A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of Laporte County Indiana, Part 38

Author: Rev. E. D. Daniels
Publication date: 1904
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1273

USA > Indiana > LaPorte County > A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of Laporte County Indiana > Part 38

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The A. R. Colborn Company enlarged its mill thereby doubling its capacity of a year ago. New machinery was also installed.

Root Manufacturing Company doubled the capacity of its mill room and added new ma- chinery. Heating system installed.

Reliance Manufacturing Company installed a new engine and boiler and had plans prepared for enlargement of plant as soon as the weather permits.

Michigan City and Northern Indiana Gas Company laid several miles of new mains, erected a monster gas reservoir and otherwise materially improved its plant.

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In insurance circles business was very active during 1903, and the activity continues. In life insurance no large policies were written, but much business was done in a smaller way. Fire insurance grew with the growth of the city, not- withstanding an increase of 10 to 30 per cent. in the rates on mercantile risks and special hazards, due to inadequate fire protection. The subject of a thorough paid fire department is being agi- tated, and the leading men in the city are coming to feel that there is a demand for such a depart- ment, which must be met very soon. Accident insurance nearly doubled in 1903.

In real estate circles there were many import- ant transfers and other changes during the year, many of them with a view to building. Con- tractors and builders had a busy season notwith- standing the unusually high price of labor and material. The number of new buildings erected in 1903 exceeds that of 1902 by about twenty per cent. while the excess in cost is nearly fifty per cent. During the year the city clerk issued 221 building permits, of which 122 were for new structures and IOI for additions and repairs. These operations are reflected in the increased sales of hardware, lumber, and all building mate- rial. The new work has been in brick and frame and for business and residence purposes. The more noticeable structures of the year were the Presbyterian church, $120,000; St. Anthony's hospital, $60,000; the Michigan City Cold Stor- age building, $100,000; the Hitchcock Chair Com- pany's addition, $10,000; the Ph. Zorn Brewing Company's addition, $53,000; the buildings of the Pere Marquette Railroad, including the hand- some station. The total amount spent in build- ing during the year was $250,165, which is an increase of $100,000 over 1902.

The growing importance of Michigan City as a brick-making center is emphasized by the es- tablishment of the American Pressed Brick Com- pany during the year 1903, and the completion of the Ohlemacher Brick Company's plant. Both enterprises were put under way with the most encouraging prospects and they have had more

orders than they could fill. Other manufactur- ing institutions that are prospering are: The A. R. Colborn Company ; Maxwell Lumber Com- pany, Michigan City City Sash and Door Com- pany, Henry Lumber Company, Reliance manufacturing Company, Greer Wilkinson Lumber Company, Root Manufacturing Com- pany, Ph. Zorn Brewing Company, Tecum- seh Facing Mills, Western Cane Seating Company, Fuller Glove Company, Charles Liest factory, Schroeder & Pike, Michigan City Lumber and Coal Company, Vail Broth- ers, reed chair factory, Michigan City and Northern Indiana Gas Company, and J. S. Ford, Johnson & Company, which concern has had such an excellent business that much of the time it is necessary to operate twelve hours a day. The Reliance Manufacturing Company is rushed with orders. We must not forget that all this business requires immense shipments, both im- ports of stock and exports of manufactured goods. Coal, pig iron, lumber and other articles are required, amounting to tens of thousands of car loads in a year.

Many businesses of this flourishing city have not been mentioned, but perhaps enough has been said to give a general idea of its activities. It would be interesting to trace its hotel life, its early inns, its Lake House kept by Ams- worth & Jewell, its Jewell House, erected in 1853, by the elder Mr. Leeds and kept by Patter- son, Childs, Layton, Crary, Harris, and others. David Grant, who died near Waterford, Novem- ber 2, 1903, kept the old New Albany eating house on Franklin street, near Second, between 1866 and 1876. Many other things would be interest- ing, but this chapter must be brought to a close. As we review the business and commerce of La- Porte county, with all its varieties made necessary by a complicated civilization, we see how depend- ent we are upon each other, that we are but parts of a social organism which throbs and pulsates with activity, and whose every part is pervaded with a common life.

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CHAPTER XXII.

COMMUNICATION.

"Singing through the forests, Rattling over ridges; Shooting under arches, Rumbling over bridges; Whizzing through the mountains, Buzzing o'er the vale,- Bless me! this is pleasant, Riding on the rail !"

-JOHN G. SAX.

Man cannot live alone, he must communicate . western thoroughfare between Michigan and with others. We are parts of a great organism. Joliet. The French missionaries, coureurs des bois and soldiers of fortune were the first repre- sentatives of civilization to use this trail. This trail had been used by the red men for genera- tions, and the remains of numerous camp fires along the line of it testified to its popularity. So it is with communities. The time came when the railroad and telegraph brought them in closer relations with each other; but even from the first there was communication with the outside world, for absolute isolation is impossible. At first there were no railroads leading out from eastern cities across the great valley of the Mississippi. The mountain ranges and dense forests were great barriers between the east and Indiana and Michi- gan territory. There was a canal from Troy to Buffalo, there were a few steamers on the great lakes, and there was a short horse car railroad running out of Toledo. There were no roads, but in place of them there were Indian trails

When in the seventeenth century white men first explored the region in which LaPorte county is now situated, they found and often used an old Indian trail which almost exactly correspond- ed with the watershed between what they called the Lac des Illinois or Lake Michigan and the Riviere de Theakiki or Kankakee river. This was the old trail made by the Sac Indians in jour- neying from their eastern to their western limit, and as the course was well chosen it became the line, occasionally straightened in the years of ad- vancing settlement, for the main eastern and

So far as we have any account, no civilized person ever set foot in what is now LaPorte county before about the middle of the seventeenth century. After that the region near the southern: extreme of Lake Michigan began to be visited by French missionaries and traders. Father Hen- nepin, who in 1769 was present when LaSalle built a fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph river, and who spent several months laboring among the savages along the lake southward from that point, probably traveled the old trail and camped on the banks of our inland lakes. Chevalier Henry de Tonty, the man with the iron hand, who came to Canada with LaSalle and went down the Mississippi twice and finally died in Mobile, probably traveled the old Sac trail. French ad- venturers of various types passed to and fro through this region in their restless wanderings, until they were interrupted by the wars begin- ning in 1689; and their dominion was undisputed until Great Britain wrested it from them in 1763

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by the peace of Paris. There is little record of the explorations in northern Indiana during that interval. Father Chardon was in 1711 stationed at a mission where Niles now is, and as he trav- eled to the foot of Lake Michigan it is probable that he did so by way of LaPorte. At about this time the post at Detroit was established, and the Sac and Fox Indians of Illinois and Wisconsin began using the trail in their journeys to and from that point, and thus the route acquired the name of the Sac trail, by which it was afterward known until it was obliterated by the early settlers.

In 1778 occurred the capture and turning over of Kaskaskia to General George Rogers Clark. Shortly after this Tom Brady, a dashing young Irishman, one of the Kas- kaskia revolutionists, in aid of General Clark's conquest of the Illinois country, journeyed with a congenial band of braves, attacked the British at Fort St. Joseph, which stood where Niles, Michigan, now is, captured the garrison and stores, paroled the prisoners and started by way of the mouth of the Chicago river back to Cahokia, whence he and his little force had set forth. He was pursued by a British company from Detroit, overtaken near the portage to the Desplaines river, seized and carried a prisoner to Canada. Surely the course of these hostile bodies of men must have led them through what is now La Porte county.

It was a grand dream of the French to estab- lish a line of forts up the Mississippi valley from St. Louis to Detroit and the St. Lawrence river. They established mission stations, and built small stockade forts and trading posts to protect the fur trade. One was built at the mouth of the St. Joseph river as early as 1679; others at Detroit, Mackinaw. Fort Wayne and Vincennes in 1700, and the old Sac trail was the natural line of com- munication between Detroit and Vincennes, and between Fort Wayne and the west.

By the Revolutionary war the United States gained control of this region and was left to con- tend with the Indians for possession. The treaty of Paris, at the close of the Seven Years' war in America, settled forever the question whether LaPorte county should be French or English. After the conclusion of the war of 1812 the In- dians of Indiana were rapidly brought under

treaty relations with the whites, and settlers were ready for every tract as it was opened up. The old Sac trail then became a wagon road and was much in use for military, commercial and other purposes, and the little heaps of ashes at La Porte were greatly multiplied. One of the notable way- farers along that romantic highway was the well known Isaac McCoy, a preacher attached to the old Carey mission near Niles, who passed through LaPorte to Fort Dearborn in 1817 and later. Other missionaries from the same establishment journeyed through LaPorte prior to 1829.

Hunters, trappers, and Indian traders from Chicago ranged through what is now La Porte county at a very early day. They knew the mouth of Trail creek and the Kankakee river route and used the old Sac trail. When Harrison was governor of Indiana territory he frequently sent confidential messengers to the Indians in the region between Lake Michigan and Niles. They took the trail north across the Kankakee to where it joined the Sac trail, and then passed east or . west as desired.

In 1803 Captain John Whistler was ordered from Detroit to build a fort at the foot of Lake Michigan. He and his family sailed in a schooner to the mouth of the St. Joseph river, and then finished the journey by canoe, while the soldiers, consisting of one company commanded by Lieu- tenant Swearingen, marched overland, arriving in August. They followed the route by way of Michigan City and the shore of the lake.

In the spring of 1804 John Kinzie, who had done some previous exploring with Niles, Michi- gan, as his center, passed through LaPorte coun- ty, and brought his family to Fort Dearborn. They followed the old Sac trail through La Porte.

On August 15, 1812, after the opening of the. war with England, when the evacuation of Fort Dearborn was ordered and the massacre followed out of sixty-eight men and thirty-two women and children, but twenty-five men and eleven women and children escaped, and the fort was burned. The fugitives fled to Detroit, through LaPorte county by the old Sac trail. In July, 1816, Cap- tain Hezekiah Bradley, having been ordered to rebuild the fort, arrived with soldiers, probably by the same route, by this time the best traveled road between Detroit and that point. The same route was used from Niles to Du Chemin or Hud-

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son lake by the missionaries at the Carey mission in Niles before 1829.

When the widow Benedict and her family and Henly Clyburn, nearly the first settlers in the county, came to New Durham township as related in Chapter III, they came by the old .Sac trail from the west ; when the Eaharts and others joined them from Niles, Michigan, they came by the old Sac trail from the east. And so we might go on showing that each of the early families who entered the county from east or west came by this trail. In short, many things are related in history in connection with this route, all of them interesting, some curious and even amusing. Hunters, trappers, soldiers of different nations, missionaries, traders, droll travelers and adven- turers all passed through LaPorte county, for it was the main line of communication east and west. The trail ran along about where State street is in LaPorte; and could that ground re- call the past and utter its voice, it would be most interesting to hear.

There were other trails besides the Sac trail ; trails coming up from the south and crossing the Kankakee. One of them crossed where the Lemon bridge was afterward built, another at Tassanong, in Porter county. In previous chap- ters we have given an account of some of the carly settlers who came from the south. They did so by means of the old trails. And then there were trails from one part of the county to another. Indian point in Noble township was so named be- cause there the Indian trail left the main land and led off into the marsh and timber. The county was not trackless, even from the first, but had communication with other localities.

Other early communication was by water, both on Lake Michigan and on the inland streams. The latter were much in use. Canoe travel on the rivers was LaSalle's great reliance. He would go up one river, portage across the water-shed, and down another. Dunn, the historian, after a careful examination of the original documents, concludes that LaSalle passed through northwest Indiana by way of the Kankakee in 1671 or 1672. The Kankakee was his usual route. During the winter of 1682-3, LaSalle was all through Illinois and Indiana, forwarding his schemes, and he had at least twenty-two Frenchmen with him. After his assassination in 1687 French missionaries,

traders and government messengers were con- stantly passing and repassing through LaPorte county. In 1679 LaSalle and Tonty met at the St. Joseph river, ascended it, portaged across to the Kankakee, and thence down to the Illinois. In 1680 he went again to the Illinois river, probably by the same route. In 1681 he was on the St. Joseph river and made that journey for the third time. His record of 1679, however, leaves the matter in no doubt. He and Tonty and their messengers probably made that same Kankakee journey several times, but the route taken is not always specified; still, the Kankakee route was the only one they knew. .

In 1831 Jerry Church, in his adventuresome and almost fantastic journey through this and other counties, passed Trail creek which he calls "Dismaugh creek," probably confounding the name with Dismaugh lake which the Indiana Gasetteer for 1849 says is a beautiful lake in the northeast corner of the county, derived from Des Moines ; that is, the monks. It was called Du- Chemin in the early maps. Church visited it on his journey.

Lake navigation was an important factor in the development of the county. The first wheat shipped from the county was by the schooner Post Boy, Captain Hixon. The printer's outfit for the first paper in the county came that way. This was the usual way of passing to and from Chicago. Thus we find Abel D. Porter coming from Chicago to Michigan City on the Ed. Sackett in 1834. In 1835 the freight on a bushel of wheat to Rochester, New York, was 121/2 cents. Before the time of railroads in northern Indiana, Lake Michigan furnished the only avenue open to the markets of the world, and the grain produced on all the farms for fifty miles around was trans- ported to Michigan City on wagons and sold to the proprietors of the elevators there. Occasion- ally there would be a combination of the boats at Buffalo to increase the rates of freight. Then the cry would be raised that the boats were "try- ing to gouge everybody." But when the rail- roads were completed to LaPorte and Michigan City, combinations for higher freight rates were effectually stopped. Before the advent of the" railroads the lake city was considered the all im- portant point for transportation, and great was the rejoicing and many the comments in the

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papers when navigation opened in the springtime. On this account great effort was made to improve the harbor. The people felt great confidence that the government would do this work, but after a few puny attempts the government disappointed them. Then they formed a harbor company to do the work themselves, and accomplished much until the company turned its work over to the government. The treatment which the govern- ment gave Michigan City in those early years was very discouraging and even exasperating. The Indiana Gazetteer for 1849, page 317, says, "Had the improvement of the harbor continued as was contemplated, Michigan City would have become the great emporium of the northern trade of the state. There were good prospects of its becoming a large and flourishing city, where busi- ness to the amount of millions would be trans- acted. Instead of this vessels can now be loaded and unloaded from lighters and in pleasant weather." The losses to the owners of lots alone were no doubt fourfold the expense of making a harbor and to the public the loss of wealth, capi- tal and facilities for business is very large. But the lake town has become quite a large and flourishing city nevertheless. The Iroquois Transportation Company is a Chicago concern which hails its boats from this city to take ad- vantage of the Indiana marine tax laws. One of its directors is a resident of Michigan City. This company a few months ago filed papers with the secretary of state increasing its capital stock from $30,000 to $50,000 with a view of enlarging its business.

Another means of communication by water is furnished by the Indiana Transportation Com- pany, which has recently had built at the Craig ship yards in Toledo an elegant new steamer to run between Michigan City and Chicago. The steamer has been launched and completed and is making her regular trips to Chicago; and as the electric line to and from LaPorte runs its cars to make connection with the steamer, this makes a pleasant, convenient and economical way of going to Chicago, as long as navigation is open, even for LaPorte people, enabling them to leave home in the morning and giving them a full day in Chicago, or less as they choose, and if they elect the former enabling them to reach home at a seasonable hour at night.

After the year 1790 Indiana began to fill with settlers very rapidly, and the Indian trails put on more the appearance of roads or cart paths. It was over such roads that Lewis A. Wilkinson and his brother Barton traveled by stage to. Detroit after visiting LaPorte in 1835 and determining to make his home in the county. It was over such roads that the Castle family, accompanied by young Polaski King, traveled from Detroit to Michigan City in 1835. It was over such roads that D. W. Closser came with ox teams from Indianapolis to Door Prairie in 1834, bringing his family and goods and con- suming twenty-one days on the journey. It was over such roads that Joseph Mclellan came from White Pigeon, Michigan, in 1834 and took up- land in Cool Spring township. It was over such roads that Hon. James Forrester drove his ped- dler's wagon from Detroit through La Porte county as far as Ottawa in 1831. It was over such roads that all the early overland settlers came. The constant wear of these roads ne- cessitated that they be repaired, and they served well and steadily improved until the section line roads were made; and some of them remain yet, not following the section lines.

The Michigan road has been mentioned in a foregoing chapter. This was a state road. By the treaty of October 16, 1826, the Pottawottomie Indians ceded to the United States a strip of land one hundred feet wide through the state of Indi- ana for the purpose of making a road from Lake Michigan to the Ohio river. On March 2, 1827, Congress granted to the state 170,582.20 acres for the purpose of making the Michigan road. For years afterwards the road was a bone of con- tention. According to the treaty it was to termin- ate "at some convenient point on the Ohio river" to be fixed by the legislature. This involved the choice of routes and the people in many different towns on the possible line of the road wanted it to pass their way. Madison was finally selected by a somewhat circuitous route. Commissioners were selected by the legislature to survey and mark the road, select the lands, etc. The road has been a great thoroughfare and is still, espe- cially on some of its portions, as for instance from LaPaz through Plymouth to Rochester. In La- Porte county it runs from Michigan City in an east by southeasterly direction through Michigan

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NEW STEAMER "INDIANAPOLIS."

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township to its southeast corner, through Spring- ville and Springfield township to its southeast corner, through Rolling Prairie and Kankakee township, then through a corner of Wills town- ship and a corner of Hudson township east by northeast into St. Joseph county. The history of the Michigan road is well worthy the labors of the patient investigator ; it is a great subject as any one will find who enters into an ex- haustive study of it. No doubt the road has been very serviceable in the development of the state and county.

The following table may be of service :-

Lands selected by the commissioners of Michigan road lands for the construction of Michigan road in LaPorte county :

In Range ONE West.

Township 37 North :- All of sections 17, 20, 29, 30. Sections 31, 32, north of Indian Boundary. s 1/2; e 1/2 ne 1/4 ; e 1/2 nw 1/4 sec. 4. s 1/2; se 1/4 sec. 8.

Township 38 :- All of section 21.

Range Two.

Township 36 :- All of sections 4, 5, 6, 7, 18.

Township 37 :- All of sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 24, 25, 26, 31, 32. Secs. 35, 36 north of Indian Boundary. Sec. 33 south of Indian Boundary. w 1/2 sec. 2 n 1/2 ; w 1/2 and se 1/4 sec. 9. w 1/2 and se!/4 sec. II. ne 1/4 sec. 15. s 1/2, nw 1/4 ; and w1/2 ne 1/4 sec. 17. n 12; w 1/2 sw 1/4 sec. 18. s 1/2 sec. 19. e 1/2 ; sw 1/4; w 1/2 nw 14 sec. 28.

Township 38 :- All of section 36.

Range THREE.

Township 36 :- All of sections I to 15 inclusive, 17, 18, 21 to 26 inclusive, 35, 36.

Township 37 :- All of sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 19, 30, 33, 34, 35. All of fractional 27. All of 31, 32, south of Indian Boundary. nw 14 sec. 36 south of Indian Boundary. n 1/2 sec. 13. w 1/2 sec. 14. se 1/4 sec. 14. w 1/2 sw 1/4 sec. 24. n 1/2, sw 1/4 sec. 26.

Range FOUR.

Township 36 :- All of sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27. n 1/2 sec. 28.

Township 37 :- All of sections 2, 11, 24, 25, 33, 34, 35, 36. Township 38 :- All of sections 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36.

The establishment of county roads was one of the first acts of the county commissioners after the organization of the county. They improved

the Yellow river road leading from Marshall county to Michigan City, and authorized Matthias Redding to keep a ferry where this road crosses the Kankakee, no bridge as yet having been built. This road and ferry did much to ad- vance the county in population, as it made Michi- gan City the market for all the country as far south as Logansport. The records of the county commissioners are full of accounts of petitions for roads, the appointments of road viewers, their reports, and the establishment of roads. Most of the leading roads of the county were laid out by the Hon. Charles W. Cathcart. He ran the first level of any considerable length that was at- tempted in the county; that is, from LaPorte to Michigan City on one hand, and from the same point to the head of the nearest stream running into the Kankakee on the other. The first ended the project of a canal from Lake Michigan to LaPorte, the second proved the feasibility of the drainage of Clear lake, a ditch for utilitarian pur- poses being the result. Mr. Cathcart did thorough and satisfactory work both on roads and on the subdivision of lands.

During a wet time many of the roads have been bad, so that a traveler returning from jour- neying west, when asked if he had been through Indiana replied that he did not know for sure but thought he must have been nearly through it in some places. Latterly, however, there has been an agitation for good roads. The subject occu- pied considerable time and attention at the Colum- bian exposition in 1893. The country is waking up all along the line to the importance of having good roads. The general government is taking a special interest in this matter. Several of the states have started out in the good road cause, and good road congresses have been held in many of them. While it costs a large sum of money to build and keep in repair a good road it is as nothing to the cost of a poor road. There is no greater drawback to the development of a coun- try than poor roads. They keep back a good country and they are death to a poor one. If farmers were fully to realize how much they would gain by improving their roads to town they would not rest until they were put into fair con- dition. LaPorte county has been doing some- thing in this line for some years. Construction of macadam roads has been made for miles out

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A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of Laporte County Indiana, Part 38

Author: Rev. E. D. Daniels Publication date: 1904 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1273

Author: Rev. E. D. Daniels
Publication date: 1904
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1273