History of Johnson County, Indiana, Part 19

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 19

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).

These table lands are true highlands of the township, and from their level to White river the fall is great. Hence, the streams flowing westward have, during the lapse of ages, cut deep channels through the soils and clays, and the high banks left on either side have, by the action of rain, frost and other agencies of nature, been molded into hills and knobs, which are now generally known as broken lands.

Some time in 1823. Bartholomew Carroll moved from Kentucky by the way of the Three Notched Line road, then newly cut, and found his way through the brush to the South fork of Stott's creek, and settled in section 34.

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where John Vandiver afterward built a mill. Carroll had a family, consisting of his wife, three sons, William, John and Samuel, and two girls. The grandfather of his children lived with him-a very aged man, who died, it is said, when he was one hundred and ten years old. Bartholomew Carroll was a genuine backwoodsman. He spent his time in the wilderness hunting game and wild honey. The country about him was well stocked with all kinds of game, common to the country, and an experienced bee hunter could take honey in vast quantities. It is said that Carroll would sometimes have as many as one hundred bee-trees marked in the woods at a time.

There is some uncertainty as to the time when many of the pioneers moved into Union township. It is next to impossible at this time to get the names of all who came in or the time when they came. In fifty years, much that was at the time of interest sinks into oblivion.

Growing upon the farm entered by Peter Vandiver is a beech tree, bear- ing in its rough bark, this date: "16th October, 1826." Strother Vandiver, then a good-sized boy, cut this inscription in that tree, to commemorate the day of his father's arrival upon the eighty-acre tract which he immediately entered. With Vandiver, when he moved from Mercer county, Kentucky, came his old neighbors, John Garshwiler, Joseph Simpson and Mrs. Christina Garshwiler. These settled over on the east side of the township. The same year, Thomas Henderson, living at the Big Spring, notified Simon Covert that a family had moved into the woods some miles to the west, and proposed they should go and see who it was. Taking their axes with them, they at length found Mrs. Gwinnie Utterback, a widow, with a family of eight sons, .Corban, Laban, Henry, Hezekiah, Perry, Joseph, Elliott and Samuel and a daughter, Rebecca, encamped by the side of a log, a little south of the present site of Union Village. Joining their help with the boys, Henderson and Covert soon had a cabin of poles raised and a shelter provided for the family. These are all who are now believed to have made settlements that year.

In 1827. George Kepheart moved to the township, and settled in section 23, and the same year Alexander Gilmer settled in the northeast corner.

In 1828 there was growth. Nearly two thousand acres were entered this year by twenty-two men, and at least ten or twelve moved in. Peter Zook and Samuel Williams and Henry Banta stopped in the Vandiver neighbor- hood; Jacob List and Philip Kepheart located near the east boundary line of the congressional township; Benjamin Utterback moved near to his sister-in- law, who came in the year before, while Adam Lash and James Rivers moved farther to the north, and John Mitchell still further out, but toward the north-

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west corner of the township. Jesse Young located on the northwest quarter of section 27.

Rock Lick was a famous resort for deer during the early times. There was not probably in all the county a deer lick that equaled it. For miles and miles in every direction run-ways led to it. Jesse Young, who had settled on the Nineveh in 1825, and who was much of a hunter, visited this place, and was so impressed with the enormous mast crops thereabout, that he determined to make his home in the neighborhood. Accordingly, some time before he moved, he drove his hogs to the oak forests, and built a camp not far from the lick. Here he hunted, tended his hogs and read his Bible and Young's Night Thoughts. With these two books he was quite familiar, and in his old age it was his habit to interlard his discourse with apt quota- tions, especially from the last-named work. Young was a strict observer of Sunday, and on one occasion it is said he lost his reckoning, and kept the Jewish Sabbath instead of the Christian. The next morning he went into the woods and, killing a deer, brought it into camp. Soon a party of hunters came by, and finding Young engaged with a deer newly killed, they reminded him of his Sunday principle. But he vindicated himself by assuring them that he had kept the day before, which was Sunday. A re-count of the time convinced him that he was mistaken, and after disposing of his venison, he turned into camp and kept the rest of the day as sacred.

Young carried a large-bored and far-shooting rifle, which he affection- ately named "Old Crate." At the time he went to the Nineveh, a white deer was known to range the woods in the west and southwest parts of the county, and every hunter was naturally anxious to secure that particular game. But this deer became exceedingly shy, and it must have been two or three years after it was first seen before it fell a victim to a ball from "Old Crate." Young killed it, firing from a great distance.

Another of the successful hunters of Union township was Robert Moore, who afterward was elected to the office of associate judge.

In 1829, ten more men with their families moved into Union. Robert Moore and Joseph Young into what afterward came to be known as the Shiloh neighborhood, and William Bridges, John James, near Vandiver's place, and William Kepheart, James Vaughn in the Utterback neighborhood, and Henry Graselose, toward the northwest corner. Peter Bergen and Andrew Carnine moved into the east side adjoining the Hopewell neighborhood. About the same time John Mullis settled near Rock Lick.

The next year, Garrett Terhune settled at the Three Notched Line road. (13)

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near Vandiver's. Gideon Drake moved out to within a mile of the Morgan county line. Bennett, Austin and William Jacobs moved up to the north side. Nicholas Wyrick settled on the North fork of Stott's creek, and David and Cornelius Lyster moved over to the east side.

By the close of this year, about forty families were living in the town- ship, as now constituted, and on the 5th day of July previous Union township was organized by an order of the board of justices. As then bounded, it was. much larger than it is now. One tier of sections now on the south side of White river was attached, and two tiers extending the entire west side of Franklin and two sections out of the southwest corner of Pleasant. From time to time, however, changes have been made in the boundary lines of the township, until they have been reduced to the congressional township lines.

In 1831, Isaac Knox, John McColgin and Joshua Hammond, who were Virginians, settled in the northwest corner of the North fork of Stott's creek. Willis Deer and Wesly, his brother, and John L. Jones settled near Mrs. Utter- back; John Henderson to the northwest of them some miles; George Kerlin and Peter Shuck on the east side of the township, and Garrett Vandiver not far from the present site of Bargersville, while Serrill Winchester and Jacob Core moved into Jesse Young's vicinity.

The next year, Jacob Banta and Samuel Throgmorton moved in and in 1833, Daniel Newkirk, the gunsmith, Peter D. Banta, David Demaree, John Knox, John Gets, Joshua Landers and, probably. Jesse Harris. Peter Voris and John Shuck.

The families moving into the North Fork neighborhood were nearly or quite all Virginians, but all the others, with but few exceptions, were Ken- tuckians. Garrett Terhune was New Jersey born, but moved from Ken- tucky. Jesse and Joseph Young, Gideon Drake and Robert Moore were from Ohio. Out of more than seventy families referred to, three-fourths were from Kentucky.

The growth of the township was slow. but those who came came to stay, and the work of improvement went on. In 1828, Peter Vandiver built a horse-mill. the first mill in the township, which was run night and day and supplied the country for a great distance around with bread. In 1832, George Kerlin put up a horse-mill, which was long a place of general resort for grind- ing wheat and corn. About 1834. John Vandiver built a mill on the South fork of Stott's creek, where Carroll had settled, and in about two years after John Young built one lower down on the same stream, and Thomas Slaughter put one up near Rock Lick on the Middle fork.

Up to the introduction of underground draining. the level lands of Union

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township were not esteemed as of very great value, but since the era of ditch- ing has set in there has been a great and wonderful development in every- thing that goes to make up the welfare of a people.

The township has ever been remarkable for the absence of gross violations of law. But one murder has ever occurred within its precincts, and that was the murder of Peter T. Vannice, in 1863, by a stranger to the place, whom Vannice employed on his farm. Taking advantage of his employer, he shot him down in his own door-yard, and then robbed him of his money and fled, with a gun, up the Three Notched Line road toward Indianapolis. George F. Garshwiler and some others gave pursuit and, on overtaking the murderer near Greenwood, he turned aside and shot himself dead.

CLARK TOWNSHIP.

The territory now organized into Clark township originally formed a part of White River, and, from 1829, when Pleasant was organized, up to 1838, it formed a part of that township. In the last named year, Clark township, with boundaries as at present, was set off from Pleasant, and the name was bestowed by virtue of the Clark family, which settled, at an early day in its history, in the northern part of the township.

This township was the youngest of the sisterhood of townships in John- son county, and was unfavorably located for early settlement. Sugar creek touches upon the southeast corner, and Leatherwood and Flat creek, having their sources near the north boundary line, flow southward and unite their waters in what was known as the Great Gulf in the early years of the county's history, and from the south side of the gulf the waters of Little Sugar flowed down to Big Sugar. In the west side, and well up toward the north boundary, Whetzel's Camp creek, or, as it is now called, the Hurricane, takes its rise, and sends its waters creeping down to Young's creek. at Franklin. All these, excepting Big Sugar and Little Sugar, for a few miles above its mouth, were sluggish streams. The traveler on the Jeffersonville railroad will observe, a . mile south of Greenwood, quite a cut through a ridge of land. This ridge extends eastward from that point, and into Clark township a distance of nearly, or quite, eight miles from Greenwood, where it bends to the north- east and, running parallel to Sugar creek, ends in Shelby county. All of Clark township north of the south line of this ridge is high ground and here did the work of settlement take its firmest hold in the beginning. The banks of Sugar creek, being drained by that stream, afforded comparatively dry sites

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for cabins, but nearly all the rest of the land of the township, excepting the high ground in the north, was exceedingly wet and swampy.

In 1820, as we have seen, Daniel Loper built a cabin at the crossing of the Great Indian Trail and Whetzel's Trace in Pleasant township. Shortly after Nathaniel Bell entered the land at the crossing, and some time in 1821 Loper moved back on the Whetzel Trace, to Whetzel's old camp on Camp creek, where he made the first permanent home that was made in the town- ship. How long he remained here is not known. John Varner, an old man who lived with him, died in his cabin within a short time after it was built, and Loper, with the assistance of Peter Doty and Nathaniel Bell, buried him in a walnut trough. Not long after Loper disappeared, but no one knows where he went. A deserted "Loper's Cabin," seen by Thomas Walker in Hendricks county some years after he left, gives rise to the surmise that he may have gone there. The circumstances attending the death and burial of John Varner, and Loper's disappearance shortly after, gave rise to a current belief among the first settlers that Loper was a murderer. After he left his place was a great camping ground for travelers, and the more superstitious sort sometimes told of seeing ghosts of the murdered dead. But from all that can be learned it would seem that Loper was a thriftless frontiersman, and becoming disturbed by the encroaching settlements at White river, Blue river and Sugar creek, moved away.

At a very early time John Ogle moved into the southeast corner-some authorities say as early as 1821, but others put it a year later. In 1822 a settlement was made on the east side of Sugar creek in Shelby county by Joseph Reese, John Webb and some others, and, attracted by this, a few men came out quite early into Clark township, on the west side of the creek. In 1822 William and John McConnell moved in, and I think that John Ogle did not come until the same year.

It is extremely difficult at this time to ascertain with any degree of cer- tainty the dates of arrival of the first and subsequent settlers, but, next after Loper's cabin and the Sugar creek settlement, pioneers began moving upon the highlands in the north. The first one to go in was Hugh McFadden and the second Glen Clark. Both were here in 1825, and the probability is that both came that year. In 1826 there moved into the settlement thus begun John L. McClain and Alexander Clark, from Kentucky, and three Hoosiers, Robert, Jacob and Abraham. The next year James and Moses McClain and Robert Ritchey came in from Kentucky and Moses Raines from Virginia. The year after Jacob and Thomas Robinson. Kentuckians, and Edward Wilson and Samuel Billingsley, North Carolinians. In 1832 David Justice,

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Abraham Jones, Mathias Parr and James Kinnick, from North Carolina; and in 1833 Andrew Wolf, George Wolf, Tennesseeans, and all those men- tioned above, save the few Sugar creek settlers, and David Parr and John Fitzpatrick went into the neighborhood of Loper's old cabin. In 1834 there was quite an influx of immigrants: Allen Williams, John Tinkle, Robert Farnsworth, David Farnsworth, Henry Farnsworth, Aaron Huffman and Daniel McLean, Tennesseeans, and Henry White, Ellis White, Joseph Hamil- ton, Henry Grayson and Taylor Ballard, Kentuckians, and Charles Dungan, a Virginian; John Eastburn, a North Carolian, and Oliver Harbert, born in Dearborn county, Indiana, moved to the township in 1834.

Clark township was now filling up quite fast. The following persons are believed to have moved in during the year 1835, to-wit: Joseph Hamilton, Theodore Vandyke, John Wheatly, Lyman Spencer, Parker Spencer, Caleb Davidson, Conrad McClain, Thomas Portlock and Samuel McClain; and James Williams, David McGauhey, John Harbert and James White followed the next year, while James Magill, David McAlpin and Jacob Halfaker came in 1837.

In May, 1838, Clark township was organized, and it was ordered that the elections be held at the house of Jacob Hosier.

The Leatherwood school house, erected on the land of Charles Dungan in 1838, was the first one built, and scholars came a distance of three miles through the woods to attend the first school taught there by a Mr. Fifield, who was a Christian preacher, and by courtesy addressed as "Doctor." The first church was organized by the United Brethren, under the leadership of George Robush and William Richardson. The first blacksmith shop was opened by John Wheatly. The first tannery was started by Allan Taylor, and he and Henry Byrely opened the first store.

The swamp, known to the early settlers of the county as the Great Gulf, and through which Jacob Whetzel cut his road when he came to the country, but which road was found to be untraveled, was long regarded as irreclaimable. Water stood in it save at the driest times of the year, and it was covered by immense forests of timber and dense thickets. The greater part of the Gulf was entered by Jacob Barlow in 1834 and 1835, but no attempt was made to drain or otherwise improve it until about 1853. In that year John Barlow, his son, moved into the Gulf and entered upon the work of clearing and draining and has made of it one of the best farms of the county.

In the early settlement of the county the Gulf was a famous game resort and as the country came to be cleared off this was the last place the wild

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beasts left. Another celebrated game resort was the "Windfall," across the Marion county line, and as late as 1840 hunters were in the habit of organiz- ing a "drive" of deer from one to the other place, while the sharpshooters stationed on the runway between brought down the game.

In 1854 a deer was shot and killed between Barlow's house and barn, and in the same year a catamount in broad daylight chased his hogs and in their fright they ran into the dwelling house for protection. The same sum- mer forty-seven wild turkeys came feeding close around the house and in 1856 a wild turkey made a nest within fifty yards of the house and brought out a flock of young ones. As late as 1860 a man became lost in the woods on the lower end of the Gulf and was compelled to lie out overnight.

But a great change has taken place in Clark township. The timber has been cleared away and the natural drains opened.

In 1865 Thomas Campbell and John Dean, Irishmen, moved in and bought wet lands and at once began the work of drainage on a more extensive scale than theretofore practiced. Since then about thirty Irish families have moved in, and the work of ditching has been rapidly carried on by both native and foreign born, and such changes made as warrants the belief that Clark township in a few years will rank as one of the wealthiest townships in the county.

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, CHAPTER VIII.

EARLY LIFE AND CUSTOMS.

The first settlers coming into the woods were confronted with the neces- sity of making a clearing for the site of the cabin. While the clearing was making, a "half-faced" camp was constructed in the Indian style, with one open side which served for windows and door and where the fire was built. Sometimes the rear of the lodge was placed against a large log, and such was the first home of Samuel Herriott while the clearing was being made for the erection of his log cabin.

The first log cabins were made of round logs halved together at the corners, the cracks between the log "chinked" with wedges of wood and "daubed" with clay. Openings were cut for windows and doors, the win- dows being covered with skins or blankets until greased paper could be pro- vided or glass obtained. The doors were swung on leather or rude wooden hinges, the latches fastening on the inside with strings hanging outside. By pulling the string within the door, the house was securely locked.

But it was not long after the settlement of Johnson county until saw mills furnished the settlers with material for the erection of frame houses. Smiley's mill, on Sugar creek, was built as early as 1822; Collier's mill. on Sugar creek, just west of Edinburg. and another at the present site of what is now known as Furnas mill, were probably erected at about the same time. A little later Porter's mill was built on Indian creek in Hensley township, and other mills were erected at different points, especially in the southern half of the county. But long after these mills were erected the ordinary home of the farmer was built of logs, and it was only the quite well-to-do who built their houses of framed materials and weather boarding.

In the making of the log houses it was the custom for all the neighbor- hood to meet and help raise the new house, for the logs were too heavy to be handled alone. After the cabins were built and a clearing made, the log roll- ing followed. All the men for miles around came to help, bringing their wives to aid in the cooking and serving of the bountiful meals. The log roll- ings and house raisings called forth the generous feelings of the entire com- munity and neighbors were not careful to keep account of the time spent in

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these neighborly offices. They bred sentiments of generosity and encouraged a spirit of neighborly kindness that the present-day methods of living do not inculcate.

This neighborly spirit also manifested itself in all the industrial life of the community. In sugar-making time, at harvest time, at wool-shearing time, and at the corn huskings the neighbors were called in to help in the labor and to enjoy the social occasion. Women of the households also shared in this spirit and apple parings and quilting bees were as common as log roll- ings and house raisings. The same spirit permeated the religious life of the time. The quarterly meetings of the Methodists, the yearly meetings of the Old-School Baptists and many other gatherings of religious bodies called out the men and women of an entire community. If the meeting was held at a church, each settler living in the immediate neighborhood would provide for a score of the members coming from a distance. At many of the camp meet- ings rude houses were erected in the woods and the community gathered there for from one to three weeks' religious services. From these neighborhood meetings came the spirit which has been manifested even to this day by the farmers' wives in inviting many of the neighbors' families home for Sunday dinners.

In the school life the meeting house or school house also became a neigh- borhood center, and spelling matches and singing schools were held frequently and were largely attended. The pictures drawn by Edward Eggleston in the "Circuit Rider" and the "Hoosier Schoolmaster" are true to life and fairly represent the customs and manners of these social gatherings.

It is worth while to consider some of the difficulties which confronted the home makers of those early days. Before the friction match was invented the problem of keeping fire was oftentimes a troublesome one. The flint. steel and tinder were found in every home. The tinder was made of the ravelings of old linen or of tow, sometimes from dried pith of the elder or other like vegetable matter. If tinder was wanting. the fire was sometimes lighted from the flint by the aid of gunpowder. Often, however. when by mischance the fire went out, someone. usually a small boy, was sent to the house of the nearest neighbor with shovel or covered vessel to bring back live coals for the relighting of the fire. Great care was taken, however, to pre- vent this necessity, and before the settler left his home for a day's absence. the fire was carefully banked against a great back log and protected with ashes.

Before the days of the kerosene lamp, the usual method of lighting the

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home was by candles. The method of making these candles is well described in Alice Morse Earle's "Home Life in Colonial Days": "The making of the winter's supply of candles was a special autumnal duty of the household and a hard one, too, for the great kettles were tiresome and heavy to handle. An early hour found the work well under way. A good fire was started in the kitchen fireplace under two vast kettles, each two feet perhaps in diameter, which were hung on trammels from a lug pole or crane and half filled with boiling water and melted tallow, which had had two scaldings and skim- mings. At the end of the kitchen or in an adjoining room, sometimes in the lean-to, two long poles were laid from chair to chair, or stool to stool. Across these poles were placed at regular intervals like the rounds of a ladder smaller sticks about fifteen or eighteen inches long, called candle rods. These poles and rods were kept from year to year, either in the garret or up on the kitchen beams.

"To each candle rod was attached about six or eight carefully straight- ened candle wicks, the wicking being twisted strongly one way; then doubled, then the loop was slipped over the candle rod, while the two ends, of course, twisted the other way around each other, making a firm wick. A rod with its row of wicks was dipped in the melted tallow in the pot and returned to its place across the poles. Each row was thus dipped in regular turn; each had time to cool and harden between the dips, and thus grew steadily in size. If allowed to cool fast, they of course, grew quickly, but were brittle and often cracked. Hence, a good worker dipped slowly, and if the room was fairly cool, could make two hundred candles for a day's work. Some could dip two rods at a time. The tallow was constantly replenished, as the heavy kettles were used alternately to keep the tallow constantly melted and were swung off and on the fire. Candles were also run in molds, which were groups of metal cylinders, usually made of tin or pewter: each wick was attached to a wire or nail placed across the open top of the cylinder and hung down in the center of each individual mold. The melted tallow was poured in carefully around the wicks."

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History of Johnson County, Indiana, Part 19

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