USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > Early reminiscences of Indianapolis, with short biographical sketches of its early citizens, and a few of the prominent business men of the present day > Part 19
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I understand that it is to Mr. Peck the citizens of this city, as well as the traveling public, are indebted for having a Union Depot at all, most of the citizens thinking it would be an in- jury to the city, and make it nothing more than a way station where the passenger would merely pass through without even a look at the interior of any of the business houses. In this particular especially has his great foresight and wisdom been manifest and beneficial to the city as well as to all who travel through it.
He has, perhaps, done as much toward making the city of his adoption what it is to-day, as any person either living or dead ; being liberal and public spirited, he has always aided with money, as, well. as countenance, any enterprise calculated to benefit the city and redound to its future prosperity, and its social as well as religious and educational advantages.
He is one of the largest contributors for the erection of that beautiful temple of worship, the Second Presbyterian
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Church, of which he has been an honored member and elder for many years.
He was president of the Indianapolis Gas Light and Coke Company for many years, which position he resigned much against the wishes of the stockholders, but his two other pres- idencies made his labor too much for his physical abilities. The Gas Light and Coke Company flourished under his super- vision, like every other institution he has had the manage- ment of, and he left it in a high state of prosperity.
He was, also, for sometime one of the directors of the State Insane Asylum, a very responsible but poor paying position, and such a one as persons are sought to fill who are well paid by the self-satisfaction of alleviating the misfortunes of that unhappy class of our citizens.
He also, in connection with Messrs. Blake and Ray, in 1852, laid out an addition to the City Cemetery, a want so much needed and called for at that time.
Were I to stop at his public services and liberality it would be doing him but partial justice, and the object I have in sketching him as a character that should be emulated. He has never been known to turn a deaf ear to the poor or those less fortunate than himself, but has acted upon the scriptural principle that "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord."
He has assisted many persons in business ; and though he has never been the person to speak of it himself, we came in possession of the fact from the beneficiaries themselves.
He has furnished means for the erection and carrying on of several manufacturing establishments in this city, as well as other places, in which his name does not appear to the public. He has dispensed his liberality in such manner as he will be enabled to witness the good he has done as he passes along, and without waiting, as too many do, to let others do it for
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Hon. Daniel D. Pratt.
him, and without, perhaps, carrying out one of his wishes, and without any regard for them.
With temperate habits, a good constitution and a clear con- science, he has managed to get himself a wife, a handsome in- come, and the universal respect and friendship of his many acquaintances throughout the State. The writer was one of the first acquaintances he made in this city, and we have never heard an unkind word spoken of Edwin J. Peck.
His genial manners, universal good humor, kind and oblig- ing disposition, has won him hosts of friends. There is none that enjoys an innocent joke more than he does, and although but a Peck in name he is a bushel in humor.
" I readily and freely grant, He downa see a poor man want ; What's na his ain, he winna take it, What once he says, he winna break it."
May he live long to enjoy the prosperity he has done so much to produce, is the sincere wish of the writer of this brief but truthful tribute to his many virtues.
HON. DANIEL D. PRATT.
This distinguished gentleman, who has within the past year been called by the Legislature to surrender one high position to accept that of another still higher in the National Legis- lature, was for about two years and a half a citizen of this place. While here he won the respect of all who knew him.
I have before me a letter from him in answer to one I had written, which portrays in every line the true character of the man. Although it was not intended by him for publication, I will take the liberty of so doing, as it contains very inter- esting reminiscences of his stay in the city.
Mr. Pratt is a man of fine legal ability, and, as a lawyer, is devoted to his profession, and in his character fills that
"Column of true majesty in man,"
talent, honesty and kindness of heart ; and I am not surprised
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Early Reminiscences.
that he feels out of place in the United States Senate, as now constituted, for he is a stranger to the scheming intrigue and corruption of professional politicians, and will not lend him- self nor influence to aid them in their own nefarious and self- ish purposes to the injury of the country.
Twenty years ago that Senate would have been more conge- nial to him, when Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, and Stephen A. Douglas were its prominent members; but it is now composed of a far different class of men.
Mr. Pratt's great success as a lawyer is attributable to his untiring industry and perseverance in studying his profession. His tall and strongiy built form, keen eyes and dark hair, and other decided casts in his features, gives him a noble and com- manding air, and displays in his personal appearance the na- tive power of his mind to a considerable extent. His record in life is one worthy to be read and remembered fresh in our minds.
The mock marriage Mr. Pratt alludes to may need some explanation. At the time he boarded with the mother of the writer there was a kind of half-witted fellow working about the house, as fire-maker, water-carrier, etc., named Henry Wilson. He was about twenty-two years of age, large and fleshy, with a considerable share of laziness.
Henry became very much enamored with one of the servant girls, and was teasing her at every opportunity to marry him. This fact reaching the ears of Mr. Pratt and an Episcopal minister, who was a member of the Legislature, they induced the girl to accept the proposition to marry him, and set the wedding for a certain evening, and they would get her out of the scrape, and at the same time rid her of his importunities.
This she did, and set the time for the consummation of the nuptials. Henry wished to start immediately to White Lick, in the neighborhood of Mooresville, and invite his friends ;
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Hon. Danicl D. Pratt.
but the affianced bride would not consent to have any but the inmates of the house invited.
Mr. Granville Young was to personate the bride, and the clergyman was to perform the ceremony free of charge. Up to this time Mr. Pratt had acted as general superintendent and next friend to the groom ; he also attended to the making the toilet of the bride.
At the last moment the minister thought he might be going too far, and declined to perform the ceremony ; it then de- volved upon Mr. Pratt to solemnize the nuptials, which he did with all the gravity and composure with which he afterwards charged a jury.
After the happy groom had received the gratulations of the company, and before proceeding to the bridal chamber, Mr. Pratt prepared him a glass of wine, in which was put a copious dose of aloes, the effect of which disconcerted the groom in a short time.
The reader will remember this was when the distinguished Senator was quite young, and before he had reached his twen- ty-first year. Although thirty-six years have passed away, and with them many of the actors in the scene, Mr. Pratt yet enjoys the narration of the ludicrous incident.
LOGANSPORT, IND., Oct. 19, 1869. Mr. J. H. B. Nowland :
DEAR SIR :- My occupation in court has prevented me un- til this moment from sitting down and giving you the brief sketch you request.
Born in Palmer, Maine, on the 26th of October, 1813. My father emigrated to central New York when I was but a year old, so that I have considered myself a son of the Empire State.
My father was a country physician and I was raised on a farm, and until sent off to school was accustomed to farm
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Early Reminiscences.
labor. After leaving college I turned my face westward, in the spring of 1832, when eighteen years of age. For fifteen months I taught school in Lawrenceburg and Rising Sun, and in the fall of 1833 went to Indianapolis and entered the law office of Calvin Fletcher, and took board with your excellent mother. I made her house my home most of the time I lived in your city. It was a village then, and a very unpretending one, with a population of about 2,500 souls.
When my school earnings were expended, and they did not last very long, I obtained odd jobs of writing; during the legislative sessions wrote in the office of Secretary of State ; was appointed Quartermaster-General by Governor Noble with a salary of fifty dollars a year, and from these sources, and the aid I was able to render Mr. Fletcher, eked out an eco- nomical living and laid by fifty dollars, which I invested in forty acres of wild land. The law knowledge I gleaned while a resident of Indianapolis, was very scanty, since most of my time was occupied in providing the ways and means of living. But, scanty as it was, the friendship of Judge Wick secured me a license to practice law, and on March 1st, 1836, I came here, where I have ever since remained.
I recall with peculiar pleasure the period I was a member of your mother's family. She was a favorite with the board- ers. Her table was always bountifully supplied, and she had a kind word for all. To me, young and inexperienced, and a stranger, she was more than commonly kind.
I can recall the names and faces of but few of her many boarders-Boyd, Webster, Peck, Dumont, Young, Garret and Ramsey occur to me, and a tall man, a printer, whose name has escaped me.
The State House was being built at that time, and many of the workmen and two of the contractors, Messrs. Levermore and Peck, boarded with her. During the legislative sessions many of the members took rooms at your house.
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Hon. Daniel D. Pratt.
I remember the mock marriage to which you allude. It was during the session ; the bridegroom was decked out with the coat of one, the boots of another, and the watch of a third. The dining-room was filled with spectators. A waggish cler- gyman, a member of the House, was to have officiated, but at the last moment took a serious view of the matter and backed out. Then it fell upon me to join the couple in marriage and conduct them to the bridal chamber. It was Young, I be- lieve, who personated the female. Never was bridegroom more eager or deeply in earnest than poor Henry. To him it did not seem out of order that the false bride should be deeply veiled. That foolish prank came near costing me my life, for when the defrauded bridegroom had recovered from the severe effects of the purgative administered, he sought the earliest opportunity of attacking me in the dining-room with the carv- ing knife. While his system was undergoing depletion he was nursing schemes of revenge against the author of his shame.
During that period the Athenaeum was organized ; it was in the nature of a Lyceum. We had written lectures and it was well patronized. We also had mock legislatures and mock courts. The social condition of Indianapolis was excellent at this early period of its history. All well-behaved persons had the entree to good society. During the winter social par- ties were common. Governor Noble was a very hospitable man, and fond of seeing his friends at his house. Morris Morris, Mr. McClure and N. B. Palmer gave fine parties.
There were no railroads and canals in those days in the State ; the three leading thoroughfares radiating from Indian- apolis were the Michigan road, running north to the lakes and south to Madison ; the National road, then in process of construction, and the road to Lawrenceburg; the latter was the direct road to Cincinnati and was much traveled.
During the late fall and early winter this road was lined
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Early Reminiscences.
with droves of hogs on their way to market. All the roads at this season, and, indeed, during the winter, were execrable. I remember being upwards of three days in reaching Cincin- nati, on horseback, in the fall of 1835. But others will speak of these matters with better recollection and authority than myself.
I left Indianapolis on March 1st, 1836, for this place, sev- enty miles distant, and by hard traveling reached here in two days. Logansport, at that time, contained about 800 white - inhabitants. The Pottawatamie and Miami tribes of Indians afforded the principal trade which the town then had. The merchants were nearly all Indian traders; Cyrus Taber and George W. Ewing were the largest and most influential. Their stores were crowded with Indians. All contracts among the whites for the payment of money were made payable at the next annuity. The "Indian payments," so called, were gen- eral settlement days. Silver coin was paid by the Government and constituted the principal currency.
It was a poor time for lawyers in those days, but I found several here. I think my earnings for the first year amounted to three or four hundred dollars.
But if the demand for professional labor was little, therc was no lack of occupation in the pursuit of pleasure, which, I take it, is, after all, the substantial and sensible business of life. The surrounding forests were grand, filled with game, and the red men ; the rivers and lakes were alive with fish, and their capture by hook, spear and net was the business of the sportsman and idle man, who supplied his necessities, and careless of the future grand hunts were organized. When the Indians were removed west of the Mississippi, in the fall of 1837, nearly all the young men were drafted into the ser- vice of the government to aid in the removal.
Kansas was their " terre incognita," and many vacant hours
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Hon. Daniel D. Pratt.
was spent on the return of the party in telling and hearing their wonderful experiences.
I forgot that you desired simply a personal sketch. Well, I have but little to say of myself. My business, as a lawyer, increased by degrees, and journeying on horseback from one county to another during the sessions of court, I practiced law in what are now the counties of Cass, Miami, Wabash, Huntington, Allen, Grant, Howard, Carroll, White, Pulaski, Jasper, Marshall, Fulton and Kosciusko.
Sometimes I would be absent on the circuit for five weeks, continuously, before returning home. Content with my pro- fession I had very little aspiration for political honors. But, in 1847, having been nominated for Congress by the Whig party, I canvassed the old Ninth District with Mr. Cathcart, and was defeated, his majority being about four hundred. The next year, being a candidate for District Elector, I canvassed the same district with Dr. Fitch. In 1850, and again in 1853, I was a member of the Legislature. In 1856, again a candi- date for District Elector, I canvassed a portion of the Ninth District in the interest of the Fremont ticket.
But political life was never agreeable to my tastes. What- ever may have been my success at the bar, and of that it does not become me to speak, I am satisfied that I have entered the arena of politics too late in life to render myself useful in any high degree to the country.
The large and varied interests of a great and growing na- tion like ours, require comprehensive study and practical statesmanship. Familiarity with State interests and State legislation is one thing, while a comprehensive knowledge of the agricultural, manufacturing, money, commercial and ship- ping interests of the country at large, and its relations, diplo- matic and commercial, with foreign countries, is another, and quite a different thing.
Late in November, 1837, I was married at Rising Sun, to
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Early Reminiscences.
Colonel Pinkney James' daughter. She had been my pupil six years before while I taught school in her native town. By her I have four children, two only of whom are living. My oldest son fell in the war.
In the spring of 1865 I was married a second time, to Mrs. Warren.
This is all that it occurs to me to say. I regard the most useful and honorable part of my life that engaged in teaching, not to speak of the period above alluded to, while engaged solely in that business. I have educated in my law office twenty-five or thirty students, most of whom have succeeded well in their profession. Experiencing when a poor young man great kindness while studying my profession, I have made it a point never to charge any student for the use of my office and books and such instruction as I could impart. In this I have endeavored to do by others as was done to me.
Yours respectfully,
D. D. PRATT.
THOMAS W. COUNCIL.
This gentleman is at present a citizen of Columbus, Bar- tholomew County, but was for many years a resident of this county, a portion of the time living in the city, and then in Pike township. He was among the first to join the Christian Church when it was first organized in this place, about the year 1833, at which time he was married.
Mr. Council was a native of North Carolina, born near Fay- ctteville in the year 1810, where he lived until 1831, when he went to Camden, South Carolina, and was living there at the time the celebrated proclamation of General Jackson was made in regard to nullification in 1832, which was the cause of the greatest excitement among the people of that city he had ever before witnessed, and caused the shedding of blood between the friends of the "old hero " and those of nullifi- cation.
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Thomas W. Council.
In the year 1832 he became a citizen of this city, and then a resident of Pike township ; assisted his neighbors and friends in rolling logs, burning brush, raising cabins, and contributed largely in labor and means in making that beautiful township of land what it is to-day.
Mr. Council is a man of considerable ability and a fair po- litical speaker, and during his residence in this county was an active politician of the Jackson school, and was ever ready to contribute his time and money with profuse liberality to se- cure the success of his party ; he was at one time its candi- date for Representative of the county in the State Legislature.
About the year 1842, a man named Carter, who had been living near Allisonville, in the north part of this county, moved to the southwest part of the State of Missouri. He hired a well known mulatto man, named Eli Terry, to drive his team, and engaged to work for him one year. At the ex- piration of the year Carter proposed to Terry to return with him to Indiana, and sold him a horse, saddle and bridle in pay for his labor, which Terry was to travel on. Instead of taking the north-eastern direction, as he should have done to reach this State, Carter struck toward Arkansas and to the interior and wilderness portion of Texas. That State had not yet become a portion of and one of the United States. Car- ter induced Terry to acknowledge himself a slave to avoid being interrupted, as he alleged, as a free negro, the laws be- ing strict in regard to free persons of color. After Terry had made this acknowledgment publicly Carter sold him into slavery for six hundred dollars, and he was kept in that con- dition for seven long years, when he was released through the agency of Mr. Council and two other gentlemen, Mr. Ryman, of Lawrenceburg, as a lawyer, and Mr. Harrison, of Hamil- ton County.
The Quakers in and near Westfield, Hamilton County, learn- ing the facts of Terry's abduction and sale into slavery, raised
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Early Reminiscences.
a sufficient sum of money to employ a lawyer and defray the expense of witnesses, and sent and had Terry released and brought home.
Mr. Council, who had known Terry's father to be a free man in North Carolina, and Terry himself here, was induced to go as a witness in the cause of freedom, that boon so dear to us all.
I have before me a pamphlet written by Mr. Council, and in very good style and language, giving an account of their travels and perils, both by land and water, to that distant land, and the danger that threatened them after they had found the object of their journey of several thousand miles. They were pointed to a tree and told that there had already been six abolitionists hanged on it, and that if they persisted in trying to establish the man's freedom, they would add three to the number.
Although Mr. Council had never sympathized with politi- cal abolitionism, he wished justice to prevail though the hea- vens should fall, and persevered in doing what he conceived to be his duty to God and an unfortunate and injured fellow creature. About five years since he removed to Columbus, where he now resides.
His son, John F. Council, to whom I am indebted for these facts in his father's history, is a resident of this city, and is engaged with his old school and play mate, William R. Hog- shire and J. B. E. Reid, in the wholesale and retail boot and shoe business, and, like his two partners, is esteemed as an upright business man, and a genial gentleman.
In the short space in which I am compelled to confine my- self in these sketches, it is very difficult to do full justice to two such persons as the father and the son, the subjects of this sketch.
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Henry Tuterciler.
HENRY TUTEWILER
Has been a citizen of Indianapolis since 1834. He was from Lancaster, Ohio, and like most others that settled here at an early day, had but little of worldly goods. He had a good trade, industrious habits and a healthy and robust constitu- tion.
He engaged as a partner with William Lingenfelter in the 'plastering business, and the fact that two such singular names should be associated together as partners, " Tutewiler & Lin- genfelter," often caused a laugh from the "new comers," or Yankees that might chance to settle in our city.
Mr. Tutewiler was, and is yet, one of the most energetie mechanics, of any kind, in this place. See him when you will he is in a hurry, driving his work instead of its driving him. We have often met him in different parts of the eity, within the same hour, overseeing his different jobs of work ; and although able to live without work, I do not see any abate- ment of his youthful zeal and industry.
Soon after he made this place his residence he connected himself with the Methodist Church, and has ever bore the name of a true and consistent Christian, as much by practice as precept. He was a member of the Wesley Chapel congre- gation when it was the only Methodist congregation in the city, and there often listened to those eminent and old-fash- ioned ministers, such as James Havens, Allen Wiley, Calvin W. Ruter, with many others of less notoriety, and has there often met brother Jimmy Kittleman and Francis MeLaughlin, and heard their loud amens, accompanied by a clap of their hands that would ring through the cars of the congregation.
Mr. Tutewiler has looked forward through the vista of years to his sons as the pride of his old age, and who, as the repre- sentatives of his family, were to carry down to suececding
12
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Early Reminiscences.
generations its respectability, and credit and good name of their father, who has not wasted time
" In dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up,"
but has accumulated sufficient to start his sons in a lucrative and respectable business, while he yet remained on earth to assist them by his counsel as well as his means.
Tutewiler Bros. are the proprietors of one of, if not the largest, stove stores in the city, where all kinds of copper, tin, japanned and pressed wares are kept and sold; also, nearly all kinds of house-furnishing goods, table cutlery, furniture, grates, marble and metal mantels-in short, all kinds of hard- ware used by house-keepers.
It is seldom we see such an establishment as theirs even in larger cities. How different from the first tinning establish- ment of this place, that of Mr. Davis, up stairs, on the north- west corner of Washington and Pennsylvania streets, and when one small room answered for shop, parlor, kitchen and hall ; or how different from the stove store of Aaron Grover, on the southeast corner of Washington and Meridian streets. Could it be possible for these two early proprietors to be called from the spirit land, would they not be astonished at the improvement made in their branch of business. To please their customers seems to be a specialty with Tutewiler Bros., and their pleasant and affable clerk, David W. Brouse, whose genial countenance is generally met at the threshhold of the establishment, as the customers enter.
WILLIAM H. H. PINNEY.
Major Pinney is a native of Thetford, Windsor County, Vermont, and inherited a considerable of the true Yankee character-industry, enterprise and perseverance. He was blessed with a good English education, such as is obtained in the common and high schools of Yankeeland.
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