History of Wabash County, Indiana, Volume I, Part 43

Author: Weesner, Clarkson W., 1841-1924
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1020


USA > Indiana > Wabash County > History of Wabash County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 43


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


The reader must keep these facts in mind, in order to reconcile ap- parently conflicting statements as to the first settlers of the two town- ships. For instance, both Pleasant and Paw Paw townships often elaim John Anderson as their pioneer settler. Undoubtedly he was the first white resident in the Pleasant Township of 1836, but is displaced by an- other when the Pleasant Township of 1873, or of the present, is eon- sidered.


JESSE MOYER, FIRST SETTLER


The local historians have reached an agreement that the first settler within the limits of Pleasant Township of today was Jesse Moyer, one of a party which in 1835, came through from Wayne County, Ohio, its members locating either in Miami or Wabash counties, near the boundary line. The story of that journey and especially the eircum- stances which determined Mr. Moyer's choice of a location in Pleasant Township are thus told by Matthias Lukens, then a youth and an en- thusiastie member of the colony: "I came through from Wayne County, Ohio, with a company of movers going to the Wabash Valley, in the spring of 1835. There were two families, with only two wagons-one ox team and one team of horses. The families were these: Matthias Moyer's, seven in all; Jesse Moyer's (brothers), five in family ; as also


448


SCHOOL Nº 8 PLEASANT TTOWNSHIP FRANK IRELAND TRUSTEE.


A.K


GRIFFITH & FAIR ARCHITECTS


FORTWAYNE INI.


SCHOOL NO. 8, PLEASANT TOWNSHIP


HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


.


,


i


T


449


IIISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


Jacob Gill, a widower with no children, and myself, who was a boy eigh- teen years old, and came with them and stayed. Father (Abraham Lukens) came two years later.


TYPICAL PIONEER TRIP


"In passing through the Black Swamp, that awful place, where so many horses were killed and wagons broken, and where there were so many taverns to take in the weary and sometimes discouraged emi- grants (there being thirty-two of them in thirty-one miles) our teams got completely stalled and the wagons were swamped. Some of the goods were taken from the wagons and left at one of the taverns, and they floundered through with the rest and with themselves until they reached the head of the rapids. Ilere Matthias Moyer was taken sick at the house of his brother-in-law, Amarah Wilson, and we stayed there until he became able to travel. Only Jesse Moyer and Jacob Gill went back with the wagons and brought the goods which had been left behind, the distance being some twenty-five or thirty miles. These goods thus brought forward were loaded upon some pirogues and sent onward to Fort Wayne, and the company of emigrants resumed their westward way to the residence of Colonel John Anderson in Wabash County. The Moyers had been well acquainted with Mr. Anderson before he left Ohio, and they were gladly welcomed by him in his new home in the Eel River Valley.


"To pass over the distance of thirty-one miles across the Black Swamp consumed ten days and the whole journey consumed from May 4 to July 25, 1835. After arriving at Colonel Anderson's the teams, with two of the men, returned to Fort Wayne for the goods which had been con- veyed from the head of the rapids of the Manmee to that place."


MEMBERS OF THE FIRST COLONY


The outcome of the migration was that Matthias Moyer settled in Miami County not far from Niconza meeting house, and Jesse Moyer, his brother, located with his family near Squirrel Creek in the north- eastern part of section 23. Matthias Lukens was a distant relative of the latter, Abraham Lukens, his father, having married a cousin of Jesse Moyer's. The elder Mr. Lukens came to the locality with his fam- ily in 1837, but it was Matthias who became the owner of the large tracts of land south and east of the lake which bears his name. Vol. 1-29


7


-


450


HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


SAMUEL THURSTON AND FAMILY


In August, 1835, the month after Jesse Moyer located just north of what was afterward Shiloh Church, Samuel Thurston, wife and two young sons, reached the Wabash Valley from Delaware County, Ohio, in company with a family of neighbors. They had come through in an ox wagon in the usual way. Mr. Thurston had made no prospecting trip, and knew neither the country nor its people. His first intention had been to settle at Wabash. but he did not like the prospects there and so pushed on toward the north, thinking to find his way to Turkey Prairie. As they camped on the banks of Silver Creek, at an old Indian stopping place, the country seemed so pleasant that the wife said "This is a fine place for a home-let's stop here." And so they did, Mr. Thurston entering an "eighty" in section 7, three miles west of Laketon. This traet became the family homestead, where five other ehildren were born and where both parents died-the father in 1847 and the mother in 1861. Mr. Thurston was a faithful Methodist and a popular eitizen and as his house was near the center of the township, it was long a favorite gather- ing place for those concerned both in religious and political matters. IIe was the second permanent settler in Pleasant Township and a good, use- ful pioneer, his wife and children also honoring the family name.


THE FIRST ELECTION AT THURSTON'S


The first election in Pleasant Township was ordered to be held on the second Saturday in July, 1836, at the house of Samuel Thurston, to elect a justice of the peace. Soon afterward the county commissioners appointed the following officers: Samuel Thurston, constable; John Fer- ree and Jesse Moyer, overseers of the poor; Cornelius Ferree, inspector of elections; Richard Adams and James Larew, fence viewers.


According to this account of the first election, told by an old settler, there were but five legal voters present: "In the fall of 1836 the im- portance of the presidential election about to take place so impressed the minds of the few settlers that they met and organized Pleasant Township, in order to seeure the privilege of holding an election within their own limits. The voting was done at the house of Samuel Thurston, and there were but five legal voters present, those being all on hand who had been in the State a year-just enough to form their board and no more. Their names were : Jesse Moyer, John Anderson, Joe Dennis, John Ferree and Jacob Gill. There were three Whigs and two Demo- crats; but as the Democrats did not know the names of their eleetors, only


.


-


-


-


1


451


HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


three ballots were cast, and two of the five legal voters, the judges of election, carried the returns to Wabash."


THE FIRST CHURCH


The first regularly organized church in Pleasant Township seems to have been organized by the German Baptists, their meeting house be- ing about three miles northeast of Laketon in the northeast corner of section 2. That locality is some two miles west of North Manchester, from which place the bulk of the membership was drawn. The society, which was formed in 1836, was called the North Manchester Church, and for a long time its meetings were held in dwellings and barns; the larger gatherings took place in the latter. Among the early members who threw open their houses and barns were Joseph Harter, Eli Harter, Israel Harter, Adam Ohmart, Isaac Ullery, Jacob Metzgar, Daniel Cripe, Daniel Swank, Henry Heeter and Nicholas Frantz. The meeting house was built about 1858. This society became very strong, and in the early '80s was split into two congregations, the separatists building a church on the line between Pleasant and Chester townships.


ROBERT SCHULER BUYS THE MOYER PLACE


In 1837 Robert Seller, with his wife and family, came from Penn- sylvania and while going up the valley of Squirrel Creek met Jesse Moyer and his family in their cabin north of that stream. The location pleased them so well that they bought the place and at once occupied it. At that time, Daniel Schuler, the eldest son of the family, was in his twenty-first year.


Nine years afterward (in 1846) Mr. Schuler married Miss Mary A. Sowers and they became the parents of ten children. By a second mar- riage Mr. Schuler had three children. For thirty-five years he was a ruling elder in the Shiloh Church. Considering all, the Schuler family is as well known as any in the township.


FOUNDING OF THE SHILOH CHURCH


Shiloh Presbyterian Church was one of the first religious organiza- tions to be perfected in the township. It was founded on October 25, 1840, at the house of Robert Schuler, in the northeast quarter of sec- tion 23 just north of Squirrel Creek. The officiating clergyman was Rev. Asa Johnson, of Peru, and the first members of the society were Robert and Elizabeth Schuler, John and Matthew Miller, A. D. Seward, Hannah


المطلوبة


0


452


HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


Johnson and Jacob Rantz. Robert Schuler, who was considered the founder of the Shiloh Church, was ordained an elder in March, 1841, and died in 1848. James Jack, who was chosen in 1843, passed away the same year. ITis son, Rev. Andrew D. Jack, served Shiloh Church for two terms. The congregation at one time reached a membership of about one hundred.


THE GAMBLES AND EARLY METHODISMI


The pioneer Methodists largely centered their activities around the Gamble family and their farm in sections 19 and 30, northwestern part of the township. Thomas Gamble, his wife and several children located in section 19 during the year 1838, coming from Kosciusko County, In- diana. The father died after about ten years' residence in Pleasant Township, the widowed mother surviving him at least thirty-five years. The Gamble estate was a large one, and for many years the widow retained nearly two hundred acres of it, lying in the southwestern part of see- tion 19 and the northwestern quarter of section 30.


When the family first came to the original elaim in section 19 dur- ing the month of March, 1838, a snow storm covered the ground to a depth of a foot, and while the older members were building a cabin, the younger ones lay under a brush heap. At that time there was only one house between their cabin and Warsaw, fourteen miles north, and Mr. Gamble had to go to Elkhart Prairie, some forty miles, for breadstuffs until they could raise some grain. As he was obliged to go with a yoke of oxen, the family were in serious straits before he returned. But that was the expected in pioneer life. Toward the south, it was three or four miles to Samuel Thurston's and farther yet to Mr. Luken's.


But within the next two or three years a number of settlers located . in the northern and northwestern portions of the township and Rev. Ansel Beach, the Methodist missionary, commeneed to preach in the little schoolhouse several miles south. Protracted meetings were also held in Mr. Gamble's barn, as well as several camp meetings in the vicinity, at "Tucker's Camp Ground." Finally, about 1842, the Methodists of the neighborhood erected a hewed-log meeting house, which stood about half a mile east of the Gamble farm, at the cross roads where sections 19, 20, 29 and 30 meet. The Tucker Camp Ground was some distance southwest.


The old log meeting house of the Pleasant M. E. Church stood until 1874, when a small frame building was erected for the holding of religious services. Mrs. Thomas Gamble continued steadfast in the support of its activities until her death at a venerable age, and her children and grandchildren have followed in her footsteps.


-


=


1


1


453


HISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY


LAKETON PLATTED


On September 8, 1836, Laketon was platted by Hugh Hanna, Isaac Thomas and J. D. Cassatt. This was the first town laid out away from the Wabash River, and it was the ambition of its proprietors to make it a rival of North Manchester as a trading center in the Eel River Valley. There were ninety lots lying near the river on the north side, and the streets were Pottawatomie, Spring, Main, Mill and Tamarack, north and south, and Eel, Wabash, Lake and Wayne east and west. Additions were afterward made by S. P. Petrie and I. R. Mendenhall.


The site of the old Laketon is a level and beautiful tract, with Round Lake at the west and Long Lake at the northwest. A mile west, on Silver Creek, James Cox established a grist mill, or corn eracker, about the time the town was platted. William Johnson and Ira Burr were the first merchants of the place, and within a few years a blacksmith shop was built and several dwellings appeared, while along in the '80s it had a number of stores, a schoolhouse (District No. 12), and a newspaper. The last-named, the Laketon Herald, was established in 1883 by Charles A. Richards, then a veteran printer who had been "at the case" for over sixty years.


Soon after the completion of the Detroit, Eel River & Illinois Rail- road, in 1873, Daniel Van Buskirk laid out South Laketon, south of the river, as an addition to the original town, a mile to the north. In 1874 Mr. Van Buskirk established a large general store, and in the same year Philip & Thomas Ijam set a sawmill in operation. Not long afterward they gave their family name to the postoffice established at the new addition, which was long known as Ijamsville or South Laketon and is now designated by the former name.


LAKETON AND IJAMSVILLE JOINED


Mr. Van Buskirk, however, continued to be perhaps the strongest moving force at South Laketon, operating at times a sawmill, a black- smith shop and a tile factory. Among the other early industries was the brickyard of F. II. Williamson, established in 1880, and the shingle factory of George W. Harter, started in 1881. For many years the Ohmart family has been a strong factor in the progress of Laketon- Abram, Jacob and J. E. Ohmart, the last named being a present-day resident of the place. In 1883 the Chicago & Atlantie Railroad was com- pleted through Pleasant Township, running between ljamsville and Laketon.


A


T


-


454


HISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY


-


E


1


LAKETON PUBLIC SCHOOL


455


HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


LAKETON OF THE PRESENT


But Laketon, as a whole, is still but a rural town. It has a flour mill, a depot of the Standard Oil Works, a bank, three general stores, a hard- ware store, two drug stores and perhaps half a dozen other business houses. The villagers are accommodated by a good union school, housed in a large two story and basement building erected in 1897. The superin- tendent of schools is E. E. Roby and principal, Aaron Miller, and they are assisted by six teachers in the Laketon school and two at the Ijams- ville building.


THE STATE BANK


The Laketon State Bank was organized August 31, 1912. It has a capital stock of $25,000; deposits of over $69,000; loans, $75,000 and cash and money in other banks, $14,775. The bank owns its own build- ing at the corner of Lake and Main streets, and its officers are: Jacob Miller, president ; Quincy A. Earl, vice president, and George F. Ogden, cashier.


THE CHURCHIES


The United Brethren Church at Laketon is one of the oldest in the township. Preaching and worship by this body of Christians began about 1853, the clergyman officiating being Reverend Mr. Heischer. The meetings were at first held in a vacant store house, kindly offered for the purpose. Among the earliest members of the society were David War- ner and wife, Jacob Warner and wife, William Sholty and wife and Jacob Lautzenhizer and wife. Rev. John Frantz held a series of revivals in the earlier period of the church's history which materially added to its membership and influence. The first house of worship specially dedi- cated to Divine services was completed by the United Brethren in 1857 and dedicated by Rev. Jacob Rinehart. The building still stands, and is used by the township as a public hall. The trustees of the church during the erection of that building were William Sholty, David Warner and Levi Miller. The present church edifice was completed in 1904, and is a brick structure erected under the trusteeship of I. E. Wyland, V. W. Fites, M. T. Sholty, Daniel Wertenberger and J. E. Thomas. Among the pastors who have served this church may be men- tioned Revs. Ambrose Penland, Presley Wells, S. W. Wells, Noah Surface, D. M. B. Patton, J. Morrison, Z. W. Webster, J. N. Martin, William Simons, A. M. Cummins, J. A. Farmer, J. M. Baker, R. J. Parrett, J. S.


456


IHISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY


Miller, G. Z. Mattox, J. E. Grimes, D. Robinson, T. A. Stangle, C. A. Siekafoose, I. S. Cleaver, J. W. Bonnell, J. A. Kek, J. A. Farmer, Noah McCoy, S. M. Hill, N. E. Tillman, C. J. Miner and J. N. Martin (the present incumbent ) .


The Wesleyan Methodist Church at Laketon was founded in 1897, and a house of worship was erected in 1903. The society has a member- ship of forty-five and is under the pastorate of Rev. H. G. Brown.


NEW HARRISBURG


The two old postoffices of New Harrisburg and Rose Hill should be briefly mentioned. The former, which fifteen or twenty years ago was called a "village," lay among the hills of Pleasant Township, mostly in the southwest quarter of seetion 35, and wandered over into Miami County. George Gearhart had laid it out as early as April, 1856. Wil- liam Carpenter built a small frame dwelling and a store on the Wabash County side in 1858, and within the next quarter of a century there are records in the history of New Harrisburg of the establishment of three more stores, a blacksmith and a wagon shop, several physicians and some mills. In 1876 the postoffice at Niconza, Miami County, three miles south, was moved to the village, and in April, 1883, the Chicago & Atlantic Railroad just grazed its southern edge and allowed it the privilege of a depot. At that time it had a Methodist church (built in 1873), about twenty-five dwellings and perhaps a hundred people. This was the high tide of its life.


ROSE HILL


Rose Hill, the postoffice on the north line of Pleasant Township, was established when the Cincinnati, Wabash & Michigan Railroad was built through the township and the county, in 1872. As it is about six miles from Laketon, eight miles from New Harrisburg and five miles from North Manchester, its location was considered good for a growing cen- ter of trade. But all such calculations and predictions went for naught.


RAILROADS AND TOWNS


The general status of the railroads which traverse Pleasant Town- ship, as well as their relation to the towns within its limits, in 1884, is thus described by a local authority of those times: "The Detroit, Eel River & Illinois Railroad was projected about 1854, and consid- erable work was done upon the route, but at that time it proved a


457


HISTORY OF WABASH COUNTY


failure. Many years afterward the project was renewed, and this time the enterprise was accomplished, being completed in 1871. It enters Pleasant Township in section 21, passes through sections 22, 15, 14, 11, 12 and 1, town 29, range 6. Its track is in the valley of Eel River, and upon the south side of the stream. South Laketon ( Ijamsville P. O.) is the only village upon its route in this township. The length of tracks of this railroad in Pleasant is five miles, running in a direction nearly from northeast to southwest, its course through Paw Paw and Pleasant being in a straight line for eight miles from a point southwest of Roaun to about half a mile east of Ijamsville, and in a slightly varying course two miles more straight to the east line of Pleasant, passing thence into Chester Township and to North Manchester.


"This railway is now combined in the system called the Wabash, or more fully, the Wabash. St. Louis & Pacific."


The Cincinnati, Wabash & Michigan Railroad passed from south to north, through Wabash and North Manchester, where it deflected to the northwest and ent through the northeast corner of Pleasant Township, which it left at Rose Hill, which was never more than a postoffice and a by-station.


The 1884 account continues: "The Chicago & Atlantie Railroad is a late enterprise, only completed in April, 1883. It passes through the township in a northwesterly direction, crossing the Eel River Railroad about half a mile east of South Laketon, passing between Laketon and Ijamsville about half a mile from each place and spanning Eel River itself near the latter. It crosses Silver Creek upon a high and extensive trestlework, and the track leaves the township near and south of the little town of New Harrisburg upon section 35, having entered it on section 13. The length in the township is about nine miles, crossing as it does its entire extent from east to west. This new road is of great advantage to Pleasant Township, since it passes near all three of its towns, offering the direct means of increase and development of traffic to them all, and thus to the township at large.


"The route promises, in fact, to be an important thoroughfare be- tween the East and West, possibly the most so of any road in the county. It will be of considerable advantage, especially to the towns of Laketon and New Harrisburg, which before its advent were floundering help- lessly and hopelessly in their distance from railroad facilities, and will in like manner be of great service to the country dwellers in their re- spective regions."


CHAPTER XXVII WALTZ TOWNSHIP


GENERAL DESCRIPTION-DRAWBACKS TO SETTLEMENT-THE RICHARD- VILLE TRACTS-TWO " FIRST" SETTLERS-LOCATED IN 1839-46-DAVID RIDENOUR-ENOCH JACKSON AND THE WEESNERS-LAND ENTRIES OF 1847-ACCOUNTING FOR WALTZ'S AREA-CREATION OF THE TOWNSHIP -TWIN SPRINGS, OR SPRINGFIELD-MOUNT VERNON-SOMERSET- SUGAR GROVE M. E. CHURCH-THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-MOUNT PLEASANT M. E. CHURCH AND CEMETERY-GERMAN BAPTISTS OF THE TOWNSHIP-PLEASANT GROVE WESLEYAN CHURCH.


Waltz Township embraces forty-eight sections in the southwest cor- ner of Wabash County, being eight miles east and west and six miles north and south. It is drained and watered by the Mississinewa River and its tributaries, which traverse all but its northern sections; in these rise the headwaters of Mill Creek, which flows northward and empties into the Wabash below Wabash City. Ten Mile Creek, the chief tribu- tary of the Mississinewa within the limits of the township, rises in the northern edge of Grant County, takes a westerly course through the southeast portion of the township, and enters the river a little east of Somerset.


GENERAL DESCRIPTION


The Mississinewa extends in a very crooked channel through the sonthern portions of the township, flowing in a generally northwestern direction toward the Wabash River, which it joins at about the center of Miami County. Its current is strong and has furnished an abundance of water-power to the people of Waltz Township, who have established several fairly sueeessful mills on its banks in the vicinity of Somerset and Mount Vernon. Mill Creek is so named not because of any industries which have been planted on its banks within Waltz Township, but be- cause the Government built the old Indian mill on that stream not far from its month in Noble Township.


458


اناته منانه


0


459


HISTORY OF WABASHI COUNTY


Waltz Township was of late development, and has never shown much progress from an urban standpoint. It is still almost purely a collee- tion of rural communities and scattered farms, virtually the only attempts at condensed settlements having been made at Somerset and Mount Vernon, in the southeastern portion in the valley of the Mississinewa. The only invasion of its territory by the railroad was in 1872, when the Cincinnati, Wabash & Michigan ent off a few acres of its extreme north- east corner.


DRAWBACKS TO SETTLEMENT


The chief reason for the tardy settlement of Waltz Township was that the lands within its limits were all included in the Big Miami Re- serve and, although they were surveyed in 1839, the year before they were ceded by the Miamis to the United States, the Government did not issue patents, or titles to them until 1847-48. The consequence was that settlers were loth to take up homesteads, the tenure to which was so uncertain, and especially as the bulk of the Indians did not leave the country until 1847.


Besides the canal and other public lands in Waltz Township, were several individual reserves to various head men of the Miamis, some of which were disposed of soon after the treaty was officially proclaimed by President Tyler in 1841. The chief of these special reserves were the Richardville tract of 1,280 acres (sections 4 and 5) ; Reserve 25, about 640 acres, on the western border of the township south of the Mississinewa River; Reserve No. 26, 960 acres on the northern banks of the river, about a mile east of No. 25, and a part of the Me-shin-go-me-sia tract, comprising 1,680 aeres north of the river and west of the eastern bound- ary of the township in sections 13, 14, 23, 24, 25 and 26.


THE RICHARDVILLE TRACTS


Chief Richardville had a grant of seven sections altogether, under the 1840 treaty, to be located at his pleasure, and his estate on Cart Creek, which his heirs held for years, cut out a large number of settlers there.


One traet of the Richardville grants was a little northeast of Somerset and was known as the Twin Springs seetion, named because of the presence thereon of two constant springs of elear, cold water. Even before this selection was made by the heirs of the chief in about 1841, a Frenchman named Krutzan is said to have located at that locality, with his Indian wife, built a rude log honse and entertained travelers, who




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.