USA > Indiana > Howard County > History of Howard County, Indiana, Vol I > Part 5
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soon acquired habits of correct and regular transaction of the public business. It is said of the officers of these early years of the county, that they were not controlled by rings nor special interests; that they put forth their best efforts to serve the people. In 1853 Greene and Jackson townships were subdivided into three townships-Lib- erty, Jackson and Union, and in 1858 Samuel Woody and Elijah Johnson presented a petition of several citizens of Clinton county asking to be annexed to Howard county. Early in 1859 the formal proceedings were completed and Honey Creek township was added to the roll of Howard county townships, making, as it has since re- mained, a county of eleven townships.
SURVEYS.
The boundary line and all lands west of that line were sur- veyed in 1838. Because of the fact, that the seven mile strip was first surveyed and the lands placed on the market, the first settle- ments were in this part of the county. The remainder of the county was not surveyed until 1846-7. In this survey Benjamin Harden, of Johnson county, Indiana, ran out the range and township lines ; that is, he blocked out the lands into districts six miles square. Van Ness, of Logansport, subdivided these squares into sections one mile square, and on each side of each section at the middle point a corner was established subdividing the section into quarter sec- tions. The whole system of range lines, township lines and section lines is in accordance with directions from the general land office at Washington. These general instructions for the survey of public lands in Indiana required that all lands should be located with reference to two principal lines-one running east and west and called the Base Line, and the other running north and south and called the First Principal Meridian. The Base Line is in the
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OF HOWARD COUNTY.
southern part of the state and the First Principal Meridian is slight- ly west of the middle of the state and is five miles west of Howard county. They intersect each other in the southern part of Orange county.
The township lines run east and west, parallel to the Base Line and are six miles apart. The first six mile strip north of the Base Line is in township I, north ; the next six mile strip is in township 2, north, and so on north. Kokomo is chiefly in township 24 north. Meridians or range lines run north and south, parallel with the First Principal Meridian and are six miles apart. The first six mile strip east of the First Principal Meridian is in range I, east, and so on east. A congressional township is one of these six miles square tracts bounded on the east and west by range lines and on the north and south by township lines. A congressional township is a square territory containing thirty-six square miles or thirty-six sections. The sections in a township are numbered by beginning at the section in the northeast corner and numbering that I, and the next one west 2, the next one west 3, and thus to the west line, the last one being 6, and then beginning at the west end of the next row south calling the first one 7, the next east 8 and thus until the east side is reached and then starting at the east end of the next row south and going west and thus back and forth until the south side is reached and the last section is number 36.
From the organization of the county until the survey of the lands in 1846-7, there had been a large incoming tide of settlers, and the county was rapidly settled ; but no one was able to tell where his lines were and two or more settlers were liable to make improve- ments on the same tract of land, and it actually occurred that some failed to get their improvements on the right tract of land. There was more or less confusion in these first settlements.
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THE PRE-EMPTION LAW.
The pre-emption law was passed in congress, August 3. 1846. After its passage settlers rapidly endeavored to secure homes in ac- cordance with its provision. The usual procedure in a claim was first to select a building site, then to cut down the saplings and make some brush heaps and then to build a shanty ten or twelve feet square of poles and cover it with bark or clapboards, and sleep in it at least one night.
It was his claim then and he could go back to move his family and no one else could "jump" his claim. Some people did quite a business in taking and selling claims. They would take as desirable a claim as they could and make some improvement, and then sell out to a new comer and then take another and make other improve- ments and sell again. A new comer often was willing to pay fifty dollars or one hundred dollars rather than go back into marshy level lands away from the rolling lands along the streams of water.
That the public lands might become the homes of actual settlers certain improvement and evidences of intention to settle upon them were required in addition to the purchase price before the issu- ance of patents by the government for the lands. The land offices for filing claims to these lands were at Indianapolis for all south of township 24; at Winamac for all north of township 23, and west of range line 5 ; at Ft. Wayne for all east of range line 5 and north of township 23.
The old state constitution before its revision in 1850, attempted to make the civil township identical with the congressional town- ship. There were then three township trustees for each township instead of one as now.
By law the sixteenth section of land in each congressional township was set apart for school purposes and when sold the money was to go into the permanent school fund.
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OF HOWARD COUNTY.
Reference has already been made to the fact that at the first election held in the county, the result was a tie, twelve Democrat and twelve Whig votes; that was in the presidential election of 1840, and was in the portion of the county west of the boundary line. In the fall of 1847 Dr. Corydon Richmond defeated Dr. J. H. Kern (father of John W. Kern), by seventeen votes. Adam Clark, Democrat, was elected county clerk in 1854 and again in 1858. In the election of 1858 the county was so evenly balanced that the re- sult of the election of county auditor hinged on the admission of the vote of Honey Creek township. If the vote of Honey Creek town- ship was counted in the vote of Howard county, James A. Wild- man, Republican, was elected; if the vote of Honey Creek was not counted, Peter Hersleb, Democrat, was elected. Honey Creek was attached to Howard county and that gave Wildman, Republican, a majority. The political campaign of 1860 was the most intense of any in its history. The Democrats were disposed to concede a small majority in the county. Certain wagers were made by local Democrats that Morton, Republican, would have a majority not exceeding three hundred in the county over Hendricks, Democrat. Morton's majority of more than six hundred was a mighty sur- prise. The county since then has been overwhelmingly and uni- formly Republican, except in two instances, a Democrat having been twice elected surveyor.
Since the county has taken fixed and permanent form it has been eleven miles wide and twenty-seven miles long and has an area of two hundred and ninety-five and one half square miles. Cass and Miami counties bound it on the north, Grant on the east, Tipton and Clinton on the south and Clinton and Carroll on the west.
The natural drainage of the county is good; Wild Cat flows through the entire county from east to west ; on the south side Ko- komo creek and Little Wild Cat creek and Honey creek flow into
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Wild Cat and thus drain or afford outlets for drains for the south part of the county; On the north side Lilly creek, Pipe creek and Deer creek drain or afford outlets for drains for that part of the county.
PIONEER LIFE IN HOWARD COUNTY.
Pioneer life as it existed in Howard county in the forties has long since completely ceased to exist. Circumstances and condi- tions which produced and called it forth have passed away, and it is difficult now to convey an intelligible idea of it.
Conditions have so changed in the past sixty years that we are practically living in another world.
The pioneers of that early time in our county history were mostly persons of limited worldly possessions, who were looking for opportunities to secure homes for themselves and their families. Many of them were young people, or fathers and mothers with families of young people for whom they wished to give a start in life by getting possession of land while it was cheap in price.
Having heard of excellent lands out in the Indian country that were either on the market or soon would be, and that by going and taking a claim, making certain improvements and paying almost a nominal price each would come into the ownership of forty acres, eighty acres, or one hundred and sixty acres of land that he could improve into a good farm home in a few years. Leaving wife to look after things while he was gone to hunt a new home, the home- seeker went out, sometimes alone and on foot, sometimes on horse- back and sometimes two or more would go together, providing themselves with wagon and team and a regular camping outfit. After selecting the site of the future home and taking the necessary
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OF HOWARD COUNTY.
steps to secure it, he returned for his family, blazing the trees on his way back, to guide him in his moving.
PATHS OF EARLY DAYS.
There were no traveled highways then. There were a few Indian traces, or paths, leading to the principal points on the out- side of the Reserve. These led to Noblesville on the south, to Frankfort on the southwest, to Burlington and Delphi on the west, to Logansport on the northwest, and Peru on the north; to Mar- ion and Wabash and other points on the northeast. Many of the early settlers on the south side came from Hamilton and Boone counties by way of the Noblesville trace. The settler, with his wagon and team, more frequently an ox team, must of necessity cut out his own wagon road and so made slow progress. He carried a limited housekeeping outfit, a stock of provisions, enough to last until the family could be settled in the new home and he could re- turn for a fresh supply.
This new home was a "cabin" in the clearing. The timber was cut away on the building site so that there would be no danger from trees blowing down or falling on the cabin. The cabin was built of round logs, not dressed, cut from the trees round about the future home. The ends of the logs were notched and saddled so that they would fit upon each other at the house corners; chunks were placed in the spaces or cracks between the logs and then daubed with mud, the mud being pressed into place and smoothed down with the bare hand, the finished job showing the finger prints. The floors were laid on sleepers made out of round logs hewn off on one side with a broad-axe, and were of puncheons, or thick slabs split from ash, oak, hickory or elm logs and dressed off with a broad-axe. They had no ceilings, but lofts instead, supported by
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round poles for joists. The roofs were covered with clapboards held in place with weight poles kept up by "knees."
CABIN FURNISHINGS.
The chimney had pounded earth jambs and packed mud hearths, and sticks and clay upper part. It is said that one of the last things of their evening vigil before retiring was to go out and inspect the chimney to see that it was not on fire. The fireplaces of those old-time chimneys were capacious affairs and held quite a pile of wood. In the evening, after the chores were done, the fami- ly sat about the blazing, crackling fire of logs and smaller pieces of wood in these huge fireplaces and enjoyed to the full the bright- ness, the warmth and the cheerfulness of the open fire in their one- room house. These open fireplaces were not only the heating plant, but also the cooking range of the home. The patient wife and mother, with her scant store of cooking utensils, cooked the meals of the family on the hearth with live coals shoveled from the fire- place. The blazing fires also furnished much of the light of the house, making a light far superior to the tallow candle. The door or doors were in keeping with the rest of the house-made of thin slabs, hewn smooth and hung with wooden hinges and fastened with a wooden latch. A string was fastened to the latch and was hung on the outside by passing the end through a small hole above the latch, so that the end would be suspended on the outside. At night, when all were in, the string would be pulled in and no one on the outside could lift the latch, and thus the door was locked to outsiders. When the latch string hung out neighbors deemed it a useless formality to ring the door bell, but pulled the string, lifted the latch and walked in. Hence the origin of the hospitable ex- clamation, "My latch string hangs out."
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OF HOWARD COUNTY.
They drew the water from wells with a windlass, a sweep or a pole with a natural hook to it. A sweep was a pole mounted in the fork of an upright pole set in the ground, with a bucket fastened to one end of the mounted pole by a rope long enough to let the buck- et to the water when that end of the mounted pole was drawn down; the outer end of the pole, being heavier, helped to lift the bucket of water.
CLEARING THE LAND.
Having erected his cabin and a rude stable the pioneer at once set about clearing the land for a garden and a patch of corn. This was done by cutting the smaller trees and the bushes and piling them about the larger trees and burning them, thus killing the larger trees at once and destroying the shade. Breaking the ground was done with a jumping shovel, a shovel-plow, with a short, thick beam and an upright cutter extending to the point of the shovel. The ground was full of green roots, and it took strength and pa- tience to do what at best was a poor job of breaking. The corn was planted by hand, covered with a hoe and cultivated by hand with a single shovel plow and the hoe-mostly with the latter. Later clearings were made by first deadening the timber, that is, girdling the trees and allowing them to stand two or three years or longer for the timber to die and dry out so that it would burn better in the heaps. When it was ready to clear much of the timber would be cut down and burned, chopped or sawed into suitable lengths for rolling, and at an appointed day there would be a log-rolling, to which all the neighbors would be invited. The men would come, bringing their neat handspikes, well seasoned and strong. A yoke of oxen was nearly always present to assist in getting heavy logs into place. Most logs, however, were rolled or carried by the men with their spikes, and many feats of strength in lifting were shown.
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The men always worked with a will and logs were rapidly piled in heaps. After the logs were piled the man and his boys, sometimes the girls, piled the trash and smaller logs on the heaps and burned them. Stooping and picking trash all day long and burning log heaps in smoking clearings deserve to have a place in the class of the hardest and most disagreeable of all work. The early fields had many standing dead trees and these continued to fall, generally in the crop season, for several years, and always were very much in the way. All rows were the proverbial "stumpy row to hoe." The hoe was the indispensable agricultural tool-a heavy, clumsy tool, not suited to make the boy on the farm enthusiastic in his calling.
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS.
The other cultivating tool was a heavy single shovel plow, sometimes known as the "bull-tongue," which required three trips to the row to plow out the weeds between the rows. Planting was done by crossing off the field one way with this single shovel plow into furrows the width of corn rows and then making furrows crossing these with the same plow, followed by a person dropping the corn into the crosses; dropping the corn was often done by a woman, as being light work, and the corn was covered by men and boys with hoes, generally three persons did the covering. Thus the planting force was one man to lay off the ground into rows, one person to drop the corn, and three with hoes to cover. Corn was the first crop grown ; soon, however, wheat growing was attempted. This was done by a person carrying a part of a sack of wheat across the shoulders and sowing it broadcast with the hand as he walked. He was followed, if in the corn, with a man with his single shovel plow, pulling down the weeds (the weeds grew luxuriantly in the new ground) and partially plowing under the wheat; if on ground
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OF HOWARD COUNTY,
that had been broken for wheat, with an A harrow. Because of the fertility of the fresh new soil this method of farming produced good crops.
The harvesting of the wheat was done with reap hooks by the men and women, for the women often helped in the wheat harvest. With one hand they seized a handful of grain, and with the other they cut it off with the reap hook. Each bound his or her sheaves. This was a slow, laborious mode of harvesting. The coming of the grain cradle a few years later was hailed as a great advance. When one man cut the grain and threw it into swaths, ready for another man to gather up and bind that was thought up-to-date farming. The threshing was done either with a flail or by spread- ing on a threshing floor and tramping with horses until the kernels were loosened from the chaff. The flail was a short pole or spike, with a shorter pole or spike fastened to the end of it with a stout withe or thong, and required an expert to use it without danger to the user's head, for in the overhead swing of the flail the sus- pended end, which was intended to hit the grain with its full length, was liable to make a head-on collision with the user's head.
After the separation of the straw from the wheat and chaff by forking, the wheat and chaff were run through a fanning mill and the chaff blown out. It was all hand work from start to finish- slow, tedious and laborious, and allowed the growing of limited crops only.
CORN.
Corn was the staple crop of the early settlers. It was the food crop of their stock and largely for themselves. Corn-bread, mush and milk were their principal articles of diet.
Mills for the grinding of the grain were not plentiful nor con- venient. There were a few "corn crackers," home-made affairs,
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manufactured from boulders by flattening and roughing the sur- face and fixed to turn one face on the other. This mill crushed the corn as it passed between the faces of the boulders, the upper one revolving on the lower. Nathan C. Beals, who lived not far northeast of Oakford in very early times, had one.
Mills operated by water power were the main reliance of the early settlers, both for grinding grain and sawing lumber.
The clothing of that time was also largely of home manufac- ture. The farmer grew flax, which he pulled and rotted and scutched. The good housewife spun the tow on hier wheel and often wove it herself. The linen garments were possibly a little rough and coarse, but were soon bleached into snowy whiteness. The farmer also had a flock of sheep and grew the wool that was con- verted into home-made woolen goods. The wool was scoured and picked at home, the men and boys helping on rainy days. Ofttimes there were wool pickings, to which the neighbor women were in- vited. These were social occasions and were real red-letter days in the social life of the community. After the wool was picked it was taken to a woolen mill and made into rolls, and then brought back home to be spun into yarn. The yarn was dyed or colored, and some of it was woven into cloth for the clothing of the men and women and the boys and girls of the home, and the other part was twisted into yarn for stockings and socks for all, and then would begin a season of knitting. The women would rise up early in the morning to knit and would sit up late at night for the same pur- pose. Woolsey-linsey dresses and jeans coats and pants were the fashionable clothing of the time. Not only was the cloth for the clothing home-made, but the various garments were home-made and hand-made also, for there were no homes into which a sewing machine had come. All the sewing was done by hand.
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OF HOWARD COUNTY.
THE WOMEN HELPED.
The wives and mothers and daughters, too, of the pioneer period, were very industrious, for in addition to the various kinds of work already referred to which they did, they also attended to the household cares, the rearing of the families, the milking of the cows and a great number of other things, as they presented them- selves. They were brave, uncomplaining burden bearers, who cheerfully and well did their full share in transforming the wilder- ness into a country of pleasant homes. We shall do well if we al- ways pay loving tribute to their memory.
Reference has already been made to the effect that the first settlers sought homes on the rolling lands along the watercourses. These lands were soon taken, and the later comers had to go back into the level lands for their homes. These lands being level and covered with fallen timber held the water so that it did not flow away readily, and the country was thus rendered swampy and wet for much of the year.
SEARCHING FOR A BUILDING SITE.
The settler, after looking about and finding a knoll sufficiently dry for building purposes, would locate. He had a double work to do in clearing his land and in making surface drains or ditches to carry off the water. There were certain natural channels, which, when the logs and other obstructions were removed, and were deepened and straightened, served as fair drains. At first open channels were thrown out in the fields to permit the water to flow away. These were so much in the way that the farmers cut ditch timbers out of the oak trees, then in the way, and placed them in these drains after deepening them, covering the stringers or side
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pieces with slabs or cross headers, and then filling in with dirt, thus making good underground drains. The benefit was so marked that the farmers rushed the construction of wooden drains, cutting the channels or ditches themselves and having the boys to saw the ditch timbers with the old plain-toothed saws without drags. There never was a man who remembered the time he spent as a boy in sawing ditch timber except with the utmost aversion.
These swampy, wet lands when drained were by far the rich- est and most productive lands. The soil was black and deep, and when underdrained dried off quickly and yielded immense crops. After a few years the timber ditches began to decay and it was necessary to replace them with new ones. Meanwhile a good tile clay had been found in many places and tile mills and kilns were turning out red tile in large numbers. Farmers, therefore, turned their attention to putting in permanent drains of red tile. Tile drainage has been continued since by putting in regular drainage systems, using large sized tiles, until now the wet lands of Howard county are no longer wet lands. Because large areas have needed a common drainage and many farms have needed the same drain- age system, the county has constructed many excellent public drains and drainage systems.
PUBLIC DRAINS.
The first public drains were large open ditches passing in a meandering way through farms and rendering not a little land waste, the ditch channels growing up each year with bushes and weeds, and requiring frequent cleaning out. Many of these have since had one or more rows of large sized tiles laid in them and covered up so that farming operations are now carried on over them. There are no lands in the county so low and wet that they
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OF HOWARD COUNTY.
cannot be drained. The county may be said to be without wet waste land.
The pioneers of the county had vast forests to contend with. Almost every acre had one or more large yellow poplar trees upon it. Much of the land had many large black walnut trees; there were many fine gray ash trees and almost numberless large oak trees of the different varieties, while the common kinds of beech, sugar, elm, sycamore, lynn and other kinds were so plentiful it was a problem how to get them out of the way. In the very early pioneer days there were no saw-mills and no market whatever for even the choicest of the timber. Large poplar, walnut, ash and oak trees were made into rails that a few years later could have been sold for many dollars. Where the early farmer wanted a field he dead- ened the large walnuts and poplars to destroy their shade, and al- lowed them to waste away, to blow down and then to be burned or worked into rails. The other timber was cut down and rolled into heaps and burned.
In this, our time of growing scarcity of timber, the acts of the pioneer settlers seem to have been wanton waste. They wanted clear fields rather than timber. A few years later, with the coming of the railroads and the building of steam saw-mills, quite a traffic in lumber sprang up. An immense amount of walnut, poplar and ash lumber was shipped to Cincinnati and other points. Saw-mill men and others bought of the owners of woodland where the tim- ber had not yet been disturbed either for a lump sum all their pop- lar and walnut timber good enough for the saw, or else bought the trees singly, paying as high as five dollars for a good, straight, sound, yellow poplar thirty inches in diameter and tall enough for four twelve-foot sticks or logs. Some choice walnuts sold for eight dollars. Farmers derived quite a revenue from this source, and it was a time just previous to the Civil war when money was very scarce
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