USA > Indiana > Washington County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Harrison County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Crawford County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Clark County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Scott County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Floyd County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Jennings County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
USA > Indiana > Jefferson County > Biographical and historical souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, and Washington, Indiana > Part 4
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A great portion of all the lands in Silver Creek township are level.
There are no hills of any impor- tance in it.
The knobs do not enter the town- ship.
It is too small to have much diver- sified soil or climate.
The bottom lands of Silver Creek
are not noted for their richness of soil and their productive qualities.
As a general thing the soil is not rich. It is made up of a kind of cold loam, fertilized by washings down from the knobs.
In the valley of Silver Creek fine crops of corn are raised. While fruit culture in other portions of the county has become a specialty, in Silver Creek township it is a failure.
The soil is unadapted to it and what does grow is of poor quality.
There are a number of fine farms in Silver Creek township and a few farmers are said to be rich; made their wealth off their farms.
Upon an average it can be truly said that the people in the township of Silver Creek are well-to-do, content- ed and happy.
There is not much that is peculiar or striking in the early history of the settlement of this township to distin- guish it from that of the rest of the county.
The first settlement made of which there is any authentic record was made in the latter part of the year 1799, by Elder Absalom Littell, of the Baptist church, on the west side of Silver Creek.
But in 1798, twelve months prior to the cmigration of Elder Littell, a Protestant church had been organized, the first in the State, and a house of worship erected on the east bank of Silver Creek, near the Littell farm.
It would be interesting to follow the history of this pioneer church
25
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
through all its changes down to the present time.
But space forbids.
Spencer Collins, a branch of the Collins family that had settled early in Monroe township, settled on the Muddy Fork of Silver Creek and built a mill as early as 1800 near where the village of Petersburg now stands.
The facilities afforded as a motive power by Silver Creek and its Muddy Fork, invited to the early construction of mills upon them and the "Old Red- mond Mill," about the center of the township, and the old Montgomery mill about three-fourths of a mile above Petersburg, on Elk Run, were. all built at an early day. The Welles settled on Camp Run as early as 1800.
The manufacture of corn whiskey was an important industry at an early day, and many of the very best citi- zens of the township operated still houses.
It was not only profitable to the manufacturer and afforded the neigh- boring farmers a good market for their surplus corn, but was held as honora- ble as any calling.
How things change; or rather in what a different light the same thing is looked upon in this age, and three- quarters of a century ago.
Hamburg is the oldest village in the township. It is located at the termi- nus of the Jeffersonville and Hamburg turnpike road, and on the line of the old Jeffersonville and Salem road,
about eight miles north of Jefferson- ville.
It was laid off by its proprietors, Abram Littell and Thos. Cunningham, in 1837.
It never did amount to much of a place.
There is but very little business done in the place, and it is now se- verely stricken with universal decay.
It is only a question of time, and a short time at that, when it will finally disappear from the list of towns on the map of the county.
Petersburg, another little village of Silver Creek township, was laid out about 1854, by Lewis Bottorff.
It was named in honor of Peter MeKossky, a Russian, who lived near by on Muddy Fork.
There are, perhaps, some seventy- five or a hundred inhabitants in the place, pretty much all engaged direct- ly or indirectly, in working for the Louisville Cement Company, whose mills are located there.
It derives all its support from these mills.
The health of the place is good.
Work can always be found at good wages, and none need to suffer for want, unless too lazy to work.
SELLERSBURG is the largest and most prosperous village in the township.
It is a real alive, go-ahead village.
It has grown more within the last year or so than any other town in the county.
It is located on the J. M. & I. rail-
26
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
road, about nine miles north of Jeffer- sonville.
It was laid out in 1846 by Moses W. Sellers, after whom it took its name, and John Hill.
It has a large flouring mill which is doing a big business.
It has extensive cooper shops for supplying barrels for the cement man- ufactures in the neighborhood, which give employment to a large number of laborers and mechanics.
It is up with the times in churches and schools and has an industrious and prosperous population and has every indication of becoming a place of con- siderable commercial and manufactur- ing importance at no distant day.
The hydraulic cement business is already one of great importance, and there is no limit to the extent to which it may be carried, because there is no limit to the hydraulic limestone out of which it is manufactured in the neigh- borhood of Sellersburg.
One would naturally suppose that the ordinance of 1787, forever for- bidding the existence of slavery or involuntary servitude in the North west Territory, would have settled that question at once and forever in that territory.
But such was not the fact.
The question of the introduction of slavery into the Indiana Territory was, from the time of its organization, earnestly favored by a strong party and urged with bitter vehemence, and caused strong opposition by those who had emigrated from the slave States
for the purpose of getting away from that institution.
Memorials were voted by the Terri- ritorial Council to Congress, praying for the repeal of the sixth article of the ordinance prohibiting slavery, mainly supported by the representa- tives from Illinois and Knox counties.
In 1803 a petition was before the Territorial Legislative Council asking Congress to permit the introduction of slavery into the Territory, purely upon benevolent grounds, in thus re- lieving the South of its surplus and consequently over burdened and mis- used slaves, and permitting them to come where they would receive more humane treatment and have better homes.
But the petition was not passed, and in this instance, as in every effort of the kind, the representatives of Clark county voted against the proposition to introduce slavery.
The termsof the representatives to the first Territorial Assembly being about to expire by limitation, an election for representatives for the second General Assembly was ordered and held on the first Monday in February, 1807.
At this election James Beggs was elected in place of Davis Floyd who had represented the county in the previous Assembly.
Mr. Floyd at this time was under a cloud.
He was a Virginian and had served under George Rogers Clark.
He had settled in Clark's grant ; was the first Recorder of Clark county
27
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
in 1801 and was appointed Sheriff in 1802.
At the time of the election for rep- resentatives in 1807 he had become implicated in Aaron Burr's conspiracy and was convicted and sentenced to three hours' imprisonment in the county jail.
James Beggs was a Virginian and a son of Thomas Beggs, a commissary in the Revolutionary Army.
He came to Indiana territory about the beginning of the present century, bought himself a five hundred acre tract in Clark's grant in Clark county and went to farming.
He was a graduate of William and Mary's College, and was a man of learn- ing and research.
He was a strong anti-slavery man and he and his two brothers were, dur- ing this slavery controversy, the head and front of the anti-slavery party in Clark county.
At this session of the Legislature, which met in August, 1807, the pro- slavery advocates seemed to have com- plete control of things. Both houses adopted memorials to Congress asking for the suspension of the sixth article of the ordinance by two-third majori- ties.
This alarmed the Free Soil party of impending danger and the people of Clark county became aroused.
A mass convention was called for October 10th of that year, at Spring- ville, the former county seat, to take action and denounce the Legislative resolutions.
A large number attended.
John Beggs, a brother of the repre- sentative, was made president and our old friend, Davis Floyd, acted as sec- retary.
Great harmony of action prevailed, and a strong memorial to Congress was unanimously adopted, protesting against the action of the Legislative Assembly.
And right here comes in a historical fact worthy to be remembered.
It is generally understood that Gen- eral Cass, in his celebrated letter, orig- inated the idea of " popular sovereign- ty," sometimes designated as "squatter sovereignty."
This position was taken for the set- tlement of the slavery question, in this State, in the Springville memorial, some forty years before the Cass letter was written.
Our Springville memorialists say, after stating the fact, that at best it was doubtful how the people of the territory then stood upon the slavery question: "We feel satisfied that, at all events, Congress will suspend any legislative act on this subject, until we shall, by the Constitution, be admitted into the Union, and have a right to adopt. such a constitution, in this respect, as may comport with the wishes of a majority of the citizens."
Notwithstanding Davis Floyd had been retired from polities for a season in consequence of his complicity in Burr's conspiracy, he was elected clerk of the House of Representatives for the session of 1807.
28
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
This caused a terrible hubbub among his pro-slavery enemies and they de- nounced him as a conspirator and asked for his dismissal as clerk.
The House paid no attention to these demands, and on July 6, 1sos, Governor Harnson revoked Davis Floyd's commission as major of the Clark county militia, and as a Falls pilot.
So the slave party got their revenge.
But little transpired at the next or third Legislative Assembly to change the relative position between the two contending parties upon the slavery question.
The representatives from Clark county maintained the position of that county as hostile to that institution, and voted against it every time the question came up.
John Paul and Thos. Downs repre- sented Clark county in the Assembly which met November 12th, 1810.
James Bergs was the councilor from Clark in that Assembly, and was cho- sen its president.
But the pro-slavery party received a hard blow about this time, in the election of Jonathan Jennings as dele- gate in Congress from the Indiana Territory, over Thomas Randolph, a Virginian and a strong pro-slavery man.
It made a few spasmodic efforts of revival after that, but its prestige was gone, and the question was abont set- tled.
The repeals of the indenture law of 1867 and the enactment of a law to
prevent kidnapping and the unlawful removing of negroes from the territory under severe penalties, put the finish- ing stroke to Indiana slavery.
The vote in the Legislative Coun- cil, upon the last named act was a tie, and was decided by the casting vote of its president, who was James Beggs of Clark county.
That was a proud feather in old Clark's cap.
It is a matter of pride and congrat- ulation to the people of Clark county, of the present day, that, in all that slavery controversy, and sometimes bitter as it was between Jennings and Randolph, Clark county never way- ered in her position against slavery.
Iler representatives stood firm against all attempts in that direction.
Two men of Clark county, James Begus and Jonathan Jennings, the one as president of the Legislative Coun- cil, in giving his casting vote for the repeal of the obnoxious indenture law; and the other as an anti-slavery candidate for delegate in Congress in which he defeated Thomas Randolph, a very able and strong pro-slavery man, did more than any other two men to make Indiana a free State.
These two events, following fast upon the heels of each other, about destroyed the prestige of the slavery party, and rendered it harmless for the future.
Some effort was made in the Con- stitutional Convention to engraft with- in it a provision to preserve pre-exist-
29
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
ing rights in slave property, but noth- ing further.
Clark county was represented in that convention by Jonathan Jen- nings, who was made its president and afterwards the first governor of the new State; James Scott, who was afterwards made one of the Judges of the Supreme Court, Thomas Carr, John K. Graham and James Lem- mon.
The convention convened at the old capitol at Corydon, Harrison county, June 10th, 1816, and at the end of nineteen days' labor, having completed their work, adjourned.
Thus a constitution for our State was made, in which Clark county had much to do, forever forbidding within its borders slavery.
It was full and complete within itself, just as it came from the hands of the convention.
It was not to be submitted to a vote of the people for approval ; it was to stand as the convention had made it.
CITY OF JEFFERSONVILLE.
The history of Clark county would be incomplete without including with- in it the history of Jeffersonville.
It is the commercial center of Clark county as well as its center of popu- lation.
Clark county is a grand old county with its reminiscences of Indian con- flict and Jeffersonville crowns it in its completeness.
The city of Jeffersonville is located
on the north bank of the Ohio river at the head of the Falls, in the very gap through which the great stream of commerce between the North and South continuously flows. It is hand- somely laid out with broad streets, crossing each other at right angles. Since its foundation which was laid in 1802, it has had a varied history.
The present plan of Jeffersonville is nothing like the original, which was novel, not to say, eccentric.
It is stated as a historical fact that the plan upon which it was originally laid out was devised by President Thomas Jefferson, from whom the place took its name.
It was designed in squares or blocks, like a checker board; each alternate square was public ground, the streets passing diagonally through these public squares and crossing each other in the center.
For a city whose inhabitants were wealthy and had no need, wish or desire for trade or business, this plan might suit, but not so to the kind of people who settled in Jeffersonville.
They wanted streets for business and not for elegant leisure.
The original plan did not long sur- vive.
It was remodeled; the plan was re- constructed by authority of a legis- lative act in 1817, and the owners of lots were assigned other lots in the place of those that were held under the original plat as near identical as possible.
The old city as first laid out oc
30
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
cupied but a small part of what it now covers.
The ground upon which it stands was owned by Isaac Bowman, a Vir- ginian, and was tract number one of the Clark Grant.
He sold one hundred and fifty acres of his five hundred acre tract, on the lower part adjoining the thousand acre tract granted to Clarksville, and on the 23d day of June 1802, made a deed to Marston Green Clark, Wil- liam Goodwin, Richard Pile, Davis Floyd and Samuel Gwathney, as trus- tees to lay off a town and sell lots, and apply the moneys realized by such sales to establishing ferries and in improving the facilities of the new town generally.
Marston G. Clark, said to have been a distant relative of General George Rogers Clark, was a Virginian, and was one of the first judges of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Clark county.
Hle removed to a farm on the waters of Blue river in the southern part of Washington county and resided there at the time the State was admitted into the Union.
Hle afterward removed to Salem and kept a tavern.
Ile represented Washington county in the State Legislature several times, and was appointed Indian Agent un- der General Jackson's administration, and died on his farm a mile from Salem toward the end of the thirties.
The reader is familiar with the his- tory of the other members of this commission.
Several additions have been made to the town of Jeffersonville since its original construction.
Without entering into details, the whole of Grant tract number one, containing five hundred and forty acres, and sixty-one acres out of num- ber two are now inchided within the limits of the city of Jeffersonville.
These additions were respectively made in 1836, 1839, 1841 and 184s.
1. has already been stated, the county seat was originally located at a village, now defunct, known then as Springville.
It remained there but a short time, when in 1802, it was removed from that village to Jeffersonville, and on August 14, 1802, a special session of the Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace was held in Jeffersonville.
The most important business tran- sacted at that session of the Court was the letting of a contract to William Goodwin to build a county jail.
At its session January 3, 1803, a contract was awarded to William Akins to build a jailer's residence ad- joining the jail on the north.
Jeffersonville remained the county seat of Clark county until 1811, when, by an act of the Legislature it was re- moved to the town of Charlestown, then a village in the woods, where it remained, not always undisturbed in its security however, until 1878.
Jeffersonville never was satisfied with the manner in which it was cov- ertly, as it was claimed, taken away from it.
31
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
There had been no question or con- troversy upon the county seat question in the election of representatives and they acted wholly upon their own per- sonal feelings and wishes in the mat- ter.
The people of Jeffersonville abided their time to take back the county seat and get their revenge at the same time.
In 1838 the county seat removal question was raised, and both sides to the question prepared for a pitched battle.
A senator and two representatives to the Legislature were to be elected.
The candidates were chosen on that issue.
The anti-removal candidates put in nomination were for senator, Benjamin Ferguson, and for the lower house, Col. Jolm S. Simonson and Thomas J. Henly.
Those in favor of removal put for- ward were, for senator, William G. Armstrong; for representatives, Dr. Nathaniel Field and Major Henry Hurst.
This was a noted contest in the po- litical history of Clark county.
They were all men of ability and of great personal popularity.
The canvass was hot and the contest, as it always is on questions of county seat removals, was bitter.
The removalists, the Jeffersonville party, elected their candidates.
But the victory was barren of fruits ; the Legislature refusing to the people of Clark county their wishes on that
subject, and Charlestown still retained her hold upon the county seat.
But the strength of the removal feeling had been tested and it showed that a majority of the people were in favor of it.
They were defeated but not dis- couraged.
After another lapse of forty years the fight was renewed.
One generation had passed away and another had come upon the stage.
The sons were as ready for the con- test as were their fathers before them.
Jeffersonville township, including the city of Jeffersonville, now had nearly one-half of the whole popula- tion of Clark county.
It was right, it was just, that the majority of the people should rule in such questions of public accommoda- tion, was contended by the people of the southwest end of the county.
So about the first of January, 1876, the city council of Jeffersonville, headed by its then recently elected Mayor, Hon. Luther F. Warder, deter- mined to make another effort to regain the county seat.
Everything was duly considered; every arrangement was deliberately made and the movement fully inaugur- ated under the general law regulating county seat removals.
The ground was donated for the site of the court house; thirty thou- sand dollars were voted and raised and deposit-d with the county Treasurer as a donation to the county to build a court house in case of a removal to
32
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
Jeffersonville, and canvassers were sent out to procure signatures to the removal petitions.
The people of Charlestown met the movement at the threshold.
They fought it with vigor and de- termination.
The people in the upper end of the county joined them in the fight.
The contest ran into bitter, per- sonal hostility between the two sec- tions of the county.
Animosities were engendered that perhaps, never will be healed.
Political affinities were destroyed and the removal question dominated every other and all other questions of public interest.
The board of county commissioners met at the Charlestown court house on the first Monday in March, 1876. The petitions for removal, containing a clear majority of all the voters in the county, were presented.
Every effort was made to defeat them.
It was charged that a large portion of the signatures were fictitious.
The anti-removalists were met at every point.
The case was pressed through the Commissioner's Court.
They appealed to the Circuit Court.
A c ange of venue was taken to Floyd county.
Then a special Judge was agreed upon and Judge Perkins, of Indianap- olis, was sent to try the case.
At length the anti-removalists had
reached the end and were compelled to submit to the inevitable.
On the -- of October, 1878, the county records were removed to the court house which had already been built in Jeffersonville, and it again after a lapse of sixty-seven years be- came re-established as the county seat of Clark county.
It is not probable that the disturb. ing question of county seat removal will ever again, or at least not during the present generation, agitate and divide the people of Clark county.
An important event in the early history of Jeffersonville was the pro- ject inaugurated in 1818 to build a canal around the Ohio Falls on the Indiana side of the river.
The means were to be furnished by a lottery and the plan was to make the waters of Cane Run do the work by digging a ditch and starting them along it, and they would wash out the dirt and open a channel sufficiently wide and deep for a canal.
The ditch was dug and the waters of Cane Run forced into it by a dam, but they would not wash worth a cent and the project fell through, and no canal on the Jeffersonville side of the river is yet built.
During the war, on account of the pe- culiar location and the facilities which it afforded for transportation as a dis- tributing depot of military supplies, Jeffersonville was made a depot of military and quarter-master's supplies.
After the close of the war, it still continued as such; and millions of dol-
33
HISTORY OF CLARK COUNTY.
lars worth of supplies were kept in some temporary buildings near How- ard's ship yard.
In the meantime, the question of a permanent location of a quarter-mas- ter's depot of supplies in the city of Jeffersonville was discussed between the city officials and the Quarter-mas- ter General at Washington.
The outcome of it was that in January, 1870, under the administra- tion of General Levi Sparks as Mayor of the city of Jeffersonville, the city purchased the ground at a cost of $11,000 and donated it to the United States for the purpose of erecting a permanent depot.
The building was completed in 1874, where millions of dollars worth of government supplies are stored for general distribution all over the United States, and where thousands of dollars worth of army clothing are manufactured by the sewing women of Jeffersonville and New Albany every year.
The growth of Jeffersonville has been slow but gradual and substantial. Every year has added something to its population and to its wealth. Public improvements have kept even pace with its growth. It has one of the best improved wharves of any city upon the Ohio river, and has more miles of paved streets than any other city of its size in the State.
It has recently completed a system of water works which will add greatly to the comfort, cleanliness and sanita- tion of our people and will afford
complete fire protection to every householder in the city.
The population of Jeffersonville is now estimated at 13,000 and is grow- ing every day. Many new residences have been built during the last year, some of them very elegant and would do honor to any city. Its streets are well built up with substantial build- ings and present something worthy of notice in the way of ornamental archi- tecture. Many neat cottages which give comfortable homes to its laborers and mechanics, beautify its streets and give the city a picturesque and rural appearance.
The city of Jeffersonville is well located for a manufacturing center, and large interests are now in active operation. Our chief manufactures are railway cars, steamboats and machinery of various kinds. The Ohio Falls Carworks are the second largest establishment of the kind in the United States and have a capacity of working two thousand men per day. These works are most complete in all their details, and give almost constant employment to from 1,500 to 2,000 hands daily.
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