USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Indiana from its exploration to 1922, Vol II > Part 20
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
The cultivation was simple. Mr. Weider's field was a "deadening" set in blue grass and pastured until the stumps were all rotted out. It was planted on the first of June, with a small Barnhill drill, plowed with a single shovel three times and hoed. The total cost of cultivation was $5.60 per acre. It was planted to the ordinary white corn grown in the neighborhood.
An incident of this year's fair was the contest among boys for the best acre of corn. This prize was
12 For experiments with sorghum cane, see report of A. H. Vestal, in Agricultural Reports, 1857, p. 259.
834
HISTORY OF INDIANA
won by John Williams of Knox county, who received his schooling in an old cooper shop and broke his acre for corn with two yokes of oxen.
The implements used to cultivate corn were a breaking plow, with wooden mouldboards, operated with two horses or two yokes of oxen, a single shovel used both for marking off and later for cultivating the growing corn; a two horse "A," spike-tooth har- row used for pulverizing the soil after breaking and by removing the front tooth, for cultivating the corn the first time ; a cultivator operated usually with one horse and having two or three small shovels or "bull tongues"; and a supply of hoes. Cultivators were not widely used. Nearly all corn was checker planted and covered with a hoe, though a number of small corn drills were on the market. It was thought im- possible to keep weeds out of corn unless it was laid off both ways. Eleven of the prize takers of 1857 planted their corn by hand and six drilled. Only one of the winners had used manure on his land. The land had been plowed from eight to ten inches deep. Little attention was being given to seed, most refer- ences being to the "ordinary yellow" or "white" corn. There was occasional mention of Dickerson's white, Boyd's, Baden, Brown, King Philip, Tusca- rora and Darby varieties of corn but nothing was given by which to distinguish them.
Wheat ranked as the second agricultural staple of the state fifty years ago, as it does at present, though it is being closely pushed by oats now. The total yield for 1856 was 9,350,971 bushels, worth $8,- 828,458. Rush county led with 339,242 bushels, a position it yielded in 1915 to Knox. Among the prize winners at the state fair for 1857 were Elias Ogaw, of Wabash county, whose ten acres averaged 311/2 bushels per acre; James A. Merryman who averaged 33 bushels; William Fulwiler, of Howard, who pro-
835
CROPS
duced 48 bushels on one acre; and George Woodfill, who raised 44 bushels on an acre. John Williams, of Knox county, also took the boy's premium for the best single acre of wheat. He raised 331/2 bushels of spring wheat. Only one of the prize winners ma- nured his wheat ground; all sowed broadcast; one broke in July, four in August, two in September and one in October, each breaking about nine inches deep. Five of the winners sowed White Blue Stem wheat; one sowed New York White; and one South Ameri- can. It seems from the county reports throughout the decade that varieties of White wheat and Blue Stem were most widely sown, though Mediterranean and Genessee were becoming common and highly praised. Soule, Baltic, Etrurian, Canadian, variet- ies of Flint, Banner and May were names of wheat raised in different parts of the state. The bearded and smooth heads seemed to be equally favored. Wheat, more than corn, depended for its cultivation on means of transportation. The conspicuous wheat counties were located on railroads or rivers. A dif- ference of thirty cents per bushel, due to transporta- tion, might be found in the price of wheat in adjacent counties. Smut, Hessian fly, weevil and rust were troublesome in all parts of the state. Reapers were coming into use gradually though there was much opposition by harvest hands. Only a very small por- tion of the wheat and oats before the war was cut by machinery.18 It was the golden era of the cradlers.
A special demonstration of machines for cleaning wheat was given at the 1857 state fair. The judges divided the entire machine into power, thresher, and separator, giving first premium to separate individ- uals on each part. This was the beginning of the old
13 For a description of ten reapers exhibited in 1860, see Agricultural Report, 1860, p. 68.
836
HISTORY OF INDIANA
horse power machine which threshed the wheat, oats, and rye of Indiana from 1850 to about 1880. The earliest machines were small enough that two men could lift one. They gradually grew from two horse power up to twenty-four as the cylinder was widened, the separator lengthened, and strawstacker added. Cylinder and concave, riddles and fan were the es- sential parts. The problem was to get the smut out of the wheat. If any were left in, the price of the wheat was greatly reduced.
J. D. Williams, of Knox county, took the first premium on a ten acre field of oats. His average was 831/2 bushels. This seemed to be far above ordinary, since the second prize went to S. H. Anderson, of Marion county, who averaged 57 bushels. The oats crop was not large, only 4,621,800. Lake county stood first with 190,428 bushels. One of the prize exhibitors said his oats were cut with a cradle, sunned for a few hours, tied up and in eight or ten days conveyed to the barn and tramped out, yielding 63 bushels per acre.
Little thoughtful attention was given to raising hay for the market except near the Ohio river. Much larger crops of grass were harvested in the northern part of the state but nearly all was prairie and swamp grass and was fed on the farm during the winter. The river counties, especially Dearborn and Switzerland, raised some hay for the southern mar- ket. J. D. Williams took first premium on timothy and red top, the former yielding 5,062 pounds per acre, the latter 3,933 pounds. Mr. Williams also raised 111/2 bushels of English blue grass seed on an acre, taking first prize. In general, in most parts of the state, farmers showed more interest in improving their pastures than in improving their hay fields. Lewis J. Reyman, of Washington county, cut 6,333 pounds of timothy from one acre in 1855 and on an-
837
CROPS
other acre cut 8,600 pounds. The average yield of timothy seems to have been slightly above one ton. Clover was common but considered only as pastur- age.
Rye was grown in every county of the state but its total amount was only 182,063 bushels, about 2,000 bushels to each county. Allen county, with 11,049 bushels, was first. The same may be said of barley. The crop of 1857 was 59,795 bushels, Dearborn coun- ty leading with 8,866 bushels. The reports from all parts of the state indicated that farmers were aban- doning these crops.
Hemp was grown in twenty-seven counties, a total of 413 tons; hops in thirty-nine counties, totaling 164,185 pounds. Both these were negligible so far as general interest or value were concerned.
In 1857 there were raised in the state, 486,734 pounds of tobacco, over one-fourth of which came from Spencer county, 125,416 pounds. The report indicated that the production of this crop was in- creasing.
Irish potatoes were grown in large quantities in every county, the total crop of 1,195,485 bushels be- ing fairly well distributed. Elkhart and Allen coun- ties were far ahead in total amount, the former with 76,876 bushels and the latter with 72,516. The prize varieties were Pinkeyes, Mexicans, Mercers, Peach Blooms, Black, White and Red Mechanocs, Prairie Queens, Shaker Blues, Russets and Merinos. The yield was from 200 to 450 bushels per acre, few of which could now be eaten. The Peach Blooms and Mechanocs especially tasted much like green persim- mons. The sweet potato was comparatively a new- comer in 1850 and there was considerable discussion as to its proper cultivation. A. H. and J. W. Vestal, of Wayne county, had raised a crop yielding 268 bushels per acre. The committee said they placed
838
HISTORY OF INDIANA
their specimens on exhibition by the cord. At their booth these exhibitors handed out a pamphlet de- scribing the potatoes, methods of cultivation and manner of cooking. Some of these potatoes had been kept two years and were fresh.
The evidence is ample that the Hoosiers of the fifties had good gardens. In the Randolph county fair of 1856 there were entered more than 100 differ- ent varieties of vegetables. In St. Joseph county 175 entries were made. A Warrick county squash weighed 197 pounds. Z. S. Ragan, of Hendricks, ex- hibited 82 varieties of apples and 18 of pears. I. D. G. Nelson, of Allen county, showed 49 varieties of apples. The best collection of apples, six varieties, for all-year use was shown by Allen Lloyd of Lafay- ette. The varieties were Fall Wine, Rambo, Bell- flower, Ortley, Pryor's Red and Wine Sap. Reuben Ragan, of Putnam county, exhibited the prize collec- tion of 59 varieties of winter apples. All told at the fair of 1857 there were 113 varieties of apples on ex- hibition. Other fruits in equally bewildering kinds and quantities were shown, but enough of this litera- ture has been canvassed to furnish a comparison with the present.
In many respects the state was almost as well cultivated as at present. Of the population of 1,350,- 428, perhaps a million were on the farms. There are only about as many today. In 1860 there were in Indiana 8,161,717 acres of improved land, 3,115,174 acres of which had been improved in the decade then just finished. The cash value of the improved land had more than doubled during the decade, largely on account of improved buildings, while the farm im- plements had jumped in value from $6,704,404 in 1850 to $10,420,826 in 1860. The cash value of real estate and personal property in 1860 was $528,835,- 371, a gain of 160 per cent. in the decade. These
839
ROAD BUILDING
details have been given at considerable length to give one an idea of agricultural conditions at the outbreak of the Civil war. While that war is the greatest event in our history and the one which the state as a whole can regard with greatest pride, it was a calamity so far as social and political development was con- cerned. Not until the late eighties were the farmers again in such prosperous condition as in 1860.
§ 149 ROAD BUILDING
Farming conditions were inseparably bound up with transportation. One of the great problems dis- cussed in every agricultural society was roads. At the second meeting of the state board of agriculture the chief topic for discussion was "What is the best system of roads for Indiana?" This question was proposed by Governor Wright to whom Indiana farmers owe a greater debt than to any other man unless it be James D. Williams.
The latest thing in country roads at that time was the plank road. This was made by covering a road- way about ten feet wide with two inch oak boards laid on two longitudinal sleepers or mud sills. This road gave good satisfaction when dry and level. Otherwise it was hard for horses to hold their feet. It was also troublesome when two loaded wagons met. One had to get off and it was difficult to get back, especially if the ground were soft.14 Travelers
14 Agricultural Reports, 1852, p. 275 ; J. R. Beste, The Wabash, I, 298. "But we soon left him and his wagon behind as we trotted lightly along this plank road. And very pleasant a plank road is to travel upon. It may be slippery in wet weather; but now it saved us from the dust which would have arisen from gravel; and the sawn boards or planks, about three Inches thick, being nailed to sleepers at the two sides of the road, spanned it from side to side and rose and sank under us with the elasticity of the floor of a ballroom. On each side of the plank track,
840
HISTORY OF INDIANA
over the north end of the Michigan road where it was planked complained that the continual use of the road produced a continuous mud puddle under the planks, so that when the weight of the team or wagon came on it the thin mud spouted up several feet high between the planks, spattering everything. Allen county had a full system of plank roads centering in Fort Wayne. All told in 1850 there were 700 miles of plank roads. The Assembly of 1850 chartered 69 companies to build turnpikes or plank roads about two-thirds being for the latter.
At the meeting of the state board of agriculture, January 17, 1852, above referred to, it was the opin- ion of the members generally from all parts of the state that plank roads would not prove satisfactory. It was given as the opinion of Henry W. Ellsworth, if a track two feet wide were made of planks laid lengthwise for the wheels to run on and the middle filled with gravel the chief faults of the plank road would be obviated. A few years of actual trial con- vinced the people that the plank road was a failure. Laid with green lumber, flat on the dirt, many of them were so far decayed in four years as to become dangerous. Their era lasted about five years, during which perhaps 900 miles were built at a cost of one and one half millions of dollars.
Governor Wright thought the best thing to do was to make dirt roads, well graded and well drained. The governor's method of avoiding the use of cul- verts was ingenius. Culverts, as then constructed,
between It and the worm fences that bounded the road, were holes and stumps and ditches and natural water courses that no wheels could venture amongst." He was traveling west on the National road out of Indianapolis. In the county histories are brief notices of many plank roads, e. g., see History of Allen County, 1880, p. 59; Cass County, 1886, p. 283. Very little remem- brance of these old roads remains among the people.
841
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION
had become a nuisance. They were usually about three feet above the level of the road and flanked at either side by a deep mud hole. The governor ad- vised removing all culverts and ballasting the cross- ing or low place with stone so that a pool of water would stand in the road. This, he observed, would be useful in washing the wagon wheels, the horses' hoofs, and for droves of hogs and cattle either to bathe in or drink.15
Everybody condemned the general plan then in practice of calling out the hands to make roads. The unprofitable system, however, is still in use except where the people on their own initiative have aban- doned it. After the war private turnpikes, graded and graveled, took the place of the old plank road.16
§ 150 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION
The last phase of the movement started by the state board of agriculture in 1851 was that for agri- cultural education. It has been stated heretofore
15 Agricultural Reports, 1851 (erroneously dated 1852), p. 251. "I should like to see the experiment tried of making a perfect earth road, without plank or metal. Dig your ditches, say seven- teen feet apart, cover them over, throw up the ground in the center, let the water from the ditches be taken to the lowest point. In place of making a culvert and bridge, use the rock for making a solid bed for the water to run over, across the road, called a valley, that droves of cattle and the stock of the country may use, and your wagons and carriages may be cleaned thereby. I have great confidence that In a large proportion of our country roads may be made for less than one-half what our plank roads cost, more durable, and far preferable." From an address by Governor Wright at the Wayne County Fair, 1851.
16 An act of Dec. 23, 1858, permitted county boards to assume control of abandoned plank roads. They were extremely danger- ous after the planks began to break under the horses' feet. See, also, Laws of Indiana, 1859, chs. XCII and XCVI, for acts closing up the plank road companles.
842
HISTORY OF INDIANA
that the farmers of pioneer Indiana took little in- terest and no pride in their schools. The explanation has also been given that the school curriculum failed to touch them in any practical way. The agricultural literature of the fifties is full of this fact. In his speech at the Wayne County Fair in 1851, Governor Wright referred to the higher education as follows:
"One of the greatest blessings that is to follow from these exhibitions of labor and skill, is that of an entire change in the character of the education of the youth. The time has been when the young men of the country were sent to the academy to take their places in the preparatory course, then to college, year after year spent in learning a little Latin or Greek, too frequently less common sense, until they became ready to graduate. With a rich colored diploma, he walks forth from the college, upon the very soil from which labor is to wring the bread that must support and keep him from starving, and yet in too many cases, wholly ignorant of the character of the soil, and of the very trees of the forest; so much so as not to be able to tell a maple from a beech tree.
The farmer, of all men, should be included in the term learned profession. He is the great physician of nature. If, however, he is ignorant of the laws of nature, of the proper treatment to effect a cure when disease affects his patient, he is, of all men on earth, the greatest quack. There is this difference, how- ever, between the quack farmer and a quack physi- cian, the farmer's patient has so good a constitution that it is difficult to kill him off. If his constitution were not good, in many cases in Indiana, the patient would long since have been dead and buried, and briers, thorns, and thistles taken his place.""17
17 Agricutural Report, 1851, p. 247.
843
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION
There was a general air of self-satisfaction among farmers that no expert or scientific knowledge could aid them in farming; the utmost that farmers' children needed in the way of education was a super- ficial training in the three R's. On this idea the old common, district school was founded. Isaac Kinley, an enterprising school teacher of Henry county, in a letter to the state board of agriculture in 1852 esti- mated the loss of farmers in the United States an- nually, due to farming "in the moon," at millions. It was the general opinion, he thought, that educa- tion rendered a man lazy and unfit for work. For that reason anything more than a modicum of educa- tion should not be given to any one unless a cripple or unfitted by temperament for hard, manly work. Fond parents sometimes educated a favorite son so he would not have to work for a living. There was a general public sentiment that labor, especially farm labor, was degrading, that country people were boor- ish, ignorant, and green. In the slang of the day they were referred to as "hayseeds," "rubins," "hill billies," "seedlings," or with a smack of his- torical compassion were called "yeomen." Com- placent lights of the "learned professions," happily graduated from their former lowly estates, invited the proletarians to gaze on themselves and see what education and application had done. Mr. Kinley pointed out very plainly how unpractical the schools were from the state university down to the district school. Nine-tenths of the people were farmers and there was not a single provision anywhere for teach- ing their craft.18
18 State Board of Agriculture, 1852, p. 359. "As one of the farmers of Indiana, but not presuming to speak in their behalf, I ask for the education of the children of the laboring man. Not a mere smattering in the elements of the commonest branches, but a thorough, practical, scientific education, of the advantages of
844
HISTORY OF INDIANA
Referring to a deep rooted prejudice among farmers themselves, Joseph R. Williams, in address- ing the Elkhart County fair, October 25, 1851, said: "Farmers of Indiana, when you scout the idea that by the agency of societis, books, fairs, schools and chemical analysis and investigations you can be taught nothing in either the art or the science of ag- riculture, you are wrong-wrong practically, wrong theoretically, wrong morally, wrong politically, wrong economically, every way wrong.''19
These are merely specimens of what could have been heard at every annual address delivered at state and county fairs. The leading farmers of the state were not only ashamed of the illiteracy of the farm- ers but aggrieved that no special consideration was being given to an occupation numbering nine-tenths of the citizens.20
§ 151 THE STATE FAIR
Section six of the act of February 11, 1851, pro- vided that the state board should have power to hold
which the poorest even may avail themselves. Of an end so desirable shall it be said It is unattainable? I will not believe it. Low in the scale of intelligence as the census places our glorlous State, I know that she has a better destiny awalting her. Of the many practical advantages of general education, our people will not long remain ignorant. That ingenuity and energy which on more than one occasion have proven equal to any emergency will not be slow in devising and executing a plan for the educa- tion of the children of the laborlng man, not only in general learning, but In practical science, the science, each, of his own avocation."
19 Agricultural Reports, 1851, p. 88.
20 For two typical addresses on this subject, see Agricultural Reports, 1857, p. 620, by F. S. McCabe, at the Miami County Falr; and p. 634, by James Collins, at the Lawrence County Falr. This was found the most difficult question in which to interest the farmers and the one on which least progress has been made. The subject is discussed at greater length in the chapters on education.
845
THE STATE FAIR
state fairs at such times and places as it deemed ex- pedient. All details were left to the discretion of the board. The scope of the fair might be such as to include all "articles of science and art.''21
No attempt was made to hold a state fair during the year 1851. Provision however was made at the meeting on June 28, 1852, for a state fair the follow- ing autumn. W. T. Dennis, of Richmond, was ap- pointed to prepare the fair grounds, which he was empowered to choose. The fair was set for October 17, following, and all the editors of the state sent complimentary tickets in return for publicity. Mr. Dennis immediately prepared a schedule of rules and regulations to govern the exhibition and award of premiums. Exhibitors were compelled to present with their exhibits detailed accounts of how the thing was made or raised. The best of these papers were intended for and later printed in the Reports. A public sale was to follow at the grounds on Saturday. The fair was duly opened to the public, October 20, 1852, at Indianapolis. An examination of the items shows beyond question that Indiana had passed the pioneer age. Passing by the pedigreed stock there were cultivators, subsoilers, rootcutters, cornshell- ers, straw cutters, wheat and corn drills, reapers, mowers, threshers, hay-pressers, smut machines, fan
21 Laws of Indiana, 1850, ch. IV. The first members of the state board were: "Joseph A. Wright of Marion county, Alex- ander C. Stevenson of Putnam, Jeremiah McBride of Martin, Roland Willard of Kosciusko, Jacob R. Harris of Switzerland, Henry L. Eilsworth of Tippecanoe, John Ratliff of Morgan, Joseph Orr of Laporte, David P. Hollaway of Wayne, John B. Kelly of Warrick, William McLain of Lawrence, Samuel Emerson of Knox, John McMahan of Washington, Thomas W. Sweney of Allen, George Brown of Shelby, and George Hussey of Vigo, be and they are hereby created a body corporate, with perpetual succession in the manner hereafter described, under the name and style of the 'Indiana State Board of Agriculture.'"
846
HISTORY OF INDIANA
mills, separators, winnowers, brandusters, regrind- ers, flour and meal mills, churns, cook and parlor stoves, boring machines, sausage grinders, hand looms, brick machines, washing machines, saw mills, ice cream freezers, rat traps, scales of numerous kinds (one of which would weigh 800,000 pounds at one time), potato diggers, garden sprinklers, ax han- dles, carriages of all kinds, printing presses, trucks, fire proof safes, Howe, Wilson and Singer sewing machines, shower baths, broom handles, bacon, tomb- stones, spinning wheels, hub machines, railroad jacks, sawmill dogs, mineral teeth, pearl work, shell lace, daguerreotypes, medicines, beltings and so on for pages the list of awards run. There were more than 20,000 persons present and the board was high- ly pleased with the response of the people. Thou- sands came from 20 to 100 miles in horse and ox wag- ons, camping along the road, enjoying the autumn weather. Side shows and "menageries" enlivened the occasion so that most agreed that it excelled any camp meeting they had ever attended.
The second state fair, 1853, was held at Lafayette, October 10-14. It seems that the local agricultural society raised the money to prepare the grounds. A feature of this fair was an address by Horace Greeley, October 13, 1853, on "What the Sister Arts Teach as to Farming."22
The third state fair was held at Madison, after a delegation of Indianapolis men had agreed to raise the money necessary but had generously expressed their preference that the invitation of the Jefferson county society be accepted. At the January meeting of 1854, there was an apple and vegetable show, a precursor of the modern apple show. The third state fair, 1854, was held at Madison and the fourth was in
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.