History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 7

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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The year 1821 saw the beginning of moral and intellectual culture as well as business. A school was taught by Mr. Reed during the latter part of the year, and Rev. John McClung, a preacher of what was called the " New Light" denomination, preached in the spring, some say in the sugar grove on the little knoll in the Circle. It is a question among the few old settlers who remember the occur- rence whether that was the first sermon heard in the New Purchase or one preached not far from the same time by Rev. Rezin Hammond. Mr. Nowland | house was occupied specially as a church till the

says that if Mr. McClung preached in the settlement that spring it must have been at Mr. Barnhill's, who belonged to the same denomination but lived outside of the donation. An old settler wrote in one of the city papers recently that Mr. Hammond preached near the site of the old State Bank, corner of Illinois Street and Kentucky Avenue, near a pond, which must have been close to the site of the first school- house, while others say he preached in the woods on the State-House Square. Mr. Nowland, years after- wards, met Mr. Hammond at Jeffersonville, and this first sermon was recalled. The party surveying the town, under Ralston, were then at work near the Circle, and they prepared on Saturday evening for the sermon next day by rolling logs together for seats and building a rough log rostrum. Not more than forty or fifty persons attended. " A few mo- ments after the services commenced," says Mr. Now- land, " an Indian and his squaw came by on their ponies. They halted a moment, and passed on to- wards the trading-house of Robert Wilmot. He was in the congregation, and at once rose and followed them ; but before he was out of hearing Mr. Hammond said, ' The pelts and furs of the Indians had more attractions for his Kentucky friend than the words of God.' There can be little doubt," Mr. Nowland concludes, " that this was the first sermon preached in Indianapolis ; it was so regarded at the time." In August of the same year Rev. Ludlow G. Gaines, a Presbyterian clergyman, preached in the grove south of the State-House Square. No church or- ganization was attempted, however, till the spring of 1823. In July it was completed, and steps taken to build a church on North Pennsylvania Street, on the site of the Exchange Block. It was finished, at a cost of twelve hundred dollars, and occupied in 1824. The " Indianapolis Circuit" of the Methodist Church was organized by Rev .. William Cravens in 1822, under authority of the Missouri Conference, but Rev. James Scott had preached here in private houses as early as October, 1821, by appointment of the same authority. A camp-meeting had been held in 1822, September 12th, and a second one in May; 1823, after the organization of the circuit, but no

EARLY SETTLEMENTS.

summer of 1825, when a hewed-log house on Maryland Street near Meridian was bought for three hundred dollars and used for four years. In 1828-29 a brick building was erected, at a cost of three thousand dollars, on the southwest corner of Circle and Meridian Streets, which became, when replaced in 1846, " Wesley Chapel." The first Baptist Church was organized in September, 1822, but held services in private houses or in a log school-house "on and partly in Maryland Street," between Tennessee and Mississippi Streets, which could be had " without interruption," as a committee reported in May, 1823, till a brick house was built on the southwest corner of Maryland and Meridian Streets in 1829. These were the beginnings of the three pioneer churches in Indianapolis and the New Purchase. They are noted here to present as com- plete a view as possible of the early settlement and history of the city and county.

In the summer of 1821 the first marriage oc- curred. The bride was Miss Jane Reagan, the groom Jeremiah Johnson, who had to walk through an unbroken and pathless forest sixty miles to Con- nersville for his license (this county at that time having no organization), and the walk back made one hundred and twenty miles. He was an eccentric man, witty, cynical, with a fashion of retracting his lips when talking so as to show his yellow, tobacco- · stained teeth, giving him something of the expression of a snarling dog. He was full of humorous conceits and quaint comparisons, and a delightful companion for young men when he was " tight" enough to feel jolly, as he frequently was. When the first telegraph line was completed to the city in 1848, " Old Jerry" saw it as he was passing along Washington Street com- fortably " full," and broke out in a sort of apostrophe, "There ! they're driving lightning down the road, and with a single line at that !" Any one who has seen a team driven by a " single line" will appreciate " Old Jerry's" joke. He died very suddenly in 1857.

Among other first events that have traditionally marked this year was the birth of the first child. But the tradition of that interesting occurrence is con- tested by two living witnesses, who rather confuse 3

one's faith, and leave a slight leaning to the skepticism which would doubt if any child was born at all. The traditional opinion, supported by two or three historical sketches, is that Mordecai Harding was that memorable infant, but tradition and history are both impeached by Mr. William H. White (before re- ferred to) and by Mr. Shirts, of Hamilton, who claims that Mr. Corbaley's son Richard was the first, in August, 1820, at his residence in the western part of the donation. Mr. Nowland denies the donation, says Mr. Corbaley lived west of the west donation line, but concedes the principal fact. Mr. White's claim is disputed by the general opinion of old set- tlers, but the other seems to be settled.

During the whole of the year 1820 the "New Purchase" formed part of Delaware County, which, then unorganized, vaguely covered most of the northern and central portions of the State, and was attached for judicial purposes to Wayne and Fayette Counties. The residents of White River Valley were sued and compelled to answer in the courts of the White Water Valley, sixty miles away, and the compulsion was costly, irritating, and intolerable. The jurisdic- tion was disputed and resisted, and the Legislature, to avoid further and graver trouble, passed an act of Jan. 9, 1821, authorizing the appointment of two justices of the peace for the new settlements, with appeals to the Bartholomew Circuit Court. In April, 1821, Governor Jennings appointed John Maxwell, but he retained the office only a few months, and resigned. The settlers then elected informally James McIlvaine, and the Governor commissioned him in October. . He is described by the old residents who remember him, and by the sketches that speak of this period of the city's history, as holding court at the door of his little log shanty, on the northwest corner of Pennsylvania and Michigan Streets, with the jury sitting on a log in front, his pipe in his mouth, and Corbaley, the solitary constable, vigilantly crossing the plans of culprits to get away into the thick woods close about, as they are said to have done sometimes in spite of him. The late Calvin Fletcher was then the only lawyer, and the primary court of informal appeal for the easily-puzzled old squire. The po-

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

sitions of counsel and judge are not often consoli- dated in the same hands,-it is too easy for one to use and abuse the other; but it was never charged that Mr. Fletcher misled his confidant in his own interest.

The first especially exciting ineident in the quiet course of the settlement brought the judicial power into a dilemma, from which it escaped by a pro- eess that did more eredit to its ingenuity than its sense of justice. On Christmas-day, 1821, four Kentucky boatmen who had come up White River from the Ohio in a keel-boat to the Bluffs, thought that the new settlement farther up would be a good place for frolie, and they came and got howling drunk before daylight at Dan Larkins' " grocery," as liquor-shops were called in those days, and frequently were a mixture of saloon and grocery-store. As usual with the "half-horse and half-alligator" men of the Mike Fink breed, the predecessors of the " cow-boy," they began smashing the doggery as soon as they had got all the liquor they wanted. The row roused the settlement, and the gentlemen from Kentucky were respectfully re- quested to desist and make less noise. They re- sponded with a defianee backed by knives. The settlers consulted. They did not want the whiskey wasted, and they did want a quiet Christmas, or at least to make their own disturbance. They de- termined to put down the rioters. James Blake proposed to take the leader single-handed if the rest of Indianapolis would " taekle" the other three, and the consolidated remainder of the embryo eap- ital agreed. Blake and the Kentuekian were both large, powerful men, but the Hoosier was sober and resolute, and the Kentuckian drunk and furious, so the rioters were captured and taken to Squire MeIlvaine's. They were tried, fined severely, and in default of payment ordered to jail. There was no jail nearer than Connersville, and it would cost as much as their fines to take them there in the dead of winter under guard, so they were kept under guard here, with instructions to allow a little relaxation of vigilanee in the night, and the hint was followed by the convenient eseape of the whole party.

Notwithstanding the appointment of justices, the courts of Wayne and Fayette Counties still elaimed jurisdiction, and doubts were entertained of the va- lidity of the appointment of Maxwell and MeIlvaine. To remedy all difficulties the citizens held a meeting at Hawkins' tavern to discuss the matter, and James Blake and Dr. S. G. Mitchell were appointed repre- sentatives of the settlement to attend the next session of the Legislature at Corydon as lobby members to seeure an organization of the county. On the 28th of November the Legislature legalized the aets of Commissioner Harrison, he haviog acted alone in sur- veying the donation and laying off the town. It may be noted here as an indication of the readiness of the Legislature to encourage the growth of the place that on the 31st of December, 1821, an aet anthorized Gen. Carr, the agent, to lease to MeCart- ney and MeDonald forty aeres of the donation for ten years free, to be occupied as a mill-seat. On the same day an aet was passed organizing the county, and requiring the organization to be completed on the 1st of April, 1822. It applied the present Court- House Square to that purpose, and provided for the erection of a court-lionse fifty feet square and two stories high, and appropriated eight thousand dollars to it. The courts that held sessions in the capitol, Federal, State, and county, were to use it forever if they chose, and the State Legislature was to use it for fifty years or till a State-House should be built. Two per cent. of the lot fund was to be given for the founding of a county library. The sessions of court and the elections were to be held at Gen. Carr's till the court-house was built. Johnson, Hamilton, and a large part of Boone, Madison, and Hancock were attached to this eounty for judicial purposes. Marion, Monroe, Owen, Greene, Morgan, Lawrence, Rush, Hendrieks, Decatur, Bartholomew, Shelby, and Jen- nings Counties were formed into the Fifth Judicial Circuit. William W. Wiek, of Connersville, was elected president judge by the Legislature, and Harvey Bates, of the same place, was appointed sheriff by the Governor. They both came on and assumed their offices the following February, 1822. The latter, by a proclamation of Feb. 22, 1822, or- dered an election to be held on the 1st of the next

A Bater

EARLY SETTLEMENTS.

April for two associate judges, a clerk, recorder, and three county commissioners. The voting precincts were fixed at Gen. Carr's, in the town ; John Page's, at Strawtown, in Hamilton County ; John Berry's, Andersontown, Madison Co .; and William McCart- ney's, on Fall Creek, near Pendleton. Returns were to be forwarded by the 3d of April.

William W. Wick was a Pennsylvanian by birth, but came to Connersville, in this State, when a young man, and from there came to Indianapolis to assume the duties of his office. Ex-Senator Oliver H. Smith said that in 1824 "he, though a young lawyer, had had a good deal of experience in criminal cases." During his term as judge of the huge circuit, now formed into a half-dozen, he was elected brigadier-general of militia, no unimportant position in those days to an ambitious young man. He was Secretary of State for four years, from 1825 to 1829, then prosecuting attorney, and in 1833 was beaten for Congress by George L. Kinnard. He was success- ful though in 1839, and served in the House during the memorable " log cabin and hard cider" campaign of 1840. IIe was elected again in 1845, and re-elected in 1847. In 1853 he was made post- master by President Pierce, and on the expiration of his term in 1857 he retired from public life alto- gether. Soon afterwards he went to Franklin and made his home with his daughter, and died there in 1868.

HERVEY BATES, who was appointed sheriff by Governor Jennings, was a son of Hervey Bates, who was a master of transportation during the Indian war under Gens. Wayne and Harmar, and chiefly engaged in forwarding provisions and munitions of war from the frontier posts to the army in the wilderness. His son Hervey, the subject of this biographical sketch, was a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, and born in that place in 1795, when it was called Fort Washington. When but about six years of age he lost his mother, and, his father having married again, he left the paternal roof, and in Warren, Lebanon County, Ohio, met with friends through whose agency he received a sufficient English education to qualify him for the ordinary pursuits of life. On attaining his majority he came to Brookville, Franklin County, where he married

Miss Sidney Sedwick, cousin of the late Gen. James Noble, United States senator. During the year 1816 he cast, in Brookville, his first vote for a delegate to form a new constitution for the State of Indiana. Soon after Mr. Bates' marriage he removed to Con- nersville, and made it his residence until February, 1822, when Indianapolis, then a mere hamlet, hecame his home. Jonathan Jennings, the first Governor after. the admission of the State into the Union, ap- pointed William W. Wick president judge of the then Fifth Judicial District, and Hervey Bates, sheriff of Marion County, which then embraced several neigh- boring counties for judicial purposes, investing the latter with full power for placing in operation the necessary legal machinery of the county. This he did by issuing a proclamation for an election to be held on the first day of April, for the purpose of choosing a clerk of the court and other county officers, which was the first election of any kind held in the new purchase. Mr. Bates was, at the following elec- tion held in October, made sheriff for the regular term of two years, but declined a subsequent nomination, having little taste for the distinctions of office. Mer- cantile pursuits subsequently engaged his attention,. to which he brought his accustomed energy and in- dustry, and enjoyed success in his various business enterprises.

Mr. Bates was the earliest president of the branch of the State Bank located in Indianapolis, and filled the position for ten years, during which time it en- joyed a career of unparalleled success, and greatly advanced the interests of the business community. Through the substantial aid afforded by this bank, most of the surplus produce of this and adjacent counties found a profitable market. Mr. Bates was also instrumental in the formation of the earliest insurance company, was a stockholder in the first hotel built by a company, in the first railroad finished to the city of his residence, the earliest gas- light and coke company, and in many other enter- prises having for their object the public welfare. In 1852 he began and later completed the spacious hotel known as the Bates House, at that time one of the most complete and elegant in the West. It was erected at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, and

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

modern improvements added, making a total cost of seventy-five thousand dollars. Many other public and private buildings in various portions of the city owe their existence to the enterprise and means of Mr. Bates. He was a generous contributor to all worthy religious and benevolent objects, and willingly aided in the maintenance of the various charitable institutions of Indianapolis. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher found in him a cordial friend when a resi- dent of the city, and in his less prosperous days. The death of Mr. Bates occurred on the 6th of July, 1876, in his eighty-third year, his wife having died previously. His children are Hervey Bates and Mrs. L. M. Vance, both of Indianapolis, and Elizabeth H., deceased.

While this first election is pending a return may be made for a moment to pick up some incidents of the settlement that occurred between the sale of lots in October, 1821, and the election, April 1, 1822. No clearing of the streets had been attempted when the sales took place. Each little cabin was stuck away in its own little hole in the dense woods, and they were so dense that a man standing near the site of Bingham & Walk's jewelry-store could not see a house half-way down the block on the other side of Washington Street, west of Meridian ; so say old set- tlers and common tradition. Gen. Morris once said that it was just like camping out in a forest on a hunting expedition when he came here with his father in 1821, except that the camping-places were cabins instead of tents or brush houses. One neigh- bor could not see the next one's house. Hawkins built his tavern of logs cut on the lot in the very centre of Washington Street. For many years the less settled streets were more or less filled with trees and brush, and the only way along them was a cow- path. In order to open Washington Street, which the plan of the town had appointed for the principal thoroughfare, an offer was made by the settlers to give the timber to anybody who would clear off the trees. It would have been a very profitable contract a year later. The offer was accepted by Lismond Basye, a Swede, who had come from Franklin County that same fall. The trees were oak, ash, and walnut chiefly, and he thought he had a small fortune safe.

When he had got them all down, and the street " to be" was worse blocked than before, and there was no mill to saw them, he gave up the job in despair, and the people burned the superb timber as it lay. In Jao- uary, 1822, the Legislature ordered the opening of a number of roads, and appropriated nearly one hundred thousand dollars to it, greatly to the satisfaction of the entirely isolated settlers. In the same month the State agent was instructed to lease unsold lots on condition that the lessees would clear them in four months, and this, as a step towards getting the settle- ment in something like civilized condition, was a gratifying measure. The lessees were allowed forty days to remove their improvements if the lots should be sold during their occupancy of them.

On the 28th of January, 1822, the first newspaper of the settlement was issued by George Smith and Nathaniel Bolton, his step-son, called the Indianapolis Gazette. Mr. Nowland's memoir of Mr. Smith says " the printing-office was in one corner of the cabin in which the family lived," and the cabin was near a row of cabins built by Mr. Willnot, called " Smoky Row," west of the line of the future canal and near Maryland Street. In the second year the office was moved to the northeast corner of the State-House Square. Mr. Smith learned the printer's trade in the office af the Observer of Lexington, Ky., and subse- quently worked upon the Liberty Hall and Gazette of Cincinnati, under the noted editor, Charles Ham- mond. In later life he lived in a frame house on the northeast corner of Georgia and Tennessee Streets, the ground now forming a part of the Catholic prop- erty about the St. John's Cathedral and the bishop's residence. Here about 1840, John Hodgkins estab- lished the first ice-cream or " pleasure garden," as it was called, and built the first ice-house, and laid down a little circular railway with a little locomotive to run upon it. Mr. Smith served two terms as associate judge of the county, and was the first man in the place to open a real estate agency, which he did in 1827. Some years before his death he bought a farm at Mount Jackson, which now forms part of the grounds of the Insane Asylum, and there he died iu April, 1826, at the age of fifty-two. He was rather an eccentrio man, but notoriously liberal to the poor.

ORGANIZATION OF COUNTY AND ERECTION OF TOWNSHIPS.

He and Governor Ray wore " cues" in the old Revo- lutionary fashion. . The Governor discarded his in his old age, but Mr. Smith held to his as tenaciously as a Chinaman. Some catarrhal affection, probably, brought a fit of sneezing on him nearly every morn- ing early after he had dressed and got out of doors, and that sonorous sound could be heard by all the neighbors as far and as plainly and about as early as the morning song of his roosters.

Nathaniel Bolton was a book-binder by trade. He became much better known to the Indianapolis people than Mr. Smith. He continued to edit the Gazette after the other had sold out his interest, when he had a larger constituency to speak for, and his wife, Sarah T. Barrett, of Madison, the earliest and most gifted and conspicuous of the poetesses of the State, helped his reputation by the abundance of her own. He was made consul at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1853, whence his wife wrote many letters to the Journal, then under the direction of an old friend, Mr. Sul- grove. In May, 1857, he came back in consequence of failing health, and died in a few months. For several years after he had sold his interest in the Gazette, he and his wife kept a country tavern on the farm that Mr. Smith lived on before his death at Mount Jackson. Mrs. Bolton is now living in a pleasant house in the country about three miles southeast of the city, and still frequently publishes . fugitive verses on passing occurrences that interest her, especially the death of old friends, marked with all the fertility of fancy and grace of style of her earlier poems.

The mechanical processes of the first paper were primitive enough. The ink was partly compounded of tar, and the press-work was slow and hard. Com- position rollers were unknown till the secret of making them was brought here just ten years later by the late David V. Culley, for many years presi- dent of the City Council. There were no mails at all at first, and when a post-route was established soon afterwards its deliveries were so irregular that the editors had to apologize once for the deficieney of matter by saying that the failure of the mails had left them without any news from abroad or any suit- able material. Several post-routes were opened during

the spring, in addition to one to White Water, opened a few weeks after the paper appeared first, but they came too late to relieve the urgent necessity of the winter and spring. The incessant and heavy rains greatly obstructed the main mail-route, and com-( pelled the entire suspension of the paper from the 3d of April to the 4th of May by catching the editors away from home and keeping the streams too deep to be forded. The first number appeared on the 28th of January, the second on the 11th of February, the third on the 25th, the fourth March 6th, the fifth on the 18th, the sixth April 3d, the seventh May 4th. The growth and changes of the Gazette will be noticed particularly in the sketch of the " Press."

The first mail came very elosely after the first paper. For nearly two years such correspondence as had been maintained between the new settlement and the older ones east and south on the White Water and the Ohio, had been carried on by the hands of neighbors and occasional travelers. On the 30th of January, 1822, a meeting of citizens was held at the " Eagle Tavern" (Hawkins') to devise means to maintain a private mail. The hope of a government mail does not seem to have been strong enough to be cultivated. Aaron Drake was selected for the duty of private postmaster and mail-carrier. He notified the postmasters all around of the arrangement that had been made, and asked them to forward all letters for Indianapolis to Connersville, where he would get them. " He re- turned from his first trip," says an early sketch of the city, " shortly after nightfall, and the loud blasts of his horn were heard far through the woods, and the whole people turned out in the bright moonlight to greet him and hear the news." This effort aroused the general government, and President Monroe appointed Samuel Henderson first postmaster in February, 1822. He opened the office the first week in March. A his- tory of the office will be found in its proper place, and nothing more need be said of it here, except that the first list of letters awaiting delivery contained five names, one of them that of Mallory, the colored barber, x and first barber in the place. For some years, it is hard to say just how long, the mails were carried on horsebaek, subsequently they were taken in stage- coaches, and Indianapolis became nearly as conspic-

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 7

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