USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana > Part 6
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well known to the South Side school-boys forty-five or fifty years ago. Her residence was the north- west corner of Maryland and Meridian Streets. She married a barber named Britton.
On the completion of the surveying force, work was begun at once in marking out the sections and fractions selected by the locating commissioners in June, 1820. The whole donation lay upon the east bank of the river except a fractional section on the west bank, where Indianola stands. A plat of one mile square was set in the middle of the donation, and almost in the middle of the plat the Circle was placed, to be made the site of the Governor's resi- dence. It was not used for that purpose, however, though a large house was erected there in 1827 at considerable expense, some six thousand five hundred dollars. The publicity of the situation made it un- desirable as a family residence, and it was used ex- clusively as rooms for the judges of the Supreme Court, the State auditor and engineer, the State Library and State Bank, and occasionally for local or individual purposes. It was proposed at one time to add wings on each side and make a State- House of it. It was sold as old building material in April, 1857, for six hundred and sixty-five dollars, and torn down and carried off in the last days of the same month. The Circle was not put in the centre of the donation, because if the centre of the town had corresponded with the centre of the donation, it would have thrown too much of the central portion of the town plat into the valley of Pogue's Creek. The point where the four sections of the donation " corner" is about ten feet west and five feet south of the southeast corner of the lot occupied by the Occi- dental Hotel. The Circle was set nearly a square east and two squares north for the purpose stated. A natural elevation at this point, thickly covered with a growth of tall straight sugar-trees, aided its nearly central situation in making it the centre of the original town plat. It contains between three and four acres, and is surrounded by an eighty-feet street.
Extending north and south from the Circle on a meridian line is Meridian Street, and crossing the latter from east to west is Market Street, both carried to the limits of the city, except the west end of
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
Market, which is blocked at Blackford Street. Par- allel with Market and one square south is Washing- ton Street, the main thoroughfare of the eity, one hundred and twenty feet wide. The whole plat, one mile square, is surrounded by ninety-feet streets, ealled respectively, from their location, North, South, East, and West. The area inside these limits is di- vided into eighty-nine blocks and fraetions by nine streets north to south and nine east to west, each ninety feet wide except Washington. The bloeks are four hundred and twenty feet square, and are divided into four equal parts, each containing one acre, by alleys fifteen feet wide running north and south, and thirty feet running east and west. All of the streets, except the two central ones meeting at the Circle, the main street, and the four hounding the plat, are named for the States of the Union in 1821. The most marked features of the original de- sign of the city are the Cirele and the avenues radi- ating from it, and starting at the corners most re- mote from it of the four blocks that adjoin it. These are named for States like the others. The squares are broken by six fractions and three con- siderable irregular tracts in Pogue's Run Valley, so that the number of completed squares is only eighty- nine. The intersections of the streets would have made one hundred if completion had been possible. Three lots were made of each quarter of a square or aere, giving to each lot of the original plat one-third of an acre. Few of these now retain their original dimensions. They were sixty-seven and one-half feet wide on the streets by one hundred and ninety- five feet deep, being longer where they abutted upon the narrow alleys. The half-mile of the donation lying all round the mile square in the middle of it, except on the river side, was not platted. In 1822 the Legislature ordered the fraetion west of the river to be laid off in tracts of five to twenty aeres by the State agent, and in 1831 he was ordered to lay off all the remainder of the donation, some nineteen hun- dred acres, into lots of two to fifty acres, and sell them at a minimum price of ten dollars an aere. These were used chiefly for farming purposes and pastures till the growth of the eity began to overrun them. It was never imagined that the city or town
would extend to these exterior lots at all, and that they should he covered by it would have been as in- eredible as au Arabian Night tale. Now the city covers nearly three times the area of the donation. The four streets bounding the old plat-North, South, East, and West-were not in it at first, but were put there at the solieitation of James Blake, who represented to Commissioner Harrison the ad- vantages sueh streets would be as public drives and promenades when the town grew up.
The act of the Legislature creating the commission to lay off the town required the appointment of an agent of the State at six hundred dollars a year for a term of three years, who was to live at Indianapolis and attend to the disposal of the lots. Gen. John Carr was the first agent. The place was subsequently held by several persons, among them James Milroy, Bethuel F. Morris, Ebenezer Sharpe, B. I. Blythe, elerk of the commission, Thomas H. Sharpe, and John Cook. The duties were finally transferred to the Secretary of State. The commissioners, or rather one of them, having completed the survey and plat, advertised the first sale for the second Monday in October, 1821, and it took place at the tavern of Mat- thias Nowland, father of John H. B., author of " Prominent Citizens of Indianapolis." This stood near Washington Street, west of Missouri; and at the request of the State agent, Mr. Nowland had built an addition to serve as an office. Oct. 9, 1821, was "a raw, cold day," says a sketch of the city's early history written some twenty-five years or more ago; " a high wind prevailed, and a man in attend- anee eame near being killed by a falling limb." The town was very much erowded. Strangers from vari- ous quarters had come to settle in the new place or to seeure property. The three taverns, kept by Hawkins, Carter, and Nowland, were crowded, and in many cases the citizens were called upon to share their homes with the new-comers till they could erect eabins. The bidding at the sale was quite spirited, and, considering the position and advantages of the settlement, high priees were obtained in some cases. " The reservation of alternate lots was begun by the commissioner by reserving lot No. 1." The best sales were north and east of the bulk of the settle-
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
ment, which was on and near the river, owing to the prevalence of chills and fever the summer before, when everybody, old and young, was down at one time or another, except Enoch Banks, Thomas Chinn, and Naney Hendricks. This visitation gave an eastern impulse to settlement, and accounts for the higher prices of lots more remote from the river. The number of lots sold amounted to three hundred and fourteen, mostly in the central and northern parts of the plat, and the total value of the sales was thirty- five thousand five hundred and ninety-six dollars and twenty-five cents. The highest price brought by a single lot was by the lot on Washington Street, west of the Court-House Square, which brought five hun- dred and sixty dollars. That on the same street, west of the State-House Square, brought five hun- dred dollars. The intervening lots sold from one hundred to three hundred dollars each. The condi- tions of the sale required the payment of one-fifth of the purchase-money down, and the remainder in four equal annual installments.
The sales continued a week, and the amount paid down was seven thousand one hundred and nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. Thomas Carter was auc- tieneer, and the late James M. Ray elerk of these first sales. Not a few of these lots are now worth one thou- sand dollars a front foot, some are worth more. " Out- lots" that were sold at first for ten, twenty, or thirty dollars could not be bought now for as many thou- sands, in some cases twice that. Of the lots purchased at this first sale, one hundred and sixty-nine were afterwards forfeited, or the payments made on one lot were transferred to another, under an aer passed a little later " for the relief of purchasers of lots in Indiau- apolis." The early sketeli already referred to says, " These forfeited lots and the reserved lots were once or twice afterwards offered at publie sale, and kept open for purchase all the time. But prices became depressed, money searee, sickness caused general de- spondeney, and for several years after the winter of 1821-22 there were but few lots sold. The amount of cash reserved by the State for donation lands up to 1842 was about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars." This the law made a publie build- ing fund, out of which was erected a State-House,
ecurt-house, Governor's house (in the Cirele), treas- urer's house and office, office of clerk of the Supreme Court, and a ferryman's house at the foot of Wash- ington Street.
The settlers brought to the new capital by the re- port of its selection for that purpose speedily trebled its population, and more. During the summer and fall of 1820 there came Dr. Samuel G. Mitehell, John and James Givan (among the first merchants), William or Wilkes Reagan, Matthias Nowland, James M. Ray, James Blake, Nathaniel Cox, Thomas Anderson, John Hawkins, Dr. Livingston Dunlap, Daniel Yandes, David Wood, Col. Alexander W. Russell, Dr. Isaac Coe, Douglass Maguire, and others unnamed and not easily identified as to the time of arrival. Morris Morris is said by one of these early sketehes to have come here in 1819, in the fall (probably inadvertently for 1820), when he came only in the fall of 1821. Mr. Nowland says that James M. Ray, James Blake, Daniel Yandes, the Givans, Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Coe, Dr. Dunlap, Col. Russell came the following spring and summer, 1821, and with them Daniel Shaffer, the first merehant, who died in the summer of 1821, Robert Wilmot, and Calvin Fletcher, the first lawyer. It is impossible now to make a complete list of the settlers up to the laying out of the town and the first sale of lots, but with the help of such records as have been made, and such memories as are accessible, a muster-roll of consid- erable interest can be made :
George Pogue (blacksmith), possibly, 1819, spring. Fabius M. Finch (lawyer), 1819, summer. John MeCormick (tavern), 1820, spring. James MeCormiek, 1820, spring. John Maxwell ('squire), 1820, spring. John Cowan, 1820, spring. Robert Harding (farmer), 1820, spring.
Van Blaricum (farmer), 1820, spring.
Henry Davis (chairmaker), 1820, spring. Samuel Davis (chairmaker), 1820, spring. Jeremiah J. Corbaley (farmer), 1820, spring. Robert Barnhill (farmer), 1820, spring. Isaac Wilson (miller), 1820, spring. Matthias Nowland (mason), 1820, fall. Dr. S. G. Mitchell, 1820, fall.
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
Thomas Anderson (wagonmaker), 1820, fall. Alexander Ralston (surveyor), 1820, fall.
Dr. Isaac Coe, 1820, spring.
James B. Hall (carpenter), 1820, winter. Andrew Byrne (tailor), 1820, fall.
Michael Ingals (teamster), 1820, winter.
Kenneth A. Scudder (first drug-store), 1820, sum- mer.
Conrad Brussell (baker), 1820, fall. Milo R. Davis (plasterer), 1820, winter. Samuel Morrow, 1820, summer. James J. MeIlvain ('squire), 1820, summer. Eliakim Harding ('squire), 1821, summer. Mr. Lawrence (teacher), 1821, summer. Daniel Larkins (grocery), 1821, summer. Lismund Basye (Swede), 1821, fall.
Robert Wilmot (merchant), 1820, winter. James Kittleman (shoemaker), 1821.
Andrew Wilson (miller), 1821.
John McClung (preacher), 1821, spring. Daniel Shaffer, 1821, January.
Jeremiah Johnson (farmer), 1820, spring. Wilkes Reagan (butcher), 1821, summer. Obed Foote (lawyer), 1821, summer. Calvin Fletcher (lawyer), 1821, fall.
James Blake, 1821, spring. Alexander W. Russell (merchant), 1821, spring. Caleb Scudder, 1821, fall.
George Smith (first publisher), 1821, fall. James Scott (Methodist preacher), 1821, fall.
O. P. Gaines (first Presbyterian preacher), 1821, summer.
James Linton (millwright), 1821, summer. Joseph C. Reed (first teacher), 1821, spring. James Paxton (militia offieer), 1821, fall. Daniel Yandes (first tanner), 1821, January. Caleb Scudder (cabinet-maker), 1821, fall. George Myers (potter), 1821, fall. Nathaniel Bolton (first editor), 1821, fall. Amos Hanway (cooper), 1821, summer. John Shunk (hatter), 1821, fall. Isaac Lynel (shoemaker), 1821, fall.
James M. Ray (coach-lace maker), 1821, summer. David Mallory (barber), 1821, spring. John Y. Osborn, 1821, spring.
Samuel Henderson (first postmaster), 1821, fall. Samuel Rooker (first painter), 1821, summer. Thomas Johnson (farmer), 1820, winter. Robert Patterson, 1821, fall.
Aaron Drake (first mail), 1821. William Townsend, 1820, summer. J. R. Crumbaugh, 1821. Harvey Gregg, 1821, fall. Nathaniel Cox (carpenter), 1821.
Some thirty-three years ago the late Samuel Mer- rill, Treasurer of State at the time of the removal of the capital from Corydon to Indianapolis in the fall of 1824, and charged with the supervision of the work, prepared a map illustrating the progress of the town at different periods, 1821, 1823, 1835, and 1850, to accompany the first historical sketch of the city, prepared by him for the first " Gazetteer," issued in 1850 by Chamberlain & Co., booksellers in the town. The reader, understanding the old plat of the city, and observing that its western boundary at West Street was about a quarter of a mile from the river, will see quite accurately the size and location of the infant settlement of 1821 from a description of the outline on this map. It extended along Washington Street, wholly south of it, to a point a little less than a block east of West Street, and was less than a block in width for a distance equal to two blocks, when it began widening, and at the river reached from about the point where Georgia Street strikes the bank to the old National road bridge. The little settlement of Maxwell and Cowan farther north, near the site of the City Hospital, seems to have been completely detached from the main body of the village. In 1823, the year before the arrival of the capital, the settlement had shifted entirely away from the river, its western extremity being ncar West Street, and it extended in a narrow line about a block in width on each side of Washington Street to Meridian Street, where a point ran south to Georgia Street on each side of Meridian, while east of it, and passing east of the Circle, another point pro- jected north as far as Ohio Street, and a third point along Washington carried the settlement to a point about half-way between Alabama and New Jersey Streets. The shape of it is an exact cross, with one
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
arm a little higher than the other. In 1835 the town had been under its own government by trus- tecs for two or three years, had established a brewery and several manufactures, besides those for custom service, had been the capital for over ten years, had nearly completed the State-House, had a population of about two thousand, and the county that year, as announced by Mr. Calvin Fletcher in a public ad- dress, contained thirteen hundred farms, and had produced one million three hundred thousand bushels of corn. In this condition of things the town formed an irregular figure, much like a balloon, with the neck near West Street, and the " bulge" opening pretty rapidly up north to Michigan Street, reaching east to New Jersey, and then south to Georgia and a little below; at the widest place, north to south, covering seven squares, and its greatest length along Washing- ton Street very nearly covering the mile of the plat. In 1850 it covered all of the plat but the northwest, southwest, and southeast corners, and more than made up for these deficiencies by projecting beyond it on the northeast, the east, and the south along the Bluff road or South Meridian Street.
In May, 1820, in three months after the first set- tlement, or in any case after the first indications of a possible settlement of more than a family or two, there were fifteen or twenty families on the donation. These increased to thirty or forty during the succeed- ing year to July, when the sales of government lands in this and adjoining counties began at the land- office in Brookville, Franklin Co. Happily for the pioneers of 1820, there was not so much sick- ness as might have been expected, and nothing com- parable to the visitation the next year, and, quite as happily, nature had provided a "deadening," in which they raised with little labor comparatively all the corn and vegetables they needed to make a com- fortable subsistence with the abundance of fish and game to be had close at hand and with little trouble. This natural " deadening" lay at the northwest cor- ner of the donation, and contained some hundred or more acres. The trees had been killed by cater- pillars, and the pioneers cleared off the underbrush together, and held the field in common, simply marking off each family's share by what Mr. Now-
land calls " turn-rows." This was known as the "big field" for several years. Its products were chicfly corn and pumpkins. In addition to this pro- vision for the staples of vegetable food, each family had a truck-patch in the rear of their log cabin, where they raised such vegetables as they required for immediate use, including the " love-apple," or tomato, which nobody dreamed of eating for twenty years afterwards. Little more belongs to the history of this first year of the city's settlement than an ac- count of the condition and modes of life of the set- tlers, and that being much the same for all the early years of the settlement will be told for all at once.
The year 1821 was an eventful one for the infant capital. During the summer the donation had been surveyed and the original city plat made, and a number of the men who were to be most conspicuous in its after-history, in spreading its business, estab- lishing its industries, founding its schools, main- taining its morality, its Fletcher, Yandes, Blake, Ray, Morris, Russell, Dunlap, Brown, Landis, had come or were on the way. It was a year of universal sickness, privation, and suffering. Says an early account, "Towards the end of summer and during the fall epidemic remittent and intermittent fevers and agues assailed the people, and scarcely a person was left untouched. (In another place it is told that Nancy Hendricks, Enoch Banks, and Thomas Chinn were all that escaped.) The few healthy ones were employed day and night in minis- tering to the wants of the sufferers, and many in- stances of generous and devoted friendship occurred at this time. The recollection of their bitter suffer- ings bound the early settlers together in after-life. The new-comers might well be appalled at the pros- pect before them, and it is no wonder that extrava- gant stories were circulated of the sickness at In- dianapolis. Although nearly every person in the settlement was more or less assailed, and several hundred cases occurred during the prevalence of the epidemic, not more than, twenty-five terminated fatally. As winter approached the health of the community improved, and by the end of the year it was entirely restored. No cause was discovered for the unparalleled visitation, which the old settlers
INDIANAPOLIS IN 1320.
-
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
hold to this day in vivid remembrance." The report of this calamity went abroad, and for many years more or less affected the otherwise strong induce- ments of the settlement to new settlers, and for thirty years malarial disorders came almost as regu- larly as the seasons. The "sickly season" was as well known and well defined a period as the " dog- days," and continued so till the general clearing of the county and drying out of low bottom lands and swamps had diminished the sources of malarial influ- ence. The effect of the epidemie of 1821 on the settlement was to force it back from the river, and extend it eastward past the Circle and Court-House Square along Washington Street.
The first death in the settlement, by tradition, was that of Daniel Shaffer, a merchant, who came early in the year, opened a store on the high ground south of the creek, near the present line of South Street, and died in the summer following. The first woman that died was the wife of John Maxwell, one of the first two settlers after the McCormicks in the spring of 1820. She died 3d of July, 1821, and was buried on the bluff of Fall Creek, near the site of the City Hospital. Eight persons were buried there during the epidemic. Mr. Commissioner Harrison was scared off home by it, but before he went he authorized Daniel Shaffer, James Blake, and Matthias R. Now- land to select a site for a cemetery. " One Sunday morning early in August," says Mr. J. H. B. Now- land, " they selected the place now known as the Old Graveyard. One week from that day Mr. Shaffer was buried there." If his memory is correct Mrs. Max- well's was the first death in the settlement, and the traditional burial of Shaffer near the corner of South and Pennsylvania Streets, and subsequent removal to the "Old Graveyard," now " Greenlawn Cemetery," is a mistake. Most of the burials during the epidemie were in that first cemetery.
Following this visitation came another hardly less intolerable. The universal sickness prevented the cultivation of the " caterpillar deadening," and the influx of settlers at and after the first sales of lots made provisions distressingly scarce. Coffee was fifty cents a pound; tea, two dollars; corn, one dollar a bushel ; flour, four to five dollars a hundred ; coarse
muslin or " factory," forty-five cents a yard. There were no roads into the settlement, nor anything better than cow-paths. All goods and provisions had to be carried on horseback from the White Water Valley, sixty miles away. The nearest grist-mill was Good- lander's, on the White Water. Corn was mainly bought of the Indians up the river and brought down in boats. Later keel-boats brought considerable car- goes of flour, whiskey, and powder, chicfly up the river. The settlers considered each one's stock of provisions the property of all that needed it, and divided with unstinted generosity.
The year 1821 was marked by the establishment of the first business house, the store of Daniel Shaffer. He was followed in a short time by James and John Givan, the latter of whom became a vagrant and pauper, supported by an annuity contributed by the merchants of the city, and died only a few years ago, a very old man, with a marvelous memory of events and persons of that early time. Robert Wilmot began merchandising about the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, near the present corner of Washington and West Streets, in a row of cabins called " Wilmot's Row." Luke Walpole opened in the same business in the fall on the southwest corner of the State-House Square, Jacob Landis on the southeast corner, and Jeremiah Johnson on the northwest corner of Market and Pennsylvania. The first log school-house was built the same year, about where Kentucky Avenue enters Illinois Street, near a large pond. The first teacher was Joseph C. Reed, afterwards the first county recorder. The first log house on the old city plat was built by Isaac Wilson in the spring of 1820, on the northwest corner of what was afterwards the State-House Square. The first frame house was built by James Blake on the lot east of Masonie Hall in the fall of 1821. The timber had been cut during the summer by James Paxton on the donation. This was the first plastered house. That winter Thomas Carter, the auctioneer of the lot sales, built a ceiled frame tavern about where No. 40 West Washington Street is, and called it the " Rosebush," in the old English fashion of naming taverns, from a rough painting of that object on the sign. It was long after removed to a point near the canal, and then to West Street
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
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near Maryland. John Hawkins had built a log tavern the fall before on Washington Street, north side, near the middle of the block east of Meridian. It may be noted in this connection, though chronologically dis- located, that the first brick building was erected for John Johnson in 1822-23, on a lot opposite the site of the post-office. It was torn down a few years ago to make room for a better structure. Though the Johnson house was undoubtedly the first brick build- ing in the town, it is not so certain that it was the first in the county. Old residents of Wayne township, like Mr. Mattern and Mr. Gladden, say that a two-story brick residence was built by John Cook in 1821, in what is now Maywood, near the line of Wayne and Decatur townships. In its latter days, thirty-five or forty years ago, it cracked through the middle, and was held together by a hoop of large square logs, notched at the corners and wedged tight, between the lower and upper stories. It was a rare style of repair for a building of any kind, and may still be remcm- bered by old residents on that account. It stood on the northern bluff of a low, level, wet prairie, the only one in the county, of which the now drained and cultivated remains, with possible patches of the orig- inal condition, are on the southern border of May- wood, and near the residence of Fielding Beeler, Esq. James Linton built the first two-story house, a frame, in the spring of 1822, on the site of No. 76 West Washington Street. He also built the first saw-mill on Fall Creek, above the Indiana Avenue or Craw- fordsville road bridge, and about the same time built the first grist-mill for Isaac Wilson on Fall Creek bayou, now known as " the race," near the line of North Street.
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