USA > Indiana > Johnson County > A historical sketch of Johnson county, Indiana > Part 2
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At the time of the discovery and exploration of the West, the Miami tribe of Indians occupied the whole of Indiana, the west- ern part of Ohio, the southern of Michigan, and the eastern of Illinois. Unlike most other tribes, the Miamis had no traditions of former migrations, and are presumed therefore to have occupied this land for a time "whence the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." Little Turtle, a celebrated chief of the Miamis, confirms this in a speech made to Gen. Wayne at the treaty of Greenville, in 1795. " You have pointed out to us," said the unlettered orator, " the boundary line between the Indians and the United States ; but I now take the liberty to inform you that the line cuts off from the Indians a large portion of country which has been enjoyed by my forefathers from time immemorial, without molestation or dispute. The prints of my ancestors houses are everywhere to be seen in this portion. * * It is well known by all my brothers present, that my forefathers kindled the first fire at Detroit ; from there he extended his lines to the headquarters of the Scioto; thence to its mouth; thence down the Ohio to the Wabash, and thence to Chicago, on Lake Michigan."
Events had transpired many years before the delivery of this speech. which more directly concerned the immediate ownership of the land of which I write. While the Cavaliers were building Jamestown and digging for " fool's-gold " on Virginia ground, and the Puritans were exploring the headlands of the Massachusetts Bay and burning witches at Salem, the Leni Lenape, or Original People, were occupying "New Jersey, the Valley of the Dela- ware, far up toward the sources of that river, and the entire basin of the Schuylkill." This nation was made up of two tribes or
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
families, the Minsi and the Delawares. About the middle of the eighteenth century, their country was overrun by an irruption of the Five Nations, and themselves defeated, whereupon the Dela- wares set their faces to the setting sun, crossed the mountains and settled upon the banks of the Muskingum. Here, however, they did not long remain, but, on invitation of the Miami people, they left shortly before the beginning of the Revolutionary war, and settled in the White River country. With them came a few families of the Mohican and Minsi tribes. A grant was made them by the Miamis of all the lands watered by the White River, and confirmed by the delivery of a belt of wampum, accord- ing to the unwritten law of the red man. In 1808, this grant was formally recognized by the United States, and was reduced to writing at the city of Washington by President Jefferson, which writing was preserved by the chiefs of the tribe with great care, until they sold their lands to the Government in 1818.
At the expiration of the time for which the Delawares had reserved possession, they were removed by the Government west of the Mississippi and located within the present boundaries of the State of Kansas. But even there they were not permitted long to remain. A remnant of the tribe-a mere fragment in comparison to what they were even when they left their hunting- grounds in Indiana, have again set their faces to the setting sun, and doubtless ere this, have lost their identity in the more nu- merous savage bands about them.
The moral condition of the Delaware Indians at the time of the cession must have been deplorable. Isaac McCoy, a missionary to the Weas, on the Wabash, traveled through the Delaware towns in 1819, and made a note of his observations among them. He found them spiritless and thriftless, given to drunkenness and debauchery. The rights of property were but little respected, and murder was not uncommon. In 1819, a party of Indians visited Whetzel's, and one of them, by the name of Nosey, shot at a mark with young Cyrus. The white man making the better shot, Nosey became indignant and quarrelsome, whereupon Cyrus pro- posed a second contest, and this time the Indian came out the victor. The party then left, but had not got far beyond the Bluffs, when Nosey, who was still in a bad humor, killed one of his com- rades. According to the Indian code of laws, he was given "twelve moons " in which to make reparation to the friends of the dead by paying them $100 in money, or that sum in deer-skins. The twelve moons came and went, but the price of life was not forthcoming. Then Nosey " gave himself up." "He was taken to a tree, his arms drawn up to a limb, his legs parted, his ankles
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
fastened to stakes driven in the ground, and then he was stabbed under the arms and in the groin with a butcher knife, and tor- tured in other ways until life was extinct."
Owing to the great abundance of game throughout Central In- diana, the place was a favorite resort for the Indians. When Johnson County was first settled, their deserted camps were found on the most eligible sites along all the water-courses, and their graves are yet disturbed in the opening of nearly every gravelly knoll. Tradition and certain facts of historical moment, elsewhere discussed, point to the fact that a thriving Indian town was at one time located on the right bank of White River, within the present borders of Johnson County, and that a battle was fought between the white and red men there, and the town destroyed. For many years after the country was settled, the Indians returned at certain seasons to hunt in the Johnson County woods; and, when the Delawares had gone, hunting parties came in from other tribes. The Miamis were encamped on Indian Creek after Richardson Hensly had settled there. The Wyan- dots hunted on the Hurricane in 1825. About the same time, a band of Indian hunters with their families made a camp where Indian Creek, of Franklin Township, empties into Young's Creek, and from this circumstance, Levi Moore gave it the name of Indian Creek. In 1825, the Indians, in large numbers, were on Sugar Creek, and it was shortly before this that a young chief, while out fire-hunting one night, was accidentally shot and killed, and his remains buried on the highi bank not far from Needham's Spring. And, when James Kinnick moved in 1832 to the land afterward entered by him in Clark Township, and on which his son William now lives, the remains of an Indian village were found with one of the wigwams in a good state of preserva- tion. Kinnick learned that the Indians had deserted the place only a few years before, and that it had been occupied by a band of the Pottawatomies. On Burkhart's Creek, at Simon Covert's cabin, Henry Byers', Thomas Roberts', Needham's, Adams', on Blue River, White River, Sugar Creek, Young's Creek, Nineveh, Stotts Creek, Indian Creek-everywhere-we hear of Indians being encamped at intervals for several years after the first settle- ments were made.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.
The Delawares stipulated for possession of their country for a term of two years, but it seems to have been the understanding of both parties that white men could occupy the country jointly with the red. Whetzel, it is true, made application to the Dela- ware chief for the privilege of cutting a trace through his re- serve, but we fail to find that any one else took the like precaution. James Wilson located on Whetzel's trace in 1818, at its crossing with Blue River, and was the first settler in Shelby County. The next year, several families followed Wilson, but none came west of the present site of Shelbyville, who settled in that county until about 1822.
In 1819, three settlements were planted in Bartholomew County, one of which was by Joshua McQueen, Tunis Quick, John Connor and Allen Wilson, on Flat Rock Creek, four miles east of the present site of Taylorsville. The same year, Richard Berry built a cabin in the edge of Bartholomew, at the place where the Indian trail crossed Blue River, a mile below the town of Edinburg. This trail led from the falls at Louisville, not far from the present line of the Jeffersonville Railroad, passing in the vicinity of the village of Waynesville, in Bartholomew County, and crossing the In-quah-sah-quah of the Indian tongue (translated into Driftwood by the white men), thence to Blue River at Berry's, and thence into Johnson County. A branch trail led up Sugar Creek, and, at the mouth of Young's Creek, another branch took up that stream, crossing Young's Creek just below the mouth of the Hurricane, and thence on the east side of that stream ; but all these branching paths led to the Delaware towns, while the main one went by the way of the Big Spring at Hope- well, and so on north, crossing White River at the mouth of Fall Creek, and thence leading to the towns on the Wabash. This trail leading to the Wabash towns came to be known after a time as " Berry's trace," from the fact that Richard Berry blazed the path for the convenience of travelers.
In 1820, the tide of emigration to the New Purchase set in strong from the South and from the East. The United States surveyors were at work, and it was known that by fall the lands surveyed would be subject to purchase. Indeed, all of Nineveh Township had been surveyed by Abraham Lee in the month of
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
September, 1819. In June, 1820, John Hendricks surveyed so much of Franklin Township as lies in Congressional Township 12, Range 5, and, in August of that year, Thomas Hendricks sur- veyed Congressional Township 12, Range 4. being in the west part of Franklin Township. In the same month of August, John Hendricks surveyed all the lands comprised within the pres- ent boundaries of Blue River Township, and, as soon as he had completed this, he went over and surveyed the Congressional township better known as Union, and, while he was at that, B. Bently was surveying Hensly. W. B. Mclaughlin surveyed all of White River, in Congressional Township 14, and Bently all that is in Township 13; and, later in the season, all the terri- tory now contained within Pleasant Township was surveyed by Thomas Hendricks, while John Hendricks surveyed all contained within Clark Township.
In the month of May, 1820, the Commissioners appointed by the Legislature to select a site for the new capital of the State, were to meet at the house of William Connor, on White River. On the 17th of the month, John Tipton and Gov. Jennings set out on horseback for the rendezvous. Accompanying them was " Bill." a black boy. On the way, Gen. Joseph Bartholomew, Col. Jesse Dunham, also Commissioners, and Gen. J. Carr and Capt. Dueson, fell in with them. Passing beyond the confines of civilization, the little party struck the Indian trail, and, as John Tipton kept a journal of every day's journey, we are not left in the dark as to their movements. At a quarter past 3 o'clock on Saturday, the 20th day of the month. the cavalcade reached Berry's. It had taken them two hours and a quarter to ride from the upper rapids of the In-quah-sah-quah (where Columbus stands) to that place. There they stopped for the night. "Good land, good water and timber," exclaims honest John Tipton. The next morning, at half after 4 o'clock, they set out again ; but now that these Commissioners, accompanied by the Governor of the State, are traveling through Johnson County, over an Indian path, and their movements become more interesting to the thread of this history, the journal becomes provokingly obscure. It says :
" Sunday, 21 .- Set out at half-past 4. At 5, passed a corner of Section 36. Township 11 north, of Range 4 east ; passed a place where Bartholomew and myself had encamped in June. 1813. Missed our way. Traveled east then.
" At 8 o'clock, stopped on a muddy branch ; boiled our coffee. At 9:30, turned back. I killed a deer, the first one I have killed since 1814. Came on the trail at 10: found tree where I had written my name on the 19th June, 1813. We traveled fast,
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
and at 7 encamped on a small creek, having traveled about forty- five miles."
It was the northeast corner of the southeast section in Nineveh Township that was passed at 5 o'clock. But where was it that Gen. Bartholomew and himself had encamped in June, 1813 ? It was after passing that place they missed their way and trav- eled east.
If we knew the time that elapsed after crossing the section corner before they missed their way, we might, with some degree of certainty, locate the "muddy branch," and perhaps identify the section on which the future United States Senator killed a deer on that Sunday morning, over sixty years ago, and, may be, find the farm on which grew the tree on which he wrote his name on the 19th of June, 1813. The most we can say is, that the encampment must have been in Nineveh Town- ship. The boiling of the coffee and the shooting of the deer most likely took place in Blue River, and the tree on which the name was written may have been in Nineveh, but was probably in Franklin Township.
But let us go back a little. Early in 1820-as early as Feb- ruary-Edward Adams, Charles Northup, and possibly some others, came to the country and began a clearing a short dis- tance east of the present site of Edinburg, but within the present. boundary of Shelby County. These men came without their fam- ilies, however, and did not then become permanent citizens. In the month of March of this year, John Campbell, a Tennesseean, came by the way of the White Water country, and settled a short. distance south of the present site of Edinburg. Campbell came with his family, consisting of his wife Ruth, and eight children, and he came to stay, and he was the first white man to build a cabin and make a settlement in the county of Johnson. On the way out, Benjamin Crews fell in with him, and together they cut out a road to let the teams through. Crews eventually stopped across the Bartholomew County line. Campbell was not left alone in the solitude of the wilderness very long, for quite a number, whose names, as far as now known, appear in the chapter on "Blue River Township," came out the same season, so that, by the close of the year, it is estimated that not less than eighteen families had moved in.
The following fall, the Johnson County lands were thrown into the market, and the purchases made were unparalleled in the his- tory of any other township in the county, there being thirty-nine in all, and the acreage purchased, according to the survey, being 4,400.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
On the 31st day of August, 1821, John S. Miller, a North Carolinian born, but hailing from Jennings County, Ind., entered the west half of the northeast quarter of Section 34, Town- ship 11, Range 4 east, the first tract taken up within the precincts of Nineveh Township. But he was not the first to become a resident there. Amos Durlin moved into the east side in the spring of that year, and Robert Worl, in the fall, located on the margin of a stream translated from the Indian tongue into Leatherwood, one mile east of the present site of Williamsburg. It must have been about this time that the cir- cumstance occurred which occasioned the change from Leather- wood to Nineveh. Richard Berry, living at the mouth of Sugar Creek, with his son Nineveh, a lad in his teens, wandered up the Leatherwood on a hunting excursion. Espying a deer on the op- posite bank of the stream, young Nineveh shot and killed it. Crossing over for his game, the youth shouldered it and under- took to recross on a log, but a misstep sent both boy and game into the stream, which was covered by a thin coating of ice, and he was well nigh drowned before rescued. Then the stream came to be known as "Nineveh's Defeat." and, in process of time, the surplus word was dropped, and " Nineveh " left to per- petuate the memory of the lad's misadventure.
It was in the fall of 1821, Worl came, but no one moved into his immediate neighborhood until the next year, when there was quite an accession to his neighborhood.
In that year 1822, the Burkhart brothers-David, Lewis, Henry, George and William-came from Kentucky, and, following the Indian trail beyond Worl's, David Burkhart built his cabin on the high bank of a little stream, on the farm on which Michael Canary afterward lived and died, while Henry stopped farther south, and located on the north side of Nineveh Township. Fol- lowing close after the Burkharts came Levi Moore, who pursued the trail as far out as the Big Spring (now Hopewell), and there he turned to the east and built a cabin a few hundred yards west of the present crossing of the bluff road over Young's Creek on the hill now occupied by the residence of John McCaslin. In Moore's Creek, which empties into Young's, near Hopewell, wc have perpetuated the memory of this genuine backwoodsman.
In February, 1821, Elisha Adams, a Pennsylvanian by birth, but moving from Kentucky, and Joseph Young, a North Caroli- nian. and Robert Gilcress, from Washington County, Ind., came to this county. Young settled in the forks of Sugar and Lick Creeks. while Adams moved farther out and built a cabin near the present site of Amity. Lick Creek was so named by the
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
United States surveyors because of the numerous and excellent deer licks that were here and there along its course. A noted one was found a few miles north of the Big Spring, while another and equally noted was at the mouth of the Hurricane. But Young's cabin soon came to be known better than the licks, and the first settlers, caring little for the work of the surveyors in naming the streams, by common consent changed Lick Creek into Young's Creek, and time has sanctioned their act.
The following fall Adams' horses strayed off, and, following them into Bartholomew County, he there met John Smiley, who inquired of him for a mill seat. Being encouraged to come and see for himself, in 1822 he came and found a site, and at once went to work and built on Sugar Creek the first mill in the county. Others followed, and by the close of the year a substan- tial settlement was founded on Sugar Creek.
In October, 1820, Daniel Loper built a cabin at the crossing of Whetzel's trace and the Indian trail, now within Pleasant Town- ship. Loper was a genuine son of the backwoods, whose place of nativity is unknown, and, although he was the first settler in both Pleasant and Clark Townships, as will further appear, it is not known when he left the county, nor to what place he went.
A year after John Campbell had planted a settlement in the southern part of the county, Abraham Sells, a Virginian, did the like work for the northwestern corner. He, in company with his brother John and certain members of their families, reached White River Township, near the mouth of Pleasant Run, on the 6th of March, 1821. The same spring the Lowe family, from North Carolina, and John Doty, from Ohio, came in, and a settle- ment was begun in White River Township.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
CHAPTER V.
ORGANIZATION OF THE COUNTY.
In the fall of 1822, George King, Garrett C. Bergen and Simon Covert, came from Kentucky to look at the lands in this part of the New Purchase. The capital of the State had been laid out that summer, and thin streams of immigration were pouring into the New Purchase from the east and the south. Not all of the counties of Central Indiana were then organized, as at present, but such unorganized territory, including that of Johnson, was attached to Delaware County. These land hunters had an eye to the partition of the New Purchase into counties in the near future, and, when they reached the Blue River settlement, King inquired of Heriott for an eligible site for the location of a town, and was cited to the tract lying between Young's Creek and Camp Creek. The place was visited, and it was found to be covered by a fine growth of beech, sugar tree, ash, walnut and poplar timber, while a tangled thicket of enormous spice brush grew up beneath. Along Young's Creek a great hurricane had passed some years before, as was plainly to be seen from the great swaths of timber cast along its bottoms. The storm had evidently come from the west, and at the mouth of Camp Creek it had changed its course, and, following the course of this stream, had plowed a great, wide furrow, extending for miles in the dense groves of timber which grew along its bottoms. Just above the mouth of Camp Creek, on the north side of Young's Creek, was a tract of boggy ground, and at the upper margin a sulphur spring burst forth. Here was a deer lick, and the numerous paths worn through the dense brush converging from every quarter of the compass, not only testified to the place being a favorite resort of the deer, but to their great abundance. The men were pleased with the prospect, and, King selecting the eighty-acre tract on which the town of Franklin was afterward located, Covert took the eighty lying to the east, and Bergen that on the north. But, when they reached the land office, it was ascertained that Daniel Pritchard, on the 25th of September before, had entered King's tract : thereupon King entered the tract lying to the west of it, while the others purchased as they had originally intended. King sought out Pritchard at once, and bought his eighty acres by paying him $200 as an advance of the original cost. The Legislature was expected to meet soon, and, for some reason not well understood
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
now, quite a stir was among the people in some localities as to the probable action to be taken with reference to new counties. Those of the White River neighborhood entertained a lofty idea of the Bluffs as a future shipping port. The Commissioners for the loca- tion of the capital building visited the spot, and, it is said, that a minority favored the place. But the capital had gone elsewhere, and the White River people now set about the organization of a county with such territorial boundaries as would enable the Bluffs to compete for a county seat location. With county lines so firmly established as they are to-day, and Central Indiana so handsomely platted into counties as it is, it is difficult to appre- ciate the claims that must have been put forth ; but let it be borne in mind that Central Indiana was at that time a great wilderness, with here and there a little settlement, and that the Bluffs was one of the noted places in the land.
There were those in the Blue River settlement aspiring in be- half of their new town of Edinburg; but, while the White River people organized, and employed a lawyer to attend the Legisla- ture and look after their interest, those of Blue River seem to have taken no active part in the matter.
George King took upon himself the burden of seeing that the territory lying between Shelby and Morgan Counties was duly organized, and to that end a petition was duly prepared, and was circulated by John Smiley. According to contemporaneous memory, Smiley seems to have brought to his aid a zeal that insured a numerously signed paper. All the men and all the boys in the Sugar Creek settlement, on both sides the Shelby line, and the larger majority of those living in Blue River, signed that petition, in person or by proxy, and Col. James Gregory, a Senator from Shelby County, as the friend of the new enter- prise, claimed that it contained the names of all who had died and of some who had never lived in the country. That petition was never submitted to a legislative committee ; but Mr. Smiley went into Washington County, where he had formerly lived, and there he procured signers to a petition which was used.
Armed with his petitions, King, on his way home to Kentucky, turned aside and stopped at Corydon, where the Legislature was in session, and the battle was soon on. Harvey Gregg, a shrewd lawyer and an active politician, winning in manner and popular in his address, who had lately moved to the new capital from Kentucky, was there as the representative of the White River in- terest. King feared Gregg and his winning ways, and, had it not been for geographical position, the lawyer would most likely have carried off the prize, and the Bluffs have been a county town.
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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.
A Mr. Johnson, from some point still lower down White River, also appeared upon the scene, and, as the sequel will show, lacked little of securing the prize to himself, in spite of all others. His plan, as also the plan of Gregg, is not now remembered, and, but for the testimony of some who took part in these scenes, it would be difficult to believe that any legislator could seriously have thought of disturbing the harmony of counties already organized.
King and Gregory, finding their interests identical, pulled to- gether. The Sugar Creek and Blue River petition was destroyed, on the advice of the latter, but a bill was prepared, and the Wash- ington County petition kept in the field.
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