A historical sketch of Johnson county, Indiana, Part 6

Author: Banta, D. D. (David Demaree), 1833-1896
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, J.H. Beers & co.
Number of Pages: 186


USA > Indiana > Johnson County > A historical sketch of Johnson county, Indiana > Part 6


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But sometimes men were so pressed for time and help as to be unable to roll and burn the logs. Not uncommonly did they clear away the underbrush and the logs, and, after burning the green trees to kill the foliage, plant their corn and raise their crops. But not all could do even this much. In raising his first crop of corn, Simon Covert managed to pile and burn the brush, but planted among the logs. Serrill Winchester, of Union Township, felled his trees into windrows, and planted in the open spaces between. Andrew Pierce, of White River Township, planted with the hoe amid the logs, and tilled his corn with the same implement.


SQUIRRELS.


Discouraging as clearing the early fields must have been to the husbandman, and severe the toil of planting and tilling, yet when the corn was raised it was with the utmost difficulty that the farmer could reap the benefit of his crop. The squirrels swarmed in the woods, and, while not so numerous, the raccoons were, nevertheless, very destructive. " Among the four families living in White River Township in the year 1821, not a single bushel of corn was saved from the squirrels and raccoons."*


In 1821, George Barnett bought a four-acre field of corn in the shock. "I helped remove the fodder," says Ambrose Bar- nett, his son, " and I was the lucky one. I found one little ear of corn. So close had been the scrutiny of the gray squirrels that they had overlooked but one ear in the four acres." John Harter stored a few bushels of corn in the "loft" of his cabin,


*Judge Hardin.


D


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but the squrrels found it out, and, ere he was aware, carried off the last ear. John Smiley had a four-acre field of corn just ripened, when it was invaded by the rodents, and, in two days, every ear was caten or carried away. It was quite common for the farmers to hire squirrel hunters to kill off the squirrels found in and about their fields. Mrs. Gertrude Farmer remembers when it was her work to patrol the corn-field, with the rifle upon her shoulder ; and children with dogs and hurdy-gurdys were kept in and about the fields from morning till night during the troublesome seasons.


INSECT LIFE.


Nor must we forget the insects that were here to annoy. " Flies, gnats and musquitoes," says Judge Hardin, "were everywhere, in the fields and in the woods, and in the houses. There were times when no horse could stand an attack of flies. The plowing was performed during a few hours of the early morning, and the horse hastily driven to the stable. At night he was turned out to the wild woods to seek his living on wild grass and wild pea- vines, everywhere abundant. Many settlers kept up a fire through the summer near at hand, that their animals might protect them- selves by standing in the smoke. Before retiring at night, it was the practice to produce smoke in the dwelling-house in order to drive out the mosquitoes and gnats from the bedrooms ; then, by closing the doors, prevent their further ingress."


WILD ANIMALS.


A recital of the obstacles that lay in the way of the pioneers would be incomplete which failed to make mention of the injury done by wild animals. The visitations from the squirrels have been referred to, and it remains to be added that, by reason of the wolves, the rearing of sheep was for many years next to impossible. And when it is borne in mind that home-made clothing was universally worn, the importance of the wool crop at that age is apparent. Notwithstanding, the utmost diligence was used in protecting the flocks in pens by night, yet the destruction went on, and the loss from this source alone to the early settlers brought discouragement and privation. The wolves were de- structive also to the young pigs, but the sows soon learned to feed in bands, and, when the wolf came, bunching their offspring, they surrounded them, and standing, snouts outward, would, in general, successfully ward off the attack. So great an enemy of the pio- neer was the wolf esteemed, that laws were made encouraging his destruction, and. up to the year 1840, and even later, allowances


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were made out of the county treasury for wolf-scalps. In 1835, Jacob Hozier was allowed $2.50 for five sealps under six months old, and the next year James Williams was allowed for six.


SNAKES.


Nor must we fail to take note of the great abundance of rattle- snakes that crawled, hissed and rattled in every thicket. Two species of these reptiles-the black rattlesnake, short, thick, and, by no means, inactive, and the yellow rattlesnake, growing from six to eight feet long and quite sluggish-were along the brakes of the ereeks and in all the dry lands. Thomas Barnett, who came to the Blue River neighborhood in 1821 and raised a crop, lived until in June in a camp walled up on three sides and open on the fourth. But so many rattlesnakes were found crawling in the brush and about his camp that he abandoned it sooner than he otherwise would have done and returned to his family, then living in Jennings County.


The small eaves so often found in the vicinity of springs in the early day were a favorite resort of the reptiles. At a spring that flowed from the hill on the Nineveh, "twenty or twenty-five" rattlesnakes came out in the spring season of one of the first years after the settlement was started, and were killed. One of these was found in the path by two women, who called Robert Moore to their assistance, and, on killing it, he plucked as a trophy twenty-two rattles from its tail.


Samuel Owens, who settled on Sugar Creek, built his cabin hard by a spring. Several rattlesnakes had been killed in the vicinity of his cabin, and finally he surmised that the fountain had hollowed the ground underneath, and that the hollow was now a snake den. Not long after, he and his wife had been to a neighbor's and returned to their home after nightfall. On open- ing the cabin door, a large rattlesnake coiled on the cabin floor sounded the alarm, and Owens was compelled to make a torch, by the light of which he ventured in and killed the intruder. The next morning he called to his assistance his neighbor, Thomas Needham, and, on digging into the spring cave, a den of snakes was found, and eight of the very largest kind were taken out and killed. Few, if any, rattlesnakes are remembered to have been seen in the neighborhood ever after.


On the "Doty hill," in White River Township, snakes were numerous. John Doty lived in a tent for some time after he settled on that hill, and his family were much annoyed with the snakes. They stretched themselves across the paths, and one day while the family were eating their meal, a huge monster


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crawled into their tent. More than thirty were killed the first year by Doty and his family.


Peter Vandiver found them numerous in his neighborhood. One day he felled a large poplar and then went to his dinner. On returning, four large ones had crawled out of a hollow in the stump and lay about in coils. One of his sons drew one of the largest to the house after it was dead to show to his mother. The next morning, two large ones were found coiled in the door-yard. They had followed the trail, as was supposed, of their dead mate.


It has been said that after the larger variety of rattlesnakes began to disappear, the smaller became more numerous, and per- haps this is true. Nathan Perry says that he killed eight black rattlesnakes in one day, while passing over and about his father's clearing in the northwest corner of Ninevah 'Township.


But rattlesnakes had their enemies. No man ever met with one without making an effort to kill it. Deer are said to have killed them on occasions, and to the hog the rattlesnake was a dainty morsel of food. In a few years, all were gone. And notwithstanding their great numbers, the writer has heard of but two instances of persons being bitten by them in the county, neither of whom received a serious injury.


SICKNESS.


Probably the most serious obstacle in the way of the first set- tlers was the great sickness that prevailed during the early years here as well as elsewhere throughout the West. Quoting again from Judge Hardin :


"Whatever was the producing cause, whether animalcular or microscopic vegetation or some other subtile poison of yet undis- covered chemical combination in the kingdom of affinities, I know not, for I write only of what I saw, and leave to others better in- formed to find and explain that which I know not. From 1832 to 1836, I saw the trees over one-half of Johnson County dying in consequence of having been girdled, and the hot sun, which for ages had been shut out, now shining fiercely on the bare ground, on pools, ponds and morasses, which by evaporation were soon dried up, and left their depressions full of dead and putrid . animals and animalculæ. The desiccation of the ground con- tracted it upon the rootlets of the shrubbery and grasses which had grown in the shade and in a loose and humid soil, and this brought death to them also, so that the spicewood throughout the country disappeared everywhere in two years. The entrance of the sun into the openings in the forests deranged the equilibrium of the atmospheric temperature, and thereby produced a general


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and free circulation by which the unbroken forest was also brought into a similar condition, and thus a new and permanent feature of atmospheric action was established.


"One thing I know, that under the baleful influence of this change for many years to come, Death numbered his victims by hundreds. The land was filled with mourning, and the grave- yards filled with the pioneer dead. Many persons seemed to die from pure stagnation of blood in the veins. The doctors, by fol- lowing the old system, only accelerated the crisis. Active stimu- lants only were found to be suitable. A quart of whisky in a night, with large doses of quinine, once more restored life and mobility to the blood and saved the patient. From the 1st of August to the 1st of October in each year, no business requiring labor was set apart to be performed. Sickness was the rule, and business was dispatched, medicines provided and preparations made to meet the sickly season. After this was over, in any assemblage, one-half the members at least wore pale faces. This was the age of quackery and quack medicines. After the qui- nine in the shops was used up, which was often the case before half the sickly season was over, the people had no remedy except in the use of boneset and gentian. The sick, therefore, readily fell in with any promised relief. Sappington's pills and others with big names heralded by a long list of curative virtues found a ready sale. Against the walls of every cabin, suspended from nails, hung two or three dozen small bottles already emptied of their contents, but with little, if any, realization to the sick of the promised benefit. A cart-load could have been gathered in a day, and such a collection would present to our children now an interesting and strange display of old curiosities, and form a long catalogue of quack nostrums."


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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


CHAPTER X. LIFE IN THE WOODS.


TOILING.


Not every man who moved into Johnson County aspiring to become a pioneer, gained the pioneer's meed of praise. There were not a few who came in the early days, with high hopes that they had reached their promised land, but found the conflict too severe, and soon retired vanquished from the field. Those who were made of sterner stuff, or too poor to get away, generally fought the battle with a courage and tenacity of purpose that gave them victory in the end. Save what has been set down of the hindrances that nature laid in the pathway of the pioneers- the woods, the wild beasts, the sickness and so on-and it requires no wearisome length of words to give a hint of the incessant toil- ing of the period. There were no drones in those days. True. there were some, as there always are upon the frontier, who loved the gun and the woods too well to be slaves to field-work, but even these did not eat at the expense of their neighbors. With but few exceptions, all were toilers-men, women and little chil- dren. Farms had to be and were cleared out, and houses and barns built, and all the work of time, stroke upon stroke. And while this work was slowly but surely going on, men, women and children must have food and clothes. There were but few idlers in those days, for men could not afford to be idle. We may catch a glimpse of the lives men led in the log-rolling season-up in the morning and busy among their own burning-heaps by cock- crowing, and off to a distant neighbor's, often four or five miles away, by sun-up, and then with handspike put forth such mus- cular effort and strength among the green logs, as happily labor- ers are seldom called upon to give nowadays, and at sunset off for home, where the smoldering heaps must again be stirred together before the wearied man could find rest in sleep. And it was not for one day, or two, or three, but for weeks this wearisome work went on. James Ware testifies to having rolled logs for thirty days in one spring when a young man. Henry Mussul- man put in "about thirty days," and "burnt his own brush and logs after night." Peter Vandiver rolled logs "from twenty to twenty-five days every year, and went from one to five miles." Theodore List rolled logs one year twenty-four days for his neigh- bors, and they in turn helped him to roll the logs on nine acres,


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and they were four days about it. Melvin Wheat attended twenty-two log-rollings one year, six of which was for one man. Samuel Herriott attended thirty-six log-rollings one spring, but as he was a local politician, he went oftener most likely than he otherwise would have done. But the common lot of all for many years after the first settlements were made was to spend many days in the spring season with the handspike at log-rollings, while at the same time their own heaps, if rolled, were to be burned and the " trash " to be " picked.'


Nor was it only the logs in the fields that called forth the com- bined muscular effort of the community. Cabins and stables must be built, and the former, often of large logs hewn to an even thickness, and all of green timber, were no holiday jobs to raise. All stood in need at one time or other of their neighbors' services, and all freely gave when called upon. Nor was there an enumeration by any of time served. A man's logs must be rolled, no matter how many days it took, and when the last " heaps " in the neighborhood had been made, accounts were con- sidered square all around. And so of other work requiring the strength of many arms.


The log-rollings and the house-raisings must not be considered, however, as unmixed evils. They bred sentiments of generosity and brought a degree of social life that worked for good. Men could not habituate themselves to giving and receiving such nec- essary and hard services in unequal degrees, without a growth of generous feeling ; and they could not toil together without foster- ing the social instincts. Still everything was kept subordinate to the business in hand. Individuals could laugh and talk to their hearts' content, but the community frowned upon any practice calculated to delay the work in hand. All quarreling was sup- pressed, fighting was prohibited and the use of ardent spirits, then so common, was so regulated that the drunkenness of the in- temperate could not delay the work in hand. Even the inclem- eney of the weather sometimes failed to put an end to combined labor. When the neighbors from Franklin and round about had gone out to put up the cabin of Simon Covert near the Big Spring, a steady rain sat in long before noon. Then the house- builders wavered, but Samuel Herriott cried out, "Men ! this man's house must be raised !" and in spite of the rain, the house was up and half-roofed by sun-down. Nor was it only at the log- rollings and house-raisings that the men pursued their labors with diligence. The same scenes marked the conduet of those who cut out and worked the first roads. But few have a thought at this time of the labor incident to that service. "Ten or a dozen"


1


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men, in 1830, consumed seven days in cutting out the Needham . road leading from Sugar Creek to Franklin.


And let it not be thought that the men alone were servants to toil. The wives and the mothers bore their full share. Many of the older fields in Johnson County, as well as elsewhere in Indi- ana, the daughters and ofttimes the wives. helped to clear. But if not in the fields, they were in and about their cabins, busy from morning to night, and often far into the night. Green grow the memory of the mothers of Johnson County ! The fathers de- serve much, the mothers more. They dyed the wool with the walnut ooze; they carded it into rolls; they spun it into yarn ; and wove the web of durable jeans. Often they pulled the flax, not unfrequently scutched it, always hackled, spun and wove it into linen cloth. The entire family would be clothed in garments spun, wove, cut and made by the mothers of these days. And what man or woman now living, who can span in memory a period of fifty years, who does not remember the mother of the house, sitting up making new or patching the frayed clothes of her chil- dren long after the other members of the household were sunk in slumber. Blessed be the memory of the dear, old, patient moth- ers of the land !


SOCIAL LIFE.


But, with all the toil and hardships of the times, there was a social life, the memory of which still survives. The labors of the day fostered sociability. Men worked together. They joined forces at corn-planting time, and old and young dropped and cov- ered the grain side by side. At the harvest, reapers, cradlers and binders, marched in phalanx across the fields. And when the winter days came, the evening fires from the huge fire-places sent out a genial, wholesome heat, unknown to the patrons of the mod- ern stove. There were but few books to read in those days, and fewer newspapers and periodicals, and so brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives, as well as neighbors, loved to gather about the firesides and while away the long winter evenings in social converse. The weddings of the time were generally social events of great significance. Nowland, in his "Early Reminiscences of Indianapolis," gives an instance in that town where the dancing was kept up for two days and nights after the wedding, but it is not believed that any party of merry-makers in Johnson County ever went to such an extravagant limit as that. Much, however, was often made of the wedding occasion here. The young friends of both bride and groom were usually invited, and, not unfre- quently, many of the older members of the settlement, and there was always much feasting and merry-making. The second or


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third day after the marriage, it was common for the parents or other friends of the groom to make an "infair," when the festiv- ities would be renewed. In the south settlements, the custom of " running for the bottle," was kept up, on infair occasions, until 1837, when it fell into disuse. As practiced here, the custom was for the groom's father, or some one representing him, to take his place at the yard gate with a bottle of whisky, and await the cavaleade of visitors, who, for the purpose, had rendezvoused at an appointed place. When in sight of the bottle-holder, the young men of the party who cared to ride for the bottle, took their places in front, and at a given signal, away they went, helter- skelter, and the fastest rider was entitled to the prize. On receiving it, he drank to the bride and groom, and then rode back in triumph to his friends, treating each in turn who chose to drink from the bottle, and custom made the dram an honorable one. It is remembered that Jesse Young, an Elder in the Pres- byterian Church, on the occasion of the marriage of his son John, held the bottle for the rough riders of the party. This custom was in vogue up to 1837, when a young man by the name of Bright Walker was thrown from his horse and killed, and then it dropped into disuse.


The quiltings, the wood-choppings, the rail-makings, the corn- huskings of the early period, all testify to the social spirit that everywhere prevailed.


THE CHASE.


To some the case brought in its season lasting delight, while to all, the game of the woods was a never-failing source of food supply. The Johnson County lands had long been a favorite hunting-ground of the Indians, and, for many years after the white people came, the woods were stocked with game and the streams with fish. Joab Woodruff is said to have killed three hundred and seventy deer in the fall of 1822, and it is told that George Doty killed three hundred in 1821 and 1822. Nathan Perry says he has frequently seen as many as forty in one herd. William Burkhart found Rock Lick, in Union Township, by pur- suing a well-beaten path known as a runway, leading to it from a distance of seven miles. Isaae Collier shot thirteen deer one morning before breakfast at Collier's Lick in the edge of Brown County. In 1834, Henry Mussulman started a herd of deer in the vicinity of Franklin, and followed them nearly to Indianapolis, and then back, where he shot and killed six of them. Judge Hardin counted twenty-five in one herd in a White River bend.


Venison was plenty, and the pioneer was an unskillful woodsman, indeed, who could not keep his table supplied in the


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fall and winter seasons for the first few years. William Ruther- ford knocked a deer in the head with an ax as it ran by where he was chopping in the woods. One Sunday morning, Isaac Voris was sitting on the bank of Young's Creek, immediately south of Judge Woollen's present residence. Hearing the bark of a dog up the creek, he saw a deer running in the distance toward him, but on the farther side of the stream. Keeping quiet, the deer came down to a point opposite and plunged in, but the current was strong and bore the animal down against a log, when Voris rushed in and secured it by the ears.


Wild turkeys were more abundant than deer. Wherever there was food for them they were easily found. Their " keouk " was a familiar sound to the inmates of every cabin. In the spring of 1823, it is said that a flock passed over the ground where Frank- lin has built, and it was large enough to make a beaten trail a hundred yards in width. They often did much mischief, scratch- ing up the newly planted corn, eating it after it was grown, and treading down the smaller grain after it was harvested.


Men, who bring a wilderness, inhabited by wild and savage beasts, to civilization, never lack in romantic incident with which to add flavor to the tales of old age. There are but few, indeed, who do not listen to old hunters' yarns with a patience that "spurs to greater effort." But no man ever came to his death in the county by the attack of a wild beast, so far as I know. Lewis Hendricks had his arm disabled for life in an encounter with a wounded bear, but that happened in Shelby County. There was, nevertheless, danger to the hunter. Samuel and Robert Bell were lying in wait for deer at a salt marsh, near the head-waters of Honey Creek. It was about dusk in the evening, and presently Samuel's attention was directed to an object crawling toward his brother, who was several yards distant. It proved to be a large panther. Samuel could see the nervous, cat-like motion of its tail, and also that his brother was unconscious of its presence. With a cool head and a steady nerve, he took deliberate aim and shot the beast dead. But there were not many panthers in the woods. The black bear, however, was quite plentiful. Joab Woodruff killed ten in one year, and there were many others who killed this noble game. No man, however, was ever brought to a strait by a bear in this county. But the deer hunters some- times got into trouble. John Smiley once knocked one over, and on going to it, it arose to meet him with "hair turned the wrong way." Smiley sprang behind a bush and the beast made a push at him with lowered antlers. Laying hold of a horn in either hand, Smiley held on for dear life, while the bush kept the beats


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off. Round and round both went, until wearied with the fruitless contest the buck smoothed his hair, a sign that his fight was over. Then Smiley loosed his hold, and the deer marched off undis- turbed. Joseph Young, of Union Township, knocked a buck down one day, and, on touching its throat with his knife, it came to its feet ready for battle. Young got behind a tree, and man- aged by hook and by crook to keep the tree between himself and the animal, until its rage had abated somewhat, when it gave its antlers a toss and disappeared in the thicket. Henry Mussulman was more severely put to the struggle by a wounded deer on one occasion. He had shot it to death, as he supposed. but with the first touch of the knife the animal floundered, and Mussulman lost the blade. The buck was large and strong, but the hunter had his head to the ground, and, as long as he could keep it there, he was safe, and so he held on. But this was not killing the deer, and it was unsafe to let go, and so in his extremity, Mus- sulman, with the jagged ends of broken spicewood, put the animal's eyes out, and then let go and run. It was the work of a moment to get his gun and shoot it dead. To inexperienced men there would have been not only danger, but, no doubt, disaster ; but to the pioneers of the country where there was danger, there was rarely disaster. Still the very fact that there was an element of danger, gave a charm to the sport, and there are but few who do not appreciate the main recital of it.




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