USA > Indiana > Vanderburgh County > Evansville > History of the city of Evansville and Vanderburg County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 32
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HEATING AND LIGHTING.
One of the greatest features of any great city is its system of lighting and also its heating, though regarding this latter part it is a matter which has only very recently come up in the city of Evansville. The great cities all over the world today are striving with each other in these days of elec- tricity to make their streets so beautiful at night that they will be one pan- orama of attraction and thereby attract and induce to stay in the cities, over night, untold thousands, yes, millions, of people, who in the old days went to small towns and at the approach of sunset, hitched up their wagons and drove home. In those early days, the approach of night meant the absolute cessation of business. All shopping was done during the day, as no house- wife ever cared to examine goods by the light of an old candle of some kind and, later on, a smoking oil lamp, so that in the early days of Evans-
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ville, comparatively speaking, it was decided that the city should be well lighted, no matter what other improvements they made, and in 1852 the legislature of Indiana granted a charter to the Evansville Gas Works, the value of the original stock being valued at $50,000. The gas works was built by John Jeffrey & Co., contractors, and the first officers were Clarence J. Keats, president, John J. Chandler, secretary. The Chandler family have always been identified with gas stock and are to this day. While the works were being built, Hon. James G. Jones was mayor and it was only five years after the city had been incorporated. The gas company began with only one hundred and fifteen consumers and there were many who held back and were disposed to disparage the new light, and some of them who ought to have had better sense even claimed that it was an unsafe light and liable to explode at any time. It would be amusing if some of those old chronic kickers of the old day could now be brought face to face with modern inventions in gas and electricity. However, there were too many of them, just as there have always been too many chronic kickers in Evans- ville and the early history of the company was disastrous. For quite a number of years there was not enough gas sold to meet expenses, but as the city began to grow rapidly, the investment soon became a paying one and the capital of the works has increased rapidly, until now the quality of the gas is first class and the wants of the public have been quickly met and perhaps the only bar in the march of improvement is that electricity is so rapidly taking the place of gas for lighting purposes. But it must be re- membered that gas will be used for a great many years for common pur- poses and that at present there is not any agent known which can take its place. When one stops to think of the cleanliness and the quickness with which a fire can be made and soon be ready for cooking in a gas stove, it would seem foolish for any except large families to dally with any other fuel for cooking. Wood has gone to a price that makes it prohibitory, while coal, even at its low price in Evansville, is a filthy article to use in cooking. Again, the gas stove is being constantly improved and is far dif- ferent from the old article of even ten years ago, which was apt to blow up at any time, though the cases of explosions of gas stoves are few and far between. For a long time our people were content to use gas for lighting purposes, but the rapidity with which the electricity was being put into use in other cities made even the backward ones believe that electric lighting would be a good thing for Evansville. So in the year 1884 the first elec- tric lighting plant was established and soon afterwards it consolidated with the gas company under the name of The Evansville Gas and Electric Light Company. The officers of the old company were very conservative men : F. J. Reitz, president, R. K. Dunkerson, vice president, Samuel Bayard, treasurer, and Thomas E. Garvin, R. K. Dunkerson, F. J. Reitz, Samuel Bayard and William Heilman, directors. At the end of the first year there were about sixteen hundred gas consumers and some fifty electric light con- sumers. Evansville went through the regular trials of all other cities in
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the way of finding the correct lights for her streets. The first electric light towers and arches will be remembered. They were the subject of endless discussion, many predicting that no lights on towers would ever give the correct lighting on the surface of the streets and sidewalks below, and this was soon found to be a fact. Evansville being a city of trees, the light poured down from the arches on to the trees and made the sidewalks ab- solutely dense in their blackness. True, one might walk in the center of the street and get light, but sidewalks and not streets are made for walk- ing. All sorts of experiments were tried, until finally the old towers were taken down, as were also the great majority of electric arches, and the city is now lighted by street corner lamps which are well and carefully attended to and with the exception of some of the outer streets where lamps have not been placed on corners, this is a remarkably well-lighted city. As with everything else, the curse of politics had its hand in the Gas and Electric Light Company and during times when contracts were to be made, it has been said that various itching palms had to be greased. Of this it is need- less to say anything. That kind of palms is so common in the city as to not create much interest one way or the other. Of late another aspirant for public favor has sprung into existence, the Evansville Public Service Company, which is now building its headquarters on Canal, near Sixth and Mulberry. This company proposes not only to furnish electricity at a very low rate, but to pipe steam heat all over the central portions of the city and even to the suburbs when the proper time comes. From the names of the directory it is naturally to be assumed that this company will do all it prom- ises, and it has gained, after a short struggle, the right to lay its mains through certain alleys and unimproved streets. Just as in the old days, when a great many of the old chronics could not see the utility of putting in gas when the first gas company was struggling for existence, so today there are many men lacking in gray matter who cannot see the great advan- tage of steam heat. It would seem that any man with an ordinary grain of sense could understand that a steam heating plant, buying its fuel and producing material in vast quantities, can produce a uniform heat at a far less rate than one possibly could in a furnace. Again this heat will be so arranged that it can be turned on at a moment's notice while those who have furnaces or even those who rely on stoves and fireplaces, know what it means to go and get kindling and coal and make up fires just when it was not anticipated that they would be needed. They also know the cost of a man to take care of a furnace and they know how heedless the average negro furnace-tender is, but they do not know that there is hardly one of them who does not almost daily, during the winter, place his house in danger of a fire through red-hot pipes. They also know that the coal fur- nace at best is dirty, that the pipes rust and clog with soot, that great piles of ashes must be taken out and, after all that, some negro must be paid to haul the ashes away to the dump. This is not intended in any way as a send-off for the new Public Service Company, but is simply a plain state-
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ment of the difference between making your own heat and buying heat already made from a company whose business is the manufacture of the said heat. It is safe to say that this company will grow to be one of the greatest aids in the progress of Evansville and the more encouragement they get the greater will be their facilities for furnishing heat and light at a very low cost. It will be but natural, where competition is in the field, that the old rule of reducing prices will hold good and that whatever prices the new company makes will be promptly met by the old gas company and, in that event, our citizens will be the gainers.
CARPENTER SCHOOL BUILDING
CHAPTER XXI.
EVANSVILLE IN THE WARS-ALWAYS READY TO RESPOND-THE MEXICAN WAR-FIRE EATING (?) BANDS-SUTLERS WHO FOUGHT AND BLED ( ?) AND NOW DRAW PENSIONS-THE CIVIL WAR HOME GUARDS-THE OLD HOSPITAL STILL STANDING-NEWS OF THE WAR-THE SURRENDER-THE DEATH OF LINCOLN-EXTRACT FROM COL. JAMES SHANKLIN'S SPEECH -- THE DIFFERENT EVANSVILLE COMPANIES-A LIST OF THE NAMES-SEV- ERAL WAR RECORDS-SOME PLAIN TRUTH-THE MAINE, AND SOME PLAIN TALK FOR WHICH THE AUTHOR IS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE.
MILITARY HISTORY.
It is indeed a task to write a military history of the city of Evansville and this county, for the simple reason that an account of what was done by the patriotic people who laid down their work and answered the call of their country, must consist of more or less dry detail. For no volume would be large enough to contain an account of the many noble deeds and acts of courage performed by these men. This being the case, about all that the author can do is to give the name of each volunteer, the time when he was sworn in and the time when mustered out. Again these matters have been fully treated of in every book that has been gotten out pertaining to this section, in many books of military history, in many government reports that have been sent out, etc, etc., until they have be- come a matter of common history and to individualize and speak of the deeds of the few would be a great injustice to some of the humbler ones who worked just as hard and withstood as many hardships for the cause that they deemed to be right. But I am determined that the state of In- diana as far as my pen may assist, shall be given due credit for having always been ready to do more than her share. In every war in which the United States took part, the people of this state have been the first to respond to the call to arms and their proportion has been far greater than that of the Eastern states much more thickly settled, and where most of the war talk has always been made. I know the truth whereby I speak, when I say that in the face of great danger the rockribbed state of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Connecticut and the other states settled by the stern pilgrim fathers, were always ready to talk of what wonders they would perform and how they would wipe the enemies of the country from the face of the earth, but when it came to action, the young
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men were too prone to think of father's farm, as about the best place for them to stay. In other words, dollars and cents cut a great deal more figure with them than the condition of the country. They are the ones who today imagine that the last war, the Civil war, is not yet over. They are the ones who will tell you that a northern man cannot go south and be treated with common decency, while I say that any man from no matter what part of the north he may come, may go to any part of the south and if he has any gentlemanly instincts whatever, he will be taken into the hearts of the southern people and treated as one of them. The trouble with these fire-eating talkers is that the majority of them were raised in a tight-fisted school which is almost unknown to the southern man. The average New Englander is very suspicious. He was brought up in a country where people are shallow-minded. His an- cestors who were proud to say they descended from the pilgrim fathers, do not seem to remember that these same pilgrim fathers were a set of thin-lipped bigoted people without one spark of rich red blood in their veins who deemed that the way to live a correct life was to mortify the flesh and never smile, never dare to enjoy anything, never eat what they wished, but confine themselves to the most scanty diet. Never allow their wives to wear even a ribbon, because that would be vanity. Unfor- tunately they looked on their God as a kind of severe master (and not a loving father) who wished them to live this life with as little enjoyment as they could possibly get out of it. This may be very severe, but it is absolutely true. Within a period of three years during my younger life, I have been in a Connecticut village where not a fire was allowed to be started on Sunday, where Sunday began at six o'clock on Saturday evening and from that time on until Sunday evening at the same hour, the man who smiled or acted in any way as if he was enjoying life, was looked on as a sinner. Not understanding these rules, I laughed on one Sunday at something which struck me as being rather ludicrous and was immediately called down by a young man cousin who asked me if I did not know that it was wrong to laugh on Sunday. This is an absolute fact. During the years of which I speak, I was in the south, where on Sunday the southern women wear their brightest and most beautiful dresses, where, with their husbands, brothers and mothers, they walked out, enjoying the balmy air to its fullest extent and Sunday to them was a day on which they were expected to look their best and enjoy the delights of nature which their Father in Heaven had given them. This may be a long preamble, but it is only to illustrate the difference between the north and the south and to show how strange it was that when the coun- try was in peril, these wonderful Eastern fire-eaters did not respond with the same alacrity as did our southern Indiana people who had been taught to look on the southern people almost as brothers. With the Indiana people it was a case of what they deemed their duty. They did not feel that hatred towards the south which cropped out in the rock-ribbed east
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and in the far north. Today they are the ones who have forgotten that there has been a war and who are the first to recognize that when an enemy is completely vanquished and admits it, the gentlemanly thing to do is to take him by the hand and say "Let bygones be bygones and let us forget it." It must not be understood that I am taking the part of those who fought against the flag of our country. I simply take the view of a man of the world who has been all over the north and the south and has had a chance to feel the public pulse in both sections. Today in Evansville the north and south have intermarried. Fathers and sons work side by side and their interests are all common. At times we hear spiteful sayings and usually from some man who served in the northern army, for the southern people long ago learned to say nothing. When I hear one of these men telling his wondrous tales about what he did in whipping the d- rebels I invariably set him down as a man who was a clerk for some sutler, drove a wagon team, or was in the 100-days service and never saw a fight or shot off a gun. Perhaps one reason for my making this very plain statement, is because I have been bored to death in my newspaper career on several occasions, by a man who persisted in telling me how he laid in the trenches when his comrades were shot down at his side, etc., etc., and how he rushed to the call of his country and gave up his very life's blood for her, when I know absolutely without contradiction, and can prove, that he never was nearer the scene of war than a little town in Ken- tucky and never even saw a battle from afar off. So again I wish to say, "Let every meed of praise be given to those noble men who followed what they deemed to be their line of duty, who left their homes and families and went to the front to suffer untold privations and lay down their lives for their country's flag." They deserve all manner of praise and it will not be many long years before the last of them is placed beneath the sod of the land for which he gave up so much, and the last taps sounded over his grave. Year by year the ranks are getting thinner and in a natural course of events, it cannot be so very long until most of them are gone. But their deeds have been written up in history and their memory will never be forgotten. To show that from the very start, that Evansville was ready to do her share, the official records show that in June, 1846, for the Mexican war two companies were formed at Evansville, and as to the state of Indiana, there were more volunteers than the quota called for and many men were compelled to go to Kentucky and Ohio to enlist from those states. The number of privates in each Indiana company had been limited by the president, to 80, with one captain, one first and one second lieutenant, four corporals and two musicians which made 93 men in each company. At that time David Reynolds was general of the Indiana militia. There seems to be an impression that the number of privates in the com- panies was limited to 64` but Honorable W. M. Marcy, secretary of war, had at that time written to James Whitcomb, who was then governor of Indiana, that the 64 privates did not apply to the volunteers requested
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from the state of Indiana. The pay was 25c per day in lieu of rations and also his daily pay of 30c making 55c per day, while he was going with his company to the place of rendezvous. It was supposed to be 20 miles of foot traveling. The pay after being mustered in was for each private, musician, and non-commissioned officer, $3.50 per month or $42 per year in lieu of clothing. To bear out what I have said about Indiana, a paper published June 12, 1846, says: "The complement of 30 companies were commissioned. No doubt exists that the number of men which cannot be received, will be very large-probably equal the number which can be received. Well done Indiana." In looking over the old work from which I get these facts, I find that the sutlers were about as bad in those early days as they were during the Civil war. A letter of a soldier states that he has been charged Ioc for a single sheet of letter paper. In those days a ream of paper cost $3. This would make the sutler get $48 per ream. Certainly a very fair profit. He says that other articles are sold in pro- portion. He calls on the government which he says has the credit of pro- viding for the wants of her soldiers and says that it ought to do something and not allow them to be subject to such outrageous impositions. Many sutlers and sutlers' clerks are drawing pensions today. A great many of those who went to the war of Mexico, were taken sick almost as soon as they got there. The change in the climate was too much for them and many deaths occurred. Almost every letter from the soldiers spoke first of the sickness in camp. One Indiana regiment on the Rio Grande in the month of September had 243 in the hospital at once. A letter from an officer of the 3rd Indiana, states that a shipload of discharged Indianians was lost in crossing the gulf. They were all men who had been discharged from the service on account of bad health. This writer says, "This cam- paign is causing Indiana some of her finest young men. We have buried at least 100 of them here. An active campaign would not cost more lives. The genuine horrors of war are seen in the hospitals and camps and not on the field of battle. A few weeks ago we had 1400 sick men in the hos- pitals of this place, besides the sick who are in the regimental hospital. To mend the matter, our medicine chest is empty. Really, things are con- ducted here on a most beautiful system." It must have been that even in those days there was entirely too much red tape and graft.
In 1847 the whole state was stirred up by an article in a southern paper giving a description of the battle of Buena Vista. The glory of the victory was given to their troops and the troops of Indiana were stamped with cowardliness and flight. The facts are that the battle was begun by Indiana riflemen who sustained the attack of two battalions for more than six hours. The second Indiana was then led against the Mexi- cans and were repulsed. The Arkansas and Kentucky cavalry retired from the left without striking a blow. The Illinois men were led to the left and repulsed and the Mississippi regiment was repulsed. Thus the entire line except the 3rd Indiana was broken and no decisive advantage given. This
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report was found to be absolutely correct and at once vindicated the state from the stain that had been put upon it. In July of 1848 congress passed an act allowing three months extra pay for all who had served during the Mexican war. As compared with the pensions of the present day, this sounds almost ludicrous. To give an idea of the difference between the past and the present, I wish to quote the bill of expenses of the General of the state of Indiana. He had no clerk or assistant of any kind. The following is his itemized expense account :
Office rent, $43-33; lights and stationery furnished, $28.75; expenses while organizing the 4th regiment, $56; expense while organizing the 5th regiment, $69. Total, $197.08. Salary $100. Amount paid out from salary, $97.08. This man went to work traveling all around, making all sorts of tiresome trips and living on the roughest kind of diet, and yet his total expense, salary and all, was $197. Compare this with a few of the senate appropriations of today. For tooth brushes, water from every spring in the country, shoe polish, manicuring nails and a thousand and one unnecessary and personal expenses and now a professional masseur, which have been charged up to the government of the United States and are being paid for by our tax payers and one can see the difference between the old times and the present. Before dismissing this subject, mark my words, "The people will not stand this forever. Sooner or later there will be an uprising and these orators who so loudly proclaim themselves the servants of the people and who go to Washington with the idea that it is the duty of the American people to pay for the paring of their toe nails and the healing of their bunions, will get a lesson that they will not soon forget."
Evansville's part in military history did not begin however, with the Mexican war, for in 1812 many of the old pioneers laid aside their hunting and fishing and trapping and cast their lot with General Harrison. Their greatest battle was the battle of Tippecanoe. Others went with the Ken- tucky riflemen to New Orleans where they served under General Jack- son, who defeated the great General Packenham. This virtually closed their work in the south and there being no boats at all, they walked the entire way home, sleeping in the woods and living on game. The people of Evansville did not know that there had been even a battle until these men came back. The next war was the Creek war in 1836 and the Sem- inole war at about the same time, but there is no record that any one from this section was engaged in either of these wars. The Seminole war was confined almost completely to Florida and the states near there. The Seminoles were natives of the Florida country and at the edge of my little place in Florida is an immense Indian mound, from which Seminole relics can be had at any time one chooses to dig for them. But when the Mexi- can war began, Captain William Walker organized a company of 100 men which left here for New Albany on the 7th of June, 1846. Mr. John Lane, so well known at that time and afterwards known as General Lane, left
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his seat in the state senate to drill under Captain Walker. All Indiana regiments left New Albany together and after stopping at New Orleans crossed the gulf and went into camp. Captain Tucker's Company K was made up of Evansville men. At the battle of Buena Vista, the Second Indiana met with great loss and it was there that Captain Walker was killed.
In 1887 the Mexican veterans formed an association in this ctiy and, at that time there were 15 members. I think that only one or two are left.
Then came the great Civil war and again Evansville responded. In the 24th Indiana, the 14th, IIth, 25th, 32d, 35th, 42d, 65th, 91st, 120th, 125th, 136th, 143d regiments were men from Vanderburg County. Some of our men and officers could not get into those regiments and enlisted in others, so that the records show that they were in 26 different regiments. Later on there was a call for colored troops and a great number of colored men from this city enlisted and did good work. In the meantime a com- pany of Homeguards was organized. This was composed of men who were really too old to be fit for military duty and yet they held themselves in readiness all through the war to repel at any time, an attack on this city. The leading company was the Evansville Rifles, of which I was the drum- mer. They drilled in Sunset park which at that time had no trees in it and on one or two occasions camped at Blackford's Grove. There were only a few scares during the war, one of which was the John Morgan case. It was reported that he was just across the river from Newburgh and was liable to swoop down on the city at any time. Valuables were all hid and the Homeguards turned out and went into camp at once, to be ready for duty but the night passed with no further alarm and a day or two after- wards it was found that Morgan was operating near Cincinnati. The first man who offered to enlist in Evansville was Captain Charles H. Meyer- hoff. He enlisted in the 14th Indiana in Captain Willard's company but this was after he had been repulsed by Captain Thompson, who was or- ganizing a company. Young Meyerhoff had attended a speaking and at once went to Captain Thompson and offered to enlist, but that gentleman said to him, "Oh go on home. We do not want boys. There are plenty of men in Indiana to do all the fighting that is necessary." "Among the men who made national reputations during the war were Gen. James M. Shackelford, John W. Foster, Gen. Conrad Baker, John Rheinlander, Col. Charles Denby, Col. James Shanklin and Col. S. R. Hornbrook. Mr. J. P. Elliot, who wrote quite an interesting history of Vanderburg County some years ago and to whom the author is indebted for many dates, was in the early part of the war, trustee of Pigeon Township and at the same time, quartermaster of the Second Indiana regiment. These two condi- tions made it his duty to care for the refugees and fugitives who kept com- ing in hordes to Evansville. They came by boat loads and were in abso- lutely destitute condition. It was found necessary to make a regular camp
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