History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections, Part 2

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 2

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A few years ago some gentleman applied to the noted scientist, Agassiz, to tell them the secret of the Blue-Grass region, of Ken- tucky, producing such excellent strains of horses. They pro- pounded their inquiry and he brusquely answered:

" Rocks, gentlemen, rocks; it's a question of rocks." When the enigma of this Delphic oracle was revealed to the minds of the

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

inquirers the whole force of his pregnant truth was plain enough. The secret of the Blue-Grass region is in the peculiar rocks beneath the soil's surface, and this determines the qualities of the grasses and the waters, and they in turn enter into the blood and bones of those fleet-footed coursers that have so long been the boast and pride of Kentucky. The bone of a thoroughbred Kentucky horse was placed by the side of that of the cold-blooded horse of some other locality. One resembled in texture ivory and the other was coarse and porous. If the hides of the two animals had been dressed and tanned it is probable here would again have appeared another as marked a difference. Our animal part is similarly affected by the soil and water whence comes our food and drink. In my trav- els through Pennsylvania, I could easily fancy that I could tell something of the different iron regions of that State by the color noticeable in the bloom on the cheeks of the men and women I would meet on the street.

History points out plainly the influences on different civiliza- tions produced by the soils and climates. A certain belt runs round the world and within that zone has come all the great and distinctive peoples known to history. The northern temperate strip spanning the earth is the confine of the ability to think. The boundaries of this belt are not known, but it is known that to the north and to the south are the impassable barriers. Here human progress stops. Beyond these lines, either north or south, men cease to advance, becoming mentally weak and physically dwarfed.

There is then plainly a practical education in the geology of the locality in which we live, and the understanding of the elemen- tary facts of this science must therefore be the most important and useful education we can give the rising generation.

We send our children to school to prepare them for more useful lives; to help them in the struggle for existence when they go out from the roof-tree to battle for a place in the world for themselves. The average man lives for his children. Here are his hopes and ambitions, and they can not be better placed. If he could be abso- lutely certain in matters of education, then he would be simply not experimenting-filled always with hope and fear. In this age of the world he ought to be enabled to procede with the education of his children with the same certainty of results that he cuts, saws, planes and finishes the different pieces that when put together are exactly the house he had in his mind's eye when he felled the trees in the woods that finally entered into the structure. This much most assuredly the thousands of years' experience should have taught us all.

But it has not. The average man thinks that education is en- tirely something he must hire some one to do for him. He sends

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

his boy to the school teacher and buys such books for him as he is told to supply. He is in time told his boy has triumphed over the Greek verb, and he is much rejoiced, and he and "mother" talk it all over with hearts full of pride. Their son has such blessed ad- vantages over anything they had, and in time who could help but envy their pride and happiness when John Wesley is the Latin vale- dictorian on graduation day. Bless their honest, credulous hearts, their cup of happiness at last is full to overflowing. John Wesley is a little bit affected himself at the rosy future just bursting upon him. In rather stilted Virgilian measure, he recounts the past school days-commencing at " Ego" and with this final flourish of "veni, vidi, vici!" And the work is done. "The world is mine oyster and I will proceed to open it." But on an average, about ninety-nine times in one hundred, John Wesley's oyster knife some- how don't so readily open the succulent bivalve. Indeed it is often found that the mollusk petrified about the time Eneas was cutting the didos about which the poet sang so sublimely. There sometimes is but one certain thing the young man finds himself fully qualified to do -teach school. He can here put others successfully through the same grind that he experienced and was told was the highest and best attainable education-a classical education. He can read Latin and Greek and has learned that Hebrew is read from right to left. True he has constant use for his dictionary in reading any of the dead languages, but that is probably better for him. By the time his graduation suits are worn out, if he is a very bright youth, he has made the discovery that there is some little difficulty in con- verting his classical education into cash in any of the ordinary walks of life. But this does not affect his faith. His teachers impressed it well upon him that the higher education is not mer- cenary, that it is above all that. But John W.'s nature is to get cold and hungry, the same as does poor Bill Stubbs, who never was at college.

In a few years you find the school boy has ripened into strong manhood and is a prominent merchant, lawyer, judge, doctor, farmer, hotel-keeper or in any other respectable and money-making business. He has forgotten his Greek verbs, and instead of his "veni, vidi, vici" of old, he is now found glibly expressing himself by the more expressive slang of "hustlers" and "rustlers."

The jolly benedict is passing it around. His boys will soon be old enough to fill the same place he once did in the schools and colleges. He intends to do the best he can for them. As for him- self he blushes to think about his graduating dreams and his actual life and how little they fitted into each other, and hopes that his boys may do better-may even some day be great professors in some old and noted university. He may possibly remember that

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

after his classical days he read the illiterate Bobby Burns, or the common stock actor Shakespeare and was amazed at the discovery that there is in nature possibilities even outside of the " classical course " in college-these children of nature, with no more cramp- ing rules than the birds, caroled their immortal songs to the skies.

He, and so do we all, followed in the footsteps of his long line of predecessors-thought in the same rounds they did, and fashioned his life after theirs. And thus our youths grow up too dependent upon the aid of others to prepare them for the struggle for life. It would be far better for the rising generation that they be told the blunt truth; that they can be assisted, but not very much, in edu- cation. That pretty much all real, practical education is for each one to gain for himself and largely by himself; that the school must not be in theory a mental gymnasium, where the muscles, so to speak, of the mind can be developed by the professor, and that there is nothing for the student to do except keep his mind always in a receptive mood; his mental hopper open so the grists of knowledge may run in uninterruptedly. The boy on the farm is practically edu- cated to be a farmer, so is the boy in the store or bank or factory or mill, educated practically in those different things.

As the advances of our civilization are based upon the agricult- ural interests, so we come to see that the geological knowledge of the locality in which our lives are cast is of first importance in the education of our youths. All we possess even in our higher civili- zation comes primarily from this source. No matter therefore what your chosen avocation in life, an intimate knowledge of the earth's surface and what is under it must be of great advantage. It is a species of practical knowledge that assists in life. The boy at school can more easily learn how to analyze the soils than he can master the Greek verb. The child's mind is more interested in investigating a plant, flower or tree, the conditions of its growth and propagation, than he is in the Greek and Roman mythologies. In short, it is natural for him to be curious about nature and her ways and laws, and it is therefore better for him to know these things than to befog his intellect trying to comprehend those abstruse metaphysics that so often are mistakenly thrust upon him.

The ancient Egyptians, from whom come nearly all the rudi- ments of education, taught chiefly adults. Their schools were in their groves, gardens and conversations from the porches of their . dwellings and public buildings. Three thousand years ago their schools, always in the open air, were places where the most vital and often practical questions of life were considered-the teachers being men eminent for their wisdom far more than their knowledge of the rules of the school room. They propounded questions and discussed them and the people attended at will. All teaching was

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

oral, as much of our teaching in geology, botany and zoology should be. The successful farmer has learned much that is useful by ex- periment and the trials of his ancestors. His knowledge of geology and chemistry as well as botany and zoology is far greater than he himself generally supposes it to be. He has learned that certain soils have certain plant food and that under a certain treatment it will yield up its treasures. He has gained his knowledge at too great a loss of time and wealth. He should have been saved the expense of such a school by the school teachers who had in charge his education. He possibly was wasting his time on Greek roots when he should have been looking into the corn roots-especially since we are told that the number of marriages is at times regulated by the price of corn.

These are some off-hand hints as to why so much importance should be attached in the history of any locality to the geology of the country, as this and the climate are the controlling factors in civilization. Where these are properly or best adjusted there will be found the best developed men-mentally and physically. They are a plea for a more practical education for the young and old. They are a general protest against the authority of precedent.

It can be no disadvantage to the school graduate to have learned well some of those lessons in the school room that his forefathers have had to learn by the sternest necessity in the conduct of their business. While experience is a hard teacher, she is the best one only because of the failure of our teachers to fully grasp the situa- tion. Where the young man returns with his Latin diploma to the old farm, it need not detract from his glory if he can go out and look over the fields and tell what will revive each soil here and there; the fertilizing qualities that have been exhausted and what will best restore them. So of his father's mill, factory or store. In the economic problems here constantly presented, so knowledge on these subjects may enable him to begin to repay his parents for the sac- rifices they have made for his education. As true knowledge is the most practical thing in the world, so is it the most useful. It is simply understanding the natural laws. Our commencement is from the mother earth, to which in the end we will return. Why is this then not the natural point to commence the higher education of our children? Generation after generation we train each other to regard precedent as of the highest authority. Hence, because a few hundred years ago the English as well as other modern lan- guages were in the process of formation-all being then more or less jargons, and as at the same time there were the fewest scientific facts known to men, and that species of education was practically tabooed, it was as a matter of course that polite learning was esteemed to be the dead languages of Athens and Rome, and to

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

these ambitious students turned with a sincere devotion, This cir- cumstance has brought even down to our day a widespread notion that a classical education is the highest and best attainable. The martyrs to the world's advanced and better education it seems died in vain, so far as our great schools and teachers are concerned. Hence, the peasant at the plow handle, the grimy smith at the forge, the telegrapher at the key, and the shoemaker's bench are as quick to give the world its great thinkers, inventors and educators as the great State universities or the most noted schools in the world. The better instincts of men are in natural rebellion against the mistakes and ignorance of the Dark Ages. Happily is it indeed, that this is so.

Beneath your feet, wherever you may be, there are in the earth vast beds of rock. These, in the simplest division, are the igneous and stratified rocks. The first, as its name indicates, is a fire-rock, that is, melted by intense heat and cooled into its solid form. The other is the slow deposits in water, where layer is deposited on layer sometimes miles in thickness. Fossil remains of course are found only in the stratified rocks, or in petrifactions that are sometimes locked in stratified rocks or are separate and alone as when formed. The immense chalk bluffs of England are the remains simply of water insects, the little skeletons whitened and cemented in the process of time into the immense beds that were uplifted by the internal forces of the earth and no longer beds of the sea, are the tall white cliffs of the uplands, observed with so much interest by travelers and looked upon with such dull indifference by the hob-nailed peasants and the ancient shepherds who turned their gaze in their long night-watches upon the rolling beauties of heaven, set as they sup- posed in the solid overarching firmament.

The ancient education tended to lead away from all practical subjects. Those who assumed the authority to speak, so taught their followers. They thought to control the movements of the mind as the king's will would control their personal movements. They grievously mistook both their mission and the true nature of the mind. They were too slow to find out that though the body may be burned, the mind will fly free and can be arbitrarily con- trolled only by destroying it, and they proceeded to enslave the mind by the persecution of the body, and the misdirection of their thoughts and judgments. They thus brought the travail of the ages, when civilization languished and the human mind remained long stagnant. Thus earnest men's mistakes are often far more hurtful and grievous than their wildest vices, But this is a part of that old, old story of the struggle between truth and error, right and wrong.

Topography .- Vigo county contains within its borders 400

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

square miles. Its surface is level or gently rolling, divided into prairie and timber land, mostly timber. There are three prairies in the county, namely Prairie creek prairie, Fort Harrison and Grand prairie, which will be more fully described in the township histories.

Streams .- The main artery in the drainage of this part of Indi- ana is the Wabash river that flows through Vigo county from north to south. The river has its rise in a small lake in Mercer county, Ohio, running in a westerly course through the counties of Adams, Wells and Huntington to the State of Indiana. The confluence of Little river is just below Huntington. From this point it continues its westerly course through the counties of Wabash, Miami and Cass. Here it turns more toward the south and passes through Carroll and Tippecanoe counties. It forms the boundary line be- tween Warren and Vermillion counties on the west and Fountain and Parke on the east. It turns still more directly south at Cov- ington. It enters Vigo County in Section 2, Township 13, Range 9. Passing into Section 3, then nearly due south through Section 10 and into Section 15, where it turns abruptly west for six miles along the section lines between 15 and 16 and 21 and 22; then turn- ing nearly due south, passing nearly through to center of Sections 21, 28 and 33, and enters nearly the center of Section 4, Township 12, Range 9; passing diagonally through the northeast corner of Section 9 and into 8 and into Section 17, and bending toward the southeast meets the town limits of Terre Haute in Section 16; then running nearly due south along the entire city's front, where it turns and bears southwest into Section 31 and bends suddenly and runs east to the center of Section 32, and going nearly due south, enters the center of Section 5, Township 11, Range 9, when it bears southwest to where it nearly touches the State line at the northwest corner of Section 28, then goes due south to the south- west corner of Section 33, where it becomes the dividing line be- tween Indiana and Illinois. From this point to the southwest cor- ner of the county, the southwest corner of Section 35, Township 10, Range 10, it continues to form the county and State line.

It is a navigable stream, and is the only one that touches the county of Vigo. To the east of the river in the southwest part of the county are several lakes and bayous. The latter are evidences that this was once a great river, from six to ten miles in width, pouring in its sluggish stream the vast accumulations of waters from the north to the divide where the drainage was through the chain of northern lakes. Time has dwarfed this mighty river which at one time might have carried abreast on its bosom all the combined armadas of the world, into its present insignificance. It was one of the great agencies in drying the continent and adjusting

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

the earth for our habitation. Evidently all of Prairie Creek town- ship was once a part of the bed of the river, and in narrowing and deepening its bed it has left its footprints in those lakes as far east as Moore's Pond and Goose Pond. The bottoms, often from six to ten miles wide, are yet subject to nearly annual overflows by the spring freshets that crowd their accumulated waters upon it. Greenfield bayou, Grassy pond, Stone pond and Horseshoe pond are considerable bodies of water, that in the general drying of the face of the country will some day be dry land. Man's energies en- croach upon the waters wherever possible, and he extends his dominions over the waters and the waste places.

Within the memory of man there has been a marked change in the Wabash river, and its waters are becoming less and less. At one time all the commerce of the portion of the State through which it runs was carried on the river. The fleets of largest steam- boats easily ascended to Terre Haute, and above the north line in the early days of western steamboating.

The first steamboat that ever plowed the western waters came down the Ohio river, and passed on to New Orleans the same year, 1811, that Gen. Harrison marched up with his army to Fort Harri- son. The name of that historical vessel was the " Orleans," under command of Capt. Roosevelt. A remarkable coincident of that voy- age of the first steamboat was that just about the time it reached the mouth of the Wabash, where it empties into the Ohio, it was met by the first evidences of the greatest earthquake ever known to visit the continent-the New Madrid earthquake as it is called, because this was its severest point. The heavens and the earth manifested their wonders, not only in the great earthquake, but a total eclipse of the sun occurred at this time, and thus were the great powers and displays of nature to meet, the apparently so feeble, but yet the most extraordinary manifestations of man's genius. As though all nature rose up at the approach of the first steamboat in the wilder- ness to awe it back or welcome it, as one may choose to think. The same year the army of occupation under Gen. Harrison came to Vigo county. What tremendous events in the world's history! To the Indians and the pioneers, could they at all have comprehended these mighty things, how supremely awe-inspiring it all would have been. Capt. Roosevelt was a brave navigator, and not much affected by the common and general superstition of his times. The eclipse had aroused the people to a frenzy of awe and fear. They were ever ready to see the coming of the end of the world, when the heavens would be rolled together as a scroll and the universal conflagration begin. Then commenced the earthquake that shook the hills, burst asunder the granite rocks as though but sheets of wet paper, and the ground heaved, waved and trembled, and with great groans rose

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

and burst in long cracks and openings, and spurted high sand and water and sulphurous smoke. The earthquake, lasted three months, the first three days being the most severe and active, and the third day the worst of all. It was on this third day, in December, 1811. that the "Orleans " rode out of the troubled waters of the Ohio into the yet more excited waters of the Mississippi. The boat had tied up the previous night at the foot of a low island just above Cairo. There was danger near the high river banks, as these would heave and swell, and great sections carrying trees would be detached and go plunging into the seething waters. Such was the force of the quick, high waves of the ground, that the great river would be turned back upon itself and rose and splashed over the tops of the highest bluffs along the shore. New Madrid, on the river below Cairo, was then a prosperous town. It was destroyed by the earthquake. During these days the sun hung in the heavens, a dull red, like a great heated iron ball.

Thus the sun's eclipse, the great New Madrid earthquake, the coming to western waters of the first steamboat that ever wakened the long sleeping echoes of the wilderness, and the coming of the armed Anglo-Saxon to take possession of Vigo county, were, his- torically, contemporaneous events.

In such a meeting how feeble man-how overpowering nature! Of the earthquake nought remains save the great lakes that lie along west of the lower Mississippi. In places for miles the forest trees were killed though left standing in their natural position. But these have rotted away and other growths have taken their place. The bruised and torn earth has smoothed over its ravages, and the quiet grasses, clinging vines, the growing trees and the rainfall have been busy repairing damage and smoothing over the earth's scars. But on the other hand how is it? Fulton's steamboat was a human idea in battle it would seem with the wildest riot of nature. Not really much more significant in the performance then going . on than the cork upon the fretted ocean. Did it pass away like the eclipse? No, here was a great thought, an invention, and feeble as it appeared, it must live and go on forever, gathering force on its way. The revolving paddle-wheels of the boat were but the be- ginning of the drive-wheels of the railroad engine that now flies over the face of the earth and of the great steamships whose sails fleck every sea.

What a noble immortality is here-a new thought, a new inven- tion, but great enough to bear aloft our highest and best civiliza- tion-to live forever. Here are the domains of real human great- ness. It is in the movements of the mind that the immortal records are made. A barbarous people can only understand or appreciate physical action-hunters and fighters. These are their highest

HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.

types of men, while they would be apt to kill the man of thought as a dangerous or impious sorcerer-blaspheming their snake-gods, and conjuring eclipses, earthquakes or the nights of storms and darkness. Apparently the instincts of the ignorant barbarian is to fear and hate the man of thought, and to adore animal strength, courage and ferocity. It was this remnant of the old times among the pioneers that made them connect the coming of the first steam- boat as a part of the angry display of heaven's powers in the eclipse and earthquake at man's impious daring. They gathered on the banks of the river, saw the black thick smoke roll slowly up from its flues, they listened in awe at the hot escaping steam, and the In- dians and most ignorant white men fled in terror to the deep woods, only to be met by the ominous rumbling of the earth, the swaying of the trees, the sulphurous vapors filling the air, and the solid earth began to heave and swell, and all this was the unmistakable wrath of God. Angry, yes, why not angry? Had not man pre- sumed to " bile the water " in order to change God's ways of doing this thing. The waters had always run on softly singing their way to the sea-carrying on their bosom the swift bark canoés, the pirogue, the raft and finally the keelboat, happily man's hand- maiden so long as the water was left as nature made it, but it must be heated over the fire into angry hissing steam, and then God's patience was exhausted. Thus ignorance warred up the true, and wrong thus has ever placed itself in the pathway of advancing in- telligence.

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History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections, Part 2

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