History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections, Part 17

Author: Bradsby, Henry C
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : S.B. Nelson & co.
Number of Pages: 1032

USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections > Part 17

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tall, erect, with hair as white as snow, he was the very embodiment of 'old Virginia,' ay, even Culpeper county itself. He was ex- tremely polite, would say 'Sir' to old or young, white or black, man, woman, boy or girl. He was very kind to us little boys, and kept an orchard of sour apples on purpose for us to rob." Capt. Earle wrote this when an old man, on board his ship, at the other end of the world. The picture is so clever and true that it merits immortality. Dr. Modesitt was a man of extensive affairs, and such was his public spirit that the history of the founding of the city where he made his permanent home, and its rise, is his history, and the two are inseparably blended together. In the practice of his profession he traveled night and day over all this part of the country. He established the first ferry on the river. He built his two-story log house on the corner of Third and Poplar streets, where his son, James A., was born in 1821. He died in 1847. His family of children surviving were Frances Anna, Welton M. and James A. Modesitt. Caroline and George died young. James A. was born, as stated, in September, 1821, and died April 15, 1880. Welton M. was born August 27, 1815. He attended school at the State University, and attended Judge Walker's Law School in Cin- cinnati, where he graduated and practiced law two years in Terre Haute; joined the Congregational church and attended the Beecher-Stowe Theological School, and was ordained a minister. The next eight years he ministered to two churches in Vigo county, on Otter creek. He went to New York in 1859, near Buffalo, at Akron. He was in the army one year, with Banks, then with Grant on the Potomac. After the war he took charge of the church at Leroy, near Buffalo, where he is now in charge. He resides with his daughter in Buffalo, N. Y.

Frances A. married Chauncey B. Warren in 1832, and still sur- vives, and with her family resides at the old homestead on Sixth street. Particulars of her are given in the sketch of the Warren family in another part of this volume.

John Jenckes may well be ranked with the settlers of this year, although he did not get his family housed in the little log house prepared for them until 1818, yet he was to all practical purposes a "settler" here two or three years before that. He was born at Providence, R. I., in 1790, and died in Terre Haute in 1860, lack- ing but a few days of his seventieth birthday. When a lad he went to sea on the ship " Ann Hope," belonging to his brother, and at that time the largest vessel that ever had sailed from Rhode Island (a thousand tons burden). In this vessel he made a trip to the East Indies, the vessel's return cargo being silks and teas. The youth made two other voyages in other vessels, going to Pernam- buco, Rio Janeiro, the Bermuda Islands, St. Helena and the West

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Indies. When the war of 1812 broke out he desired to enter the navy with his cousin, as a midshipman under Commodore Perry, on Lake Erie, but was prevailed upon by his mother not to do so. In 1814 he left Rhode Island for Kentucky, and resided about one year in Paris, of that State, engaged in sheep-husbandry. In Oc- tober, 1815, in company with Prentiss, Sawyer and Shaw, he left Lexington on horseback, with a guide and tent and packhorse, crossed the Ohio river at New Albany, and came up to Vincennes, and from there along up the east side of the Wabash, carefully ex- amining the country along Honey creek up to Raccoon creek, and east as far as Eel river. He made his selections in Vigo county in anticipation of the land sales to take place soon. He returned and spent some time attending the land sales, and bought several tracts in the county, and these he held mostly to the time of his death. April 6, 1818, he took possession, with his family, of the little round-log house that Thomas Puckett had built for him, about three and one-half miles south of Terre Haute, and there he lived forty-two years to a day.

He immediately planted a quarter section of his land in wheat, and raised a large crop, but this article was so plentiful in the country, and there being no markets, that the surplus was worth but little more to him than the straw.

Judge Jenckes was one of the associate judges in the first court in Vigo county, his associates being Demas Deming, with Hon .. Thomas H. Blake as president judge. Mr. Jenckes was elected State senator, and served his term at the then capital of the State, Cory- don, in a two-story log house, for capitol. The senate occupied the upper room and the house the lower room. The difference now in the quality of State houses and then is as greatly in favor of the modern architecture as was the old superior to the modern in those virtues of the members that were, as Cæsar would have his wife, " above suspicion." Judge Jenckes never joined any church, his life was honorable and exemplary as the end was gentle and peace- ful.

The Pound family settled on Prairie creek, in 1816. The reli- able evidence on this point is found in the address of Elijah Pound at the old settlers' meeting, September 11, 1877. The following is the speech in full as reported: "I left Ohio with my father and fif- teen of the family in the fall of 1816. We 'landed' on Prairie creek about the first of November. I never got much learning and never got much sense. [Laughter. ] We had all the honey, veni- son and turkey we wanted, but our bread-stuff was very hard to get. If we had continued to live as we did then we would have enjoyed life much more than we do now. I have ten sons born to me; my sons and sons-in-law all vote the Democratic ticket." [Laughter. ]

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Here are sixteen arrivals in one family in the year 1816, that settled down on Prairie creek, and commenced their lives in their new homes. If each one of that family did as well as Elijah, who tells us of his ten sons, with a general lumping of his sons-in-law, then they were the kind of people to come to a county where nearly everything was in abundance except people. They were, judging by the expressions of Elijah Pound, an old-fashioned, hard-working, honest people. It was Thomas and William Pound, brothers, that came with their large families in 1816. And Joel Kester and family about the same time as the Pounds came, and settled in the same neighborhood. Thomas and his wife, Sarah Pound, had the following children : Will- iam, Elijah, Joseph, Sarah, Rebecca, Eunice, Malissa and Eliza- beth.

This Elijah Pound is the son mentioned above, and who said at the meeting that his "ten sons and his sons-in-law [not enu- merated ] all voted the Democratic ticket." The Pounds and the Kesters intermarried, and it is therefore not to be wondered at, as you travel through that part of the county, nearly every place you come to on your way belongs to one or the other of the branches of these families.

One of the important accessions to the county was the Ezra Jones family, originally from Vermont. Mr. Jones, wife and nine children, in the winter of 1815, came in sleighs to Olean Point, on the Alleghany river, and then floated down that river and the Ohio, to Brandenburg, Ky., to which place his brother, Oliver, had pre- ceded him the year before. The families were left at that place, and the two brothers came across to Louisville, and thence to Vin- cennes, on horseback, and then followed up the east side of the Wa- bash, to Fort Harrison, prospecting for homes. Of course they were entirely satisfied when they examined Vigo county and the surroundings of the fort. Spending a short time here they returned, and the early part of 1816 came with their families. Oliver Jones had three sons-in-law: James Chesnut, John Chesnut and James Wilson, and one brother-in-law, Elisha Bentley. These five fami- lies settled on Honey Creek prairie. Ezra Jones located on Fort Harrison prairie, near the south limits of the present city. These were prominent people, especially Ezra Jones, who soon became known as one of the leading men of the county, and took an active part in the county's formation. He was a good mechanic, mill- wright and architect and builder for that day, as well as an efficient farmer, and he was in all ably assisted by his four sons, who were then young men. He kept in his employ a number of men, and his home was therefore of itself quite a colony. Such families count up rapidly as voters and " hands " to work the roads, as well as rap- idly build up and improve the country generally. Mr. Jones built

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the Otter creek mill for Maj. Markle, and was the first to engage in building flatboats and shipping to New Orleans, at that time the only accessible market for the Wabash valley products.

He put up a fine frame barn, the first one erected on the prairie. His residence, outbuildings and extensive young orchard made his improvements the most conspicuous in the county. He was commissioned associate judge of the circuit court by Lieut .- Gov. Radcliff Boon, acting governor at Corydon, and was one of the first commissioners of the county. He had a good education for that time, and was fond of reading the current literature of the day; temperate, frugal, industrious and widely respected by all. His second wife's maiden name was Lucy Allen. Her father was one of seven brothers, among whom were Ethan and Ira, both con- spicuous in the Revolutionary war. Her brother, Heman, was presi- dent of the United States branch bank at Burlington, and minister to Chili during John Quincy Adams' administration. His eldest son, Ezra M. Jones, was sheriff of Vigo county in 1835-36. He, in 1838, removed to Iowa, and from there to Santa Fe, N. M. Ezra Jones, while engaged in his New Orleans trade, was on a trip in 1825, and on his way home was taken sick and died in Natchez at the age of forty-eight years.

I was shown a private letter, dated 1820, in which occurs as the then common political battle cry, "Down with the Canadians!" The letter ran on in the usual tone and hoping for a brilliant out- come of the campaign. The whole had but little meaning to a stranger at this remote time. Further investigation brought the meaning of the expression. March 5, 1816, congress granted land bounties as extra pay to certain Canadian volunteers in the war of 1812-15. These land warrants were brought here by some of the Canadian immigrants and laid on land on the Wabash in Vigo county. A conspicuous instance was that of Maj. William Markle, who was one of those men who is always a leader. He was active and aggressive in the politics of that time, and this cry of "down with the Canadians" was chiefly a dart hurled at Markle and his fol- lowers by the followers of Col. Hamilton, a strong leader opposed to Maj. Markle.

In the county records may be seen a deed from Maj. Markle to Joseph Walker, dated September 20, 1817, which, after describing the tract conveyed, recites that the land was conferred to Markle by a patent from the general land office, "pursuant to an act of con- gress, entitled, an act granting bounties in land and extra pay to certain Canadian volunteers, passed March 5, 1816."

Maj. Abraham Markle was born in Ulster county, N. Y., in 1769, of one of the most prominent families in the county. When a very young man he emigrated to Upper Canada, where he soon

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acquired fame and fortune. He bore a conspicuous part in opposi- tion to the rule of England in the dominion and the oppression of the people by English rulers. He became a member of the provin- cial parliament, and on all occasions gave unmistakable evidence of the spirit of freedom and independence that had culminated in the independence of the colonies. Immediately on the declaration of war between England and the United States, in 1812, he returned to his old home in New York and entered the army with the rank of major. In his command were his two sons, William and Abra- ham. When the war was over he came at once to Fort Harrison with his family of seven sons and two daughters.

For his action in the war the English authorities confiscated all his property in Canada, and then it was that the congress of the United States granted him a large quantity of scrip and extra pay to partially compensate him for his sacrifices for his country. These land warrants he proceeded to locate on Wabash lands as soon as he arrived. He thus became the owner of several sections in and about Fort Harrison; among these tracts were the lands on and about where is now the Union depot, and he became the owner of the land on which stood Fort Harrison.

Maj. Abraham Markle died March 26, 1826, aged fifty-seven years. He was a large man physically and mentally, and would have risen to prominence anywhere or any time, as his command- ing military figure would arrest attention in any gathering of men. His energy of character was great, and he bore down all ordinary opposition by a slight effort. His temperament was fiery and chival- ric, impulsive, but as warm and generous of heart as any man that lived. He would go to great trouble to meet a foe that he thought was hunting for him, and twice as far to meet a friend who wanted his assistance. His nature was social and jovial, and a beautiful woman only could divide his affections for a fine horse. Courtly in manner, he drew his friends around him, and his hospitality was generous and graceful. His love of fine horses always assured his presence at a noted horse race or "an agricultural horse-trot." Liberal in all his ideas, with a high sense of honor, he was born to command men and not to follow.

His eldest daughter married Nathaniel Huntington, noted as the first lawyer who opened an office in Terre Haute. A man of fine abilities who soon ranked among the ablest in the profession, and who was only cheated of great eminence by his early death. Col. Huntington loved military affairs. He was in command of a militia regiment, and often had drilled his men in the open ground where is now the Terre Haute House.

Capt. James Wasson, a native of Connecticut, came in 1816, and lived in Terre Haute, where he died at the age of sixty-four

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years, universally respected. He was an "old sea dog," and on land kept a hotel. Wasson's Hotel in Terre Haute was a landmark.

There was quite a brisk little colony settled in what is now Prairieton township in 1816, under the general superintendence and direction of Moses Hoggatt. This was the Quaker settlement- every one in it was noted for honesty and industry. Of these were Enoch Harlan, David M. Jones, James Wilson, Ezra Jones, David M. Jones and Harvey E. Bentley. The last named was a typical, rough pioneer, but of shrewd, quick sense, and soon became an in- fluential man in the county. He was sent to the legislature, and it is remembered that he filled the place with fair ability.

Enoch Harlan settled on Section 1, in the southeast part of the township. He was a native of Davis County, N. C., born December 19, 1800. His wife was Catharine Pope, of the same place, and came with her people to Vigo county in 1820, and was married two years after. This couple reared a family of six children. Mr. Harlan spent his life on the 200-acre farm which he had entered from the government. He prided on telling how he brought the first clock (a very tall old wooden clock) to the township. He was present at the treaty with the Indians in Parke county, and would graphically describe the feasting and drinking and general Indian drunk that followed the final acts of the treaty. He was a soldier in the Black Hawk war. He remembered all about the Indians stealing the child of John Campbell, who lived on the prairie east of Prairieton; how Campbell spent much time, and about all his means searching far and wide for his child, but never found it.

Hamilton Reed, Elijah Staggs, and Thomas and Hugh Reed, settled in Prairie Creek township in the fall of 1816.

The same year and a little before the above named settlement, came what was known as the Lykin's settlement. They were David Lykins, Josiah Wilson, William Armstrong, and probably two or three single men. They settled on the old military road, near the Lykin's cemetery.

The Baldings, Isaac and Henry, and Jacob and David Lyon, from Ohio, settled in Otter Creek township in 1816, and Mr. Briggs had then settled in the southern part of the township. They all settled along the old Terre Haute and Lafayette wagon and pack- horse road that ran nearly due north from Terre Haute into Parke county. This was one of the oldest roads regularly laid out and traveled in western Indiana, being the northern extension of the Vincennes road. It was following up this road to Otter Creek that decided Maj. Markle to build his mill at that point in 1817.

William Adams was the lone settler in what is now Nevin's township in 1816. He came with his family from Kentucky and built his house in Raccoon bottom in the heavy timber.

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All the world, that is just here, knows much about Thomas Pucket, "the man what fit the Inguns and druv the bear," but they don't all exactly just now remember what year it was that he be- came a good and loyal Vigoan-it was 1816. Ask any old citizen or the descendant of any of the early settlers about Tom Pucket, and he will at once tell you there is no mistake about it-"he did actually drive the bear into town;" it is not a fish nor a bear story, but a cold fact. As the bear never disputed it, why should we in- cline to carp at it?

The current story is that Pucket was hunting bear one day about twenty miles south of Terre Haute. He had been hunting cows the day before and started up a bear, but having no gun he left it to wait until he could go home and get his rifle and return and kill it. If he had made any positive arrangement with the ani- mal it forfeited all claim to integrity by running away before he got back to the trysting place. This provoked the man to go out the next day in the general hunt for bear. He finally came across one lying on the sunny side of a hill sleeping. He got close enough to examine it and was amazed at its size and corpulency. He re- flected that if he killed it where it lay that he could not get it home, and it was doubtful if he could even carry the hide. Being a man of quick conclusions and having the courage of his convic- tions, he approached the sleeping monster and woke him up with some general observations about the weather, The bear raised its head, gaped widely, winked at him with its off eye, licked out its tongue in a friendly way, and laid down its head for another snooze.

Pucket now spoke in a deep stern bass voice and ordered bruin to rise and start for town, and backed this language with a punch with the muzzle of his gun. The bear was soon on its feet, but was either perverse or didn't know the way to Terre Haute, and started off in a graceful fat-bear waddle toward Vincennes. Pucket headed him off and made him reverse ends, but there was much zig- zagging on the way, yet the general trend was about right. But these by-plays of the animal made him travel nearer forty miles than the twenty he could have made it in if he had gone as the crow flies. The result was that when within seven or eight miles of town the bear laid down for the last time, and neither moral nor any other suasion could make him budge an inch. He was then ruth- lessly slain and skinned, and the immense hide was seen by nearly every one of the then settlers in Vigo county, as a confirmation of the story. There are no other fossil remains now left of this " bar story," except the country over which he drove it, and most of this is fenced up. The reader must draw his own morals from this "bear story," because Tom Pucket was a harmless, inoffensive man, who was a rough carpenter that could build round-log houses with

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dirt floor that were a credit to the guild of contractors and builders. He had his little odd ways, and sometimes they might be termed eccentricities, yet they were a necessary part of the man-without them it would not have been Tom Pucket, and the verity of history would not have been compelled as now to place this little laurel bud upon his obscure grave. He has long since gone where they neither drive bears nor are driven by them. He died intestate- much in the same way he had lived out his days.

" Old Tom Pucket," so every one called him, died at the resi- dence of his son-in-law, Dr. Thomas Parsons, Douglas county, Ill., in 1867. As early as 1839 it got to be too thickly settled on the Wabash for Tom, and so he emigrated to Texas and became a jolly cowboy. Texas was then a Republic, and the old Vigo bear driver was out of the United States for a short period of his life. He "fit " the greasers, and when Texas became a State he engaged in driving Texas cattle to the north. Finally, when very old he drove up and the hardships were too great for him, and he was stricken with his first and last sickness.

This and the preceding chapters account for over 100 families as being located in Vigo county by the close of the year 1816. From the numbers of young men who must have come as employes, and from the size of the families, so far as we can learn on this point, it is safe to estimate that there were about 500 inhabitants in the county, and at least four-fifths of these came in the year 1816.

Indiana had now become a State in the Union, and her great future was in many ways beginning to manifest itself to the close observers.

At the old settlers' meeting here in 1877 all those who had been here fifty years and over were thought to be about old enough to be enrolled in the society. There were not so many of these all told as there were people here in 1816, the first year really of the set- tlement in the county. We can imagine it did not take so long then to pre-empt the claim to " old settler " as it did in 1877. As an evidence of how the claims to first settlers were often con- tended for, there was a case near Prairieton, where a man had put up a cabin and returned to the older settlement in Kentucky for his family, and soon after he went away a family of movers came and found the empty cabin and moved in and put it on record that they were the first settlers in that township-at all events they were the first family that had staid over night in a cabin. The family not only warmed the new house for the man, but staid in it until they built their own near by, and were in it before the owner returned with his family. This was something of the kind of intro- ductions of family to family that were not uncommon in those days.

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We can but faintly understand the ties that drew these pioneer families together, when chance caused them to meet in the new wild country ; as the young and giddy now are apt to sneer at the warmth of feeling always exhibited when these few remaining old pioneers chance to meet, and shake hands, and at once commence again to live over their lives of fifty or sixty years ago, because they know nothing about it, and they do not reflect that it is their own ignorance of history that disqualifies them of all proper understanding of the case.

CHAPTER XIV.

1817.

A PARTIAL LIST OF MANY WHO CAME THAT YEAR.

TN the preceding chapter reference was made to Mrs. Jane String- ham Wedding as one of those who came here in 1816 with her father. She became the second wife of Judge Randolph H. Wed- ding, by whom there were no children. Judge Wedding died in Terre Haute, December 10, 1866, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was born in Charles county, Md., April 15, 1798, the son of Thomas Wedding, one of the Revolutionary fathers, being the eighth child and was the last survivor of his father's immediate family. At the age of nineteen he left his place of nativity and located in Ohio. On August 28, 1817, he married Mary De Puy. The issue of this marriage being seven children-four daughters and three sons-three daughters and one son survived their father; Mrs. Henrietta Allen, wife of Judge James M. Allen, of Terre Haute; Mrs. Emily Roach, wife of Judge Anderson L. Roach, of Indianapo- lis, and Mrs. Catlin and Oliver. The last two named are dead, leaving at this time Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Roach.

Immediately after his marriage Judge Wedding, 1817, came to Vigo county. His first wife died in 1833 and the next year he married Jane Stringham, daughter of Capt. Daniel Stringham.

George Jordan was born in Pennsylvania, April 5, 1798. In 1817 he, in company with a young man, came on foot from their homes to Vigo county, and the young men stopped and built their cabin on Honey creek. The young man had but small op- portunities in the school-rooms of his day and therefore his train- ing in that line was limited, but his development of mind in the

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practical affairs of life in many respects admirably qualified him for the trials and triumphs of the hard pioneer life that he chose. At the end of two years the young housekeepers and farmers were as well fixed as their neighbors. They had been industrious and their economy had been as a matter of course in a country where there were no opportunities for waste or extravagance. In 1819 the two young men felt that they had earned a vacation, and on foot made a visit to some friends in Ohio. Proceeding leisurely on their way they often stopped at the Indian villages or camps and ate and slept with them. When night came they bivouacked wherever dark overtook them, and in rain or shine they pursued their way as happy as the days were long. In 1822 Mr. Jordan made his first trip on a flatboat to New Orleans. In 1824 he married Judith H. Bennett, and of this union there were born eight children.

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History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections, Part 17

Author: Bradsby, Henry C Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago : S.B. Nelson & co. Number of Pages: 1032

Author: Bradsby, Henry C
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : S.B. Nelson & co.
Number of Pages: 1032