USA > Indiana > Grant County > Centennial history of Grant County, Indiana, 1812 to 1912 : compiled from records of the Grant county historical society, archives of the county, data of personal interviews, and other authentic sources of local information > Part 17
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There are four things to look after in the soil, as far as its actual composition or structure is concerned. First; it must have a sufficient humus content, which can be provided best in the form of barnyard manure or by plowing under erops of green manure. The latter can best be accomplished by means of the various legumes, such as clover, alfalfa, cowpeas, soy beans and the vetches, which contribute, in addi- tion to humus, their excess of nitrogen, gathered from the air. These legumes are concerned with the economical production of nitrogen, which is the second necessary factor. Third, by the application of some form of phosphorus, which is usually sold from the farm in grain farming. Acid phosphate or "raw ground rock" will supply this ele- ment. Potash can only be supplied, at the present time, in commer- cial form, through the potash salts imported from Germany. Barn- yard maure supplies all the elements of plant food, but it is low in its percentage of phosphorus. Because of the type of farming carried on in Grant county, it has been fonud that the application of fertilizer carrying a large percentage of phosphorus, pays on most erops, espe- cially wheat. A fertilizer of two per cent nitrogen, six to ten per cent phosphoric acid, and two to five per cent potash, has given excellent returns in applications of one hundred and fifty to five hundred pounds to the wheat crop. So far not much attention has been paid, in Grant county, to the fertilization of corn and oats by means of commercial fertilizer. . Such fertilization is yet in the experimental stage, and should remain so until it has been proven profitable.
The soil is a scene of life and energy. It is not as some people be- lieve, a place of lifeless and inert materials. Minute plants, in the form of molds, fungi and bacteria, are densely populons in the earth's surface, as many as millions to each enbie inch of cultivated soil; each contributing its little iota in the processes of soil disintegration, or- ganie decay and chemical action, to the ultimate benefit of the farmer. The same might be said of minnte organisms in the forms of tiny ani-
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mals or worms. The earthworm, in particular, is an example of one of the larger organisms beneficial to the farmer.
This article is not written as an exact scientific treatise, subject only to the criticism of higher authorities. It is written for the pur- pose of awakening more interest in the study of Grant county 's most valnable assets, her soil. In this section we have been wonderfully blessed with the rich, virgin timber soils found within our borders. It was as a mine from which our forefathers squandered its timber and used its products to the making of the county we now have. We must rall a halt. This soil is not one immutable, indestructible asset, that it is impossible to wear out by continuons cropping wastefully carried on. Let us consider this soil as a scene of life and energy, as the plas- tie clay in the hands of the artist capable of being molded, handled, built up, or torn down, as the artisan may see fit. Let us remember that coming generations will also be dependent on the soil and its prod- uets, and that their prosperity will in a great way be measured by the manner in which we handle and leave it for them. Shall we be destruc- tive or constructive? Shall we build up or tear down ! These are vir- ile questions that touch not only the man at present occupying the land, but also everyone that is dependent in anyway upon the soil's produets, now and in coming generations.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks are accorded the present state geologist, Mr. Edward F. Bar- rett for the annual reports of his department, that have made this arti- clo possible.
XVIII. WHEN THE MISSISSINEWA GIVES UP ITS DEAD
"There is no death; what seems so is transition," but in the minds of many who live along it the beautiful Mississinewa will ever be re- garded as a cruel stream-tells its own tale of sorrow and distress, in- asnmich as it has swallowed up their loved ones and left to them the most bitter remorse. Death is always something for which one is totally unprepared, and death from drowning is more horrible than when fam- ilies have expected such visitation. When the river snatches a victim it is done so relentlessly that one is unable to learn the lesson of sub- missiveness that probably should be impressed upon him. Here and there are rebellious hearts-firesides have been destroyed by the river, and interviews only stir up the grief afresh, and even the "oldest inhab- itant," so much sought after by the historian, often has but meager knowledge of some of the heartrending seenes that have from time to time been enacted along the stream.
Strange as it may seem, the older citizens have a better recollection of what occurred in the dim past than has the average man on the street corner today of what happened only yesterday, last week, last month or last year, and Noah's flood impresses many just as seriously as the latterday inundations with their heavy tolls of human life, un- less the persons themselves have been driven to places of refuge. Flood, deluge, inundation-all become scare words to one who has experienced water disasters. Shakespeare says: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," and "young flood" is certain misfortune. While Noah's flood as recorded in the Book of Genesis is not to be repeated on the earth, partial inondations seem destined to frequent recurrence. With the vernal equinox falling on Good Friday and full moon on Saturday, and Easter in its wake on
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"Horrors of Tornado, Flood and Fire." While the announcement seems overdrawn it requires a quickened imagination to understand the horror of water when it is on the rampage-is uncontrolled.
The secretary of the Deep Water Way Association in discussing the certainty of the return of floods, said the most serious feature of the terri- ble disasters in Ohio and Indiana is the almost unerring certainty that the Hoods will occur again, perhaps soon and probably often. Recur- renees are certainties if present conditions continue. Nothing in the 1913 Hoods was unusual or unprecedented except the height of the water. The rainfall was extremely heavy, but not record breaking at all. The rains found the soil saturated and the streams were fairly full, but every winter breaks up with wet soil and full streams, and all that is needed then is a general rainfall and another disaster will result. Rainfall always comes but not always when most needed, nor even in the same months, but the annual precipitation does not vary greatly. The rain cannot be prevented and it must run off. It is what happens to the rain after it strikes the earth that is cause for concern, Drain-
NEBRASKA STREET AND THE MISSISSINEVY IN TILL 1913 FLOOD
age has changed conditions. Formerly the rainfall sought the streams almost entirely by soil percolation. The surface of the earth was ab- sorptive and the rain entered it.
The capacity of the soil of a woodland or the heavily grassed son of a meadow to absorb water is almost unlimited. Once in the soil the entire rainfall sought the stream beds slowly and kept them bank- tul for several weeks, or even a month. The reason of the change is that the surface soil is no longer absorptive, and the cultivated farms, the hard roads impervious to water and the miles and miles of paved streets in the towns have replaced the ancient woodlands and meadows. While natural rain still falls an unnatural soil receives it. The pur- pose of drain tiles, paved streets, gutters and sewers is to carry water quickly to the rivers, and nature's methods have been perverted. While the rivers were once equal to the need they are now out of date as outlets to the water surplus. It is because all the rain gets into the river at the same time that causes the congestion-the floods. So far, nothing has been done to relieve the streams of this congestion, but all effort has been toward the simultaneous arrival of all the rainfall into
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the stream. Drainage is the science of hurrying water from lauds into streams, although swamps and wet lands were all part of nature's scheme for regulating conditions. While the swamps cannot be re- placed and drainage is a phenomenal achievement, the rivers have not been altered to meet the changed natural conditions, and floods are bound to oeeur with increased frequency until there is a solution of the problem. Levee building alone will not suffice, as the flood heights are increasing year after year and it is only by controlling waters that floods are to be prevented in future.
The Easter flood of 1913 worked greater hardship in other locali- ties than in Grant county, and just after the flood subsided there was a craze for canoes in this locality. While boats on Marion streets were a novelty many people saw them, and boats for resene work have been the problem cach recurring food, and conservation of life may be sub- served by precantion in this particular. Now that boating is a fad per- haps better crafts will be available in life saving extremities. While good old Noah was prepared for the flood, he had been the joke of by- standers who would gladly have entered the ark, but he closed the door against them. It is promised that the whole earth will never again he destroyed by water, and the bow of promise is still seen in the clouds. yet portions of the earth's surface have been inundated periodically ever since that time, and yet none would say that Grant county is a Sodom or Gomorrah that the Mississinowa should wreak such awful destruction. Transportation was tied up. and destruction walked abroad, and yet how soon the community recovers from disaster.
While there was water everywhere there was talk about the river in the vicinity of Marion again flowing in its old channel, some having a theory that it once skirted the hills of the town, but while it inundated portions of the city it would have required several feet more of water to have accomplished that evil design. Cellars in the second story may never be a necessity, and yet people will continue to feel a certain degree of insecurity. Ammal house cleaning came early in the submerged for- ritory, and sanitary inspection was necessary. The Mississinewa is not more treacherous than other streams, and its toll of death in other years has not been more than other Indiana rivers. While there were harrowing experiences at the 1913 Eastertide, the 1904 food brought greater sorrow to tirant county. While the water was higher at Easter- tide, people seemed to take advantage of the situation better and escape its ravages.
First aid to the drowning should be given special attention by Boy Scouts and others bent on loving service, and resuscitation is sometimes possible where the odds are against it. While all high water marks of the past were submerged, the changed conditions in Marion make it difficult of comparison, and paved streets and sewers carried the water so quickly to the river that it spread over much of the town in its effort to carry its hurden. The debris afloat cannot be imagined by those who did not see the swift moving current, and because the flood was so much greater than in 1904 or in 1883, many have compared it to the New Year food of 1847, when there were no bridges across the river and little else by which to gange the height of the water. The rain had fallen in the elosing days of December, and January 1st was high tide along the Mis- sissinewa for many years-perhaps until the 1913 deluge raised the water marks. George Webster, who was an early day contractor and builder in Marion, lost a bridge by that flood that he was constructing at the present Washington street site, the girders having been laid and washed away as well as the material on the bank, and later it was found in drift farther down the stream. The abutments were made higher and
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in 1847 the first bridge finally spanned the river. Since that time the bridges have been a source of apprehension each recurring flood.
It is said that it was not so much the water as the drift that swept along with the current that endangered the early day bandas across the Mississinewa, but the heavy timber has been removed and now the danger is from water and from buildings in inundated territory The river at the desse day homestead north of Jonesboro is not much changed since 1847, when the water had come up almost to the floor, and in 1918 it was forty-five inches deep in the house- only twice bad the occupants been uneasy about it- and they went out in the night, not having thought of danger until the disaster was upon them. At Glencoe, the home of W. E. Mason above Jonesboro and Gas City, where his ancestry arrived by raft on the Mississinowa in 1829, al high water marks were overreached, although his father and grandfather before him had some times taken refuge on the hills. Thomas Coleman was the first settler. and the house built by him still stands. The 1913 food tilled the room
FOURTH STREET AT BOOTS C'RESA
where previous marks had been left on the walls, more than six feet of water standing there. In 1904 Mr. Mason had the foundation laid and timber on the ground for a house when the flood swept it away, and as a precaution he made the wall one foot higher than the water mark at the time, and in 1913 there were more than forty-one inches of water on the floor. Natural conditions about there remain practically unchanged except for underdrainage that carries the water quickly to the river. It is a peaceful valley except the danger from the flood, and now the family will not be surprised at any emergency.
Saturday night, March 26, 1904, was a wild night along the river at Jonesboro amid the harvest of death as brave men attempted the resene of flood bound families. Two young men without family were lost in the water in an attempt to resene a woman and children, and there is a small monument in the cemetery saered to the memory of Teddy M'Gov- ern and Robert Howe, whose bodies were later taken from the drift. They had been friends in life and they met death together. As orphan boys they had come to work in a Gas City factory. There were no boats in daylight hours, and after night fall some were secured from Marion and the young men went out on the turbulent water. When
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their boat capsized their voices were heard in the darkness, and citizens implored Wilson Carter and his son, George W. W. Carter, to attempt their resene. Mr. Carter was ready for bed in his own home when the call came, and he and his son made the attempt, but their boat struck a submerged fence post as they were guiding it in the direction of the voices, and the son dived under in order to cling to the opposite side from his father. He was so quilted that before they were rescued next morning he had perished from the cold. They swam by the boat until they caught the limbs of a tree and climbed it and spent the night there, having gone out at 9 o'clock in the evening and being resened at 7 o'clock next morning.
As the two men spent the night in the tree suffering from the cold, the son asked his father if he thought any one in Jonesboro would come to their resene in the morning. Mr. Carter answered that some stranger might attempt it, and about 7 o'clock Andrew MeMiller, a man they had never seen, came to them in a boat. Mr. Carter elimed down from the tree, saying his son had died from exposure after the light of day, but his clothing was frozen and held him in position on the limb. It was necessary to ent the clothing to remove him, and the boat drifted with the current until the landing was effected opposite the Hiatt homestead several rods down the stream, and there Mr. Carter was bathed in whis- ky as a restorative. Ile was able to be taken home two days later to al- tend the son's funeral. It was a terrible night for relatives at home who only knew they had gone out in the night on the water and had not re- turned to their homes. Jr. Carter had worn an overcoat and his body was not so wet as his son's who dived under the boat in order to balance it from the other side, and he chilled to death on a limb in the tree. Miss Beatrice Ellis composed the words of a song published that year: "The Mississ inewa Flood," and although too sad to sing, many copies of it were laid away as souvenirs of the awful occurrence. Since then Mr. Carter is broken in health and the subject is always avoided in his presence an experience filled with unutterable sadness to him. It was a night of suspense for all concerned, and his companion in suffering had sue enmbed to the inevitable, and he had been unable to relieve him.
A few years ago a soldier in the Home. Richard Lew Dawson, wrote a sonnet on the name of the river and the last stanza is:
"Bright-Imed stream so sweet and sober, Passing bluff, ravine and field, Where the colors of October Summer's ebbing perfumes yicht. Here on beauty's wings ascending I will dwell where love is law, In a dream of bliss unending On the Mississinewa !"
but those who have have been robbed of loved ones by the river do not feel that way toward the Mississinewa.
The river is now more frequently spanned by bridges, and in the pursuit of business people need not so often risk their lives. When a drowning occurs today it usually develops that it came about in the pursuit of pleasure rather than necessary adventure. In recalling the past along the river one hears most unpleasant stories, but they have their place in history. While there are other watery graves in the county, the smaller streams and gravel pits having collected their quota of bodies. only those drowned in the river are listed, and perhaps it is only a partial list, people preferring prospect to retrospect when asked about such things unless the tragedy has come to their own hearthstones. In
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the early days of the county's history there were many expedients re- sorted to that are no longer necessary, and the methods of resuscitation that have been resorted to at different times indicate something of the progress in science along the river.
Some early day customs have become obsolete because their practice is no longer necessary. In olden times many families who lived near the river and must eross when the ice was thin have done so in greater safety by resorting to boards or rails, thus spreading their weight over a greater surface. In this way a man and his entire family have crossed when except for the precaution they might have gone under the ice, and when the river was frozen over was the only time they had communication with neighbors on the other side, although only a short distance from them. There were ferries before there were bridges, but the ice bridged over all difficulties in winter. While it used to be esteemed a feat to swim the river, there is not now mich spirit of such adventure -- sanitary conditions and cleared land having something to do with the custom. The water is neither so deep nor chan with sewers emptying into it, and bath rooms fitted up in the homes relieve the pressure with regard to cleanliness, still next to godliness in Grant county.
Years ago there were dredging poles in many of the farm houses along the Mississinewa, and there were grappling hooks attached for use in emergencies, and then they were returned to the farm house, sont homestead near the river, and when wanted again they were in trad- iness. lee hooks, too, were often used where the unfortunate vietim had drifted, and in every community there were brave men who feared not the water. Many stories of thrilling adventure and rescue used to be told along the river, and data of recent drownings is almost as hard to obtain as what transpired years ago. While it may be regarded in the light of a psychological problem, it was nevertheless told years ago as a l'art that Noah Small, who lived in Jonesboro, was impelled to drive rapidly one morning to the river, and while he could not explain the ferling he acted upon the impulse and reached the bank in time to resene a drowning man, Thomas Curn, an Irishman known to everybody in the town. The ice had broken with him and he could not get out of the water. Mr. Small threw ont a "life line" from the harness, and saved the ahnost exhausted man and never know whether it was premonition or a call direct from God, although glad he followed the impulse to visit the river.
There were many terror stricken witnesses when Roy Shull was drowned near the Charles mill, but no one had sufficient courage to al- tempt to reach him. When Manford R. Thomas was drowned one anne day wear Dunn's mill at New Cumberland, there were seven boys in the water and all narrowly escaped the same fate-early in the century. They were in quicksand and men in camp heard their eries, and although they had warned the boys of danger when the water was high, the warn- ing was of no avail and some of the boys were more dead than alive when resened. The body of one was not found until next evening when the action of carp in the water led searches to it. In the summer of 1598 a boy named Hubert Jeffries was drowned near the McFeely mill dam, and Pearl Rowe was a boy drowned north of town. Charles Thrift, a student in Fairmount Academy was drowned near the Rock dam many years ago. It was said that he was mentally unbalanced as a result of hard study. He came to the river in the night and clothing left on the bank led to his discovery later. Stories of drowning at the Soldiers' Home are of frequent occurrence. On November 8, 1899, the body of James Dolan was found under the railroad bridge back of the camp. and Joseph P. Patton's body was taken from the river below the
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Washington street bridge where it was completely eneased in ive, and the removal of the body from its iey bed was only accomplished after a great deal of difficulty. Conrad Gunther had been missing many days when his body was found along the river by a comrade in quest of frogs. and although in civilian's clothes his identity was revealed by his un derwear. So many soldiers stroll along the river, and perhaps others have met similar fortune.
On January 14, 1884, Joseph B. JJadden was drowned while break- ing ice with a crow bar at MeFeely's mill when the head gates went out and he was precipitated into the forebay. The body was recovered in about half an hour, and all who remember the incident remember some verses in his memory published at the time. On December 19. 1893, Job Mark Bacon Gage as he came from school at noon went on to the ice at the foot of Nebraska street and passersby were horrified to see the ice give way and the boy disappear from sight, and within a short distance From his home where dinner was awaiting him. The ice had to be eut as men searched, and in about one hour the body was carried home-a sad ending of a talented young boy whose future seemed unusually bright. In the summer of 189] Asher Kuntz was drowned between the two bridges as he returned from a northside fact- ory, the body lying under water from Saturday till Monday noon, and
BIRDSEYE THEY OF JOHNSTOWN
a searching party worked diligently for it. Holly Carter, a seven-year old son of George W. W. Carter, who perished from exposure on the river in 1904, had been drowned a few years before by breaking through the ire, although passengers on a passing ear saw the accident and his body was rescued twenty minutes later. Near the same time a French boy named Leopold Veislet was drowned below the old Fankboner mill dam at Jonesboro. Ile had gone fishing. It was in 1898, and drop- ping the fish pole, he drowned in attempting to get it again.
Samnel Stotler, a little boy, an inmate of the Orphans' Home, was drowned just back of that institution. The body was found in a crouch- ing position in water hardly deep enough to conceal his form and his death has always been a mystery. On June 15, 1891, William and Glem Ives, were drowned near the old gas plant at Eleventh street and the river. A number of boys were with them, but all were so frightened they could not tell about it. In the spring of 1863 Mathias Stotler, a Monroe township farmer, came to town with the family marketing and a grist of corn to be ground at the mill. The water at the old ford where the MeFeely bridge now stands was spread over the banks, and he was advised that the ford was unsale, but he attempted to eross and his wife was only convineed of his fate when she saw the team in the drift. The grain he brought was afterward dried in the mill, and some one in a boat rescued the bucket of butter he had brought to
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market. The body drifted to the present site of Johnstown and when a few days later it was seen afloat, a coffin was taken out in a boat and it was placed within it on the water Charles Stonetsky, of Buffalo, New York, an employe of Philip Charles at a mill a little way below Matter park, was drowned by going over the dam in a boat. While different persons remember the incident the time was not known by any one.
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