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 73
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In this house there was only one room that could be used for court. purposes, so that when a trial by jury was had the jury was instructed by the court, and then under the charge of a bailiff, the twelve men were sent out of doors to some convenient place, without molestation, to make up their verdiet. They deliberated sitting on a log or while lounging within the shade of this friendly old elm. No one ever intruded or thought of attempting to corrupt a juryman, and though this neigh- borly tree enjoyed the confidence of the jury, it never told how they stood. But their verdiets then, as now, were and are past finding out. No jury ever disagreed under that old elm.
The judges of that early time traveled a large cireuit, and came either from Richmond or Connersville, this county being then attached to Wayne for judicial purposes. They journeyed on horseback, and the ablest lawyers in their distriets followed the court from one county to another. The judges were learned in the law and very able. Law books were scarce, but being grounded in the principles they evolved law. They presided on the bench with great dignity, and were treated by the people and by the bar with profound courtesy and respect.
The courts were then, as they are now, the champions of law and order; the conservators of the peace; the guardians of the people's rights; the mainstay of their political and religious freedom.
In this same room, devoted to so many purposes, the first dry goods merchant spread out his wares in Marion. The goods were conveyed hither in a wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. My mother purchased one-half of his entire stock of queensware being one-half dozen plates, cups and saucers. What a beginning, to end in our present splendid emporiumns : palaces rich with oriental wares, and the products of the loom, domestic and foreign !
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On this tree was also fastened one of the estray notices put up by Mordecai Cross, and which, on account of its peculiar phrascology. caused at the time much merriment, and has come down to us by tradi- tion as a specimen of rare composition, the product of an cecentrie frontiersman.
In this house religious services were also held. It was the home of the Methodist preachers, and here, in their travels from one neigh- borhood or settlement to another, they always found a welcome and a lodgment. When the appointed time came 'round for preaching, usually every four weeks, but occasionally as, many months might elapse before the "man on horseback" spreading the gospel would put in an appear- ance. 1 have heard my mother say she would spend Saturday in setting her house in order for the service and in providing for the occasion. The neighbors far and near were notified, invited and gladly welcomed. The gospel was preached in great simplicity, but with deep earnestness, and the "common people heard lim gladly."
In this house the first Methodist church of this city was organized in the year 1831, with less than a dozen members. Now it worships in an elegant edifice at the corner of Seventh and Washington streets, and has a membership of about 1,000. The foundation was laid deep, broad and strong; the religious timber placed therein had a strong tiber.
The services were held in the same room where the election had been held, where the commissioners met, wherein court had also been appropriated to be held, and wherein the pioneer merchant exchanged his goods for ginseng, coonskins and other furs. The good, old circuit rider used to "light," in the common parlance of that day, from his tired horse under the spreading Ihubs of this historie tree, shake hands with the few settlers gathered to hear him preach; pass into the house and soon commence service by announcing a hymn. Then lining it out. and leading the singing in a strong, stentorian voice, with which every- body joined, "singing with the spirit and with the understanding also."
Not infrequently, however, on such occasions some devoted brother, with a keen, sharp, nasal twang, would "pitch the tune, " and " make the welkin ring."
The Methodists of that day and age were plain people, easily known by their dress, and were deeply religions. One of their ministers, bewaiting the tendeney of some of the sisters to overdress, declared that a woman who wore flowers on her bonnet "reminded him of a calf look- ing through a rose bush."
These ministers, however, called to preach the gospel, were strong mentally, morally and devoutly religious. They were thoroughly devoted to their work, and frequently suffered great privations and severe hard- ships. To keep their appointments they rode horseback through heat and cold ; forded swollen rivers, and faced many a blizzard while thread- ing their way through a dense forest, following a pathway indicated only by blazed trees.
They were students of the Bible, men of one book, but they knew that book. They proclaimed a gospel of peace, but if occasion required it they could draw pictures of the "take that burneth with fire and brimstone" with such graphic power that their congregations woukl tremble with fear lest they should fall into the awful, yawning abyss.
But these God-fearing men sowed good seed, and sowed it well, and the harvest "yielded" some thirty, some sixty. and some a hundred fold."
A notch ent in this tree showed the high water mark in the great flood of 1847. The first elephant ever brought to Marion, about the
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year 1848, was chained to this tree, and in amazement the barefooted boys and others larger grown gathered around this monster, which, as one expressed it, "had a rubber tail on each end."
The carly settlers came into this county, then practically a great, unbroken forest, afoot, on horseback, following the Indian trails, or as my father and mother and their little ones came in the spring of 1529, by an improvised flatboat down the Mississinewa river. They all cante full of hope; endowed with great courage ; bearing a bright, keen-edged ax with which to hew away the tall timber and build their cabins, and a trusty ritle for protection and to secure will game for the table.
The men and women who thus pushed their way "to the front" in the early dawn of our history, enduring great hardships and frequently severe want. and who toiled early and late to transform a vast wilder- ness into fields of rich production, thus laying the foundations for the peace and plenty which we now enjoy in this matchless county, deserve well our kindly remembrance.
This venerable elm. standing like a lonely sentinel after all of his comrades had fallen, linking us in memory to the far away past, drank in the sunshine and the rain, and braved the storms of fully three hundred years, and then, at last, its head, like that of the frontiersmen, grew "white with a frost that never fades, " and like him also in due time, it withered and died, full of honors, rich in reminiscebees and fragrant with sweetest perfume. " When fond recollection presents them to view."
Although the Marshall rose is elsewhere mentioned in this Centen- nial History the historian cannot resist using the following reference to it : One day, as Captain Marshall was quitting his home for the office, Mrs. Marshall pinned on his coat a bouquet taken from the rose bush he describes, and inspired by its fragrance, he wrote the Following, which with a handful of roses, was laid on Colonel G. B. Lockwood's desk at the Chronicle office and that evening Marion people read the following tribute :
There lies on my desk a bunch of old fashioned Inundred leaf roses. In color a delicate pink, garnished with deep green leaves. Their fra- grance is delicious, distilled through a century past.
Whence this color, and whence this perfume, changing not with time, Hor soil, nor place, nor neighborly association with other roses of varied Imes? Through all the years, amidst sunshine, rain and ice fields, this Rose has preserved its beauty and its sweetness, as if its motto had been the famous stanza of Dr. Hale, whose grave will soon be heaped with flowers like these:
Look up, and not down; Look forward and not back ; Look out, and not in; Lend a hand.
Its parentage was beyond the Blue Ridge, in a peaceful, quiet valley of Old Virginia. Its nascent state, as far as I know, was in my grand- mother's garden, surrounded by such good old companions as sage, mint, thyme, lavender, anise, rue and basil.
It flourished in that warin, genial clime, and year after year revealed its beanty and gave out its sweetest perfume.
In the fall of 1829, my mother took from this "parental stock" a small root, and with other things, useful or ornamental, bore them on horseback northward and westward across the Allegheny mountains and through practically an unbroken forest to the new born state of Indiana.
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In this way corn, wheat, oats, rye and other small grains, and gar- den products were carried forward by the frontiersman, supplying food for man and beast, as lands were cleared and homes were founded.
Thus also came our morning glories and honeysuckles, clambering over the cabin doors and making glad the hearts of weary wives, fired husbands and the little urchins, at morn, at noon time and eventide.
In a colder climate it flourished, and at the end of almost a century it may be truthfully said, a descendant of that Rose, having never lost its dignity, its beauty or its fragrance, today stands proudly ercet in our "garden plot" at Marion, cherished and revered-"A thing of beauty, a joy forever"- even unto the fourth and fifth generations.
LAVH. G. A. R. AND W. R. C. IN GRANT COUNTY By Augustin Kom
The inception of the Grand Army of the Republic dates back to the Civil war, the years 1861 to 1865, when the grandest army the world has ever known went forth to battle. That army was distinguished as the boys in blue and the title was not without a meaning, for boys they were-boys in their teens, and from every vocation in life. There was the mechanic, the merchant, the clerk, the college student. the lawyer, the doctor, the college professor, the musician, the preacher, even the farmer boy was there, a shortage on dudes, but boys of highest type and of the qualifies that go to make men of them a body of men bound together by fraternity, charity and loyalty.
They were men of feeling as strong as life and stronger than death, as was shown on a thousand bloody fields. The boys in blue were strangers to fear on land or sea, and why all this? The answer is, love of country and the flag-the stars and stripes, that beautiful emblem of liberty handed down from our forefathers, and with a pledge taken with uncovered heads and uplifted hands to protect and preserve it or die-that was the makeup of the army and navy that carried the emblem of freedom from the tiring of the first gun on Ft. Smuter carly in 1861 -- four years of awful war in which was father against son and brother against brother. They were all lighting for principle as each saw and understood it, and it was four years of what our beloved hero, W. T. Sherman, defined as hell, and all this to determine whether this country was what it claimed to be-the land of the free and the home of the brave, where liberty's emblem shines forth as the gem of the ocean, and the star of liberty under whose folds the low and the high, the rich and poor, may alike protection claim. This having been deter mined, the army disbanded and the soldiers returned to their homes and former vorations, at the awful cost of the lives of those who fell in battle on a thousand fields of carnage, in prison pens, in camps, on the march or in the hospitals, and those who found watery graves in seas and rivers by the blowing up of hidden torpedoes, by the sinking of the pontoon bridges and a thousand other means of death.
Death lurked everywhere in the trackless path of soldier life at the front with no loving hand to bathe the fevered brow. The night was never too dark and the sun was never too hot, it never rained too hard and the mud and snow were never too deep for a soldier to answer duty's call. No task was ever too great For those boys in blue to undertake while being led on the field of battle by such men as Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Logan, Sheridan, Hancock, MePherson and a host of others,
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and was it not perfectly natural that after a lapse of a few short years there was formed a fraternal association-hence the Grand Army posts scattered about the country, the organization of the Grand Army of the Republice, an organization of men into whose ranks none can enter on whose character a trace of treason rests, who served his country ninety days or longer and who was honorably discharged from the service of the United States government.
There was no other such an organization when the G. A. R. was formed, and so ably assisted by a sister organization known as the Woman's Relief Corps-the G. A. R. and the W. R. C. the one an auxiliary to the other, the W. R. C. having its inception during the early progress of the Civil war. Early in the summer of 1861, says Nurse and Spy, a Mrs. B. wife of Captain B, assisted by one other woman, instituted a begging campaign in Georgetown and Washing. ton, asking for hospital supplies, and this was the beginning of the Sani- tary Commission, It was a group of noble, patriotic women banded together to furnish assistance in the hospital or on the battlefield, giving relief to the sick and wounded and dying men as only women going as ministering angels can do such things. While there were women on the field. there were women in the homes who did what they could in serap ing lint and preparing bandages which they sent to the front, to be used by the nurses in caring for dying men.
In 1881 the local G. A. R. post, known as General Shank Post, received its charter and it was christened for David S. Shank, colonel of the Eighth Indiana Infantry, who gave his life for his country. No more noble was General Shunk than many others whose names might be mentioned, and in the G. A. R. headquarters are many mementoes of Grant county soldiers. Many will remember the saddle horse used by General Shunk, which was taken care of by Samuel MeChue until old age was the cause of his death. Since their organization the G. A. R. and W. R. (. have worked in harmony in carrying on a system of relief among deserving soldiers and sailors and in the families of those deceased who may need such ministration. It is their mission to see that the graves of soldiers and sailors are decorated with Old Glory. and that flowers are strewn upon the hallowed ground above their patriotic formis on each succeeding Decoration Day- the thirtieth o May.
To the local branch of the W. R. C. is due the honor of the erection of the beautiful soldiers' monument in the Marion J. O. O. F. cemetery, bearing the statue of a private soldier standing sentinel over the silent resting place of a part of those in whose memory it was created and dedicated in 1911 --- the unveiling being part of the regular Decoration Day servire. This monument is in memory of all soldiers of Isol to 1865 in Grant county, no matter where their last resting place. Other posts and corps were organized in the different locations as follows: Colonel Asbury Steele post. No. 39, at the Soldiers' Home, August 30 1907; Hezekiah Beeson post, No. 396, at Fairmount. September 26. 1884; John Ruess post, at Upland, August 27. ISS5; Edwin Lenox post, No. 408, Swayzee, August 28, 1885; Magnolia post, No. 109, Jones- boro, September 10, 1885; B. R. Dunn post, No. 410, Matthews, Feb- ruary 12, 1886. L'aptain Beeson post, No. 341, at Jalapa, has been disbanded. The Wiley Anderson post, at Van Buren and all the scal- tered posts are performing patriotie service in their several localities. During all these years the comrades are growing older and with cach return of Decoration Day their step is not so elastie as it was fifty years ago, and why -- ask the veterans of those stirring scenes.
With moistened eyes and emotion in his voice as the soldier relates
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the incidents that were so indelibly stamped upon his mind never to be erased, he will tell you his story. The morning and evening gun, the reveille, the roll call, the guard mount, the assembly call, the form ing into line, the company, regiment and brigade drills, the picket post, the march of the night to reform under the cover of darkness, to be ready for the dawn not knowing what awaits him, but expecting and ready to meet whatever was to come -- the boom of the eamon, push- ing forward to the scene of the whistling of the shells, the skirmish line, the charge, the battle of the musketry and the Fray was on. Need you wonder at his emotion when the soldier tells you his story, when the hoy in blue describes to you the battle. How glad we are that we were born early enough in the Nineteenth century to have part in the Civil war chapter in the history of our country.
The half century that has gone into eternity since the war is a period not duplicated-that has not been excelled by any like period m the history of the world. We have lived to see the blue and the gray meet in reunion on the blood bought field of Gettysburg, and there under the folds of Old Glory, the Red, White and Blue, the Star Spangled Bammer, the Beautiful Stars and Stripes, the Emblem of Liberty and the Gem of the Ocean, loved and cherished alike by the blue and the gray, and the G. A. R. has been an important factor in it all in estab- lishing a feeling of fraternity, charity and loyalty that is more than nation wide, and extends throughout the civilized world. But the G. A. R. has not been and is not now what it should be because many com rades do not enter its ranks, and some have entered for individual motives and having accomplished or Failed in their purpose, have dropped out again, not realizing or caring to know what a power an organization of such magnitude would or could have become had all become mem bers in the beginning, and in time to come their relatives will realize the disappointment in the fourth and fifth generation.
As is the case now with the descendants of Revolutionary soldiers, the records will be searched by generations to come to find out if Grand- father Brown, Smith or Jones was a member of the Grand Army of the Republie, saying they knew he was a soldier, and yet-where is his rec- ord ? Why did he not join the army post and help keep the camp fires burning? One of the peculiar traits of the boys in blue- they are not old, but cling to the idea that they are mere boys and their hearts are young, but the answer comes back that in another decade there will be only a few to keep the camp fires burning. History alone will tell the story. Taps will have been sounded for the last time and all will have bivouacked on the other side-will all be in eternity.
LAVILL. MASONRY IN GRANT COUNTY
By G. 1. Henry
There is no society so widely known and yet so little known as that of the Free and Accepted Masons. The origin of Free Masonry is lost in the mists and obscurity of the past, and while it would be foreign to the purpose of this chapter to attempt to search through the evidences of the Ancient Mysteries for its origin, yet a few words as to the antiquity of this ancient and honorable order seems at this time appropriate.
Well authenticated references to Masonry are found dating almost as far back as the beginning of the Christian era, one as early as the third century, when the Emperor Carausius "granted the Masons a
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charter, and commanded Albanus to preside over them in person as Grand Master." The name Free Mason is met with in connection with the organization of Masonry in England as far back as 1350, but just when this title originated is not clear.
What is known as the "Old York Constitution, " was forundated and adopted by a general lodge of Masons congregated at York, England, in the year 926 A. D. This lodge was called Prince Edwin by the authority of his brother, Athelstane, then King of England. But there are no connected chronological data from that time. But in the history of English and Scotch Masonry from which Masonry here is derived, we can take our stand upon actual records, presenting an unbroken series, as evidenced by minutes of lodges beginning with the year 1599, until the present time.
"Mother Lodge Kilwinning, Na, O." which met at Kilwinning, Scot- land, is one of the ancient lodges which is universally known and respected throughout the Masonic world, and while its earliest records are lost, yet there are preserved authentic records dating back to Decem- ber 20, 1642.
It is uncertain just when Masonry was first introduced in America. It was, however, carly established in the English colonies. The first official authority for the assembling of Free Masons in America was issued on the 5th of June, 1730, by the Duke of Norfolk. Grand Master of England, to Daniel Coxe. appointing him Grand Master for the provinces of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Three years later a Grand Master was appointed for the colonies of New England. From these dates Free Masonry can be said to have been officially estab- lished in the boundaries of the present United States.
Free Masonry was introduced into the territory of Indiana as carly as 1795. The first lodges organized in the territory were constituted under charters issued from the Grand Lodge of Kentucky. After Indiana became a state the nine lodges then within its boundaries assembled at Corydon on the 3rd of December. 1817, and resolved that it was advisable to form a Grand Lodge within the jurisdiction of the new state. This was accordingly done at a convention held at Madison, January 12, 1818, where the first Grand Lodge for Indiana was duly organized. The lodges then surrendered their old charters and received new ones from the Grand Lodge, and Free Masonry was safely and regu- larly launched in Indiana.
The first lodge of Masons in Grant county was organized in Marion. Organized Masonry in Marion runs back to the middle of the last cen- tury. At the time of such organization Marion was a small town, in fact little more than a village. Sometime in July, 1848, at a date not fixed exactly by the records. four Master Masons met at the residence of Dr. Sammel St. John in Marion, in a building situated at the southwest cor- Her of Adams and Seventh streets, for the purpose of taking steps look- ing to the organization of a lodge of Free and Accepted Masons in the then little town of Marion. Those in attendance at the meeting were Samuel St. John, a leading physician; John Brownlee, a young lawyer : Peter Doty, a merchant, and Hiram P. Weeks, a tanner.
As a result of this meeting a lodge was organized under dispensation soon after, sometime in August, 1848, the exact date being unknown. The officers appointed for the lodge under dispensation were Samuel St. John, worshipful master; John Brownlee, supreme warden ; Fred- erick Eltzroth, junior warden; John M. Wallace, secretary. The mem- bers of the infant lodge were at first ten in number : Samuel St. John, John Brownlee. Hiram P. Weeks. Frederick Eltzroth, JJohn W. Wal- lace, Joseph Work, Anthony Inman. Peter Doty, William F. Spencer
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and Benjamin Inman. The first three new members to be mitglied. passed and raised were Mevander Dolman, Joka St John and Oliver 1. P. Carey, in the order named the last being rand in the sublime degree of a Master Mason on the 25th day of October. 1 15 The lodge thus organized grew slowly, and on May 20, 150 it was granted a charter and duly constituted as Grant Lodge No. 105. F & \ \
At that time the mblant lodge was too small and too pour to rent quarters for its meetings, and it met for a while in an upstair, touttt at the residence of Hiram P. Weeks, on the west side of Washington street between what is now First and Second streets. Vierwards Its meetings were held in a room on the north side of the public square, on the east side of the alley. Some live or six years after the location of the lodge was changed to the third floor of the old brick building the ser and north of Third street, on the west side of Washington street In last the lodge was again removed, To a room in the northwest corner of the Spencer Hotel building. Again, after a few year the lodge in 1870 picked up its belongings and removed to the third floor of the Bennett Block, on the West side of the public square. After five wall in these quarters its location was again changed. This time to the third floor of what was then known as the Tharp ant Neal Bloet. but am u is now the north side of the Iroquois Block. In the year (76 the lodge location was again changed to the third Door of what is known as the Masonde Temple. In 1900 the lodge leased the large atol con quarters on the east side of the public square These quatters sehr adjacent to and connected with the old room Here the lodge rematar until May 6, 1943, when it removed to it- splendid new home, the pas ent Masonic Temple.
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