USA > Indiana > Vermillion County > History of Parke and Vermillion Counties, Indiana : with historical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of many of the old families > Part 5
USA > Indiana > Parke County > History of Parke and Vermillion Counties, Indiana : with historical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of many of the old families > Part 5
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 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78
51
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
one by one, he saw his ten children sicken and die, and in his old age, lonely and poor, he calls upon God to attest the rectitude of his intentions and save a few witnesses for him out of the many for whom he had toiled. And at the last he saw an Indian church formed on an apparently sure foundation in Oklahoma."
It would seem that this was a part of God's great plan-the red man must needs become extinct and the higher race, the white, must perfect the plans of an All-wise Providence. If so, then God will retrieve and make right all these seeming wrongs between the two races. In that other and eternal existence, such characters as Missionary Isaac McCoy and John Elliott, Las Casas and William Penn must be permitted to rejoice with the once sad victims of civilization, and go out to suffer no more for ever.
After the period just named came the battle of Tippecanoe, in Novem- ber, 1811; then the war of 1812 with England. In October, 1818, the Indians signed the treaty of St. Mary's (Ohio), by which they ceded all of these lands north of the "ten o'clock line," except the "Sugar Creek Reserve," and early in 1819 William Polk surveyed the eastern portion of Parke county and ran the line of the Reserve, as "provided by law," completing his work in August. The eastern line of the reserve was not, however, cardinal; it ran from Raccoon to Sugar creek in a line a little east of north, passing two miles west of Rockville. It was provided by law that this should remain a reserve, and the timber thereon be protected and the Indians guaranteed peaceable possession " until such time as the United States shall make further and permanent provision for the Confederated Weas and Miamis ; provided, that Christmas Dazney, on account of important public services, shall be entitled in fee simple to one section of said reserve, to be by him selected." This section Mr. Dazney chose near Stringtown, as it was called, now Armiesburg, and old settlers a third of a century knew it as the Dazney farm. Thereafter the land below the line was known as Old Pur- chase, and that above as New Purchase; nor was Sugar Creek Reserve for- mally opened to settlement till 1823, when William Bentley surveyed it into sections.
On his way to Tippecanoe county, General Harrison, in 1811, with nearly one thousand United States troops, crossed the Raccoon creek in Wabash township, this county, and camped for the night.
52
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
THE GENERAL HARRISON TRAIL.
When General Harrison left Vincennes in November, 1811, to proceed against the Indians in what is now Tippecanoe county, and which campaign resulted in the triumphant battle of Tippecanoe, on the morning of Novem- ber 7, 1811, he took between eight and nine hundred soldiers of the United States army and marched under the guide and trusty scout, Zachariah Cicott. He entered what is now known as Mound township, Warren county, thence passed northward through Kent township, encamping first (in that county) in a small grove, and there on his return trip, after the battle, buried two or three soldiers who had been wounded at Tippecanoe. Their resting place is at what is now called Gopher Hill cemetery, about two miles to the southeast of State Line village. From that point the army resumed their march north- east and passed by the huge bowlder, which until recent years stood in the highway on the old Hunter farm, between sections 19 and 30, township 21, range 9 west. This was an immense granite bowlder and if it had not thoughtlessly been blasted and removed would doubtless today have a suitable inscription on its rustic surface, making a permanent landmark for all gen- erations to come, showing just where Harrison and his army passed. The second encampment in Warren county was made just across the Big Pine creek, east, and "about eleven miles from its mouth into river Wabash." This is known now as "Army Ford," and there seems to be two theories as to where the army really did cross this creek, but the generally accepted one is that his crossing was made above where Honey creek comes into Big Pine creek, and in the center of section 9, township 22, range 8 west, on lands now owned by Scott Brier, a descendant of one of the first settlers, and who, with his neighbors, has always called this the crossing place of the army. It is in Liberty township. This seemed to be the belief of Judge Isaac Naylor, who wrote on this theme many years since, and he was with Cicott after the war of 1812 and went over the trail and noted the camping places.
The other theory (we give it for what it is worth) is that it was in the southwest quarter of section 4 in the same township and range, less than a mile to the northwest. But there seems little good evidence that this is correct.
From that point-"Army Ford," wherever that may have been-the line of march was taken up and pursued in a northeastern direction, directly to where the battle was fought in Tippecanoe county, passing through the corner of Pine township, diagonally northeast through Adams township,
53
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
cutting the northwest corner of Medina township, thence on into Tippecanoe county.
It should be added that on the march back from Tippecanoe to Vin- cennes, Harrison lost a man named Drummond, who was buried near the camping place on Big Pine creek. The grandsons of pioneer settlers re- member the grave well and frequently tell strangers of its loneliness, at an early day. This soldier, with probably the three buried at what is Gopher Hill cemetery, were the only ones who died from wounds en route to Vin- cennes, and to their graves there should be placed an appropriate tablet or monument, either by Warren county or by the general government, the brave men certainly deserving of such recognition, even at this late day.
GEOLOGY OF PARKE COUNTY.
.
Parke county is based on a regular slope from east to west. Along the eastern border of the county the under-coal limestone crops out, being the bed-rock of Big Raccoon at intervals for ten miles. Thence westward, then through what may well be styled the basin rock of the county, with a tolerably regular slope for fifteen to twenty feet to the mile, passing some distance under the bed of the Wabash, and, as shown by borings made up to 1880, maintained the same westward slope to the Little Wabash river, under which it is found seven hundred feet deep. Beyond that it turns and comes up with the same regularity, again coming to the surface in western Illinois. Assum- ing that this was the bed of the old river in which the coal was made, Parke county lies along the east shore of what was the marsh in which the coal plant grew. The fossils, therefore, are all of the coal period-at least in the western part of this county. The huge reptiles and mammals lived in the next succeeding ages. The largest of these fossils now unearthed are a species of the "goose-necked lizard" and some detached bones of an American mastodon. As most of this county was filled with made or solid land before the coal period ended, it follows that all the rock-in-place is of the sandstone shale and lime-rock of the coal measures, but on that there is an immense thickness of drift and the soil is from the wear of the crystalized Canadian rocks. For these reasons there is an inexhaustible fertility directly over immense beds of coal, with an abundance of good building stone and the finest of pure water from springs and wells. As the larger streams, in their passage across the county, have to cut down from the high levels of the lime- stone foundation to the level of the river Wabash, there appear wild, per- cipitous bluffs, presenting some of the finest scenery in all Indiana.
CHAPTER III
PIONEER SETTLEMENT OF PARKE COUNTY.
The contents of this chapter are believed to be substantially all that is necessary in order to give the reader a comprehensive account of the first settlement of what is now known as Parke county, Indiana. Not that it contains in minute detail the circumstances surrounding the entry of land and settlement of each actual settler in pioneer days, but it is designed to give something in general of the pioneer band that located in various parts of the county, leaving much of detail for the different township histories. However, before entering into this task of outlining the first settlements in the county, it will be best to reproduce the views of Surveyor M. D. Buck, published in Brown's Gazetteer, in 1817, and also of the author of that work, after he had made a trip to the Wabash valley, both of whom we here quote and inter- weave :
"Rocky river (Sugar creek) is one hundred yards wide, at its mouth, and has several large forks The bottoms bordering the Wabash are rich; wells have been sunk in them that showed a vegetable soil twenty-two feet deep, though the ordinary depth is from two to five feet. All the streams have spacious and fertile bottoms. The prairies in the vicinity of Fort Har- rison exceed for beauty and richness everything I ever beheld. The land sells very high near Fort Harrison, for it is the most delightful situation for a town on the Wabash. The Indians camp in the woods convenient to water, where they build wigwams. While surveying in the wilderness they appeared very friendly, and offered us honey and venison. The woods abound with bears, wolves and wild turkeys. About three-eighths of the land we sur- veyed is excellent for most kinds of produce; the remainder is good for grazing, but too hilly, flat or wet for grain (!) Wheat grows rank, but the grain is not as plump as in New York. The difficulty is, the land is too rich until improved ( !) Apple trees bear every year. Wheat is seventy-five cents a bushel. Flour is three dollars per hundred-four dollars delivered at Fort Harrison; pork four dollars; beef, the same; butter and cheese, one to two shillings. European goods exorbitantly high. Ginseng grows on the bottoms to a perfection I never witnessed. Harrison's Purchase was first
55
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
opened for sale at Jeffersonville, in September last [1816], and numerous tracts sold at from four to thirty dollars per acre. A section on the Wabash below Fort Harrison [now Terre Haute] sold at thirty-two dollars and eigh- teen cents per acre. The best proof of the excellence of these lands is the fact of their being the scene of numerous Indian population. Serpents are very numerous. Deer are mortal enemies of the rattlesnakes and often kill them by jumping upon them. It is also reported that the turkey buzzard has the power of killing the rattlesnake by its intolerable stench, which it most pow- erfully emits by a violent fluttering in the air a little above the snake's head."
To definitely locate and name the first actual white settler in this county is now impossible. It is, however, known that the Dotys, Henrys and others had come up to the line of the Old Purchase at least as early as 1818, possibly 1817. It is known that James M. Doty settled on Henry's prairie in 1818, and is by many called Parke county's first settler. At about the same date came Judge Joseph Walker, who settled in what is now Florida township, near the present town of Numa. William D. Mitchell, so long and well known in Union township, was born in Raccoon in 1818, just after his parents ar- rived there. Mrs. Peggy Miller, whose maiden name was Robinson, came to Fort Harrison with her parents in 1815, and was always sanguine that they moved into Parke county in 1818. James Kerr bought land in this county at the very earliest sales, either 1816 or 1817; but did not settle permanently till 1822. His wife always claimed that her family located in Parke county in 1818. Many more claim that Dr. Taylor was the first permanent pioneer settler in the county, on the upper end of Henry's Prairie, and early in 1817 or 1818. The true first settler will never be known, as no record was made of the coming of several families, all of whom constituted the first band of pioneers. It was certainly from among the families already mentioned.
Among the strong men who followed up the army and studied the coun- try, was Capt. Andrew Brooks, Indian agent, trader and interpreter. He made numerous trips from Fort Harrison northward; whether on the prairies of the southwestern border of Parke county or in the dense woods in the center of the county, he everywhere noted the local advantages; especially did he scan the localities favorable for a good mill site, and as early as 1817 (possibly 1818) he set his eye on the bluff at the south bend of Big Raccoon. A year or so passed before he found a partner with capital sufficient to im- prove this water power, but fortunately he fell in with Chauncey Rose, at Fort Harrison, who became known as a distinguished pioneer and philan- thropist. He was born December 17, 1794, in Weathersfield, Connecticut, and
56
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
when twenty-two years of age came to Indiana, reaching Fort Harrison (Terre Haute) early in 1817. An elder brother settled in Carolina, and advanced him some capital, and he had already shown his ability to acquire more, when he met Captain Brooks. They were kindred spirits and, together with Moses Robins, formed a partnership to establish a mill, store and dis- tillery on Big Raccoon. While the snow was yet on the ground they left Fort Harrison, in company with a friendly Indian, made their way to the location selected, and early in 1819 broke ground for a mill and named the place Roseville.
About this time there were many of the shiftless, roaming type of men and women who came in and remained, as in all new countries, for a few years and then passed on to newer, wilder sections where they might mingle with the Indians, hunt, fish and trap, and not be held in obedience to any civil law or custom. But of these settlers no account will here be made, as they were not in any sense county or state builders, but nomadic in style and habits.
Meanwhile the business enterprise of the firm of Rose, Robins & Brooks had been completed and was running in full blast in 1819-20. The Indians came in from far and near to exchange their furs and meat for flour and whisky. Soon a second store was opened by Scott & Linton. Now came in a better, more stable class of settlers and made claim to much of the fine farming lands in the county. Just who was first to locate in the northern part of the county, no one seems able to tell, but certainly in 1819 there were several families, and in 1820 the following located in Florida and Raccoon : Judge Joseph Walker, James Henry and his five sons, John, James, Richard, Moses and William; John Doty, Samuel Adams, William Nevins and Jacob Bell. John Adams, David Evans and Boston Derr were the first to locate in the forks of the Raccoon. William Rea was first to locate on' Little Raccoon, above the forks; he came in 1820 to the northwest corner of section 7, in Raccoon township, not far from the present town of Catlin. John Sunder- land soon came in, as did Caleb Williams and Henry Greer. Many of these pioneers came in before the land was actually opened for settlement, and abided their time. The first land sales did not take place above the "ten o'clock line" until 1820, and in the fall of that year, too. The records show that among the earliest to purchase lands here were: James Buchanan and Mr. Gilkinson, fathers of Alexander Buchanan and John C. Gilkinson, Esq., and they bought, at Terre Haute, the same land on which their sons lived so many long years. Joseph Ralston came to Parke county in 1819 and settled near Kerr's springs, on Big Raccoon. He cut the date on an immense beech tree, and it remained legible for full forty years.
57
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
Among the settlers north of the creek, and south of the line, were Dempsey Seybold, Dr. Taylor, John Prince, Samuel Prince, John Morrow and members of the Doty, Henry and Robinson families. These men all reared good sized and highly sturdy, intelligent families and became masters of the situation in after years in the development of Parke county.
Major Ambrose Whitlock, government surveyor, reported his work finished in the New Purchase in the summer of 1820, after which a great immigration set in, from Vincennes and Terre Haute, settling up the valley of the Wabash to a goodly extent; the Raccoon and its branches all gave up their virgin lands to settlers and permanent home-seekers. The paths, traces and blazed trails were alive with land-hunters and explorers; Indians, traders, hunters and speculators, on foot and horseback, were all hunting out locations for themselves. The year 1821 saw a wonderful addition to the pioneer settlement in Parke and Vermillion counties. Perley Mitchell made the first entry in Penn township, in the Sugar creek and Walnut groves above Leatherwood. The rush lasted until the autumn of 1822, after which the advent of pioneers was more even and moderate. They had a little under- standing among themselves as to bidding on land, and if an outsider pre- sumed to over-bid them, he was usually instructed by "persuasion," generally heeded, to "move on."
In the fine autumn days of 1822-ninety years ago-the father of Squire Glass, John Glass, arrived on the Raccoon and halted a few days at the home of Reuben Webster, who had been a settler for two years on the creek about three miles below Bridgeton. There, in two weeks, Mr. Glass lost a fine mare, seven sheep and a valuable dog, all with milk-sickness. This was a common thing in early days. Then, too, the pioneer band had to struggle with the fever and ague for a number of years. Some could not withstand it and returned to the East, from whence they had emigrated. Many who sought lands at Terre Haute in the fall of that year were unable to secure the coveted lands in the bottoms, but as it turned out it was a stroke of good fortune for them, for they found the uplands and timbered sections to be even more valuable as the years passed by. Messrs. Glass, Jacob Miller, John Miller, and Thomas Woolverton started for Montgomery county, where there was already a good sized Kentucky settlement, but early in the day they chanced to meet a solitary horse-hunter who told them of a "mighty fine strip of black walnut land just about the divide between the two creeks." They went on and were charmed by its appearance, and ere the sun went down the next day they had selected lands in that favored spot. This was the
58
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
opening of the New Discovery, as James Kelsey called it from this circum- stance, and as it is still known. Then began another great land-hunter's rush. These settlers did not see the well cultivated section that cheers and charms the passerby of today. All was one vast wild forest land, obstructed with tanglewood and thicket. In every fertile spot the peavine grew in tangled masses, cropped by the cattle, which frequently fattened upon this wild food alone. Elsewhere the spicewood choked the glade, while on the southern slopes and black-soiled bottoms the pawpaw thickets yielded up their sweets in great abundance. In many places the tangled woods were impassable, and the first settlers were sometimes days in cutting away the brush and trees in order to gain an entrance to the spots they had chosen for erecting their cabins. One writer says : "The Linn thicket, which now contains a good area of the best land in the county, was navigable for ducks from the spring thaw, often as late as July first. By following the windings of low lands, a goose could have swum across a township in many seasons. But there were some compensations. Game was, of course, plenty, though beef and pork were called a luxury. An occasional bear was still found; a few wild-cats lingered in the bottoms; deer and turkeys were on every hand abundant, and squirrels of all kinds thick enough to be a nuisance to farmers. Coons, 'possums, foxes, ground-hogs and wolves were common; the ugly looking porcupine was now and then found, and birds were twenty times as numerous as nowadays, and their songs were never sweeter."
The old Indian trace from Fort Harrison to Fort Wayne bore north- east from the head of Henry's Prairie, keeping on the divide between the Big and Little Raccoon, and it was soon beaten into a road by eager home- seekers. By the middle of the summer of 1823 Abel Ball, John Jessup, Henry Nevins, Joseph Wilkinson, Silas Harlan, John Blake, Nathan Blake, Charles Woolverton, John Burford, Benjamin Walters, Constantine Curry, Clem B. Burton, and probably twenty more, had settled in New Discovery ; and before the cold weather set in, there might have been seen a line of comfortable cabins and clearings even as far as Crawfordsville. May 13, 1823, there came a great time of excitement at the land office located at Crawfordsville. It was for the first pick of land; horses were run to death, men rode day and night in storms, swam swollen streams, and risked their own lives in many curious devices to reach the land-office first or outwit a rival. The "witness trees" were well known, as the survey was but recent, and the man who first threw down the "numbers" on the counter and announced his claim got the land. In 1824-5 the Hollandsburg neighborhood was filled, and it is stated
59
PARKE AND VERMILLION COUNTIES, INDIANA.
that in October, 1825, not a single piece of first class land remained untaken between there and Crawfordsville. Later, the lands were not bought and sold so readily, but it was soon found that many who took up the Linn thicket lands had made no mistake, for they proved rich and valuable. In passing, it should be said that after the first decade or so, while the virgin soil was being turned up to the sun's hot rays, especially in the autumnal months of each recurring year, things went well with the settlers, but during this first period of their sojourn here the fever and ague did great mischief and afflicted every family and sometimes every member of the household. By reason of this, great suffering had to be endured, for it is said that in that sickness people "want to die, but can't." But after the lands were broken up a few years, the decaying underbrush burned and the land with sluggish pools of water had been drained out, the country was one of beauty and enjoyed by a happy band of sturdy pioneers, who became the grandfathers and fathers of the generation just now passing. Indeed, these pioneers builded far better than they knew, and this the twentieth century is enjoying the fruits of their toils and self-sacrifices.
"We love best the man that dares to do- The moral hero, stalwart through and through, Who treads the untried path, evades the rut; Who braves the virgin forest, builds a hut, Removes the tares encumbering the soil, And founds an empire based on thought and toil."
CHAPTER IV.
ORGANIZATION AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT.
The third Legislature of the state of Indiana, by an act approved Janu- ary 9, 1821, at the then capital of the state, Corydon, organized Parke county, with what is now known as Vermillion county attached as a civil township for various purposes. The same day the Governor appointed Capt. Andrew Brooks sheriff, to serve until an election could be held, and James Blair coroner. On March 27th Dempsey Seybold and Joseph Walker were ap- pointed associate judges for the new county and Wallace Ray as clerk and recorder. May 30th John Skidmore and Joseph Ralston were commissioned justices, and all these were to act until after an election. William Clark was also appointed resident surveyor, but did not qualify, and Stephen Collett was appointed and served in his place. The first election for the new county was fixed for the first Monday in August, 1821, when the polls were opened at the house of Richard Henry, on Henry's prairie, just above the county line. Judge Seybold and 'Squire Ralston organized the poll, Judge James Barnes acted as judge of the election, and what happened in way of trouble is briefly narrated elsewhere in this volume.
At the date above mentioned the county was supposed to have a voting population of four hundred, and commissioners were sent to locate a perma- nent county seat. This commission was made up of Gen. Joseph Orr, Gen. Arthur Patterson and Col. Thomas Smith, the last named later becoming the well-known Indian agent. There were here, as in all new counties, a rivalry as to who should secure the county seat. The commissioners were evidently well and favorably impressed with the Buchanan vicinity, near the present town of Judson, but were urged to visit Thomas Gilkeson's place, on the Raccoon, before deciding. While at his place the commissioners were invited by Messrs. Ray, Hand and Simmons to visit another spot, which brought them up at Ray's tavern, in what is now Rockville, on a dark, gloomy morn- ing early in the month of February, 1824. The commissioners were wet, weary and miserably fatigued, but were royally entertained by Mr. Ray, the landlord. Just what inducements were offered, aside from the steaming breakfast of which they all partook freely, none can conjecture, but before
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.