History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 15

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942

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Of this period militia musters and militia officers form too important an element to be overlooked. When the county was organized the battle of New Orleans was but seven years old, and that was a militia battle on our side. There was enough military spirit in the people to demand a military system of some kind, and to sustain it till it got to be an old song and the events of the last war with England had faded into legend, and a militia force was organized of all the adult male population with some exceptions, divided into regiments by counties and brigades by Congressional districts. Judge William W. Wick was the first brigadier of this district ; James Paxton was elected the first colonel, Samuel Morrow the first lieu- tenant-colonel, and Alexander W. Russell the first major, as before stated. Musters were held annually, possibly oftener, and the turn-out was expected to embrace about all the able-bodied voting population who were not specially exempted. But it did not, as there were always plenty to look on besides the troops that followed the march. The parade was formed at the court-house usually, with no uniforms except what the officers wore, and no guns but " squirrel rifles," and many without them taking canes, papaw

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

sticks, broken hoe handles, or pieces of split plank. The march was sometimes out east to a grove, but oftener west down Washington Street and Maryland to the open ground between Georgia and Louisiana Streets west of Tennessee, where the force was put through an hour of drilling and marching, and another hour of idling about and talking and eating apples, and then the parade was dismissed, with about as much improvement of military knowledge and spirit as if all hands had stayed at home. But the parade was a great event. The regimental officers made a most inspiriting show. They were in their glory, as a " militia officer on the peace establishment"-as Cor- win said of Crary-ought to be at a militia annual parade. It was the day for which the other three hun- dred and sixty-four were made. They galloped back and forth, their red and white plumes swaying and bobbing, their sword-sheaths rattling, their blades flashing, when they were not rusty, their voices duly husky with dust and duty, while old Peter Winchell and Nat Cox kept the drums rattling till no one could hear more than an infrequent squeal of Glidden True's fife. Little boys ran along and screamed, dogs barked, sedate old hogs in fence corners got up and ran off grunting, women stood in their doors holding up their babies to see the gorgeous spectacle, and for one hour of glorious life the militia officer had a right to feel that he was a bigger man than any man without a commission.

Although the militia system was intended, as Burke said of the feudal system, to be " the cheap defense of the nation," and the military tastes of the people were as strong as those of any people, yet so incessant were the demands of urgent duties and labors that little time was left for such as availed only in remote and improbable emergencies. Thus it came that after the settlement of the New Purchase there was never anything more made of the militia system than an annual show and a little personal distinction fre- quently used for political effect by the officers. This will explain the reference to it here instead of in the general course of the history, where its infrequency would make it more irrelevant.

Ex-United States Senator Smith gives an account of the "end of the militia system" on the White

Water, which is at once so amusing and so fully illus- trative of the condition of the system all over the State that it is reproduced here. Premising that an ambitious young fellow named Lewis had been elected major of the regiment, and that he was possessed by a large idea of the importance of his position, Mr. Smith goes on thus : " The great and memorable day at last arrived. The aide-de-camp of the major came galloping into the field in full uniform directly from headquarters, and halted at the marquee of the adju- tant. In a few minutes the order from the major was given in a loud military voice by the adjutant, mounted on a splendid gray charger, 'Officers to your places, marshal your men into companies, separating the bare- footed from those who have shoes or moccasins, plac- ing the guns, sticks, and cornstalks in separate pla- toons, and then form the line ready to receive the major !' The order was promptly obeyed, when at a distance Maj. Lewis was seen coming into the field with his aids by his side, his horse rearing and plung- ing very unlike 'Old Whitey' at the battle of Buena Vista. The line was formed, the major took position on a rising ground about a hundred yards in front of the battalion ; rising in his stirrups, and turning his full face upon the line, he shouted, ' Attention, the whole-' Unfortunately the major had not tried his voice before in the open air, and with the word 'attention' it broke, and ' the whole' sounded like the whistle of a fifc. The moment the sound reached the line some one at the lower end, with a voice as shrill as the major's, cried out, ' Children come out of the swamp, you'll get snake bit !' The major pushed down the line at full speed. ' Who dares insult me?' No answer. The cry then commenced all along the line, 'You'll get snake-bitl' The major turned and dashed up the line, hut soon had sense enough to see that it was the militia that was at an end, and not himself that was the object of ridicule. He dashed his chapeau from his head, drew his sword and threw it upon the ground, tore his commission to pieces, and resigned on the spot. The battalion dispersed, and militia musters were at end from that time forward in the White Water country." The system made a less comical exit in the White River country, but it went out about the same time and as completely. Its

AMUSEMENTS.

offices ceased to be of any value even as means of electioneering for political positions. When it began to be replaced, as it was in ten or a dozen years after the removal of the capital to the White River region, the substitute took the form of voluntary associations, always sure to be more efficient than any statutory system in a country that couldn't enforce, and wouldn't try, a conscription in time of peace.

In the way of ordinary amusements, sueli as usu- ally divert the inhabitants of towns, there was nothing. A theatrical performance had come and gone, and that was all till 1830, when the first eirens, MeComber & Co.'s, exhibited in the rear of Henderson's tavern. Such diversions, besides those referred to, as the young capital had to regale itself with it contrived for itself, owing nothing and paying nothing to any- body else.

Thus it came that for the first decade or two the town and country were as closely assimilated in their amusements and general social condition as if the town had never been platted or its streets cleared, and in business and in ordinary duties the separation was little more distinet. The town was merely a little thickening of the country settlement.

Mr. Mason speaks of the scarcity of money in In- diana in the first few years after the State's admis- sion into the Union, and all the survivors of the first dozen years of the settlement of the New Purchase say that most of their trading was barter. Money was hard to come by, and what little was encountered in this region was Spanish almost altogether or Mexican. The old copper cent, as big as a half-dollar, was the only home coin that circulated in any considerable force; the next smallest was the " fip," or " fipenny bit," a little Spanish coin rated at six and a fourth cents, the sixteenth of a dollar. In later years, after flat-boats began running to New Orleans with our corn and pork and whiskey and hay, we imported the Southern designation and called it a " picayune." The next coin was Spanish too, worth two of the first, and ealled a "levy," sometimes a "'leven- pence," changed by Southern influence into " bit." Another Spanish coin worth eighteen to twenty cents was called a pistareen. It was so nearly the same size as the Spanish quarter that it was easily

passed for that if worn so much as to make the stamp undiscernible. The quarter had the Pillars of Hercules on the reverse, and the pistareen had not. These coins were the common medium of business when money was used at all, except that the dollar coin was frequently Mexican, sometimes a French five-frano piece helped out by a fip, but never an American dollar. If the " daddies" had it, they kept it. Paper money began to show itself with the organization and operation of the old State Bank in 1834. The first American coins, except an occa- sional ten-cent piece of the old pattern (the first with the seated figure of Liberty) ever brought to Indianapolis, so far as can be now ascertained, were brought in the summer of 1838 by a jeweler named Foster on his return from the East, and by him placed in the corner-stone of the first Christ Church, which was the first corner-stone laid in the place.

The primitive condition of the country and the un- sophisticated character of the people can be better judged by a few ineidents related by eye-witnesses than by chapters of elaborate description, wherefore it is deemed best to add here some of the anecdotes of the early settlement of the White River Valley, preserved in O. H. Smith's and Mr. Nowland's reminiscences. The latter, in his sketch of a noted character of the early days of Indianapolis, " Old Helvey," tells an amusingly illustrative story of a wedding there. " After the bride and groom had retired the whiskey gave out. There was no way of getting more except at Mr. Landis' grocery. He was present, but there was no pen, pencil, or paper with which an order could be sent to the clerk. Old Helvey suggested that Mr. Landis should send his knife, which would be recognized by the young man, and would certainly bring the whiskey. This was done, and the whiskey came, to the great joy of all present. Mr. Helvey thought the bride and groom must be dry by this time, so he took the jug to them and made them drink the health of the guests."

Another incident related by Mr. Nowland indicates a stronger matrimonial exclusiveness in a portion of the early settlers than prevails now, or ever prevailed in most of the country. This was the first dance given in the settlement, by Mr. John Wyant, at his

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

cabin on the river bank, near where Kingan's pork- house is, in December, 1821. Mr. John Wyant was the first man prosecuted criminally in Marion County. His offense was selling liquor without a license. There was a charge of twenty-five cents admittance for each adult male, to furnish the fluids, which were the only costly articles used on these occasions. The guests had begun to arrive, and while the landlord was in " t'other house," as the second cabin was called, Mr. Nowland (father), " having been educated in a different school of etiquette from that of Mr. Wyant, thought it but simple politeness to invite Mrs. Wyant to open the ball with him. She gracefully accepted, and they with others were going in fine style when the landlord returned. He at once commanded the music, which was being drawn from the bowels of a dilapidated-looking fiddle by Col. Russell, to stop. He said, ' As far as himself and wife were concerned they were able to do their own dancing, and he thought it would look better for every man to dance with his own wife ; those who had none could dance with the gals.' This order, as far as Mr. and Mrs. Wyant were concerned, was strictly adhered to the remainder of the night. When the guests were ready to leave at the dawn of day they were still ' bobbing around' together." Not a bad example of matrimonial fidelity, which it can do no harm to recall at a time when a divorce is granted about every day in the year in their own county.

Of one of the earliest marriages-the second prob- ably-Mr. Nowland says, " As the two rooms were already full the bride had to make her toilet in the smoke-house, where she received the bridegroom and his retinue." The wedding dinner is thus described : "On either end of the table was a large, fat, wild turkey, still hot and smoking from the clay oven in which they were roasted. In the middle of the table and midway between the turkeys was a fine saddle of venison, part of a buck killed the day before by Mr. Chinn (the bride's father ; the bridegroom was Uriah Gates, a well-known citizen) expressly for the occasion. The spaces between the turkeys and veni- son were filled with pumpkin, chicken, and various other pies. From the side-table or puncheon Mrs. Chinn, assisted by the old ladies, was issuing coffee,

which was taken from a large sugar-kettle that was hanging over the fire. By the side of the coffee-pot on this side-table was a large tin pan filled with maple sugar, and a gallon pitcher of cream." Delmonico could not have got up a better dinner at twenty dol- lars a head. Mr. Nowland adds that " the dancing was continued for two days. I remember that father and mother came home after daylight the second day, slept until the afternoon, and then went back and put in another night."

An incident of the first Fourth of July celebration is related in the same interesting collection of remi- niscences : " On the morning of the Fourth of July, 1822, my father's family was aroused before daylight by persons hallooing in front of the door. It proved to be Capt. James Richey, who lived at the Bluffs, and a young man and lady who had placed themselves under his charge and run away from obdurate parents to get married. Mr. Richey and father soon found the county clerk, the late James M. Ray, at Carter's ' Rosebush' tavern, procured the necessary legal docu- ment, and Judge Wick married them before breakfast. They had scarcely arisen from the breakfast table when the young lady was confronted by her angry father. Capt. Richey informed him that he was just a few minutes too late, and instead of losing a daugh- ter had gained a son. The parties were soon recon- ciled and invited to attend the barbecue and ball given in honor of the day, which they did."

Mr. Smith tells the following in the same humorous vein :

James Whitcomb, Governor of the State in 1843, and United States senator in 1848, dying 1852, was one of the foremost lawyers in the State, and practiced pretty much all over it, as did his lead- ing cotemporaries. In the New Purchase he and all the bar were in the habit of stopping at Capt. John Berry's tavern in Andersontown (he was the man who blazed out " Berry's trace," one of the first from the South into the White River region) and, as his custom was, the eminent lawyer, who greatly resembled the English premier Disraeli in face and complexion and fastidious taste, changed his shirt at night. Capt. Berry was exceedingly sensitive to any disparagement of his hotel, and

FASHIONS OF THE TIMES.

this, says Mr. Smith, "was well known to Calvin Fletcher," who appears to have been the wag of the , bar as well as one of the most enterprising and benefi- cent of the founders of the prosperity of Indianapo- lis. "Taking the captain to one side, he said, 'Do you know, Capt. Berry, what Mr. Whitcomb is saying about your beds ?' 'I do not; what does he say ?' ' If you will not mention my name, as you are one of my particular friends, I will tell you.' ' Upon honor, I'll never mention your name; what did he say ?' 'He said your sheets were so dirty that he had to pull off his shirt every night and put on a dirty shirt to sleep in.' 'I'll watch him to- night.' Bed-time came, and Capt. Berry was looking through an opening in the door when Mr. Whitcomb took his night-shirt out of his portman- teau and began to take off his day-shirt. He pushed open the door, sprang upon Whitcomb, and threw him upon the bed. The noise brought in Mr. Fletcher and the other lawyers, and after explana- tions and apologies on all sides the matter was set- tled. Years afterwards Mr. Whitcomb found out, as he said, what he suspected at the time, that Mr. Fletcher was at the bottom of the whole matter."

Among the fashions of the times was the disfavor of beards. Side-whiskers of the "mutton-chop" style were not uncommon, and occasionally they were allowed to grow around the face, except a couple of inches or so on the throat and chin, but this was the limit. A " goatee," or "imperial," or " moustache" would have been as strange a sight as a painted Indian as late as 1840. A full beard would have been very generally considered a freak of insanity. Even whiskers were held " dandyish," and the wearer of low esteem. Though Judge William W. Wick cherished them when in Congress, he could not make them fashionable. Forty years or more ago Joseph M. Moore laughed at them in some satirical verses in the Journal, and accused him of

" Using 'Columbia's Balm' to make his whiskers grow, As forked as three WWW's all standing in a row."

The first moustache that appears of record was worn by the then young "Than West forty years ago or thereabouts, as perpetuated in a young lady's poetical 6

address to some of the young bloods of the town. She refers to the ornament in speaking of Mr. West's avoidance of young ladies,-

" For fear that they should kiss bim, Has raised a thorn-hedge on his lip."

The best-known wcarer of the moustache, how- ever, and the most effective agent of its diffusion in respectable society was Mr. Charles W. Cady, one of the first insurance men of early times. Beards began to " increase and multiply" in area and num- ber before the civil war. That momentous experi- ence was the end alike of slavery and universal shaving.

A case related by Mr. Smith illustrates the slender respect with which the early settlers sometimes re- garded the law and its ministers. A grand jury, while Mr. Fletcher was prosecutor, had found an indictment against a man for selling liquor without a license, much the most frequent offense of that time. The foreman of the grand jury refused to sign it; the prosecutor urged it. "I shall do no such thing, Mr. Fletcher; I sell whiskey without a license myself, and I shall not indict others for what I do." " If you don't sign it I will take you before Judge Wick." " What do I care for Judge Wick ? he knows nothing about such matters." " The grand jury will follow me into court." In the court-room, " This foreman of the grand jury refuses to sign his name to a bill of indictment against a man for selling whiskey without a license." Judge Wick : " Have twelve of the jury agreed to find the bill ?" " Yes, eighteen of them." "Foreman, do you refuse to sign the bill ?" " I do." " Well, Mr. Prosecutor, I see no other way than to leave him to his conscience and his God; the grand jury will return to their room." In the jury-room the foreman said, " I told you Judge Wick knew nothing about such cases." Mr. Fletcher : " I am only taking legal steps to have the bill signed." " What are you going to do now ? what are you stripping off your coat for ?" "The law requires the last step to be taken." " What is that ?" "To thrash you till you sign the bill." " Don't strike, Mr. Fletcher, and I'll sign." He did, and the jury returned to the court-room. " Has the

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

forcman signed the bill ?" " He has." "I thought his conscience would not let him rest till he had signed it."

Pertinent to this connection is Mr. Smith's account of the hardships of a political campaign. A year or so after the removal of the capital to Indianapolis he was a candidate for Congress in the eastern district of the State, then extending the whole length of the State pretty nearly. In a portion wholly unsettled he hired an Indian guide. They swam some of the streams on their ponies, but at last found one they could not cross in that way.

"The moment we reached the river the Indian jumped down, peeled some bark from a hickory sap- ling, and spanceled the fore legs of the ponies ; I sat down on the bank. The Indian was out of sight in a moment in the woods, and I saw nothing of him for an hour, when he returned with the bark of a hickory-trce about twelve feet long and three feet in diameter. The bark was metamorphosed into a round- bottomed Indian canoe when the sun was about an hour high. The canoe was launched, my saddle, saddle-bags, and blanket placed in one end, and I got in the other. With my weight the edges were about an inch above the water. I took the paddle, and by the use of the current landed safely on the other side," paying the Indian two dollars for his services.

During the rather indefinite period covered by this attempt to present an idea of the condition of the settlement aside from its material changes (loosely put at twenty years), there had been organized some ten churches,-one Baptist, two Presbyterian, two Methodist, two Lutheran, one Christian, one Catholic, one Episcopal, and all had places of worship of their

own. The intention here is not to present a summary of the condition of the religious element of the settle- ment at this time, but merely to notice some of the early fashions and forms of public religious conduet. Until near the close of this first twenty years of the set- tlement the forms of worship, except in the Episcopal and Catholic Churches, were not so fixed as they are now. They were controlled more by the wish of the preacher or the impulse of the occasion. A written sermon was an unknown performance to many of the pioneers, and to some of them would have looked like

a profanation. Choirs were unknown until introduced by Henry Ward Beecher, except in churches with established rituals. Mr. Beecher's brother, Rev. .

Charles, an accomplished musician, was the first choir-leader of a non-ritualistic service. Among the first choristers were Mrs. Dr. Ackley, Mr. John L. Keteham, Lawrence M. Vance, A. G. Willard, Augustus Smith. The churches generally held to congregational singing, which was led by some man with an approved voice and taste, who could be trusted to select a good air of the right metre, and start it with a pitch that all could readily follow. Not unfrequently the starting was a volunteer effort, coming from some one in the body of the congrega- tion with a pet tune for the special metre of the oc- casion. Familiar hymns were sung right along, with or without books; but when there were no books or but few, and for a good while after they became eom - mon, the preacher would "line out" the hymn, or " deacon" it, as the Yankees called it, by reading two lines and waiting for the congregation to sing thein before reading another couplet. This would produce an odd effect now to most hearers, even to those who were familiar with it in childhood and youth, but it certainly in no measure or way affected the solemnity or sincerity of the worship. Sermons, as before re- marked, were unwritten, and not unfrequently unpre- pared,-by no means identical conditions necessarily, but often made so. They were uniformly longer than now, an hour being neither an unusual nor unreason- able duration. Probably they exercised a stronger im- mediate influence on the feelings of the audience than their shorter, pithier, more methodical and logical successors from the writing-desk do now. There was room for dramatic action and effeet, for variety of tone and feeling, for a vigor that comes involuntarily with a fresh thought, and there is not much chance for these agencies of oratory to get at an audience through a carefully thought out and written out sermon of the year of grace 1883.

There were a few hymns so popular from their spirit or the air usually associated with them that everybody knew them. One of the finest of these is still unmatched in sacred hymnology for the pious pertinence of the poetry or the spirited but stately

MUSIC.

movement of the music,-" Am I a soldier of the cross ?" Another was "Come, thou fount of every blessing," frequently sung to the air that Rousseau dreamed; a third was "Come, humble sinner," the air of which was a " minor" evidently adapted from an old Irish air called the " Peeler and the Goat"; an- other, sung by John Brown on the scaffold, " Blow ye the trumpet, blow"; another, " Oh, love divine," to a most spirited and pleasing air that is never heard now. Besides these there were camp-meeting tunes not greatly different from some that prevail among the Southern colored churches now. "Old Rosin the Bow" was one of these, adapted, and thus first named, to a secular and satirical song, " Old Rossum the Beau," wholly Southern however; "John Brown's Body" was another ; and one of them was profanely applied by some " unrespecting boys," about the end of the period in question, to a comic song about " The Great Sea-Snake." Music was not much cul- tivated in a scientific or systematic way then, though occasional teachers formed classes and gave lessons from the " Missouri Harmony" in the " square note" system. The " round note," or " do, re" system came along about the time that church choirs did, and the diffusion of a taste for the higher kinds of music than ballad airs and dancing jigs came with the in- flux of German immigration. The adoption of the piano as a piece of fashionable furniture was a coeval movement. Musical improvement made it fashion- able, and it made music fashionable.

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 15

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 942

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942