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 31
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Let us return to the settler's new field. The breaking is done and the corn is planted. It may be late in the season according to the modern idea, but we must remember that the soil is virgin and that all vegetation grows rampant. Mrs. Nancy Forsyth remem- bers that her first planting of corn-beans shot up till the vines caught into the lower limbs of the trees. Simon Covert laid his first crop of corn by, within eighteen days after planting, and raised fifty bushels to the acre. But the luck more often went against the early agriculturist than with him. Many causes combined to jeopardize his corn crop. It ran the risks of late spring frosts and of the early fall ones, it was liable to be injured by cut worms, and there might be too much or too little rain. These risks are yet to
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be run but the pioneer farmer experienced others and greater ones, which happily the modern farmer knows little or nothing of. The wood-peckers pulled up the sprouting plants and pecked into the roasting ears to an injurious extent, little dreamed of now-a-days; and when the grain had ripened, the wild turkeys feeding upon it, lessened the crop more than we are apt to think. And so of the raccoons. As soon as it was in roasting-ear state, these animals invaded the fields and pulling down the stalks, devoured the young corn like so many pigs. Samuel Doty describing to the writer the devastation done by the raccoons said: " The sound of their eating in the corn patch was like the sound of the eating of so many hogs." John Doty had a field of three acres entirely consumed by the raccoons.
But the depredation of the grey squirrels was greater than that from all other causes combined. These rodents swarmed through- out the primitive woods. They prowled around the fields and found hiding places in the dead trees left standing therein. As soon as the seed corn was covered they began their work of de- struction, and kept it up till the grain was absorbed by the growing plant. With what certainty a squirrel will follow the row and dig in the corn-hills only, till he found the grain, there are men vet liv- ing who remember. Thence on till earing time the rodents could do no harm, but no sooner were the grains found on the cob than the spring marauders, accompanied by a full grown progeny, re- turned, and between themselves, the birds and raccoons, the little fields stood a sorry chance. Some years they were worse than others, but all were bad. The years 1824, 1834 and IS36, were specially bad ones. During the squirrel visitations the farmer put forth his utmost efforts to protect his crop. The children were sent to the fields armed with every conceivable device for making a noise. They rattled " horse fiddles " and bells, and beat on fence rails and hollow stumps and trees, with clubs. Mrs. Jacob Halfacre, a daughter of John Campbell, the first settler of the county, remem- bered in her old age, that the first work she and her sisters engaged in after their arrival on Blue River, which was about the first of June, was to keep the birds and squirrels out of their father's five- acre corn field. At daybreak he would waken her and her sisters, and they would immediately go to their respective stations in the field and begin the noisy demonstrations of the day. During the heat of the day the squirrels lay concealed in the woods, and they rested from their labors, but as the afternoon sun descended, the squirrels returned and they resumed their noisy demonstrations in the field.
Every possible plan for the destruction of the little animals was
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resorted to. In some fields a dead-fall or other form of trap was to be seen in almost every fence corner. Nearly every farmer kept a gun, and it was used daily as long as the visitation lasted. Sometimes the farmers of a neighborhood would combine, and while one of their number would make the round of their fields, shooting squirrels as he went, the others would look after the till- ing of his corn. Jacob Banta, who settled in Union Township, in IS32, had a hired hand, John Harrell, who, under his instructions, plowed half a day and shot squirrels the other half; and so faithfully did the hand perform his last half day's work, that the " stench from the putrid squirrels lying around the corn field, made the air sickening." The wife of John S. Miller, of Nineveh, with rifle on shoulder, patroled the woods around the field, and kept the squirrels out, while her husband tilled the corn. So good a shot did this pioneer woman become, that she could shoot her game in the head, making as few misses as any hunter in the neighborhood.
The stories told of the abundance of squirrels some years, and of their destructiveness, almost challenge our credulity, but the stories are, nevertheless, well authenticated. Mrs. Millie Owens says there were seasons when she could stand in her door and see " fifteen or twenty squirrels on the fence at any morning or even- ing hour." James Owens, her husband, killed 200 in one day. Jacob Bower shot twenty-six on one occasion "without moving out of his tracks." William Freeman, without arising from his chair at the breakfast table, shot nine from a hill of ripening corn in the garden in front of his cabin door. Thomas Patterson shot two from a neighbor's chimney, and they fell into the fireplace within. " Sometimes they were so thick they would average one to every tree." No wonder they ate up the land. "Among the four fami- lies living in White River Township, in 1821," says Judge Hardin, "not a single bushel of corn was saved from the squirrels and rac- coons." In the same year, George Barnett, on Blue River, bought a four-acre field of corn in the shock. "I helped remove the fod- der," says Ambrose, his son, "and was the lucky one. I found one little ear of corn. So close had been the scenting of the grey squirrels, that they had overlooked but one ear in the four acres." John Ilarter stored a few bushels of corn in his cabin loft, but the squirrels found it out, and ere he was aware, stole every ear. John Smiley had a four-acre field of corn just ripened, when it was invaded by a swarm of the rodents, and in two days, every ear was eaten or carried away.
For the first few years the pioneer farmers confined themselves mainly to raising corn. But after mills suitable for the grinding and bolt- ing of flour became accessible, they began to raise wheat. In spite of
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sultry weather, the harvest season was a joyous one. The men of the neighborhood combined and went from field to field reaping and shocking as they went. They made a sort of social occasion of it, and thus the labor was lightened. At first it was with sickle the bearded grain was cut, but soon the cradle crowded the sickle out, but the social feature remained. A half dozen cradles mowing with military precision through the waving grain, and followed by as many binders, and the necessary complement of sheaf gatherers and shockers, was a cheering sight. The labor was hard, but there was time and opportunity for the jest and laugh. Harvesters, in those days, plumed themselves on their skill and endurance. Not every man was an expert cradler, but the ambition of every boy was to become one. More or less friendly emulation prevailed among every band of harvesters as to who should so far excel as to be conceded the leadership of the cradlers, and every one, whether cradler or binder, feared the odium that would attach should he, in the language of the times, "go to grass."
The harvest season was characterized by its good living. The best cooks in the neighborhood vied with each other, and as a con- sequence harvesters lived off the fat of the land. In many com- munities, perhaps in a large majority, whisky was deemed a neces- sity, and was passed freely with the water. In a few, butter-milk took the place of whisky, whilst in others, water alone was drunk. About the middle of the afternoon it was the custom in many places to send to the harvesters a basket of refreshments, the most im- portant part of which consisted of the coffee pot, cream pitcher and sugar bowl. At the close of the day's work an elaborate supper was eaten, after which the laborers repaired to their homes, undis- turbed by thoughts of dyspepsia, to rest and sleep, and be ready to repeat their experience on the morrow. In due time the wheat crop was taken to the threshing floor. This was usually prepared in the field by removing from a circular space, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, the grass, stubble and irregularities of surface. after which a few barrels of water were spilled over it, and it was then thumped with a maul, till the surface was quite smooth and hard, and solid. If the grain was flailed out out less pains were taken with the threshing floor, but usually the grain was tramped out with horses, and a hard floor became necessary. The grain the farmer removed from the chaff with a sheet. This was a slow process, requiring the labor of three persons, two at the sheet, and one to pour the chaff and grain. Fanning-mills were introduced slowly. Strange as it may seem, there existed in some quarters a prejudice against the fanning-mill, that kept it out for a good many years. In one neighboorhood the fanning-mill became a church
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matter, and it was seriously discussed as to whether it was not a violation of the laws of nature to raise the wind in so peculiarly an artificial manner. But the fanning-mill ultimately won.
The pioneer farmer long found his milling a difficult problem. The approved style of milling for many years was to carry the grist on horseback. For the first two or three years the grists were thus carried to the White Water Mills, a distance of sixty miles. As the country settled up the mills drew closer, and it was not long before the water mills on the creeks of the county, Smiley's, Harter's, Ogle's, Thompson's and others, not to mention the horse-mills, afforded facilities for grinding nearer home. As late as 1830, how- ever, John Carson carried his grist a distance of twenty-two miles to mill. About the first of November, 1824, John Stevens and Richardson Hensley sent their sons, with grists, to Tannehill's mill, on the Driftwood, about six miles north of Columbus. The corn had been gathered and dried for the purpose. The boys were Gideon Stevens, aged ten years, and Elijah Harrell, his foster brother, aged eleven, and Bloomfield Hensley, also aged eleven. Each carried two bushels in a sack, strapped to the horse's back. It took two days to go and return.
How did the pioneer spend his winters? He fed his beasts. Ilis horses he usually kept in an unchinked log stable, and his cows he left out of doors to endure the winter weather as best they could. It required many years for him to realize the economic value of warm barns for his beasts, or to think it worth while to prepare a dry, comfortable place for his wife to do the milking in. He cut and hauled firewood from time to time, as it was needed; some- where around his cabin was the woodpile, like as not it was near the front door. If a lane passed the front door, the woodpile was quite sure to be in that lane. To this woodpile he drew wood on his sled, principally limbs of dead trees from the deadening, or he dragged whole trunks of trees to it on the log sled or the "liz- zard." In the woodpile he cut his wood as he needed it, and both cut and uncut took the rain and the snow and the sleet, the same as the unhoused cattle. The woodpile in the lane was a conspicu- ous place during pioneer times. Here the sled, the log sled and the lizzard were, also axes, mauls and wedges lay around. In pro- cess of time its mound of chips became the driest spot on the farm, and while it was not always suffered to become a bedding place for the hogs, it seldom escaped being the milking place and the sleep- ing place of the cows. There are men yet living who have a lively recollection of the odors that exhaled from the woodpile during the spring and summer weather.
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On suitable days the pioneer made rails or worked in his clear- ing, and on bad ones he half-soled his sled, made a handle for his axe, mended his gears, fashioned a basket, and made and mended shoes for himself and family. Or, perhaps, he went hunting. Not all of the pioneers were hunters, but a majority were more or less fired with a love for the chase. And what a splendid hunting ground lay at their doors! The woods were full of game - bears, panthers, wolves, deers, wild turkeys - what a rare catalogue for the lovers of forest sports! To some the chase brought in its sea- son, lasting delight, while to all, the game was a never failing source of food supply. Johnson County was well supplied with most excellent "licks," to which the deer resorted in great num- bers, all through the warm season of the year, and the merest tyro could kill a deer in a "lick." The county, as indeed all of central Indiana, abounded in a bountiful and variegated mast, on which the deers, bears and wild turkeys fed and fattened in its season, and little wonder the woods abounded in game. Joab Woodruff is said to have killed 370 deer in the fall of 1822, and George Doty told the writer that he killed 300 in IS21 and 1822. Samuel Herriott bought 600 deer hides one year. Nathan Perry says he has fre- quently seen as many as forty deer in one herd. Judge Franklin Hardin remembers to have seen as many as twenty-five on one oc- casion, corralled in a bend of White River. William Burkhart found Rock Lick, in Union Township, by pursuing a well beaten path, known as a run-way, leading to it for a distance of seven miles. Isaac Collier shot thirteen deer early one morning, at Col- lier's Lick, in the edge of Brown County. In 1834, Henry Mus- sulman started a herd of deer in the vicinity of Franklin, which he followed to within a short distance of Indianapolis, and thence back to their starting place, and during the chase killed six.
Venison was plenty indeed, and unskillful was that pioneer who could not now and then secure one for his table. Many persons kept the larder supplied the year round. William Rutherford, on one occasion, knocked one in the head with an axe, as it ran past him where he was making rails. One, pursued by dogs, took shelter in Gideon Drake's sheep pen adjoining his cabin, and Mrs. Drake and a neighbor woman, closing the door of the pen, slaughtered it, and made venison of it before the pursuing hunter came up. One Sunday morning, shortly after King's cabin was built, Isaac Voor- heis was sitting on the bank of Young's Creek, immediately south of Judge Woollen's present residence. Ilearing the bay of a dog up the creek, he looked that way, and saw a deer coming toward him. Keeping quiet, it came down to a point opposite to him and
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plunged in, but the current carried it down against a log, when Voorheis rushed in and caught it, and in his hands it became veni- son for the family.
Wild turkeys were more abundant even than deer. Wherever there was food for them they were to be found in goodly numbers. Their " keonk " was a familiar sound to the inmates of every cabin. In the spring of 1823, a drove passed over the after site of Frank- lin, numerous enough to make a well marked trail a hundred yards in width, but they were extremely poor, and were, no doubt, migrating in search of food. Simon Covert has been heard to say that for several years after he moved to the neighborhood of the Big Spring, he could at any time within a two hours' hunt during the fall and early winter season, kill one or more turkeys. Jacob Fisher was an expert turkey-pen builder, and thought nothing of catching six or eight turkeys at a time in his pen. As late as 1850, flocks of fifty were to be seen in the woods in Union Township, and in 1856, a wild turkey hen hatched a brood within fifty yards of John Bar- low's house in Clark Township. Wild turkeys often did much mischief scratching up the newly planted corn, eating it after it was grown, and treading down the smaller grain before it was harvested. Richardson Hensley, of Hensley Township, lost his first planting of corn by the turkeys scratching it up.
Men who bring a wilderness, inhabited by wild beasts, to a state of civilization, never lack in romantic incidents with which to add flavor to the tales told in old age. There are but few, indeed, who do not yield to the charm of border life incident. Men who came in conflict with the wild beasts of the country, necessarily met with experiences that when afterward related, bordered on the romantic. However dangerous some of the encounters had with the wild animals by the pioneer hunters of the county, no man ever lost his life, or for that matter, received serious injury, save Lewis Hendricks, who lived in the Sugar Creek neigh- borhood, in an encounter with a bear, when he met with an accident that left him disabled for life. He had wounded the animal, and in company with a neighbor, was hunting for it. One on either side of a brush fence in which it was supposed to be lying, they were walking slowly along, when it rushed out and attacked Hendricks. His companion ran to his assistance and shot the infuriated animal, but not before it had stripped the flesh from his arm, and other- wise injured him.
Hardly a hunter of any note lived in the county during the first ten years, who could not boast of his success as a bear hunter. Curtis Pritchard, William Spears, Robert Worl and Jacob Woodruff, while hunting, found three full-grown bears holed in trees. Kind-
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ling a fire in the hollow of one of the trees, one was smoked out and shot. Cutting the tree down before it fell, another descended and ran with such rapidity as to escape the flying bullets. Five dogs pursued it, and, after a half-mile chase, brought it to bay. Two of the dogs it killed outright, and crippled badly two others, before it was dispatched. The third beast was shot and killed as the tree fell in which it had concealed itself. Bear meat was prized by some as an article of food. Benjamin Crews had at one time Soo pounds of the meat cured and smoked like bacon, which he sold for the same price.
The most ferocious beast that roamed the woods was the panther. The bear, the wolf, and even the deer, would fight savagely when in close quarters, but each would run from the hunter whenever it could. The panther, on the contrary, was re- puted to make battle with man without provocation. Two brothers by the name of Smith, living in Nineveh, in the early days, went to hunt straying cattle. They carried no guns, and when night came, they made a camp-fire and lay down and slept. During the night one of them was awakened by a noise, and stirring the fire to a blaze, he plainly heard a panther leap off through the bushes to an open space not far distant, where it stopped and lashed the earth with its tail. Several panthers were shot at Collin's Lick, one by a man named John Weiss, and under circumstances showing the narrow risk an unskilled hunter sometimes ran. Weiss carried a very inefficient arm, and had no experience as a hunter. He went to the lick to watch for deer, and while hiding in ambush, he happened to look around and was horrified to see close by, a panther crouched, ready to spring upon him. Without a thought, he brought his gun to bear upon it, and through sheer good luck, shot it dead in its tracks. Weiss never went hunting again.
Near the headwaters of Honey Creek, Samuel and John Bell were lying in wait at a marsh much frequented by deer. The sun went down and twilight was coming on, when Samuel's attention was directed to an object crawling toward his brother, who was several yards away. It was a panther, and he knew enough of the habits of the animal to know it meant mischief. But he was an ex- perienced hunter, a good marksman and with all, had a cool head and steady nerves. Taking deliberate aim, he shot the beast through the head. More hunters, however, got into trouble with wounded deer than with all the other animals of the country. John Smiley once knocked one over, and on going to it, it arose to meet him with " hair turned the wrong way." Smiley sprang be- hind a sapling and it made a push at him with lowered antlers. Laying hold of a horn on either side of the sapling, he held on for
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dear life. Round and round both went until wearied with the fruit-' less contest, the buck smoothed its hair in token that his fight was over, when Smiley let go, and he walked off undisturbed. Joseph Young, of Union Township, knocked a buck down one day, and on touching its throat with the knife, it sprang to its feet and made at him. Young jumped behind a large oak tree and the deer took after him, but by hook and by crook, he managed to keep the tree between him and his assailant, receiving no more than an occasional pick of the horn. After its rage had abated, it gave its antlers a toss and disappeared in the thicket.
One of the most desperate encounters with a wounded deer was had by Henry Mussulman. To the throat of a paralyzed buck he touched his knife, when it gave an unexpected flounce, sending his knife flying through the bushes. It was a powerful deer, and the hunter who had his knee on its head and a firm hold of its antlers saw at a glance, that his safety depended on holding it down. Of course there was a struggle, and although the advantage at first was with the hunter, yet it soon became evident to him that the animal's power of endurance was equal to, if not greater than, his own. His knife was lost, and his unloaded gun was leaning against a tree more than twenty feet away. What was he to do? Realizing more and more that his safety lay on keeping on top, he held on in grim desperation. In their struggle a spice bush was broken, and in the splintered stub he thought he saw a weapon of deliverance. If he could only put those baleful eyes out, the vic- tory was his. One after another he broke off the splintered stubs, and jabbed them into the creature's eyes, till their sight was gone, after which he left the blind Sampson of the woods to stumble over the logs and thrash through the bushes in impotent rage, till he could load his gun and give it the death shot.
Another incident in this connection, may be mentioned. Jesse Wells, an old time settler on the Blue River, who was long well- known as a Methodist minister, was given to hunting. On one oc- casion he "creased " a deer, and proceeded to bleed it. Taking hold of its hind leg to turn it over, the creature came to life, and giving one tremendous kick, which knocked the knife so far away that it was never afterward found, the animal leaped to its feet and furi- ously assailed him. Wells was a lithe, active man, but in spite of his best efforts to secure shelter behind a large poplar standing close by, the enraged brute succeeded in piercing his knee with one of the sharp prongs of its antler. Once behind the tree the animal abandoned the fight, and disappeared in the forest. Jesse Wells ever after walked with a stiff knee, which came of the wound received in that fight.
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Thus far have we written, using the masculine he, his and him' almost exclusively. Of course she was there, the sharer in all the hardships that befell him, and in all his triumphs. But let us enter the cabin and catch a glimpse of her life. All through the summer and fall the wife has been as busy as the husband, and during the winter, if possible, more so. Perhaps the labor of cooking was not as severe as in this day of greater abundance. Certainly there was less to cook, and for that matter, less to cook it in. The pioneer housewife had never seen a cooking stove. If she had a skillet, a metal oven, a boiling pot or two, a frying pan, a coffee pot, a griddle and a johnny-cake board, she knew herself to be well supplied with cooking utensils. She baked her loaves and pones and dodgers in the oven, and her biscuits and slapjacks in the skillet. Her chunks of venison, back bones and spare-ribs, she roasts in the metal oven. Into the same vessel she puts her sweet potatoes, Irish po- tatoes, and, when the orchard comes to bearing, her apples also, when she wants to bake them. If she wants a pound cake on an extra occasion, she bakes it in a teacup, set in that oven, or, if a pie, she slips the plate in which it is made into the hot oven or skillet. IIer boiled dinners came out of the pot much as her grand- daughter's do to-day: and her chicken pot-pies, the favorite dish at every house raising and log-rolling, came piping hot out of the same pot or its mate. Naught came to her larder that she could not cook to suit the taste of those who sat at her board.
But cooking was to her a minor care. Children were apt to come in quick succession in her cabin, and they had to be clothed as well as fed, and upon her fell the burden of their clothing. She might, or she might not, have to go into the clearing and " pick trash" or "nigger logs," or "right up" burning log heaps. She might, or she might not, have to hoe corn and pull weeds or stand guard in the field to keep the squirrels out; but there was no escaping the clothing question. She was responsible for the jeans and the linsey. Her husband sowed the flax and sheared the sheep, for this was a man's work. If he pulled the flax and washed the wool he did well, for it was not so certain that this was a man's work. He broke the flax and peeled the walnut bark with which the wool was dyed, but there his work ended, unless the weather was very bad, when he might " swingle " the flax. She washed the wool and picked the burs out of it, and saw that a part of it was properly placed between layers of walnut bark in the drying trough, and then covered with water and left to soak till the ooze gave it the right color. That done, she dried it and washed it and, until the carding machines came, hand-carded both the colored and uncolored, into rolls and spun them into yarn, " sixteen to twenty
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