USA > Indiana > Miami County > History of Miami County, Indiana : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people and its principal interests, Volume II > Part 9
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
EDWARD H. MILLER, only surviving child of John W. and Julia Ann (Lease) Miller, was born on the old homestead farm in Peru township, on the 22d of April, 1842, and there also were born all of the other children with the exception of the eldest daughter, who had been brought from Ohio when an infant, as previously noted in this context. Mr. Miller early gained close fellowship with the arduous labors and manifold duties of the pioneer farm, and the experience is one to which he reverts with pleasing memory, the softening influence of many years having obscured the recollection of sore and jaded muscles and almost incessant application. In a little log school-house erected by his honored father and a neighbor named Townsend he gained his early educational training, which proved a solid foundation upon which to upbuild the substantial superstructure of knowledge which he has since gained through self-discipline and close association with the prac- tical affairs of life. He was enabled to attend Notre Dame University, at South Bend, for a few months, but he reverts to the little school-house of logs as his alma mater and recognized the solidity and value of the instruction which he received therein.
In the long years of a signally active and productive career Mr. Miller
494
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
has not faltered in his allegiance to the great basic industry under the influences of which he was reared, and he now owns nearly two hundred acres of the finest farming land to be found in Miami county, the same having been a part of the locally famed Godfrey reserve and being situated in Butler township. He resides on this fine homestead, upon which he has made the best of modern improvements, and during his entire career as a farmer and stock-grower he has exemplified the most progressive policies and methods, together with a seemingly unlimited capacity for consecutive application. He is emphatically one of the most prominent and successful representatives of the agricultural interests of his native county and here he has so ordered his course as to merit and receive the inviolable confidence and high regard of all who know him.
Mr. Miller has ever manifested a loyal interest in all that has tended to advance the civic and material welfare of his home county and state, in which connection he has given co-operation in the furtherance of progressive measures and enterprises projected for the general good of the community. Though never imbued with ambition for public office he accords unfaltering allegiance to the Democratic party, and thus is enabled to be one of those who, in view of the results of the national election of November, 1912, have reason to "rejoice and be exceeding glad." He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. His wife holds membership in the Presbyterian church.
On the 21st of January, 1864, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Miller to Miss Louan Nesbit, who likewise was born and reared in Miami county, among whose earliest settlers were numbered her parents, the late Walter B. and Lou Ann (Reilly) Nesbits Of the eleven children of Mr. and Mrs. Miller seven attained to years of maturity, and concerning them brief record is made in the concluding paragraph of this article.
Caroline is the widow of Edward T. Wilson and resides in Washing- ton township; Max C. died at the age of about forty years and had five children ; Edward O. is a resident of the city of Portland, Oregon, and has two children ; Lou Ann is the wife of William Sharp, a representative farmer of Washington township, Miami county, and they have four children ; Jessie is the wife of James H. Tillett, a resident of Peru, and they have two children; John W. is identified with prominent business interests in the city of Peru, the judicial center of his native county ; and Nellie is the wife of Jason Blair, a sterling representative of the farming industry of Peru township, and has two children.
AARON N. DUKES was but twelve years old when he came to Miami county, Indiana, with his parents, and it was here that he grew to manhood and passed the greater part of his life. He was born in Randolph county, Indiana, October 27, 1834, a son of William and Matilda (McKim) Dukes, and a grandson of Isaac Dukes, who was a native of England, and who, upon coming to America, settled in Mary- land.
William Dukes, the father of Aaron N. Dukes of this brief sketch, was a farmer and when Indiana was yet in her infancy as one of the sisterhood of states, he preempted a farm from the government, in Randolph county, which he proceeded to clear after the manner of the pioneer of his day. In 1846 he removed with his family to Miami county and for a number of years operated a farm near the village of Gilead, later removing to Peru where he was engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death in 1879.
Aaron N. Dukes was able to secure a good practical education as a boy, and his earlier years were passed in helping with the work of the
495
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
home farm. When he was seventeen years old he began clerking in the mercantile establishment of Elbert H. Shirk, and from this prince among busines men he became thoroughly grounded in the knowledge of what was to be his future career. After one year he became the partner of Mr. Shirk in a branch store established at Gilead, and was thus engaged for two years. During the ensuing six years he was variously engaged in merchandising, milling and real estate at Mankato, Minnesota, and it was while he was located there that he became cap- tain of a company of men organized to fight the Sioux Indians at the time of their historic outbreak and during their ravages along the frontier. He gained distinction in his service in that campaign as a soldier of courage and valor, and was long remembered in that district for his excellent work as an Indian fighter.
In 1862 Mr. Dukes returned to Peru, Indiana, and again became associated with Mr. Shirk in the merchandise business, and still later became connected with J. H. Jamison, engaged in the handling of such produce as fruits, butter, eggs, etc., and also in the packing of pork. In 1870 Mr. Dukes bought the Holman farm, adjoining the corporate limits of the town of Peru, and upon this property in the fall of 1897 oil was first discovered.
There have been few industries, if any, pertaining to the com- mercial and industrial prosperity of Peru that have not felt the in- fluence of Mr. Dukes, and in the course of time he amassed a consider- able fortune as the result of his operations. From his ample means he has contributed to the support of all laudable enterprises that have been promulgated in Peru and his benefactions have been many and varied in their nature.
In 1877 Mr. Dukes was appointed assignee of the Ulrich Wagon Works and in 1881 was receiver of the Indiana Manufacturing Com- pany and became a large stockholder, general manager and secretary and treasurer therein. These two concerns occupied the greater part of his attention during the remainder of his life. From the beginning of Miami county, few men of this district have occupied a more prominent place in its history than did Aaron N. Dukes, and he long maintained an honored and honorable place among the leading men of the city and county.
To his marriage with Mary A. Thomson which occurred in 1858, two sons were born,-Elbert and William, the latter named dying in 1872 when he was ten years of age. Mrs. Dukes died in April, 1898, and on November 14, 1900, he married Mary Rose Thomson, and she survives the death of her honored husband, which occurred on July 5, 1911. He was long a member of the Presbyterian church, and was on the roll of that church at the time of his death, and had started the building of the hospital.
ELBERT JAMES DUKES. It would be extremely difficult, if not well nigh impossible, to estimate in any adequate degree the good that resulted from the activities of Elbert James Dukes, lately deceased, during his active and well spent life of forty-nine years. The advocate of education along the most approved and useful lines, he did much for the advance of learning wherever he was found, and he was ever the stanch friend of young men and their guide and adviser in times of stress and struggle. He was a man whose influence in educational, religious, philanthropic and even in political circles was widely felt, and from which more of good to the general public accrued than is to be accredited to the influence and works of the average public man.
Elbert James Dukes was born on August 15, 1860, in Mankato, Min-
496
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
nesota, where his father, Aaron N. Dukes, concerning whom appropriate mention will be found preceding this article, was living at that time. When Elbert Dukes was yet a child his parents returned from Minnesota to Peru, which had been the former home of the family, and here he was reared to manhood. His primary education was obtained in the public schools, succeeding which he took a preparatory course of training at Wabash College. He later pursued a full scientific course in that institu- tion, from which he was duly graduated in 1885, and succeeding his graduation he took charge of the musical instrument and sewing machine store which his father had established in Peru some time previous. This work constituted his regular employment and business interest during the remainder of his life, but in no way were his powers of usefulness and service to his fellows circumscribed by his activity in this enterprise.
As a result of his personal friendship with Dr. Dickey, with whom he had come into a close friendly relation during his college career, Mr. Dukes became interested in institute work, and visited Chautauqua, New York. He eventually became assistant manager of the work under Dr. Dickey at Winona Lake, as well as a director of the Chautauqua work. Mr. Dukes was always a wide reader, particularly along educational lines, and in company with his friend, Dr. Dickey, he visited Europe for the purpose of securing suitable speakers for Bible Conferences to be held at various points in America. For years he was engrossed in educational, religious and philanthropic work, and he became widely known, not only in his home district, but throughout the entire country. He was of the Presbyterian denomination and was for years an elder in the church of that denomination in Peru. Politically he was a Repub- lican, and at one time was a candidate for the office of city treasurer, although he was not a man to devote himself deeply to political strife and stress.
As a man, his life was quiet, uneventful and without ostentation of any sort, and it is doubtful if many beyond his immediate family and his more intimate associates realized anything of the scope of the work he carried on aside from his business. Particularly was he interested in the education of young men. Not education alone in the regularly accepted sense of the term, but education along general lines, and of the most practical and suitable order for the individual in consideration. A number of deserving young men were financially assisted by him in the procuring of collegiate education, and have honored their benefactor in displaying characteristics wholly creditable to themselves and to his . excellent judgment. Mr. Dukes lived a clean, upright and moral life, and earnestly held before him the precept of the Golden Rule as one of the guides of his life. The last of his days he was a sufferer from valvular heart trouble and it was at Battle Creek, Michigan, where he had gone in the hope of receiving some relief from his sufferings that the end came. He died on October 16, 1909, and was laid to rest in the old cemetery at Peru, where others of his family lie buried.
Mr. Dukes married on March 4, 1886, Miss Ruth S. Baldwin, of Washington, Indiana, the daughter of Rev. Robert R. Baldwin, who was long in the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal church.
JOHN C. HITE. A resident of Peru for the past fifteen years, active manager of the Peru Milling Company, and regarded as the only thor- oughly successful miller that this city has ever had, John C. Hite has had a career of many experiences, and interesting changes. He is an Indiana man by birth, having been born in Jefferson county, this state, March 16, 1853.
Since he was fifteen years old he has been left to his own responsibil-
497
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
ities and practically all the school education he ever attained was that furnished by the common schools, previous to that time. Probably the most interesting fact in Mr. Hite's life was the manner in which he was started upon his independent career. His father, as will be noted in the following paragraphs, was a man of large business affairs and very prominent in his town. However, he possessed the convictions shared by so many fathers that his son should implicitly follow his advice as to his vocation. The profession of medicine was the calling picked out by the father for the son, and in order to give the boy the proper start the father bought a drug store and established John C. in it as clerk, that being then thought a very successful way to start a young man on a career of medicine. John C. Hite's inclination from his early boyhood was for machinery and the mechanic arts. He explained to his father, as well as a boy can, this inflexible affection and expressed his thorough disinclination for the profession of medicine. After a heated argument, at the conclusion of which, the son received a sound thrashing, the boy ran away from home and never afterward returned. It was in this intrepid fashion that he threw himself upon the world with only his own faculties to guide him.
His first work was handling a dump-cart at $1.00 a day in the con- struction of the old Cairo & Vincennes Railroad. He next found work in a flour mill at Metropolis, Illinois, where he attained his first experi- ence in the milling business. While in that town he accidently picked up a newspaper in which his father had an advertisement offering a reward of $200.00 for any one telling of the son's whereabouts. This
chance paper with its advertisement started young Hite on a hurried exit from the metropolis, and he walked eighty-six miles to Ashley, Illinois. During his winter in that town he suffered with chills and fever, and otherwise had a very hard time. His chief employment was at work in a drug store at Ashley. From there he went to Mount Vernon, Illinois, during the next spring and there began a complete apprenticeship in the milling business, receiving $50.00 and board the first year, $150.00 and board the second year, and $400.00 and board the third year. When he had become a thorough skilled miller, it was in the year 1870, and with the $400.00 saved from his three years work he went to St. Louis, where he worked at his trade in the old Cherry Street mill for about seven years. For eleven years after that he was engaged in the milling business at Trenton, Illinois. At the conclusion of that time began his career as a miller on his own responsibility, at Lebanon, Illinois, where his enterprise was continued until his mill was burned in 1890. For some years following that he was employed on the Pacific Coast as the "troubleman" for the Allis-Chalmers Company. In 1895, Mr. Hite took the contract for constructing a flour mill at Shawneetown, Illinois, but the foundation selected proved to lie above a deposit of quicksand, and the entire equipment became a total loss, and likewise wiped out all the financial resources of Mr. Hite. Following this some- what disastrous termination of his independent assets. he became manager of a mill at Charleston, Missouri, as receiver, the milling company having failed for the sum of $96,000. At the end of twenty-five months, he had not only discharged the indebtedness of the company, but had turned back to the original owners $16,000.
It was with this work of experience and thoroughly practical ability in the milling business that Mr. Hite came to Peru in 1898. Two weeks later he became an associate of Mr. Hugh McCaffrey in the milling business under the name of the Peru Milling Company. The mill at Peru had previously been a more or less unprofitable enterprise, and as already stated Mr. Hite is the only thoroughly sucessful miller whose
498
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
residence has been in this city, at least for many years. He has brought the plant of the Peru Milling Company up to a state of the highest efficiency, and it is among the most prosperous enterprises in the city. Mr. Hite organized the Indiana Grain Dealers Association, of which he was president for several terms. Subsequently he perceived that this organization was drifting toward centralization, and in order to counter- act the dangerous results of this he withdrew from this membership and organized the Indiana Millers Association, and has served several terms as president of this organization.
Mr. John C. Hite's parents were Joseph C. and Elizabeth (Talbott) Hite, the father being a native of Virginia and the mother of Kentucky. After the Civil war Joseph C. Hite had a large plantation near Hickman, Kentucky, operating it with a large force of slaves. When President Lincoln issued his famous emancipation proclamation early iu 1863, Mr. Hite bestowed freedom upon every slave upon his place, but through this action incurred the enmity of his neighbors, all of whom were radically pro-southern people. The community practically ostracised Mr. Hite and family. During the remaining years of the war Joseph C. Hite was a steamboat captain on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and during a considerable portion of the time was in the government service. During his early career he had learned the activities of the river in all details by running flatboats laden with produce down the Wabash river, thence into the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. He was one of a large number of Ohio Valley producers and traders of the times, who sold their crops after transporting them down the river by flatboat, at New Orleans and from that city made their way overland and usually on foot, to their homes in Indiana and other states along the Ohio. As a steamboat captain during the war he ran one of the first boats by the blockade at Vicksburg. During that experience he met General Grant, and ever afterwards they maintained a personal friend- ship. After the siege of Vicksburg Mr. Hite had charge of the army transports until the close of the war. After the war he continued the steamboating until his company was bankrupt during the hard winter of 1875, and practically all their boats were destroyed by being crushed in the heavy ice at St. Louis. After that serious setback he went to New- port, Arkansas, where he was engaged in the sawmilling and lumber business. It is said that he probably made the first shipment of telegraph poles out of the state of Arkansas. He died at Newport at the age of ninety-two years in 1895.
Mr. John C. Hite of Peru is a loyal Democrat and has served two terms as a member of the city council. He is affiliated with the Masons, the Modern Woodmen of America and the Travelers Protective Associ- ation. On July 31, 1876, he married Miss Addie J. Veitch, of Grafton, Illinois. Their three living children are Augustus V., who is at present time general foreman of the Peru Milling Company ; Cleo, the wife of W. H. Howell; and Claude E.
LEWIS BAKER. The thriving and attractive little city of Peru, judicial center of Miami county, has attracted within its borders a goodly quota of those sterling citizens who have here stood for many years as able repre- sentatives of the agricultural industry, and of this number of honored retired farmers in the city is Mr. Baker, who is here passing the gracious twilight of his long and useful life in well earned repose and amidst pleas- ing environment and associations. He is a member of one of the honored pioneer families of Miami county, which has represented his home for nearly seventy years, and his reminiscences concerning conditions and events of the early day are most graphic and interesting. He has not
499
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
only witnessed but has also assisted materially in the development and progress of the county along industrial and civil lines, and his integrity of character as well as his worthy achievement have given him secure place in the confidence and high regard of the people of this favored sec- tion of the fine old Hoosier state.
Lewis Baker was born at Lima, the county seat of Allen county, Ohio, on the 2d of October, 1835, and thus is nearing the venerable age of four-score years, though his mental and physical vigor belie the years that have been accredited to him. He is a son of Alfred C. and Mary (Osborne) Baker, the former of whom was born in Virginia and the latter in Pennsylvania. Alfred C. Baker was a representative of a family of English origin, that was founded in Virginia in the colonial era of our national history, and he was a youth at the time when he accompanied his parents on the long and toilsome journey through an almost virtual wilderness to the new home in Ohio, where his father obtained government land and reclaimed a farm from the virgin wilds. Alfred C. Baker continued to devoted his attention to farming in Ohio until 1844, when, with courage equal to the repeating of his pioneer experiences, he came with his family to Allen county, Ohio. In the trip from Virginia to Ohio he had made the journey on horseback, and in coming to Indiana he availed himself of team and wagon, the journey having frequently been interrupted by the necessity for clearing a pas- sage through the forests and underbrush and the filling in of marshy spots to enable the wagon to move forward. Upon his arrival in Miami county Mr. Baker entered claim to government land in Erie township, about two and one-half miles east of Peru, which now thriving city was at that time represented by a few primitive houses and mercantile establishments. He obtained one hundred and fourteen acres of land, the greater part of which was heavily timbered, and there set to him- self the herculean task of reclaiming a farm from the wilds. He erected as the family domicile a log cabin, twelve by fourteen feet in dimen- sions, and equipped with the yawning fireplace so common to the pioneer days and so pleasantly remembered by those who still remain to tell the stories of that interesting period of the county's history. The lower part of this fireplace was constructed of stone culled from the land, and the upper part of the chimney was made of sticks and mud, the latter primitive element taking the place of plaster. It may well be under- stood that in this rude forest lodge happiness and contentment found place and that its narrow walls were wide in their hospitality, for that was a time when neighbors were such in fact and friends were friends. Alfred C. Baker represented the best type of pioneer, as he was of fine physique, over six feet in height, lithe and active, though weighing about two hundred and thirty-five pounds at that stage of his life. He en- dured the full tension of arduous toil and the many vicissitudes which fell to the lot of the average pioneer, but in the midst of his labors he had the enduring satisfaction of providing for his family and making slow but certain progress toward the goal of independence and definite prosperity. He became, in the course of the passing years, one of the substantial farmers of Erie township, and he was not only rewarded with definite success in material lines but also with the unqualified confidence and esteem of his fellow men. He and his wife were earnest and consistent members of the Baptist church and in politics he was an oldline Whig until the organization of the Republican party, in 1856, when he transferred his allegiance to the latter, thereafter to continue a stalwart advocate of its cause until the close of his life, in 1876, his loved and devoted wife having been summoned to the life eternal in 1873. They became the parents of five children, of whom three attained
500
HISTORY OF MIAMI COUNTY
to years of maturity, but Lewis is the only one living. One brother, Daniel, died in Andersonville prison during the war. The other two brothers were Samuel and Stephen; the daughter was named Belle.
Lewis Baker gained his rudimentary education in the common schools of his native state and was a lad of nine years at the time of the family removal to Miami county, Indiana, in 1844, so that with the coming of the year 1914 he will have been a resident of this county for seventy years. Well does he recall to memory the conditions and in- fluences of the pioneer days when the family home was virtually in the midst of the untrammeled wilderness, when deer, bear, wolves and other wild animals were much in evidence, including the wild turkeys, which furnished the larders of the pioneers on many occasions. He has never failed in appreciation of the early days of struggle and virtual isolation, for under such conditions every man was the friend and helper of his neighbor, confidence and good will were at all times in evidence and there was much to compensate for the improvements and associations which the march of progress has brought in its train. Mr. Baker has known Miami county thoroughly during the transition periods, has aided in the advancement and has loyally supported progressive move- ments, but in the gracious evening of his life he often reverts with tender memories to the hallowed associations of the days long past,- the days when his hope and enthusiasm ran high and foreshadowed much of the achievement which has marked his course as one of the world's productive workers. He has seen the flail superseded by the threshing machine, the sickle by the grain cradle and that in turn by the modern harvester, and he recalls the time when the common mode of travel in this section of the state was on horseback, the while canal trans- portation was in evidence and in high favor before the construction of railroads. He is one of the few remaining of the old pioneers who have not yet "passed within 'that tent whose curtain never outward swings," and well may be treasured his tales concerning the early events in the history of the county that has long been his home and the stage of his earnest and prolific endeavors.
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.