USA > Indiana > Biographical and historical sketches of early Indiana > Part 14
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Ex-Governor Baker said :
" He was not a learned man, but not an uneducated man. I mean by that, he was a man who knew how to think. He had learned the art of thinking, but had he been an educated man he would have been a good lawyer. He had a discriminating mind. He was one of the best parliamentarians I ever knew, hardly ever making a mistake. He was a man of a strong, · generous, emotional nature. I have seen him on several occa- sions when he could not control his emotions. I was with him a few weeks ago, at the house of a friend, when some songs of the little folks touched him so that he filled up and could not speak."
Rev. Dr. Bartlett spoke thus eloquently of Governor Williams :
" Cincinnatus was found at the plow when his promotion came. Our Governor, we may say, has never left the plow. It is a credit to the institutions of the country that you can take the plain workingmen, that you can take the early suffering pioneers, men who can only make headway by virtues that are rugged. and severe and stern, virtue that labors with unremitting toil, the ingenuity that comes from making much out of little, build- ing your house with a hammer and a saw rather than with the refined implements of a later day."
On Tuesday, November 23, the remains of Governor Williams, accompanied by the State officers and hundreds of leading citi- zens, were taken to Vincennes on a special train. They were met at the Vincennes depot by a committee and taken to the Court-house, where they lay in state during the day. The weather was intensely cold, but, notwithstanding this, thou-
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sands of Knox county farmers were in Vincennes to take a last look upon the remains of the man they loved so well. That evening the corpse was taken to the old homestead, and the next day buried in the cemetery near by.
During the present year, 1883, the family of Governor Wil- liams procured a granite monument and placed it at the head of his grave. On the 4th of July it was unveiled with impos- ing ceremonies in the presence of thousands of his former neigh- bors and friends. Hon. D. W. Voorhees made a very eloquent address on the occasion, in which he said :
" He lived and died a practical farmer. He knew the labor- ing people better than any other public man Indiana ever pro- duced. He was born in their ranks and remained there to the end. He was at home in the broad and wholesome field, and he was familiar with the wants and ways, the hardships and the hopes of those who eat their bread by the sweat of their faces. From the days of Cincinnatus to the present time, men seeking popular favor have been paraded and eulogized as farmers who could not tell a field of wheat from a field of oats, but the farmer in whose memory we are here to-day drove his team and held the plow ; planted the corn, attended its growth, and gathered it in ; sowed his small grain, and reaped his harvests ; raised horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, and fed them with his own hands. He made more than two blades of grass grow where none grew before, and thus advanced the general welfare."
Speeches were also made on this occasion by Ex-Governor Baker, Ex-Senator McDonald, Senator Harrison and Hon. Ja- son B. Brown, all of them being eloquent and appreciative.
The monument which stands at Governor Williams's grave bears this inscription :
JAMES D. WILLIAMS, Born January 6, 1808; Died November 20, 1880. A representative of the people for many years ; Was one term in Congress ; Governor of Indiana from 1877 until his death. A faithful officer and An honest man.
Indiana honored him in life and cherishes his memory in death.
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In the spring of 1880 the author of these sketches accom- panied Governor Williams in a trip to the Gulf of Mexico. Af- ter leaving Nashville, at every point of importance upon the road he was received by large delegations of people. When he reached Mobile, he was met by the recorder, who is the chief executive officer of the city, the president of the Cotton Exchange and the president of the Board of Trade, who es- corted him to his quarters at the Battle House. After dinner he held quite a levee in the parlors of the hotel, where many of the leading people of the city called upon him. While thus engaged, a young girl, some twelve or fourteen years old, called at the office of the hotel, with a large bouquet, and asked for him. The clerk, thinking she was a flower girl, seeking to dispose of her wares, tried to have her leave the hotel without seeing the Governor, but this she would not do. She came into the parlor where he was seated surrounded by a number of gentlemen and ladies, and approaching him, said: "This is Governor Williams, I believe?" "Yes, my daughter," he replied. She then presented him the bouquet, which he ac- cepted with the grace of a courtier. She asked if he did not remember receiving a bouquet at Laporte, during the canvass of 1876, from a little girl who was sick. He replied that he re- membered it well. She then said: "I am the girl who sent it to you, and your kind acknowledgment makes mamma very anxious to see you." "Where is your mamma?" asked the Governor. "At home," replied the girl, giving the street and number. "She shall see me," said the Governor, who then arose, excused himself to the ladies and gentlemen present and left the room. On reaching the street he called a hack and was driven to the mother's home.
This incident illustrates one prominent trait in his character- his love for children.
On our return home from the South we stopped one day in Nashville. While there I procured a hack and asked Governor Williams to accompany me to the Hermitage, as I wished to see the home and grave of Jackson. He did so, and on our return said to me : " This morning I went with you, now I want you to go with me." I asked him, " Where?" He replied, " To see the finest farm in America, if not in the world." He ordered a
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carriage and we drove to the farm of General Harding, some seven miles from Nashville. I shall not attempt to describe the farm. After seeing it I had no disposition to question the Gov- ernor's judgment. We went over the farm, chaperoned by Gen- eral Jackson, General Harding's son-in-law, and saw some of the fine stock for which the farm is noted. A horse, for which $30,000 had been paid in Europe, particularly attracted the Governor's attention. He examined him critically, and pointed out his excellencies and his defects. I wondered at the time what Governor Williams thought of General Harding's in- vestment, for I knew he would never have put $30,000 in a horse. He believed in utility, but not in show. As we walked over the farm Governor Williams, several times, plucked blades from the blue-grass sod and examined them with a critic's eve, some times tasting them. He spoke of the blue-grass of the Wabash country, which, he said, was as fine as any he had ever seen. Often, after our return home, did Governor Williams speak to me about our visit to General Harding's farm, but never once about that to the Hermitage. While he loved the memory of Jackson he loved still more fine stock and rich blue-grass pas- tures.
Governor Williams was the only farmer ever elected Gover- nor of Indiana. He belonged to the class who till the soil and husband its increase. He loved his calling and was successful in it. The farmers of the State considered him their represen- tative and were proud of his. fame. Posterity will revere his memory and he will go down in history as the Farmer Gover- nor of Indiana.
CHRISTOPHER HARRISON.
Ox the south bank of the Choptank river, fourteen miles from its confluence with Chesapeake bay, stands the beautiful town of Cambridge. It is one of the oldest towns on the East- ern Shore of Maryland, having been settled early in 1600 by immigrants from England, many of whom were of gentle blood. In the Episcopal burying-ground at Cambridge may now be seen tombstones covered with ivy, upon which are en- graved the names and coats of arms of the early settlers of that country. The town is in Dorchester county, and is the most beautiful as well as one of the most populous on the peninsula lying between the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. In this town, sometime during the year 1775, Christopher Harrison, first Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana, was born.
Christopher Harrison's family were English. His parents emigrated to Maryland about the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, and settled at Cambridge. The family was of good so- cial standing in England, one of its members having held an important office in the city government of London. The Har- risons were received into the aristocratic circles of Maryland, for be it known that nowhere in the country were the lines di- viding the people into classes more distinctly drawn than in the land first settled by Calvert. The abolition of slavery destroyed this, and now a man in that country is not measured by the ne- groes he owns, nor by the number of years his ancestors lived off the labor of others. During the war of the rebellion the author of this sketch, who is a native of Dorchester county, asked an old school-fellow about one of their early friends, and was told that he was sheriff of an adjoining county. Knowing
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that in the days of his boyhood the sons of slaveholders only were elected to office, the author remarked : " Well, Frank has risen in the world." "Yes," said his friend, "in this country the bottom rail has become the rider."
Christopher Harrison was liberally educated. He graduated at St. John's College, Annapolis, and soon after entered the counting-room of William Patterson, one of the merchant princes of Baltimore, as his confidential clerk. He was re- ceived into Mr. Patterson's family as an equal, a privilege to which he was entitled both by his birth and his education. Mr. Patterson was the father of Madame Bonaparte, then Elizabeth Patterson, one of the most beautiful and brilliant women Amer- ica has ever produced. The young clerk became her friend, and for a while acted as her tutor. There is a tradition that an attachment grew up between the young people, resulting in an engagement of marriage. It is also said that the match was opposed by the lady's father, and that Harrison, finding his suit hopeless, left Baltimore and sought surcease of sorrow in the wilderness of the West. There is a good deal of evidence to support this tradition, but not enough, I think, to make the matter conclusive. It is, however, certain that Christopher Harrison had a love affair at this period of his life, and that it caused him to leave his native State and come to the new Ter- ritory of Indiana. Thomas P. Williams, of Baltimore, who married his niece, in a letter to Judge Banta, of Franklin (to whom I am indebted for much of the material for this sketch), thus speaks of this epoch in Mr. Harrison's life :
" In early life he was a confidential clerk of the late William Patterson, of this city, one of our princely merchants, and who was the father of Madame Bonaparte, who recently died in this city. He instructed, or rather aided her in her studies as a young girl, and has often spoken of her as the brightest and most ambitious person he ever knew. I have been informed that in a sketch of Madame Bonaparte it is incidentally mentioned that Mr. Harrison made love to this then beautiful woman, but this, I think, is a mistake. He had, however, a love affair, which was the cause of his leaving home, and of not being heard from for years. Both his family and the family of the lady objected
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to the marriage, and, while the young people were devotedly at- tached to each other, they did not marry, for Mr. Harrison said he would not enter a family where there was opposition ; and seeing no end to this opposition, he preferred to go West."
The belief was quite general among Mr. Harrison's friends in Indiana that he and Madame Bonaparte had been lovers, and if there had been nothing of it, it is somewhat strange that the husband of his niece, at whose house he lived for many years : after his return to Maryland, should have said anything about it.
In 1809. when Williamson Dunn settled in Jefferson county, where Hanover now stands, Christopher Harrison was living in a log cabin on the bluffs of the Ohio river, near by. When he came there I know not, but on a beech tree standing near his cabin door, were engraven these words :
"CHRISTOPHER HARRISON, JULY 8, 1808."
Perhaps he made the inscription as a memento of the day he located upon this beautiful and romantic spot. His cabin stood upon a point known as " Fair Prospect," a site which commands a view of the Ohio river for miles up and down. It had but a single room, and was roughly made, but inside were many things which testified of the culture of its occupant. Books were there, some of them classical, and paints and brushes and easels were to be seen, and pictures hanging on the wall. He also had about him man's most faithful friend-the dog. Back ·of his cabin, jutting against its chimney of clay, was a kennel, in which the companions of his solitude were wont to shelter themselves from the wind and the rain.
This hermit of the wilderness was quite a hunter. He sup- ported himself mainly by his dog and gun, for the woods abounded in game, and his necessities were few. Thus lived Christopher Harrison until 1815, when George Logan came along and bought his land. It is supposed that by this time the keenness of disappointed love had worn off, for he threw soli- tude behind him and went out into the world. At that time Salem was one of the most important towns in the State. and thither the hermit of the Ohio bluffs determined to go. He and
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Jonathan Lyons, one of the original proprietors of Madison, bought a miscellaneous stock of merchandise and took it to Sa- lem, where they opened out a store. For many years they sold goods together, doing the largest business in their line in the place.
While at Salem Christopher Harrison lived alone. His dwell- ing was a little brick house of two rooms, one of them barely large enough for a bed. An old colored woman came each morning to tidy up the house and put things in order, and, with this exception, no one scarcely ever entered his door. But the lot upon which it stood was often visited. It was fifty feet one way by a hundred the other, and nearly every foot of it not covered by the house was planted in flowers. Here the boys and girls of the town would come for flowers, and seldom did they go away empty-handed. The master of the house made bouquets and gave them, drew pictures for them, and in many other ways sought to please and make them happy. One who remembers his Salem home says he painted a picture of a grape- vine clinging to his porch so perfectly that she once, on seeing it, reached out her hand, thinking she was about to pluck a bunch of grapes. About 1830 Governor Harrison left Salem and moved upon a farm a few miles away, where he lived until 1834, when he left Indiana and returned to his native State. While he lived on his farm it was his custom, in melon time. to fill his wagon with this delicious fruit for his little friends in town. He would cut the name of each favorite on the rind. and then deliver the melons to the delighted young folks. He evidently loved children. But I can not longer dwell upon his tastes and habits, and must hurry along and say something about his public life, else the reader will wonder why this sketch was written.
In 1816 Christopher Harrison was elected Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of Indiana, at the first election held under the State gov- ernment. At the same election Jonathan Jennings was elected Governor over Thomas Posey, while Harrison's competitor was John Vawter. He served as Lieutenant-Governor for a couple of years, and then resigned in a pet, and went home. The cause of this unnatural act in an office-holder was this: In 1818, Governor Jennings. General Cass and Judge Parke were
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appointed by the President of the United States, commissioners to negotiate for the purchase from the Indians of the lands in the central part of the State. The constitution of the State for- bade the Governor from holding "any office under the United States," but Governor Jennings accepted the office and dis- charged its duties. Lieutenant-Governor Harrison claimed that Jennings had vacated his office, and that he (Harrison) had be- come Acting Governor. He took possession of the executive office and attempted to assume its duties, but Jennings appealed to the Legislature, and that body recognized him as the legal Governor. This so incensed the Lieutenant-Governor that he resigned his office. The day he resigned his office of Lieuten- ant-Governor, he sent to the House of Representatives a letter dated Corydon, December 18, 1818, addressed to the Speaker, in which he said :
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"I have this day delivered to the Secretary of State, to be filed in his office, my resignation of the office of Lieutenant- Governor of this State. As the officers of the executive depart- ment of government and the General Assembly have refused to recognize and acknowledge that authority which, according to my understanding, is constitutionally attached to the office, the name itself, in my estimation, is not worth retaining."
Upon the reading of this letter the House passed the following resolution :
"Resolved, That the House of Representatives view the con- duct and deportment of Lieutenant-Governor Christopher Har- rison as both dignified and correct during the late investigation of the differences existing in the executive department of this. State."
The next year, 1819, he was a candidate for Governor against Governor Jennings, but was badly beaten, receiving but 2,088 votes in a total of 11,256.
But his defeat for Governor in 1819 did not end Christopher Harrison's public life in Indiana. In 1820 the Legislature elect- ed him and James W. Jones, of Gibson county, and Samuel P. Booker, of Wayne county, commissioners to survey and lay off"
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Indianapolis, the new capital of the State. At the time fixed by law for the commissioners to meet none of them except Mr. Harrison appeared. He determined to act by himself, and at once proceeded to business. He appointed Elias P. Fordham and Alexander Ralston surveyors, and Benjamin I. Blythe clerk. This was in April, 1821, and the next October the lots were sold under the direction of General John Carr, the State agent. At this sale Christopher Harrison bought several lots, some of which he held until after he left the State.
On December 1, 1823, he made his report of the condition of the 3 per cent. fund, of which he was agent, and in 1824 the Legislature appointed him and Governor Hendricks commis- sioners to open a canal around the falls of the Ohio. This re- port dates January 18, 1825.
After Governor Harrison returned to Maryland he lived around among his relatives and friends. For many years he re- sided with his sister, Mrs. Lockerman, and spent his time, when not reading, in hunting and fishing in Chesapeake bay and its estuaries. Judge Banta has several of his letters written at this time, in which he very minutely describes his manner of life. He says he is " uncle " to all the young folks in the neighbor- hood. He tells of his success in hunting and fishing, of the number of canvas-back ducks and sheep's-head fish he brings home to " the pot."
Mr. Williams, in the letter heretofore referred to, says :
" He was a student all his life, and his acquirements were various and extensive. He was not satisfied with a superficial knowledge of anything ; he went into matters thoroughly. He was reticent, and it was difficult to get at what he knew or thought on any subject. He was the soul of honor, and no man I ever knew had a more thorough contempt for a mean act. He was generous to excess. He had no love for money or its ac- cumulation. He had opportunities for making a fortune, but he gave away as he made. From the simplicity and purity of the man and his great goodness I became greatly attached to him. He was the best informed man I ever met. At one time he lived in my family for ten years, and I know him thoroughly. He
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was an honest man and died poor. He was a remarkable man, and deserves a place in history."
Governor Harrison died at the home of Mr. H. C. Tilghman, in Talbot county, Md., in 1863, at the ripe age of eighty-eight years. And another Indiana pioneer was laid at rest.
When Christopher Harrison arrived at man's estate he was the owner, by inheritance, of a number of slaves. To these he gave their freedom, and never afterward was he the proprietor of human flesh and blood. In those days it was a rare thing for a young slaveholder to free his chattels, but Christopher Harrison stood not upon precedent ; he acted for himself.
Governor Harrison was a well-built man, of medium height. While he lived in the cabin near where Hanover now is he was erect in carriage, but later in life he became bent or stoop- shouldered. He had an oval face, light complexion and blue eyes, says one authority. Another describes him the same, except that his eyes were gray. He was always careful of his- dress. Usually he was cleanly shaved, and in his person was. always scrupulously clean. He was a free-thinker, but he had great respect for the Quaker church. After he returned to Maryland he frequently extolled the virtues of the Quakers he knew in Indiana. He was a great student, being a voracious reader of books. Judge Banta has a couple of books, one of them printed in Latin, which once belonged to the old pioneer. They contain notes and emendations in his handwriting, and interspersed through them are beautiful pictures, in water col- ors, drawn by the deft hand of their owner.
Dr. Alexander H. Bayly, who lives at Cambridge, Maryland, the town in which Christopher Harrison was born, in a recent letter to the author of these sketches, says :
" Well, indeed, do I remember the sturdy old gentleman as he visited, for the last time, the home of his childhood. I can see him now, dressed in the old style, slowly wandering around our town, lost, as it were, in the memories of . the long, long ago.' Sad, indeed, must have been his thoughts. Being bald. he wore a black silk skull-cap, which gave rise to the report that he had been scalped by the Indians: His father, Robert Harrison, was a proud, aristocratic' Englishman, and all stood
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in awe of him. He owned, lived and died on his farm, .Ap- pleby,' in the suburbs of Cambridge, on the Blackwater road, where old Dr. Joseph E. Muse once lived, and where he died. After his death it was bought by the late Governor Thomas H. Hicks, who resided on it at the time of his death. You, no doubt, recollect the farm. [The author remembers it well. ]
" Christopher Harrison, or as he was most commonly called here, ' Old Kit Harrison," was a descendant of the John Caile, now resting in our old graveyard, and was related to William G. Harrison and others of Baltimore. The family was highly respected and influential."
Christopher Harrison never married. He lived his fourscore and eight years without a helpmeet, but he was blessed with lov- ing friends. These cared for him in his old age, and when the messenger came and called him to his fathers, they laid him away in his silent tomb and covered him with his native earth. There I will leave him at rest.
MILTON STAPP.
INDIANA owes much to Kentucky. She owes her for thou- sands of pioneers who helped cut down her forests and bring her lands into cultivation ; she owes her for statesmen of trans- cendent ability, and particularly does she owe her for the gal- lant rangers she sent to beat back the savage foe.
Among the men from Kentucky who came to the help of In- diana in her trials was Milton Stapp, the subject of this sketch. He was born in Scott county, Kentucky, in the year 1793. His boyhood was spent in the ordinary way, there being nothing unusual in his history until after he was nineteen years old. The tidings of Indian cruelty that came to him from across the Ohio river fired his blood and stimulated his patriotism to such a degree that he resolved to go to the rescue of his imperiled countrymen. He enlisted as a private soldier in the regiment commanded by Colonel Richard M. Johnson. He participated in all the skirmishes and battles of his regiment, and at the bat- tle of the Thames, fought October 5, 1813, he was wounded in the neck by a musket ball. He carried the scar of this wound while he lived-a badge " more honorable than the star or gar- ter," for it testified of blood spilled in saving women and chil- dren from outrage and butchery and their homes from pillage. When peace was declared, and the inhabitants north of the Ohio river no longer needed his musket, he returned to his Kentucky home. In his march through the Territory of Indiana to meet the Indians and their British allies, he saw a country rich in soil and natural advantages, and believing that such a land presented more inducements to the young and ambitious than the country where he lived, he determined to make it his
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