History of Johnson County, Indiana, Part 18

Author: Branigin, Elba L., 1870-
Publication date: 1972
Publisher: Indianapolis, B.F. Bowen, [Evansville, Ind.], [Unigraphic, Inc.]
Number of Pages: 981

USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnson County, Indiana > Part 18

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

And around their firesides, in social evening gatherings, their friend- ship and kindness knew no limits. And, if it were not for the want and destitution and constant hardships endured by them, and the gloomy, deadly autumnal sickness, I could wish to meet them once again, though in the gloomy forest, to enjoy another social gathering in a humble log cabin where every thought and every word came up fresh and pure, gushing from the heart. But they are gone. They have long since gathered by the "side of the beauti- ful river," in a friendship now changed into perfect love, where God shall wipe away all tears, to receive the glorious rewards of well-spent lives. We

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owe to their memories a vast debt for the beautiful country which their labors and sufferings hae left us, and yet still more, for their examples in goodness and virtue, which by night and by day still go with us, and kindly, and softly, and sweetly, in angelic whispers, invite us to walk in their footsteps and prac- tice their virtues. They are gone, but still they are with us and live in our memories as fresh and as green as the beautiful grass that, mournfully droop- ing, in spring-time waves over them. They are gone, but still affection, though it linger, will follow on and cling to them, and for long years to come will often return with soft, silent footsteps to plant nature's sweet emblems of virtue on their graves, the choicest and richest and rarest of flowers, which will spring with fresh vigor, and bloom in new beauty and glory, and shed richer fragrance, sweeter than incense, because they grow on the graves of the pioneer fathers and mothers, and because they were planted by children and kindred who loved them and nurtured them with tears of richest affec- tion.

In the northwest corner of Johnson and northeast corner of Morgan and over north in Marion county, was once a large farm and a town of Dela- ware Indians. The acres which had been in cultivation, in the judgment of the first settlers. in 1820, although overgrown by bushes, must have exceeded two hundred, the greater part of which was in Johnson county. It was de- lightfully situated on a plateau twenty-five or thirty feet above the overflow- age of the river, and was cut on the northeast and southeast by White river. When William Landers, Esq., settled on a tract of land adjoining the town in April, 1820, there still resided on that portion of the farm in White River township and west of the river, Captain Big Fire, Little Duck, and Johnny Quack, and on the east side of the river, in White River township, on the old Morgan or Denny place, Captain White, another Indian, where also a large field had been in cultivation at a previous date. And on the left bank of the river, three-fourths of a mile below Captain White's, on the lands of John J. Worsham, was another Indian location and burial ground, but no cultivation. This encampment was owned by Big Bear. On the Morgan county part of the old Indian field Captain Tunis had his wigwam, and just adjoining, in Marion, old Solomon had his. The wigwams were situated on the right bank of the river at the southeast corner of the farm, near the middle of section 31. Here seems to have been once a stone wall, thirty or forty feet long and five or six feet high, built of portable undressed stones and laid parallel with the river and a hundred feet distant. The Indians said this wall was built for de- fensive purposes against the Kentuckians ; that there had been a bloody battle fought there once between them and the whites, beginning on the east bank of

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the river, where they were surprised, and that they were forced over the river, assaulted in the town and finally driven out. That thereafter the farm had never been occupied, except by a few returning families. The size of the brush growing on and about the once cleared land at that date, 1820, showed that it had but recently been abandoned. An old Kentuckian of great reliabil- ity, Stephen Watkins, on a visit to White River township, twenty-five years ago, repeated precisely the same history of this town, and the battle and all the circumstances of the fight. He went so far as to point to the near battle- field; he said he had the particulars from one of the actors and knew them to be true. Does history give any account of this battle? In Dillon's history of Indiana, it is shown that the "Pigeon Roost Massacre" took place in the north part of Scott county, about eighty miles south of the Indian town, on the 3d day of September, 1812. The next evening one hundred and fifty mounted rifle-men, under command of Col. John McCoy, followed the trail twenty miles. On the 6th, the militia of Clarke county (no number given) was re- enforced by sixty mounted volunteers from Jefferson county, and on the evening of the 7th three hundred and fifty volunteers from Kentucky were ready to unite with the Indiana militia of Clark and Jefferson for the purpose of making an attack on the Delaware Indians, some of whom were suspected of having been engaged in the destruction of the Pigeon Roost settlement. * * "But, it is said, a spirit of rivalry which prevailed among some of the officers defeated the intention of those who at the time proposed to destroy the towns of the friendly Delawares who lived on the western branch of the White river." Now hear what Major John Tipton says about these "friendly Indians" on White River: "In their way out, they (the escaping Indians) passed the Saline or Salt creek and I there took an old trail leading direct to the Delaware towns, and it is my opinion that while the government is sup- porting one part of that tribe (the Delawares), the other part is murdering our citizens." *

"It is much to be desired that these rascals of whatever tribe they may be harboring about these (Delaware) towns, should be routed, which could be done with one hundred men in seven days." With this purpose and spirit openly declared by the whites, how long, do we imagine, they waited for an opportunity to execute it? Will any one make me believe that six hundred armed men at the "Pigeon Roost Massacre," after viewing the slaughtered and roasted human bodies and burning houses, quietly dispersed and went home? Col. Joseph Bartholomew raided these towns on White river with one hundred and thirty-seven men on the 15th day of June, 1813. He found three towns, two of whom had been burnt about a month before (see Dillon,

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524). Who destroyed them? The reason that the battle at the Delaware, if a battle did occur, and the breaking them up on White river was never re- ported, is that the government, during the war with the other Indian tribes in 1811, 1812 and 1813, was supporting and protecting the Delawares who had promised to engage in peaceful pursuits. General Harrison had directed the Delawares to remove to the Shawnee Reservation in Ohio, and most of them had done so soon after the battle of Mississinewa, December 17, 1812. Those who refused to go received but little mercy. But another proof of this battle is the fact that on the twenty-acre field, in the southwest corner of the north- west quarter, section 32, township 14 north, range 3 east, near Captain White's old camp, large numbers of leaden bullets of every size, battered and bruised, have been found. I have had at least one hundred of them myself, and have picked up at least nine, recently, in a wash of the river and have been told of hundreds being found by others. I have passed a short distance from this field, on other ground more suitable for finding them, but never yet found any except on this locality. And a few years since, on John Sutton's farm, one mile and a fourth north of the battle field, and only one mile east of the Indian town, four frames of human bodies were washed out of a low, wet piece of bottom land. The skulls were carried off before I had an oppor- tunity of examining them. No Indian ever buried his dead in a low, wet piece of land. They must have been buried there under pressing circum- stances and by white men.

PLEASANT TOWNSHIP.

There was not one of the pioneers of Johnson county, about whom so much has been written and spoken, and of whom so little is known, as Daniel Loper. In October, 1820, Simon Covert, Jacob Demaree, Prettyman Burton, George King and some others made a tour through central Indiana, and, on their return, crossed White river at Whetzel's, and followed his trace out to the crossing of the Indian trail, now within the limits of Pleasant township. At that place a little cabin was newly built, the roof was partly on, and a family had just come up the trace from the east, and were ready to take possession. This is the first heard of Daniel Loper, the first white inhabitant of two townships of Johnson county-Pleasant and Clark. But Loper did not remain long in his cabin at the crossing. Nathaniel Bell, from Ohio, "entered him out" in December of 1821, and Loper moved over to Camp creek.

Bell was a man of bad character, so much so that persons hunting homes

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in the woods shunned him and his place, and, unlike most other men who came to stay at that date, he was not the founder of a neighborhood. It was cur- rently reported of him, and generally believed, that he availed himself of the opportunities that were presented to extort money from travelers who stopped at his cabin, by secreting his horses in the woods, and then, for a sufficient re- ward, returning the animals.

As soon as settlers began coming in, Bell built a horse-mill, the first of the kind in the county. This was a very primitive affair, the tub in which the stone revolved being a section of a hollow sycamore, and the harness with which the horses were hitched to the levers being of rawhide. But Bell was an unworthy miller and so managed the grists that came to his mill as to steal more of the corn and meal than he took by lawful toll. He wore the sleeves of his hunting shirt open and large, and he not only managed to pick up a few extra grains while tolling the grist, but, on the pretense of examining the meal as it came from the spout, he managed to catch in his open sleeve a good share of the meal, and then, folding his arms about him as he sauntered to his own chest or to his cabin and unloaded. Sometimes his victims would remonstrate with him, but his usual reply was "Well, the little old man must live." On one occasion, it is said of him that the miller's sleeves being well gorged with meal, the horses took fright, ran away and knocked the mill stones from their frail scaffolding, and otherwise damaged the property. Bell himself received a blow from the flying debris that knocked him down and scattered the meal stored in his ample sleeves. Shame or conscience so worked upon him that he promised to do better in the future, but his promise was soon broken; he never mended his ways. For many years after the settlement of the county, every man's stock ran the range, and hogs soon became wild and, when fattened on the mast, were hunted and shot by their owners the same as were the deer. Bell, it was believed, made a practice of killing other men's hogs, and once at a log rolling Permenter Mullenix, who had lost hogs, charged Bell with the theft. Apparently much shocked that such a charge should be made, he went to Indianapolis and employed Judge Wick, then practicing law, and Calvin Fletcher, to prosecute Mullenix for slander. The action was accordingly begun, but Mullenix made good his defense by prov- ing the charge to be true, whereupon the grand jury indicted Bell, and he was tried, convicted and sent to the penitentiary, the first convict sent from the county.

In 1823, John B. Smock and Isaac Smock moved from Mercer county, Kentucky, and settled near the head waters of Pleasant run. A road was cut out to Franklin, but from thereon the Smocks were compelled to bush their

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own way, and they were two days about it. The next year their brother James followed them, and, in 1825, Garrett Brewer, Garrett Vandiver, Garrett Sorter, Robert Lyons and Joseph, John and Samuel Alexander also came. The Smock settlement was a half-way house between Franklin and Indian- apolis, and from this may be accounted the fact of its slow growth for many years. Up to about 1830, it appears that the number moving in was quite small. In addition to those already mentioned, may be named John Com- ingore, who came in 1826, Cornelius Smock in 1827, Alexander Wilson in 1828, and Isaac Voris in 1829.

In 1824 the State road was cut out, and notwithstanding the country in the center and south side of the township was inclined to be wet, settlers shortly began making entries of land, and, in 1828, David Trout and, a little later in the year, James Tracy and his grown sons, Nathaniel, Thomas and John, William Pierce and James Chenoweth built cabins and started clearings extending from the center of the township southward. All these men, except- ing the Alexanders, who were Pennsylvanians, and David Trout, who was a Virginian, and had moved from Nineveh, were Kentuckians. On the 4th day of May, 1829, Pleasant township was created by striking off from White River all the territory east of the range line, making the west boundary the same as it is now; but, up to 1828, Clark township formed a part of Pleasant. Elections were ordered to be held at the house of Isaac Smock, and Isaiah Lewis was appointed inspector. The township took its name from its prin- cipal stream, Pleasant run. Two explanations have been given, accounting for the name of the creek. one of which is, that when the country was first settled the stream was a gently flowing, pleasant running stream; and the other that it was the reverse of this, and the name was given by way of irony.

Here, as everywhere else, it is difficult to fix upon the years when men moved in, but it is certain that an impetus was now given to immigration into the township. By mid-summer of 1834, the following persons are known to have moved into and about the Smock neighborhood, to-wit: The Com- ingores, Henry and Samuel, the McColloughs, John Lyons, Peter Whitenack, Samuel Eccles, the Henrys, Robert, Hiram and Samuel, J. D. and William Wilson, John and James Carson, Dr. William Woods, William Magee and sons, William and Joseph Benton, Marine D. West, Berryman Carder and the Todds. All these were from Kentucky, except the Henrys, from Virginia, the Wilsons, who were from North Carolina, the Woods, the McColloughs and the Carsons, who were from Tennessee .. Lower down in the Tracy and Trout neighborhoods, Thomas Gant, the Hills, Littleton, Joseph, Squire and Charles, James Stewart, David Lemasters, Reuben Davis, William Mc-

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Clelland, Daniel, David and John Brewer, Robert Smith, Abraham Sharp, and probably others, moved in, while over toward the southeast corner and east side came in Thomas Graham and his three sons, Samuel, James and Archi- bald, and also Lewis Graham, Isaac Clem and Andrew McCaslin, followed soon after by Ashford Dowden, Abraham Banta, Solomon Steele, Jacob Pegg and others. By the close of 1834 persons were located all over the township, but it could not be said to be fairly inhabited until 1840.

The first sermon preached in Pleasant township was at the house of John C. Smock, in 1824, by the Rev. George Bush, who afterward became a pro- fessor in a theological school in New York, and wrote "Bush's Notes on the Gospels," and a life of Mohammed. A Presbyterian church was organized in the Smock neighborhood, the first in the township, after which a meeting house was built, which was used for a time as a school house.

About 1828, James Richabough undertook to operate a cotton spinning factory and a carding machine in a frame building. He put it up a mile or less south of the present town of Greenwood, but his venture proved a failure.

Pleasant township is favorably located. It has a thrifty, industrious people, who are blessed with good soil, and who have had the enterprise to utilize their gravel deposits in the building of gravel roads.

HENSLEY TOWNSHIP.

On the 10th of March, 1799, Richardson Hensley was born near Fred- ericksburg, in Virginia. While he was yet a child, his father moved to Fayette county, Kentucky, after which he moved to Mercer county, where, in 1800, Richardson was married to Elizabeth Cully. In the war of 1812, he served as a first lieutenant on the frontier; and in March, 1825, he brought his family to Johnson county, this state. Accompanying him was William Daven- port, a North Carolinian, and William Mitchell, a Virginian, his sons-in-law, and their families. Five or six families were living around Edinburg, and at the Nineveh settlement the road ended. Stopping at some point at the time not now known, but probably on the Nineveh, Hensley and his companions made a tour through the woods, and selected the central part of congressional township II, range 3, on the banks of Indian creek, as the place for their homes. Among the woodsmen of that day Curtis Pritchard stood at the head, and, employing him to select the best route through the wilderness from Nineveh to Indian creek for a road, he went ahead with horn in hand, and at intervals would wind a blast as a signal to the axmen to cut through the woods to his vantage ground. Selecting a quarter section, cornering with the center

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of the congressional township, Hensley put up a cabin, and then, on the 17th of February, he entered the first tract of land in the township that was occu- pied by a pioneer.

In 1823, three hundred and twenty acres had been taken up in the north- east corner of the township, and at the same time two hundred and forty acres just across the township line, now in Union, by David Scott. But Scott never came to his purchase, and many were the conjectures accounting for it indulged in by those who knew of the "Scott lands." The most popular of these was, that he had been murdered before reaching home, after his entry had been made; and it was seventeen years after the purchase before it was learned that Scott was a trader, living at Cheat Neck, near Morgantown, in Virginia, and that he had invested the proceeds of a trading voyage to New Orleans in congress lands in Johnson, Bartholomew, Shelby and other counties in Indiana, and then had returned to his home and reported to his creditors the loss of his cargo in the Mississippi, and made with them a composition of his debts. But his fraud availed him nothing, for shortly after he came to his death by being thrown from his horse, and his secret died with him. Not even had he divulged it to his wife and daughter. William Y. Johns, a young man living in Scott's neighborhood, being lured to Johnson county about 1837, by the memory of an old sweetheart, and remaining here, was elected to the office of county treasurer, in 1844, and the "Scott lands" coming under his notice, he made the discovery that they had been entered by his old neighbor from Cheat Neck. William Y. Johns' brother was then married to Scott's only daughter, and the widow, who was still living, and the daughter, came to Indiana. And although the "Scott lands" had long been sold at tax sales, they were partially redeemed.

Hensley cleared a little field in the woods the first spring, and planted it in corn; but the wild turkeys invaded his field and scratched the seed out of the ground. Replanting and keeping the turkeys away, when the little crop was raised the squirrels came and did great damage. After these, a band of forty well dressed, well mounted Indians came and encamped on Indian creek-so called because it was a famous Indian resort in the early times-and although they had plenty of money, they begged and stole everything they wanted. Hensley's corn patch was peculiarly tempting to them, and, in spite of his best resolutions and utmost vigilance, they carried his corn away by the armfuls.

The same spring that Hensley, Mitchell and Davenport came in, John Stephens, from Tennessee, and Nathaniel Elkins, from Kentucky, came, and some time during the last of the year Peter Titus came from Ohio, and settled on what has since been known as the Bridges farm. In the fall of that year, .

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it is believed that Charles and Mitchel Ross settled on the west line of the township, and about the same time Richard Perry must have moved into the northeast corner.

The township grew rapidly in population. The lands along Indian creek were peculiarly inviting to land hunters, who had traversed the level lands of the country in search of suitable locations and immigrants came trooping in. At least twenty men came in and bought, and more than half that number moved in. Of these, Isaac Holeman, Henry Musselman, Arthur Bass, Albert Roberts, John Schrem, John and Lewis Shouse and Aaron Holeman may be mentioned. By the close of 1833 more than fifty families had moved in, and, while it would seem to be impossible at this time to make any degree of class- ification as the time when these came in, or even to give the names of all, yet the following may be set down as being early settlers, to-wit: James Taggart (who was afterward killed at the battle of Buena Vista), William Skaggs, Holland Jones, John Brunk, Nicholas Hobbs, Hiram Porter, Reason and John Slack, John Voris, Simpson Sturgeon, Montgomery Smith, Andrew Under- wood, Leonard Leffler, John McNutt, William Mitchell, Thomas Lyman, S. W. Weddle, Thomas Lockhart, Thomas Alexander, John Clark, Jesse Wells, Samuel Fleener, Hiram T. Craig, John Boland, Samuel Woolard, Frederick Ragsdale, George Bridges, William Clark, Abraham Massey, Mckinney Burk. Avery M. Buckner, Levi Petro, James Wiley, Elijah Moore, Stith Daniel, Thomas L. Sturgeon, James Forsyth, David and Uriah Young, God- frey Jones, R. W. Elder, James Hughes, George White. Richard Joliffe and Perry Baily.

Hensley was the fourth township, in point of time, organized in the county. At the March term of the board of justices. in 1827, the organization took place and the name was bestowed upon the suggestion of Samuel Herriott, in honor of its founder.

The elections for twenty years were held at the house of Richardson Hensley, after which the place was changed to Henry Musselman's house.

In 1834 Henry Musselman opened the first store in the township, and sold goods for many years. He was a very active man, but totally devoid of book education. He could neither read nor write, and yet. for a great many years, he carried on business successfully. But what is the more remarkable, he did a credit business and kept accounts in his peculiar fashion. He knew and could make figures, however, and could carry on processes of addition, substraction, multiplication and division mentally. His accounts he kept by marking upon the walls of his storeroom with a nail or pencil. Every cus- tomer had his own place of account allotted to him, and so well trained was

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Henry Musselman's memory that he never forgot the right place nor the mean- ing of his marks, nor did any man ever dispute his accounts. One story is told, and vouched for as being true, tending to show that it was possible for him to forget, and it is this : A debtor came and called for a settlement and among the items charged was a cheese. "But I never bought a cheese of you in my life," said the debtor. "Didn't you? Well, what did you get? Think!" and the debtor thought. "Ah," said he, light breaking, after a pause, "Yes, I got a grindstone." "Oh, so you did, I forgot to put the hole in it." On an- other occasion, when Musselman was in Madison buying goods, a merchant, with whom he was dealing, asked him how he managed to know what per cent. to put on his goods, seeing that he was unacquainted with letters. "Well, I don't know anything about your per cent. but I do know that when I buy an article of you for one dollar and take it out to my place and sell it for two, that I am not losing anything." He could and did mark the cost price on his goods, however, but no one understood it but himself. After his son, George W., grew up he procured books and had George keep his accounts, but so retentive was his memory that he could and often did sell goods all day, and at night repeat the exact quantities of goods sold, to whom sold, and at what price.

UNION TOWNSHIP.

The political township of Union is co-extensive with the twelfth con- gressional township in the third range. The township is well watered. The North fork, south fork, middle fork and Kootz's fork of Stott's creek, flow westerly, partly through and out of this township, and draining into the White river. Moore's creek takes its rise in the northeast part, and runs into Young's creek to the east. The table lands lying upon the divide between the head waters of the Stott's creek and the Young's Forks creek tributaries, and also between the North. South and Middle forks, are level, and at the time of the settlement of the county. were extremely wet.

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History of Johnson County, Indiana, Part 18

Author: Branigin, Elba L., 1870- Publication date: 1972 Publisher: Indianapolis, B.F. Bowen, [Evansville, Ind.], [Unigraphic, Inc.] Number of Pages: 981

Author: Branigin, Elba L., 1870-
Publication date: 1972
Publisher: Indianapolis, B.F. Bowen, [Evansville, Ind.], [Unigraphic, Inc.]
Number of Pages: 981