USA > Indiana > A history of Indiana from its exploration to 1850 > Part 23
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26 Indiana Gazette, April 3, 1827.
27 Sanford Cox, Recollections of an Old Settler, Lafayette (1860).
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
little steamer, "Republican," to make a trial trip. Accord- ingly, on the June rise, 1834, the start was made with a number of Logansport men on board, and also the interested merchants. The boat moved along beautifully till, a few miles above the Delphi landing, it began to strike. The crew had to get out at sandbars and lift and push. Haw- sers were run ashore and used as tow lines. Finally it struck the Georgetown Bar and stuck fast. Captain Towe, as well as Colonel Pollard and Job Eldridge, who had goods aboard, got out in the water and pushed and hauled. It was no use. Twenty yoke of cattle were hitched on and the little "Republican," shorn of much of her prestige, but still alive, steamed into the harbor at Logansport. The return trip was never attempted. The boat bilged and sank near the mouth of Eel river.28 This, if not the first, was among the first of the steamboats that ever went up so far. The soundings taken by the "Republican" showed that Delphi could be reached easily; and the next year a petition was sent to Congress by the Delphians asking that that place be made a port of entry.
A like excitement was caused on the St. Joseph three years later when the "Matilda Barney" steamed down to the South Bend on her way to Elkhart and Goshen. She had on board one hundred passengers and ten tons of freight, and was drawing thirteen inches of water. Everybody in reach rushed to the banks to see the wonder. Land along the river rose over night from $5 to $10 per acre.29 The most promising point along the river at that time was the iron foundry at Mishawaka.
§ 52 THE FLATBOAT TRADE
IT is not beyond the fact to say that nine-tenths of the surplus produce of Indiana from 1820 to 1840 was carried to market on flatboats. The merchants did most, but by no means all, of the boating business. Early in the spring they put their boat carpenters to work. The finest poplars
. 28 Dr. James H. Stewart, Recollections of Carroll County, Cincinnati, 1873.
29 Western Sun, May 31, 1834.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
in the neighboring forest were marked for gunwales. Some of these were eighty feet long. They were usually cut be- fore the sap rose in the spring and left in the woods as long as possible to season. By the first of the following March the boats must be completed and at the landing ready for loading. The loading of the boats was no ordinary event in the neighborhood. The produce had all been prepared be- forehand and in many cases had been stored in a warehouse at the landing. The owners of the boats watched the stage of the water, and when it was thought to be favorable, they sent word to everybody in the neighborhood either to bring in their produce or come with all hands and the teams to load the boats. It was usual for the women to come also, not only to cook for the hands, but to help wrap and store away the goods on the boat. It was a time of great gaiety. On the bank stood a barrel of whiskey with its head knocked in and a gourd to drink from. When the loading was done and the boats gone, a frolic at the nearest and most com- modious house or barn closed the event.
By 1827 the New Orleans market was failing, not on account of the quantity of produce, but on account of the time and manner of reaching it. Three-fourths of the mar- ketable produce of the Mississippi Valley was run out in March. This deluge struck New Orleans all at once; and, it being a small city, was unable to care for it till it could be shipped to New York. In the spring of 1826, one hun- dred and fifty-two flatboats passed Vincennes loaded for New Orleans. They carried 250,000 bushels of corn, 100,- 000 barrels of pork, 10,000 hams, 2,500 live cattle, 10,000 pounds of beeswax, 3,600 venison hams, besides hogs, oats, meal, chickens, etc.30 From these statistics it is evident that about three hundred flatboats left the Wabash each year.
From Lawrenceburg to Mount Vernon on the Ohio there was scarcely a five mile stretch but what had its "landing," where flatboats were loaded for the down-river trade. In 1828 David Guard & Brothers, farmers on the river above Lawrenceburg, bought the abandoned steamer "Scioto" and
30 Western Sun, June 17, 1826.
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
transformed it into a barge, on which they placed 600 live hogs, a large number of fat cattle, chickens, geese, corn, 500 kegs of lard, 500 barrels of pork, and other produce, all from their own farm, and set out, March 10, for New Or- leans.31
From this same port twenty-seven such boats were run in one year. Down below, at Vevay, the Dufours and Schencks, known by their products throughout the east, loaded their annual fleet with wine, hay, straw hats, and other produce of this energetic French community. Madi- son, the center of the pork-packing industry in the State, did the largest down river business of any town in the State. Not only from the river-board but from the tribu- tary streams, such as Pigeon and Anderson, Oil and Blue, Indian and Loughry, came numberless boats. Scores of busy little town-landings of that day have completely dis- appeared from the map. Such were Maysville, Hindostan, Palestine, Fredonia, Pittsburg, Port Royal and Darlington.
Passengers and pilots on upstream steamboats counted hundreds of flatboats in a single day. John Matthews, a veteran boatman of Indiana, commenting on the large num- ber of boatmen at New Orleans in the spring of 1829, ob- served that over half were from Indiana.32
As far as possible the boatmen gathered in groups, often ten to twenty boats keeping company. When a fleet of them tied up in a down-river port like Paducah, Natchez, Vicksburg, or Plaquemine the crews had high revels. Old rivermen indulged in all kinds of jokes on green hands, then on their first trip. At New Orleans there were sights to keep all on the alert. The splendor of the theatres, gar- dens, churches, and stores were such as the young boatmen had never dreamed of. Scarcely an hour was spent in sleep during the three or four days' stay by those on their first trip.
The merchant or master was busy during this time dis- posing of his cargo and buying goods with the proceeds. Little cash was brought back to Indiana. The return trip
31 Lawrenceburg Palladium, March 15, 1828.
32 Indiana Journal, August 1, 1834.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
was not so pleasant for the boatmen as the going. Until about 1840 most of the men returned on foot. This was not only tiresome but dangerous. The down-river country, and especially the roads frequented by returning boatmen, were infested by thieves and robbers. Gangs of gamblers, mur- derers, and river pirates preyed on the commerce from Cairo to New Orleans. Frequently, as in the case of the one at Cave-in-the-Rocks, Illinois, pirate bands were strong enough to overpower a flatboat crew and rob them.
After 1840, or thereabouts, the boatmen returned by steamer to the nearest Ohio river town, and thence walked home. Those from the Wabash towns landed at Evans- ville; those from the central part of the State landed at Leavenworth, or New Albany.
§ 53 EARLY MAIL SERVICE
THE chief means of communication between Indianians and the outside world was the United States mails. These were necessarily infrequent and irregular. The mail routes were laid out and the service directed by Congress, and there seems at this date to have been little cause for com- plaint by the pioneers. Sometimes the carrier was delayed a few days by high water. Frequently he was drowned in trying to swim his horse across a flooded river. More frequently the postmasters took the newspapers from the bags and detained them until next trip-often a week-that they might read them. In 1827 the publishers of the In- diana Journal complained that half their papers were so detained.
At the same time the editor explained that he had is- sued no paper the previous week because the mails from Cincinnati had been delayed two weeks by high waters. There were at that time thirty routes in the State. Nearly all were weekly. On one the mail left Lawrenceburg at two p. m. Monday and arrived at Indianapolis at six p. m. Wednesday. This was a fair example of the service.
"Franked" congressional documents often clogged the mails to the exclusion of more important matter. Captain
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Sample, the postmaster at Connersville in 1828, complained that he had over a wagon load of this material, nearly all franked by T. P. Moore, a congressman from Kentucky, to Jonathan McCarty-the Jacksonian candidate for Congress in that district.
The postal receipts during the year 1828 for Indianapo- lis were $379; Brookville, $142; Crawfordsville, $139; Fort Wayne, $158; Terre Haute, $235; Madison, $323. For the whole State it was $7,905. There were then one hundred and forty-nine offices in the State, thirty-seven of which had been established that year.33 The development, how- ever, was rapid. At the beginning of 1830 Indianapolis had a weekly mail to Madison, Louisville, Elizabethtown, Ky., Petersburg, Terre Haute, Mooresville, Noblesville, Lawrenceburg, and twice a week to Brookville, and to Day- ton.34
§ 54 SETTLEMENT OF THE WABASH COUNTRY
No description can give an accurate impression of the settlement of Indiana. One who has watched the rising waters of a flood overflow the land will appreciate the over- flow of the State by the swelling tide of immigration. By 1825 the settlers were entering the northern half of the State. The "New Purchase" in 1818 opened almost all the land south of the Wabash to settlement.
As noted in the last chapter, land sales at Crawfords- ville had been opened by Ambrose Whitlock and William- son Dunn December 24, 1824, though there was no per- manent land office established there till 1828.35
Crawfordsville became the converging point for all set- tlers northwest of the capital. The first settlers of Lafay-
33 American State Papers, Post Office, I, 208.
34 Indiana Journal, Jan. 16, 1830. In 1832 the South Bend North Western Pioneer announced with great pride that South Bend had a twice-a-week mail from Piqua, Ohio. Before that a weekly mail from Fort Wayne had been sufficient ; cf. Waldo Mitchell. "Growth of Indiana. 1812-1820," Indiana Magazine of History, Dec .. 1914, where a number of the early routes are given.
35 Sanford C. Cox, Recollections of the Early Settlement of the Wa- bash Valley, 17.
274
HISTORY OF INDIANA
ette and Delphi, and what was then called the upper Wa- bash country, made their way from the upper Whitewater Valley across by Andersontown, thence down White river to Strawtown near Noblesville. There they took the Wil- derness road by Thorntown to Crawfordsville. From White river to Crawfordsville there was not a white man's house along this trace in 1825.36 A score of families constituted the little settlement at Crawfordsville and then the forest stretched unbroken to Terre Haute.
Along this trace, in October, 1824, came Sanford Cox, his father, mother, brothers and sisters, among the first to reach the Wabash country by this overland route. The Robinson family, Henry and his sons, Abner and Coleman, their wives and children, from Dayton, Ohio, had preceded the Coxes by only a few days. At Crawfordsville they se- lected their land, and cut a trace for their wagon into Car- roll county, the earliest settlers in the vicinity of Delphi.37
The whole country to the northwest of Montgomery county was. then known as Wabash county and was at- tached to Montgomery for administrative purposes. Early in the spring of 1825 Robert Johnson, the tavern keeper of Crawfordsville, surveyed for William Digby the town site for Lafayette. In January, 1826, Tippecanoe county was set off by the General Assembly and in May following the commissioners located the county seat at Lafayette.38
Almost at the same time, March 28, 1826, John Tipton moved the Fort Wayne Indian Agency to the mouth of Eel river. April 16, 1828, the town site of Logansport was sur-
36 "Soon after crossing White river we passed Beckwith's place. Mr. Ogle, who drove the (ox) team told us to take a good look at that cabin as it was the last we would see for forty miles." Sanford Cox, Recol- lections, 11.
37 Dr. James Hervey Stewart, Recollections of the Early Settlement of Carroll County, 13.
38 Dr. E. V. Shockley, in an article entitled "County Seats and Coun- ty Seat Wars," Indiana Magazine of History, March, 1914, has given the location of the different county seats of the counties of Indiana, showing the time, manner, and inducements, that led up to them. In the case of Lafayette the proprietor gave the even numbered lots to the county as a price for the location.
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
veyed, and August 12, 1829, it became the county seat of Cass county.39
Fort Wayne had been the seat of a military post or Indian agency for nearly a century before any real settle- ment was made. In 1822 a land office was established there under charge of Joseph Holman and Samuel C. Vance. The first land sale was opened at the fort, October 22, 1823. Squatters and traders, such as Samuel Hanna, James Bar- nett, Alexander Ewing, Samuel Comparet and others, had already settled there. The General Assembly of 1823 laid out Allen county, the county seat being located the follow- ing year at Fort Wayne.40
As early as 1823 Alexis Coquillard, a fur trader, estab- lished a station where the city of South Bend now stands. Lathrop Taylor soon followed. The station was an outpost of Fort Wayne. Real settlers soon followed and by the time the Michigan Road reached the place a considerable settle- ment had sprung up,41
Settlers entered Lake county by way of Lake Michigan and the "Old Sac Trail." The Indian title to this section was not secured till 1828 and 1832. The Black Hawk War in the latter year scared away prospective settlers, but in 1833 a stage line from Detroit to Fort Dearborn, passing through, opened up the country to settlement.
It is thought that the first settlement in the region was made by a tavern keeper named Bennett, who located his hostelry near the mouth of the Calumet. Traces ran from Laporte to Hickory creek, Illinois, passing Cedar Lake. This latter was called the "Old Sac Trail."42
Settlers had established homes on the prairies about Laporte as early as 1830, there being about 100 families in that neighborhood by the close of 1832, when Laporte county was organized.43
These settlements indicate the main lines of immigra-
39 W. Swift Wright, Pastime Sketches. This is a series of articles written for, and read to the Cass County Historical Society.
40 Wallace A. Brice, History of Fort Wayne, 293.
41 Judge Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, 132.
42 Rev. T. H. Ball, Lake County, Indiana, 20.
43 Gen. Jasper Packard, History of LaPorte County, 36.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
tion, but only the main lines. Thousands came up the Wa- bash; others came by trail to the Wabash from Lake Michi- gan, a harbor having been made on the Indiana shore as early as 1834.44
"Nothing is more common," wrote Rev. George Bush, of Indianapolis, November 20, 1826, "than to see fifteen or twenty wagons passing in a single day, each carrying the little belongings of the family that trudged along by its side. Indiana is now teeming with the hordes of immigra- tion. As many as thirty wagons camp together for the night."45
"For a week our town has scarce been clear of immi- grant wagons," wrote the editor of the Indiana Gazette, of Indianapolis, October 30, 1827.46 It was reported that 200 families passed through Centerville for the Wabash count- try during the two months of September and October, 1827. Since 1820 there had been organized in the "New Purchase" twenty-one counties whose population in 1827 totaled 55,- 000.47 There was no cessation in this rush of settlers. Dur- ing the years from 1829 to 1835 the flood poured along the roads that centered in Indianapolis. From there they took the Crawfordsville, Logansport, or Terre Haute trails. The canal agitation, which began in 1827, quickened the move- ment and swelled the crowd. Sales of canal lands all along the route attracted speculators, city builders, and settlers in ever increasing numbers. Cities like Lagro, Peru, Mia- misport, Pittsburg, Logansport, Lockport, Lafayette, Wil- liamsport, Eugene, Attica and Covington sprang up in a season and became flourishing towns.48
44 Indiana Journal, Jan. 18, 1834.
45 Rev. George Bush, to Corresponding Secretary of the Home Mis- sion Society, Indiana Gazette, April 3, 1827, "Their destination is the Wabash above Terre Haute. We wonder why a merciful providence kept this country hid from civilized man, or why he did not create an espe- cially gifted race for its occupation."
46 Indiana Gazette, Oct. 30, 1827.
47 Western Sun, Nov. 10, 1827.
48 Paoli Patriot, Oct. 9, 1834, "We presume not less than one hun- dred and fifty wagons have passed through this village in the last two weeks." Indianapolis Indiana Democrat, "Our streets are one moving mass of living men, women, and children, carriages, wagons, cattle.
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
The bulk of population, as shown by the census of 1830, was still in the southern part of the State. The White- water Valley was most thickly settled. Wayne county, with a population of 18,589; Dearborn, with 13,955; Jefferson, with 11,465; Franklin, with 10,719, were the leading coun- ties. The immense throng of settlers, then crowding to the Wabash frontier, passed through these counties and thou- sands became permanent residents, who had intended to go to the Wabash.49
Another large body of population was located, roughly speaking, in the triangle of hilly country with its base resting on the Ohio from Madison to Leavenworth and its apex at Crawfordsville. Most of these settlers had entered through Clark county, which then contained 10,719 persons.
As an evidence of the heavy immigration into the Wa- bash country, Tippecanoe county had a population of 7,167; Fountain had 7,644, either equal to that of Marion, with 7,181, or Montgomery, with 7,386.50
horses, hogs and sheep, all joyously wending their way to their new habitations. The old, middle aged, and young go together. Nor is this moving spirit confined to one part of our State alone, but we believe tens of thousands are going by the lakes, and every leading road abounds with similar trains of emigrants." The Indiana Journal, Sept. 8, 1830, called attention to the heavy immigration then pouring through Indian- apolis. The capital that year had a population of 1,094; Vincennes 1,560; Salem 853; Madison 1,752. The newspapers were filled with the adver- tisements of towns. Andersontown, Knightstown, Muncytown 1827, Del- phi 1828, Blakesbury, Brentonville, Marion, Mooresville 1830, Lebanon, New Maysville, South Bend, LaPorte 1832, Michigan City, Allisonville 1833, New Bethel, Monticello, Plymouth, Germantown, Northfield, Peru 1834, will give some idea how fast these towns were laid out and placed on the markets. The date given is the first advertisement for the sale of lots. There were scores of towns laid out and advertised which can not now be located on the map.
49 Dr. James Hervey Stewart, Recollections of the Early Settlement of Carroll County, 12, "On passing through Richmond and Centerville we were annoyed by croaking predictions of ill-luck uttered on all sides. 'You will never get through' said one, 'You will die if you go to the Wabash; every one that goes there dies in less than a year,' said an- other."
50 Vevay Messenger, Sept. 27, 1831, gave the following ceusus report of Indiana for 1830:
County.
Census. County.
Census. County.
Census.
Allen 1,000 Clark 10,719 Carroll
1,614
Bartholomew
5.480 Crawford
3,234 Clay
1.616
(19)
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
County.
Census. County.
Census. County.
Census.
Boone
622
Clinton
1,423 Cass
1,154
Dearborn
13,955
Jackson
4,894
Rush
9,918
Decatur
5.851
Johnson
4,139
Ripley
3,959
Delaware
2,372 Jennings
3,950
Randolph
3,912
Daviess
4,512
Knox
6,557
Sullivan
4,696
Dubois
1,774 Lawrence
9,239
St. Joseph
287
Elkhart
935
Martin
2,010
Switzerland
7,111
Franklin
10,990
Madison
2,242
Scott
3,097
Fayette
9,112
Marion
7,181
Spencer
3,187
Fountain
7,644
Montgomery
7,386
Shelby
6,294
Floyd
9,368
Morgan
579
Tippecanoe
7,167
Gibson
5,417
Monroe
5,678 Union
7,957
Greene
4,253
Orange
5,909 Vanderburgh
2,610
Hancock
1,569
Owen
7,090
Vigo
5,736
Harrison
10,088
Posey
4,883 Vermillion
5,706
Hendricks
3,667
Perry
6,378
Washington
Henry
6,498 Putnam
8,495 Warren
2,854
Hamilton
1,750
Pike
2,464 Warrick
2,973
Jefferson
11,465
Parke
7,534 Wayne
18,589
Total
344,508
CHAPTER XII
RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN EARLY INDIANA
§ 55 CHURCHES
THERE was periodical preaching among the Indiana set- tlers from the earliest years of the nineteenth century. The log houses and barns of the settlers were used as meeting houses. Occasionally a rough pulpit was erected in the grove and more or less regular services held in the shade of the trees. Itinerant priests and preachers were pressed into service. Many of these were merely accidental visitors, others were traveling under the direction of eastern mis- sionary societies.
The earliest church organization in Indiana was the Catholic at Vincennes. The records of this parish church date back to 1749. From this date to 1834, when Bishop Gabriel Bruté became the bishop of Vincennes, thirty priests had served in succession. The earlier priests, particularly Bishop Flaget, had traveled over Indiana, ministering to the Catholic settlers, revalidating marriages, administering sacraments, and receiving converts into communion. Only traditional evidence remains of the ministrations of this clergyman.1
With the appointment of Bishop Brute, Vincennes, which had formerly belonged to the diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky, became an independent see. His jurisdiction in- cluded Indiana and much of Illinois. As soon as the new St. Francis Xavier cathedral church at Vincennes was dedi-
1 Rev. Herman Alerding, A History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Vincennes, 92. In 1823 and again in 1825 Bishop Flaget traveled from New Albany to Vincennes holding church at such places as New Albany, the Knobs, Mt. Pleasant, Washington, and Black Oak Ridge. At Vincennes in an eight day meeting he secured three hundred converts.
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HISTORY OF INDIANA
cated Bishop Brute and the resident priest, Lalumiére, started on a tour of the State.2
The Catholic settlers were gathered into congregations at suitable places and priests sent them as soon as possible. Bishop Bruté was a man of remarkable activity, and, by the time of his death, June 26, 1839, had the State well or- ganized.3
The first session of the Indiana Conference of the Metho- dist Episcopal Church was held at New Albany in 1832. There were represented in the conference five presiding elders' districts. These were Madison, Charlestown, Indi- anapolis, Vincennes, and the Missionary district covering the whole northern part of the State.4 There were reported at this time 19,853 white members and 182 colored. There were sixty preachers appointed and four charges left un- supplied. These were under the direction of five presiding elders. There was scarcely a nook or corner of the State not reached by the famous circuit riders of this church.
As early as 1804 Peter Cartwright and Benjamin Lakin, who were then riding the Shelby and Salt River Circuits in Kentucky, crossed over and preached in Clark's Grant. The principal gathering places of the early Methodists was at the home of the Robinsons and Prathers near Charlestown.5
Mr. Cartwright also organized the first Methodist church in southwestern Indiana, in the Busroe Settlement, about this time. These converts were organized into a class in 1808.6 Whitewater Circuit, in western Ohio, was organ-
2 In the Western Sun (Vincennes), March 4, 1826, is a notice by Father Champomier that the cornerstone of the new Cathedral Church would be laid March 30. Catholics and Protestants alike were invited and Protestants aided liberally in the work of construction. Nov. 6, following, the unfinished walls were thrown down by a violent wind. Indiana and Illinois then constituted the diocese. This was by far the finest church building in the State.
3 Alerding, A History of the Diocese of Vincennes, 121-161. The bishop was buried in the sanctuary of the Cathedral of Vincennes where his body still remains.
4 Rev. F. C. Holliday, Indiana Methodism, 75.
5 Nathan Robinson moved to Indiana from Kentucky in 1799 and was perhaps the pioneer Methodist of the State. Stevens, History of Methodism, IV, 152, 153 ; Sweet, Indiana Magazine of History, Dec., 1914. 6 Peter Cartwright, Autobiography.
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RELIGION AND EDUCATION
ized in 1806, soon after, including among its charges Brookville, Liberty and Connersville. In 1807 the Silver Creek Circuit, in Clark county, was organized and placed under the charge of Rev. Moses Ashworth.7
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