USA > Indiana > Allen County > Monroeville > A time to remember who we are ; a historical resume of the settlement of Monroeville in conjunction with the Indiana State Sesquicentennial > Part 2
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During this time, such terms as Garrison, Douglas, Lincoln, John Brown, raid, fugitive slave, underground railroad and Levi Coffin were prominent. The underground railroad crossed Indiana and was a means of concealing negroes from slave to freedom and into Canada. Levi Coffin, the president of the underground railroad for ten years, liberated over three thousand slaves into freedom.
Levi Coffin's house in Fountain City is famous in Indiana history as the grand central station of the underground railroad. Levi Coffin, and his wife, the latter known as Aunt Katie took care of the fugitives and helped them to finish their journey in safety. The term was used as "underground railroad" when a frustrated slave hunter from Kentucky remarked, "They must have an underground railroad a-runnin' hereabouts, and Levi Coffin must be the president of it." Levi Coffin and his wife were Quakers. The Quakers, or Friends, brought a distinctive quality to Indiana life in their fight for the great principle concern- ing human slavery.
The schedule was operated only during the night. Levi Coffin in his memoirs explained the details as follows:
"We knew not what night or hour of night we would be awakened by a gentle rap at the door. That was the signal for the underground railroad. Outside in cold or rain there would be a wagon, loaded with fugitives. I would invite them in, cover the windows, strike a match, and build a good fire. My wife would prepare good food for them. The horses would be taken to the stable and the fugitives would rest for the night. Then in the darkness they would to on to their next destination."
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Signatures Taken From Monroeville Centennial Register . 1951
John Meyers Johnny Knox Samuel Row S. R Rose. Tom Griffith I. R. may Lillie Robinson
. Ellen J. Mc Intosh Da Marquardt
Vess G. Fortway It arry bizard Dwight Castleman
C. A. Taylor I haves . H. Roy
Albert E Lauenburger Omil De clevy Fred L Amith
LE A. Pillers
David Van meter
Addie Heckler
Nerne Mitchell
John Bottenberg
Section
Deuter
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MONROEVILLE
BARNHARTS
0
1850 - MONROEVILLE
Previous to the survey of the Pennsylvania rail- road, now one of the greatest systems in the country, there was not a home within a mile of what is now known as Monroeville.
As soon as the railroad was assured, houses were built and the town was born. For a number of years the town was represented mostly by the mail station on the Pennsy . The town was platted by Jacob and John Barnhart, sons of Peter Barnhart, and the corporation limits stand today the same as they did one hundred and fifteen years ago. You may read such names as Barnhart, Webster, Pilgrim, Rowland, Engle, Swift, Pool, Argo, and Dickerson on the abstracts of the present home owners. These were the men who eagerly bought lots or had previously owned the land in 1851.
The town grew by leaps and bounds and was taking a prominent place in Allen County. The ground had been broken for the new railroad and in 1852 the contract for the building of the stretch of railroad from Crestline, Ohio, through Monroeville to Fort Wayne, one hundred and thirty one miles, was let to Samuel Hanna. Money for the work was derived from the sale of stocks and bonds and subscription. By the fifteenth of November, 1854, the first railroad train ran from Crestline, Ohio through Monroeville to Fort Wayne. Monroeville was connected with the industrial centers of that day. The waterways of travel that had bypassed this township had given way to the locomotive and Monroeville was directly in the line of traffic from Pittsburgh to Fort Wayne and Chicago.
CHICAGO. JAN. 1, 1859)
R.R. MICHIGAN
UROBERTSDALE L. MICHIGAN
TOLLESTONE-1858
R.R.
& NORTHERN IND.
LINE
MICH.
01858
WAN
HI
STARK 01858
PLYMOUTH 1856
WARSAW
UNTSVILLE
COLUMBIA CITY
OHIO-INDIAN -BOUNDARY LINE
NOR. IND. R.R.
LIVERPOOL
FORT WAYNE & CHICAGO R. R.
N -Z
8
.
W-
-E
ILLINOIS- INDIANA BOUNDARY LINE
LOUISVILLE, NEW ALBANY CHICAGO. R.R.
LOGANSPORT
TOLEDO & WABASH R.R.
OHIO INDIANA
R.R.
5
HOBARTO
1856
SHORT
MOWAYNE
1854/
SASTERN R.R.
LA CROSSE
CHICAGO & CINCINNATI
JOLIET &
VALPARAISO.SENT.
INDIANA BOUNDARY
CHICAGO/GREAT
CLARKE JC.
MICH, SOUTHERN
NA
BOOM TOWN -IBBB-78
Monroeville is a boom town. Monroeville is a part of the greatest nation on the face of the earth ... America. This is America, earning money and spending it. The whole country had doubled the number of manufacturing establishments in the last ten years. The day of westward expansion is here and the railroad is bringing urban pros- perity to its peak.
In our area, the man on the small farm worked and made a thrifty living. Farmers had begur to buy stock. People who had money spent it with a flourish. Houses were decorated with towers, mansard roofs, and jigsaw patterns of wood and iron. The best parlor had the stereoscope, the plush album, the antimacassars and the whatnots. Lawn parties were the thing that was being done by the social set and the croquet epidemic began in the summer of 1866.
The M. E. Argo grove, one half mile south of town was the scene of many outdoor parties. It was becoming fashionable for women to have an education and the school marms were taking their places in the elementary schools of Monroeville.
Two business houses were doing a large volume of business : the hardware of J.A. Neizer, who built the large home on South and Monroe Streets and the drygoods and drugstore of D.S. Redelshimer. Other firms were: S. Heller, W. D. Baker, M. Cary and Company, Sam Pool, C. W. Rollins, D.S. Row, Thomas Wilson, Strauss and Smith, who had undertaking and furniture; also M. B. Knouse, J.T. Poole, Attorney, J.W. Jones, E.G. Coverdale as Justice of Peace and Drs. W.A. Connolly, C.A. Leiter, E. P. Wilder, Jones E. Schlick, W. D. Rockfellow, F.L. Bobilya, Indiana House and J.H. Delavan, M. Rundell and A.C. Webster in charge of sales.
One industry which flourished in the 64's through the 70's was the flouring mill of Dague and Brothers with an output of one hundred barrels of flour a day and large quantities were shipped to Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
Oil barrel staves and headings was another industry. John Rout, George Webster, James Weiler, Hemphill and Ashworth, M. E. Argo, Rollya and Robertson, A. T. Beaugnot, D.S. Redelshimer and Jacob Sweeny were men engaged in this business. There were five stave factories going strong in this town with branches in Paulding, Ohio, Dixon, Ohio, and Decatur, Indiana.
Seven thousand cords of timber were used annually and the staves sold in the markets east and west.
T.A. Long, and W.A. Waterman began the wooden suction pump business and the carriage and wagon works was conducted by Adam Scar and Christian Hoffman.
The stories have been told many times of those busy days in Monroeville when the glamour of the night was made bright by the light of the refusal of shop and mill at the bonfire pit. It illuminated the town by its reddish glow.
Yes ... Monroeville was a boom town, hustling and bustling with the manufacturing of staves and headings. New homes were built for the stream of people looking for a place to live. Monroeville was second in industry only to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
HOOSIER POLITICS
In politics, Indiana has had an enviable history. Indiana came into the Union in 1816 and at once became what is called in politics a doubtful state. This is a state that has nearly an even division of votes be- tween the two parties. In order to get the electoral vote of this state, the Conventions of the two parties appeal to the state's pride by moninating candidates from the doubtful state for either the President or for the Vice President.
In the long period from 1868 to 1916, nearly fifty years, Indiana furnished two candidates for President and nine candidates for Vice President.
Some of her great names have been Thomas A. Hendrick, whose death posed the unanswerable question, "Who will become President in case President Cleveland should die?" A question which is still being discussed today. There was Governor Morton who kept Indiana from seceding from the Union. Also the two Harrisons, General William Henry and Benjamin Harrison. There was Thomas R. Marshall, Charles W. Fairbanks, Paul V. Mc Nutt, Governor Hanley and Governor Schricker.
HOOSIER WRITERS
Until 1840 the writing in Indiana was mostly written by scholars who had come from Europe and New England to study. Then came John Finley, who wrote "The Hoosier's Nest", a first genuine poem of the frontier. Edward Eggleston and "The Hoosier Schoolmaster", Lew Wallace and his "Ben Hur", Meridith Nickolson and "The Hoosiers", Gene Stratton Portor's "Limberlost", and Johnson's series of "Little Colonel". There was Kin Hubbard's sketches and essays and George Ade with his lively satires of Abe Martin. Booth Tarkington's "Gentleman from Indiana", Theodore Drieser's "An American Tragedy", Robert Lynd, a sociologist's study of Muncie's "Middletown", Albert J. Beveridge and Claude Bowers, who were political historians; also Charles Austin Beard's "Rise of American Civilization", Eleanor Atkinson's 'Johnny Appleseed", James Whitcomb Riley's poetry, Levi Coffin's "Reminiscence", and this community lays claim to Lloyd Douglas, whose last book, "Time to Remember", recalls many favorite stories of his mother, whose memory we all cherish.
Although the Indiana group is a phrase often heard in reference to Hoosier authors, the most famous in the state's literature during the later nineteenth century was the children's poet, James Whitcomb Riley. Riley's verses were good, bad, and indifferent, and were published for years in the weekly newspapers of Indiana. The common people he wrote about took him warmly and uncritically into their homes. Riley is best known for "When the Frost is On the Punkin", "Ole Swimmin Hole" and "Little Orphan Annie". They are still universally read.
Throughout his life he remained the spokesman for children and his rustic philosphies fit the average Hoosier to a "T".
Well, now, how did the name of Hoosier come about? One theory is that the words were used in the pioneer's hail to a newcomer at his home. "Who's Yer?". This was the beginning of the famous nickname. But there is another version, one that springs from the fact that in 1825, there was a contractor in the Ohio Falls Canal at Lousiville named Sam Hoosier. He found the men from the Indiana side of the river suited him better than his usual lot and he gave these men preference. Soon his gangs were composed largely of Indiana sons with the result that they became known as the "Hoosier men" and later, simply Hoosiers. No matterhow the term originated, Indiana people are Hoosiers everywhere.
Now the average Hoosier is not a high polished city feller, nor is he wholly from the farm. He is really something in between, he is friendly and he doesn't care much for show. He is likely to agree with Riley, ' they's nothin' much patheticker'n than just a bein' rich'. Neighborly, perhaps describes better than any other word.
1900'S
Time was kind to our town and electric lights and productive farms had a great influence on the business of our community. On Sunday morning, January 12, 1913, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette was devoted entirely to Monroeville and her progressive citizens. Such men were, J.J. Peters, town clerk and school teacher, Charles Shifferly, who with his brother, James D. engaged in the implement and tinning business. Visitors have called this town of Monroeville, the town of the tin
roofs. Dr. H. E. Steinman was young in the medical profession. G.H. Painter, who with his brother, Seth, engaged in furniture and undertaking. There was D. W. Mercer, Chief of Fire Department, Henry C. Dorris, Supt. of municipal lighting, Charles Krick, town treasurer, W.C. Sweeny, school board and organizer of Citizens State Bank, Ralph Waterman, town council and pumpman for Pennsylvania Railroad, Henry Krick, councilman, William Peckham, town marshall, Dr. D. E. Kauffman, school board and medicine. George Burchnell, broom factory and photographs, Clarence and Harry Clem, hardware, Albert and Alfred Leuenberger, bicyles and first auto sale, and Phillip and Jack Meese the barbers.
The majority of people living here at this time were engaged in agriculture. The barrels, the staves and headings were now lined up alongside the canal boat and the carriages. The products of the farm were hay, corn, oats, wheat, cattle, hogs, sheep poultry and wool. The receipts of these commodities reached into millions annually. Citizens owned their own homes in Monroeville and the city was full of energy and up with the times, progressive in spirit and work.
With the opening of the twentieth century came municipal lighting, the town hall, a home for the fire department, the jail, and the Weekly Breeze. It is said that John D. Alleger was the pulmotor which had kept the breath of life in the town of Monroeville. The weekly newspaper was a masterpiece of hometown news. John D. and his son, William, performed a great service to the community, keeping and recording events in our town.
One of the greatest developments in Monroeville in the early 1900's was the electric railway, which put this community in line of traffic for passenger and freight. There was a great deal of hard labor that went into the building and piling for what was called later the Indiana Service System.
OUR HOOSIER HERITAGE
From the earliest missionaries, fur traders, explorers, Indians, frontiersmen, educators, Indiana is a blend of east, west, north and south. Indiana is called, "The Crossroads of America". This Indiana carved from the Great Northwest Territory is the pride of every Hoosier.
Here the prairie starts its westward sweep, northeastern Indiana is a lovely pastoral region with little hills and innumerable, small, clear lakes. South of Indianapolis, tumbled hills and narrow valleys of Brown County attract the tourist. The limestone used to build the nation's public buildings comes from the southcentral Indiana quarries.
Indiana is sewn together with large farms, little towns, hills, prairies, sleepy rivers lined with sycamores, lakes, sand dunes, and buttoned with men and women of good- will and kindly tolerance.
Every Hoosier is proud of his heritage. The heart of a country, the strength of a country, is found in its people. Anything which we own together is richer than any one thing which we own individually. Our heritage, our Hoosier heritage, the property and responsibility of each of us.
A great governor of our Indiana once said, "If we do anything well, we must do it in our own hometown." A man who has no interest in his own hometown may be considered a failure. What kind of a town would this town be, if everyone in it were just like me. Where, but in a small hometown can you walk out your doorway and know your neighbors. The hometown, where the sounds of choir practice harmonize with the crack of the bat at the Little League Park. The hometown, where the men exchange the news at the restaurant and the ladies exchange views on rearing children over the church meetings.
A man could live long enough to build a house by himself, but he could never live long enough to build a town by himself. One look at the buildings and homes of our town, the churches, the many organizations within Monroeville, points to the interdependence of our citizens.
As we review the panorama of our history, we are humbled that the past has bequethed us with so rich a heritage. We face the challenge of an ever changing world in the spirit of the frontiersman, striving ever toward the great principle of Freedom, Peace, and Progress for the whole world.
America is great because she shares and she works together. However, we are no longer a group of log- rolling pioneers in Indiana. America has learned the lesson of the interdependence of all races and all peoples.
We were Indian country at the time of Indiana's Statehood. Over the next twenty-five years the country will echo with the sounds of some sixty-five million housing units being built. It is hard to picture the lonely echo of the ax in the wilderness in 1830 to 1851.
America, standing with her feet on the silent, revealing past, her hands clasping the present, knows her future is a rendezvous with God and with world destiny.
How can we cope with dangers as well as opportunities in an inter-related world, with technology on the run away? How can the light of freedom burn in the next century. We need modern frontiersmen who respond with acts not words.
My Indiana, our Indiana May you ever be the mother Of a free people, A toiling, sturdy people, A peaceful people always.
May you always be A part of the greatest Nation On the face of the earth.
I REMEMBER'S
Some of the "I Remember" tales are reappearing from "They Made the Way" booklet of 1951, all too good, not to remember again. Many new ones have been added for the scene of the oldtimer is a rapidly changing one. We are hoping young'un's will lock them away for the time when they are oldtimers.
Writing and spinning the tales from old times is something like the ague, it comes on 'ya, lets up a spell, and then hits you full blow. You never really get over it.
Helene Trentadue
I remember my great-great grandfather's diary as one of my prized possessions. In here, he relates the day the M.E. Church, Corunna, was going to kick him out because he was selling spirits to the Indians. And in his old fashioned script he writes, "I told them if they knew which side their bread was buttered on, they would allow me to remain." I guess they allowed him to remain because his tombstone reads, died 1851, a member of the M. E. Church, Corunna.
Jeanne Andrews
I remember S.F. Bowser coming into my father's store and ordering his meat. He always asked for me. I was the only one who could suit him. We had one of the very first gasoline pumps of Bowsers in front of our store.
George Ertel
I remember my grandmother Hester Peckham telling about her grandfather, Sam Wass, who declared he would never be buried in a grave yard. He was a very strong minded man. His farm was the old Alleger place on lol south. As he lay dying, he called his children in and made my grandmother's mother, Harriet Mundorf, promise to bury him between two large trees on a little hill overlooking Flat Rock Creek to the southwest. His children did as he wished, but the ironical twist to the story was this, his heirs later sold the property to IOOF who developed it for a cemetary and great-great grandfather ended up being the very first man to be buried in our local cemetary.
Dortha Jackson
I remember when father wore a mustache years ago. On Saturdays, Mom andDad went to town in the surrey with the fringe on top, for groceries. We waited at home watching down the road to see who would get the first glimpse of them. One day, when we ran to meet them, we had to back off, for Dad had shaved his mustache. He looked awful queer. It wook a week for us to get acquainted all over again.
Mrs. John Hawkins
One time they had a fair here in town and they wanted the oldest man and woman to come up on the stage and Ves Rose and Lily Robinson went, because they're both ninety by now, and after the show was over- you know old Ves- he wanted to take Lily over and get her an ice cream soda, so he takes her arm and they go off the stage, and he says real loud like, "Here goes a Lily with a Rose. "
Alice Brown, (deceased )
I remember when the Fort Wayne and Findlay Railroad was built. I carried the water for the teamsters who did the grading. I received fifty cents per day pay. I remember when they had toll gates between here and Fort Wayne and when the street cars were pulled by a horse. I also remember the time when I would chase flying squirrels around in the woods, and when Father threshed with an outfit, the separator was pulled by oxen. But best of all, I remember when I had to crawl under the log house to get eggs which the brown leghorns layed.
Orren Myers, (deceased )
I remember the time when that stretch of land between Monroeville and Woodburn was a solid belt of timber. I can say that I cleared those woods around our home and burnt out stumps of virgin trees near 101. It has been just seventy years since I watered my last horses at the town pump. My father, Sam Ball, dumped the first load of gravel ever to be lined on country roads, and got it out of the bed of Flat Rock Creek.
Frank Ball, (deceased)
I remember the time when my father gave me the gift of trust. He worked in the corn field, and at three o'clock in the afternoon, I was to carry water in an earth brown jug out to him. As I walked down the dirty road, I would see him look up. He knew I would be there at three. He was trusting me and I felt this important virtue of being trusted.
Mildred P. Van Horn
I remember when the old frame school house caught fire in the belfry. I was sitting with Lawrence Minster and saw the fire through a knot hole in the board which covered the hole where you got up to the bell.
Russel Fetters
I remember when wild horses were shipped in from the west and were sold at auctions at the stock yard, where the Equity Oil tanks now stand ). The farmers gathered from miles around for the sales.
Kathryn Shifferly, (deceased)
A folk superstition- by Alice Pancake Brown, (deceased ) My Grandma Crabill was a weaver, you know, and folks would come from all around, mostly from Clark's Chapel to get weavin' done. Now, my Uncle Dave Crabill lived over there, and he had a nice a team of horses you'd ever see. My Uncle Levi came home one day, a walkin' his own self, and when he got back, Uncle Dave was stuck in the mud. The horses wouldn't pull a 'tall. Uncle Dave was a whippin' them and tryin' everything. Uncle levi came up and said,
"Stop that whippin' that team. Didn't you see that strange person goin' down the road, he's put the witchery on those horses. Jes' get your ax, and chop the hub of the wheel. You'll get your team to walk right off."
But I don't think that Uncle Dave Crabill would ever do that. I think he unhitched 'em. Anyway, if he'd done it, the feller that put the witchery on, would have been DEAD!
Yes, maam, strange folks would put witchery on stock too, fix your cows, so's they won't stand still. Can't get near 'em to milk 'em. And your churn too, you can have just the nicest kind of cream, but you can churn and churn and still git no butter out.
I remember one time the G.A. R. had their encampment here in town and they offered to give a fine bear robe to the most popular doctor in town. Now wasn't that a heck of a thing to do? Well, Ole Doc Leiter and Ole Doc Morgan, both Southerners, and hot tempered, were in the race.
Doc Morgan got the robe, but he had a hard time keeping it. My Dad was town marshal and had to separate them. £ Man, that was a fight!
Ves Rose, (deceased )
Did you say timber? I remember this country had the finest timber on earth. Old man, Dominic Lortie, was one of the first to get what they called ship timber out of the woods. No, they didn't make ships from it, but it was shipped as raw material to Europe, duty free. Only the big ones were used. After they were scored, the man on the broad ax never wanted to pick up another ax, as it would set him off kelter. Then the big giants would be hauled out of the woods in the winter on bob sleds. For forty years, I was never without dynamite, clearing land, blowing stumps, laying tile, dredging ditches, and all that goes into making the new ground livable.
Frank Ball, (deceased )
I remember the first political speech I heard after coming to Indiana. It was in the campaign of 1920, when Taft was the candidate for President on one ticket, and Marshall was the candidate on the other ticket for Governor.
The Democratic Committee sent Marshall to South Bend to speak to the laboring men in one of the factories of that city. After he had spoken and some of the audience had come to the platform to greet him, one man reached out his hand and shook it fervently, saying, "How do you do, Mr. Taft, I am glad to meet you and I surely am going to vote for you. "
After he left, I said to the Chairman, "I wish I knew what brand of whiskey he drinks, if his brand makes that much difference in the drinker." Berl B. Blauvelt
From the earliest times, an endless crop of tall stories has sprouted among those who gather in the hometown, at the store, or the loafing bench. The listener is likely to hear about the summer that it was so hot that popcorn popped in the fields, and the mule that saw it froze to death, because it looked like snow. Or say, did you hear about the hunter that saved himself from the bear, by reaching down the bear's throat and turning the bear inside out.
In the folktales of Indiana, is written the best history of its people.
1851 Centennial Hymn_ 1951
- Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Monroeville -
Helene B. Trentadue
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HECKMAN
BINDERY, INC. Bound-To-Please"
OCT 03
N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA 46962
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