USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Vigo county, Indiana, with biographical selections > Part 29
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106
276
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
Haute friends had forgotten him, they heard the welcome news that the boy had gone from the humblest beginning as a sailor to the highest in command of his vessel. Fortune had smiled upon him, and his boyish dreams, acquired in a canoe on the Wabash, and then on a flatboat, as he said " to harden him," as he intended to go to sea and some time be the captain of a ship.
All over the globe sailed this bold boy and man, but the heart pictures that he ever carried with him of his boyhood home and his Terre Haute friends never faded the least by time. The remarkable circumstances of his life, his intense love for Terre Haute always, and his memory quicked, and his wonderful power of observation as a boy, and then being away from these the remainder of his life, all combine most fortunately to give us a picture as made upon his mind nearly sixty years ago that could have been preserved in no other way. That he wrote down these recollections and gave them to us is more fortunate still. Under any circumstances this man's recollections of his early boyhood would have been valuable indeed, but as they do come to us they are far more valuable and less likely to mix up events and times and incidents and persons than if he had remained here all his life and seen and been a part of the constant occurring changes.
From one of his communications to the Terre Haute Journal is taken the following extracts, and is an account of a trip he made from Terre Haute to Vincennes, many of his comments are as good as Dickens or anybody else ever conceived.
"I send you an account of a trip to Vincennes in 1833, when I was quite a lad I wrote it during a very stormy passage across the Southern ocean, and I have had neither leisure nor in- clination to copy or correct it. I have tried to avoid all sea language, and have only used nautical terms where I could find no other word to express my meaning so well.
"I only mention the horse with the cloven foot to show how the boys of those early days were addicted to habits of observation. * * I know this communication is too long, yet I was even tempted to tell how I crossed Honey creek on my pony, with Mary Ann Morgan sitting on the crupper. The water was more than half up the pony's sides. Mary Ann in trying to keep her feet dry lost her balance and hold of me and tumbled over backward. I caught her, however, by some part of her dress and towed her over the creek heels foremost. She was a sorry-looking sight when she reached the bank and stood on end. Her hair hung down her pallid cheeks like sea weed round a clam. Her dress clung to her as close and was as wet as the skin of a seal. Mary Ann was of good pluck and equal to the emergency. She thanked me for landing her on the right side of the creek, and then retired to a clump of bushes to
277
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
make her toilet over again. I think she must have disrobed, for it wasn't long before I saw several garments (some were of calico and some were white) spread by hands attached to bare arms on the bushes in the warm summer sun, and not a long time elapsed be- fore Mary Ann emerged from the copse as dry as when we started from home.
"It was in the early part of June, 1833, and early in the morning Mrs. Probst sewed $100 inside the lining of my vest. Mr. Probst instilled or tried to instill about as many instructions in- side of my head, how to go to Vincennes and enter an eighty-acre lot of land for him, and I mounted pony and was off on a gallop, down Second street to Main, down Main to Eagle and Lion corner, and then I made a straight wake for Vincennes. Pony and I were excellent friends. Mr. Probst had bought him for Asa and me of Micajah Goodman, over in Sugar Creek township, and gave $15 for him. He was a stocky, stubborn, self-willed little fellow of an Indian pony of considerable power for his size, and of great en- durance. He had a habit of taking the bits in his teeth and running away with me at times. I could only stop him by steering into a mud hole or against a fence.
" Just south of the hill I saw Maj. Lewis emerge from the bushes-you don't remember Maj. Lewis, do you? Well, the Major was very black, very short, wore a high bell-crowned hat, gray hair, a long, blue swallow-tailed coat that reached down to the calves of his legs, with brass buttons. I turned my head the other way, gave the pony the reins -- pony laid back his ears, bared his teeth and made for the Major. 'Take 'a care dar, mine! I tell you, mine!' shouted the Major, and I reigned up just as he entered the hazel bushes, his coat-tail on end and the whites of his eyes gleaming over his shoulder. The danger over he came out, saying: 'Dat hoss is mitey wishus, Massa Bill; you mus' be car'ful.' The Major was an institution, made lots of fun for the boys, not one of whom would hurt a hair on his head. He blackened boots, and his wife (Jenny I think was her name) did washing.
"There were only one or two houses between Terre Haute and 'Old Terre Haute;' three or four between Old Terre Haute and Honey Creek bridge. A Clem family lived next to the bridge. In crossing the mile or so of prairie just south of the creek, passed two frame houses on the left, two on the right, then came the Quaker meeting house in a neck of woods on the left side of the road. Emerging from this strip of woods, the road lay along near the gentle slope to Honey Creek bottom; past Moses Hoggatt's farm on the left, then came Robert Hoggatt's farm, then his store of brick, both on the right; a little farther south on the top of the rising ground was Peter Agney's grog-shop. Nearly the whole of Honey Creek prairie was
278
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
fenced in on the line of the road. South of that prairie the travel- ing was more solitary, the road more wild. After passing Middle- town came Gordontown, a collection of seven or eight substantial new hewed-log houses tenentless, having been deserted some years previously on account of milk sickness. Somewhere not far south of Gordontown I rode up to a house a little back from the road on the right, and asked for a drink of milk. It was brought out to me by a very pleasant looking woman, who, learning I was from Terre Haute inquired if I knew Cyrus Grace (a bandy-legged clerk of William C. and David Linton) ; I think she was his mother.
"After this I saw a fresh horse track, which rather puzzled me, as one foot left a cloven impression in the soft clay. I soon came up with a man riding a gray horse with hisright footsplit. This man was merciless in the number, kind and quality of the questions he asked me in regard to my business at Vincennes; I parried them as well as I could with the truth for a long time, but finding that entirely inadequate to the occasion, I am afraid I invented excuses for my visit to Vincennes and my business there, for which Ihavenever duly repented. I was glad when he turned off to the right with his cloven- footed horse and corn bags, yet he kindly invited me to stop at his house on my return.
" The remainder of the road to Merom was mostly through the forests, now and then a small clearing indicating life.
"I arrived at Merom shortly after noon ; as I alighted at the tavern door I sank to the ground unable to rise; three men ran out and picked me up and carried me into the house. One of these men was John Boudinot, one was Cyrus Bishop, and the other I do not remem- ber, but he was moving with his family to Terre Haute, where he afterward lived. I was very lame from riding so long and so fast without dismounting. The landlord joked me so seriously about Terre Haute that I almost cried with vexation. At last John Bou- dinot said: 'Let the lad alone, Major,' and there was peace. After dinner I went out to see Merom. Merom was in its normal condi- tion-asleep. The nearest approach to any work going on was a tailor slumbering on his bench and a dog gnawing a bone. I walked out to the bluff that overlooks the river, and while there a man lounged along with about as much energy as a soldier would require to haul a shad off of a gridiron. He pointed out to me the many ad- vantages and beauties of Merom, dwelling especially on an eagle's nest in a dry tree on the opposite side of the river. I told him I couldn't see any particular advantage an eagle's nest was to a town. He went off in high dudgeon, saying that I was too young to ap- preciate natural beauties."
Has Merom waked up to the reflection of anything better than an eagle's nest in the State of Illinois ? [Yes, they have a tri-weekly railroad. ]
279
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
"About the middle of the afternoon I was ready to continue my journey. When I was about to mount, the landlord commenced run- ning on Terre Haute again. He must have been pretty severe for I forgot the respect due to my elders and said, as I mounted into my saddle: 'My worthy patriarch (his name was Abraham, Isaac or Jacob) I have seen Merom, and come to the conclusion that God must have created the town, for the people are too lazy to have built it, and have not spirit enough to finish what is begun.' A cane whistled by my head to the other side of the road. I don't think he tried to hit me with it. I added some other impertinence which I have forgotten; the men on the porch laughing loudly at me, or the landlord, I didn't know which ; I don't know that I cared.
"As I rode through the woods after leaving Merom, I pondered over the thought of how great a traveler I was becoming. It may be well to remark in this conversation that these lines are on ship board at a point 192 miles distant south from the southwest extrem- ity of Van Dieman's land, precisely the same longitude.
" I arrived at Mr. Webb's, six miles below Merom, long before sunset. There was no one at home but a girl some twelve or thirteen years old. She went with a run to the stable to put away pony, and then came back to sit on the steps of the porch to talk. We had not been there long before a traveler came along from the south on horseback. He had evidently neither traveled far nor fast that day. He was dressed in black, and with great neatness-not a spot or blemish on his shirt bosom, a very (for those times) narrow, black neckerchief; his hair smoothly brushed, and his hat shining. He was tall and slender, not a wrinkle on his smooth-shaven face; his hair light and thin, but he was not inclined to be bald. I was much pleased with his looks, and the young girl and I put away his horse, and then went back and resumed our seat on the steps. Meantime the stranger had prepared his toilet and was walking in front of the house when we returned. He would occasionally speak to us a pleasant word. After a while he came and sat down between us, which I didn't thank him for, and I felt very indignant when he took the girl's hand in his; my anger soon passed away, however, as he talked. I had never heard a man talk as he did to us two children. There was a kind of manner of speech and tone of voice that invited one to ask questions. He told of places where he had been. I deemed him a great traveler, and must have tired him with questions, but he answered all cheerfully. About sunset Mr. Webb and wife returned, and we soon had supper; after which the stranger and I walked up and down the road in front of the house. He had made me talk, and I suppose I uttered some first-rate nonsense. I was an ardent Whig, and I suppose I abused Jackson and Ratliff Boone and the Indian agent, who had just been elected to the United
18
280
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
States Senate. At this the stranger said, 'Anybody might know I came from Terre Haute;' whereupon I flew at him with, 'And isn't Terre Haute as good as any other place to come from ?' 'Oh, yes, any one had better come from there than any place I know of,' he replied. I could faintly see there was a covert meaning to what he said, and I thought best to make a drawn battle of it. He in- quired my name, and I told him, with the addition that I was called tow-head sometimes. I was impertinent enough to ask his. I did not quite catch the name; it sounded like Jones or Bohrens, but most like Bones, and I called him Mr. Jones. We were both ready to start the next morning at the break of day. As I was about to start to mount Mr. Jones came up to me, and wishing me good-bye, he added: 'If you should ever have occasion to speak of me and should be asked what my name was, tell them John Tipton.' Here was a pretty kettle of fish! John Tipton! Indian agent! United States Senator from Indiana, and what not! The very man I had been abusing. I begged his pardon as well as I could. He told me ' never mind;' he had had, and expected to have, worse things said of him than I had uttered. I saw him again in 1837, when he was going south, perhaps to attend Martin Van Buren's extra session of Congress. He stopped all night at Prairieton, where I was living at that time. He laughed when I reminded him of our meeting at Webb's. He asked me if I had got no farther than Prairieton on my travels.
" A heavy thunder storm had passed during the night, and Mr. Webb told me I had a creek to cross which would probably be swollen, and for me not to attempt the crossing if the water was above a certain mark, but to go a quarter of a mile farther up, where I would find shoal water. I found the water up to the mark, and I plunged in-the pony came near being swept away-gaining the other bank, I halted, looked back, shook my head and started on at a gallop. I took breakfast at Samuel Emerson's. Mr. E. was pro- prietor of the mail stage between Terre Haute and Vincennes, I believe. Shortly after leaving that place, in crossing a little stream of water the pony made a jump and I was left sitting in the mud and water. I slipped off my nether garments, however, washed them in the brook, and dried them on the bushes in the warm sun. I stopped at a farmhouse about half way between Mr. Emerson's and Vincennes and asked for a drink of milk. A boy brought it to me, and asked me to dismount and get something to eat. I de- clined, and was soon at Vincennes. I was not long in finding the land office, or one of them. I forget which I had to go to first, register or receiver. I felt very important when I told the gen- tleman in the office that I wished to enter an eighty-acre lot, and re- peated the town, range, section, quarter and half quarter, and then
281
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
compared my little slip of paper with his noting. He asked me if I were not very young to be sent so far on such business. I must have felt twice as large as usual when I told him I did not think anyone too young to do what he was able to do.' He accompanied me to the other office, where the business was soon settled. One of the gentlemen, I forget which, offered to let me stop at his house while I remained at Vincennes. One of the gentlemen's name was John Badolet. I remember him well, for I took dinner with him at Homer Johnson's hotel a few days afterward.
"I stopped with a family named Bailey. There were two brothers, John and Thomas, and a sister named Emeline, besides a little girl named Clara. Mrs. Probst and Mrs. Lane, of Terre Haute, were also sisters of the family. I had a grand time at Vincennes, last- ing 'all day Wednesday and Thursday. Cherries were just ripe and I put many of them where they would do the most good. I stuffed little Clara, who was only four years old, so full that Emeline scolded me.
" The next day after my arrival I wandered about the town and saw much to wonder at. I saw a cotton factory, wind-mills invented by a man named Coleman, that spread as much canvas as a line of battle ships leaving the hub of the universe-the printing offices of the Vincennes Gazette and the Vincennes Sun. Mr. Caddington was the editor of the first, and I know Elisha Stout was editor of the other, and a stout old Democrat he was, too. His editorials were in the first person singular, very non-committal, except in politics ; here is an example plastered to my memory, 'I am cred- itably informed that the Wabash River is on the rise.' [In all the books is there in a sentence a neater or more complete picture than this of the Captain's about the "stout old Democrat?"-Editor. ]
"I saw a sign which read: 'Rum, Gin and Brandy, Raisins and Candy.' I fell in with a lot of boys throwing tin in the rear of Nick Smith's tin shop. They asked who I was and where I came from. After they had satisfied themselves on this point, they wanted to know if I wanted to fight. I told them ' no,' whereupon one of them dared me to knock a chip off his shoulder. I told him he might keep the chip there, I had no objections. He then at- tempted to put one on my shoulder. I stepped aside and told him I didn't want it there; he followed and made the second attempt, when I struck him on the side of the head with my fist. This was a signal for hostilities. All hands pitched in, the consequence was the distinguished traveler from Terre Haute got a pretty thorough pounding. I made out to get hold of a hickory switch, and made some of them hop about like French dancing masters, and kept them all at bay. Just at this stage of the engagement some one took hold of my arm. I looked around and saw Jake Gullinger, he
282
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
said: 'What, Billy, are you here fighting half the boys in Vincennes!' He made us all make friends; then we set to work ornamenting Nick Smith's shop with bits of tin. Poor Jake; he was a horse-race rider or a race-horse rider, I don't know which you term it. He was killed, I believe, by a fall from a horse some three or four years afterward. His mother, I think, lived out in Lost Creek township.
"On Friday morning, just as day was breaking, I mounted pony and started on my way home, with a heart overflowing with joy and my pockets stuffed with doughnuts. I took a pretty early breakfast at Mr. Emerson's and pushed on for Mr. Welsh's, where I arrived a little before noon. I didn't leave there until the mid- dle of the afternoon or later, finding it hard to leave the little girl. We parted, however, and we have never met since, for she was not at Mr. Welsh's the following year when I went to Vincennes. I intended to have galloped through Merom, and was doing so when I was stopped by my friend of the Eagle's Nest. I had observed a number of the more enterprising citizens asleep on the sunny sides of their houses, apparently preparing for the fall campaign The Eagle's Nest inquired the
against the fever and ague.
news. I informed him that Gen. Jackson had been elected President the November previous. He told me they had already received the intelligence through Mr. William S. Cruft, who had rid- den over from Carlisle the day before and found a small boy awake in the streets and had told him. I was also hailed and brought to bay by the patriarchal innkeeper, to whom I gave a newspaper, had a short talk with him and resumed my journey. He didn't say ' Terre Haute ' once. After I left him I began to think what a cheery voice he had and how kindly he spoke; how rudely I had spoken to him the Monday before; my heart misgave me, I turned the pony, went back and asked forgiveness for my impoliteness. You can't tell how light my heart became as soon as I had done this.
"I remember nobody attached to that house except the boy with the freckled face and red hair. After supper he took a position near the sign-post and repeated some lines with considerable emphasis.
A stranger traveling through the West By chance espied a Hoosier's nest, And fearing he might be benighted He hailed the house and then alighted. The Hoosier met him at the door; Their salutations soon were o'er, He led the stranger's horse aside And to a sturdy sapling tied. Then having stripped the saddle off, He fed him at a sugar trough; The tired traveler walked to the door, Had to stoop to enter in, The entrance closing with a pin.
.
283
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
Inside two rifles placed above the door,
Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor,
Dried pumpkin overhead was hung.
Around the fire was gathered soon Some five or six young Hoosieroons,
With mush and milk, tin cups and spoons,
White heads, bare feet and dirty faces,
Seemed well inclined to keep their places.
Supper over it was not long before Good madam, anxious to display
Her rough and undisputed sway, Her offspring to the ladder led And cuffed the youngsters up to bed.
Then the conversation became general, but
Mine host he centered his affections On game, and ranges and quarter sections.
" This fragment lias clung to my recollection nearly fifty years. I never heard it repeated but the one time, never saw it in print. The boy said he saw it in a Cincinnati paper. We sat on a sloping bank near the sign-post and talked over our hopes and intentions. He was going to congress and I was going to see the world. I wonder which has come the nearest to his goal ?
" The following morning I was off bright and early. My desire to know the news of the painter of the landlord's sign was very great; he had evidently taken great pride in this exhibition of his literary attainments, for he had attached his name to it. If I only
›* knew his name I would assist thus far to immortalize it. * *
" It was a lovely morning and quite early when I came to the vicinity of Gordontown. I checked up to a slow walk to enjoy the solitude; to me these deserted houses were a Tadmor. Often and often, even to this day does Gordontown haunt my dreams, always however, connected with a lone rock away down in the great Southern ocean, over which I have just passed; that rock in dreams appears to rise sheer aloft a thousand feet; its base baffles the briny waves; its summit renders asunder the low, swift flying clouds; no animal life can exist upon it; no wild sea-bird can hover near it, no sacred albatross on balanced wing can sail around it. How often in these visions of the night have I hove my ship to, under stern stay-sails under its lee amid the thick haze and upon the troubled waters, and watched this seeming embodiment of desolation and despair fade away in the mists of the night. Walking my horse slowly along I was soon startled by a herd of seven or eight deer trotting out from among the houses into the road. As soon as they saw me they bounded up the road to the northi with pony after them. They soon sprang into the woods to the left and I galloped along to Middletown, where I watered the pony and met Steve Taylor (saw-buck). Stephen rode two or three miles along the road with me and then turned off to the left as the deer did, but not with the same speed. When going south through Honey Creek
284
HISTORY OF VIGO COUNTY.
prairie I had noticed the height of the corn, and now returning I was surprised at its growth in five days.
" Just north of where Prairieton was afterward laid out I came to a two-story white frame house. A little girl some ten years old was in the yard. She had long dark curls and very bright eyes. I asked if I could get a drink of water for myself and pony. She ran and opened a side-gate and I rode in and dismounted at the well. A large trough stood by the pump. I filled it with water and plunged my head into it to the chin-a practice that I have followed so far back that my mind runneth not to the contrary. The little girl exclaimed with astonishment: 'Is that the way thee drinks water ?' I answered: 'No, miss, I don't drink water when I can get milk.' 'Oh!' she said, 'thee has never been weaned yet. But thee must not let Aunt Racheal hear thee call me miss.'
"' What then is your name ?' I asked.
"' Mary Johnson Hoggatt' she replied, scampering off.
"I heard her ask 'Aunt Rachel' for 'a bowl of milk for that crazy boy out there.' 'Aunt Rachel' sent out a towel and a comb. I had let the water run out and by this time refilled the trough, and the pony plunged his nose into the water half way to his eyes.
"' Why, that horse does just the same as thee did. Does he want some milk too ?'
" I soon dispatched mym ilk and its accompaniments and thanked my little bright-eyed handmaiden, mounted the pony and was again on my homeward-bound passage. Near the Friends meeting-house I met Capt. McComb, Col. Dowling's veteran voyageur, who in 1836 had been forty-two trips to New Orleans. I went to New Orleans with him in 1838 on his forty-fourth trip. He was going to hit a man over the head one day with the skillet-lid for speaking ill of me. I had a short yarn with him. I stopped to have a few words with Jacob Jones at his house. I always liked Jacob because he would tell me every time I saw him that when he was assisting to build a chimney to my father's house, they came to work one morn- ing in September, and were told that they could not work that day as a man-child had been born during the night. His name was to be William and is the writer hereof.
" I crossed Honey creek at the usual place, of course I would not cross at a bridge if I could help it.
"I stopped my horse to view the surroundings, where the ghost had lately been seen-near the corner where the same year the corn grew eighteen feet high.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.