USA > Indiana > A History of Indiana from its exploration to 1922 > Part 3
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Roosevelt in discussing Hugh McGary, the pioneer, and his rela- tion to the battle of Blue Licks in 1782 refers to him incidentally as the town builder, thus confusing him with Hugh McGary, the younger. Evidently Roosevelt adopted the mistake of Thwaites. Roosevelt says :
"Among the earliest of these town builders were Hugh McGary, James Harrod and Benjamin Logan. The first named was a coarse. bold, brutal man, always clashing with his associates (he once nearly shot Harrod in a dispute over work)."
The last statement results from a careless reading of Kentucky history in which Roosevelt naturally follows the current of the general narrative of the early Kentucky histories which is unfriendly to Mc- Gary. A more careful reading of the incident shows an account of the sugar camp incident in which William Ray a stepson of Hugh McGary and a member of his family, was murdered by the Indians at a sugar camp. His brother James who was with him, in a long race outran the Indians and reached the Harrodsburg Fort. McGary insisted on im-
33
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
mediately having troops to go with him to recover the mangled remains of young Ray, but Harrod, commander of the Fort, feared any weak- ening of the Fort at that moment and objected. McGary denounced him as a coward. Both leveled their rifles and McGary's wife stepped between them and threw up McGary's rifle. McGary had his way and recovered the remains of his step-son. To say, as Roosevelt says, that such an incident shows McGary once nearly shot Harrod in a dispute over work, is neither correct nor fair. When the history of McGary is written it will appear that in the suppression of all of the facts in his history by the Kentucky historians which could be suppressed, much of the truly heroic has been overlooked.
So reliable a historian as Gil R. Stormont of Princeton, who in 1914 published an admirable history of Gibson County (p. 944) in speaking of Joseph McGary, son of Harrison McGary, who was a brother of Hugh McGary of Evansville and a son of Hugh McGary, the elder, says: "The paternal grandfather of Hugh McGary, who was a native of Kentucky (this is wrong), took part in the early Indian wars with Daniel Boone and became one of the first settlers of Evans- ville, having come up the Ohio River in a boat and tying it to an elm tree, which died only a few years ago ; another tree was planted on the spot with considerable ceremony, the subject of this sketch being pres- ent on that occasion." That is where a nephew of Hugh McGary, of Evansville, posed as his grandson. It should in justice be said of Mr. Joseph McGary, as well as his brother, Hugh McGary, both living in Gibson County, men of high standing, that their father Harrison Mc- Gary died when they were too small to obtain from him any statement which might have prevented the confusion of identity of these two men.
The worst and most misleading of all the blunders on this subject is found in Elliott's "History of Vanderburgh County," page 25, et. seq., where the author ridicules the pretense of other alleged historians who have written on the subject of Hugh McGary, because in writing of him they have not confused him with the Kentucky Pioneer, Hugh McGary, the elder. Elliott says: "Actual occurrences are left for me to record for the first time in any history of Evansville and Vander- burgh County, etc."
Then follows the most absurd and ignorant statement. Elliott's history, pages 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29. He has Gen. William Henry Har- rison ordering the battle of Blue Licks, Kentucky, confusing the iden- tity of Governor Harrison of the state of Virginia with that of Gov- ernor Harrison of Indiana Territory. He then has the troops who fought at Blue Licks ordered to Vincennes, Indiana, whence they pro- ceeded to Tippecanoe, where they fought the battle of Tippecanoe. (These battles, of course, were twenty-nine years apart.) Then the army went back to Vincennes and "Col. McGary's regiment, what few were left of them, went to their homes at Kentucky, at Bardstown," (Hugh McGary's name is nowhere found in the roster of names of those who fought at Tippecanoe ; he was not present at the battle, and did not live at Bardstown, but in Knox County, Indiana ; the elder McGary was long since dead). "When Col. McGary came down to
34
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
the Ohio River he was so pleased with the view on the point where Evansville was subsequently located at the foot of Main Street (later located) where the Indian path terminated, he went to his home in Bardstown, Kentucky, and with two brothers and some friends four weeks later came with tools and built a cabin, etc. Hugh McGary remained in Evansville until 1835;" this is all fiction with no founda- tion of fact.
The records mentioned, which, as stated, are conclusive, are corro- borated by many details in the line of each of the parties when they are brought to light which are wholly inconsistent with the confusion of the identity of the two men.
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1308484
THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT
At the beginning of Vanderburgh County and the city of Evans- ville there came into the north part of the county a settlement of well to do English emigrants with some Irish and Scotch, who, according to the historians, had left Europe on account of the disturbed economic conditions following the wars of Napoleon, which were wide in extent and general character. There were at that time four such English settlements in America including the one in Vanderburgh County which was the first British settlement in Indiana. The notes and let- ters of Morris Birkbeck, an English farmer of recognized authority in agriculture throughout England, were about time time published in Philadelphia and London and translated into a number of European languages and Birkbeck associated with George Flower, an English- man of large means and marked ability, established the celebrated Eng- lish settlement at Albion and Wanboro, a few miles apart, in Edwards County, Illinois. Among the early western travelers in this section was one William Faux, who spent a year in America visiting the Atlantic coast cities and states, and before his return he came west from Phila- delphia eight hundred miles to Saundersville, in Vanderburgh County, which was the center of the Indiana settlement then not quite two years old. He spent seven weeks at the cabin of John Ingle, father of John Ingle, Jr., the railroad builder, and from that point with John Ingle as a companion (an old friend in England) visited the New Harmony settlement and the settlement of Birkbeck and Flower when John Ingle introduced him to the leaders of these settlements with whom he was well acquainted. On his return to England Faux pub- lished a book upon his travels in America which occupies more than one full volume in Thwaites Early Western Travels. More space is given in that book to Faux's seven weeks to the Indiana settlement in Vanderburgh County and its environments, including a visit to Evans- ville, with some very interesting descriptions of the early prominent pioneers, than to any other single subject mentioned in his book. Faux describes this settlement in November, 1819, with the utmost particularity and detail and the contrast between the English life which he had left and the most primitive life imaginable among back-woods- men in the wilderness, without some of the necessaries of life, was so great as to induce him to draw a dark picture of the darkest period in the history of the colony. Within a couple of years, however, the self- reliant emigrants had overcome the worst obstacles. Faux's work gives to the Vanderburgh County settlement an historical setting in the literature of that time, but no local historian has ever mentioned it until at the end of one hundred years, out of the historical interest created by the centennial in the state of Indiana and city of Evans- ville, an exhaustive examination was made and a history in the fullest detail of that settlement was prepared and published in the Indiana Magazine of History .*
*Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. XV p. 89.
1
36
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGII COUNTY
The dividing line between the people of the English settlement and the people of the village of Evansville was from the beginning not well marked. There were probably for several years as many or more people in the English settlement than in the village of Evansville. There were in the village of Evansville English and Irish emigrants, successful men, tradesmen, with whom the settlers in the English set- tlement traded, the remote limit of the English settlement to the north was not exceeding ten or twelve miles from Evansville, the ridge of high ground upon which the state road was located abruptly terminated at Pigeon Creek, near Negley's Mill (the old Anthony Mill) and ex- tended north through Vanderburgh County, and when the state road was laid out the advertisement for bids for work in the Evansville Gazette shows that the stakes were driven at points in the farms of the English settlers practically from Mechanicsville to the northern limit of the county. There is in existence a petition for the opening of a highway from Evansville to Saundersville filed August 9, 1819, in the handwriting of Samuel Scott, signed by 104 names, embracing nearly all of the prominent men then living in Vanderburgh County. The petition asked for a new highway from Evansville to Saundersville. There had a short time previously been laid out the state road which ran through the English settlement but passed perhaps half a mile east of Saundersville. The four leading men in the town of Evans- ville whose names do not appear upon the petition, Robert M. Evans (then living in Princeton and very active in the interest of Evansville), James W. Jones. Elisha Harrison and Amos Clark, evidently objected to the petition as the granting of it would make parallel roads for ten miles and a slight change of location of the state road would prac- tically answer all necessary purposes. Further search in the county records developed a second petition filed the same date, August 9. 1819, simply requesting an order "for turning so much of the road from Evansville to Princeton as shall take the same through the Main street of the town of Saundersville." This petition is in the hand- writing of Samuel Scott and contains a number of the leaders of the English settlement, together with the big four mentioned, as well as Alanson Warner and Alfred L. Warner, who had signed the first peti- tion. The interpretation of these papers would seem to indicate that the last petition was the result of negotiation and compromise which was carried through by an order moving the state road a little to the left. In 1827 Saundersville ceased to have ambitions as a city com- peting with Evansville, which in fact it had in the beginning, so also had Mechanicsville (String Town), and the legislature in that year enacted a law vacating the streets and alleys at Saundersville which soon completely passed out of existence.
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George Bylin
39
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
"Road Petition filed Aug. 9, 1819, Before the Commissioners of Vanderburgh County.
We the undersigned do petition the Hon'ble Board of County Commissioners for the county of Vanderburgh to grant an order for a road from (Evansville to)1 Saundersville (and from Saundersville)1 to Owensville on the nearest and best ground.
Samuel Scott
Joseph Baldwin
W. R. McGary
Saunders Hornbrook
Ebenezer Curtis
Saml. R. Truesdell
Thos. Ward
John Leveston
John W. Shaw
Emmory Cook
Henry Wheatstone
Porter Fuller
Richard Carlile
Elisha Satterlee
Zerah Fairchild
Julius Gibson
Christifer Lynxwiler
David Knight
Henry Wagoner
David Whetstone
George L. Shaver
Reuben Curtis
George Tyler
Thomas Gordon
Henry Hunt
Asey Satterlee
James Ring
Zadok McNew
Kenneth Compton
Thos. Yates
Charles McJohnston
Samuel Sullivan
George Potts
William Hillyard
John Harrison
John Fitzgerald
Alexr. Hillyard
Isaac Knight
Mathias Whetstone
John Hillyard
Peter Linxworthy
John Gibson
James Hillyard
James Hornbeck
Alanson Baldwin
Walter Bryant
B. Davis
David Sanders John Shaver
Isaac Lynxwiler
John Fickas
Reuben Fitzgerald
Arnold Henning
William Johnston
George Watt
Hazeal Putnam
Thos. Hooker
Morrison Farrell
Jesse McAllister
Thos. Hooker, Sr.
John Corbet
Arche F. Garrald
James Cawson
Clark McAllister
John Swango
Saml. Mansell
Jas. Russell
Lewis C. Logan
Alfred O. Warner
E. H. Minchington
Parker Aydelotte
Alanson Warner
Danl. Miller
John Cody
John Slow Francis Burtley
George M. Kinney
Howel Blivens
Henry Thompson
James Maidlow
John W. Gillman
Peter Hewson
Edmund Maidlow
Wm. A. Thompson
James I. Buss
John Ingle
Hugh McGary
Wm. Wagnon
Asa Comstock
Ashley Stanfield
Robert Gibson
James F. Jennel
William Hooker
Andrew Sullivan
John McCan
Morgan Young
The. Skelhorn
V. K. Phar
Absolam Vann
Joshua W. Stephens
Collins M. Johnson
!
1. Erased in ink upon the granting of another petition, Aug. 9, 1819, changing the State Road so as to run through the main street of Saun- dersville.
-
William Hampton
S. Boardman
40
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
Petition for Change of Princeton Road so as to run through the main street of the town of Saundersville.
We the undersigned do pray the Hon'ble Board of County Con- missioners for the County of Vanderburgh to grant an order for turn- ing so much of the Road from Evansville to Princeton as shall take the same thro' the main street of the Town of Saundersville.
Vanderburgh Cty. July 1819.
Saml. Scott
S. Hornbrook
J. W. Jones James Maidlow
Thos. Henson
John Ingle
George Potts
Alfred O. Warner
Emmory Cook
Edmund Maidlow
Thos. Ward
Alanson Warner
Amos Clark
E. Harrison
Robert M. Evans
The first week in October, 1817, the junior Hornbrook, with his sisters, arrived at Pigeon creek. "a place merely for loading and dis- charging vessels for the western part of Indiana State." Evansville, located half a mile above the mouth of Pigeon creek, then consisted of thirteen log houses. A road ran out to the river through the bluff bank at a point now the foot of Main street, much as John W. Foster describes it as in 1846. Hornbrook bought for his father, Saunders Hornbrook, Sr., nine hundred and sixty acres, about ten miles from the Ohio river, and seventeen miles from Princeton, which he imme- diately entered at the land office at Vincennes .*
This location by Hornbrook was in October or November, 1817. When the senior Hornbrook came over in the following summer, 1818, he met Edward Maidlow, with his family, at Wheeling, bound for the Prairie settlement. They bought and fitted up an ark and came by water to Evansville together, and Maidlow located adjoining Horn- brook, entering about the same quantity of land as Hornbrook.
In April, the same year. George Flower, on his second trip to America, sailed from England in the ship Anna Maria, chartered by him, with a band of emigrants for his colony, with the deck of the ship covered with a selection of fine stock preceded by a ship similarly loaded .** Among the passengers who came with them, named by Flower in his history of the settlement, was John Ingle, his wife, five young children and maid.
After a survey of the situation. Ingle, instead of going as he had intended to the Illinois settlement, bought a section of land near Horn- brook, about the time that Maidlow purchased. Hornbrook and Maid- low were men of middle age with good sized families of grown chil-
*Private letter of Saunders Holbrook, Sr., dated Jan. 7, 1818, at Tavistock.
** George Flowers' History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Il1. 100.
41
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
dren, a number of whom later intermarried. Maidlow was "a most intelligent and respectable Hampshire farmer, who brought consid- erable capital and English habits and feelings the best in the world."* He preferred to remain a farmer and hold his land for its increase. Ingle outlived Hornbrook and Maidlow. He was for many years an active leader in public matters, like Hornbrook and Maidlow, re- mained on his farm all of his life. All of them were strong men and natural leaders, who became and remained during their lives the cen- ter of a large circle in the Saundersville community, well known throughout the county, exercising wide and permanent influence.
The McJohnstons and Hillyards, Irish, who came in 1818; and the Wheelers, English, and the Erskines, Scotch-Irish emigrants, who came in 1819, and Warren, Browning, Hornby and others, all located a few miles east of Saundersville. They were people of the same type, all men of high purposes and character. With, or following soon after all of these men, came followers, relatives or, friends. This was the beginning of the British settlement in Indiana which, in November, 1819, Faux describes as containing fifty-three families in possession of 12,800 acres of land entered, having capital to the amount of eighty thousand dollars. Within two years after that date there were in the settlement over one hundred families, representing probably from five hundred to seven hundred and fifty people. A list of names of the heads of these families, including some children, was with the aid of the late Edward Maidlow and his brother-in-law, the late Robert Rus- ton, compiled by the writer, and is nearly accurate, though no doubt contains some errors and omissions :
Delaware Armstrong, Robert Armstrong.
B. F. Barker, John Bolsoner, Henry Blackburn, William Bowles, Richard Browning.
James Cawson, Emory Cook, Richard Carlisle, Joseph Compton, - Crisp, - Calvert.
Thomas Devine.
William Ewing, James Elliott, Earl, William Erskine, Andrew Erskine, John Erskine.
Mr. ("Old") Ferrell, Zera Fairchild, Sherman Fairchild, Harrison Fairchild, James France.
John Grand, James Grimwood, Luke Grant.
Saunders Hornbrook, Sr., Saunders Hornbrook, Jr., John Henson, Major (Thomas) Hooker, Mr. Hall, Doctor Hornby, Arnold Hen- ning, Joseph Hewey, Hewey Hornby, brother of Dr. Hornby, John Hillyard, William Hillyard, Alexander Hillyard, James Hillyard.
John Ingle, John Inwood.
Samuel Jared.
Everton Kennerly, Samuel Kirkpatrick, James Kirkpatrick, Kingsbury, - - Knowles, Patrick Keegan.
Richard Langford, Christopher Lockvear.
John S. Maidlow, Edward Maidlow, Edmund Maidlow, George
*Thwaites, Early Western Travels, XI, 234.
42
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
McCrary, John McCann, Samuel Mansell, Thomas Martin, James McClanaham, George Mallard, Charles McJohnston, Sr., Charles Mc- Johnston, Jr., Arthur McJohnston, Kinloch McJohnston, Edwin McJohnston.
Peter Newman, George Newman, Esan Newman.
William Onyet, Sr.
Mr. Peck of Chatteris, J. Pedley, Thomas Potts, David Powell, William Perry, Charles Phillips, Pruett, Pressley, Pritchett.
Randolph Rogers, Rhodes Rogers, William Rogers, Samuel Rog- ers, Daniel Rose, Simpson Ritchie, John Ruston, Roquet.
Samuel Scott, Graville Scott, Wash Scott, Thomas Shelhorne, S. Sutton, Daniel Stinchfield, Edward H. Sharlan, George Skeeles, John Sansom.
George Trussler, Thurston.
Payton Wheeler, Jerry Wyatt, William Warren, Rev. Richard Wheeler, Rev. Joseph Wheeler, Mark Wheeler, Elijah Waters, John Withrow, Robert Withrow, Kirby Wood, Mathias Whetstone or Wheatstone, David Whetstone, Thomas Ward.
William Young, John Young.
The relation of the settlement to the new town of Evansville was most intimate. A few miles distance between them in that day counted slight obstacles to such intimacy. They grew from beginnings at the same time and were soon almost united by the Mechanicsville (or Stringtown) ridge, which was from the beginning settled by the better class of pioneers and on which were scattered early a few of the Brit- ish colony. The British settlement became an integral part of the foundation, growth and expansion of the city of Evansville, which was destined to become a large city, in which members of the settlement had an opportunity not offered to the other purely agricultural British settlements of the time.
Some of the descendants of these British pioneers, including some of the younger generation born in England, such as John Ingle, Jr., and Philip Hornbrook, were among the leading citizens of Evansville in its early growth and formative period. The influence generally of the whole settlement on the agricultural community, its intelligence, morality and sobriety was also marked. More probably than any other single element, the influence from the source mentioned aided in the establishment of high standards of social and political life and institu- tions of the early time in Vanderburgh County.
Before the days of railroads and the telegraph, representatives of the British settlement were leaders in the town of Evansville. They were leaders in the building of the first canal, the first railroad and the first telegraph line in southwestern Indiana, and in the promoting of the first coal mine, and river craft attachment to furnish fuel to steamboats on the river and the people of Evansville at its wharf. They were leaders, in the beginning, of a public library and educational institutions of the city of Evansville at the time of the creation of the public school system of Indiana. They were leaders in the organization
43
HISTORY OF VANDERBURGH COUNTY
and support of the first agricultural society in the county,* and the early agricultural reports of the State contain the names of one of the younger leaders in the settlement as among the first contributors of the literature of scientific agriculture .** In pioneer work in the reli- gious institutions of the entire county they were first, as the records show.
From 1819, when the Wheeler brothers and Robert Parrett came into the settlement, and for twelve or fifteen years afterwards, while the community was too poor to build a church or support a preacher, the town of Evansville itself, as well as the rural districts, relied almost entirely upon them-excepting an occasional visit of the Presbyterian ministry.
The names of the leaders mentioned and others were early well known in Vincennes, New Harmony, Albion, Princeton, Evansville, and surrounding country, and for one hundred years, through several generations, those names have stood for truth, honesty, and justice in dealing with others. The large representation of those families among the prominent citizens of Evansville, as well as some well known in wider fields, is due in no small degree to this fact. Among the latter, now living, will appear names known throughout the country in lit- erature and great moral reform and when the United States, in No- vember, 1918, assumed government control of all telegraph as well as telephone lines in the country, a grandson of Robert Parrett, Union Bethel, was placed in charge of them all.
The organization of county and township government in Vander- burgh County began in 1818, contemporaneously with the coming of the British emigrants. They were not treated as foreigners and re- garded themselves a part of the body of the county, owners of the soil and ready to take an active part in all civic duties. While members of the settlement in the beginning were located very closely together, with Saundersville as the village center, it was never a separate com- munity, so far as sympathies with American ideals and surroundings were concerned.
Treating the members of the British settlement as a separate source of influence, with ideals and culture transplanted from the old world into the wilderness of the new, there may be said to have been at the beginning two other classes of people in Vanderburgh County, the in- fluence of which may be for the time separately traced. These were best represented by the southern backwoodsman and their leaders, men of strong personality, and a few men from New England, New York and other Altantic coast states.
Before the English came, there were already upon the ground sev- eral leading men born in England, who had emigrated to the Atlantic
*Philip Hornbrook was secretary of the first agricultural society in Vanderburgh County and so continued during his life. When he died the society abandoned its meetings.
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