banks, Newspaper Changes, Etc.
165
CHAPTER XIX
River Traffic and Famous Steamboats
173
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CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XX Swiss Colonization Society at Tell City 184
CHAPTER XXI
Pioneer Men and Industries at Tell City
193
CHAPTER XXII Immediately Before the War Between the States_ 203
CHAPTER XXIII
Beginning of Hostilities
212
CHAPTER XXIV
Benevolent and Patriotic Work of Women
221
CHAPTER XXV
Progress of War
226
CHAPTER XXVI
Hines' Invasion-Morgan's Raid
237
CHAPTER XXVII
Bombardment of Hawesville
245
CHAPTER XXVIII
Close of War
250
CHAPTER XXIX
Industrial Development
258
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....
xii
CONTENTS CHAPTER XXX Adyeville, Branchville, Bristow, Siberia 268
CHAPTER XXXI
Rome Academy
276
CHAPTER XXXII
First Teachers' Institute.
285
CHAPTER XXXIII
First County Fairs
294
CHAPTER XXXIV
From Plank Road to Railway.
303
CHAPTER XXXV
Newspapers and Fraternal Orders
317
CHAPTER XXXVI
New Court House-First High School
330
CHAPTER XXXVII
Present Century Events.
341
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Indiana Centennial
352
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
CHAPTER I
EXPLORATION AND ORGANIZATION.
PERRY COUNTY, Indiana, is one of the first memorials to the fame of the gallant American commodore, Oli- ver Hazard Perry, of Rhode Island, whose brilliant naval victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie, Sep- tember 10, 1813, was recognized and commemorated less than one year later by the Legislature of Indiana Territory through the bestowal of his name upon one of two new counties (Posey being the other) organ- ized out of Warrick and a part of Gibson, by an act approved September 7, 1814.
Since, however, all history must have its beginnings with the earliest inhabitants of any country or local- ity, let it not be forgotten that within the metes and bounds as thus established, some material evidence then existed to give testimony that Perry County was once in possession of the Mound Builders, that singu- lar race of nomads, or semi-nomads, who left traces of their occupancy throughout the entire Mississippi Valley. These Mound Builders being placed by reliable historians as contemporaneous with the early Assyri- ans, Babylonians and Egyptians, a speculative dis- cussion of their origin, sojourn and ultimate disap- pearance would far outreach the plan of this volume, nothing being perhaps more completely shrouded in oblivion than this strange race. Their works form their monuments, and tradition is even more silent than their tombs.
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
They are called Mound Builders from their custom of building vast accumulations of earth and stone in a variety of forms which indicate that some colossal force with intelligent direction was at work in the far- gone and forgotten centuries. Investigators have classified these earthworks by their apparently prob- able diverse uses-military, sacerdotal, ceremonial, memorial, sacrificial or sepulchral, and under the last two heads would come certain remains described by an elder generation as once existing in Perry County. Five mounds formerly stood in the north- eastern part of the county, on the old Stephen Deen farm in Union Township, but all were opened long ago by unskilled relic-hunters, and in the lapse of subsequent years have become indistinguishable through washing, plowing and cutting down.
Some of these mounds are said to have contained only deep beds of charcoal resting upon rude altars; one, nothing beyond concentric layers of superimposed soil; while in another were a few implements of stone or bone, besides some crumbling human bones, mingled with ashes and charcoal. Had these human remains been immediately submitted to expert anatomical analysis, it might have been satisfactorily established whether they were the skeletons of Mound Builders or of Indians, who had to some extent emulated their pre- decessors in customs of burial, although they knew nothing of them, even by tribal tradition.
If the Mound Builders were the lineal ancestors of the Indians, the ancestry was so remote that not only was all relationship lost, but their respective osseous structure was distinctively modified in the lapse of immeasurable time. Ethnologists have found such structural similarity to the Aryan families of Central Asia that prevalent opinion now holds the Mound Builders to have descended from Asiatics who crossed to the continent of another hemisphere by way of Ber- ing's Straits and overspread all America. This hypo- thesis gives base to the further argument of some
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authorities identifying them with "The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel," but practical conditions alone can be dealt with herein, however fascinating the theories neces- sarily excluded.
Undoubtedly the first white explorers of Indiana were the French voyageurs-missionaries or traders- who chanted pious hymns or caroled love-ballads while paddling their shallow canoes along the mid-western streams; so, by the establishment from time to time during the Seventeenth Century, of widely scattered 'posts,' of which Vincennes was one, all the vast region lying between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Moun- tains came under the dominion of France; although it now seems more a dream than a historic fact that per- mission to traverse the bounds of Indiana once had to be humbly solicited in Paris, before that supreme voluptuary, Louis Fourteenth, whose lifelong philos- ophy was epitomized in his phrase, "L'Etat, c'est Moi," ('I am the State,') or that the right of commerce with naked redskins along the Wabash ever lay in the hand which signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Louis Fifteenth, his successor.
British supremacy along the Atlantic coast was un- questioned, and England rested content with vaguely claiming the "South Sea" (Pacific Ocean) as the west- ern boundary of Virginia, the Carolinas, Massachu- setts and her other colonies. But when her traders began to push beyond the mountains they found them- selves everywhere forestalled by the French; so, at length, toward the meridian of the Eighteenth Century, the English government roused to the situation.
Thus was inaugurated the struggle known in Ameri- can history as The French and Indian War, called in Europe The Seven Years War, of which Thackeray wrote: "It was strange that in a savage forest of Pennsylvania a young Virginian officer should fire a shot and waken up a war which was to last for sixty years, which was to cover his own country and pass into Europe, to cost France her American colonies, to
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sever ours from us and create the great Western republic, to rage over the Old World when extinguished in the New, and of all the myriads engaged in the vast contest to leave the prize of the greatest fame with him who struck the first blow."
With masterly fidelity and vivid picturesqueness is the stupendous story narrated in Francis Parkman's monumental series of volumes : "France and England in North America," also touched in thrilling verse by the magic pen of Oliver Wendell Holmes :
"Long raged the conflict, on the crimson sod Native and alien joined their hosts in vain; The Lilies withered where The Lion trod, Till Peace lay panting on the ravaged plain."
Under the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, France gave up all the territory east of the Mississippi River, except the town of New Orleans, a political and geographical status which remained until the Revolu- tionary War, when the Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, necessitated a new map of the American continent.
Richmond on the James then became the seat of government, after eighteen years of its administration from London, since the wide region now styled the Middle West was already part of Virginia. The emin- ent historian, John Esten Cooke, has said: "Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the right of any other commonwealth to its own domain, and if there was any question to the Virginia title by charter, she could assert her right by conquest. The region had been wrested from the British by a Virginian com- manding Virginia troops: the people had taken the oath of allegiance to "The Commonwealth of Virginia,' and her title to the entire territory was indisputable."
Richest and most powerful among the Colonies, Vir- ginia was the foremost advocate for equality and union, to secure which she made a willing sacrifice by
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yielding to the Federal government the noble princi- pality won for her, February 25, 1778, at Vincennes, by General George Rogers Clark, the hero of Foert Sackville. As "The Territory Northwest of the Ohio," it was first organized July 13, 1787, and on July 4, 1800, a new division was created by Congress under the name "Indiana," an appellation coined from the Indians who were its inhabitants.
Notwithstanding English control, the heart and con- fidence of the red men had always remained with the French, and the haughty, domineering policy of the British government retarded commerce by causing the Indians to despise the English. Beyond a doubt, the foundation of Indian hostility to later pioneers throughout the West was laid in their early antipathy to the Anglo-Saxon people, which when once conceived was skilfully nourished by the proud, unrelenting na- tives under such crafty leaders as Pontiac, Tecumseh, Black Hawk and others, down to Sitting Bull and Geronimo.
Most of Indiana's area was originally the hunting and camping ground of three different though asso- ciated tribes, the Miami, the Wea, (or Ouiatenon) and the Piankeshaw, the last-named occupying nearly all the lower Wabash Valley and ranging along the Ohio River also, their extensive possessions making them a powerful factor in the celebrated Miami Confederacy. The boundaries which these people claimed were arro- gantly defined at the Treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795, by Chief Little Turtle in the words: "It is well known to all the brothers present that my forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit, from thence he extended his lines to the headwaters of the Scioto; from thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash; and from thence to Chicago on Lake Michigan."
But as the early tide of immigration poured its flood of European settlers along the Atlantic coast, civiliza- ttion took up its westward march across the Apalah- chians. Disdainfully rejecting the enlightment thus
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
brought, the sullen, treacherous savage retired con- tinually farther into the gloom and solitude of his virgin forests. In time, therefore, several different tribes came to dwell in the same territory, the newer arrivals being called 'permitted,' so throughout the whole of early Indiana these wandering strangers were found. Among them may be named Delawares, Pot- tawatomies, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Wyandottes and Senecas.
The duration or scope of such varied tenure is prac- tically indeterminable, but the period of its close is fixed through the Treaty of Fort Wayne, June 7, 1803, and the Treaty of Vincennes, August 18 and 27, 1804, with all the leading tribes who could by any remote possibility claim the lands.
All the soil of Perry County became under these agreements the property of the United States govern- ment, subject to entry for settlement, and within twelve months afterward a sectional survey was made. The extreme northern portion was surveyed by Levi Barber in September, 1804; Range 3, West, by Elias Rector, in June, 1805, Range 2, West, by Stephen Benton, dur- ing the same month; and Range 1, West, by Ebenezer Buckingham, in August, 1805.
Shortly following these surveys the Indians migrated to trans-Mississippi grants, except a few straggling remnants of tribes, isolated families who haunted the woodland countryside, occasionally harassing the earl- iest pioneers. When the newly surveyed sections were thrown upon the market, settlers appeared, though an interval of some two or three years went by before the first entries of lands taken up in Perry County were officially recorded at Vincennes, as the newcomers were reluctant to undertake at once a further hazardous journey across the trackless wilderness in order to file their papers in the Territorial Land Office, a frame building yet (1915) standing.
Many of these pioneers had come-as the Lincoln family did, earlier, into Kentucky-by 'broad-horn' flat-
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
boats, or by keelboats from the Old Dominion, and to this early influx of Virginians was largely due that lingering affiliation with Southern political principles which asserted itself sixty years afterward. Along that marvellous "Course of Empire," the Ohio River, they took their westward way, travelling the only com- mercial thoroughfare then available, a majestic stream with a history of imperishable significance.
Although two Moravian missionaries, Heckewelder and Zeisberger, toward the close of the Eighteenth Century, declared the name to be a contracttion of 'Ohiopeekhanna,' meaning 'the white-foaming river,' the strongest consensus of opinion has always favoured a derivation from the Wyandotte 'O-he-yan-de-wa,' abbreviated on early French maps as 'Oyo,' and for the French translated by the Indians as meaning La Belle Rivière, the Beautiful River.
Such is the name yet handed down to the descendants of those who traversed its long shining aisle through a fair green world, beneath the sun and stars of a century and a half ago. Reaching high into the foot- hills of the Alleghenies and the Cumberlands, beckon- ing to the colonists of Virginia and the Carolinas; with outspread arms stretching as far as the sources of the Allegheny at the north and those of the Tennessee to the south ; the Beautiful River called through the for- est stillness with musical voice, then heard by the pioneers of Perry County and today still faintly echo- ing its appeal of home in the hearts of all their exiled sons and daughters.
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CHAPTER II.
PIONEER SETTLERS OF EACH TOWNSHIP.
JUST as the vast domain first organized under the title "Territory Northwest of the Ohio River," and later Indiana Territory, was reduced by successive divisions to the final limits of the commonwealth as it stands today, a similar process of elimination was fol- lowed in practically all the earliest counties of Indiana, so the extensive and unwieldy area of Perry County as created in the original enactment was gradually dimin- ished by the respective organization of Dubois County, December 20, 1817, Spencer County, January 10, 1818, and Crawford County, January 29, 1818. Such, there- fore, shall be the geographical boundary circumscrib- ing the region whose historic events it is the purpose of this chronicle to consider.
Section 5 of the Act approved September 14, 1814, reads: "And be it further enacted, That William Barker, Jesse Emmerson and James Stewart, of Gib- son County, Joseph Paddox and Ignatius Abell, of Harrison County, be and are hereby appointed Com- missioners to fix the seat of justice in Perry County, who shall meet at James McDaniel's in said Perry County on the third Monday of November next and proceed to fix the seat of justice for the said county of Perry agreeably to the provisions of an act entitled 'An act for fixing the seat of justice in all new counties hereafter to be laid off.'" These commissioners, there- fore, or a majority of them, met at the appointed time and place, pursuant to the Act quoted, to begin their labours.
The Greek classics describe Neptune, God of the Waters, as the builder of ancient Troy, a poetic para-
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phrase interpreted as meaning that it was a maritime city whose site was determined upon as convenient abode for sea-faring men. Similar considerations, be- yond doubt, had strong influence with the earliest pio- neers who came down the Ohio River, and among these voyagers James McDaniel, Joseph Wright, John Bowie and perhaps some few others had found a haven just above the mouth of a stream which later became known as Anderson River. Here they located, with their families, negro slaves and household goods brought from Virginia, and while the exact date, claimed by some of their descendants as 1793, is undoubtedly too early, and now quite impossible to verify, it is certain that they entered land in Perry (then Knox) County during the first few years of the Nineteenth Century.
Thus sprang into existence a tiny hamlet, one of the first-born below the falls of the Ohio, sheltered under the wing of a protecting hill, a part of the lofty sand- stone elevation in Southern Indiana which physical geographers classify as the extreme foothills of the Cumberland Range. Even as Mount Ida (Tennyson's "many-fountained Ida") overlooked the walls of storied Ilium, this majestic ridge dominated the landscape and watched the feeble beginnings of Hoosier Troy. It is unknown to whom the name owes its being, or just when it came into use, since it does not appear in the act quoted, and its sponsorship has never been claimed.
With constantly increasing frequency south-bound vessels passed by, among them the brig St. Clair, the first ocean-rigged craft in the West; the sea-going schooner Amity and the ship Pittsburg built at Pitts- burg in 1801, which made the long river voyage to New Orleans, thence to Philadelphia and across the Atlantic to Bordeaux. Of these the Tarascon Brothers, whose name still lives on western waters, were the owners and builders.
Others constructed later at Marietta, Ohio, were the Muskingum, Indiana, Eliza Greene and Marietta, also the Dorcas-and-Sally, built at Wheeling, ranging in
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
tonnage from 70 to 250. But after some few successes and numerous failures it was realized that river con- ditions were unfavourable for the operation of such deep-bellied ships, so shallower bottomed boats super- seded them as better able to negotiate an upstream voyage against floods, rapids and snags.
As all floating craft formed the habit of stopping at McDaniel's the spot became gradually recognized as a convenient landing place and its selection as a meeting point for the commissioners was a natural choice. The same arguments, added to the persuasiveness of ma- terial donations, no doubt carried weight in affecting the commissioners' decision, and after viewing several places along the river they finally fixed upon a tract of one hundred and twenty acres offered as a gift by James McDaniel, Sr., and James McDaniel, Jr. Solo- mon Lamb, who had come from New York state to these parts, also gave ten acres of land, and his brother, Israel Lamb, a cash donation, while among the other citizens of the vicinity sufficient money was subscribed for erection of the necessary court house and jail.
The county was next divided into the townships of Troy, Tobin, Anderson, Clark, Oil and Hurricane. This last-named appears for a time as Lamar Town- ship, extending on the west of Anderson River from the Ohio as far north as Dubois County. As a division of Perry County, however, its existence was brief, only until the organization of Spencer County, (1818) when it became the present townships of Hammond, Huff, Carter and, lastly, Harrison in that county. Subse- quent township changes in Perry County were the crea- tion of Union, Smith, Athens and Deer Creek, all but the first having been re-absorbed into the original dis- tricts, while Leopold, the latest civil division set apart, was not created until 1847, ten years after Deer Creek had been formed.
With no intention of awarding any precedence in antiquity to one portion of the county over any other, in here enumerating some few of the earliest settlers in
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each township, the townships will be taken just as previously listed, leaving claims of priority for others to determine.
Troy Township's name was derived from the same source as that of the village itself, and a very early entry at the Vincennes Land Office appears as that of Elias Rector, in 1809, taking up Section 31, Fractional Sections 32 and 5, all in Township 6, South; Range 3, West. This lay about midway between Troy and the present city of Cannelton and became the later site of Tell City.
Elias Rector was the third of nine sons born in Fau- quier County, Virginia, to Frederick Rector and his wife, Elizabeth Connor, a daughter of Lewis and Ann (Wharton) Connor, of Norfolk, and probably a sister or cousin to Terence Connor, the pioneer of that name in Perry County. All these nine sons were educated as civil engineers, and in 1806 came in a body to Indiana Territory, whose area then extended from the Missis- sippi River to Lake Superior.
They established themselves at Kaskaskia, and formed a clan of remarkable brothers, who surveyed for the Government all the district known as Illinois after 1809, when set apart from Indiana. Besides this work, performed under appointment from Jared Mans- field, surveyor general of the Northwest Territory, whose headquarters from 1803 to 1812 were at Cin- cinnati, they were required to survey the lands of private individuals, many of which were old French grants difficult to outline, and for such intricate labour Congress, in December, 1809, allowed additional com- pensation to William and Elias Rector, upon the report of Senator Richard M. Johnson.
The nine brothers were strikingly clannish, each six feet in height, straight as an arrow, fearless yet quiet, with a chivalrous sense of honour and manners of courtly dignity. However interesting their personality, it is, notwithstanding, scarcely correct to designate Elias Rector as an actual pioneer resident of Perry
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