USA > Indiana > Boone County > Early life and times in Boone County, Indiana, giving an account of the early settlement of each locality, church histories, county and township officers from the first down to 1886 Biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and women. > Part 11
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. and then commenced to build a church on west Main street. The roof was on but no weather boarding, when one windy night the whole roof was blown off. Not being satisfied with the location, as it was on a street, they soon bought more ground where J. C. Brown's residence now stands, and built a house on the commons, where nothing would disturb them but the frogs, as there was a pond full of these musicians close by. This building was afterwards sold to the Catholics and moved
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on Indianapolis avenue, where it was repaired and called the St. Charles Catholic Church. It stands there and is occupied by that denomination at this time. The Baptists had preach- ing for several years before they organized. The United Presbyterians had an organization for some time and held their meetings in the court house. The Christian Union also had a few members and held their meetings in the old Methodist Episcopal Church.
The first school teacher was a Mr. Kimble, who taught in the court house. The first school house was the "Seminary," now the Pleasant Grove House, where many of our middle- aged men and women received their common education. W. F. W. C. Ensminger taught many years and was considered the best instructor we had ever had. Spelling was the one principal study, as the whole school would have to spell at the same time, and a prize was given for the best speller. Joseph Lewis, then a young man, and Mary Zion, eleven years of age, were the closing contestants, the latter carrying off the prize, a book of "Payne's Poems." The seminary was after- wards converted into a residence, Dr. Perkins living in it for several years. Chauncy King then bought it and commenced the hotel business, continuing the same until his death. Mrs. Bray, then his widow, is yet successfully carrying on the business.
People had to go two miles below the Quaker Church at Thorntown for their flour and meal, the amount of the former being limited, however. After some two years Mr. Longley and Col. Hocker told the people if they would donate enough money to buy an engine and boiler they would build a " corn cracker." That was the first piece of machinery in the town, and it almost frightened the natives to death. When the steam was blown off for the first time they ran for their water buckets to put out the fire. The mill was a great help to the people, as the roads to Thorntown were almost impassible in those days, and even the streets in this town were so the women had to wear boots or ride on horseback. We had then an
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elegant residence called the "Steamboat." It stood where the Rat Smith property now is. It was oval shaped, standing . east and west as though it was ready to start up street through the mud and water we had then. One time we had a concert in the court house and everybody must go. It rained and rained, but go we must. We got all the umbrellas (not many) we could find, and some of us appropriated our plaid gingham parasols. The night was as dark, the mud as deep and the rain as copious as was ever known. On our way home I lost my parasol, but fortunately the next morning Wilson's boys looked up Main street, about opposite the Collier residence, and there it stood stretched out over the street unharmed. except the part under mud. We had no sidewalks or ditches to carry off the water.
Uncle Sammy Strong had the only tannery here for a num- ber of years, and he accumulated a handsome fortune at the business. His vats were where the elegant residence of Mrs. J. C. Daily now stands.
The 12th of August, 1852, the first train of cars reached the depot. What a celebration ! Everybody and their children, old and young, were present. Some were frightened at the locomotive, and ran back and kept at what they thought would be a safe distance. There was a big dinner free to everybody. Mr. Zion had a long table spread in our yard, with green bushes for a covering, and fed two hundred for dinner and supper. After the railroad was completed, Mr. Zion donated to William Jenkins and Moses Hall, Sr., four acres of ground south of the railroad, on which to build a flour mill. In 1880 this mill was destroyed by fire. AMELIA ZION. 1 December 18, 1886.
ROADS AND BRIDGES.
BY CHAS. F. S. NEAL.
Thirty years ago it was not then known that sufficient gravel could be found here to construct a system of gravel roads in the county. In 1864 a company was organized to
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construct a gravel highway from Thorntown to Darlington, to connect and extend to Crawfordsville. This was the first gravel road enterprise in the county. It and the Rosston gravel road, on the old Michigan road, are the only toll col- lecting highways in the county. In the year 1857 the Leb- anon and Royalton and the Lebanon and Sugar Creek Gravel Road companies were organized. At first these two roads were toll collecting, but in the year 1884 were bought by the tax-payers living along them and turned over to the county as a part of the free gravel road system. Under the legislative act of 1877, petitions for free gravel roads were filed before the board of commissioners, at a called session held August 6, 1879. The first road ordered constructed under this act was the Lebanon and New Brunswick, followed in quick succession by the Lebanon and Dover, Middle Jamestown, Lebanon and Noblesville, Thorntown and Bethel, Kirk's Mill and Sharon, Kirk's Mill south to Crawfordsville road, Lebanon and Thorn- town, east end Noblesville, Elizaville, eleven roads, which exhausted the limit allowed by law, the limit being one per centum of taxables of the county. In the construction of these roads gravel was found in sufficient quantities to build and maintain them with only one exception. The roads con- structed were highly satisfactory. The contractors on the Lebanon and Elizaville found materials of the poorest and in. smallest quantities. Bad as it was when completed, it is now by careful management as good as the best. Gravel road building was started anew by the bond limit being increased from one to one and a half percentum and the Thorntorn and Sharon and Whitestown's two roads, and Zionsville's two, the Lebanon and Favette, Dover and Shannondale, Lebanon and Ladoga, Lebanon and Slabtown and Thorntown, Hazelrigg and Lebanon roads were ordered constructed. At this time twenty- four free gravel roads have been built, aggregating 181 miles. costing $189,100. The first issue of bonds for this public im- provement was redeemed by the treasurer in February, 1886, and from his report he has ample means to redeem all that
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become due during the present and ensuing years. It will be seen that where gravel was considered so scarce, with many other seeming obstacles in the way, our roads have cost on an average of $1,181 per mile. Much of this can be attributed to the good management of our county board. Once con- structed, the keeping of so many miles of road in proper repair has been no small task. These roads are managed by the county commissioners as a board of free turnpike directors. They first organized as such July 15, 1881, being Nathan Perrill, William Curry and James Coombs, with Charles L. Wheeler as clerk. This board meets quarterly. Each com- missioner has especial charge of all free pikes in his district, and each road has its superintendent of repairs. Once each year these superintendents meet with the turnpike board and receive orders for repairs for the year. The present board of directors are W. C. Crump, Ben. C. Booher and Jacol, S. Miller. The expenditures on account of repairs to the several roads in the county, to the present time aggregates $46,824.71, which includes the re-building of the Lebanon and Royalton and Lebanon and Sugar Creek roads. Including the extensive repairs to the roads last named, our roads cost us near $60 per mile each year.
The peculiar location of our county, being situated at or near the headwaters of numerous streams of central Indiana, makes the matter of bridging quite light to the tax-payers, compared to our neighboring counties. Singular as it seems, prior to 1870 only a few small bridges were erected, and these were only makeshifts compared with the handsome structures erected in the past ten years. As the county developed and products fast came marketable, good roads and easy carriage to market was demanded; and to have good roads with deep, dangerous fords greatly hindered at all seasons of the year the carrying of loads such as our farmers now start to market with. Our county board soon recognized the necessity of better crossings over the streams of the county. At the June session of 1870, seven thousand dollars was appropriated to
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erect a 130-foot iron span bridge on stone work near Thorn- town, over Sugar Creek ; also five thousand dollars to erect a similar structure over Eagle Creek at Zionsville, and four thousand dollars for one over Sugar Creek at Mechanicsburg. The erection of these three structures were all made ont of general county revenue. For ten years our county fathers were content without further bridge accommodations.
In 1881 the legislature authorized county boards to create a special bridge fund, and since that time a fifty-foot iron bridge, on stone work, has been erected in Marion Township over Eagle Creek. In Clinton Township two iron bridges have been erected, one over Mud Creek near Elizaville, fifty feet long, and one over the same stream near Hugh Wiley's, seventy-five feet long; Washington Township has a good bridge near the Bird, seventy-five feet long, and at the present time a 144-foot span on stone work is being erected over Sugar Creek at Crose's Mill. This structure, when completed, will be the largest, as also the most expensive, in the county. A bridge ninety feet long is also being erected over Brush Creek.
Sugar Creek Township has two bridges, one north of Thorntown over Sugar Creek, and one east over Prairie Creek. Center Township has three good iron bridges, fifty feet long, all over Prairie Creek. Union Township has an eighty-foot iron bridge over Eagle Creek. Eagle Township has three iron bridges over Eagle Creek. Jackson Township has an eighty-foot span over Eel River and a fifty-foot span over Raccoon Creek. In all, eighteen good bridges in the county, fourteen of which are of wrought iron, costing in the aggre- gate $40,200. Large as this seems, many counties have ex- pended half the amount on one structure. As much more expended on good, substantial structures and Boone County will have the streams crossing her highways well bridged.
In its native condition, a large portion of Boone County consisted of marshy lands, much of which during the wet sras- ons, was occupied and covered with extensive sloughs and lagoons of water. At an early day these lands were estimated
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to be of little value, as it was then thought that it was im- practicable to drain them. As the improvement of the county progressed, a partial and very imperfect system of artificial drainage was commenced in some localities. Without giving the details of the early progress of drainage, we may state that up to the year 1879 much ditching had been done. Prob- ably as much as three hundred miles of large open ditches had been made, and more than six thousand miles of small, mostly covered, drainage had been made. Take the number of farms in the county and estimate an average quantity of ditching on each, and the highway ditching, and the above estimate will not appear to be too great, though the exact amount can not be given. Since 1879 it is probable that more drainage has been done than prior to that date. Many of the open ditches that had been cut prior to 1879 have been re-cut and much enlarged so as to increase their efficiency in the capacity of drainage; besides many new drains have been made, and many thousands of rods of covered tile drains have been put in, the exact quantity it is impossible to give, and yet there is no abatement in ditch improvements, but it is on the increase every year. Fresh impetus was given to drainage by the leg- islative act of 1881, which gave a new method of procedure by giving the circuit court law, under which James Nealis and George Stoltz were appointed Drainage Commissioners. They were succeeded by Thos. J. Shultz and S. F. Cox, and they in turn by I. S. Adney and Joseph Etter. During the first fif- teen months, beginning with September, 1881, forty-three large drains-about one hundred and seventy-five miles-were constructed. Since that time as many miles more have been constructed, until at the present time as much as four-fifths of the large drains of the county are constructed. The construc- tion of so many large drains gave ample outlet to many deep ponds and sloughs that heretofore the imperfect outlets had failed to drain. One singular obstacle to the drainage of our county is that on most all of the ditches is a backbone, or high place ; on these the beaver and muskrat built their dams. On
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the removal of these obstructions many thousand acres became- dry land. Not until 1883 were any provisions made to keep such valuable public improvements in repair, which now is. placed in the hands of the county surveyor. The first large ditch in the county was constructed by Fordice & Devol, fol- lowed by Eel River, Sanitary Raccoon, Grassy Branch and many others. In proportion to the number of acres of wet land originally, probably Perry Township is the best drained of any in the county, while Harrison has the largest number of main drains according to area. At this time, by estimate, there are near four hundred miles of open drains and seven thousand miles of underground ditching in the county.
THE OLD-TIME SCHOOL MASTER.
As early as 1720 the French traders had established a trad- ing post at Thorntown, being one of the system of posts. extending from the valley of the St. Lawrence to that of the Lower Mississippi. In 1800, it is said, the town included thirty-six trading houses or stores, and was the home of a branch of the Miami Indians. The white population up to this time seems to have included only males, and no attempt was made to establish society or to found schools and churches.
In 1828, when the Indians sold their reservation of Thorn- town to the Government, the entire population, French as well as Indian, abandoned the place and the new town of Thorn- town, laid out in 1830, was located upon the west or opposite side of Prairie Creek from the site of the old town. It may be said then that the first Anglo-Saxon settlement was that of the MeCord brothers, who settled east of the present site of Zionsville, in 1821. Other settlers came in each year and about 1826 the first school in the county was organized in an abandoned cabin on the east bank of Eagle Creek near the Marion County line and about one and a half miles south of the site of Zionsville.
In 1832 a school house was built on the farm of William
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Beelar, in Eagle Township, and about the same time a log school house was built in the new town of Thorntown, and Jefferson Hillis was engaged as teacher at the latter point. These two were the first houses erected, built especially for school purposes, within the county. The same year the first school in Washington Township was taught by Daniel Ellis, in a deserted settler's cabin, on the south bank of Sugar Creek just a few rods south of the subsequent site of the Chase or Ben Crose mill. In this same winter of 1832, the first school in Marion Township was taught in a cabin on the farm of John Pan, just north of Big Springs. It was not till 1836 that the first public school house was built in Marion Township, being situated upon the farm of John Wright, not far from the pres- ent site of School No. 2. Within these years, from 1832 to 1837, private schools were carried on in all the new settlements. In Jefferson and Union townships as early as 1833, and in the southwest part of Jackson Township in 1835, schools had been established, and rudimentary instruction was given pupils who came through the tangled forests and swampy by-ways to gain what knowledge was then opened to them. All of the schools in the county were at this time carried on by subscription on the settlers who, from their scanty means cheerfully gave, and, each in turn, boarded the teacher for the sake of giving their children a measure of preparation for the wider range of duties to devolve upon them with the development of the country.
In 1835 the first school in Clinton Township had been established in a deserted cabin in the Mud Creek settlement, northwest of Elizaville, with J. H. Sample as teacher. The following year witnessed the first school in Perry Township, being in a cabin in the northwestern part of the township. In the year 1837 the first school in Worth Township, and prob- ably the first free school in the county, was taught in a cabin on the farm of James McCord, the teacher being Henry Lucas, and the teacher being paid by the county. In the antumin of this same year a subscription school of two or three months' duration was taught by Pleasant Crawford in Harrison Town-
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ship. This was the first school taught in that township. From this time on the growth of the schools in the county kept pace with that of the population. In 1824 the legislature had enacted a law to establish school houses, of which two provis- ions were as follows :
SEC. 6. Each able-bodied male person of the age of twenty-one or upwards, being freeholder or householder, residing in the district, shall be liable equally to work one day in each week until such building may be completed, or pay the sum of thirty seven and one-half cents for every day he may so fail to work, and provided, morever, that the said trustees shall always be bound to receive at cash price, in lieu of any such labor or money as aforesaid, any plank, nails, glass, or other materials which may be needed about such building.
SEC. 7. That in all such cases such school house shall be eight feet between the floors, and at least one foot from the surface of the ground to the first floor, and finished in a manner calculated to render comfortable the teacher, pupils, etc.
Under this law school houses were rapidly constructed all over the state, the great majority of such houses being built of hewed logs with puncheon floors and capacious fireplaces and chimneys. The seats were withont backs; the writing desk or table was made of puncheons re-ting upon wooden pins driven into the walls and extending along two or three sides of the room. The teacher's whips were laid upon two long pins above the teacher's desk. The public schools under the old constitution depended entirely upon the income from the congressional fund, no tuition tax being provided for by law. From eight to twelve weeks usually exhausted the pub- lic money. In a majority of cases the term was extended several weeks by subscription upon the part of the patrons of the district. The early teachers were generally Yankee, Irish, or Scotch, with an occasional Quaker from North Carolina. For a long time there were no public examinations to deter- mine the fitness of teachers other than the local school direct- ors and the patrons at large. An indispensible requisite was the ability and disposition to make a vigorous use of the beech and hazel rods that lay above the teacher's desk. Add
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to this the ability to do "the sum" 'in Pike's Arithmetic through "Tare and Tret," to spell through the old Element- ary and to read loud and rapidly and he was fully equipped for his manifold duties ! Most of the teachers uniformly "skipped the fractions" in arithmetic. It is related that one or two of the earlier teachers in the county attempted to teach the spherical shape of the earth, and even asserted that it was as cold at the south pole as at the north pole! For these ignorant and blasphemous teachings more than one pioneer teacher was promptly dismissed. Their notions of geography were not orthodox, for how could the earth have "four cor- ners" if these things were true ? But a better class of teach- ers soon came into the new county from New England, the Middle States and Kentucky. Many men who have since led their profession in our state, came into the state as pioneer teachers from 1835 to 1850. The county seminaries, designed as stepping-stones from the district school to the State Uni- versity, were being rapidly established in the different county seats of the state, and about 1840 the old Boone County Sem- inary was begun on the east side of Lebanon. The building was finished in 1843, and that autumn the first school within it was taught by Stephen Neal, Esq., who is still a resident of Lebanon. Mr. Neal was succeeded in 1844 by John M. Pat- ton, late cashier of the Thorntown national bank. The county seminary continued to flourish during a period of ten years, until the adoption of the new constitution in 1852, when, like most of the seminaries in the state, it was sold at public sale. It brought the county school fund the sum of $900, and was converted into a hotel or boarding house, for which it is still used, known as the Pleasant Grove, or Bray Honse.
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Among other early teachers of Boone County we may men- tion a Mr. Schenck, a German, who taught the second school in Perry Township in 1837; Mr. W. L. McCormick, who first taught in the county in 1842, teaching a public school in an old log house a mile and a half east of New Brunswick, in Harrison Township. Since that time Mr. McCormick has,
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with the exception of one or two winters, taught every year, keeping pace with the rapid advancement of the school sys- tem. For many years he has kept his place as the oldest teacher in the county. Among the early teachers at Thorn- town were numbered Rufus A. Lockwood, afterward famous as a brilliant and eccentric lawyer, the winner of the famous Mariposa gold mine suit in California, and who went down in the Atlantic with the ill-fated Central America, and Rev. Bird, a Presbyterian minister, who established a school at Thorntown about 1840, which attracted many pupils ; Andrew J. Boone, Joseph Sample, Isaac and Robert Carmack, Rev. Philander Anderson, David Burns and others became widely known over the county as teachers within the two decades from 1840 to 1850. In 1855 the Thorntown Academy was established under the charge of the Northwest M. E. Confer- ence. Among its principals may be cited Rev. Tarr, Hon. O. H. Smith, Republican candidate for Superintendent, in 1878; Prof. J. C. Ridpath, the historian and literateur ; Prof. Sims, now Chancellor of Syracuse University, New York; Profs. Osborn, Rouse and others who have been widely known as educational workers. This school flourished for about seven- teen years, at the end of which time it was sold and converted into a public high school. In 1860 the Presbyterian Church began the erection of an academy in Lebanon. The first school was taught in the new building in 1862, under the charge of Prof. Naylor. The school continued to prosper for some ten years when it was sold to the town and converted into a public high school, for which purpose it is still used. Upon the conversion of the academy into a public school the three dis- trict schools, which had long been maintained in Lebanon, were abolished. The meagerness of the county school records afford but few statistics of the steady progress of the public schools; but each year the enumeration and enrollment in- creased and the facilities of every kind were extended. But two or three isolated school ma'ams had been known in the county previous to the breaking out of the civil war; and it
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seemed to have been a matter of general astonishment when the necessary employment of women proved that in many cases, at least, the school ma'am could surpass the school- master in the efficiency of her work and the beneficence of her influence. For the year 1886-87 there are employed in the schools of Boone County fifty-four female and 106 male · teachers.
Until a few years ago there was still in use, near the Har- rison and Perry Township line, an old-time log school house. known popularly as "Cornbread College." In fact, it still stands, and is used as a wood house for No. 9, Harrison Town- ship. This was the last of the old-time log school houses with its two logs cut out for windows, its puncheon floor and mon- ster chimney. From hewed log to frame, and from frame to briek has been the transition. There are now in Boone County 135 school buildings, of which thirty-six are frame and ninety-nine brick. The total value of buildings and furnishings exceeds $200,000.
Of the town school buildings, that of Jamestown was erected in 1873, at a cost of $12,000. It is a very spacious and well-located building. That of Zionsville was erected soon afterwards and is a handsome edifice, and its site, upon an eminence at the west side of town, is unsurpassed in the state. In 1883 the Thorntown High School was erected, at a cost of about $15,000. It is probably the best school building possessed by a town of the size of Thorntown in the state. It is commodious in its arrangement and beautiful in its propor- tions and its finish. Within the past year the city of Lebanon has built a neat ward school building, and it is the expectation that a new high school building that will honor the county seat will be erected in the near future. Certain it is, that no railway or other enterprise can ever bring to a town the pros- perity and development that such a school must insure.
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