USA > Indiana > Vanderburgh County > Evansville > Evansville and its men of mark > Part 18
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Since then he has crossed the Alleghany Mountains in stage coaches and canal boats more than forty times, going to and coming from New York and Philadelphia to purchase goods be- fore railroads were built. When he first settled here it was almost a wilderness, there being only five families where the town now is. With the means he had and with good credit he soon established a very heavy business, having only very small competition. In a few years he became acquainted with the settlers in this and the adjoining counties, Pike, Dubois, and Spencer, who gave him an extensive trade. Many of the set- tlers at that time lived on "Congress " land, and many of these got him to purchase their lands for them, which he did, giving them time to pay him - they paying a reasonable inter- est. He rendered them further assistance to make their pay- ments, by taking their produce, of which he run several flat boat loads every year to New Orleans and shipped their tobacco. According to the records of the county, about one-tenth of all the lands of Warrick County has passed through his hands.
During his business career he had frequently to hire from three to seven clerks, of whom the following may be named : His brother, Cadwell Phelps, who about two years after, com- menced business at Boonville, in which he was successful ; Henry Williams, Neely Johnson - afterward Governor of Cali- fornia-Albert Hazen, Smith Hazen, Isaac Adams, Union Bethel John DeArmona, Tillman Bethel, D. B. Hazen, Robert Hall; most of whom are living and doing well. During his business in Evansville he kept liquor for sale; but on commencing in Newburgh, he felt it was time to abandon it,
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In 1834 he made a profession of religion. In 1837 he built he first church in the town and county, fitting it all up in good order for services, donating it to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church ; which house was afterward donated to the Indiana Presbytery for school purposes, which was then named and afterward known as Delaney Academy.
Mr. Phelps has been associated with many of Evansville's nost noted improvements. He has been known as an intelli- gent laborer for the many railroad and other projects of the ast, whose histories are related elsewhere, and is to-day as arnest as of yore in the advocacy of any improvements for the building up of Evansville and this section.
Possessing a warm and sympathetic nature, his labors for the voor, and his generous gifts to the needy and oppressed, have btained for him a wide-spread reputation as a practical philan- hropist.
...
Rev. J. W. Youngblood.
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R EV. J. W. YOUNGBLOOD was a South Carolinian by birth, having been born in the Abbeville District, in 796, and is now in his 77th year. His parents were Samuel nd Jane Youngblood. The father was an old Revolutionary oldier, and suffered much in that war, often being robbed and lundered by the tories. There were ten children in the family, ven sons and three daughters, most of them living to be grown, ur subject being the eighth one of the family. The mother ied when he was about twelve years old, and his father then roke up housekeeping, leaving his children without the kindly fluences of a living mother. They had no education, for heir father was poor and in a slave country, where the common lass had little opportunity to better their condition. Under- sanding these disadvantages, and hearing of the new territories pened up to emigration, the father concluded to bring our sub- ct and his youngest brother to Tennessee to live among some quaintances and some kinsfolk. They left South Carolina
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with only one horse for the three, came through the State of Georgia, where they stopped a short time to recruit, they then turned through the Cherokee country, and had an opportunity of seeing a great number of these Indians every day. They were generelly friendly when they were not drinking, but when intoxicated could not be trusted. Rev. Youngblood calls up often to his friends many incidents that happened as the party passed through this nation. His father was quite a hunter and had got a large bell to put on their horse, so that when camp- ing out they would take a couple of hickory withes and plait them together and make what was called hopples and fasten the bell upon the horse for the night. Game was plenty in the nation, and the father had brought his rifle with him and would often give his sons the large bell to rattle along the road, while he would look for a deer through the brush. One day as they were rattling the bell along the road, the father stayed out hunting for so long a time that the boys became uneasy lest something had befallen him, and they concluded to turn back. Being alarmed, they continued to ring the bell and commenced shouting at the top of their voices. The noise soon gathered a large crowd of Indians and one of them spoke to the boys very roughly, and wanted to know what they meant by so much fuss. They were quieted, however, as soon as the lads were able to explain their situation.
Their journey proceeded, and they entered the State of Tennessee some time in Angust, 1811, where they remained about one year, and then came to Kentucky, staying there also about a year.
At this time the subject of our sketch came to Indiana Territory, this part of the country at that time being very thinly settled, but the people were very friendly, and dependant much on each other, the rules of good neighbors being observed very generally.
The face of the country resembled, however, a wilderness, the Indian moccasin tracks had hardly disappeared. The game such as bear, deer, elk, wolves and panthers, were in great abundance, and their meat served largely to feed the people.
About the Fall of 1813, our subject came to this section and was married September 21st, 1815, to Ann Musgrave, the cer-
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emony being probably one of the earliest ones performed in our immediate vicinity.
Eleven children were born to them, one daughter only dy- ing in infancy, the rest growing up to be heads of families, and all but three are still living.
It may be interesting to the reader to know how the people managed to live in this country at that early day. Of course they were comparatively poor and moneyless. They did not live so fast nor so extravagant as they do at the present time.
There were no mills and every man made his own mill and ground his own meal, and baked his own bread, sometimes in the ashes, and sometimes on a board before the fire, and again in what we called a " dutch oven." And no complaints against fortune went up from their rude tents
For clothing, they exchanged their merchandize, transport- ed by pack horses to the Cotton States, where they purchased the cotton, brought it back with them, and the women would card, spin and weave it by hand. One of these home-made garments would outwear three of the factory work.
The men in cold weather, dressed in skins of deer and other animals, which they were first compelled to kill.
Buckskin pants were considered elegant. The first time our subject ever saw Governor Ratliff Boone he remembers that he was dressed in his buckskin hunting apparel.
There was no church or school house throughout the entire region. The people were rough, and the only way they heard the gospel in their smoky cabins was when some minister who was pioneering in the western wilds would come into their set- tlement and assemble a congregation.
And God often wonderfully blessed the labors of those faithful men. These men had much to contend with, for the new country was sorely infested with horse-thieves, counterfeit- ers and house-breakers.
Many amusing incidents can be related by our subject in regard to the rough pioneer life of these early days; and no one can listen to him without feeling a profound reverence for this reverend gentleman himself, who, after a life of noble deeds, calmly awaits the call of his Master.
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No one is more eloquent and sanguine than he, in regard to the progress of our country, the clearing of a wilderness and the cultivation of the soil ; the building of churches ; the estab- lishing Sabbath Schools for the benefit of the young. The rise and progress in the arts and sciences, even during the last half century ; from all the inconveniences of the early days, he has lived to see railroads, steamboats, and the electric telegraph.
The life of this worthy gentleman is so intimately con- nected with the hardships of a by-gone generation, that a de- scription, as given, was necessary, in order that the reader could properly appreciate trials, After his father had settled his boys in Tennessee, he left them to their fate and returned to Caro- lina, where, while settling up his business, he died. Shortly after his marriage our subject joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and not very long afterwards the church gave him au- thority to preach ; and for some forty years he has labored zealously in the cause of Christ, doing much good throughout this section. He has often labored with his own hands for his support, and never coveted any man's silver and gold, or apparel -preaching the Truth, as it is in Jesus.
He is now the last one of the old ministers that is yet liv- ing Almost all of the old settlers who were living when he began his ministerial labors have died or removed to distant lands; but the reputation of Rev. J. W. Youngblood, for kind- ness to the poor, for generosity to his fellow-men, as well as his fervent piety and devotion to the cause of his Master, will never be forgotten.
The Social Experiment at New Harmony.
BY ROBERT DALE OWEN.
IN the Summer of 1824 there came to Braxfield a gentle- man whose visit to us there determined, in great meas- ure, the course of my future life.
Richard Flower, an experienced English agriculturist, possessed of considerable means, had emigrated, some years before, to the United States, and had settled at Albion, in the southeastern part of Illinois, and about twenty-five miles from a German vil- lage founded by emigrants from the Kingdom of Wurtemberg, schismatics of the Lutheran Church, led by their pastor George Rapp. These people came to America in 1804, settling first on the waters of Conequenessing, Pennsylvania ; afterwards, namely in 1813, on the Lower Wabash River and about fifteen miles from the town of Mount Vernon on the Ohio. There they pur- chased thirty thousand acres chiefly government land, and erected a village containing about a hundred and sixty buildings, one half brick or frame, the other half of logs. They held it to be a religious duty to imitate the primitive Christians, who " had all things in common " ;* to conform to St. Paul's opinion that celibacy is better than marriage ;} and desiring also to be like the early disciples, " of one heart and of one soul,"} they called their little town Harmonie.
Their experiment was a marvellous success in a pecuniary point of view; for at the time of their immigration their prop- erty did not exceed twenty-five dollars a head, while in twenty- one years-to-wit, in 1825-a fair estimate gave them two thousand dollars for each person - man, woman, and child ;
*Acts iv. 32. The land was entered in the names of the entire community; and was conveyed by Rapp, under a power of attorney from them to my father.
f1 Corinthians, vii. 8. They lived together as the Shakers do.
+ Acts iv. 3.
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probably ten times the average wealth throughout the United States ; for at that time each person in Indiana averaged but a hundred and fifty dollars of property, and even in Massachu- setts the average fell short of three hundred dollars for each adult and child. Intellectually and socially, however, it was doubtless a failure ; as an ecclesiastical autocracy, especially when it contravenes an important law of nature, must eventu- ally be. Rapp was absolute ruler, assuming to be such in virtue of a divine call ; and it was said, probably with truth, that he desired to sell out at Harmonie, because life there was getting to be easy and quiet, with leisure for thought ; and because he found it difficult to keep his people in order, except during the bustle and hard work which attend a new settlement. At all events he commisioned Mr. Flower to offer the entire Harmony property for sale.
The offer tempted my father. Here was a village ready built, a territory capable of supporting tens of thousands in a country where the expression of thought was free, and where people were unsophisticated. I listened with delight to Mr. Flower's account of a frontier life ; and when, one morning, my father asked me, " Well, Robert, what say you - New Lanark or Harmony ?" I answered, without hesitation, "" Harmony." Aside from the romance and the novelty, I think one prompting motive was, that if our family settled in Western America it would facilitate my marriage with Jessie.
Mr. Flower could not conceal from us his amazement, say- ing to me, I remember, " Does your father really think of giv- ing up a position like his, with every comfort and luxury, and taking his family to the wild life of the Far West ?" He did not know that my father's one ruling desire was for a vast the- atre on which to try his plan of social reform. Robert Owen thought he had found one; crossed the Atlantic - taking my brother William with him, and leaving me manager of the mills -in the Autumn of 1824; completed, in April, 1825, the pur- chase, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, of the Rapp village and twenty thousand acres of land ; and in the course of the Summer some eight hundred people had flocked in, in accordance with a public invitation given by him to " the indus- rious and well disposed " of all nations and creeds. Every dwel- ling house was filled.
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The purchase, though not judicious merely as a pecuniary investment, seeing that the estate lay in an interior nook of the country, off any main line of travel, actual or projected, and on a river navigable for steamers during a few months in the, year only, was eligible enough for my father's special purpose. The land around the village, of which three thousand acres were under cultivation, was of the richest quality of alluvial soil, level but above the highest water-mark, and in good farm- ing order. This valley-land was surrounded by a semicircular range of undulating hills, rising sixty or seventy feet above the plain below, and sweeping round about half a mile from the village on its southern side, On a portion of these hills where the descent was steep were vineyards in full bearing, covering eighteen acres and partly terraced. On the west, where this range of hills increased in height, is terminated abruptly on a " cut-off" of the Wabash River, which afforded water-power used to drive a large flour-mill ; and near by, on the precipi- tous hillside, was a quarry of freestone. Across the cut-off was an island containing three thousand acres, affording excellent woods pasture.
The village had been built on the bottom land, quarter of a mile from the river. Seen from the brow of the hill-range as one approached it from Mount Vernon it was picturesque enough literally embowered in trees, rows of black locusts mark- ing the street lines. Several large buildings stood out above the foliage, of which a spacious cruciform brick hall the trans- cept a hundred and thirty feet across, was the chief. There was also a church, a steam mill, a woolen factory, and several large boarding-houses. The private dwellings were small, each in a separate garden-spot. Adjoining the village on the south were extensive apple and peach orchards.
When my father first reached the place, he found among the Germans-its sole inhabitants -- indications of plenty and material comfort, but with scarcely a touch of fancy or orna- ment ; the only exceptions being a few flowers in the gardens, and what was called " The Labyrinth," a pleasure-ground laid out near the village with some taste, and intended -- so my father was told-as an emblematic representation of the life these colonists had chosen. It contained small groves and gar-
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dens, with numerous circuitous walks enclosed by high beech hedges and bordered with flowering shrubbery, but arranged with such intricacy that, without some Dædalus to furnish a clew, one might wander for hours and fail to reach a building erected in the center. This was a temple of rude material, but covered with vines of the grape and convolvulus, and its inte- rior neatly fitted up and prettily furnished. Thus George Rapp had sought to shadow forth to his followers the difficulties of attaining a state of peace and social harmony. The perplexing approach, the rough exterior of the shrine, and the elegance displayed within were to serve as types of toil and suffering, succeeded by happy repose.
The toil and suffering had left their mark, however, on the grave, stolid, often sad German faces. They looked well fed, warmly clothed - my father told me - and seemed free from anxiety. The animal had been sufficiently cared for; and that is a good deal in a world where millions can hardly keep the wolf from the door, drudge as they will, and where hundreds of millions, manage as they may, live in daily uncertainty whether, in the next week or month-chance of work or means of living failing-absolute penury may not fall to their lot. A shelter from life-wearying cares is something ; but a temple typ- ifies higher things-more than what we shall eat and what we shall drink and wherewithal we shall be clothed. Knapp's dis- ciples had bought these too dearly, - at expense of heart and soul. They purchased them by unquestioning submission to an autocrat who had been commissioned-perhaps as he really be- lieved, certainly as he alleged -- by God himself. He bade them do this and that, and they did it ; required them to say, as the disciples in Jerusalem said, that none of the things they pos- sessed were their own, and they said it; commanded them to forego wedded life in all its incidents, and to this also they assented.
Their experiment afforded conclusive proof that, if a com- munity of persons are willing to pay so high a price for abund- ant food, clothing, shelter and absolute freedom from pecuniary cares, they can readily obtain all this, working leisurely under a system of common labor, provided the dictator to whom they submit is a good business manager. The success of the Rapp-
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ites, such as it was, wonderfully encouraged my father. He felt sure that he could be far more successful than they, without the aid either of bodily and mental despotism or of celibacy. Aside from rational education, which he deemed indispensable, he trusted implicitly, as cure for all social and industrial ills, to the principle of co-operation.
There was much in the economical condition of England to lead a mind like my father's, accustomed to generalizations, and imbued with sanguine confidence in whatever he desired, to such a conclusion ; and; unless I here devote a page or two to a succinct statement-in mere outline it must be-of the main statistical facts whicn go to make up that strange and unprece- dented condition, I shall leave my readers without a clew to the motives which caused a successful business man like my father to relinquish wealth, domestic ease, affluent comforts, and an influential position, and to adventure, with a faith which admit- ted not even the possibility of failure, an untried experiment on an unknown field, then little better than a wilderness.
As a large manufacturer, much cogent evidence bearing on that condition had been brought home to him. Ten years before, Colquhoun had published his work on the Resources of the British Empire, and that had supplied important additional data.
My father felt that there was then-as there is now-one of the great problems of the age still to be solved : I can here but briefly state, not seek to solve it. It connects itself with the unexampled increase of productive power which human beings in civilized life have acquired in little more than a single century, and with the momentous question whether this vast gift of labor-saving inventions is to result in mitigation of the toil and melioration of the condition of the millions who have acquired it. Few persons realize the extent of this modern agency, the changed state of things it has brought about, or the effect of its introduction, so far, upon the masses, especially in European countries.
From certain Parliamentary reports made in 1815, in con- nection with Sir Robert Peel's Factory Bill (already alluded to), my father derived data in proof that the machinery em- ployed in Great Britain in cotton-spinning alone-in one branch,
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therefore, of one manufacture-superseded at that time the labor of eighty million adults; and he succeeded in proving, to the satisfaction of England's ablest statistician,* that if all the branches of the cotton, woolen, flax, and silk manufactures were included, the machine-saved labor it producing English textile fabrics exceeded in those days, the work which two hun- dred millions of operatives could not have turned out previous to the year 1760.
This statement of my father's attracted the attention of the British political economists of that day, was virtually adopted by them soon after, and became, as these vast inanimate powers increased, the foundation of successive calculations touching their aggregate amount in all branches of industry carried on in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1835 my father put down that aggregate as equal to the labor of four hundred million adults ; and estimates by recent English statisticians, brought up to the present time, vary from five hundred to seven hundred millions. We may safely assume the mean of these estimates-six hun- dred millions-as closely approximating the truth to-day.
But the population of the world is, in round numbers, twelve hundred millions ; and the usual estimate of the pro- ductive manual labor of a country is, that, it does not exceed that of a number of adult workinen equal to one fourth of its population. Thus, the daily labor of three hundred million abults represents the productive manual power of the world.
It follows that Great Britain and Ireland's labor saving machinery equals in productive action, the manual labor power of two world; as populous as this.
It follows, further, inasmuch as the present population of the British Isles is less than thirty millions, that seven millions and a half of adults represent the number of living operatives who control and manipulate that prodigious amount of inani- mate force.
Thus, in aid of the manual labor of seven and a half mill- ions of human workmen, Great Britain may be said to have imported, from the vast regions of invention, six hundred
*Colquhoun, whose celebrated work on a cognate subject is above referred to. See, for Robert Owen's conversation with Colquhoun on this subject, his (Owen's) autobiog- raphy, p. 127.
GRACE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
Corner Mulburry and Second Streets,
Erected 1873. BY THE
VINE STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, - Rev. C. B. H. Martin, Pastor.
ROBERT BOYD. Architect.
Brick Work and Slating, Carpenter and Joiner,
CONTRACTORS :
Win. Bedford, Jr. Stone Work, Albacker & Caden. Thomas Eaton. Galvanized Iron and Tin Work, J. B. Mesker.
BUILDING COMMITTEE :
WM E. FRENCH, N. M. GOODLETT, L. RUFFNER, JR.
FINANCE COMMITTEE :
SAM'L M ARCHER, CYPRIAN PRESTON, WM. G. BROWN.
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millions of powerful and passive slaves; slaves that consume neither food nor clothing; slaves that sleep not, weary not sicken not ; gigantic slaves that drain subterranean lakes in their master's service, or set in motion, at a touch from his hand, machinery under which the huge and solid buildings that contain it groan and shake; ingenious slaves that outrival, in the delicacy of their operations, the touch of man, and put to shame the best exertions of his steadiness and accuracy ; yet slaves, patient, submissive, obedient, from whom no rebellion need be feared, who cannot suffer cruelty nor experience pain.
These unwearying and inanimate slaves outnumber the human laborers who direct their operations as eighty to one. What is the result of this importation ?
If we shut our closet doors and refuse to take the answer from the state of things as it actually exists, we shall probably say that inestimable aid, thus sent down from Heaven as it were, to stand by and assist man in his severest toils, must have rendered him in easy circumstances, rich in all the necessarieg and comforts of life, a master instead of a slave, a being with leisure for enjoyment and improvement, a free man, delivered from the original curse which declared that in the sweat of his brow should man eat bread all the days of his life. But if rejecting mere inference, we step out among the realities around us, with eyes open and sympathies awake, we shall see, throughout the Old World, the new servants competing with those they might be made to serve. We shall see a contest going on in the market of labor, between wood and iron on the one hand, and human thews and sinews on the other ; a dread- ful contest, at which humanity shudders, and reason turns as- tonished away. We shall see masters engaging, as the cheapest most docile, and least troublesome help,§ the machine instead of the man. And we shall see the man, thus denied even the privilege to toil, shrink home, with sickening heart to the cellar where his wife and children herd, and sink down on its damp floor to ask of his despair where these things shall end,-wheth- er the soulless slaves, bred year by year from the teeming
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