USA > Indiana > Wells County > Biographical memoirs of Wells County, Indiana : embracing a comprehensive compendium of local biography, memoirs of representative men and women of the county whose works of merit have made their names imperishable, and special articles by Hugh Dougherty [et al.] > Part 5
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Bluffton, the county seat of Wells coun- ty, is known throughout the entire country as a most beautiful city of five thousand in- habitants, with miles of asphalt, brick and macadam streets, matched with cement walks on either side, with its shade trees and lawns, beautiful and cozy residences, both large and small, as a background for the picture. Still the city is not ahead of the county, with its three hundred miles of grav- el roads that ramify it. The farms are well
drained and in a fine state of cultivation, yielding excellent crops, in abundance com- paring favorably with the very best counties of Indiana.
It is not, however, to be supposed that the triumphs of Wells county in these mat- ters have been achieved without effort, for in the care and attention given to the successful cultivation of the soil the farmers have la- bored strenuously for many years, until in- genuity and integrity have become their most distinguished characteristics.
When one has comprehended all that this people have done for themselves we are sure it is neither natural or reasonable to grudge them the success that has attended their ef- forts, and yet the common complaint is that the farm and farm life are not appreciated by our people, but that they long for a more elegant pursuit. The ways and fashions of the city are not in the line of happiness and comfort, for the farmer has the most sacred and natural occupation and ought to find life sweeter than any other, for he alone, strict- ly speaking, has a home. He writes his his- tory upon his field ; his friends are his cattle, his team, his dog, his trees; his satisfaction is in his growing crops and his improved fields ; his intimates are the bird and beast ; he co-operates with the cloud, the sun and the season; heat, wind, rain and frost, all humble him, teaching him patience and rev- erence, and restore the proper tone to his system, and radiate his virtues after his day's work is done.
AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS IN WELLS COUNTY.
BY EVAN T. CHALFANT.
Wells county is and, so far as we are able to see, must always be an agricultural district. There is neither coal nor iron here, nor water power to make a manufacturing district of it. The grand forests of oak, hick- ory, ash, beech, walnut, maple, elm, cotton- wood and other varieties of timber which once covered our county, and which took centuries to grow, are now nearly gone. So our lumber industries are rapidly drawing to a close. There are no rare clays or min- erals to bring manufacturing industries into our midst. In all these respects our county seems unfortunate; and yet we think these very deficiencies will prove a great blessing to our people. No manufacturing section can also be a successful agricultural section. The conditions that make the one work against the success of the other. Not hav- ing our attention divided between agricul- ture and manufacturing, we can concentrate all our energies, all our skill and all our wealth to make a success of the former.
Nature has blessed our county with con- ditions that will ever make it a successful and wealthy agricultural district. Our cli- mate is healthful and favorable to agricul- ture. There is sufficient moisture and
warmth to grow bountiful crops. The win- ters are neither long nor severe ; the summers are long and pleasant and give crops ample time to mature. Frosts come early enough to cause corn and other late growing crops to ripen and cure out to save well. Spring opens up early enough to give ample time for spring seeding. The soil is for the most part a rich clay loam, underlaid by from twenty to one hundred feet of clay subsoil, which constitutes the best farm land on earth. The surface is generally level, with just enough slope to give good drainage, but not to cause the surface to wash into gullies. The land is free from rocks and stones, so that it is easily farmed. A ridge of rolling lands crosses our county from northwest to southeast, that makes excellent grazing land, giving a grand opportunity for stock raising and dairying. The level lands are also well adapted to the same branch of agriculture. The great depth of soil between the surface and the rock having been formed by the gla- cial drift and so being equally rich through- out its depth in the mineral plant foods, makes it impossible to ever exhaust this kind of plant food. As the gases that help to . form the plants comes from the air, that
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source of plant food is also inexhaustible. The earth above the rock contains many gravel beds filled with excellent water, and the rock also contains an abundance, so the county is liberally supplied with this very necessary material. Our location with ref- erence to the markets and our shipping fa- cilities are all that could be desired, so there is no reason why Wells county should not always be a great and wealthy agricultural district.
The lastest Indiana agricultural statis- tics for our county show that it is already a great agricultural district. It gives the amount of wheat raised in one year as 2II,- 896 bushels, being an average of 9 bushels per acre; 1,909,080 bushels of corn, an average of 45 bushels per acre ; 681,398 bushels of oats, an average of 46 I-2 bushels per acre; 12,270 bushels of rye, an average of 26 1-2 bushels per acre ; 29,02I tons of timothy hay and 21,415 tons of clover hay, the former yielding I I-2 tons per acre and the latter I 3-4 tons; 40,680 bushels of Irish potatoes and 1,540 bushels of sweet potatoes, yielding 110 bushels of the latter and 56 1-2 bushels of the former to the acre. Of horses the same statistics give us 7,954 head and IOI head of mules ; 14,229 head of cattle, 40,330 head of hogs, and 20,532 sheep and lambs. Milk pro- duced equalled 2,899,995 gallons and butter 620,981 pounds; 12,825 dozen chickens gave 693,459 dozen eggs. These statistics show only a part of the productions of our county for one year. The fruit and vege- tables, excepting potatoes, are not men- tioned, nor such crops as clover and timothy seed, buckwheat, soy beans, Canada field peas, corn stover and some others of which our county produces an abundance. While
the amounts of the various animals and crops given show an enormous total and a great diversity in kinds and varieties that can be successfully grown and produced in our county, yet they by no means show the limit of the amounts that our fine climate and rich soil are able to produce. Much of our land is not yet under cultivation, and that which is is capable of doubling and trebling the amounts now produced. For instance, in the report quoted wheat is given as averaging only 9 bushels per acre, while a yield of from 30 to 40 bushels is often grown by individual farmers. The same kind of farming that produces these latter amounts if followed by all the farmers would raise the average amount of wheat produced per acre to several times 9 bushels. So with corn, many farmers raise from 90 to 100 bushels per acre, or double what the whole county averages. The same ratio of increase could by good farming and management be continued throughout the whole list of crops and farm animals and animal products. At present our farmers try to manage too many acres for the amount of help they have. The results are crops not thoroughly cultivated and man- aged and many small unprofitable yields. If only half the number of acres received the same amount of work and care they would yield as many bushels as the larger num- ber of acres but half cared for yield.
The conditions of the farmers and the methods of farming in Wells county have greatly changed and improved in the last quarter of a century. When the writer came to this county from the Pennsylvania hills, in the spring of 1867, the country was new, the land but partly cleared and the fields were full of stumps and roots. But
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little ditching had been done; swamps and wet land abounded on all sides and the air was loaded with malaria and mosquitoes. The "chills" and fever were escaped by but few every summer. Most of the families then lived in log houses of but one or two rooms. For six months of the year the roads were almost impassible and they were never very good. A buggy or a carriage was a great curiosity and as rare as automobiles are today. Young men and women rode out together on horseback or went afoot. People either walked to church or went horseback or in the farm wagons. In those days the principal food was corn and pork. But little wheat was raised and fruit was still scarce. But few homes could boast of a sewing machine, a washing machine, an organ or a piano. The floors were usually bare boards and the furniture of the cheapest sorts. The farm- er then cut his grass with a scythe, raked his hay by hand and pitched it all by hand. He cut his grain with the cradle and raked and bound it by hand. The threshing ma- chines were run by horse power. There were no riding plows, cultivators, harrows nor other riding tools of which we now have such a variety. Hard toil was the rule in all the work on the farm. There were no railroads, telegraph lines nor telephones in the county in those days. The stock was of poor varieties, or breeds, or rather of no particular breeds. Hogs had to run in the woods till nearly or quite two years old be- fore they could be fattened. When stock was sold it had to be driven to Ft. Wayne either by the owner or buyer. Grain sold had also to be hauled there for sale. It would seem impossible for people to enjoy life under such conditions; but they did, and we can
look back to those days and count over many blessings we received and many pleas- ures we enjoyed. How much more, then, ought we to enjoy life now and how thank- ful we ought to be for the many blessings. and privileges we now enjoy. Compared with those early days, the farmers in Wells. county live like kings and queens today. We have comforts and privileges and pleas- ures innumerable. If the improvement con- tinues another quarter of a century as it has. the past quarter or more, there surely will be nothing further to wish for this side of heaven. The farmers of Wells county now live in large, fine frame or brick dwellings. They drive to town or elsewhere in fine car- riages over gravel roads, or they go on the cars, and they soon will be riding on inter- urban cars, as two or three roads are now be- ing constructed that will pass through our county. They have telephones connecting them with their neighbors and with the. cities. They have their mail delivered daily at their doors and now take the daily papers and many nice magazines and papers. they seldom saw twenty-five years ago. Every farmer's boy now has his horse and buggy and his bicycle. The farmer's daugh- ters also have their bicycles and they ride in the finest rubber-tired buggies in the world. In the homes are found organs, pianos, sew- ing machines, washing machines, fine furniture and carpets and rugs. Ele- gant stoves and ranges have taken the place of the old fireplace. Wind pumps now draw the water for the home and for the stock. The swamps have been drained, the land cleared, and the stumps gone. The climate is now healthful, and chills and ague unknown. The farmer now rides, often un- der a sunshade, while he plows his ground,
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sows or plants his grain and while he culti- vates and harvests his crops. Grass is now cut with a machine, stirred with a machine, raked, loaded 'on the wagons and unloaded, all by machines run by horse power. Grain is cut and bound by machinery and threshed by a steam-running machine that feeds it- self, stacks the straw and measures and sacks the grain. Corn is now being cut by machinery that shocks it and it is husked by machinery, too, and the fodder shredded and put into the mow. The faithful horses do almost all the farm work now and do it easily, too. Steam and gasoline engines are fast taking the work off from the horses also, and we predict that the farmers' horses in our agricultural district a quarter of a century hence will have as easy a time of it as the farmer has today. Electricity and gasoline will then do most all the hard work and do it quickly and cheaply, too. Fruit of many kinds is now raised here in abund- ance and the farmers' bill of fare nowadays is varied, abundant, wholesome and palat- able as heart could desire. The farm stock in our county has been greatly improved also in the past quarter of a century. It seems hardly possible to ever grow finer hogs, cattle, sheep or horses than are now found on the majority of Wells county farms. Hogs especially have been greatly improved until now one seldom sees any but good breeds on our farms. Instead of driving stock to Ft. Wayne, now it is usual- ly hauled but few miles at most to the stock yards and there shipped to market. Grain elevators are now to be found in various places in our county, making it an easy mat- ter for the farmer to dispose of his surplus. While nearly all kinds of fruit grown in the temperate zone will grow and do well in
our county, yet our climate and soil are bet- ter adapted to grain and grass than to fruit raising ; so we find the former industry pre- dominating here. As there is a profit to be made in feeding grain and grass to farm an- imals, farmers are raising more stock and selling less grain and hay.
The Wells county farmer has greatly im- proved in his knowledge of his profession ; in business methods, and methods of man- aging his farm, cultivating his crops and in the breeding and care of his stock. This improvement has been brought about by the reading and study of agricultural papers and books, and by farmers' institutes and clubs, coupled with his own experience and observations. While most any kind of farming would produce fair crops in favor- able seasons in the virgin soil of our county, it now takes skillful farming to succeed in raising large paying crops in all seasons. By this we do not mean that the land is poorer and the conditions more unfavorable than formerly, for they are not. In the early days the forests had been burned off and the fertility that had been gathering for centuries was thus made immediately avail- able for plants to feed upon. In all those centuries nothing had been removed from the land. The leaves and twigs had de- cayed where they grew and the trees were mostly burned. The ground was also full of decayed and decaying roots and thus abundant fertility was, as it were, lying around ready to be eaten by the crops when planted, just as acorns and hickory nuts were lying scattered around for the farmers' liogs to eat up when turned into the woods. When the acorns and hickory nuits were gathered up, then the farmer had to replace them with other food for his hogs. So when
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the forest fertility was gathered up by the crops the farmer had to learn how to make other fertilizers available, raise more or liberate more for his crops. However, the supply is rich and abundant. There is enough plant food in the soil of Wells county to last for thousands of years, but it requires skill to make it available and to keep the land in a suitable condition for the raising of good crops every season. As the supply in the soil is made available by the air, the water, by freezing and thawing, by cultivation and stirring of the soil, by the plant roots and by the decay of vegeta- ble matter in the soil and the acids produced thereby and by the agency of bacterial life in the soil, the farmer must manage the soil and the crops so as to make the conditions the most favorable for all these agencies. He must also add to the amount of plant food made available from month to month and from season to season the manures pro- duced by the feeding of animals on the farm. He must also add to the plant food of the soil the gases of the air that are used by the plants and which give life to the bac- terial life of the soil. To do all this we can readily see why it requires more skillful farming and better posted farmers today than it did twenty-five or thirty-five years ago, when nature alone had accomplished what the farmer must now help to accom- plish: In those early days the conditions required principally muscle to make a suc- cessful farmer, while now the chief qualifi- cation is brains.
We have examined into the agricultural conditions of the past and the present in our county, now let us look ahead a little way and try to see what the future has in store for us. Like Patrick Henry, we have no
way of judging the future but by the past. We know the conditions and changes of the past, and the tendencies of the present, and so we are enabled to form some correct premises as to what the future is apt to be. I predict that our agricultural conditions will continue to improve in the coming years, not at so rapid a pace, perhaps, as in the past, but there will be continual improve- ment and advancement in knowledge and wisdom and skill and wealth and pleasure amongst the farming classes. In another quarter of a century every farmer will have his mail delivered to him every day. Most farmers will then be connected with each other and with the outside world by tele- phone. Electric cars will cross our coun- try in all directions and will give easy, quick and cheap transportation everywhere. Farmers' clubs, institutes and organiza- tions will be the rule instead of the excep- tion, as now. Farmers will have more leisure to devote to such institutions. They will then stand shoulder to shoulder and will work together for their mutual inter- ests and welfare. The best of stock will be found on every farm, and the lands will be so farmed as to make them yield their ut- most. Farmers will read and study more, and so will be better and more successful farmers, which will mean more wealth to them, and with more wealth will come more ease and comfort, more privileges and pleas- ures in life. Improvements in farm machin- ery will continue. Electricity, gasoline and wind will do more and more of the work on the farm. The homes will be lighted and heated by electricity, which will have been generated by wind power. The time is fast approaching when farming will be the pleasantest, most profitable and most
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desirable pursuit to follow, as it is now the most healthful, least confining and most in- dependent of all the professions. Then many engaged in other professions will envy the farmer, his occupation, his lovely home and his ease and comfort and enjoy- ment in life, and will try to change their professions to farming, but will not be able to do so, as there will be no more farms to possess, and the farmers will not sell out and go to the hot, crowded, noisy cities to live, but will live on their farms all their days and then turn them over to their chil- dren. To bring about such results in farm-
ing, the farmers must be better educated, better posted in their profession, more fully awake to their opportunities, more ready to make the best use of their privileges, and more in love with their farm life and work. And these qualities are becoming more and more common as the years roll by. There is a glorious future in store for the agricul- turists of our county and nation. The farmer is in partnership with the Lord, who made the soil, who waters it with rain and dews, who warms it with sunshine, who supplies it with air and life and beauty, and he must succeed.
PUBLIC EDUCATION.
BY P. A. ALLEN.
The early beginnings always form an interesting chapter in any historical sketch, especially when it has to do with a subject which lies so near to the hearts of the people as does that of public education. In this important interest Wells county and the city of Bluffton have always occupied a place in the front rank and have for years enjoyed an enviable reputation throughout the state. In providing for the growth and efficiency of the schools, those who laid the foundation of the fine system which is a matter of just pride to our people, spared no pains or reasonable expense, and time has demonstrated that they "builded better than they knew." The foundation was laid broad and deep and will support well the superstructure which the later generations shall build upon it.
While a study of the beginning has a charm and absorbing interest on account of the mist of years that surrounds it, it is a matter of keen regret that a record of this first period was not made at the time it was fresh in the minds of those who actively participated in it. So long a time has elapsed since the first steps were taken in public education in this county that there
are few persons now living who were here in that pioneer period, and the infirmities of age have so impaired their powers of recol- lection that the incidents they are able to recall are so fragmentary and disconnected that nothing like a succinct account can be made from the information gleaned from those sources. That part of this chapter which is reminiscent in character was ob- tained by interviews with many persons who have been residents of their respective neighborhoods for many years and are well acquainted with the traditions of their local- ity. We realize that the best possible sketch to be written in this way will be open to the just criticism of being incomplete because of the omission of many most interesting things, and incorrect because of the defec- tive memories of many of our informants. With this understanding we will ask our readers to take it for what it is worth, be- lieving it will contain something of inter- est for all who are in any way identified with the interests of the county.
A school which is claimed by some to be the first in the county was taught by Jesse McGrew in 1837 in a school house which stood on the Adam Miller farm, southeast
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of Bluffton, on Six Mile creek, on the south part of section II, in Harrison township. Another of the early school houses of the county was near the one above mentioned, where David Powell's old tannery stood. It was a log building, eleven by eighteen feet in size, with clapboard roof held on with weight poles. The seats were ar- ranged in semi-circular form about the fire- place ; the writing desks were of hewn slabs pinned to the walls, and a row of backless benches in front of them for the use of the more advanced pupils. This was the typical school house of the period.
The first school in the present limits of Bluffton was taught by Asa Cohoe, a Uni- ted Brethren minister, in the year 1839- 40, in a log school house on the north side of the Henry Thoma residence lot on Scott street. This house was like its con- temporaries in the country, in that it was provided with a huge fire place which occu- pied nearly all of one side of the room. It had a clay back wall and stick chimney. It took in logs of firewood ten feet long, and required a good-sized saw-log for the back- log. Mr. Cohoe taught school during the week, and preached to his congregation on Sundays. This log school house was suc- ceeded by a brick structure which was used for school purposes until the erection of the Central building in 1868.
The following incident will illustrate the wilderness condition of the territory which is now the site of the city of Bluffton : Rev. Cohoe, the first teacher in the town, went hunting one day and was returning in the dusk of the evening. In trying to find his home, which was located at the corner of Market and Marion streets, he became hope- lessly lost and came to the conclusion that
he was in the depths of the forest, he knew not how far from his home. Despairing of being able to find his home that night, he decided to make the best of the situation and prepared to spend the night in the woods. He crawled into a hollow log, and barricad- ed the entrance with logs and chunks to pro- tect himself from wolves, which were very plentiful at that time. He thus spent the night in safety, and in the morning was awakened by the crowing of roosters at the home of Nelson Kellogg, at the corner of Main and Cherry streets, only a block away. The log in which he had lain was where the George Harnish residence now stands on Cherry street. When we see Bluffton as it now is, with all its metropolitan improve- ments, it seems almost incredible that the conditions only sixty-three years ago were such as that the above incident could have occurred.
Some of the pupils of the first schools in the city were B. F. Wiley, Warren Mc- Bride, J. B. Plessinger, Gabriel Shrock, Nancy Spencer, Mrs. Fay, George and Newton Burwell, Josie Hall, Joel Kemp, Ruth McDowell. Abraham and David Thompson, James, Calvin and Frank Deam and their sister Elizabeth, afterward the wife of James Russell.
In 1843 Nelson Kellogg taught a school in a shed-roofed building at the north end of Johnson street, on the banks of the Wabash. J. B. Plessinger has occasion to remember that year, as he froze his feet while gathering fire wood with which to keep the rest of the school from freezing to death. Ann Maria Hubbell, a niece of Ad- nah Hall, taught school in the same building later. The next winter George Brown taught school in the log court house, which
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