USA > Indiana > Johnson County > A historical sketch of Johnson county, Indiana > Part 15
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HENRY HARDIN'S FAMILY.
Henry Hardin died in Nicholas County, Ky., in October, 1825, leaving a widow, Catharine Hardin, and ten children-five. males and five females. At the time of his death, he was making arrangements to move with all his children to Johnson County, Ind. He owned in White River and Perry Townships, Marion County, Ind., several hundred acres of land, and had also con- tributed to several of his children the means to purchase a home in Johnson County. Thomas and Benjamin, both married, came to White River Township in the fall of 1824. Thomas located on a part of Section 35 and 36 in Township 14 north, Range 3
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
east, Benjamin on the southwest quarter of said Section 35, but before they had realized any benefits from their labors in 1830 and 1831, sold out and moved to the State of Illinois. John Waddle and Mahlon Seybold, who married Hardin's daughter settled in White River Township. Waddle, after several years of hard labor, sold and also moved West. Mahlon Seybold lived many years in White River Township, held the offices of Assessor and Justice of the Peace to public acceptance, and died in Indianapolis in June, 1861. John Waddle and Samuel Doty operated a whip- saw for several years and made the first plank in the township cut with a saw. In October, 1827, the widow, with the rest of the family, arrived. In August, 1833, three single full-grown members of the family, Mark, Elihu and Elizabeth died in one week, in one room with congestive fever. Franklin, the young- est of the family alone remains, all but him being dead. In 1825, his mother and himself examined this county and saw many new things already told. He has held several public offices, and has contributed his mite to the welfare of the county.
OTHER PIONEERS.
The limits of the pioneers having been greatly extended, re- quires brevity in order to include those we wish to notice.
THE SURFACE FAMILY .- George Surface and his sons came from Virginia, and arrived at various dates from 1827 to 1832. Their names were John Surface, of Honey Creek ; John, Michael, William and David.
JOHN SURFACE, distantly related to the other John, was also a Virginian, and came in the fall of 1828. He died on October 18, 1861, leaving only one son and several daughters. John R., the son, was an eminent preacher of the Christian denomination, and died on October 3, 1867.
JAMES STEWART, son-in-law of the last John Surface, came from the same place and at the same time. He died August 1, 1851, leaving several sons and daughters.
PETER DAVIS was a brother-in-law of John Surface. He came from the same place and at the same time. He left many years ago, and died in Iowa.
SAMUEL ROBINSON was also a brother-in-law of John Surface, and came at the same time and from Virginia.
JOHN SHUFFLEBARGER and family came from Montgomery County, Va., in the fall of 1829. He died in 1862, leaving four sons and one daughter living.
JOHN TAYLOR came from Alleghany County, Va., in 1830. He still lives, hale and hearty.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
BERRIEN REYNOLDS came from Franklin County. Ind., De- cember 16, 1828. He still lives, hale and hearty.
SAMUEL WATTS came from Wayne County, Ind., perhaps in 1823. He taught the first general school in the township. He only remained four or five years, and left.
ANDREW PIERCE came to White River Township from Penn- sylvania, perhaps in 1823. He sold to James Stewart in 1829, and left the county.
JOHN McCORD and his son-in-law. Robert Thomas, came early, perhaps in 1824. He is believed to have been from Ohio. He sold to Coonrod Brunnemer. and his sons George and William, in 1829, and left the county.
COONROD BRUNNEMER and his sons George and William, to- gether with Abraham Bishop, a son-in-law of Coonrod, were Vir- ginians. Coonrod died many years ago. William died August 16, 1876, and George Brunnemer and Abraham Bishop are still living.
LEWIS CAGLEY was a brother to John Cagley, and died in Vir- ginia. His widow and son. Dr. Cagley (or. as he spelled his name, Kegley) moved to White River Township, perhaps in 1826. He married a daughter of John Doty. He practiced medicine and ran a farm. He is long since dead, and has left a successor in the medical art, Dr. John Kegley.
WILLIAM L. WOOLFORD was a son-in-law of Lewis Kegley. He came with the family and died July 18, 1865, leaving a large family, who have left the State.
MICHAEL PRUNER, was the old fife-major. Who among the present citizens of this county have not heard his loud, shrill fife ? I applied for a land-warrant for him. I asked his name. He answered, " George Michael Pruner." Immediately the applica- tion returned saying, " We find no George Michael on the mus- ter-roll." Then I proved by a half-dozen Virginians that he was called George Michael, Michael George and Mike and George, indifferently. The warrant came right a long. He moved to the township in 1823.
ANDREW BROWN, Jr., was said to be a relative of Andrew Brown, Sr. He died April 14, 1866, leaving a large family. He was a Virginian, and came in 1823.
JOHN and JACOB GROSECLOSE, brothers, came to the township about 1824, from Virginia. John died here June 24, 1833. Ja- cob moved to Iowa in 1853, and died there.
HENRY PRESSER came from Kentucky to White River Town- ship in the fall of 1831. His son-in-law, Fox, an eminent school-teacher, came along, and ran a school for many years in
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
the township. Mr. Presser died many years ago. Only one son now remains, John M. Presser. He is the equal of the best farmer in White River Township.
NICHOLAS ORME came from Lewis County, Ky., and located in the north part of White River Township in 1829. He died in February, 1864, seventy-seven years of age.
THE JENNINGS FAMILY .- Two sisters (both widows), Mary, widow of William Jennings, and Margaret Thompson, came from Kentucky in 1832 or 1833. Mrs. Jennings was the mother of Robert, William H. and Thompson P. Jennings. She died Septem- ber 12, 1851, sixty-two years and ten months old. Mrs Thomp- son died June 11, 1873, aged eighty-eight years two months and four days.
MR. FOGLESONG was an old Virginian, from Wythe County. He came at an early day to White River Township. He had several sons, only one, Jacob, now remaining in the township. The old man died about 1851.
THE TURNER BROTHERS .- In the spring of 1828, an old widowed mother and three bachelor sons and one daughter lo- cated on the north part of Section 27, Township 14 north, Range 3 east, 240 acres, as farmers. They were skilled in all kinds of labor, took great pains with everything they undertook, and sel- dom failed in success. They could manage the house as well as a skilled housekeeper ; could cook, wash, and, in short, could do any kind of housework. They had been halting along on the way for several years, but the children had been born in Penn- sylvania, and the old lady in Ireland. But they have all passed away except John Turner. He alone bears the name of Turner. They were good people.
WILLIAM EDDY came from Kentucky to White River Town- ship in the month of October, 1827, and located on the southwest quarter of Section 28, Township 14 north, Range 3 east. He had a wife and three children-two boys and one young woman. One of his sons soon died, leaving only two children in the fam- ily, Gideon and Miss Julia. The latter was married, first to Mr. Charles McBride, who died five or six years after the marriage, and afterward to Albert G. Prewitt, now of Greenwood, Ind. Prewitt and his wife are intelligent and kind, and long resided in White River Township, and enlivened it by their rich, cheerful conversation and hospitality. Mr. Eddy did not live to enjoy his farm, but was seized with congestive fever in September, 1833, and, after a few days of sickness, died. He was a man possessing unusual vigor of mind, and also extensive information. He was a kind-hearted and good old pioneer.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
ISAAC B. VORHIES and his family moved to Greenwood from Mercer County, Ky., in 1828, and, after nine or ten years, he moved further west into White River Township, where he contin- ued to live in perfect uprightness until the day of his death, March 29, 1861, aged seventy years. His wife, Rachel B. Vorhies died December 25, 1879, aged seventy-eight years.
JESSE HUGHES, Esq., was a Tennesseean, and came to White River Township in 1829 or 1830. He, however, had lived on Whitewater after coming from Tennessee. He followed the bus- ยท iness of a farmer and was a man of hard labor, soon clearing out a large farm in the green woods. He was several times licensed as an exhorter in the Methodist Church, and was always a lead- ing member of that denomination. He was once chosen a Jus- tice of the Peace. He had two wives. He died July 29, 1871, aged seventy-four years and eleven months.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
CHAPTER XIX.
PLEASANT TOWNSHIP.
There was not one of the pioncers of Johnson County, about whom so much has been written and spoken, and of whom so little is known, as Daniel Loper. In October, 1820, Simon Covert, Jacob Demaree, Prettyman Burton, George King and some others made a tour through Central Indiana, and, on their return, crossed White River at Whetzels, and followed his trace out to the crossing of the Indian trail, now within the limits of Pleasant Township. At that place a little cabin was newly built. the roof was partly on, and a family had just come up the trace from the east, and were ready to take possession. This is the first heard of Daniel Loper, the first white inhabitant of two townships of Johnson County-Pleasant and Clark. But Loper did not remain long in his cabin at the crossing. Nathaniel Bell, from Ohio, "entered him out " in December of 1821, and Loper moved over to Camp Creek.
Bell was a man of bad character, so much so that persons hunting homes in the woods shunned him and his place; and, unlike most other men who came in to stay at that date, he was not the founder of a neighborhood. It was currently reported of him, and generally believed, that he availed himself of the oppor- tunities that were presented to extort money from travelers who stopped at his cabin, by secreting their horses in the woods, and then, for a sufficient reward, returning the animals.
As soon as settlers began coming in, Bell built a horse-mill, the first of the kind in the county. This was a very primitive affair, the tub in which the stone revolved being a section of a hollow sycamore, and the harness with which the horses were hitched to the levers being of rawhide. But Bell was an unworthy miller, and so managed the grists that came to his mill as to steal more of the corn and meal than he took by lawful toll. He wore the sleeves of his hunting shirt open and large, and he not only man- aged to pick up a few extra grains while tolling the grist, but, on the pretense of examining the meal as it came from the spout, he managed to catch in his open sleeves a good share of the meal, and then folding his arms about him he sauntered to his own chest or to his cabin and unloaded. Sometimes his victims would remonstrate with him, but his usual reply was, "Well, the J
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
little old man must live." On one occasion, it is said that the miller's sleeves being well gorged with meal, the horses took fright, ran away and knocked the mill stones from their frail scaffolding, and otherwise damaged the property. Bell himself received a blow from the flying debris that knocked him down and scattered the meal stored in his ample sleeves. Shame or conscience so worked upon him that he promised to do better in the future, but his promise was soon broken; he never mended his ways. For many years after the settlement of the county, every man's stock ran in the range, and hogs soon became wild, and, when fattened on the mast, were hunted and shot by their owners the same as were the deer. Bell, it was believed, made a practice of killing other men's hogs, and once at a log-rolling, Permenter Mullenix, who had lost hogs, charged Bell with the theft. Apparently much shocked that such a charge should be made. he went to Indianapolis and employed Judge Wick, then practicing law, and Calvin Fletcher, to prosecute Mullenix for slander. The action was accordingly begun, but Mullenix made good his defense by proving the charge to be true, whereupon the grand jury indicted Bell, and he was tried, convicted and sent to the penitentiary, the first convict sent from the county.
In 1823, John B. Smock and Isaac Smock moved from Mercer County, Ky., and settled near the head-waters of Pleasant Run. A road was cut out to Franklin, but from thereon the Smocks were compelled to bush their own way, and they were two days about it. The next year their brother James followed them, and, in 1825, Garrett Brewer, Garrett Vandiver, Garrett Sorter, Robert Lyons and Joseph, John and Samuel Alexander also came. The Smock settlement was a half-way house between Franklin and Indianapolis, and from this may be accounted the fact of its comparatively slow growth for many years. Up to about 1830, it appears that the number moving in was quite small. In addition to those already mentioned may be named John Comingore, who came in 1826, Cornelius Smock in 1827, Alexander Wilson in 1828, and Isaac Voris in 1829.
In 1824, the State road was cut out, and notwithstanding the country in the center and south side of the township was inclined to be wet, settlers shortly began making entries of land, and, in 1828, David Trout, and a little later in the year James Tracy and his grown sons, Nathaniel, Thomas and John, William Pierce and James Chenoweth built cabins and started clearings extending from the center of the township southward. All these men, excepting the Alexanders, who were Pennsylvanians, and David Trout, who was a Virginian, and had moved from Nineveh, were Kentuckians.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
On the 4th day of May, 1829, Pleasant Township was created by striking off from White River all the territory east of the range line, making the west boundary the same as it now is ; but, up to 1838, Clark Township formed a part of Pleasant. Elec- tions were ordered to be held at the house of Isaac Smock, and Isaiah Lewis was appointed inspector. The township took its name from its principal stream, Pleasant Run. Two explanations have been given, accounting for the name of the creek, one of which is, that when the country was first settled the stream was a gently flowing, pleasant running stream ; and the other that it was the reverse of this, and the name was given by way of irony.
Here, as everywhere else, it is difficult to fix upon the years when men moved in, but it is certain that an impetus was now given to immigration into the township. By mid-summer of 1834, the following persons are known to have moved into and about the Smock neighborhood, to wit: the Comingores-Henry and Samuel-the McColloughs, John Lyons, Peter Whitenack, Samuel Eccles, the Henrys, Robert, Hiram and Samuel, J. D. and William Wilson, John and James Carson, Dr. William Woods, Wm. McGee and sons, William and Joseph Brenton, Marine D. West, Berryman Carder and the Todds. All these were from Ken- tucky, except the Henrys, from Virginia, the Wilsons who were from North Carolina, the Woods, the Mcculloughs and the Carsons who were from Tennessee. Lower down in the Tracy and Trout neigh- borhoods, Thomas Gant, the Hills, Littleton, Joseph, Squire and Charles, James Stewart, David Lemmasters, Reuben Davis, Will- iam McClelland, Daniel, David and John Brewer, Robert Smith, Abraham Sharp, and probably others, moved in, while over toward the southeast corner and east side came in Thomas Gra- ham and his three sons, Samuel, James and Archibald, and also Lewis Graham, Isaac Clem and Andrew McCaslin, followed soon after by Ashford Dowden, Abraham Banta, Solomon Steele, Jacob Peggs and others. By the close of 1834, persons were located all over the township, but it could not be said to be fairly inhabited before 1840.
The first sermon preached in Pleasant Township was at the house of John C. Smock, in 1824, by the Rev. George Bush, who afterward became a professor in a theological school in New York, and wrote "Bush's Notes on the Gospels," and a life of Mohammed. A Presbyterian Church was organized in the Smock neighborhood, the first in the township, after which a meeting-house was built, which was used for a time as a school- house.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
About 1828, James Richabaugh undertook to operate a cotton spinning factory and a carding machine in a frame building. He put it up a mile or less south of the present town of Greenwood, but his venture proved a failure.
Pleasant Township is favorably located. It has a thrifty, industrious people, who are blessed with a good soil, and who have had the enterprise to utilize their gravel deposits in the building of gravel roads.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
CHAPTER XX.
HENSLEY TOWNSHIP.
On the 10th of March, 1799, Richardson Hensley was born near Fredericksburg, in Virginia. While he was yet a child, his father moved to Fayette County, Ky., after which he moved to Mercer County, where, in 1800, Richardson was married to Miss Elizabeth Cully. In the war of 1812, he served as a First Lieutenant on the frontier; and in March, 1825, he brought his family to Johnson County, hunting for a home, after having spent a year in Jackson County, this State. Accompanying him was William Davenport, a North Carolinian, and William Mitchell, a Virginian, his sons-in-law, and their families. Five or six families were living in around Edinburg, and at the Nineveh settlement the road ended. Stopping at some point at the time not now known, but probably on the Nineveh, Hensley and his com- panions made a tour through the woods, and selected the central part of Congressional Township 11, Range 3, on the banks of Indian Creek, as the place for their homes. Among the woods- men of that day Curtis Pritchard stood at the head, and, employ- ing him to select the best route through the wilderness from Nineveh to Indian Creek for a road, he went ahead, with horn in hand, and at intervals would wind a blast as a signal to the axmen to cut through the woods to his vantage-ground. Select- ing a quarter section, cornering with the center of the Con- gressional township, Hensley put up a cabin, and then, on the 17th of February, he entered the first tract of land in the town- ship that was occupied by a pioneer.
In 1823, three hundred and twenty acres had been taken up in the northeast corner of the township, and at the same time two hundred and forty acres just across the township line, now in Union, by David Scott. But Scott never came to his pur- chases ; and many were the conjectures accounting for it indulged in by those who knew of the " Scott lands." The most popular of these was, that he had been murdered before reaching home, after his entry had been made; and it was seventeen years after the purchase before it was learned that Scott was a trader, living at Cheat Neck, near Morgantown, in Virginia, and that he had invested the proceeds of a trading voyage to New Orleans in Congress lands in Johnson, Bartholomew, Shelby and other counties in Indiana, and then had returned to his home and re-
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
ported to his creditors the loss of his cargo in the Mississippi, and made with them a composition of his debts. But his fraud availed him nothing, for shortly after he came to his death by being thrown from his horse, and his secret died with him. Not even had he divulged it to his wife and daughter. William Y. Johns, a young man living in Scott's neighborhood, being lured to Johnson County about 1837, by the memory of an old sweetheart, and remaining here, was elected to the office of County Treasurer, in 1844, and the "Scott lands" coming under his notice, he made the discovery that they had been entered by his old neighbor from Cheat Neck. William Y. Johns' brother was then married to Scott's only daughter ; and the widow, who was still living, and the daughter, came to Indiana. And although the " Scott lands " had long been sold at tax sales, they were partially redeemed.
Hensley cleared a little field in the woods the first spring, and planted it in corn ; but the wild turkeys invaded his field and scratched the seed out of the ground. Replanting and keeping the turkeys away, when the little crop was raised the squirrels came and did great damage. After these, a band of forty well- dressed, well-mounted Miami Indians came and encamped on Indian Creek-so called because it was a famous Indian resort in the early times-and although they had plenty of money, they begged and stole everything they wanted. Hensley's corn patch was peculiarly tempting to them ; and in spite of his best reso- lutions and utmost vigilance, they carried his corn away by the armfuls.
The same spring that Hensley, Mitchell and Davenport came in, John Stephens, from Tennessee, and Nathaniel Elkins, from Kentucky, came; and some time during the last of the year, Peter Titus from Ohio, settled on what has since been known as the Bridge's farm. In the fall of that year, it is believed that Charles and Mitchel Ross settled on the west line of the town- ship, and about the same time Richard Perry must have moved into the northeast corner.
The township grew rapidly in population. The lands along Indian Creek were peculiarly inviting to land-hunters, who had traversed the level lands of the country in search of suitable locations, and immigrants came trooping in. At least twenty men came in and bought, and more than half that number moved in. Of these, Isaac Holeman, Henry Mussulman, Arthur Bass, Albert Roberts, John Schrem, John and Lewis Shouse and Aaron Holeman may be mentioned. By the close of 1833, more than fifty families bad moved in; and while it would seem to be
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
impossible at this time to make any degree of classification as to the time when these came in, or even to give the names of all, yet the following may be set down as being early settlers, to wit : James Taggart (who was afterward killed at the battle of Buena Vista), William Skaggs, Holland Jones, John Brunk, Nicholas Hobbs, Hiram Porter, Reason and John Slack, John Voris, Simpson Sturgeon, Montgomery Smith, Andrew Underwood, Leonard Leffler, John McNutt, William Mitchell, Thomas Lyman, S. W. Weddle, Thomas Lockhart, Thomas Alexander, John Clark, Jesse Wells, Samuel Fleener, Hiram T. Craig, John Boland, Samuel Woollard, Frederick Ragsdale, George Bridges, William Clark, Abraham Massey, Mckinney Burk, Avery M. Buckner, Levi Petro, James Wiley, Elijah Moore, Stith Daniel, Thomas L. Sturgeon, James Forsyth, David and Uriah Young, Godfrey Jones, R. W. Elder, James Hughes, George White, Richard Joliffe and Perry Baily.
Hensley was the fourth township, in point of time, organized in the county. At the March term of the Board of Justices, in 1827, the organization took place and the name was bestowed upon the suggestion of the late Samuel Herriott, in honor of its founder.
The elections, for twenty years, were held at the house of Richardson Hensley, after which the place was changed to Henry Mussulman's house.
In 1834, Henry Mussulman opened the first store in the town- ship, and sold goods for many years. He was a very active man, but totally devoid of book education. He could neither read nor write, and yet, for a great many years, he carried on business successfully. But what is the more remarkable, he did a credit business and kept accounts in his peculiar fashion. He knew and could make figures, however, and could carry on processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division mentally. His accounts he kept by marking upon the walls of his store- room with a nail or pencil. Every customer had his own place of account allotted to him, and so well trained was Henry Mussul- man's memory that he never forgot the right place, nor the meaning of his marks, nor did any man ever dispute his account. One story is told, and vouched for as being true, tending to show that it was possible for him to forget, and it is this: A debtor came and called for a settlement and among the items charged was a cheese. "But I never bought a cheese of you in my life," said the debtor. "Didn't you? Well, what did you get ? Think !" and the debtor thought. " Ah," said he, light.break- ing, after a pause, "Yes, I got a grindstone." "Oh, so you did, I forgot to put the hole in it."
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
On another occasion, when Mussulman was in Madison buying goods, a merchant, with whom he was dealing, asked him how he managed to know what per cent to put on his goods, seeing that he was unacquainted with letters. "Well, I don't know any- thing about your per cent, but I do know that when I buy an article of you for one dollar and take it out to my place and sell it for two, that I am not losing anything." He could and did mark the cost price on his goods, however, but no one understood it save himself. After his son, George W., grew up he procured books and had George to keep his accounts, but so retentive was his memory that he could and often did sell goods all day, and at night repeat the exact quantities of goods sold, to whom sold, and at what price.
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