History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 18

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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Although the indigenous diseases were the chief dread of the settlers, they were not free from alarms of epidemics. On the 17th of May a colored woman by the name of Overall was found to have the small- pox, and a panic ensued. A public meeting was called and a Board of Health formed of all the leading physicians of the place,-Drs. Samuel G. Mitchell, Isaac Cox, Livingston Dunlap, John H. Sanders, John E. McClure, Charles McDougal, John L. Mothershead, and William Tichnor. They were authorized to take any measures they decmed necessary to arrest the dis- ease. Nothing was done, however, as no other case made its appearance. In June, 1833, a case or two that were supposed to be cholera excited alarm. The churches appointed and kept the 26th as a fast-day. The fatal prevalence of the epidemic in the southern part of the State, especially in Salem, Washington Co., renewed the fear here that had been allayed by its disappearance, and a public meeting was held in the court-house on the 17th of July, a thousand dollars contributed by the citizens for sanitary pur- poses, a Board of Health appointed, consisting of five doctors and five citizens, sanitary committees appointed in each ward, medicines obtained, and the Governor's house, in the Circle, fixed upon as the hospital, with Dr. John E. McClure as superintendent. Better pro- vision for a possible calamity was apparently made in that emergency fifty years ago than was made after- wards, except in the provision of the City Hospital. The city has been unusually free from fatal epidemics, the smallpox being the only one that has appeared, and it has never become epidemic here.

During all this early period of the history of the city and county the primitive habits and conditions of the settlement were but little changed, though changes were on the way and at work in scattered influences both in the family, school, and church, and social and business conditions. The universal brother- hood of the days when there were no streets, or they were full of stumps and mud-holes, with cow-paths for sidewalks and worm-fences for borders, was giving way to the inevitable separation into classes and coteries. "Stores" were dropping one and another article or class of the miscellaneous stock they had been keeping and approaching the specialties of city

CURRENCY AND MANUFACTURES.

establishments. They were leaving sugar and coffee to grocery-stores, abandoning liquor altogether, con- fining themselves more exelusively to dry-goods, and putting away their red-flannel door-signs as un- becoming their maturer years. Barter was passing away before the advance of cash, and the supply of home necessities trusted less aud less to the foresight of the head of the family. The winter's supply of meat, which for years had been contracted for during the fall with one or another farmer and eut up and cured at home, was gradually coming more and more largely from the butcher as the day's needs required.

cious but liberal management was a great help to the early growth of Indianapolis and the region of which it was the centre and depot. When the crash of 1837 was followed by the "hard times" of 1839 to 1845, the State Bank's money was all the people had that they could trust. The State itself issued " scrip" or " treasury notes" receivable for taxes, and at first bearing six per cent. interest, but with all these advantages the money was discredited. It passed with difficulty at par here, and would not pass at all in Cincinnati, or only at a ruinous discount of fifty per cent. or more. This was a grievous embar-

Parte Ette Con este

WAGON TRAIN ON NATIONAL ROAD.

Home-made sugar was giving plaec to " Orleans," but no backwoods boy or man alive or that ever lived will substitute " Orleans" molasses for " home-made." "Store tea" was supplanting " spice-bush" and sassa- fras without being better or half as pure. Custom shops were sometimes encouraged to manufacture a little for stoek and the chance of a market. The new State Bank, with its branches at the principal points of the State, furnished an excellent. though by no means abundant curreney, and by loans to enterprising men encouraged such industries as were adapted to the condition of the country. Its judi-

rassment, and largely neutralized the benefit the Legis- lature hoped to find in thus "inflating" the currency. Some few who were wise in their day made money of the situation. They would go to Cincinnati with State Bank money or specie and buy State six per cent. serip for fifty or even forty cents on the dollar. At home it was good in trade, would buy anything or pay any debt, though not always to the pleasure of the creditor or seller. Others who could afford it hoarded it for the interest and found their account in it. One of the Supreme Court, who was one of the least expensive men in the world, took his salary in

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

" scrip" and saved it. By the time the State re- deemed it the accumulation of interest nearly equaled the principal. These financial incidents, though re- mote from the first settlement of the city, are still more remote from the present time, and will serve to illustrate to the present generation a condition of things that will never come again. A previous issue of treasury notes had been made shortly after the State's admission into the Union, and, though re- ceivable for taxes, were considerably depreciated, and in consequence embarrassed the purchasers of town lots seriously.

During the continuance of the "hard times," from 1839 to 1845, interstate emigration did little for Indiana or the New Purchase. The " repudiation of the State debt," as it was often called,-the failure to pay interest on the bonds of 1836,-had a bad effect on the hunters of new homes, and they passed through the State to Illinois and Missouri and Iowa. The National road, incomplete as it was, afforded so much better a route than others that it was largely used by emigrants. Long trains of wagons passed every day from sun-up till sun-down, sometimes in long procession, sometimes in groups, rarely singly. There were four-, three-, and two-horse wagons, cov- ered sometimes with canvas, sometimes with bed- quilts, with chairs tied about the "end gate," a tar- bucket swinging to the coupling pole, a dog hitched to the hind axle, tow-headed children stuck about among feather-beds and bureaus in front, a sturdy man on foot driving, and as sturdy a woman trudg- ing by his side with a baby in her arms, and the older children following with the cows and shecp. Thus came to their new homes many a man who has dis- tinguished himself at the bar, in the pulpit, in the school, in the doctor's office, in legislation, on the bench, on the battle-field.

" And buirdly chiels and clever hizzies Are bred in sic a way as this is"

in the backwoods to this day occasionally, but the land was full of them at the time referred to.

CHAPTER V.

Second Period-The Capital in the Woods.

THE second period of the history of Indianapolis is broken by conspicuous events into three divisions of nearly equal length,-first, from the removal of the capital to the incorporation of the town in 1832; second, from that event to the abandonment of the public works in 1839; third, from that time to 1847, when the impulse of improvement ran ahead of the opening of the first railroad. The whole period was so uneventful, and in the main so unpromising (except during the unfortunate real estate inflation that accom- panied the " Interoal Improvement System"), that it can be treated more intelligibly by associating its events in logical rather than chronological connection.

The removal of the State capital to Indianapolis produced two beneficial changes. It improved the tone of society by a large annual admixture of the best intelligence of the State. The meeting of the Legislature was for nearly a generation the great event of the year. The members came usually on horseback, with the now-forgotten "leggings" and " saddle-bags." In later days such as were on stage lines had the aristocratic privilege of riding. It was not till 1852 that they began to come mainly on rail- ways, and to be regarded as of little more consequence than other men. The hotels were all "taverns" for many a year, and the modes of life as simple and primitive as they were in any country town. Farmers came in with their families to see the Legislature. Visitors from other parts of the State, besides those with "axes to grind," came often, and it was long before even the townspeople lost their curiosity to see its proceedings. There were strong men among the legislators of the State in those days. The pay was a trifle, and a trifling man could not afford to take such a place. It was usually a man who was needed by the interests of his locality or a man of conscious ability who took a place in one house or the other as his first step in the ladder. Elections were rarely riotous and never corrupt, though electioneering then no more disdained mean arts and artifices than now. There was no money to buy votes, the consequence

THE CAPITAL IN THE WOODS.

was a better class of men, in the average, than do the law-making now. Moreover, most, if not all, of them were immigrants, with the push and persist- ence of men who have enterprise enough to go from home to seek fortune, and brains enough to take ad- vantage of the chances that offer .. In a little town numbering but a hundred families the preceding spring, and probably not more than six hundred inhabitants when the first legislative session was held here, the advent and free association of such a body of men could not but be improving.

The other benefit following the change of the cap- ital was the improvement in the material prospects of the village. With no immediate or decided change, there was a confidence of prosperity that held up the courage of the settlers against the terrors of annual chills. The fulfillment of this promise was long in coming. It took twenty years to bring the first evi- dences of probable prosperity and progress beyond a country town.

The Legislature was always ready to do all that might be properly done to help the place, and fre- quently stepped in with relief laws for the embarrassed purchasers of town lots. At its second session here, on the 20th of January, 1826, it came to the relief of the ague-shaken debtors who could not pay the deferred installments of the purchase-money of their lots and extended the time for payment, and allowed the cash payments on lots that the holders could not keep and wanted to surrender to go upon the lots that were kept, thus wiping out in a large measure an indebtedness that would finally have proved ruinous.

The condition of things urging this action is clearly set forth in a little article in the Journal of Dec. 15, 1825, about a month before the bill was passed. After remarking that a bill to consolidate payments on lots would be introduced in a few days, the Journal- it had then borne this name less than a year-said, " Many circumstances combined to make lots sell for more than they were worth. At the time of the sale treasury paper, with which payments were authorized to be made, was plenty and at a considerable discount. Now payments which were expected to be made in depreciated paper, and in consequence of which lots sold very high, have to be made in specie or its 7

equivalent. Many persons also paid enormous prices for lots contiguous to the State-House Square, under a belief that a State-House would be speedily erected, and that their property would consequently riso in value. We hope the Legislature will give this sub- ject due attention, and if they do not see the propriety of the measure suggested they will probably agree to extend the time of making payments." The Legis- lature did both. It was wiser than its latter-day suc- cessors, and took the suggestions of the press with becoming alacrity and deference. There is a consid- erable ray of light let in upon the condition of things in the first year of the new capital by this little ex- position. The donation outside of the town plat was partly sold by an act of Jan. 24, 1824, when eighty acres were laid off in four-acre blocks,-the size of the city squares,-and sold on the 25th of January, 1825, by auction, the highest bringing one hundred and fifty-five dollars, the lowest sixty-three dollars. On the 12th of February of the first session here, in 1825, an act was passed ordering twenty more four-acre out- blocks to be laid off north and south of those pre- viously sold,-they were on the north and south sides of the city, thus making a double tier on those two sides,-and sold on the 2d of May. The same act ordered the sale of the reserved lots on Washington Street, the clearing of Pogue's Run Valley at an expense not to exceed fifty dollars, and the lease of the ferry at the foot of Washington Street for five years. The second series of out-blocks brought four- teen hundred and sixty-seven dollars, or about eighteen dollars an acre. The Washington Street reserved lots, even under the elevating influence of the possession of the State capital, did not approach the figures of the first sale nearly four years before. The highest brought three hundred and sixty dollars, the lowest one hundred and thirty-four dollars. An aggregate of street frontage equal to three squares brought but three thousand three hundred and twenty-eight dol- lars.

The relief act for embarrassed lot-holders had the effect of concentrating the settlement in the centre of the town plat, along Washington Street, as heretofore noted. The court-house and State capitol in one was east of a central line, and the taverns and business

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

houses were gathering upon that direction. So the lot-holders who wished to surrender any of their pur- chases gave up those nearest the river, and applied the money paid upon them to lots farther east which they wished to keep. This tendency away from the river continued till the "internal improvement" impulse became so strong as to force the great " improvenient system" through the Legislature of 1836. Antici- pating this a real estate speculation took wing in 1835, and from that time till the panic of 1837 got this far west the course of development was westward towards the line of the canal on Missouri Street, where ware- houses were to grow thick and mills wake the cchocs all night long. When this westward bulge was broken by the hard times the town's business settled down hopelessly on the two sides of Washington Street from Delaware to Illinois, while the residences spread about two blocks farther east and west, and only in widely- scattered clumps or single houses got as far north as North Street or as far south as South Street. In February of 1826 a local census showed a population of but seven hundred and sixty, with a Sunday-school attendance of one hundred and sixty-one,-a very large and healthy disproportion.

For convenience and coherence, all the legislation of the State directly affecting the town, during the interval from the change of capital to the first incor- poration, may be thrown together in this connection. The first act was on the 26th of January, 1827, or- dering the State's agent to survey and sell seven acres on the river for a site for a steam-mill. The company that bought it at a mere nominal price was in- corporated a year later, on the 28th of January, 1828, and was mainly composed of the oldest and most prominent citizens,-Nicholas McCarty, James Blake, James M. Ray, Daniel Yandes, Noah Noble, William Sanders. This steam-mill, which stood till 1853 very near the east end of the old National road bridge, was the first manufacturing enterprise in the history of the place, and on that account may be particularly noted here. The Legislature favored it to an extent that would be tolerated for no enterprise now. On the 6th of January, 1831, the company was given the right to extend the time of completing the mill another year, and next day were given authority to | Bagwell's fiddle, though, as previously noted, mis-

cut any timber they needed on any of the lots held by the State. With good transportation facilities this grant alone would have been a nice little fortunc. The mill was a very large frame, three stories high, with a two-story attic, so solidly put together by a noted workman of the time, James Griswold, that after thirty years of neglect, abuse, and total aban- donment, it was as strong when it was burned as it was the day it was erected. The western and smaller and lower division was a saw-mill, the lower part of the main building a grist-mill, and the upper stories a wool-carding mill. The machinery was brought here from Cincinnati, partly by wagon and partly, some say, by the first and only stcamer that ever came so high up White River. The building was finished in December, 1831. The saw-mill, a less formidable structure, was finished and at work the fall before. The grist-mill began operations in Jan- uary, 1832, for the first time since the settlement of the "New Purchase," giving its customers bolted flour. Previously flour, like corn-mèal, had to be sifted at home. For over two years the establish- ment was maintained in an ineffective way, fre- quently idle and never remunerative, and was finally abandoned in 1835 and the machinery offered for sale. For a number of years, however, portions of the saw-mill works were left for idle boys to abuse or break up and sell for old iron, and the building was made the haunt of thieves and strumpets, except during the occupancy of the Messrs. Geisendorff with their woolen-factory, from 1847 to 1852. The enter- prise was too big for the placc. It could supply a home demand treble that to which it could look for business, and beyond that it could do nothing. The cost of getting flour to the Ohio River or any shipping market would have been as much as the cost of the flour itself. It is among the traditions of this first enterprise and failure that it took a hundred men two days to raise the frame- work, and that they used no liquor in the labor. The singularity of this abstinence no doubt gave life to the legend. Liquor at a " house-raising" or " log-rolling" or " corn-shuck- ing" or any of the co-operative labors or neighborhood frolics was as indispensable as food or Rouse's or

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THE CAPITAL IN THE WOODS.

chievous excesses were far less frequent than now. Three of the men conspicuously connected with this enterprise were quite as conspicuously connected with the whole history of the earliest development of the city's industrial and commercial interests. These were Nicholas McCarty, Daniel Yandes, and James Blake. Others, like Calvin Fletcher, Morris Morris, Hervey Bates, and James M. Ray, were as closely identified with the general progress of the city, but less so with the special interests indicated. Mr. McCarty and Mr. Yandes were the chief capital- ists, so far as can now be learned. The former stands as the representative of the commercial as the latter and Mr. Blake of the manufacturing development of the city. Though Mr. McCarty was behind neither of his compeers of their own special direction, he is best known as the leading merchant of Central Indiana.

NICHOLAS MCCARTY was born on the 26th of September, 1795, in the town of Moorefield, Harding Co., W. Va., among the Alleghanies. His father dying when he was very young, his mother removed to Pittsburgh, Pa., where he remained until he was well advanced toward manhood, with little opportunity for early school education. While still under twenty he left Pittsburgh for Newark, Ohio, where as a boy he won the favor of Mr. Bucking- ham, then one of the leading merchants of Ohio, by the sterling qualities that in later years won him the respect of every honorable man to whom he was known. He speedily made himself master of the mercantile business, so far as it was developed within his range, and Mr. Buckingham made him superin- tendent of one of his branch houses near Newark. His success was as speedy and conspicuous here as in a lower position, and in a few years he had acquired both the experience and the means to begin business for himself. His trade was large and prosperous from the beginning. Here his career gives the key- note of his character,-a sensitiveness of honor that feels a reproach like a stab, a strength of gratitude that counts no sacrifice a loss in returning the good- will he has received. Finding that his business was growing at the expense of his benefactor's, when he had counted confidently on a sufficiency for both, he

sold out and came from Newark to Indianapolis in the fall of 1823, at twenty-eight years of age.

He 'established himself in a building on the south- west corner of Washington and Pennsylvania Streets, known for thirty years as "McCarty's Corner," and south of this building some years later built an im- posing brick residence, the home of the family for many years. He was the first merchant educated to business who conducted it systematically. He began in a larger way, too, than others, and his success was proportional. He established branch stores in Laporte, Greenfield, Covington, Cumberland, and Waverly, and trained several young men afterwards conspicuous in the business of the city or State, imbuing them all with his own scrupulous and resolute integrity. It was reserved for the great crisis of his life to exhibit his best qualities at their best. When the panic of 1837 and the subsequent hard times had made his great resources, largely in real estate, unavailable, he became involved, and made a settlement with his creditors upon such terms as to enable them to realize more than the principal and interest of his obligations.

James Blake had come to Indianapolis in 1821, under the advice of some Philadelphia friends, with an eye to the preparation of ginseng-a profuse growth of the woods all about the settlement at that time-for shipment from Philadelphia to China, where it sells at high figures, and its use is universal now, as it was then. He established a drying and purifying apparatus in a little house south of the creek, on the present East Delaware Street, and Mr. McCarty here, and by his agents at his branch stores and elsewhere, collected the roots from farmers and their families, who frequently helped out a short corn crop with what they called " sang." A little hoe was made especially for this use called a " sang-hoe," obsolete for forty-five years or more. The extent of his business in a little place of less than two thousand people may be judged by the fact that the freezing of the Oliio in 1829 compelled him to haul in wagons his entire season's stock from Philadelphia, requiring sixteen six-horse Conestoga wagons to do it. The freight of ginseng back made the audacious enterprise profitable,-an illustration of his business perception

100

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

and prompt decision, for the cold snap froze the Ohio just as his goods reached Pittsburgh to take steam passage to Madison. Besides his ordinary mercantile business, he took large contracts for Indian supplies, and made himself quite familiar with the dialects of two or three of the tribes on the " Miami Reserva- tion."

His enterprise appeared repeatedly in attempts to' introduce new industries or develop new resources. He was largely interested in the effort to establish silk-growing about 1835, and went with character- istie energy into the planting of the Morus multi- caulis. A few years later (about 1840) he began one of the most important enterprises of his life, though the distress of the country was too great and general to permit it the success it would probably have achieved a half-dozen years later. This was the cultivation and manufacture of hemp on his " bayou farm," now " West Indianapolis," where are located the " stock-yards," " car-works," and other improvements. The fibre was rotted, broken, and eleaned in vats and mills on the bluff bank of the creek just below the present line of Ray Street at Church, Carloss, and Wilkins Streets. Proving un- profitable, the enterprise was abandoned in two or three years.

Mr. McCarty's personal popularity was so great that the Whigs, who had been placed under the eloud of " hard times" from 1843 onward, thought it possible to save a seat in Congress by him, and ran him against Judge Wiek in 1847. It was his first experience as a politician, but his native shrewdness served him better than many an older politician's more devious ways. He made no pretence of oratory, and for that reason made a stronger impression by his solid sense and effective humor than his opponent, who was really an unusually good speaker when he chose to be. But the Whigs were not strong enough to win even with a man stronger than the party. A few years later he ran for the State Senate in the county and was elected, serving three years, the last three under the old Constitution. In 1852, much against his inelination, he was unanimously nomi- nated by the dying Whig party for the first guber- natorial term under the new Constitution. He made

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 18

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