History of Boone County, Indiana : With biographical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of old families, Volume I, Part 45

Author: Crist, L. M. (Leander Mead), 1837-1929
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Indianapolis, Ind. : A.W. Bowen
Number of Pages: 592


USA > Indiana > Boone County > History of Boone County, Indiana : With biographical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of old families, Volume I > Part 45


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48


499


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


FORTY-FOUR YEARS IN THE SCHOOL ROOM.


The subject of this sketch, Miss Mattie Matthews, a cultured Christian lady. has been a life-long resident of Boone county, Indiana. In early life she began teaching in a country district school, in the year 1868, when the demand for lady teachers was created by the decimated ranks caused by the bloody internecine strife between the North and the South over the question of civil rights. The following year, 1869, she entered the Thorntown grades, where she remained guiding the footsteps of recreant youth, and teaching their young ideas how to shoot, for the space of six years. It was here that we first made her acquaintance, and learned to love her gentle and pursuasive ways. She then went to Lebanon for one year, 1875. Not being able to forget her first love, she returned at the close of the year's successful work and took up work with her first love remaining in Thorntown until 1890, a period of fourteen successful, happy years. Again, strong induce- ments being urged upon her, namely to assume principalship of the schools there, she returned to the capital of Boone, resolving to make the science and art of teaching her life work. She applied herself assiduously to her new and complex duties and turned out pupils who became noted for brilliant scholarships in the states and in the Old World. To make note of her successes would make fine reading chapters in her life history, and would fill volumes. In the year 1912 she resigned her field of toil and sought a surcease from labor, crowned with the golden meed of praise which has rung down for centuries from the ages. "Well done, thou good and faith- ful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things."


LYDIA M. HOATH.


Rev. Lydia M. Hoath was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1867. Four years later she came with her parents to Thorntown, Indiana. At the proper age she was entered in the Old Brown Academy as a pupil. Here her child- hood and girlhood were spent in innocent glee and happiness. At the age of 12 years she united with the Methodist Episcopal church. When this acad- emy became merged into the public school she passed up through all its grades, until it was rebuilt and became "The Thorntown Commissioned High


500


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


School." From this, she graduated with the class of 1885. She entered the ranks as teacher, giving good satisfaction at Edinburg, Indiana, for two years. Then coming home, she taught in the neighborhood of Thorntown two years. She then took a trip west to Kansas City, Missouri, and while there accepted a fine business position for four years. Returning home she ac- cepted a call to teach Latin and mathematics for two years in the Thorntown High School. In 1897, she classified as junior at DePauw University. Recognizing a divine call to the ministry, she united with the Friends Church in 1901, recorded as a minister of the Western yearly meeting same year. The years since have been spent in Bible study, pastoral work and Bible teaching. Two years were employed in religious work as director in the Young Woman's Christian Association in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. A year was then spent at Oberlin, Ohio, studying for the ministry. The last three years of her pastoral work she has occupied the pulpit and taken charge of the work of Sugar Plain, Thorntown, Indiana, which work she accepted so as to be with her mother, who was left widowed in the homestead.


MABEL BONSALL.


The subject of this sketch was born in Burlington, Iowa, December 21, 1872. Her parents brought her to Thorntown in 1875, where at the school age she entered the public schools, and attended continuously until she graduated from the Thorntown High School in 1888. She immediately entered upon the work of teaching for the first two years in the country. She then attended the State Normal, graduating from there in 1896; afterwards taught in Lebanon, Edinburg, Franklin, New Albany, Alexan- dria, and graduated from the State University in 1900. When President Roosevelt sent Dr. E. B. Bryan to the Philippines to establish a normal school for the Filipinos, she went as one of the faculty of twenty-five teachers in 1902. Mathematics was her specialty. She remained there two years and four months. After she returned home, on account of having contracted malaria, and had recovered and rested up, she was appointed as one of a commission to meet at Yonkers, New York, to assist in drafting an arithme- tic for the Philippine schools. Her suggestions received the preference, and she was employed by The American Book concern of New York to


501


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


prepare an arithmetic suitable to the needs of the Filipinos; which was adopted for five years, by the commission of education in the Islands. She has since revised and added to the book, as their advancement required, and it is still retained in their schools. In 1908 she was called to the State Nor- mal at Terre Haute, and she has been there continuously ever since.


A FOREIGN MISSIONARY SIXTEEN YEARS IN CHINA.


Luella M. Masters, M. D., the subject of this article, attended the district school in Washington township, Boone county, Indiana; then attended the Frankfort High School, and from there went to "The Ladoga Normal," where she graduated. She taught several terms of school in the country, and taught one year in the Thorntown public schools. She attended the University, Syracuse, New York, one year, and then entered the Syracuse Medical College, Syracuse, New York, from which she graduated in 1891. While in Syracuse she joined the Student Volunteer Movement. In 1891, she was accepted by the N. W. branch of the Woman's Foreign Mis- sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in August, 1892, sailed for China from San Francisco. She has spent sixteen years in medical work in China, and while there had charge of a hospital for women and children; also opened medical work in the interior. While in China she did medical work at Foo Chow, Foo Chow City and Nencheng, South China : Chung King, West China, and at Tientsin, North China. She was in China during the vegetarian trouble in 1895, during the Boxer uprising in 1900, and during the Revolution, which began in 1911. The greater part of her mission work was at Foo Chow. In 1910 she returned, going via Trans Siberia railway to China. She was at Chung King, West China, only one year, when the Revolution broke out, and she, with hundreds of other refugees, was ordered to Shanghai for safety. While a refugee she did two months post-graduate medical work in Tropical diseases; three months medical work with the Methodist South at Soo Chow (the Venice of China). In June, 1912, she was sent to take charge of the medical work at Tientsin, where she remained until March, 1913. In April, 1913, she returned to the States, and at present is practicing in Thorntown, her former home before going to foreign lands.


CHAPTER XXI.


BOONE COUNTY CEMETERIES.


If there was anything dearer to the heart of the Aborigine than his hunt- ing ground, it was his burial place. Their usual method in burying their dead, was to cover the body with a slab of wood, and then place five or six inches of dirt over that; but this method was not always followed. In one instance the body of a child was found buried in a hollow log. In another case the body of an old chief was placed, according to his request, in the branches of a tree where his bones yet remained when the first settlers came. For generations, the child of the forest would visit the burial place of his fathers, and ever held it in his memory as sacred. As far back as the white man's knowledge of the trading-place of Kawazakee or Thorntown, there were at least three of these sacred spots, one on the hill on the west side of the Prairie creek; and one on the hills on the east side of Prairie creek, a third one about a mile further east on the Hamill farm. Long after the In- dians sold out their reserve, the chiefs and principal Indians, were accus- tomed to return and visit the burying places of their fathers. The early white settlers respected these resting places of these warriors, and they re- mained undisturbed by the settlers; a story is extant, that an archaeologist from Yale, came one time, and exhumed a skeleton from the Indian grave- yard and the State punished him severely, which taught all intruders a lesson. The white man, too, was immortal, and soon after coming to this new Western wild, being exposed to its hardships, miasmas and privations, he, too, passed away, thus making the necessity of a burying ground. Some high knoll on his own premises, or, neighbors near by, was selected. In this way each cemetery was first a private graveyard, being increased by the addition from time to time of some neighbor or friend, and in this way "God's Acre" first took its start. The first grave of a white person known in this "Indian Reserve" was that of a young girl, just entering her teens, known in history as Jemima Harness. The family moved away. No one was ever buried by the side of her, and the sacred spot remains to this day


503


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


AKHILL


cyO


-Argus-Enterprise.


ARCHWAY-BUILT BY THE FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS.


504


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


a lonely, unmarked grave. Civilization owes it to her to plant there a tomb to her memory. Far too many burial places were established. Some be- came only dear to a single family, others were deserted or removed; only those which became of community interest remained and are being devel- oped. There are at least, in this county, sixty burying places, not counting those which belong exclusively to a family. They are distributed generally over the county from three to six in a township. In these consecrated spots are resting this day all that remains of the early pioneers of this county. Some of these resting places are organized and incorporated, others are not. Some are in charge of the township trustee, under the provisions of the law regarding cemeteries. Not a few are being discontinued, because the friends have died or have moved away.


We can not here enumerate and locate each, but will simply mention those with which all are most familiar: Oak Hill, Lebanon, Center town- ship; St. Joseph, Lebanon, Center township; Brown's Wonder, Center town- ship; Elizaville, Clinton township; Hopewell, Clinton township; Bethel, Ma- rion township; Mud Creek (Salem), Clinton township; Bethel, Washing- ton township; Mechanicsburg, Washington township; Jones, Marion town- ship; Mount's Run, Union township; Center, Center township; Lutheran, Eagle township; Pleasant View, Union township; Jones, Union township; Pitzer, Union township; Mt. Tabor, Perry township; Smith, Perry town- ship; Howard, Perry township; Johnson, Perry township; Mount Union, Center township; Robinson, Harrison township; Old Union, Jackson town- ship; Mt. Zion, Jackson township; Pleasant View, Jefferson township; Ca- son (Dover), Jefferson township; Cox, Jefferson township; Poplar Grove, Harrison township; Brockway, Jackson township; Jamestown, Jackson township; Sugar Plain, Sugar Creek township; Taylor (Hazelrigg), Jeffer- son township: Beck, Washington township; Salem, Eagle township; Bethel (Precinct), Washington township; Milledgeville, Harrison township; Ross- ton, Union township; Salem (near Zionsville), Eagle township; The Old Graveyard, Thorntown, Sugar Creek township; Maple Lawn, Sugar Creek township; Brush Creek, Washington township.


SKELETON OF INDIAN CHIEF.


While workmen were excavating a small outlet for an eave-trough at the home of Frank Coolman, at Thorntown, another Indian skeleton was un-


505


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


earthed. Those who saw the skeleton and the Indian relics which were found buried with it thought the skeleton that of a former Indian chief. The skeleton was in a fairly good state of preservation. With the body was found a nine by twelve inch silver cross with the initials P. H., and word Montreal inscribed thereon. This is the third cross found buried with Indian skeletons within the past few years, and the third skeleton found buried on the Coolman premises. A stone peace pipe, a gold thimble and other trinkets were also found. The Indian graves have all been unearthed at a depth of about two feet.


John Hewitt is in possession of a peculiar design in silver that was found where the relics of crosses and bracelets were found in the exhume on front street. The figure seemed to be a six pointed star in looks and all inclosed with a ring. It was a curio upon which you could place the pencil and trace all the lines without removing the pencil.


INDIAN LORE.


James Davis' Story of the Tree that Laughed and Cried.


Over the nom de plume of "Ancient Mariner" the following appeared in the LaFayette Sunday Times, of March 15, 1914:


I met a man on a traction car the other day who told me that James Davis was dead. He was a very old man. I knew him and my father and grandfather knew him. Then I thought of a story he told me about a big tree that laughed and cried. He and I were sitting on a bench in front of the postoffice in Thorntown, the day the beautiful fountain given the town by a General Mills as a monument to his father and mother, was dedicated and he told me the story. I believe I will try and tell it to the boys and girls who read the Sunday Times. I mean the little boys and girls.


Thorntown is on the Big Four railroad, about half way between LaFay- ette and Indianapolis. It is a very old town, older than LaFayette or Indi- anapolis. It was an Indian town long before it was a white man's town. There were a great many thorn trees growing around there with long sharp thorns on them and that was why it was named Thorntown. Of course the Indian word for Thorntown [Ka-we-ah'-ke-un-gi], was different but that was what it meant. The town is located on a fine level plat of land and on


506


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


the east side down a nice grassy, sloping hill, is Prairie creek. All along at the top of the hill were a lot of fine big oak trees, just a good deal like the trees at Battle Ground. Jimmy's home was on this hill and one of the largest of these trees was in his yard.


Jimmie Davis was one of the liveliest boys you ever saw. He could shoot with a bow and arrow and throw awfully straight with a sling. In summer time he ran barefooted and hunted-and fished -- and swam. In win- ter he skated, hunted rabbits with his dog and threw snow balls. In fact, some of the neighbors thought Jimmie was a little terror; but he was not. He was just so full of life and fun that he could not be awake and be still a min- ute. He was really a very kind hearted little boy.


There were two very odd things about the big oak tree that grew in Jimmy's yard. One was that it made a strange noise when the wind blew, especially at night. Sometimes it would wake Jimmy's father and he often said he was going to cut it down but he never did. The other odd thing was that there were no limbs on the tree until it got away up above the house ex- cept at a place about as high as a second story window, a big limb grew right straight out. It was almost as big as a man's body. All the boys and girls of the town would gather and play in the shade on the hillside and they were always talking about what a nice limb that was to put a swing on. Ropes were very scarce and high priced and people did not have much money then, so Jimmy took the boys and they went to the woods and got a big wild grape vine.


The next thing was to get it fastened around the limb. The boys got a long pole and Jimmy climbed up to the limb, with a string in his mouth to pull up the vine. When he got astride of the limb and boosted himself along about ten feet, he came to something that fairly made his hair stand straight up. There was a nice trough or box-like hole cut in the limb. It was about eight inches wide and three feet long and over six inches deep, and in it was the skeleton of a little Indian boy or girl, laying there just perfect. Jimmy scampered down, told all his playmates and then ran for his papa, who got a long ladder and climbed up to see. Then all the little boys and girls climbed up, and everybody from the town came. Then Jimmy's father went down by the creek and got a big piece of bark and covered it over nice so the rain would not rain in on it any more.


Long before, an Indian had lived under that tree and his little girl had


507


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


died and he could not bear the thought of putting her in the ground, so he had climbed up and cut that place in the limb and laid her there, where she could swing in the breezes and the birds would sing to her.


That night the wind blew gently and Jimmy's room being upstairs on that side of the house, he heard the noise, but it was not a strange noise at all. It was "Tee he, tee he, tee he" and "oo, ho, oo, ho, la lee, la lee," and all just like a little Indian girl swinging and singing in the tree. At first he was a bit scared and got up easy and looked out at the window, but he could not see a thing but the big limb just swinging in the breeze. Every night when the breeze would blow Jimmy would hear the singing and laughing.


The fall of the year came and one night it turned cold suddenly and rained and it turned to sleet and the wind blew hard. Something waked Jimmy and he listened, but it was not singing and laughing he heard. It was crying and shivery wailing and screaming. He knew the little Indian girl was cold and scared, and he was scared too, and he cried, and crawled away down in his bed and covered up his head. Pretty soon he heard two piercing screams and then a big crash. Then everything was still. When he went out in the yard the next morning the big limb was laying on the ground all broken. Jimmy hunted all round and found two little copper ninger rings and some pretty beads.


Jimmy never heard any more singing and laughing in the tree after that, but he kept the rings and the beads to remember the little Indian girl that so often sang him to sleep.


The house Jimmy lived in is gone long ago and now Jimmy, who grew up to be a fine man, Mr. James Davis, is gone. All the other little boys and girls who played with him are gone too, Grandma Burk and Hines and Cones. I think Camilla White's great-grandma Buckles was one of the little girls who was helped up the ladder.


The big tree died and rotted away long ago, but if you ever go to Thorn- town inquire for my friend, Theodore Van Eaton, and he will take you over back of the old Uncle Billy Roberts' home and show you where the tree stood, or Mr. McCurry, the clothier, can show you. It was about one square south of where his great-grandfather lived and was buried.


Here is another story. There was an Indian chief living at Thorn- town who had a very beautiful daughter. Her name, as near as I can indi- cate the sound, was Wah-neh-te-mah-nah. It meant, some said, "Sunbeam


508


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


in the Morning," and some said, "Rainbow in the Morning." She must have been something of a coquette, anyway there were two young Indian braves who were very much smitten with her. One named Tonawah lived in Thorntown and the other was a Shawnee who lived mostly near Shawnee Mound. The Thorntown Indians were Miamis and of course they did not like the Shawnees very well and would not have permitted them to go into the village to pay court, although the Shawnee went sometimes on pretended friendly visits, but really to see Wahnehtemahnah. When he wanted to visit Wahnehtemahnah, he would slip up into a thicket and whistle like a bird. She would be listening and would slip away and join him and they would go and spend the afternoon on the banks of Wolf creek about two miles west of the village. This creek was called Wolf creek (in Indian) be- cause once when the Indian chief was fishing a hungry wolf attacked him and he caught it in his hands and held its head under the water until it was drowned.


The Shawnee Indian brave's name was a word meaning "black bass fish." He was named that because he caught a very large black bass fish when he was a very little boy. One summer afternoon when he had been visiting, Black Bass came back so close to the village that Tonawah saw him and drew his bow and shot just as Black Bass threw his tomahawk. The arrow pierced Black Bass' heart and the tomahawk buried its blade in Tona- wah's brain, and both dropped dead. Wahnehtemahnah had run a little ways and stopped beside a big tree. When she saw both drop she screamed, dropped her bright shawl and ran. Other Indians hearing her scream came quickly, found the two dead, and her shawl. They hunted all night for her but did not find her until the next day. She had run south, circling around near where the Big Four depot now is, down the hill across Prairie creek, getting her moccasins wet, and to the Indian cemetery. There they found her lying dead with a long sharp thorn piercing her heart.


The Indians buried her there, then built a log pen about four feet high around the grave and squatted the dead Indian brave at the foot of the grave, with the arrow through his heart, and the other at the head of the grave with the tomahawk sticking in his head. Then they covered the pen with brush. The pen was still standing when my grandfather came to Indi- ana, but some of the logs were badly rotted. Several years later grandfather, whose first name was Joseph, and his brother Wesley, and another brother,


509


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


John, and James Smith, a brother-in-law, were hunting. They came by there, cut some more logs and rebuilt the pen. After that it was repaired with rails a few times. It was still there when I was a very little boy. I saw it and heard this story. It is all gone now.


If you ever go automobile riding to Thorntown, go west on Main street, past the fountain two squares, and down the street to the left about fifty or sixty feet, where the Indians killed each other, and over east in the second back yard is about where the tree stood that Wahnehtemahnah drop- ped her shawl by. Then you can ride out east across Prairie creek, up the hill, and a little farther on see on the left the old Indian grave yard. It has never been plowed. The grave is about half way along and west of two trees, if they still are standing,-and they are.


A REAL STORY OF 1830.


Back in the early years of Thorntown, when the village was just on the border of civilization; at the time when the Red men made occasional visits to the old trading village of Kaweahkeungi, and took farewells of their hunt- ing-grounds and the burial places of their fathers; there lived on Church street a family of pale-faces. It was the maternal grandparents of our worthy trustee elect, S. V. Titus. The front name of the pater-familias of the manor was George. His spacious cabin of two rooms stood on the north side of the street, between Vine and Market, just a little west of the home of our es- teemed citizen Cal Graves. There were no frame buildings on this first street of the young town of that day, but here and there a log cabin, stretching from West street to the burial grounds of the Red men on what afterwards was known as the Curry Hill. These houses were all after the same pattern, with variations of the shape of the logs from round to hewn, and from one room to two or more with attics above. These grandparents' home was a little aristocratic for that day. It actually had a door made of boards, and a floor of boards and a fire place with chimney made of mind and sticks to carry off the smoke. Just back of the home a little to the northwest, was a gurgling spring called in the Indian tongue Kahwazakee, around which they often gathered from the excitement of the chase to quench their thirst. We can not stop to tell you how old and young gathered at the spring, and the


510


BOONE COUNTY, INDIANA.


papooses played, and the lithe maidens of the woods ran with bottles of hide, gourds and polished horns, and dipped them full to the brim of the cooling liquid. The white man made much of this spring afterwards. He curbed it, placed rock for it to bound laughingly over, and made cement tiling to lead it across the field north, to the track of the iron horse, to quench the thirst of the steed of iron when it speeded by. We are not so much concerned about the old spring, as we are the inmates of the cabin home. The spring was simply the attraction that led up to the more exciting events. It lured visitors to that spot, sacred to the memory of those who had quaffed of its cooling sparkles in the past. No Indian ever visited the old village from their new home on the banks of the Wabash, without visiting the old spring, and quenching his thirst from its sweet and refreshing waters. One bright morn- ing in early spring before the buds had bursted their winter overcoats and thrown off their jackets and before the robin built its nest, George was from the home at some log rolling or cabin raising, and the cherub of the home, the mother of S. V. Titus was fast asleep in the artistic sugar trough cradle, that the father with adz and the skill of his own hands had hewed out of a large linn log. He had placed beneath it polished rockers upon which it was swung to and fro to lull to sleep the little one. All was quiet within and without. The babe was snugly tucked in the cradle soft and warm and the busy housewife was about her morning work, when a glance through the partly opened door revealed to her the approaching line of In- dians in single file coming from the spring to the home. Dreadful fear for the safety of her babe seized her. She quickly stepped to the door. Her first thought was to close and bolt it. The Indians were too close at hand. It would look like banging the door in their faces, which would be unkind and unhospitable. No pioneer would be guilty of such a breach of etiquette even to an Indian. She stood her ground at the entrance of her citadel ready to do and dare for its defense and for her innocent. The Indians lined up before the door. The mother's heart rose to her throat, almost smothered with fear. There stood the braves of the woods, clothed in buck-skin and trimmed with turkey feathers about the limbs, up the back with a cluster on the back of the head. There was Shaw-po-to-se-aw the medicine man, with his companions O-megh-qua, Wetche-ke-te-ta, Toth-te-non-ga, Ke-osa-osa- kun-ga, Ne-go-ta-kaup-wa and Wa-haw-ko-se-aw, Oseas and Mackinsas. There they stood around the door of the cabin silent, somber and savage look-




Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.