History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships, Part 25

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman
Number of Pages: 664

USA > Indiana > Randolph County > History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships > Part 25

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" The last time I went to Fort Wayne was in 1829. Several tribes drew their payments there for years after Fort Wayne was laid out as a town. The Indians around here were Shawnees. They would trap in April and May, and then go back to their towns. The squaws would plant and raise the corn, and dress the skins. The men did the hunting and the women did the work. At one time at Fort Wayne, thirteen Indians were killed during one payment in drunken fights."

" Plenty of wild plums and grapes (and some blackberries) were to be found. The plums and grapes grew on the banks of the creeks, and along the edges of the (wet) prairies. There were different sorts, red and purple, small and round, but very sweet and good, better than most tame plums. Some grapes were fall grapes and some winter grapes .. The blackberries grew on the " windfalls." There was one near Spartansburg. There were crab-apples, but too sour to use, and papaws, but no one would eat them. The woods were full of weeds of many kinds, and of pea- vines, and horses and cattle lived well on them. Some places had been burned over, and the woods, in those spots, were open like a big orchard.

" Iknew Johnny Cornstalk, the Shawnee chief. My mother- in law once made him an overcoat. He was a large, portly, fine looking, genteel Indian, straight as an arrow.

He once came (with his wife) to my father's, on horseback, to tell him that they had found a bee-tree in his woods. They rode up. Cornstalk dismounted, but his wife sat still upon her horse, tall, straight and lady-like, genteel, dressed richly in In- dian fashion, with a beautiful side-saddle and bridle, and a fine pony. Mother said, " Won't you light?" Spry as a cat, she sprang off, and they went into the house. She was waiting for an invitation. They were a stately, elegant-looking couple. Cornstalk told father of the bee-tree, and father went and eut the

tree down and gathered the honey, and gave Cornstalk half. They were then " camping " near James Jackson's place. I knew Chief Richardville five miles above Fort Wayne, on St. Mary's River. He was a Miami Chief, had a large, brick house and was rich. His daughters dressed Indian fashion, but very grand and stylish. He was a good, honest, genteel, friendly man, and much respected, both by the Indians and white men. We made bricks one season at Fort Wayne, and saw him often.

"In plowing, when father first moved, we used a bar-share plow and a wooden mold-board. I could tell tales by the hour of those old times, but it is not worth the while to print so much of an old man's gossip."

JAMES C. BOWEN, 1814.

Son of the fourth settler, who came on his forty-fifth birth- day, October 22, 1814, when James was only a half-grown boy. " Hunting was splendid, and game plenty in the woods. Deer, turkeys, bears (and wolves) were abundant.

" We used to go to mill to Newport, to George Sugart's mill, but oftener to White Water, to Jere Cox's mill. Sugart had a little " corn-cracker " run by water-power. The buhr went around no oftener than the wheel did. Sugart would throw in a bushel of corn, and go out and swingle flax, etc., for an hour or two, and then go in and attend to his grist again. Awful slow ! One day a hound came in and began licking up the meal as it came in spurts from the spout. It did not come fast enough for him and he would look up with a pitiful howl, and then lick for more meal! We boys would go fourteen miles to mill on horseback. Sometimes we would go with a wagon and take a load, and then it would take two days. Often the settlers had to go over to the Big Miami for provisions. Sometimes two men would join teams and go with four horses, and bring a big load. Once I went with Clark Willcutts' son (we were boys) on horseback to a mill four miles east of Richmond, to get a grist of corn. We each got a sack of corn, took it to Cox's mill, got it ground, and took the meal home. It was twenty miles and took us two days.

" Pork was $1.50 a hundred net, and sometimes $1, or even less than that. As late as 1835, when I was Justice, I rendered judgment on a debt, and the defendant said he had wheat at Jeremialı Cox's mill, and he could not get 123 cents a bushel, in money, to pay the debt. At Newport, Jonathan Unthank sued David Bowles for $5, balance on a store debt. Bowles was angry and declared he would never trade with Unthank any more. " To think, " he said, " that I have traded there so much, and he must go and sue me for $5 !" Benjamin Thomas (Wayne County) said he had as good wheat as ever grew, and he could not get 12} cents a bushel, in money, to pay his taxes !

" In making " Quaker Trace," in 1817, twenty-five or thirty men started with three wagon-loads of provisions. I went about twenty-five miles (beyond the Mississinewa River) until one wag- onload was gone, and then returned with that team."

[Mr. Bowen thinks that Sample's mill, on White River, was the first mill of any importance in the country. He says, also, that Cox's mill had at first a hand bolt, and that flour had to be bolted by hand, which was a slow and tedious process].

[Ephram Bowen came from Ohio in a big Shaker wagon, with a load of " plunder," and then went back after his family. The patent for his quarter-section was signed by James Madison. E. B. was an intelligent, devoted Methodist, and did much to help plant the foundations of religion in this western wilderness. His dwelling was the " preacher's home," and a preaching station for more than thirty years. The first meeting was held at his house, and the first sermon was preached there also. All the Methodists in the region were there, and others, perhaps thirty persons. The descendants of E. B. are numerous and wide- spread. There were at his death seventy grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. E. B. and his family are a fine specimen of the hardy pioneers who subdued these Western wilds. Courag- eous, honest, industrious, devout, intelligent, energetic, upright,

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

enterprising, successful ; their labors and achievements have helped the howling wilderness to become the " garden of the Lord," and to cause the " desert to bud and blossom as the rose."]

SILAS JOHNSON, 1817.

"I was fifteen years old when father came here. Paul Beard and John Moorman and Francis Frazier and John Barnes were here when we came. Paul Beard came the same spring. The others had come perhaps the year before. Curtis Cleny came, I think, the same fall. Daniel Shoemaker, James Frazier, David Ken- worthy were early settlers. The settlers before us had not been here more than a year, perhaps not so long. John Barnes was very old and he died last spring ( 1880 ).

"James Frazier (bell-maker) had a large family, and lived in a " camp." The roof-poles of his camp were put in the forks of a cherry tree. There came a heavy snow May 4, after the leaves were out, and broke down his forks, roof-snow and all right on their heads.

"The Friends first. attended meeting at Center Meeting in Wayne County, but soon Lynn meeting was set up (about 1820).

" Francia Frazier lived west of the pike, a mile south of Lynn. Daniel Kenworthy lived east of Jesse Johnson. Curtis Cleny lived a mile south. Daniel Shoemaker lived a half mile east of Lynn. James Frazier lived one mile east of Lynn.

CHOLERA, 1849.

" In the morning about breakfast, a black cloud came up from the east, dark and threatening; there was some thunder and a little rain, suddenly a sharp stroke of lightning seemed to strike the earth between Mr. Palmer's and the four corners, a mile east of Lynn. The sky was filled with smoke, and a fearful sicken- ing smell as of burning sulphur filled the air, which lasted some time. A little while afterward, that same morning, John Lister and two sons (one a lad ) passed those corners. They were all taken sick that evening, John died next morning, and his oldest son during the day. The lad lingered a month, but recovered. William Ifodgin passed next, and then Henry Benson and three others; they were all taken sick and died the next day or very shortly. On Chamness' place, a mile off, five or six were taken sick, but they did not die.

Isaac Moody and Jonathan Clevinger nursed the sick all the time, but were not sick themselves. Most of the persons east and south of those corners were taken sick. Twenty-seven died, and a few got well. It lasted two or three weeks. There seemed to be an uncommonly sharp smell after dark. [See W. Pickett's, Francis Frazier's and W. D. Stone's accounts].

When Jesse Johnson came in the fall of 1817 (perhaps ), Paul Beard had cleared a field and burned the standing trees black by piling the brush of the undergrowth around the roots of the trees and then burning the brush piles.

Settlers at that time were Paul Beard, Sr., Francis Frazier, John Moorman, John Barnes (Wayne County), Travis Adcock, Isaac Hockett (Cherry Grove), Gideon Frazier.

David Kenworthy had entered land ( 80 acres ) some years before, but he came after Jesse Johnson did.

Jesse Johnson had been here and had entered the land, and came and settled soon afterwards.

Curtis Cleny was the next that bought near Francis Frazier, John Moorman and Travis Adcock.

Cleny was in the Indian war of 1811-13, in the block- house and scouting in the region.

James Frazier and John Baxter came the next spring. Ed- ward Hunt came when Jesse Johnson did, and settled west of, and near to Lynn, 1817. James Abshire was an early settler, northwest of Lynn. He was a famous hunter. His son Isaac Abshire is still residing in thatregion."

IRA SWAIN, 1815.

" My father, Elihu Swain, was born in 1759, on Nantucket

Island, moved from there to Guilford County, N. C., in 1776 ; to Jefferson County, East Tennessee, in 1785; to Wayne County, Ind. (near Randolph County line) in 1815, and died in 1848, aged nearly ninety. He married Sarah Mills in North Carolina in 1782. They had ten children, six boys and four girls-John, Nathaniel, Hannah, Samuel, Joseph, Lydia, Elihu, Rachel, Job and Ira. The family lived in a tent made of a wagon sheet for three weeks or more, lying in beds on the ground. They built a pole cabin, which for some time had a Yankee blanket for a door.

" For two or three years the children used to play with. the Indians, who were plenty. A dozen Indians lived near, with their families, in " camps," made of poles set up in a circle, with ash bark peeled off the tree for a roof, the fire being built in the middle and a hole at the top in the peak to let off the smoke.

" In two or three years the Indians left their wigwams and came back no more, but their little pole tenta stood tenantless and desolate for years.

"One little Indian by the name of " Jim," who lived not 200 yards away, and with whom I played many a day when we were boys there together, was adopted by Judge Reeves, and grew up civilized. I met him years afterward at La Porte, Ind. He knew me, though I did not know him. He had traveled a great deal, but he came back, and lived on Judge Reeves' old place a few years ago, remaining there until he died. When our family were coming from Tennessee, I saw a sight of cruelty which will stick by me to my dying day, and the memory of which has done much to fasten in my mind an eternal hatred of human slavery. As we came through Richmond, Ky., a man was being flogged near the road where we passed. I was but a child, but I remember it well. The man's hands were drawn down over his knees, and a stick was thrust through between his arms and his legs, thus fastening him forward. His body was naked, and they were whipping him terribly. Ile was screaming with all his might, and his back and hips were all cut into a jelly. It was a fearful eight.

" Father entered Congress land. The twelve-mile purchase was in market, but the land west of it was not, being surveyed in 1821-22. Father had to go or send to mill to Connersville (thirty miles). They would buy corn near the mill and get it ground and bring the meal home.

" The first school was near David Moore's (in 1816 or 1817), with, perhaps, twenty scholars. The house was a pole cabin, 14x18 feet. One end of it was cut out (much of it) for a fire- place. We used to pile up logs in the fire-place (i. e., the larger scholars did) for a rousing big fire. The fire-place was built up to the mantel, with puncheons filled in with clay inside, and the chimney was made above with sticks and clay around. The floor was puncheona, and the benches were split poles with legs. The older pupils used to get wood at noon to last till the next day noon. That was not much trouble, though the chief care was not to fell the trees on the schoolhouse, and it took "lots " of wood to keep the house warm.

"For several winters we had no shoes. Then father dug out a large Ing and made a big trough and tanned some hides, and made some leather, and so we got some shoes. One man who had a trough and some hides tanning, intending to move and wishing to take his hides along (I suppose they were not tanned enough, and he thought there was no bark on the prairie where he was going), made a big truck wagon with wooden wheels, sawed from a large oak tree. He loaded his tan trough, bark, hides and all, upon his huge truck-wagon, and away he started for lilinois. After trav- eling two or three days, he bethought himself that he had left some tobacco in a crack of his cabin, and, leaving his folks and team (of oxen) in the woods, he "footed" it back after the to- bacco, found it, got it, and tramped back again, spending two or three days in the operation. What the folks did meanwhile I do not know ; I suppose they just waited there in the woods, cook- ing and eating, and taking it easy.

yours Truly

K. B. Since

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

"The people in those days made 'hand-mills' with stones 'a foot over' to grind corn with. To turn them was hard work. My wife's father once took a peck of corn to grind on one of them; a boy came with a tin cup to toll the grist. The man ground and ground, till he got so tired that he called out to the boy, " Come here, sonny, with your tin, and get some more toll, or I shall never get done." People went on horseback, or rather walked and led the horse, with a sack of corn or meal on his back, thirty miles to mill. A man or a boy would go with a horse and three bushels of corn in a four-bushel sack all that distance. Johnny Banks made a great improvement ; he loaded one horse and attached a rein, leading one and riding another, thus not exactly killing two birds with one stone, but what was still better, getting two grists cf corn to mill with one boy. Great labor-saving invention, to make on . boy to accom- plish the work of two, and more than that, for the led horse, hav- ing no boy to " tote," could take a full load of corn. We were often two weeks without bread. However, mother could make plenty of lye hominy, and we had potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and sweet pumpkins and squashes, and plenty of bacon and chickens and eggs, venison, wild turkey, etc., so that people need not starve even on such fare."

ANNA RETZ.

" Mr. Blount lived at first on the Zimmerman place [southern part of West River]. Mr. Barnes lived south of it.

Griffith Davis lived south of Mount Pleasant Church. Will- iam Smith settled a mile north. He came in 1817. I remem- ber the " falling timber." I saw a tree fall between the house and the corn-crib, and remember playing under the tree top, as it lay there, with Cahoon's children, an Irish family, who lived near by. I recollect father's trying to get some colts that were in the woods among the fallen timber. We could see them and hear them "whinny," but he could not get them. They worked round home in three or four days. The cattle also took several days to come home. We could hear them bawl, but they could not be got at. One heifer did not come, but we got her a year afterward. A man saw the mark on her and came and told us, and father went and got her. My sister was keeping house for Isaac Branson, with his children ; father clam- bered over the trees after the storm and got there ; half of the house roof was blown off, and the stable roof also, and the logs were blown down round the horse, so that he could not move, yet he was not hurt ; their cow was killed, and that was the only animal we knew to have been hurt. Trees were blown crosswise in every direction ; east of our house it blew down but little ; the storm seemed to rise for a space, but it came down again near Albert Macy's and took his house roof off ; by-and-by it rose, and did not come down any more. The crops were injured, but not so badly as one might think ; there was no hail ; the worst of the storm was north of us. The house we lived in at the time of the storm is standing yet, and in good repair."

W. M. BOTKIN (1816).

"My father was a tanner ; his tan troughs are here yet, though out of use for many years. A large cherry tree is growing in the end of one of them, as it lies buried in the ground. General muster used to be held on father's farm. A. colored man named Jack ran away from Kentucky in early times and came to my father's, stopping awhile to work. One night a spelling-school was held in father's cabin. While they were spelling, a knock was heard at the door ; father went to the door and asked who was there. Jack heard the reply. and knew his master's voice. Peter Botkin opened the window and let Jack jump out and escape. The master offered father $50 to help him get the slave, but we helped him off instead.

Plows were made almost wholly of wood ; the har and share were iron, but the moldboard, etc., were of wood .; sometimes

a piece of a saw or the like would be put over the moldboard to make the plow scour.

To make a cradle to rock the baby in, we took a hollow buck- eye and split the log, and put rockers on the bottom.

I have cut many a cord of wood at 20 cents a cord and board, and bave split rails at 9} cents a hundred. I have worked many a day for 25 cents, and 373 cents in harvest, from sunrise till sundown at that. Wheat was 373 cents a bushel, and pork $1.25 a hundred net. I used to slide on the ice barefooted ; the skin on the bottom of my feet was hard, almost like a stick.

Methodist meetings were held in father's cabin, and quarterly meeting at Jesse Cox's. . Father's cabin burned down, and then meetings were held elsewhere; William Hunt and Nathan Gib- son were preachers ; father was very poor when we came to Ran- dolph.

There is now on my place a tan trough, made by my father more than sixty years ago, hollowed from the body of a large tree, the top of the tree, some thirty feet long, being still in con- nection with the trough. There are also rails, made of white oak, of blue ash and of walnut, still sound and in use on the farm, made by father before 1820, and put up into fences by him on his original farm in that early day. It is only two or three years since I changed the location of some of the rails which had lain all that long time unmolested in a fence, and the "crossing " of the rails were firm and sulid."

[Mr. Botkin, poor though he was when a boy, as his story shows, is poor no longer. He owns several hundred acres of ex- cellent land; has a splendid brick mansion in a beautiful situa- tion ; is a thrifty and prosperous farmer, and a prominent and influential citizen, foremost in every good work. It is really a wonder how many of the rich men of the day are sons of men who were very poor, and some of them widows' sons and even orphans.

Thomas Ward's father was not able to enter forty acres of land. Nathan Cadwallader's father died when Nathan was a lad ; their old horse died and they were too poor to buy another.

John Fisher was an orphan boy who rode a pony alone from Carolina to Indiana.

Simeon Branham was an orphan boy who went for himself alone in the world at sixteen years old. And so on ad infinitum.

JOHN FISHER, 1817.

"Father was forty-five and mother was forty-two years of age when they died and left me alone orphan in the world. I knew of no settlers in Randolph when I came but those on Nolan's Fork. What I understood to be the first wagon that went to White River was that of William Wright, from Clinton County, Ohio, in the fall of 1817."

[ Mr. Fisher is mistaken. Settlers had come upon Nolan's Fork, Greensfork, Martindale Creek and West River in 1815, and on White River in the summer of 1816. Mr. Wright's wagon may have been the first that passed through that neighborhood two miles north of Newport ( Fountain City). The company from Carolina in the spring of 1817, bound for White River, most likely went along a route farther west, past Economy, Joseph Gass', etc. ]

"I owned a little mare and a saddle and bridle, and nothing else. I was an orphan boy and had no more than that pony and its accouterments. I had heard of the free and glorious Northwest, the grand and fertile plains beyond the mountains and the river, where no slave might tread; and set my beart to find that wondrous country, and I found it and thanked God for the consolation. I crossed the Blue Ridge at . Ward's Gap,' thence to Grayson C. HI., Wythe C. H., Abingdon, Va., head of Holston River, Tennessee, a large spring, from which flows a wonderful stream as big as the White Water at Richmond. I traveled down Holston to French Broad, turning north into Ken- tucky, crossing Clinch Mountain, and Cumberland Mountains to Cumberland River, and so on to Kentucky River, Cincinnati,

HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

Richmond. The latter place had perhaps thirty houses, one small store kept by Robert Morrison, one log tavern, etc.

Newport was founded in 1822. It was a solid wilderness for years after I came. I have voted at every Presidential election, beginning with Madison's second term, 1816. I voted for Madi- son, Monroe and Adams, against Jackson, Van Buren ; for Har- rison and Taylor, against Polk, Pierce, Buchanan ; for Lincoln, Grant and Hayes. I hope to give yet one more vote, and to help elect one more Republican President, and then I must leave national politics for younger hands [ Friend Fisher had his wish. Ile went to the polls and helped elect another Republican Presi- dent; and now he is gone to the land "where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest." He

lacked thirty hours of living long enough to hear the candidate of his choice declared President by the presiding officer of the Sen- ate in the joint convention of the whole Congress assembled to witness the counting of the electoral votes and the proclamation of the grand result. The second Wednesday of February was on the 9th, and he died on the morning of the 8th, at 6 o'clock. Father Fisher's era of life was truly an eventful one].

Mr. Fisher says: " I had no wagon for seven or eight years ; my hauling was all done on a sled, winter and summer. In 1826, a neighbor and I bought a wagon 'to the halves ' and we used it in company. In 1829, I bought his half and owned it alone. That was an event in my life, to be the sole owner of a two-horse wagon. Wagons were like 'angels ' visits, few and far between. " Of course there were some wagons in the country, but great numbers had none, and I belonged to that numerous class until the eventful hour when the bargain was struck, the trade was complete, and the wagon was mine, all mine."

JANE FISHER, 1817.

"Father, Edward Starbuck, Sr., came to Wayne County, in 1817. The family who came were father and mother and nine children. One daughter had been married in Carolina, and did not come till afterward. Father had, in all, eighteen children ; ten by his first wife and eight by the second, nine boys and nine girls, the first set five and five, and the second set four and four. The first that died was Phebe (Leverton), sixty years old, and that was when the youngest was twenty-three years old. The father and eighteen children were alive till the youngest was twenty-three years old. The whole eighteen were married. The next that died was James, sixty-five; Edward, sixty-one; Betsey, eighty. Thirteen are still living. (1880).

" I have a large platter (pewter) which was my father's in Carolina, which he got from his mother. Its age is probably not less, perhaps more, than 120 years. The platter is fifteen inches across, is heavy and thick, and has never been remolded."

Mrs. F. has an iron candlestick, more than fifty years old, and as good as new, made by her uncle, Zachariah Coffin, a famous blacksmith of those early days. It is " the old candlestick "- the family candlestick-that used to hang, by a hook at the top, from a chair-back, to study by, when people were thankful for " tallow dips;" and the splendors of gaslight and kerosene were a thing unknown and unimagined.

She can show several wooden trays forty years old, in good condition, though dusty for lack of use. She can show also the greatest curiosity and oddity of all, in the identical "first coat and pants," made for and worn by her oldest son Daniel, now in his fifty-ninth year. The ancient relic must be about fifty-five years old. They are truly quaint and odd ; the coat is not " shad-belly," but more like "swallow-tail; " the pants are " single fall, " as was the fashion sixty years ago ; the buttons are good, bright, brass buttons, good for fifty years more; the cloth is striped. home-made, strong and smooth, and just a trifle coarse.

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History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships, Part 25

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman Number of Pages: 664

Author: Tucker, Ebenezer
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago : A.L. Klingman
Number of Pages: 664