USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnston County, Indiana. From the earliest time to the present, with biographical sketches, notes, etc., together with a short history of the Northwest, the Indiana territory, and the state of Indiana > Part 29
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
Lean, Tennesseeans, and Henry White, Ellis White, Joseph Hamil- ton, Henry Grayson and Taylor Ballard, Kentuckians, and Charles Dungan, a Virginian; John Eastburn, a North Carolinian, and Oliver Harbert, born in Dearborn County, Ind., moved to the township in 1834. Clark Township was now filling up quite fast. The follow- ing 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.
Let us now go from the northeast corner of the county, to the southwest, and note the progress of settlement there. In the month of September, 1823, two young men, David and Alexander Stevens, sons of John Stevens, living in Jackson County, came to the Nineveh settlement to view the country. The best lands having been taken up in that neighborhood, Curtis Pritchard and William Spears went with them to look at the Indian Creek coun- try in the next Congressional township on the west. It was on the 12th of September when the brothers and their guides reached the desired place. The latter had hunted game on Indian Creek, and had observed several choice locations. They struck the South Fork, or near the place where the Martinsville road now crosses, and going down that, not far from the confluence of the North and South forks, they encountered a man with a deer on his back who had a camp on a mound on the south side of the creek. His name was John Davis, and accepting his hospitality, they staid with him that night. He was living in a pole cabin about twelve feet square, with the fire place on the ground in the center, with a hole through the puncheon roof for the smoke to escape. Over the door was hung a bear skin, and bear and wolf and deer skins made the bed around the fire on which Davis and his guests and his two big dogs slept that night. Before retiring, the guests partook of an ash pone and of a wild turkey, which the woods- man hung before the fire over a broken pot lid to catch the dripping gravy, with which he basted the roasting fowl, using for that purpose a wooden spoon.
Davis was a hunter and trapper, who said he had come to the county from Clark County, in 1822. One William Horton, had come with him, and for a time they had camped together, but a disagree- ment arising, IIorton had moved by himself and was living in a hut a half mile southward. Davis seems to have been quite a suc- cessful hunter and trapper, while Horton was less so. During the
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winter of 1822 and 1824, it is remembered that the former trapped six beavers on Indian Creek, and killed five bears. The raccoons, muskrats and grey foxes taken, is not known. On one occasion he caught three wolves in a pen at one time. The following sum- mer he married Polly Elkins, and continued to reside in the neigh- borhood till 1827, when he moved away. Horton left the country shortly after the visit of the Stevenses.
The next morning after the night of the feast, John Davis went with his guests, and showed them the lands on which John Stevens and Richardson Hensley and their families. were so soon to make settlement; and then the boys returned home .. Richardson Hens- ley, John Stevens' neighbor, shortly before the return of the two young men, had sold his farm and proposed returning to Kentucky, but they gave such a glowing report of the country they had seen, that both Stevens and he determined to move to it. Accordingly, on Wednesday, the 23rd of September, Hensley, with his family, and his two sons-in-law, William Davenport and Ambrose, his brother, and William Mitchell and their families, and John Stevens and his two sons, Alexander and Gideon, and a boy he had brought up, Ephraim Harrell, set out for the new country. The movers came in three wagons, Hensley and Stevens had one each drawn by three yoke of oxen, and Davenport and Mitchell joined in one drawn by one yoke of oxen and one pair of horses. Forty head of cattle and 100 hogs and a flock of sheep accompanied them.
They were five days on the road to the Nineveh, and four thence to the final stopping, a distance less than seven miles in a straight course. They had to cut a road every foot of that four days' travel. John Stevens and Richardson Hensley went before and chose the way, while William Mitchell, William Davenport and Alexander Stevens followed with their axes, and made a path for the wagons. On the evening of the third day they camped by a dead poplar tree, which caught fire during the night. The next morning, Fri- day, October 3, the journey was resumed, and at five o'clock that evening, they camped on a " black haw bush knoll" a half mile from what was soon to be known as Hensley's Spring. As the night closed in they looked back in the direction they had come, and were startled to see, barely two miles away, the flames blazing in the top of the poplar they had left burning that morning. The next morning the pioneers selected their respective tracts of land, and Hensley " without saying a word," cut down a straight sugar tree, measured off sixteen feet, cut it off, saying, " I've got the first cabin log cut." Cabins were erected as soon as could be, and were covered with lin bark. John Stevens returned to his family in Jack- son County in about three weeks, leaving his son, Alexander, and
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
his foster son, Ephraim Harrell, who remained during the winter, taking care of the cattle and hogs. Early the next spring they re- turned to their father's home, and assisted him to make the final move, landing at their new home on Indian Creek, on Tuesday, the 6tlı day of April, IS24.
The work of clearing the land was begun as soon as the men could get at it. By the time for planting in the spring, Ilensley had six acres cleared for corn and four acres for an orchard; each of his sons-in-law about three acres, and Stevens seven acres. The wild turkeys annoyed them by scratching up their com as soon as it was planted. The squirrels followed the turkeys, and by the time for harvesting, the crop was nearly destroyed. Hensley sowed his orchard in turnips, and raised an immense crop -about 500 bushels, on which he wintered his cattle. In the following fall (1824), William Holman, Isaac Holman, Ar- thur Bass and Nathaniel Elkins moved to the township. Dur- ing the ensuing winter, William Chase arrived, and the next season Peter Titus, and Charles and Mitchel Ross and Richard Perry. Following soon after came Henry Mussulman, Albert Roberts, John Schrem, John and Lewis Shouse and Aaron Hol- man: and at intervals during the years intervening between 1826 and I833, 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 Woollard, Frederick Ragsdale, George Bridges, William Clark, Abraham Massey, Mckinney Burk, Avery MI. Buckner, Levi Petro, James Wiley, Elijah Moore, Stith Daniel, Thomas L. Sturgeon, James Forsyth, David and Uriah Young, Godfrey Jones, R. W. Elder, James Hughes, George White, Rich- ard Joliffe and Perry Baily.
Let us turn to Union Township on the north of Hensley. Some time in 1823, Bartholomew Carroll moved from Kentucky by the way of the Three Notched Line road, then newly cut out. and found his way through the bush to the South Fork of Stott's Creek, and settled in Section 34, 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 Car- roll was a genuine backwoodsman. He spent his time in the wil-
2I
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derness 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 100 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.
In October, 1826, Peter Vandiver, John Garshuiler, Joseph Simpson and Mrs. Christina Garshuiler settled on the east side of the township, not far from the headwaters of the South Fork of Stott's Creek. The North and South forks of Stott's Creek run through this township. Both afforded mill sites in the west side of the township in the early times. They were so named from a family by the name of Stotts, who settled at the mouth of the stream in the early times. Another stream of this township is Kootz's Fork, which taking its rise between the two Forks of Stott's Creek, empties into the south one. A frontiersman by the name of Kootz lived at the outlet of this stream long enough to give immortality to his name. The same year Mrs. Gwinnie Utterback, with her family of eight sons and one daughter, settled on a tract of land ly- ing half a mile south of the present site of Union village. In 1827, George Kepheart moved to Section 23, and Alexander Gilmer, to the northeast corner.
In 1828 there was growth. Nearly 2,000 acres of land were entered, and a dozen families moved in. Peter Zook, Samuel Williams, Henry Banta and John James stopped in the Vandiver neighborhood. Jacob List and Philip Kepheart located near the east boundary line. Benjamin Utterback moved near to his sister- in-law, and Adam Lash and James Rivers moved to the north side, and John Mitchell not far from the northwest corner, and Jesse Young near the center. In 1829 ten more families moved into Union, Robert Moore and Joseph Young into Jesse Young's neighborhood, afterward known as Shiloh, William Bridges and John James near Vandiver's, William Kepheart and James Vaughan in the Utterback neighborhood, and Henry Guseclore in the northwest corner. Peter Bergen and Andrew Carnine moved on the east side adjoining the Hopewell neighborhood, and John Millis settled not far from the center of the township. The next year Garrett and James Terhune, two brothers, settled a mile west of Vandiver's; Gideon Drake moved to within a mile of the Morgan County line; Bennett, Austin and William Jacobs moved up to the
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EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
north side; Nicholas Wyrick settled on the North Fork of Stott's Creek, and David and Cornelius Luyster on the east side of the township.
In IS31, Isaac Knox, John McColgin and Joshua Hammond, who were Virginians, settled in the northwest corner on the North Fork of Stott's Creek. Willis Deer and Wesley, his brother, and John L. Jones, settled near Mrs. Utterback; 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 IS33, Daniel Newkirk, the gunsmith, Peter D. Banta, Peter Banta, David Demaree, John Knox, John Gets, Joshua Landers, and, probably, Jesse Harris, Peter Voris and John Shuck. The fam- ilies moving into the North Fork neighborhood were nearly or quite all Virginians, but all the others, with but few exceptions, were Kentuckians. Garrett Terhune was New Jersey born, but moved from Kentucky. 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.
What was true of the nativity of the first settlers of Union Township, was true of all save Nineveh. That was settled by Ohioans mainly. In all the others the majority were Kentucky born. A sprinkling from east Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, western Pennsylvania, and also Ohio, was to be found in all neigh- borhoods.
We have seen that the population of the county at the time of its organization was about 500. In IS28 the number of polls, as shown by a report made by the Auditor of State to the Legisla- ture, was 506, which would give a population of between 2,500 and 3,000. In 1830 the census showed a population of 4,019. In 1832 there were 908 polls, showing a population of about 5,000. In IS35, judging from the vote of that year, it had increased to at least 6,500, and in IS40 the census showed an increase to 9,352.
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CHAPTER III.
BY D. D. BANTA.
THE PIONEERS-WHERE THEY CAME FROM - WHO THEY WERE -ARRIVAL IN THE NEW COUNTRY - DESERTED CABINS - ARCHITECTURE OF THE EARLY HOMES - MODES OF TRAVEL - HARDSHIPS OF NEW COMERS - DOMESTIC ANIMALS MAST - HOG STEALING - SITUATION OF NEW HOMES - PRIMITIVE TOOLS - MODE OF FARMING - HUNTING INCIDENTS - WOMAN'S WORK - DOCTORS AND DISEASES - MORALS, SOCIAL CUSTOMS, ETC.
ETTLEMENTS were first made in Johnson County early in IS20. All of the New Purchase was open to immigrants by that year, and when the time came for laying it off into counties, it was found that settle- ments in all had been begun about the same time. In all, the growth was slow in comparison to what has been seen in new counties further west, in a later day. At the end of the first year there were not to exceed twenty families in Johnson County. During the second the number in- creased to about fifty-five, and at the close of the third it was not less than 100. It took ten years to bring it up to Soo.
The majority of the first settlers of Johnson County visited the country and selected the place of their future abiding before mov- ing. The greater part of these made some sort of arrangement for shelter before coming. A few bought lands on which cabins had already been built by earlier settlers. Others unaided, or with hired or volunteer help, built their own cabins, while others still, hired the work done altogether. A cabin of two rooms, finished after the fashion of the times, usually cost about $50. Not a few at the beginning moved to the country without knowing where they were going to locate, and having no promise of shelter. Occasionally one of these found an unoccupied cabin in the woods, into which he moved and lived until he could built for himself. Samuel Herriott, who came to the county in December, 1820, find- ing such a cabin on Sugar Creek, moved in. It had been erected the fall before, and was unfinished, having "neither door, floor, nor chimney." His wife, after raking a six-inch snow out, drove forks in one corner of the cabin and laying poles therein,
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THE PIONEERS.
crossed them with clapboards on which she made the bed. This she curtained with the wagon-sheet, making it quite comfortable. In the center of the floorless cabin, against a stump, she set a fire burning, which gave warmth to the family, and over which she hung the pot when she wanted it to boil. In this primitive abode Mr. Herriott and his wife lived till about the first of February fol- lowing, when they moved to their new home on the west side of the creek. This new cabin had a puncheon floor when they moved in, and Dame Herriott, more than fifty years afterward, speaking of her " one big pot and two splint-bottomed chairs," declared that when the men could sit on the edge of that puncheon floor and eat their dinners out of that pot, she " felt well fixed."*
But unoccupied cabins were not of common occurrence. The greater number of those who ventured to move to the country without having homes prepared beforehand, or friends to give them shelter, camped in the woods while building their cabins. In 1822, Andrew Pierce came to the White River settlement. His wife and he had walked all the way from Pittsburg, each carrying a bundle containing all their worldly goods. At their journey's end, which they reached after the winter weather had begun, they camped by the side of a log in the woods, till, with the help of the neighbors, a rude cabin was built, in which they found shelter. Benjamin Crews, who moved to Nineveh early in the spring of IS21, camped for eight weeks before his home was made. The season was so far advanced, and the necessities for raising a crop so great, that the first thing he did was to clear a field and plant it in corn, after which he put up a cabin. Sometime in 1826, Thomas Henderson, who was living at the Big Spring, notified his neighbor, Simon Covert, that a family had moved into the woods some miles to the westward of his place, and he proposed that they go and see who it was. Shouldering their axes, they set out, and at the end of a five miles' tramp, they found Mrs. Gwinnie Utterback, a widow with her family, consisting of eight sons and one daughter, camped in the woods a short distance south of the present site of Union village. The two pioneers, with the assistance of the Utterback boys, fell to with a will, and soon had a pole cabin up, into which the widow and her house- hold at once moved, and began life in the Indiana wilderness in earnest.
At this distance an air of romance is cast about many occur- rences that no doubt were painfully matter of fact to the parties concerned, at the time. In the fall of 1830, Garrett Terhune and
* History Presbyterian Church of Franklin, p. 193.
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JOHNSON COUNTY.
his brother James, arrived from Kentucky, and settled on the east side of Union Township, a mile west of Peter Vandiver's place. Garrett Terhune had a family of ten children, and he paid a man $30, all the money he had, to move him out. No preparation for shelter had been made, and when the end of the journey was reached, the movers' goods and their families were literally turned out in the woods. The brothers at once built two open camps ten feet apart and facing each other. In the space between they made the camp fire, at which the meals were cooked, and around which both families gathered of nights listening to the moan of the autumn winds in the tree tops and the howl of the prowling wolves. At the end of six weeks they abandoned their camps for a double cabin which they had erected in the meanwhile. Peter Vandiver, Terhune's nearest neighbor, moved to the country in IS26. Ten children were in his family and they were without shelter. The father, assisted by the older sons, immediately built an open camp, twelve by twenty feet, into which the family moved and lived till a better house was made.
The " open camp," as it was called in the early days, was quite frequently met with at one time in the Johnson County forests. The most of those who came to the county without homes pre- pared beforehand, found shelter till that could be done, in the hast- ily constructed open camp. The greater number of the early set- tlers had cabins prepared before moving. This was specially true of those who came from the southern part of the state, and from Kentucky. But it would seem, that of these, the greater part moved into unfinished homes. The man who came in advance to build was quite often ready to return for his family and goods, as soon as his cabin was raised and had a roof on. Door, window, floor and chimney could be attended to afterward. Robert Forsyth's cabin was without floor, door, chimney, daubing, chink- ing or loft, when he moved to it. John P. Banta came to the county, a year before he moved, and built a cabin, put a roof on, chinked the cracks, and made a mud and stick chimney. When he moved to it in September, IS29, it was without door, window, floor or loft. William Keaton and his wife moved into theirs before a place for a door, window or chimney, was cut out. The top log of the door span had been cut out and the family climbed in and out as best they could, till such time as a larger entrance could be made.
It was so common in the pioneer times, this moving into un- finished cabins, that it seldom or never caused comment. It may be safely assumed that during the first ten years after the first white man moved to the county, more than half of the people who
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came to find homes, lived for a time in unfinished cabins. Quilts and blankets hung over cabin doors and windows, gave protection against wind and weather for weeks, and in some instances, for months, to a large per cent. of the people who came during those first ten years.
The first cabins were primitive structures. They were made of round logs felled on or near the home site. Some were square enclosures, but most were parallelogram in form. Sixteen by eighteen feet was a common size, but some were 18x20. The roof was held in place by weight poles. The cracks between the logs were chinked with wood and daubed with tempered mortar to keep out the rain and cold. The back wall and jambs were made of dry earth invariably dug from beneath the floor and beaten so firmly into place as to stand the fires of many winters. Mounting above these was the mud and stick chimney, which, after a few vears, usually had to be propped with a pole to keep it from fall- ing. Slabs of ash -blue ash preferred-hewn to a face, made the floor-a floor that gave a silvery brightness at the touch of the scrubbing broom and mopping cloth. There were no carpets in those days, but in most families, Sunday morning saw the cabin floor as white as the table linen. If there was poplar plank to be had, it went into the cabin door, but if there was none, riven oak boards, smoothed with a drawing knife, answered the purpose. On wooden hinges the door was apt to swing, and its fastening might be a wooden pin, or better, a wooden latch with the string hang- ing out.
In the construction of many of the first cabins, not a nail, not a scrap of iron entered. Wood and clay composed it all. A " worm" fence around it protected it and the door-yard, from the cattle and hogs. Very soon a better order of cabin architecture followed. The two roomed cabin with its clapboard roof nailed on, its logs scotched, its doors and windows cased in sawed stuff and painted blue or red, was to be seen everywhere. Sometimes the two rooms would be separated by an " entry," making a form of cabin known in some quarters as a " saddle-bags cabin," but usually, the line dividing the two rooms, consisted of a wall of logs, through the middle of which was cut the " inside door."
Into the majority of the primitive cabins, the Johnson County pioneers moved during the autumnal season. Most of them came in wagons, but not all. Andrew Pierce and his wife walked all the way from Pittsburg, carrying packs on their backs. Stith Daniel, who settled near the present site of Trafalgar, packed through from Kentucky on horse back. Richard Perry, who came in IS23, brought part of his goods in a two wheeled vehicle, drawn by
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oxen, and packed the residue on horse-back. He was ten days traveling 200 miles. Ladd, who settled at the bluffs, close to the line, moved all the way from North Carolina in a sled. George Bridges came to the country with two wagons, one of which was " home-made." The wheels were made of thick oak plank with iron tires. Not infrequently the wife and mother rode on horse back, and the biggest children walked. Mrs. John Doty rode all the way from the North Bend, below Cincinnati, and carried the baby. Mrs. Nancy Forsyth rode from her old Kentucky home on horse back. At the crossing of the Driftwood, she took on a sack of meal and carried her two year old baby in her lap before her, while the baby carried the pet house cat.
The fall of the year was usually chosen as the time to move, of necessity. The wretched condition of the Indiana roads as found at almost all other seasons of the year, operated largely to bring this about. From the season of the beginning of the fall rain, on through the winter and spring and till the summer drouths held the land in their dry embrace, it was next to impossible to haul a load from the Ohio River to central Indiana. Some years the dry sea- son was of such short duration that the mud-roads held sway the year round. George Kerlin, who moved to the country in the month of September, 1831, found the roads next to impassable from the Ohio River out. At any other than during the dry sea- son, it was a hard day's ride from Franklin to Edinburg and return. It occupied all of one day to ride to Indianapolis. When once in his new home the pioneer was apt to find his lines in any but pleas- ant places. His cabin was cheerless. Everything was new. The conveniences of life were scant. Much had to be left at the old home that could not be supplied in the new. It is difficult to con- vey to the people of this age an adequate idea of the unsupplied wants of the people who lived in the early days. Poverty abounded everywhere. There were few, indeed, who had money, and the majority lacked in everything that is now deemed essential to comfort.
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