USA > Indiana > Lawrence County > History of Lawrence and Monroe counties, Indiana : their people, industries, and institutions > Part 42
USA > Indiana > Monroe County > History of Lawrence and Monroe counties, Indiana : their people, industries, and institutions > Part 42
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75
The salary for this honored but responsible stage service to each driver was sixteen and two-thirds dollars per month and found, meaning free lodging. board and laundry. This pay was regarded as princely wages in the thirties period of hard times and scarce money. Passengers were not sold tickets as railroads now do, but were way-billed more like live-stock freight. The driv- ers picked up or set down passengers at their homes in the larger towns, and delivered them at their resident destination in each of the terminal cities. The drivers were collection agents for all unpaid fares and did this business on honor and without bond. A passenger from Bloomington to Indianapolis was charged or way-billed for three dollars, and to Louisville for six dollars. No second class fares or half rate fellows like over-grown youths, or circuit- riding preachers, were considered. The report that these drivers stopped at the bottom of a steep hill when the stage was heavily loaded and called down. "All first class passengers get out and walk ; all second class passengers get out and push," was a story of Windy Bob's own creation.
The Orchards, with their stage drivers, were the first near-railroad men of Monroe county. They were minus the iron rails and the iron horse and coach, of which they were the forerunners. Those two old-time "stagers" were crowded off the scene of action, had to come down from their high seats. their occupation gone. Their positions were usurped by the new locomotive drivers. the brass-buttoned, blue-coated conductors on the incoming railroad trains of the new era. They gracefully accepted the situation, gave a double farewell to "Ye lumbering old stage coach." and a hearty three times three
446
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
welcome to "Ye easie going passenger train" of the New Albany & Salem railroad.
NEW ALBANY AND SALEM RAILROAD.
New Albany, Indiana, was an ambitious little city on the north bank of the Ohio river. Salem, Indiana, was a progressive hamlet thirty-five miles inland. The city and the town had many social and commercial interests in common. They had attained the age of majority, were friendly and chummy, and flirted and courted until they absorbed the double-headed notion that they would like to be joined together in the iron bonds of railroad wedlock. They made an appeal to the men and the great state of Indiana, a license was granted and marriage was consummated January 6, 1847. The groom got a hustle and the bride got a bustle on, and in the proper interval of time, January 18, 1850, a child was born. It was christened the "New Albany and Salem Rail- road," for which James Brooks stood as godfather and Phoebe Brooks as godmother.
This New Albany and Salem youngster was born delicate and weakly, yet it was able to sit up and take notice. It was fairly perfect in form and feature and finish, and was ready and anxious for traffic and business. Its playthinglike track was laid of common flat-bar iron, spiked through to sawed wooden stringers, braced apart and bound together every six feet by wooden cross-ties. It had two daisy little light-weight engines bearing the names of James Brooks and Phoebe Brooks, in honor of its worthy president and his wife. Its complement of toy-like coaches, box cars and gondolas were simple enough for all the business in sight or to be secured. * *
In the fall of 1849, the New Albany & Salem railroad was surveyed through our home county of Monroe. From a point on the south line near the town of Guthrie, ranging northerly, coming through and splitting Blooming- ton almost in halves, thence out to the north line of the county near Gosport. The greatest bugaboo about adopting this survey was the big expense of con- structing the high bridge and fill at Jackson's creek, and the deep rock-clay cut at the edge of town. This ridge was the highest point on the railroad survey. So this pioneer railroad was projected through Monroe county in 1849, the same year that numbers of our citizens hit the trail bound for the gold mines of California.
The fashion of building railroads was raging in Indiana, and any county not having one was out of fashion and was out of the world as well. Monroe county had no railroad, so she began to perk up and take notice. Here was a
447
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
new railroad being projected lengthwise through the great state of Indiana. Monroe county could have thirty-three miles of this road within its own boundaries for the asking-substantially backed up, of course, with sufficient assistance and encouragement. The company only advocated a free right of way, some donations and a nominal stock subscription. This stock was to be a dividend earner, and a valuable and paying investment forever. In addi- tion, the town of Bloomington was promised a railroad round-house, the machine shops, and a freight division terminal.
Town meetings were called, the public feeling worked up, and all citizens were enthusiastic for giving and getting the road at any and all hazards. Building grounds and right of way was pledged to the railroad, and a liberal stock subscription procured. It was thought to be the "Simon pure old Jacob Townsend blown in the bottle goods," and was as popular accordingly. People fell over themselves in haste to subscribe. The stock book looked like a dupli- cate Monroe county tax list of that period. Terms of payment were easy : Cordwood, land, timber, bridge stone, all were given.
The first location survey of the route into town was east of the present line along Walnut street, and following Spankers' branch across the Max- well. Ben Adams and graded school lots to the present site of the depot. The route was later changed to the Bedford road and up Morton street. The first survey in the south part of the county was located near the Ketcham mills. The route was afterwards changed on the plea of getting more business out of the little town of Smithville than from the mills. All told, it is believed that near one hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock was gathered from the willing and generous people of Monroe county. No doubt great bunches of it today could be raked out of old socks and strong boxes-worthless souvenirs of each owner's railroad investment. Built in a happy-go-lucky fashion, in the crudest, easiest and least expensive way, it was nevertheless a railroad, and filled the prescription and met the require- ments. The town got its promise, too, in a four-stall engine round-house ; a machine-shop lean-to, employing one brawny blacksmith and his helper : and in addition to all that, a big, unsightly brick depot thrown in for good measure.
Some seventy miles of the main line track was built of flat-bar iron in a manner as has been described. The ordinary pounding of the engines on this flat-bar track often loosened the flat-headed nails and the end of the bar springing up was called a "sneak-head." The constant loosening of these bars was ever a source of trouble and danger.
The first little wheezy, wood-burner, fire-tossing engines, with their
448
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
balloon-shaped smoke stacks and their canvas-covered, bow-topped cabs of wagon-bed shape, were of small and light pattern. The other rolling stock of the road were those little short, squatty, sawed-off, eight-ton box cars, the roof so low that a full grown man had to stoop or telescope himself to enter, and could not stand erect inside. A dinky little train of this kind was first put in service, and was called a "wild cat." After the new road was placed in better condition, this free and easy, wild cat train was superseded by two mixed trains of a few freight cars and one coach for passengers. These trains would stop for a passenger when flagged at any public cross- roads. A disgruntled passenger writing about these trains, said: "It took a long summer day to get there, for the engines were fed with wood, and every now and then had to load the tender with fuel corded on the right of way, and water the locomotive sometimes by bailing from near streams with buckets (the brakeman called this operation jerking water) and from this the road gets its name of 'jerk water road.'" The trains also had to stop to mend couplings, to cool off hot boxes, drive cattle off the track, and wait at meeting points for other trains in equally bad luck.
The track of the New Albany & Salem railroad was laid into Bloom- ington in the fall of 1853. but it was not finished through the county until the following summer. At Bloomington, July 4, 1854, the New Albany & Salem road was declared finished and open for traffic throughout its com- pleted length. Excursion trains crowded with people came into Blooming- ton from both north and south. There was a free-for-all jollification, glori- fication; speeches from delighted railroad men, and also from jubilant citi- zens-a feast of reason and a flow of soul, and a big barbecue dinner served on the court house square.
The first year or two of the railroad's operation of trains it had no telegraph or Morse code or Marconi system. Later along, and in conform- ity with other railroad work, an apology of a telegraph line was constructed. One small strand of common wire loosely strung on low black-jack poles, about such as farmers use for training butter beans and hop vines. The first messages used were sight written; that is, were first compressed on a long, narrow white paper ribbon, by feeding through a little roller dot and dash perforating receiver, then cut out, deciphered, and translated from the Morse code.
From its very first inception, the railroad was the hutt of ridicule, and got the gaff from employes and the public. It was dubbed and derided as the "jerk water," the "dog fennel." 'twin rust streak," etc. The first em- ployes in the train service were few in number and quite well known. Ed-
PICTURESQUE SCENES IN MONROE COUNTY
449
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
ward Gregory, engineer, with James Draysdale, fireman, pulled the first train into Monroe county, as well as the first passenger train into Bloomington.
The New Albany & Salem railroad was known and called the "College road," for the reason it had such a string of colleges all along the line. There was DePauw Seminary, Borden Institute, Southern Baptist Normal, State University, Asbury College, Wabash College, Purdue Agricultural, North- ern Normal, not mentioning a state reformatory at south and a state peni- tentiary at the north terminal.
October 4, 1859, the New Albany & Salem railroad, recovering from the hands of a receiver and under a new management, Salem lost her place and name in the railroad game. On this same date, New Albany also was given a mortal wrench and lined up as a way station, but permitted to hold second place in the new title of "Louisville, New Albany & Chicago Railroad Company."
THE INDIANAPOLIS SOUTHERN RAILROAD.
The subject of a new railroad for Bloomington is one which engaged the attention of the citizens and voters of this city for many years, to my knowledge. The necessity for additional facilities was keenly felt by the enterprising people and by the management of the university. Probably for half a century this city sought to get out of the woods by means of another railroad, leading in almost any direction. Any many prospects were ex- ploited, but all failed, and the routes were strewn with the blasted hopes and the broken fortunes of the promoters; for it costs money, in no stinted sums, to promote railroads.
But a better day dawned, and the past was forgotten. For in the last year of the last century, the Indianapolis Southern railway was incorporated by David M. Parry, William E. Stevenson, Charles E. Barrett, John Mc- Gettigan et al., with the avowed purpose of building a railroad, the main line of which would start from Indianapolis and run through the counties of Johnson, Morgan, Brown, Lawrence, Orange, Dubois, Warrick and Van- derberg, to Evansville, with a branch line from some point in Johnson, Mor- gan or Brown county, through Monroe, Greene and Sullivan counties to a point near Hymera in Sullivan county. Surveys were also made through Jackson county to Brownstown, thence through Salem in Washington county to Paoli, Orange county.
The sophistries of the promoters did not prevail against the money bags of Wall street, and the result was that the main line failed, because no money could be secured to build it.
(29)
450
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
The company was reorganized in February, 1902, and from the date of this reorganization Bloomington had her first real chance for a new railroad. The first move was to marshal the business men and send a delegation of our best to Indianapolis, to extend the glad hand and promise hearty co-opera- tion and support. It was early decided to follow about the present line from Indianapolis to Bloomington. The following summer petitions were circu- lated and elections ordered to vote on subsidies in Benton, Bloomington, Perry and Van Buren townships. The elections were held on the 8th day of July, 1902. Van Buren voted against the subsidy. Benton voted $3,653 subsidy by a majority of two votes. Perry voted $30,796 by a majority of 142 votes. Bloomington township voted $54,433 by a majority of 599 votes. Thus the two townships of Bloomington and Perry voted a total subsidy of $85,229. A tidy sum indeed. During this year of 1902 rich men from the East often came to look over the line, and to estimate the probabilities of return for an investment in the bonds.
The first location of the road east of the city followed along the breaks of Griffy creek, from near the present Unionville station, and came through Kenwood addition from the northeast to Madison street. It violated one of the fixed rules for good railroad building, in getting down off the high ground this side of Unionville station, and traversing a rugged country, thence to the city for five or six miles, and then attempting to climb up onto high ground again. The grades were objectionable from a railroad view- point, and this part of the route was relocated when the Illinois Central came into possession. From Eleventh street the line followed Madison street south and crossed the Monon at grade on the heavy curving grade at Eighth street, thence down the branch back of the Dill mill and the gas plant, to the Monon right of way, which was thence pretty closely followed to Clear creek.
The first official action which the city was called upon to take, in relation to the railroad, was on the 18th of November, 1902, when David M. Parry, William E. Stevenson, Thomas H. Hazelrigg and others appeared before the council and presented a petition asking for a franchise for their road to run through the city, and urged that the matter be considered and the franchise be granted at that meeting, as the conditions of the franchise were pretty well understood by the people at large. It was a great disappointment to these men when the council, with scant ceremony, postponed the considera- tion of the franchise. The visitors left the city the next morning on the first train out, in an ugly frame of mind toward official Bloomington. They said they would never ask another hearing, and I sought to placate them by volunteering to present and urge the franchise at the next meeting. The
45I
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
franchise, as prepared, was all right, and was proof against any reasonable objections by any citizen.
At the next meeting, held on the 2d day of December, 1902, present Frank J. Dunn, mayor ; councilmen Sanford F. Teter, John F. Potts, Fred Fess, Henry Splitgerber, Ellsworth Cooper and Isaac Walker. I presented and read the franchise, which had by this time become pretty well understood, because an effort had been made in the meantime to awaken public interest in the necessity of doing our part to supplement the efforts of the men who, in good faith, were trying to build us a railroad. There was some opposition and some unpleasant things said, but no concert of action, and the franchise was passed by an unanimous vote of the council, and afterward approved by the mayor.
It was not until the early summer of 1903 that a man appeared on the scene with money and courage to put it into this railroad. He was Archibald White, of Wall street, who had recently syndicated the salt interests of the country, and formed the trust, and thereby made his millions. We showed him all the quarries, and estimated the output, and before the day ended he saw a great light, and began figuring upon the feasibility of syndicating the stone business and making a barrel. This was the man who put up the first building money for the Indianapolis Southern Railway.
Early in September, 1903, actual work began along the whole line from Indianapolis to Bloomington. Interest abated not until winter. During all this time work was progressing, and there was apparently nothing to mar the prospect for an early completion of the road. During the winter of 1904 it was definitely settled by the highest engineering authority that it was impracticable to cross the Monon railroad at grade at Eighth street, as con- templated in the first franchise, for the reason that at this point, and for a long distance north and considerable distance south, the Monon was not only climbing a heavy grade, but was turning sharply to the northwest, and as a consequence the east rail of the track was very considerably higher than the west rail, and that it would be impracticable to adjust the track of the new railroad to such conditions. So the directors asked me to present a petition to the council for a franchise for the use of Morton instead of Madison street, and to cross the Monon between Fifth and Sixth streets. Accordingly, on February 2, 1904, I went before the council and presented the new fran- chise. A spirited campaign was initiated, and a fierce fight made before the council. When it finally came to a test the vote stood in favor of the amended franchise. It was about the time this franchise was put upon its passage that the New York financiers failed or refused to furnish money to continue
452
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
the work. Parry, Stevenson and the Van Camps are resolute and resourceful men. They met the crisis as became men who had weathered many commer- cial storms. With undaunted courage they accepted the situation and did the only thing under the circumstances which could possibly succeed. Each put his personal and private fortune into a common fund, and from this the pay- rolls were made, and the teams and men were kept at work. When this fund was exhausted, they replenished it, easily at first, by borrowing from the banks and trust companies of Indianapolis.
The spring wore away, the summer came, and thoughi sometimes almost overwhelmed with difficulties, these dauntless fellows were able to keep the work going until July, 1904, when Stuyvesant Fish, president of the Illinois Central railroad, and a party of his official family, came prospecting over the line. They were so well pleased with the outlook, not knowing the distress of the builders, that they were prepared and willing, without much haggling, to offer a price for it which would net the promoters a handsome reward for the efforts and hazards of the past, and entitle them to the glory of having built another railroad into Indianapolis. The preliminaries were arranged, and the new management was soon directing affairs and paying bills.
A. S. Baldwin, chief engineer of the Illinois Central railroad, was put in charge of construction. There had been so much work already done east of the tunnel that it was deemed inexpedient to modify it. But from near Unionville station, he had new surveys made along about the present line to Switz City. Modern railroads are built on a grade not exceeding one-half of one per cent. and with a maximum curvature of three degrees. Mr. Baldwin wanted to build a modern railroad, and thus sought and found such grade, and kept within the limits of curvature. Without wincing, the management abandoned the expensive work already done near Unionville, also the great tunnel building by Bruce Head south of Sanford. This reloca- tion meant that the old franchise through the city would not serve the purpose for the new line.
It was in January, 1905, that high officers of the Illinois Central rail- road had a meeting in their private car at Indianapolis, and I was invited and urged to attend. The spokesman outlined the purpose of the meeting, and said that the road would be compelled to ask a new franchise through Bloomington, and would insist that all mention of coal, or other freight rates, be omitted from the franchise. I demanded for the city recompense for the loss of the rates. After much discussion they offered to yield half the subsidy, if I would come home and lend my best energies toward getting our people to grant them the desired franchise and omit the rates. I still
453
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
persisted, and after we had several rounds of discussion, pro and con, they at last yielded the whole subsidy.
I hurried home, elated with the terms I had negotiated with the railroad company for the relinquishment of the subsidy. I could not understand how anyone could oppose it. But a sinister influence did effective work with the City Merchants' Association, and this body remonstrated against the fran- chise. Influential individuals and interests, allied to the Monon, opposed the franchise. The battle went merrily on for a week, when the council met in regular session on the 17th of January, 1905. Mr. Baldwin presented the claims of the railroad. To the disappointment of Mr. Baldwin, the final consideration of the franchise was postponed until January 24, 1905. at which time the council met in special session. Diplomacy is an effective agency at a critical time like this. Its use on this particular occasion closed the breach between the council and the railroad representative. Some minor changes were agreed upon, and, on roll call, the franchise was passed. The serious obstacles were now out of the way, and there was nothing to hinder the vigorous prosecution of the work of actual railroad building.
During the spring, summer and fall of 1905 great progress was made, and before winter had closed in the work train had forged forward to within a mile of the east side of the city, and on the 23d of April, 1906, the first scheduled passenger train from Indianapolis steamed into Bloomington and discharged its passengers at a temporary station near the intersection of Lincoln street. The present passenger depot between College avenue and Walnut street was built during the autumn of 1906. Thus the militant period passed, the struggle ended, and we all felt secure that at last we had another railroad.
PIONEER TALES. (By Margaret J. Mccullough.)
When I was a little girl I used to see some of the old people who were still left of the pioneer days of the twenties and thirties of the last century. A child, being heedless, I recall now but little of their talk. I do not think, either, that most of their talk was of the past. They were people who make history, rather than recite it.
I remember how they looked. The old ladies wore caps. Caps were put on in the earlier part of the last century, not as a mark of old age, as some think, but a badge of the married woman. My grandmother, who was mar- ried at the age of sixteen, put on a cap to wear to what was called "the in- fair dinner" the next day after her wedding, and she wore caps till the day of her death. Some of these old ladies wore under their caps smooth, dark, thick false fronts or half wigs, which were called "braids."
45
LAWRENCE AND MONROE COUNTIES, INDIANA.
Their best dresses were usually of black silk or lustre, with full straight skirts, the kind built for service, and not considered worn out until they had been turned upside down, wrongside out, and perhaps redyed in the family dye-kettle. The bonnets they wore were bonnets in fact, as well as in name. Some of them used tobacco, which they usually smoked in pipes, though I could name one who preferred to chew, and another who took snuff, not "dipping" in the Southern style of today, but snuffing the stuff up the nostrils in a way to cause a good sneeze.
The good names their parents had given them had in the early years of the last century been fashionably nicknamed; Polly for Mary, Patsy for Martha, Betsy for Elizabeth, Sally for Sarah, and Peggy for Margaret. These were the names they, in their old age, still called each other. When these old ladies came with their knitting to visit my grandmother, I would sometimes listen to the talk of the knitters.
It was "Cousin Patsy Baugh" who told this story: The first year the peach trees they had planted bore fruit, they got some flour from Vincennes, and she made a peach pie. She sent invitations to her neighbors to come in and eat peach pie, which they did. She thought it was the first peach pie ever made in this county. The peach pie of that day was of the deep kind, known as a cobbler, and baked by the fire place in probably an iron oven.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.