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 61

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 61

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Two brothers, Dawes, traveling, stopped at Winchester, hav- ing two slaves. They were tanners, and decided to locate there. They contracted for tanbark, etc., but were advised to go back to Kentucky, and sell their slaves. They concluded to do so, and to buy hides in Cincinnati as they returned. They set out at noon, and got to Newport about dark, in a double wagon. Dr. H. followed them, got a warrant at Newport, twelve men pur- sued and arrested them as kidnapers, and brought them back to Newport in the night. They found the law and the temper of the people were such that conviction for kidnaping would cer- tainly ensne, and they were persuaded to emancipate the slaves. The point was this: Owners were allowed to hold their slaves while simply passing through, but their contracting in view of settling was interpreted to be in law a location; location made the slaves free, and attempting to take them away was kidnap- ping. They tried to prosecute Levi Coffin for his part in the transaction, but they did not succeed.

Lewis Talbert ran away from a plantation a few miles from the Ohio River, in Kentucky, and came to the Union Literary In- stitute. After attending school for some months, he grew so un- easy thinking of his sisters in slavery, that he could not rest. and resolved to go and get them off to the free States. He went, stayed one day and two nights on the farm; did not see his sis- ters, but left them word that he had been there, and that he would come again. In three weeks he was back at the school. After awhile he went again, got his sisters, brought them to the Ohio, but for some reason one sister was afraid to cross, and the other would not come without her; so they went back, and he crossed into Ohio and came on to Newport and to the Institute again. Meanwhile, he had told others how to run away, and several had left, and pursuit was made. The hunters came to Richmond, got assistance, and sixteen men came in the night on horseback to Newport. Lewis had been there, but had left. They found no fugitives. Three men started at midnight on foot to come to the Institute to tell Lewis to get out of the way. They came just at daylight, and asked, " Is Lewis Talbert here?" „No; why?" "Because if he is he must make himself scarce; they are after him; sixteen men came into Newport last night,

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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

and will be right up here." Lewis had "vamosed " already. They did not come after him, nor did they find him anywhere else. Afterward he laid his plans to visit Kentucky again. A confidant unwittingly revealed them, and his master's son came to Indianapolis, seized him, had him adjudged a slave, and took him bound to Kentucky. He said afterward, "That was just where I wished and had started to go; but I did not fancy that style." His friends supposed him done for; but in six weeks from the day he was put upon the train at Indianapo- lis, his black face popped in at the door of the Institute. "Why, Lewis, we thought you down in New Orleans by this time." "Oh no; I was never born to be sold down the river." He had been twice sold, and the trader had started his gang on the steamboat down the river. They let him be loose on the boat. He managed to get a chambermaid to cut the ropes of a boat behind and let him down into the river. He paddled for shore, and found himself in Southern Indiana, with only shirt and pants. He was taken up by some amateur hunters, but he put a bold face on it and said he was a free negro from about Richmond, and showed a genuine note of hand, signed by Elijah Coffin, President of the State Bank, Richmond. They let him go. He afterward went to Canada and became a preacher. Whether he ever got his sisters away, or what has become of them, or of him either, is not known by the writer of this sketch.

SLAVE GIRLS-CABIN CREEK.

Two slave girls were brought into the Cabin Creek colored settlement. They were closely tracked to the house where they were. A parley was held; a crowd had gathered; the girls were dis- guised with men's clothes and smuggled through the crowd, taken to John Bond's, then to Dunkirk, Cherry Grove, and to Newport, at Levi Coffin's. There they were concealed between two feather beds. The pursuers traced them there too, but they were never taken. The girls were sent away to Canada. (See fuller account elsewhere.)

A gentleman in Richmond had his house so fixed that slaves could be concealed so that, though his dwelling was searched over and over, time and again, while the hunted ones were there, still none were ever found. Even his children never knew until years afterward of that place of concealment. Once a company of fugi- tives were traced directly to his house; the house was watched outside while it was searched inside, and was watched for days and nights, but no discovery was made, the slaves were never found, and got safe off at last.

EMSLEY JONES' ADVENTURE.

One dark night a colored man came to Emsley Jones', an Ab- olitionist near Dunkirk, and told him that a runaway wished to see him. He went out, and the negro led him directly to a couple of slaveholders. "Where are those slaves ?" "I cannot tell," said he. One of them struck him with a sharp knife to cut his throat, but only hit his chin, He stepped aside, and in the dark got out of their way; but they never found the slaves.

INCIDENTS TOLD BY JOHN H. BOND.

"I have known of twenty-five in one company. They came partly in a wagon, and some on foot from Newport, and were sent to Jonesboro or to Camden. I took one company of ten to Jonesboro; we had to camp out one night.

"Seventeen lodged at my house at once. The man who took them on went through to Jonesboro in one day and night. Pur- suit was made. Three of us rode all night, and got to them at Jonesboro about daylight. The gang were dispersed into the woods, and were kept there three weeks before they could be got away. The pursuers got there before noon. Three men, Jack Page and two others, were the hunters. They hunted round for several days, but went off without their prey."

Gangs of fugitives used to come to the Institute. At one time fifteen came in one company. It was a woman and her ten children, a son-in-law and a grandchild, and two others. The woman and children belonged to one man. and they were all he had. She was asked, " Were you not used well?" " Yes. "

" Why did you run away?" " My children were my master's, and the mistress and the white children wanted us to be sold, and we thought it time to quit."

Fugitives would often stop and attend school for awhile at the Institute. At one time there were ten at school together.

The whole subject of the Underground Railroad is a remark- able episode in the history of this country. Many exciting oc- currences, and some amusing ones as well, took place in the prog- ress of events. At Oberlin, Ohio, at one time, some slaves were conveyed out of town toward the lake in open daylight, under a load of hay. One black man was once painted white, and rode off to a place of security in that disguise. On one occasion, a decoy wagon was sent out in advance toward Elyria from Oberlin containing some free negroes, residents of the town, some of them dressed as if they were women, knowing they would be watched and followed, as they were. At Elyria, eight miles away, the whole group was arrested. As much delay as possible was made, but in the course of two or three hours after the arrest, the fact was learned that this party was a "sell." But meanwhile the real fugitives had been taken away by another road entirely un- known to the would-be slave catchers, and got safely off to Canada.

At one time a slave woman at one of the lake ports, who had been closely pursued, was conveyed across the lake in a coffin as a corpse, being accompanied by several friends in deep mourning.

The pursuers went over to Canada on the same boat, but they never learned the ruse that had been practiced upon them. The great mass of events in connection with this movement will, of course, be lost in oblivion. A few have been rescued from the general fate, and we have made a small addition to the number for the perusal of future generations.

In addition to the excitement and separation among the Friends on account of slavery. the Methodist denomination also suffered to some extent by the "True Wesleyan " movement. For a considerable time. that body found many adherents in this region of the State, including a considerable number in Randolph County. Some account of the Wesleyans may be found in the chapter devoted to the churches, as also a statement concerning the Antislavery Friends in the same chapter.

Some other incidents also may be found elsewhere in these pages among the " reminiscences " contained in this volume.

It is an amusing fact that many persons really supposed that the Underground Railroad was underground. A young lady from New Hampshire once asked the writer of these sketches how the thing was ever managed "under the ground." "What do you mean?" rejoined he. "Why, the Underground Railroad --- how did they get to it and from it?" said she. "Did you under. stand that it was really underground?" "Yes, of course; 1 never heard it called anything else." And then we had to ex- plain to that young lady, who was really an intelligent girl, why the Underground Railroad had received that curious and expressive appellation, at which explanation the lady was greatly surprised in her turn.

WILKERSON GIRLS- SLAVE CASE.

In 1839, a peculiar case was entered in the Randolph Circuit Court, being a charge against several persons, colored and others, by Thomas Stringfellow, of Tennessee, for concealing his two female slaves, Susan and Margaret, and assisting them to escape.

The affair was a famous one. and made great stir at the time. Two girls by the name of Wilkerson had managed to escape from Tennessee, and had made their way to the house of their grandfather Wilkerson, residing in the colored settlement on Cabin Creek, in Randolph County. They were pursued and overtaken at that place. A gang of some seventeen armed men on horseback, raised in the vicinity of Huntsville. had gathered and gone to the house where the girls were. Meanwhile, the old lady Wilkerson had armed herself with a corn knife, and, with fierce and deadly earnestness, guarded the door. threaten- ing to cut down whoever attempted to enter. She also put her little grandson upon a horse, with a horn, with orders to ride for life, and blow the alarm as he went, which he did with a will, and the neighbors came together as if running to a house

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HISTORY OF RANDOLPH COUNTY.

on fire. In the confusion the girls were gotten out of the back window into the woods, and so they escaped. It serves to show how blunted were the moral perceptions of men on this subject of human liberty at that time, that the slave claimant was a Methodist clergyman, and the leader of the troop of pursuing horsemen was a Baptist preacher. They doubtless, hke Paul of old in his Pharisaic blindness, thought they were doing good service to God as well as to man; but. thank heaven, those days of darkness are past.

The indignant declaration of brave old Massachusetts, by the prophetic lips of the gifted Whittier, has become sober fact throughout the entire National jurisdiction:

" No slave hunt in our borders, No bloodhound on our strand: No fetters in the Bay State. No slave upon our land !"

We give the complaint in full as a memento of the condition of our common country forty years ago.

RANDOLPH COUNTY, CIRCUIT COURT, APRIL TERM, 1839 .- TRESPASS- DAMAGES LAID, $1,200.

State of Indiana, { Randolph County. S

Thomas Stringfield, Plaintiff, vs. Alexander Williams, Robert Scott. Milly Wilkerson, Martin Scott, William Wood, Samnel Green, Willborn Wilkerson, Matthew Chavis, Benjamin Outland, Defendants.

Thomas Stringfield, a resident citizen of the State of Tennessee, in the United States of America, complains of the defendants named aforesaid, being in custody, etc., on a plea of trespass, to wit :

That the plaintiff was heretofore, to wit, on the 26th of Jannary, 1830, and for a long time before and still is, the true and lawful owner of two negro women-Susan and Margaret-of great value, to wit, of the value of $1,200, and duly entitled to claim property and service in the said negro women, by and under the laws of the State of Tennessee, And, whereas, the said negro women had, before the day last aforesaid, escaped from the plaintiff to whom they owed service as aforesaid, and had come into the county of Randolph aforesaid, without the consent of the plaintiff. And. whereas, the plaintiff had sent to the county ef Randolph a duly qualified agent, with authority to arrest said negro women, and take them back to the State of Tennessee aforesaid, yet the defendants, well knowing the premises, and that the said negro women were the property of the said plaintiff. and owed to him labor and service under the law of Tennessee, afterward, to wit, on the 26th of January, 1839, with force and arms, at the county of Randolph aforesaid, did unlawfully, knowingly, forcibly and wilfully conceal and harbor and entice away said negro women, and did then and there forcibly, unlawfully, knowingly and wiltully, after due notice as nforesaid, that they were the plaintiff's property, conceal, command and assist the said negro women to make their escape, and to clude the lawful pursuit of the plaintiff for the said negro women, By means whereof, the said negro women, the property of the said plaintiff, escaped from him, the said plaintiff, and went to parts unknown, and have become wholly lost to the plaintiff ; and other wrongs then and there did to the plaintiff serious harm and damage, contrary to the statute and against the peace of the State, and to the damage of the plaintiff of $1,200, and therefore he asks, etc.

ELKINS & PERRY, Attorneys for Plaintiff.

The case was contestod for a time, Moorman Way and Samuel W. Parker being the attorneys for the defendants. The case was never brought to final trial, however. It was abandoned at last by the plaintiff, enraged, no doubt, by the determined opposition he encountered from the Abolitionists, and convinced of the use- lessness of further contest, and the hopelessness of any attempt either to recover his slaves or to get redress for loss of their per- sons and their services. Such occurrences, of course, greatly provoked slaveholders and those who were not Abolitionists, but those who belonged to that despised but determined band felt a necessity laid upon them to fight slavery in every possible man- ner to the bitter end. They felt in their inmest souls that " man is worth more than laws," and that the liberty of an op- pressed but innocent race was an object worthy of the utmost ac- tivity and determination.

ANTISLAVERY INCIDENTS -JOHN H. BOND.

"The Underground Railroad through Cabin Creek began about 1831. The first fugitive was brought by Thomas Frazier. Thomas rode on horseback and the slave walked. Great num- bers have passed here first and last, probably hundreds of them, on foot, on horseback, and in wagons. Seventeen is the largest number that ever lodged at our house at one time. They would be brought from Newport, and be taken from here to Jonesboro, or elsewhere. I took one company of ten to Jonesboro. The tr:1) consumed three days, and we had to camp out one night. We

knew that they were coming. Word was sent from farther south to William Beard, in Union County. and by him to Levi Coffin, and from there to Cabin Creek.

At one time a company that had been sent on to Michigan were parsned, and a man went all the way from Cabin Creek to Michigan on horseback to give warning.

A man was once caught and taken back to Newport, but his friends there managed to rescue him."

Scores and scores of cases might be given if there were room to print the recital, which, however, there is not.

REMINISCENCES-JESSE WAY.

"One day H. H. Way (Uncle Henry), came to me and said, " Jesse, is thy horse in thy stable?" "Yos." "Has thee a sad- dle and bridle, and are all in good condition? Does thee need them for a few days?" "Ne, not especially." "Well, feed him properly, and if thee don't find him in the stable in the morn- ing, thee need not be uneasy."

The horse disappeared that night, but several days afterward he was there again. H. H. Way had been up into Michigan, or somewhere, and a troop of negroes on horseback had passed through the town.

One morning, on passing by Levi Coffin's, many people were standing in the street around his door. "What is the matter? Is somebody dead?" Henry Way came out of the house and said. "Only a fresh lot of negroes come to town."

Henry H. Way was a young physician, and brought a lot of medicines along to Daniel Dawson's, whom they moved to Blue River, in the south part of the State. (Jesse Way still survives, a resident of Winchester, and an honored citizen of that place, one of the few, the very few remnants of "pioneerism" still re- maining in this county of ours.)

Old Newpert (and Levi Coffin in that town) was the head center for Underground Railroad work for this whole region. He re- moved to Cincinnati, and until the end of slavery was prominent in Antislavery labors, assisting in the escape of thousands of fleeing fugitives from bondage toward the North Star. Levi and his worthy wife died a few years ago.

NEGRO REGISTRY.

In consequence of the adoption of the Thirteenth Article of the Constitution of 1851, a book was prepared for the use of the County Clerk wherein to register persons of African blood, to show that they were residents of the State before the ratification by the sovereign people of Indiana of the Constitution for the Commonwealth containing that remarkable article including, of course, the identical article itself. The book contains, per- haps, 500 blanks, each for a separate negro or mulatto; in fact, twice as many as the heads of colored families residing in the county. It is a noteworthy fact that in Randolph there were at the time two large and strong colored settlements, and another also that Randolph County alone among all the counties of the State, gave a majority against the Thirteenth Article.

But so far at least as Old Randolph is concerned, the registry business was nearly a "plumb failure." Just twelve is the en- tire number registered. One was recorded by George W. Monks, as Circuit Clerk, in 1853. two years after the adoption of the article requiring it, and near the close of his term of office. The other eleven were registered in a group by the name of Peelle, in 1857, one of them being the noted "Cesar Peelle." near Spar- tansburg, Ind., who died in the winter of 1880, a very old man.

The last acts of registry were done by H. H. Neff, Clerk at the timo, and anyone can see by the looks of the record that he had no heart in the work, but that he did the thing just because he had to.

That Thirteenth Article and the laws under it, though the article itself received the amazing majority of nearly one hun- dred thousand, was, nevertheless, for the most part a dead letter, and persons of celor continued to come and go at their pleasure. and men harbored and hired them and traded with people of color as before, never so much as asking the question, " Where did you come from?" These laws were indeed sometimes em- . ployed to vex and scare the friends of humanity. One promi-

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nent teacher within the author's knowledge was seriously threatened with indictment by the Grand Jury of a neighboring county for harboring persons of color, contrary to the statute and against the peace of the State and the sufoty of the Common; wealth, because the Trustees of the institution of which he had charge allowed some bright, active and upright colored youth from the State of Ohio to attend the school and enjoy its privi- leges. But that old Thirteenth Article is dead, dead, thrice and four, yea, five times dead at last. It was a dead letter at first; the amendments to the Federal Constitution killed it the second time, the resulting decision of the Indiana Supreme Court killed it the third time, and an overwhelming popular majority of the voters of Indiana who voted upon the question killed it the fourth time; and after the Supreme Court of the State, three to two, had gal- vanized the lifeless corpse with a quasi vitality, a second popu- lar vote by a sweeping majority pushed the dead and rattling skeleton back into its grave to como out thence to vex the eyes of living men no more forever.

CHAPTER XV. AGRICULTURE.

GENERAL-FRUIT-HORTICULTURE-SORGHUM -- FENCING-DITCH- ES-DRAINS-WEATHER, CROPS, ETC. - PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY -FAIRS-IMPLEMENTS.

GENERAL ..

MILLING the ground has always, from the time that Adam was T set to dress and to keep the "garden eastward in Eden " till this very hour, been the chief employment of the human race. Without food and raiment, the human kind would soon be extinet, and these must come, directly or remotely, mostly from the soil. And in this Western world nearly the whole means of livelihood was for a long time found in farming or around the farmer's fireside.

In these artificial times, to begin on a farm requires a for- midable outlay of money. A modern house and barn built of lumber, etc., purchased at a railroad town and brought by the locomotive from the distant factory, or by river-floats and by steamer from the forests of Michigan or Wisconsin, or elsewhere. is an expensive thing. A stalk of wheat cannot be cut down in these latter days without a $150 reaper, nor a spire of grass brought to the ground without a costly patent mower; no raking can be done except with a patent horse-rake, a hill of corn can- not be put into the soil without a horse-drill, or, at least, a hand- planter; nor can the growing corn be worked unless a man has a walking plow or a riding plow, mayhap. with an umbrella to sit under; hay must be pitched into the mow with a horse and a pulley fork. To sow a kernel of wheat one must have a two-horse drill, and, to thresh it, a $1,000 steam engine and a $500 separator.

The machinery of the present time has come to be so multi- farious and so complicated that an old-time pioneer who has been dead fifty years, were he to return to the scenes of his forest life, would be utterly nonplussed and could not imagine what the immense array of "new-fangled inventions" could be intended for.

Our fathers and grandfathers. when first they threaded their weary way among the giant forest trees to the spot of their choice in this new country, needed no such host of outlandish, bewil- dering implements, nor such a costly array of edifices. A rude camp, made of poles or rails against a huge log, and upheld by stakes driven into the ground, or at best a log cabin, the logs dragged up to the spot by a horse and raised by helping, friendly neighbors, or by settlers gathered from miles around, or by the Indians themselves, was, to the hardy emigrants, a palace, because it was their own. No nails, nor rock, nor brick; no glass nor plank were needed; no boughten tables, nor doors, nor shin- gles, nor bedsteads, nor chairs had to be purchased; the roof was clapboards, weighted down by poles laid on them, or fastened by pins through the boards. The doors and the floor and the tables

were puncheons, and the chairs were pieces of puncheon set upon legs; the hearth was pounded clay, the fireplace was clay, against puncheonus; the chimney was dirt and sticks built up together; the bedstead was poles, with ends bored into the walls and held up at the corner by a single post driven into the ground; the hinges, latches, etc., were all made of wood; the latch was raised by a string, aud the door was locked by pulling the string in- side.

The wheat was cut with a sickle, threshed with a flail and cleaned by shaking in a sheet or by a basket fan; hay was cut with a scythe and raked with a wooden fork, and hauled on a sled or on some poles to the log stable or the stack. Plowing was done with a bar-share plow and tending corn with a single shovel plow; hauling was done upon a sled and gears were made with rawhide tugs and corn-husk collars. Clothes for men were made of deerskin; buckskin jacket, hunting-shirt and vest and pants and buckskin moccasins and deerskin cap were an excellent supply for men, and home-made linsey wolsey for women. Men could dress the deerskins themselves, and make them up into gar- ments with their own hands. Women would pull and thresh, brake and scutch and hackle their flax, and spin and weave the cloth, and make it into garments for themselves and for the chil- dren. Even the girls were equal to the occasion. At one time, a mother of a large family with several nearly grown girls was obliged to leave home for ten days. The flax lay spread upon the ground, where it had been placed for rotting. The girls, with the help of a half-grown brother, gathered up the flax. broke, swingled and hackled it, spun and wove it and made it into clothes for the younger children, and when the mother came home, the little "younkers" were wearing their new clothes as proud as young princes. Little wheel, reel, winding blades, warping bars, rattling, pounding loom and hand-needle were bet. ter than a $500,000 factory, for they were right at home and could be put to use at any moment withont money and without price, and no cost except labor; and stalwart boys and strapping girls had muscle in abundance. Hand-mill and hominy-pounder, or burnt-log mill, or corn-grater, made meal or hominy, saving the trouble of going twenty, thirty or forty miles on horseback, or with two or three yoke of slowly-plodding oxen through al- most trackless ways to the distant mill.

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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 61

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