USA > Indiana > St Joseph County > A history of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Volume 1 > Part 28
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which the gods on Mount Olympus might envy.
Few sights are more touching than that of an elderly couple seated complacently, on such an occasion, in the shade of a spreading oak or beech, looking upon the enjoyments of their children, and talking quietly to one another and to their old friends.
One such annual reunion is the Pennsyl- vania pienie, held at Island park, in the city of Elkhart, on the third Saturday of August each year. At this reunion are welcomed all Pennsylvanians and their descendants, resid- ing in northern Indiana and southern Miehi- gan. The pienie has now been given an- nually for upwards of twenty-five years; and is looked forward to each year with eager- ness by all our citizens of the splendid raee that came to us from the Keystone State. There is no better blood in the citizenship of St. Josph county than that of the sturdy sons of that old commonwealth. The found- ers of our Pennsylvania pienie were William B. Garman, Michael F. Shuey and the Rev. James D. Huehison, of Elkhart county. Many of the most eminent persons of this and neighboring counties have been active partieipators in those annual reunions at Island park .- among them the late Joseph A. S. Mitchell. judge of the Indiana Supreme Court ; and also his life long friend and ad- mirer, the IIon. John B. Stoll, of this eounty.
Another of these reunions is the annual pioneer pienie of northern Indiana and southern Michigan, held at Clear lake, in Warren township, near the state line, where the old settlers and their families from St. Joseph county, Indiana. Berrien county, Michigan, and other counties in both states, gather on the beautiful wooded border of that fine, lake. Besides the sports, shows and feast- ing, there is always at this picnic, as well as at the Pennsylvania picnic. entertaining speech and song, commemorative of the past and promising for the future. There. too, comes the reformer. the politieian, the man of affairs; and there weighty measures are
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often discussed which afterwards become a part of the laws of the land. But the main purpose of the reunions is reminiscence, as to the past; enjoyment, as to the present ; and high hope, as to the future.
At the picnic held at Clear lake, August 15, 1900, the writer of this history had the pleasure to deliver such an address to the assembled pioneers. It was as follows :
"Friends and Neighbors : When that worthy pioneer, Ashbury Lindley, of Warren township, asked me to talk to the old set- tlers of St. Joseph and Berrien counties, and when I began to consider what I should say on this occasion. it occurred to me that I ought to be in full sympathy with any gath- ering of Indiana and Michigan people. I am myself a native of Michigan, and lived in that goodly state until the days of man- hood ; but I have now lived in Indiana even longer than I did in Michigan. I have there- fore some right to count myself both a Hoosier and a Wolverine. Though not born in Berrien county, I have yet many precious recollections of that splendid county and of her people. When I was first on my way to the Hoosier state, the last town in which I rested was the pretty city of Niles. There I took the old-fashioned stage coach for the south ; in those days this was the only means of travel from Niles to South Bend. It was an early morning in February, in 1859, long before daylight, when the mighty, humber- ing stage, drawn by four great horses, began its journey south through the darkness, swaying from side to side along the lower river road, once the trail of Pottawatomies and Miamis passing to and from old Fort St. Joseph's. The only stop which we made before entering Indiana was at the tavern in Ber- trand. Located at the junetion of the St. Joseph river with the Chicago road, the great Sauk trail, known of old to Indian and early settler, that pioneer village was at one time a more important place than either Niles or South Bend. But Bertrand. the famous trad- ing post, has disappeared from the face of
the earth. Its pretty gardens and its busi- ness lots are but a part of the rich farm lands of the St. Joseph valley. Its Indian neighbor, too, Pokagon's village, just across the river, can be seen no more. Civilization has eliminated Pokagon and his band; the no- ble chieftain, friend of the white man, is no more. The railroad has removed the stage coach, and with that has gone the ambitious village of Bertrand.
"It was three years after that early morn- ing ride in the stage coach when I came back again to Berrien county and to Michigan. It was February again. There was civil war in the land; and, like many another youth, I thought it my duty to offer my service, if need be, my life, for the preservation of the Union. When the question came as to what regiment I should join, I thought at onee of my native state. I was not then old enough, had not been long enough away from my childhood's home, to be weaned from Mother Michigan ; and so down I went to Niles and was taken into Company I of the Twelfth Michigan infantry, then in winter quarters at old Camp Barker. I did not know a sin- gle soul in the regiment ; but it was a Michi- gan regiment, and I should defend my coun- try in the companionship of boys of my na- tive state. That was enough for me. Noble fellows, too, were those Twelfth Michigan soldiers. Many of them, including those of Company I, were residents of Berrien county. A better citizen, a purer patriot, a worthier American gentleman, than our captain, Da- rius Brown, could not be found in all the ranks of the Union army. Lightly rest the green sod upon his breast, where he sleeps in peace by the banks of the St. Joseph. Many another citizen soldier of that brave regiment, the living and the dead, has a se- eure place in the memory of his comrades and of his fellow citizens. From Berrien Springs they came, and' from Buchanan; from Three Oaks and Galien ; from Niles and St. Joseph, and Benton Harbor and New Buffalo, and from every farmhouse and
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hamlet of the county; simple-hearted and brave pioneer patriots, who thought it noth- ing that they should go forth and bare their breasts to the sword that sought to strike at the heart of their country. And so am I doubly bound to the pioneers of Indiana and Michigan ; by the strong bonds of mature manhood no less than by the tender ties of youth.
"And what manner of men and women were those pioneers? They were of hearts as brave as those of the children whom they raised up to do battle for their country. They came out into the wilderness with little else than their own stout hearts and strong arms to help them. They cut down and removed the forest, or turned over the stiff sod of the prairie, and so changed the desert into farm lands and gardens. It was often a lonely life, not to speak of the terror of wild beasts or wilder Indians. I .very distinctly remem- ber in my own home, when we could see no habitation but our little log house, in what- soever direction we turned our eyes. We knew that an unele lived off to the south, but it was through the dense forest to get to his house. To the east a pathway by a swamp, over a barren knoll and through a fearfully lonely woods, led to the nearest neighbor in that direction; and memory still clings to that triumphant day, when as a boy I first found my way through that terror-haunted woods and back safe home again. To the north, far beyond the marshes, stretched an almost endless forest, and be- yond that we knew there lived one of our most valued and respected friends. To the west we never penetrated, though there was in our minds some vague knowledge of wood- land denizens in that direction. The trees were our near, and the hills. marshes and swamps our more remote landmarks. The 'hooked tree' and the 'forked tree' were then as well recognized objeets in our con- fined landscape, as are now to us the stand pipe at South Bend or the Michigan Central railroad bridge at Niles. And there was an-
other well known tree where, once upon a time, brave chanticleer had chased a hawk, and not content to drive off the robber, had followed him into the air, lighting upon a limb high up on the great oak, which ever after was known to us as the 'rooster tree.' The daring feat of this rooster was the theme of admiration at many a winter's fireside thereafter. The ‘bear's hill,' half a mile into the mysterious western woods, was the spot where, on a never-to-be-forgotten morn- ing, a company of thirty hunters, with dogs and guns, had finally come up with big brown bruin; and ever after when the morning sun shone through the trees and rested upon that hillside we imagined that, through the flut- tering leaves and shadows, we could still see the hunters and their dogs, and the big bear in their midst. A more graceful picture rises before us when we call to mind the pleasant morning when the dew drops glittered over the north marshes as we boys went to bring the oxen from pasture, and saw far off, near to the edge of the woods, two deer from the forest contentedly grazing, as if they were themselves a part of our domestic cattle.
"But the pioneer life was not all beauty and romance. It was, even more, hard and unremitting labor. The courageous toiler must cut away the underbrush and burn it, he must ent down the trees and make them into rails, boards and shingles. Ah, what endless work it was! But the little clearing was finally made; the logs were laid up, one over the other, until the walls of the cabin were completed, and the rude roof of split shingles was laid over it. And then came also the brave young wife, who accepted the prospect before her like the heroine that she was. Year after year, the clearing was enlarged, and a erop grown among the stumps. The marshes and swamps were drained and so converted into meadows. Alas, with this stirring up of the new soil, this reclaiming of the morasses, rose up also the germs of malaria. Regularly as the season came. August and September found the pio-
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neer, and sometimes the faithful wife and helpless little ones, shivering by turns and burning with the everlasting ague. Happy was it for them if the ague did not develop into bilious or intermittent fever, or even the dreaded typhoid. Many a brave pioneer, many a struggling wife, many a stricken boy or girl succumbed to those malignant dis- eases, and the tired bodies found rest in the little graveyards that spread out from year to year around the country churches. those days, men and women became old at forty-five and fifty years; and only the hardier constitutions lived through that first period of labors, privations and siekness. But the hardier ones did live through it all. Year after year. the forest, the prairie, the marsh and the swamp, put on, little by lit- tle. the appearance of the farm and the gar- den. Wheat and oats, corn, potatoes and buckwheat, grew and ripened among the stumps; and finally the stumps themselves disappeared, and great fields of grain and vegetables and orchards filled the places once occupied by the underbrush and the dark and silent woods. The marshes were turned into pastures and hay fields. The rail fences gave way to boards, to hedges and to wire, until finally the wild rule of wandering cows and young stock was done away with, and domestic animals were fenced in, and need no longer be fenced out. The roads that were once only Indian trails and traces, pathways and stray tracks through the des- ert. crossing the streams or rivers by fords or ferry boats, were straightened, drained, graded and graveled, and substantial bridges or culverts thrown across the streams, until the highways along the farms became almost as fit for travel as the paved streets of the cities. The rude log house, laid up by the pioneer's own hands, was set aside, and in its place appeared. at first, the neat frame structure, and afterwards, perhaps, the briek or stone mansion. The stick chimney vielded to one of brick. The log sheds and barns disappeared: and in their place were
discovered the comfortable frame shelters and the great bank barns, swelling with hay and corn and wheat. Intellectually and mor- ally, a like transformation took place. Well do I remember the old log school house, half hidden in the woods. There gathered the chil- dren of the pioneers from December to March, stamping into the warm room every morn- ing, half frozen from the deep snowbanks; and then again bundling up just before dark every evening, to take the same roads to their homes. Many an ambitious boy, sit- ting on one of the split log benches of those school houses, and facing one of the lean-to writing desks that lined three sides of the building, thought seriously of the time when he should be congressman, or governor, or, it might be, president; or the more modest youth or maiden, while perhaps enamored of one another, became even more enamored of science, literature and scholarship. And the best of it is that a goodly number of those day-dreams came true. From the log school house went forth many a distinguished man and woman of the nation; and there is lit- tle doubt that the toils and privations of home, the long walks from home to schoo!, and the studious quiet of those winter abodes of learning, have all combined to give ear- nestness, resolution and courage to the young scholars; so that when afterwards they met with their more luxurious city rivals they found no trouble in distancing them in the race of life. The pioneer schools were rude ones, but they were nurseries of robust, vir- tnous and successful citizens in every walk of life.
"But the log school houses have passed away. More commodious and elegant homes of learning have taken their place: and the modern school building and the neat church edifice ornament the pleasant slopes and cozy valleys throughout all the smiling farming lands, where once the pioneer struggled and triumphed in the hard battle with rude na- ture. Yes, the pioneer has triumphed. Culti- vated fields, pleasant homes, churches and
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school houses, line all the well kept highways; and where fifty years ago the wilderness frowned upon the first invasion of the axe, the spade and the plow, there civilization lifts her glorious banner over the wide land- seape. Let the pioneers and their children then gather together in those annual harvest reunions to commemorate the noble work, the joys and the sorrows, that laid the founda-
tions of the blessings which we now enjoy. The pioneers builded well; they were the founders of a great nation, the greatest that has ever blest the earth. Let them and their children and their children's children meet from year to year, forever, as we are meeting this afternoon at Clear lake, to keep green the memory of those heroic days and to shed honors forever upon those noble pioneers."
CHAPTER V.
ORGANIZATION OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
I. LAND TITLES AND PUBLIC SURVEYS.
Sec. 1 .- INDIAN TITLES .- When Pierre Na- varre located on the St. Joseph, in the year 1820, neither the state of Indiana nor the United States had acquired title to any lands in what is now St. Joseph county, nor indeed to any lands north of the Wabash, except small tracts near Fort Wayne and Lafayette. The title to this great northern wild. its thick woods, oak openings, prairies and marshes, was still in the Indians, as it was left by the treaty made between Anthony Wayne and Little Turtle and the other chiefs, at Greenville. August 3, 1795. Not only was the legal title to the lands still in the In- dians, but they continued to occupy the coun- try as their great hunting reserve.
On August 29, 1821. as we have already seen," the Ottawas, Chippewas and Potta- watomies of Michigan ceded to the United States a large tract in southern Michigan. This cession included also the eastern part of the ten mile strip between our northern boun- dary, as fixed by the ordinance of 1787, and the state boundary, as fixed by the enabling act of 1816. on the admission of Indiana into the Union. The western limit of the Indiana strip so acquired by the United States reached to the middle line of range two east; and the southern limit reached to the south line of township thirty-seven north. Those lines take in the northeast quarter of St. Joseph county. The Potta- watomies were then the exclusive owners of a. Chap. 3 of this History; Subd. 5, Sec. 12.
the remainder of the county. By treaty of October 16, 1826, they ceded the western end of the ten mile strip, which included the northwest quarter of St. Joseph county. By treaty of September 28, 1828, an irregular tract lying south of the cession of August 29, 1821, was ceded. This cession reached to and included the southeast quarter of the county. . Finally, by treaty of October 26, 1832, the remainder of the extreme northwest of the state was ceded. This cession included the remaining or southwest quarter of St. Joseph county. The only land title, there- fore, which Navarre could acquire, in 1820, was an Indian title. The same was true as to Coquillard on his coming, in 1823, and for three years afterwards, except as to the northeast quarter of the county. Even when Taylor came, in 1827, the Indian title had been extinguished only as to the northern half of the county.
Sec. 2 .- FIRST CONGRESSIONAL AND LEGIS- LATIVE ACTS .- The first act of congress di- rectly affecting St. Joseph county was that approved March 2. 1827, entitled "An act to authorize the state of Indiana to locate and make a road therein named." This act was passed to carry out certain provisions of the treaty of October 16, 1826. by which the Pottawatomies, amongst other things, ceded to the United States. " a strip of land. commencing at Lake Michigan and running to the Wabash river, one hundred feet wide, for a road, and also one section of good land contiguons to said road for each mile of the
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same and also for each mile of a road from the termination thereof, through Indianapo- lis, to some convenient point on the Ohio river. And the general assembly of the state of Indiana shall have a right to locate the said road, and apply the said sections, or the proceeds thereof, to the making of the same or any part thereof; and the said road shall be at their sole disposal." Following the treaty, and the act of congress in relation thereto, and to provide for carrying the same into effect, the general assembly, by an act approved January 24, 1828, appointed com- missioners "to survey and mark a road from Lake Michigan to Indianapolis, agreeably to the late treaty with the Pottawatomie In- dians, and the act of congress in confirma- tion thereof."" Thus were the first steps taken for the construction of the Michigan road, one of the most important public im- provements known in the history of Indiana. The work was of great moment to the whole state, from the Ohio to the lake, but par- ticularly so to St. Joseph county and other northern counties, which would thus be more closely connected with the settled parts of the state and also enabled more conveniently to reach the lake trade at Michigan City, or Trail's Creek, as that place was at first called. It was a renewal, by another route, of the old course of commerce from the lakes to the gulf.
The act of January 24, 1828, in relation to the Michigan road, was the first official notice taken by the legislature of the terri- tory of our county. But the proposition to construet a great highway through this re- gion was indeed the giving of most important consideration to the welfare of the valleys of the St. Josephi and the Kankakee.
Sec. 3 .- FIRST SURVEYS .- Among the earli- est surveys made in the county were those of the Michigan road and of the Michigan road lands. The original survey of the road was begun in the fall of 1828; but that survey
a. Acts 1827, p. 87.
b. See Chap. 2 of this History; Subd. 2.
was abandoned as impracticable, being an attempt to lay out a road on a direct line from Lake Michigan to the Wabash, over al- most impassable swamps and marshes, chiefly those of the Kankakee country. The route proposed in this survey, from the site of the present eity of Michigan City to that of Logansport, was seventy-four miles in length. A second survey, made the same fall, turned to the southeast from Trail's Creek until it reached the south bend of the St. Joseph river. "At this point," say the surveyors in their report, "is a beautiful site for a town." So, in 1828, did the surveyors of the Michigan road make prophecy of the future of the Queen City of the St. Joseph valley.ª From this south bend of the St. Joseph, the survey continued nearly in a direct line to the south. The distance by this route be- tween Michigan City and Logansport, as the extreme points are now called, was found to be one hundred and two miles. The maps and plats of this survey were filed in the office of the secretary of state, December 9, 1828. In the spring of 1829, there was a resurvey of that part of the road from South Bend to Logansport, over practically the same route as that surveyed in the fall of 1828; and the maps, plats and field notes were filed in the office of the secretary of state on June 12, 1829. This survey, as made from Michigan City to South Bend in the fall of 1828, and from South Bend to Lo- gansport in the spring of 1829, was accepted ; and the field notes are called the "Field notes of the second survey"; the first being that over the impracticable route from Trail's Creek, or Michigan City, through the swamps, directly to Logansport. Had the first survey been accepted, and the road built on that route, South Bend and St. Joseph county would have been left far to one side; and our history might have been different. For- tunately for us, however, it was according
a. The field notes on which this remark is written were filed Dec. 9, 1828, and signed by W. W. Wick, surveyor.
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to the "Field notes of the second survey," that the road was laid out and constructed."
The first public surveys, after those of the Michigan road, were the surveys made in 1829 by William Brookfield, our first county surveyor. Brookfield's surveys were made in townships thirty-seven and thirty-eight, north, ranges one, two and three, east, and included parts of the present townships of Portage, Penn, Clay, German and Warren. Other surveyors during the year 1829 were David Hillis and Thomas Brown. The prin- cipal surveyor in connection with the Michi- gan road and Michigan road lands was Wil- liam Polke, for a long time commissioner in charge of the construction of the Michigan road, whose surveys extend from the year 1830 to the year 1834, inclusive. Other sur- veyors were E. H. Lytle, in 1830 and 1834; and Robert Clark, Jr., in 1833. The people were exceedingly urgent for the completion of the Michigan road and for the survey of all the lands of the county; and both these important works were pushed ahead with energy. On the extinguishment of the In- dian title to the lands of what is now the southwest quarter of the county by the treaty of October 26, 1832, the surveys were rap- idly extended over all our territory; so that by the year 1834 practically all the lands of the county were surveyed. At the beginning of the year 1832 the Michigan road was com- pleted from the Ohio, at Madison, to the Wabash, at Logansport; and by the end of that year the road was opened to the lake, at Michigan City. The tide of emigration. induced by the facilities thus afforded, poured into all the country between the Wa- bash and the lake; and the population of this vicinity increased very rapidly.
Sec. 4 .- FIRST LAND SALES .- While the publie surveys were begun in 1829, yet it appears from the plat books now on file in the office of the county auditor that the first sales of publie lands were not made un- a. See further as to the Michigan Road, Chap. 7, Sub. 2, Sec. 3.
til late in the year 1830; and the first sales of the Michigan road lands were made still a year later. Yet, although the actual sales were not completed until the dates named, the entries were made much earlier. After the entries were made, and even after the sales were completed, it was some time yet longer before the patents could issue. On October 4, 1830, the south half of the north- west quarter of section twelve, township thirty-seven, north, range two east, was sold to Lathrop M. Taylor; and on the 25th of the same month the north half of the same tract was sold to Alexis Coquillard. In the spring following, on March 28, 1831, these two men laid out the county seat on the two tracts so purchased, together with a smaller tract in the southwest quarter of section one of the same township and range. Yet on May 12, 1831, in the bond of Coquillard and Taylor agreeing to donate certain lots in the new town for publie purposes, they say, "which said several donations are to be legally conveyed in a reasonable time after the patents shall have been issued to the said Coquillard and Taylor." It is very plain that the population was pressing into this rich country much faster than the state and national authorities could prepare for them.
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