USA > Indiana > St Joseph County > History of St. Joseph County, Indiana > Part 60
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
looking back over the road we have traveled these forty odd years, faces and characters will spring up before us that we once loved and cherished, but now almost faded away from our memories. Still it is a pleasure to contemplate them in the deep, dark, misty past-their follies all forgotten, and only their virtues remembered. " During that winter what little stock we had was fed on bronse, the tops of trees-a good substitute for hay when there is none. In the spring we moved down to Harris's prairie, enjoying the hos- pitalities of Jacob Harris and his family, as kind and good-hearted people as ever lived. Mr. Harris was the first settler on the prairie, and I am glad the name of so good a man is perpetuated by it. This little prairie was nearly a mile in diameter, almost round, and surrounded by burr-oak and hickory bushes. It was a perfect gem in beauty and fertility. After putting in a crop of corn, we moved to South Bend in June, 1831, where my home has been ever since. There is no place on God's footstool dearer to me than this town of Sonth Bend and St. Joseph county. Its prosperity, and the good fortune of all in it, is mine. I rejoice in the success of every one of its citizens, and feel proud of the reputation given it by its successful business men, such as the Studebakers, Singers, James Oliver, Alexis Coquillard, the Birdsells, and other manu- facturers of less notoriety, who comthand respect and confidence everywhere. The prosperity of such enterprising men, directly or indirectly, benefits us all. Envy and jealousy are the meanest pas- sions of the human heart. Let no citizen of South Bend entertain snch feeling toward any other citizen who by honest means excels him in the race for wealth and reputation. It is no disparagement to the good character of one, that he is outdone by another in one particular direction ; perhaps in other avenues of life he is the snpe- rior. Our trne policy is to help each other, and do all we can to help the whole as a community. When new men come in seeking a location for business, when their characters are all right, we should encourage and uphold them, though they may be engaged in a rival business, and if they get ' hard up' by spreading out too much, we should indulge them and help them out as far as we can. Always speak well of them and hope for their success. The municipal anthorities should always be liberal and just in fostering our man- ufacturing interest, treating the old establishment with the same consideration they offer to new ones as an inducement to come in. Let us all unite in one common enterprise in behalf of the city. If we differ in opinion, the minority ought to yield without a trace of bitterness being Jeft behind, and as soon as the object of the majority is accomplished, they too should obliterate all memory of the division. We have never been cursed with rings and cliques, and woe be to the man or set of men who shall dare to so divide our people.
"There was not a lionse between South Bend and IIarris's Prairie, not even a wagon road, in the spring of 1831. We came down along the north side of the big marsh, and forded the river a few
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
rods below St. Mary's, and then came along the edge of Portage, and then struek off into town-such as it was. The whole town plat was covered with oak and hickory trees. There was but one house on Michigan street, a story-and-a-half house, where Peter Johnson kept tavern. Alexis Coquillard had the frame of the house up where Joseph Miller now resides.
" On Pearl street, where E. P. Taylor now lives, was Lilley's tavern, a two-story, hewed-log house, the spaces between the logs in the upper story still open. On the south side of Pearl street, at its junetion with Washington, Benjamin Coquillard also kept a tavern. A good many people were coming in looking up lands to enter, and it required a good many little taverns to accommodate them. Alexis Coquillard had several cabins on the bank of the river, on the lots now occupied by Worden, Pine and others, where he then resided and kept an Indian trading post. Hanna & Taylor had an Indian store on Pearl street, nearly opposite the present residence of E. P. Taylor. Simeon Mason had commenced a tannery on the Menssel property, near the standpipe. I am not sure, but think Solomon Barkdoll had a log honse on the lot now owned by Franz Baner. Thomas St. Comb lived on the bank of the river near where W. L. Barret now resides, and a man by the name of Nedean lived back between Michigan and Main streets, near Centre. Samuel Martin, the proprietor of Martin's addition, was the only person living on that addition. The houses I have named embraced all in the town of Sonth Bend when I first saw it. A good many people soon after came in, and then 20 or 30 houses were built that sum- mer. There were several other families living outside the town plat. Joseph Rohrer and his family were living under a shed on the lot now occupied by James Henry; Oliver Bennett was living on the Wadham place; Col. Hiram Dayton, near where Adam Baker's new honse now stands; Major Larue, on the bank of the river, on the John Veasey place; Henry Stull, where David Bow- man now lives; Samuel Leeper, on the Kankakee ont-lot where it is crossed by the Michigan road. The south half of the county was an unbroken forest; so was all the country between here and the Wabash. Portage Prairie, Snmption's Prairie and Terre Coupee had a few settlers scattered around the edge of them. The first emigrants to the prairies selected their lands adjacent to the timber, and to protect themselves and cattle from the severe storms of win- ter, built in the woods near by.
" For several years the middle portion of the prairies were left open and unobstructed by fenees. There were only here and there a few settlers between South Bend and the east line of Illinois. The whole of this territory was, at that time, attached to St. Joseph county for municipal purposes. It was really still a wild Indian country just beginning to attract emigration. Its beauty and fer- tility soon became widely known, and emigration poured in rapidly from all quarters. The county seemed to be flourishing until the panic of 1837, when every enterprise was flattened. Then came the
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
sickly season of 1838 which about laid us all ont. It was a very different thing in settling a new country then from what it is now. There were no railroads to the frontiers. There was not fifty miles in the United States. Now there are over sixty thousand. It took us longer to pass over the Black Swamp, in Ohio, though only twelve miles wide, than it now takes to go by rail from here to Kansas. It is no wonder that Kansas and Nebraska have settled up more rapidly than Indiana and Illinois. The railroads have not only furnished a great deal quicker and cheaper transportation, but a ready market for the productions of the country. Withont them the fertile lands of the Mississippi and Missouri, and back from these rivers, would still have been the hunting grounds of the Indians, unmolested by white men, and Chicago and St. Louis third- rate cities. Without them this county would have been twenty years behind its present condition. There are undoubtedly individual and local instances where railroad companies are unjust and oppressive, but the general results of railroads upon the country at large has been so strikingly beneficial, that I think the general complaint is a little unjust.
" For several years before the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana railroad was built, twenty-five cents was considered a good price for corn, twenty cents for oats, forty to sixty cents for wheat, one and a half to two cents for pork and beef, three to five dollars a ton for hay, and butter and small fruits hardly worth anything. I bought the first wood used on the railroad in this county-four hundred cords-and paid eighty-seven and a half cents per cord for body wood, and seventy-five cents for second quality. That was the market price. Wood-haulers, what has the railroad done for you? But if they carried your wood to Chicago for the same rate as they bring lumber here, you would make us pay eight dollars instead of five dollars per cord. But there is nothing unjust to you in that. This you will admit when you consider that railroads are the largest consumers of wood in the country, and that the increased price would cost them more than all the freight they would receive for carrying it. You would do precisely the same thing if placed in similar circumstances. Powerful corporations may at times be oppressive, and extort, but the great regulator, competition, is the safest governor. When you come to regulate by law prices and values, you are treading on unsafe ground. Every man affected by it regards it as unjust and oppressive, and will do all in his power to evade it. Considering the great good railroads have done the country, let us deal with them as we do in other business.
" I have only time to talk of the settlers of 1831. The late Horatio Chapin was our first general dry-goods merchant. He commenced business in July or August in a small hewed-log house on St. Joseph street, where the widow of John Massey now resides. Massey and Samuel Eaton started a blacksmith shop on the same lot. Chapin's store, the blacksmith shop, Lilley's tavern and Tay- lor's Indian store made St. Joseph street then the business street of
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
the town. The late Elisha Egbert was our first lawyer and school- teacher. He taught me to 'read, write and cipher.' Rev. Nehe- miah B. Griffith was our first Methodist preacher, a man of a good deal of native ability. Rev. S. T. Badeau, our first Catholic priest, a hale, hearty, genial old man, who had spent his life as a mission- ary among the Indians. I heard him say he was the first Catholic priest ordained in America.
" In the fall of this year South Bend was attracting a good deal of attention. A weekly newspaper, the Northwestern Pioneer, was started by John D. Defrees and his brother Joseph, the latter now an honored citizen of Elkhart county, but it was ahead of its time. It withered and died. It was in that office onr respected towns- man Lea P. Johnson learned to set type. Mr. Defrces now lives in Washington. Dr. Jacob Hardman was our first physician. He is, I am happy to say, still above ground, hale and hearty, and well known as one of the white-bearded patriarchs of the town. Nearly all the men of that day have departed. Many of them lived until within the last few years,-one by one gently dropping away, until now L. M. Taylor, E. P. Taylor, Benjamin Coquillard and Dr. Hardman are all that I now remember remaining here, and but few who then lived ont in the country are surviving; but among the number Henry Stull, Jolin Druliner, Jacob Rush, B. Druliner, George Holloway, John Rupel, Jacob Ritter and John Squires are all that occur to me now.
" If I had time I would like to say something of such good men as Reynolds Dunn, Dr. Harvey Humphreys, Dr. Leonard Rush, John Egbert, Elisha Egbert, Horatio Chapin, Alexis Coquillard, George Reynolds, Peter Johnson, John Massey, Samnel Good, Aaron and David Miller, John T. McClelland, Jacob Bowman, and many others of the departed. The mere mention of their names will be enough to call them up before yon, and to freshen their por- traits in your minds, and you will then in imagination see them again as you used to see them moving about amongst you, living, active men."
In September, 1875, another meeting was held, at which the President, Dr. Humphreys, delivered the following adddress:
" Ladies and Gentlemen :- To-day we halt briefly by the way, in our rush over life's rugged journey. From these days of rail- roads and telegraphs, of almost countless daily mails and daily newspapers; of the transit from New York to Chicago in 26 hours; from the dash and roar of multitudinous wheels in our manu- factories; of water-works, sewers, fire brigades, and firemen's tournaments; of palatial residences and business houses; of fur- naces, base-burning coal stoves, cooking ranges and cooking stoves; of gas-lighted and paved streets; of friction matches and steam threshing-machines, grain and clover separators; of mowers by horse-power, self-raking and binding reaping machines; of Oliver chilled and all other kinds of steel and iron plows; of Studebaker,
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
Chockelt and Coquillard wagons and carriages; of patent states- man and other grain drills and horse-power sulky rakes, and culti- vators; of spinning jacks and jennies, and woolen and cotton factories; of paper by millions of miles in sheets, or by tons in weight; of sewing-machines of all kinds (except feminine); of household furniture, elegant, faneiful and varied in styles as the changes in the kaleidoscope; of large and numerons church edi- fices, school, educational and manufacturing structures; costly and fashionable wearing apparel; of extensive and well-cultivated farms, elegant farm houses and barns; of large orchards and small-fruit plantations; of the contemplation of individual and corporate wealth, banks and moneyed institutions; of fire and life insurance companies and agencies; of populons counties, towns, cities and cemeteries; of the careless selfishness of crowded populations and varied pursuits of life, and the thousand unnamed surroundings of the day; we turn away for a short time to contemplate the rapidly receding past, in our histories as individuals and communities.
" To-day memory will reproduce startling memories of by-gone years with startling vividness. To-day faces, figures and charac- ters, long since faded from recollection, will take their places in our panoramic vision. Once again will come memories of the old- style prairie-schooner wagons, drawn by oxen, as moving vehicles, filled with household goods, women and children, live stock in train in slow-creeping pace, over roads not made with hands. To these will be added the camp-fires by night and the wayside haltings by day, for rest and refreshment for man and beast; the location and purchase of homes, for which, sometimes, a horseback ride at Gil- pin speed to the land office was requisite; then again, the hastily built log cabin will appear, with rudely constructed furniture of rough boards or poles, liglited by night by the improvised broken sancer or tea-cup lamp, of lard or 'possum fat, or grease of the raccoon for illuminating substitutes. Near by will be seen the wood-curbed well with its old style sweep (no driven wells or pumps, propelled by patent wind engines then). Upon the plain, prairie or green slopes, the fresh furrow, by primitive plows drawn by several yoke of oxen, in dark lines will come again, or, perchance, the forest clearings, log-rollings or log heaps lighting up the mid- night sky will be produced. The memory of the one or two days' journey to some far-off mill, with the family grist of corn or wheat (usually corn) to be ground, will pass before some of us. The staple articles of food-pork, wild game and fish, potatoes, dried apples, cranberry sauce, bread of Indian meal, rye for coffee, some- times mixed with the 'boughten article,' with brown sugar or wild honey-will onee more take their places on store-box tables.
"To-day visions will pass before some of us of the barshear plow, the wooden-toothed drag, the flail, or cireus performance of horses on barn floor or ground, in tramping out the grain from the straw, the plain shovel plow, the three or four pound hoe, the grain sickles, with baby cradles of sugar troughs, the hand rake, the flax-break,
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
sentching board, the haekle, the little wheel and rack, or distaff, with its musical whir to the mother's nursery song morning and. evening, and often heard at the midnight hour; the sheep- shearing, the hand-cards, the woolen rolls from the carding machine, the ' big wheel' with its spasmodic hum, the flitting forward or backward of the Jameses or Marys, traveling miles in a day as the soft rolls dwindled into threads of uniform size, counting the 'cuts' of yarn by dozens before each day's sunset; the domestic dying of yarn by the matron, whose hands showed the tints and colors for weeks; the hand loom, with its periodic knocks and interludes of rattling, squeaking treadles; the domestic flannels and home- made jeans and eloths to be fashioned by female skill into wearing apparel; the domestic millinery, sun-bonnets, calashes and flats for ladies; hats of straw braided and sewed by mother and the girls, for father and the boys; the home-made soeks and stockings, knit as an amusement by the women during their gossippy hours of rest and repose; the slippers of cloth, soled with old saddle-skirts, or felt from old woolen hats, for the women; for the men, moc- casins, or stoga boots or shoes, made in odd hours by some artisans, or by Sam Jones, who farmed when the sun was out, and made shoes when it rained. Once more the old-fashioned open fire-place will shine upon us with its cheery light and genial warmth; the evening domestic circle about it of from half to one dozen children sandwiched by visiting representatives of the nearest neighbors; topics for disenssion by the elders and middle-aged, the leeturers of those times-erops, farming, breaking prairie, clearing forest, priees of land and their prospective value, wild game, hunting achievements, the latest news from former far-off native homes, preparations to move to this country by friends and relatives, antici- pated joy on their arrival, politics and religion. Visions of old- style kitehens will come up to-day; of antiquated deep and shallow kettles, ovens and spiders, with hooks of wood and iron, or the swinging crane to hang them on over the open fire in the old deep chimney upon stones, andirons or fire-dogs. To these were added a frying pan (everything was fried; a gridiron was a novelty then), then the Johnny-cake board, and in families well-to-do, the door- yards had an oyal, mound-like 'Dutch oven' upon a platform, like a sentinel or altar to Ceres, a guarantee of an abundance of the staff of life. The flushed faces will again revisit us of the cooks of those times, bearing witness of the torrid climate in the kitchens, protected in part by deep sun-bonnets and other devices of feminine ingenuity. Evening corn-hnskings, pumpkin pies, roast spare-ribs and quiltings will again loom upon our vision, when the sounds of the fiddle, with musical airs familiar to all but Strauss and Wagner, will ring out in tones giving inspiration to young and old in Money Musk, contra dances and the Virginia Reel. To all these will be added the log school-house and log church, often both in one, with puncheon floor and seats without backs, except when occupied, paper windows, and the wide, deep fire-place, whose hearth was the
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
shrine of Lares, before whom all the children were taught to wor- ship. Before these will rise the ' Knight of the birch,' enthroned for these winter months, instilling into the pupilistic subjects about him the principles of 'Webster's Speller,' the 'Columbian Ora- tor,' the English Reader,' 'Pike' and 'Daboll,' 'Murray' and . Kirkham.' The varions scenes and events will once more pass before us to-day, of the profitable dealings of some of our enter- prising pioneers in the trade of furs and peltries with the numerous family of ' Mr. and Mrs. Lo' who once resided here. Our beanti- ful river St. Joseph will again swarm with little steamers, keel- boats, arks and barges, that once comprised a commerce of no small magnitude, and the only facility for exportation of the surplus prod- uce of St. Joseph valley and the importation by way of the lakes, Chicago and the village of St. Joseph, of necessary supplies of groceries, drygoods, hardware, and much of our wearing apparel. Again will come before us the representatives of the newspaper press-at home-the Northwestern Pioneer, the South Bend Free Press, the Mishawaka Bee, the Mishawaka Tocsin, the Free Soil Democrat, a written local, 'Tom Thunderbumper,' by name, the Valley Register, and South Bend Forum. From abroad, the National Intelligencer, Amos Kendall's Union, the Richmond Whig and Enquirer, New York Courier, New York Enquirer, New York Herald, Cincinnati Gazette, Louisville Journal, and our own State papers, nearly all weekly publications, with these budgets of news from five to ten days old from the Atlantic cities, and twenty to thirty days from Europe.
"To-day will come the remembrance of the time when the early emigrants, who had not forgotten their religion and principles of Christianity, began to group themselves in embryo Church organi- zations, each seeking his or her affinity in denominational preferences; then the store lofts and rooms in private houses for public worship; then primitive church buildings, and then still a better class of religions edifices, with bells upon them. Away up the river of time to-day, will come to some of us the sweet music of the first church bells (small and unpretentious though they were), sounding out in dying cadences memories of distant native homes, and recalling the hallowed scenes of boyhood and youth. To-day the pioneer preachers of the different church organizations will pass in review before us; camp-meeting scenes and surroundings, the frequent practical and often eloquent sermons of those times, as though the inspiration of a new country as God had made it, gave new energy, power and impulse to the leaders of the advance guards of Christianity.
" To all who were here in 1838, known since as the sickly season, when four-fifths of the population were sick, the sad scenes and suffer- ings of that year will pass in review with no pleasant memories, when whole families were prostrate, without often even one of the entire household being able to assist the others to a drink of cold water; when the grass actually grew in the principal streets of South Bend
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY.
from non-use; when the supplies of medicine failed and no more could be obtained, so remote were we from points from which sup- plies could be had, and so slow and imperfect were the facilities for bringing them to this frontier region; when the few of our inhabi- tants that were able to leave their rooms and houses went slowly about our streets like stalking ghosts, supported by canes, and protected by umbrellas from a blazing sun that was not obscured by rain clouds for a period of four months; when all the physicians of the country were sick, some of whom sacrificed themselves, literally dying at their post with their professional harness on; when entire fields of wheat and other crops went to waste, and were unharvested for want of laborers. But this panoramic view of that year of suffering has never and can never return again, for the reason that such a combination of causes can never again exist.
" To-day will return to us that noble trait in the character of the early settlers of this country, which, like charity, was the greatest and best of all their virtues, and covered a vast multitude of minor faults and imperfections, and, like the patriarchs of old, leaves a halo of glory and admiration around their memories. I allude to the generous hospitality, sincere sympathy, self-sacrificing desire to help each other, characteristic of them all, traits of character seldom found and almost crushed out and extinguished by the selfish, push- ing, jostling pursuits of a comparatively crowded population of the present day.
"Patriarch pioneers and old settlers, the long roll of departed ones show that a large number from your ranks have passed through the valley and over the Jordan that marks the end of time, and their memories only live with us to-day. Let us emulate and cher- ishi their virtnes and forget their imperfections. Others of you are well down the sunset slope of life's journey. Some of you are almost touching the river's brink. May it be yours to say, ' Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.'
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SOUTH BEND FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE.
In 1847 John Norris resided on the south branch of the Ohio river, about one mile and a half below the town of Lawrenceburg, Indiana. He elaimed to own as slaves a family consisting of David Powell, his wife Lucy, and their four children, Lewis, Samuel, George and James. He permitted the family to cultivate a piece of ground and sell the produce where they pleased, and David and the boys were often seen in Lawrenceburg selling their producc.
During the night of Saturday, Oct. 9, 1847, David and his family disappeared from Kentucky. The alarm was given next morning, Sunday, and about forty persons started in pursuit. Norris and a party in his employ hunted through Southern Indiana for about two months without success, though they found articles of clothing belonging to the fugitives at several different places. In Septem- ber, 1849, Norris started with a party of eight men, and about midnight of the 27th of that month, they forcibly broke into a house about eight miles from Cassopolis, in Cass county, Michigan, occupied by Mr. Powell's family. The house was in the woods about half a mile from any other dwelling. Mr. Powell and his son Samuel were absent from home at the time. Norris and his party drew their pistols and bowie knives, and compelled the mother and her three children to rise from their beds and follow them. Some they bound with cords, and hurrying them off to their covered wagons, they started post haste for Kentucky, leaving a portion of their company at the house to prevent the other inmates from giv- ing the alarm. Lewis, the oldest soa, had but recently been mar- ried, and was forcibly separated from his wife by the brutal gang. After awhile the alarm was given, and pursuit commenced; a neighbor, Mr. Wright Maudlin, overtook them about noon, near South Bend, Indiana, about thirty miles from where they had started. This was on Friday, the 28th of September. Mr. Maudlin immediately applied to E. B. Crocker, an attorney in South Bend, stated what he knew of the circumstances, that he had no doubt the family were free, that he had known them for some time as quiet and industrious persons, and never heard any intimation that they were slaves. They had purchased a small tract of land, on
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