USA > Indiana > Hamilton County > Carmel > Reminiscences of the long ago : being a historical sketch of the early settlement of Bethlehem, now Carmel and vicinity with an account of the Indians and of the doings and makeshifts of the early pioneers who have passed away etc > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Gc 977.202 C21w 1510682
M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
J L
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 02301 6600
-
OBITUARY
Z INA WARREN, son of Daniel and Mary Warren, was born in North Carolina, September 9, 1831; died April 1, 1911, being at his death seventy-nine years, six months and twenty-one days old. His parents moved to Wayne County, Indiana, when he was quite young. Shortly afterward they moved to this community where the deceased was reared, educated and lived all his life.
In the year of 1854, he became acquainted with Isabelle Thomas and in 1855 they were married. To this union were born six children, three of whom died when quite young. Those living are Mrs. Thomas J. Newkirk and Will W. Warren, of Chicago, and Mrs. Lizzie Hodgins, of Carmel.
In 1862 he became converted to the Christian religion, but did not join the M. E. Church until 1868, of which he remained a loyal member until death.
He leaves a wife, three children, six grand- children, three sisters and one brother, and many other relatives and friends to mourn their loss.
Reminiscences of the Long Ago C
. BEING A HISTORICAL SKETCH .. OF ...
The Early Settlement of Bethlehem, now Carmel and Vicinity ... WITH ...
AN ACCOUNT OF THE INDIANS And of The Doings and Makeshifts of the Early Pioneers Who have passed away with a Partial List of Their Names ... AND ...
A LIST OF THE DEAD OF BETHLEHEM-CARMEL An Account of Merchandising and Other Branches of Business Accidents, Suicides, Shootings, Fires, Etc. up to 1911
BY
Z. WARREN
1510682
Immigration and Settlement
TT IS with some reluctance that I undertake to write a history, not being a Ridpath, Bancroft, or a Pliny, but I will try to make it truthful and ask the reader to excuse any incongruities of composition, believing that at a future time this record of the past will be of some benefit, being written by one who is seventy-nine years old and has voted for president fifteen times, scoring eleven, and lived with the history of our country through three wars and five panics.
As my parents were the first white settlers in this immediate vicinity, and Daniel Warren, Sr., my father, the founder of Bethlehem, now Carmel, I will first give a little sketch of their history, immigration, and settlement here.
Daniel Warren, Sr., was born in the year 1791 and was of English descent. He was about eight years old when General Washington died and could remember the universal sorrow, and of hearing such expressions as "I suppose General George Washington is dead." In his younger days he was a hatter in North Carolina and worked, not in "Beard's Hatter Shop," but in old Salem. He was a son of Joseph Warren, who fell pierced in the breast by a bullet in battle with the British, one month and nineteen days after they
3
burned the Capitol at Washington. He, Daniel War- ren, was only prevented by sickness from participating in the battle of "Perry's Victory" in Lake Erie, near Put-In-Bay. 1
Grandfather Warren was at home on furlough, and the day arrived for him to start back to the army, to return never more; but,
Soldier, rest, thy warfare o'er; Sleep the sleep that knows no waking, Till the resurrection morn.
My mother's maiden name was Mary Hoover. She was born about 1795. Her father, Jonas Hoover, and a relative, Rudolph Weymire, who was a soldier in the battle of Dettingen in 1743, immigrated from Hanover, Germany, sometime after the above date.
My parents immigrated from North Carolina in 1831, when Andrew Jackson was president, and Napoleon was sleeping on St. Helena. They loaded their wagon for the new country, Indiana, the then "Far West," putting in amongst other things a box of ginger cakes of home manufacture, and a little tin trunk filled with "Hard Money" with which to buy land; nothing but gold or silver would be received by the government for land.
They left their married daughter, Ruth, never expecting to see her again, the distance being almost as far then as around the world now. But in a few years a wagon arrived at our house, and the occupants sent some one in who asked mother if she would like
4
to see Ruth. She said "Yes, but I never expect to." He told her to go out to the wagon if she wanted to see her-they had immigrated.
Emigrants from North Carolina and other parts came occasionally. One day a covered wagon drove up to our house; they were folks from North Carolina, and some relation to my mother. After a little while their little flaxen haired girl approached rather shyly and handed me a large red streaked apple, and I expect the very stem was chewed up. Apples were not often seen, there being but one orchard in the vicinity of seedling trees, planted by the Indians. What became of that little girl? Long since departed, but one of her sons is now a prominent business man on West Main Cross Street, Carmel.
The little tin trunk, spoken of before, had a little padlock and was kept locked, so no one could steal their cash, and when camping it would sometimes be left unguarded in the wagon, not thinking anyone would be hog enough to carry off the whole trunk bodily. Nowadays there might be some persons that unscrupulous.
A little incident happened at the ferry over the Ohio River at Gallipolis. Two ferries were running in opposition; one offered to take us over for a little less, then the other underbid him, and so on until one said, "Come on with me and I will take you over for nothing." Then the other, not to be outdone, said, "Come with me and I will take you over for nothing
5
and treat to a pint of whisky." I do not remember hearing my father say which one he went with. We passed through Chillicothe, Ohio, and at Richmond, Indiana, called upon David Hoover, my mother's rela- tive, who laid out the city and gave it its name.
My father, Daniel Warren, entered one hundred and sixty acres of land, cornering where now is the southwest corner of Main and Main Cross Streets of Carmel. The patent deed had the signature of Andrew Jackson, then president.
There were yet some Indians, bears, panthers and wolves and deer galore, wild turkeys, pheasants, rattle snakes, and squirrels in great abundance. When burning brush at night, droves of deer, attract- ed by the light, would come near enough for their eyes to be seen. About where Edmund Graves' house now stands, my brother saw one lying in a tree top, and when he threw a stick at it, fifteen jumped up and ran flopping their tails. When a dog got after one he would often be thwarted by a fence, the deer mak- ing it at one bound.
The Rail Pen
The first thing to do after landing in the then solid wilderness, on the quarter section now the farm of Jonathan Johnson, was to cut down an oak tree and split enough rails to make a rail pen, and boards to cover it. A fire-place was left on one side and a "back-log" rolled in place, and a door on another
6
side, to which a sheet was hanged up for a shutter. This was the first house! Look at it-and it was about the second day of blustery March.
They lived in this house for six weeks, three of which mother and the children were left alone while father was on the hunt of his horses, which had estrayed, and there were the Indians and wild animals, and no white neighbors near. Droves of hungry wolves would come up of nights with their dismal howling. My father later kept dry brush heaps in stock, so that when the wolves got too fresh he could set fire to one, and the light would scare them away for that night.
They had to have pens and shut the sheep and hogs up of nights to secure them from the wolves. One night the wolves were howling, and they had for- gotten to shut the hogs up, and my two elder brothers went in the dark to shut them up.
A Field of the Dead
At another time they neglected to put the sheep in the fold, and in the morning "A field of the dead rushed red on their sight, and the lambs and the sheep were scattered in the fight." A long pasture field was strewn with dead sheep from one end to the other, the wolves only sucking the blood from their throats.
The Log Cabin
After living in the rail pen six weeks our folks set about building a house. They made no cement
7
foundation, had no lumber or hardware bill to pay, no brick for chimney, no plastering, painting or papering; but rocks for corner stones, on which they built up with beech logs, scalped a little on two sides and notched down at the corners. Round poles made the joists and rafters, and clap-boards, split boards about four feet long, for the roof and ceiling. The boards on the roof were held in place by poles, and the boards were laid loose on the joists.
The cracks were "dobbed" with clay which, after drying, would crack and sometimes pieces would get knocked out, and here we see the origin of the phrase "knocking the dobbin" out of anyone. The floor was made of "puncheons," split slabs with the edges trimmed to fit together. The chimney was made of split sticks covered with clay, and the hearth and back wall of clay. The stairway was a ladder.
The doors were made of split boards with wooden hinges and latch, having a string to it, and passed to the outside through a hole in the door, pulling the string would unlatch the door and by pulling the string inside your door was fastened from the outside. Here we see the origin of the expression of hospitality by saying "the latch string will be out."
A few holes were bored and wooden pegs driven in for wardrobe hooks, and there was the house ready to move into. After a few years my father built a more pretentious house, the present old one on the Jonathan Johnson farm. The old log cabin was sold and moved to town for a stable and has decayed, ex- cept a small piece preserved by the writer.
8
Noes
In the early days of the first settlement there were no pike roads, steam or electric roads, locomo- tives, telegraph, telephone, wireless, express office, bank, post office, rural routes, postage stamps, en- velopes, postal and post cards, money orders, steel pens, matches, kerosene, gasoline, electric lighting or power, natural or artificial gas, cement walks or building blocks, buggies, carriages, tile, bicycles, motorcycles, autos, taxicabs, tricycles, ice cream, horse clippers, safety razors, daily papers, Sunday papers, breach loaders, chloroform, ether, X-rays, phonographs, incubators, manure spreaders, wind mills, clover hullers, cultivators, hay rakes, corn planters, corn shredders, sowing machines, sewing machines, corn shockers, silos, mowing machines, reapers, self binders, hay and straw balers, road scrappers, organs, pianos, wire, wire screens, sausage grinders, canned goods, lawn mowers, cigarettes, moving pictures, high schools, factories, galvanized iron, wire nails, gimlet pointed screws, corn shellers, type writters, ratchet braces, patent screw drivers, kinetoscopes, rubber tires, sacharine, glucose, Japan dryer, eight hour law, aeroplanes, emery wheels, car- borundum, bar sheer plows, systematic school books, acetylane gas, cylinder presses, cook stoves, heating stoves, star candles, carpet sweepers, knitting ma- chines, cameras, photographs, fountain pens, gun cotton, smokeless powder, dynamite, nitroglycerine,
9
traction or gasoline engines, threshing machines, straw stackers, separators, oil lamps, glass lanterns, cream separators, creameries, sorghum, rubber shoes, and various other things.
If the pioneers had microbes, they did not know it. They had no tuberculosis, it was only consump- ' tion; had no hosiery, only stockings and socks; no cemeteries, only graveyards; no churches, only meet- ing houses, and after musical instruments came, no violins, only fiddles. The towns had no restaurants, they were only eating houses.
Makeshifts
For mail, the pioneers went to Westfield after the office was established there. Postage rates was ac- cording to distance, and letters limited to half an ounce, and to but one or two sheets of paper. For long distances the rate was twenty-five cents, and you could prepay or not, as you preferred. For steel pens they used goose quills, which were staple articles of trade at the store, when there was one, and they brought three cents per dozen in goods. For ink they boiled a little maple bark, to which was added a small lump of copperas, and they had a jet black ink.
Lanterns were made of tin, perforated with small holes to let a little stray light through, and with a door on one side, and had a short tube inside to place a bit of candle. Next came an improvement, the four sides were of glass, held together at the corners by strips of tin. Then came lard oil and glass flue, and lastly the kerosene article now in use.
10
It is not necessary to mention the big kettles of whole grain lye hominy, but will here tell how they made a mortar to crack corn to make "small hominy" before the advent of the first grist mill. A cut about two feet long from a beech log would be set up on end, live coals of fire placed in the center of the top, on which bits of wood were placed, and the fire kept burning till a round bottomed cavity was burned out, watching to see that it was not burning too near the edges. Then this black cavity was dug and scooped out to remove the charred part, and it was finished. Then for a pestle or "hominy beater" they split a stick and put the flat part of the iron wedge in the opening and fastened it by lashing tightly.
Joseph Green made combs of cows' horns, and Jacob Green, Sr., and Nathan Hawkins, cooperage, iron bound well buckets which were staple articles, all of which could be bartered for.
Sugar Making
They made their maple sugar and molasses, and if camps were not too far apart, when one "stirred off" they sent for the neighboring camp people to come and eat wax. Sometimes when out of maple molasses, they would boil pumpkin juice to a mo- lasses. Children would make wooden spoons for wax, in the winter to have them ready.
Oh, there is yet an indescribable charm to the very name of the "sugar camp" where we would lean against, or sit on a mossy log, or climb a tall "sap-
11
pling" and eat our big ball of wax. Eating much wax would give one an appetite for something salty, and we would take to the camp in the morning some slices of regular, Simon pure, dyed in the wool, home cured ham, bread and eggs, and for dinner fry the eggs in the ham gravy, or "sop," make spicewood tea by boiling sugar-water till sweet enough, have warm maple molasses, then eat our dinner in the wildwood, a big log being our table. A true picture, but never to be realized again as "Our fugitive years are all hastening away."
I will tell here what a predicament our folks were in at one sugar making time. They cooked on the fire-place, and, in order to save the sugar water, had taken many of the cooking utensils to the camp, and an itenerant preacher came. Mother hardly knew how to do; and just to think, that he was a preacher! She apologized, but in after years she concluded that preachers are about like other people.
Home-Made Clothing
The pioneers made their own clothing of wool from the sheep's back, and flax from the flax patch. The wool was sheared, washed, picked, carded, spun, colored and wove up into cloth. They even had but- ton moulds and cast their buttons of pewter, sticking a little wooden peg in a certain place to make the eye. If they had no pewter and did not want to melt up a pewter plate, they used lead instead. Those not having moulds would borrow. Some buttons were
12
made of gourd shells, cut round and covered with cloth. Gourds were raised for dippers and drinking cups; one would be hung up at wells and springs, and oh, what a good drink one could get from an old- fashioned gourd!
The women knit stockings and socks. Straw hats were made for summer; for winter lambs' wool was taken to Mr. Hennings at Westfield, and made up into hats on the shares. For shoes, hides were tanned on the shares, and made up by shoe-makers the same way.
They made their own soap with lye and grease. They sowed their flax and when mature, pulled it up by the roots and spread it out in rows on the grass for the stalk to rot and be brittle. Then it was put upon a scaffold and kiln dried, and there were four things which to the rising generation would be nonde- scripts-a flax break, an upright scutching board, a wooden scutching knife, or paddle, and a hackel.
The flax was then put in the break and the stalk broken into short pieces, then passed to the scutching board and the "shoves" knocked out, then it was pulled through the hackel, which separated the short fiber from the long. The long was regular flax ready to spin, and the short was "tow," which was coarse and had scraps of stalk left in it. It was made into tow linen for pants and shirts, and pity the skin of those who had to wear them. Some of the tow was spun into twine and traded at the store for wrapping
13
twine. Think of the merchant using tow string and coarse brown paper, made of straw and woolen rags, to wrap up packages. They had no paper sacks but sometimes the store-keeper's wife would paste some of the brown paper into sacks in which to tie up coffee.
I will tell a tow-shirt tale. A boy, who is yet living, had nothing else on, waiting while his mother was patching his tow pants. A man was seen coming and his mother told him to run up in the loft, but it was such a rare thing to see somebody coming, could he forego the sight? No, he split to the door first to see the man, who by that time was in the yard, then ran up the ladder to the loft. His mother explained, and the man, Elias Johnson, said he understood it all. That boy walked carefully over the clapboard floor so as not to step on the end of a board, for if he had it would have tipped and landed him on the lower floor with banner flying.
Before leaving the flax subject, I will relate the disastrous ending of a flax breaking and scutching, about seventy years ago, on the farm now owned by Jonathan Johnson. All was in readiness and work had begun; the season's flax in sheaves was dry on the scaffold over the fire and around it, some of which was broken, scutched and hackled, when the boy, who is yet living, and who was scutching a strand of flax, one end of which was wrapped around his hand, got a little lazy, or cold, and in yanking around and stand- ing with his back to the fire, the lower end of his dry
14
flax came into contact with the flame. Then such another yelping and jumping! In trying to get the burning flax off his hand, he did such a lively job of flopping it up and down that he set fire to the whole kiln of flax, and that which was broken, the pile of scutched, hackled and the pile of tow. So the whole kit was destroyed, the flax work all done, and the boy left with a burned hand as a reminder.
Before matches came into use the pioneer covered fire with ashes, but if it failed to keep they would go to the nearest neighbor and borrow fire, or strike fire with flint and steel. Many times they would have to go for fire before they could get breakfast. Some kept a log heap or stump burning to furnish fire.
For gates they made bars and hay forks were cut from the woods and trimmed up nicely and the prongs sharpened. For cathartics they boiled white walnut bark and made pills. Many had not coffee mills and would put the coffee in a rag and pound on a flat-iron, and in the event of getting out of coffee, and the store being miles away, they would brown corn-bread crusts on live coals, or as a substitute, brown wheat, if they had it.
Instead of barshear plows they used the jumping shovel. For reapers, mowing machines and self- binders, they used the sickle, cradle and scythe. For threshing machines, they spread the wheat out on the barn floor, or a smooth level place on the ground, and had horses to go round over it till the grain was
15
tramped out, or beat the grain out with a "flail." The grain was then run through a fan mill to separate from the chaff, and if they had no fan mill would flop a sheet up and down to blow the chaff away.
Instead of magazines, they read Poor Richard's Almanac. For school books they had the English Reader, Pike's Arithmetic, Walker's Dictionary, and Webster's Elementary Spelling Book, and introduc- tion to the English Reader.
The schools did not have many classes, as the books were miscellaneous, scholars taking whatever kind they happened to have; for reading books, his- tories, etc., were used and there were cases in which scholars not having books took a newspaper in place of a reading book.
For light, if they had tin candle moulds, they would mould tallow candles, the wicks of which would have to be snuffed off occasionally or they would give but little light, and candle snuffers were staple articles. Not having moulds, they would dip the wick into melted tallow, and let it cool, repeating the process till they would have an irregular and un- sightly candle which they called "schluts," or tallow dips. But not having tallow, an iron lamp, kept for sale by the store, was used. It was to hold grease and had a twisted rag for a wick. Not having the iron lamp, a saucer was used to hold the grease, with a rag wick extending over the edge. ‘
Instead of an eight or ten hour law, men's work was from sun up till sun down at about twenty-five
16
cents per day. The women cooked by fire-place, the four main cooking utensils were of cast iron; a tea- kettle, skillet with lid, bake oven with lid and a stew kettle. Later on the frying pan with a long handle was used.
The first sign of preparing a meal was to see the teakettle set on the fire, and the skillet and lid placed on to heat. When hot, live coals were shoveled on to the hearth to set the skillet of bread to bake, putting on the hot lid and shoveling live coals on it. Then there was the "Johnny cake," corn bread shortened with home rendered lard, or "cracklines" if at hog- killing time, and spread out on a "Johnny cake" board and baked by the direct heat of the fire, on both sides by turning. Good enough for a meal without anything else; yum! yum!
It would sometimes happen that the teakettle would upset on the fire. Ho! then there was a mina- ture Vesuvius, with steam, ashes and soot flying, and kids and cats following suit, or soot, but not in the same direction. Later on, swinging iron cranes were used over the fire place with different length S hooks to suspend kettles and pots on.
For brooms, they made hickory ones by taking the body of a hickory bush of proper size and length and stripping the tough splints from the end up apiece, then from higher up the splints were pulled down over the lower ones and then tied, and the bal- ance of the stick was shaved down to proper size for the handle.
17
-
Lead pencils had no wood on them, were about the size of our present ones, but were all solid and of the same material contained in our present ones. After writing awhile one's thumb and finger would be black. Inkstands were sold in the store and were made of two or three thick pieces of cork fastened together with wooden pegs and a hole left in the center in which was a little glass receptacle for the ink.
Goose quill pens were used in the schools, and when one got out of repair the pupil would go and hand it to the teacher, no words being passed, and he would remake the pen and hand it back. The teacher had a small sharp knife for that purpose, and here is the origin of the word penknife.
Very early not many had clocks, and a "noon- mark" was cut in the floor at the south door to indi- cate dinner time and if the sun was not shining they could guess at it. For pumps they had the "well sweep" with an iron bound well bucket on the end of a pole or rope, or a windlass with a crank, by turning which the rope and bucket were let down and drawn up.
Rope Making
Before flax was ready, well ropes were made of the outer bark or fiber of nettles, some one having a rope twisting machine, which served for the whole neighborhood and on which later they made their
18
ropes of flax or tow. There was some art in the pro- cess, and the uninitiated had to be shown. The rope maker was a twister, and,
When a twister a twisting, would twist him a twist, For by the twisting of his twine, he three twines doth entwist, But if one of the twines of the twist doth untwist, The twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist.
The Gas Well
In stating the things the pioneers did not have, I said they had no natural gas, but they had one gas well and did not know it.
Ezekiel Clampitt dug a water well on his land, east of where now is the Friends Church at Poplar Ridge, and after he had come out, heard such a sizzing noise at the bottom that he attempted to let down a lighted candle to see if the "damps" were in it. A man having on tow clothing, which had been worn till nappy, was sitting on the edge of the well with his legs hanging down in it, and Mrs. Clampitt was standing near the edge with her baby in her arms. When the flame of the candle reached the edge of the well there was an explosion, and a flame of fire heavenward. Mr. Clampitt's hat was blown off, Mrs. Clampitt was knocked down, and woe to the man sit- ting on the edge-it set the nap of his tow clothing afire, burning all over him. People came to see the wonder, and after it had been burning for some time, Mr. Clampitt was afraid of it, and filled the well up, and dug one in another place.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.