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 31

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 31

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).

"The first Disciple meeting was held near old Mr. Stewart's, a mile or so west of town. Several persons joined. The Baptists held meeting at Mr. Cartwright's. He was a Baptist.

" When I was a boy, people hired me to hunt their cattle. I could go anywhere, and not get lost, day or night. When twelve years old, I used to grind bark for the tanner at eleven pence (12} cents) a day. Wild hogs were plenty in the "timber." I have been treed by them many a time. As I would be after the cows, the hogs would be in the woods, and they would see and chase my dog, and he would run to me, and they after him. Then the hogs would see me and chase me. I would begin to climb right sudden, you may guess, a high log or a tree, and there I had to stay till they would leave, which sometimes would not be anywise soon. The hogs would boo-boo around, and then seem to go away, and suddenly be back, and try to get at me again. These wild hogs had sprung from swine that had been tame, and had bred in the woods, and so their offspring had grown to be wild. My grandfather would let his swine run in the woods, and by-and-by he would find where they slept, and build a pen partly round their nest, and watch and shut them in. Then he would catch the pigs and mark them, and let the whole " pack " go again. At killing time, men would go out and track and shoot them wherever they might chance to be found. When I was twelve years old, grandfather was chasing up and killing his hogs. The men would shoot them, and I hauled them to the road with a horse. I forget how many I hauled that day. Grandfather marketed that pork at Richmond for $1.50 net.

" A big poplar tree stood in front of Mrs. Hammond's house, and another large tree stood on my lot. When I was a boy, I had a young bullock, perhaps a two-year-old, that I worked. It was a tough job to catch him, the only way being to run him down; and we would have a tedious race. One day I chased him a long time, and finally he plunged into a pond, and I after him waist deep. He stopped ; I gathered him by the horns, Frank Morgan waded in with a rope, and we roped him and brought his lordship out of the pond in triumph."

[Mr. Clark reckons himself to have been longest a resident of Spartansburg, since 1826, or fifty-six years ago. Frank Morgan and he were boys then together, but Frank spent many years of his youthful life elsewhere, and, moreover, he died in 1880 at Spar- tansburg. Still, Mr. C. is by no means an old man, but is active and vigorous as in former days.]

WILLIAM CLEVINGER.

"The settlers when father came, 1828 (near father's), were Bezaleel Hunt, Nettle Creek ; Joel Drake, Nettle Creek ; Mark Diggs, Nettle Creek ; Joab Thornburg, Stony Creek ; Jonathan Finger, Stony Creek ; Job Thornburg, Stony Creek ; Abraham Clevinger, Stony Creek ; David Vestal, Stony Creek ; George W. Smithson, Stony Creek ; Joseph Rooks, Stony Creek (large family boys) ; Jonathan Clevinger, Stony Creek ; John Diggs, Stony Creek ; and in the colored settlement, Richard Robbins (blacksmith), John Smith, Benjamin Outlan, Richard Scott, Jerry Terry, Isaac Woods.

" I have been to fifteen log-rollings in one spring. The first show I ever went to was an animal show at Muncie. I walked fifteen miles and got there by 9 A. M. My father was a member

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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

of the Christian Church, and a Democrat. He voted for Jackson the first time that Jackson was elected, just after he came to Ran- dolph County.

" He had just money enough to enter 120 acres. He had one old horse, and it died in the spring. He had no way to buy any, and he did without, borrowing sometimes, which was hard to do. He cleared ground, and tended it mostly with the hoe. By next season he got an ox-team. We plowed our corn with an ox, put- ting harness on it like a horse, and one boy would lead the ox and one hold the plow.

"Father and his boys have cleared more land than any other family in Randolph County-more than six hundred acres. Father had no wagon for years. He hauled everything on a sled. He never owned & good wagon. He bought an old one for $30, and got "bit " at that. That was about 1836. He used that seven or eight years, and never owned any other. He made one crop with no team, and two crops with oxen. Then he traded the oxen for one horse. The oxen were young, and we could not " break " them well. We did mostly with one horse. Some- times in the winter we would have a boy behind the sled with a rope hitched to hold back with. We had no wheat bread till we raised some wheat to make it from, for a year or two, at least. I remember when there were only three wagons in two miles square among twenty-five or thirty settlers. Once we put horses to a wagon with twenty bushels of corn and wheat, and started to mill (Economy). The horses knew nothing of pulling together, and the wagon got stuck fast before half a mile. Six men took a horse and sack apiece and went ten miles to mill, and left four or five to get the wagon out. The mill was owned by Nathan Proctor. Nathan Proctor, Elijah Arnold and others were charged with counterfeiting, thieving, etc. They were said to have a "rendezvous " in the "fallen timber." Some were convicted, and the gang was broken up at last. One of them, arrested for passing a counterfeit bill, asking to see the bill, took it and swallowed it.

" My father got his meat thus : He had a dog that would catch any hog. He helped his neighbors catch their wild hogs, and they would pay him in pork. The hogs were so wild they would not eat corn.

" How to build a cabin with weight poles : Build the square, let the top end logs project a foot or so, put the butting pole farther out than the body of the house, have it split and notched and pinned with the edge upright, so as to catch the ends of the boards ; lay logs to build up the gables, with their ends scafed off to allow the roof boards to cover them, and the supporting poles so arranged as to give the proper slant. Put on the first course of boards, and lay a pole on the course far enough from the butting pole to receive the second course, keeping the " weight pole " up by "knees " between it and the butting pole. Put on the second course and another weight pole, and "knees," and so on to the top.

" Mother never got a meal of victuals on a cook-stove in her life."

JOHN KEY.

"Father came from Tennessee in 1829. He was a Methodist, and took great delight in the religious services of the olden time. When camp-meeting opened, he would move down to camp to stay while the meeting lasted, on a rude wagon with truck wheels made by sawing them from the end of a huge oak log. He had no wagon, and for home purposes used a sled. When father landed in "Randolph," he had just 373 cents, one old horse, and five children. Pork was high afterward, and he sold four hogs for $50, and entered his first forty acres of land.

" Swine would run wild, and often, while we were hunting them and the dogs were trying to catch them, the wild creatures would cut the poor dogs' throats with their sharp, strong tueks.

" Once while some men were hunting wild swine, the savage beasts undertook to run into Dolph Warren's cabin, and scared the family inside well nigh to death. Squirrels would be so

thick and would make such havoc in the corn that the children had to be set to scare the greedy "varmints " away.

"The pea vines would grow as tall as a man's head, and as thick as they could grow, so that one could track a horse or a cow through the tangled masses of pea vines almost as readily as through a snow-bank.

" Wild plums would grow in the thick woods, loaded down with as nice fruit as one would need to see; gooseberries, raspberries and blackberrios would grow in the "clearings" and open places.

"The State road through Deerfield to Ridgeville, etc., was cut out about 1830. Mr. Andrew Key helped cut it out from the State line west, and assisted in opening it, too.

"Mr. Key entered forty acres at first (with that hog money), and afterward forty acres more ; still later, he bought out Collins (his brother-in-law)."

"Andrew McCartney, born in 1804, in Virginia, came first to Jay County, in 1837. He has been married several times ; once, and the last time, to John Key's sister. He had had & large family, was a rough, harsh, cruel man, with whom no one could live in peace. He would boast of his scrapes and exploits, and, in fact, would readily find and plunge into enough of them to answer any five ordinary men."

" Riley Marshall lived where Judge Miller did afterward. Mr. Miller bought Mr. Marshall out."

STATEMENT BY JOHN MOCK, WARD TOWNSHIP.

In 1824, Daniel B. Miller lived in Jackson Township. In a few years, the Harshmans came, and soon afterward, John Sheets settled on the Mississinewa, and built a saw-mill. Benjamin Devor, Ezekiel Cooper, Thomas Devor, Christian Nickey, Dr. Diehl, the Mikesells, Baileys, Moses Byram and the Debolts, also moved in before very long.

March 24, 1824, Ward (including Franklin) Township had seventeen families-Meshach Lewallyn, Benjamin Lewallyn, George and Henry Renbarger, Daniel Badger, Burkett Pieree, George Ritenour, William Odla, Elias Kizer, Allen Wall, David Connor, Reason Malott, William Massey, Riley Marshall, Daniel Mock, Jeremiah Lindsey, Joab Ward. Lewallyn had a mill that would crack five bushels of corn in twenty-four hours, if every- thing was in order. In 1829, he put in a hand-bolt and ground wheat, each customer bolting his own grist. A saw-mill was built about that time, near Deerfield. At the Presidential election in 1824, five votes were cast in the township of Ward. At that precinct D. B. Miller was Inspector and Riley Marshall Clerk. Persons could vote anywhere in the county, and most of the voters went elsewhere to cast their ballots.

In 1829, Ward received a large reinforcement from Tennes- see, Key, Fields, etc., etc.

In 1836, George Ritenour built a grist-mill one mile west of Deerfield, with two run of buhrs, which did pretty good work. Samnel Helm built a saw-mill two and a half miles east of Deer- field. Collins & Fields also put up a saw-mill half a mile east of Deerfield. The village of Deerfield was laid out in 1831, but did not improve till 1837, when Edward Edger came and brought a store, and from that time it grew and a great amount of business was done there.

A long time after the first settlement, William P. Charlton built a steam saw-mill at Ridgeville, and William Addington re- built the grist-mill, which were of advantage to the county round, but no town was established till years afterward.

There were but few settlers in Green Township before 1835. John Life and Samuel Caylor, Bennet King, the Orrs, Cyrus Reed, Philip Barger, Elijah Harbour, Thomas Hubbard, Nathan Godwin, the Garringers and others came about that date or soon after. Fitzpatrick, Evans, Haynes, etc. lived at Fairview.

Antony Mckinney built a mill in 1839. Cyrus Reed built a saw-mill near the grist-mill, causing trouble and a tedious law- suit.

In 1824, Winchester was a field of stumps, with one store on

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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

the northeast corner of the square, owned by George Burkett. The old log court house was on the north side of the street, which lay north of the square. Charles Conway lived in a log cabin between the store and Salt Creek, and there was a log cabin still nearer the creck. On the northwest corner of the square was a double log cabin, occupied as a hotel by John Odle. There was a small log cabin in the southwest part of the town, and the new log jail stood on the jail lot. Those were the buildings in Win- chester in March, 1824. In 1825, Thomas and Joseph Hanna put a stock of goods into a new building on the north side of the square, and before many years Michael and Andrew Aker bought them out, and sold goods a considerable time. Meanwhile the Man- sion House was built, and Jesseand William M. Way put a store in it. The brick across the street was built, and Jere Smith built the Franklin House. A. B. Shaw erected a brick on the northwest square. Moorman Way built the brick west of the Mansion House. Rush and Kizer put up a brick building on the cast of the sqare.

In 1836, Elias Kizer and David Haworth put up a steam grist- mill east of Salt Creek, the first steam engine in Randolph County. This mill was of great importance, as there was none north of it nearer than Fort Wayne. The new (second) court house was built in 1826, or thereabouts.

Some of the early settlers in the region now called Monroe Township were Andrew Devoss, John Henenridge, Jesse Ad- dington, Mr. Sloan and others. It settled very slowly. The region had no conveniences, no thoroughfare, no mill, no village nor town of any sort, until 1852. The southeastern and southern portion of the county had been long settled ; the Bowens, the Fraziers, the Johnsons, the Hocketts, the Hinshaws, the Beards, the Hunts, the Botkins, the Smiths, the Arnolds of famous memory and many others had filled up that region. But in 1824, Nettle Creek and Stony Creek were still in the deep, unbroken forest. Nathan Mendenhall built a mill on Cabin Creek, which was a great convenience. John Thornburg put up mills near Windsor for both grist and sawing.

Among the facts of old times, it may be mentioned that there was not a shoe shop in Randolph County before about 1830. People made their own or got some neighbors to do it for them, and there was not a boot made nor worn in the county before that date.

A man by the name of Hartley made the first pair of boots in Winchester, for Michael Aker, and Aker, after exhibiting them a while to a curious crowd, wore the boots himself.

During the winter of 1824-25, an imitation of a school was had at Deerfield, on a grade from arithmetic down, and the teacher could not spell the word "highest " any better than to say h-i-e-s-t, nor tell how much salt $1.12} will buy, at $1.37} for fifty pounds [a rather snug little mental problem, by the way]. I never saw a blackboard in a schoolhouse in Randolph County, except at the seminary.

The people in the early days were full of hospitality. The settlers were from all quarters-Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Carolina -- and all classes vied with each other in generous hospitality to strangers sojourning in the region.

None were ever allowed to suffer, and men would kill deer and give the flesh away. And so with turkeys and pheasants and fish. The way to catch fish was peculiar, and worth a de- scription.

If the ice was thick enough to stand on, we could cut holes, and drive the fish to the holes and spear, them ... Sometimes, in a sunny day, we would tie three hooks back to back, and haul the fish out that way. In the spring, they would bite freely ; later in the season, we would take torches of hickory bark, and spear the poor fellows as they lay in the ripples of the streams. Some- times, we made a "brush-drag" by taking a grape-vine of suffi- cient length, laying strips of thin hickory bark across the vine under it, and then piling brush on till there was as much as we

wished, tying the brush to the grape-vines with these strips of hickory bark ; and, when the drag was completed, it would be hauled through the water, and the fish would move along in front of the "drag," and so they would be caught.

There were several ways to kill deer. One way was simply to shoot them from the ground ; another was to climb a tree, and shoot them as they were drinking from a spring. Another, and a very cruel way, was to bleat like a fawn, and decoy the does to their death. Hunting turkeys was very sly work, as they are wonderfully sharp-witted. However, in the "gobbling time," you could call the "gobblers"' to you by making a kind of pipe of the center bone of the wing. Fox hunting and coon hunting were great sport, though chasing the foxes and chopping the trees for the coons made a pretty hard task ; yet the fun of it made the work seem light.

The tools for farm work at first were exceedingly simple. An ax, an iron wedge, a mattock and a maul, and a big " nigger hoe," an old-fashioned single shovel plow, and a barshare plow with an iron share, a coulter in front and a wooden mold- board, and a harrow made of wood, teeth and all. These were all they had till about 1829. About that time, John Way began to make the front part of the moldboard of iron, some of which would scour, and these were used till about 1834, when Horney, of Richmond, made a cast-iron moldboard and share. And, in 1845, Beard & Sinex brought forward the steel moldboard. About 1830, John Mansur, of Richmond, sold cast-steel axes, and about 1835, the Collins' patent came About 1840, Gaar & Co. pro- duced the four-horse power chaff-piler threshing machine, and later the eight-horse power separator came to hand-the Pitts, from Buffalo, for instance.

In 1836, there was only one open buggy in Ward Township, and one top buggy, Edward Edger having the former and Widow Kinnear the latter. Reapers and mowers, hay rakes, corn planters, nor even simple corn-markers, had any of them come into use in 1855, when Mr. Mock left Randolph County for the West. The first cook stoves in Randolph were brought by Edward Edger to Deerfield in 1838, one for himself and one for Mrs. Kinnear. They weighed 600 pounds each and cost $50, besides the hauling from Cincinnati, which was a large sum. Roads there were none in those early times, only perhaps that they were cut out some- what ; and the travel went anywhere among the trees and stumps, with mud in the wet season two feet deep, even as late as 1855, when he left for Illinois. Mr. M. started from Deerfield June 10, 1855, in a wagon with as good a span of horses as could be found in the county, with himself and wife and three small children and two trunks, perhaps 600 pounds in all, and it was all they could do to get through to Winchester. At least a mile of the corduroy was afloat or under water. There were too "little showers that day, in which the rain fell five inches deep.

Mr. Mock relates that he once shot a horse belonging to one of the settlers by the name of Cox in the White River Settle- ment, east of Winchester, in mistake for a deer. Mock was young, and he was greatly alarmed. He went to Mr. Cox and told him. "So thee has killed my horse." "Yes." "And thee thought it was a deer." "I did." "And thee wishes to pay me for the horse." " It would be no more than right that I should, I suppose." " Well, John, I guess I'll not charge thee anything for the horse." And then Mock felt mightily relieved.

One of the old settlers (who might be named, but will not be, as he is yet alive) came to mill one morning and bought a drink of whisky. In undertaking to swallow it, he threw it up twice, but, catching it in the glass, he kept turning it down, exclaiming the third time he swallowed it (with an oath), "Stay down ; whisky costs too much money to be wasted that way." And it stayed at last.

Jacob Voris was a butcher and a grocer and a baker. He made great quantities of gingerbread, that wonderful "nick- nack " of olden time. The chaps had a song about it, one stanza of which ran thus :

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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

" Of all the birds that fly in air, The white, the blue, the red; Of all the cakes that Voris bakes, Give me the ' gungerbread.' "

At one time they had a spelling match at the school west of Deerfield under William Shoemaker as teacher. They spelled from the dictionary, which was the first time Mock had ever seen a book of the kind. It scared him out. He thought it was of no use to try to spell from that.

The best teacher in that region in those days was James Ed- wards, from Cincinnati or thereabouts. He taught a term or two and left again,

CHARLES CRIST.

When we moved to Hancock County, Ohio, there was but one house within three miles of where we built our cabin. It was January, and the snow was eight inches deep in the woods. My family stayed at that house, and we (brother and myself ) tramped back and forth night and morning, to build my cabin, and we could get only two other men (four in all) to help raise it. It was small, fourteen by sixteen, and just high enough to stand np in. When we moved in, it was chinked, but not daubed ; had neither chimney, nor floor, and no door (only a hole for one). We built a big log-heap fire to cook and warm by for two or three days, till we got a fire-place and chimney made, and we hung up a quilt for a door. There were only three or four houses then at Fort Findlay. There was one store ; the two men that kept it were so poor that they had only one coat between them, and they brought their goods on packhorses. We were as happy then as ever in our lives. The Indians lived on their " Reserve,' between Findlay and Upper Sandusky (about twelve miles away). They used often to pass as they were hunting-Wyandots and others. They are gone now, except some who live like white people. I have stayed many a night with the Indians. They lived well ; the half- breeds, especially were intelligent and industrious.

" For some years, we had to go to mill to Perrysburg (Fort Meigs), on the Maumee River, across the "Black Swamp." That "Black Swamp" was a terrible place. We would take three yoke of oxen, and twenty-five bushels of grain, and cross the swamp, eighteen miles, and then go fifteen miles farther to the mill. The trip would take ns twelve days, sometimes going only two or three miles a day. We crossed at what was " Hull's Trace," and the places were still there where Hull's soldiers cut brush, and little trees, and fixed and wove them together, to make places to keep them out of the mud and water as they slept at night The mud was black and deep-how deep I do not know. Large rocks were scattered in many places through the swamp.

"At another swamp in that country, there was a "crossing " made of rails, for a road, and the swamp would shake for several rods on each side, as a wagon passed along the track, and if a horse or ox got off the rails, he would sink into the mire so that he could not get out, only as he was hauled out. The " Black Swamp " has since been drained, and the farms there are among the very best. This swamp extended a great distance, perhaps 150 miles. As we traveled across it, we slept in the wagon, and would tie one ox to the wagon, and turn the rest out to feed. The surface away from the track was firm enough for cattle to walk on, and feed upon the weeds and bushes. I was at Lower Sandusky when the cholera prevailed. The emigrants going West died there in great numbers. I saw them lying dead around, I cannot tell how many. I got a load of salt to take to Findlay, and as I went to get some buckwheat straw to stuff round my barrels, I found several corpses lying covered in the straw.

" We lived in Marion County, Ohio, when the " stars fell," No- vember, 1833. Some people that worked the next day in a deep well saw the " stars falling " all the next day also. In a deep well in Baltimore County, Md., eighty-four feet deep, which I cleaned

out, I saw distinctly the stars from the bottom of the well. In Hancock County, Ohio, Mrs. Crist saw a "ball of fire" fall to the ground, and explode in all directions. I, myself, saw, one night, one fall not fifty yards off. It struck the ground and burst, and the fire flew every way. The light was bright enough to see to pick up a pin. It seemed as large as a man's hat, and burst as it struck. I have bought cornmeal at $1 a bushel that was so musty it was green, and that smelt so strong you could smell it several feet from the wagon, and we were glad to get even that ! I used to split rails at 20 cents a hundred, and to work at 40 cents a day.

" The first spring, I cleared up five acres for corn. A good crop grew, but the birds and "varmints " mostly ate it up. I used to kill squirrels, and coons, and turkeys, so many that I did not take the trouble to pick them up. The turkeys would come twenty or thirty in a flock."

THOMAS MIDDLETON.

" I came to Indiana with $3 and a rifle-gun. I have been greatly afflicted ; had much sickness. Have seven times been sick expecting to die ; yet I am eighty-one years old, and in moderate, though feeble, health. I have paid thousands of dollars for doc- tors' bills. I was sick, when a boy, and I am sick in the same way yet. My back was hurt when I was a small child, and it hurts me still. I have had the piles and the gravel from early youth. I was ruptured in 1826, which remains till now. Dr. Ruby made thirty visits from Bethel at one time. I took my wife and walked and led the mare to Richmond. My wife stayed six weeks, and got no relief. She came home and lived till Octo- ber. My second wife was visited once a day for seventy days. I once sent for Dr. Warner, who prescribed for my case. Said he: "When this medicine is gone, come and see me." I went, and he charged me $1.50, and said : "You can't be cured. Some doc- tors will say: 'We can cure you,' but all they wish is a big bill ; they can run that up on you fast enough." I was at one time greatly troubled with the gravel, and Dr. Morgan tried to ease me. He injected morphine into my side, which seemed to give relief. I had been almost raving and wild with pain from Wednesday morning till sometime Sunday.

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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 31

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