USA > Indiana > Wayne County > Richmond > Memoirs of Wayne County and the city of Richmond, Indiana; from the earliest historical times down to the present, including a genealogical and biographical record of representative families in Wayne County, Volume I Pt. 1 > Part 4
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
EARLY TRIALS AND TRIUMPIIS.
Of course, the first object of the "newcomer" was to get a "patch" cleared large enough to admit of a log cabin, and in the meanwhile, if they could not "stop" with friends who had preceded them, they were domiciled in the great four-horse wagons and
30
MEMOIRS OF WAYNE COUNTY
Carolina carts, with which they had immigrated. Then came the herenlean task of enlarging the patch to the proportions of a "clear- ing" and having "put in" enough seed to raise enough food for man and beast for the first year ; the next object was to swell the clear- ing to the dignified proportions of a farm, with roads opened to it. All this meant almost superhuman hardship, but with the "rais- ings" of cabin and barn, the "log rollings" and the "huskings" when the corn was gathered in the fall, came also the mirth of reciprocal good fellowship, the good cheer of hospitality and the reward within for helping one another. Fully compensated was he who was se- lected at the raising as expert enough to "carry up a corner," and proud as he was, his rival for distinction at the logging, who ex- celled all the others in physical strength, was he who stood the test of superior manhood. The corners properly saddled and notched, the experts again displayed their skill in carrying up the gables, between which saplings spanned the space, and on these the clap- boards were placed to be held down by weight poles, spaced with knees to hold them in place. Then came the big outside stick and clay chimney-built cobhouse fashion-the puncheon floor, greased paper window, the split board door with wooden hinges and latch- spring fastening, and all was done to the furnishing, save chink- ing and daubing with mud the interstices between the logs. For daylight, they supplemented the limited supply from the greased paper window by leaving the door open, and at night they relied upon the glare from the broad open fire place, and a single room served for all purposes. It was more room outside for crops they were thinking most about, and they did not wait to cut down all the timber to get it, as in many settlements. They grubbed out what they could of the small growth, felled the smaller trees and deadened the large ones by girding about them the burning brush of the smaller ones, at the same time insuring an immense yield of whatever was planted in the scorched soil thus claimed. Next in turn came the matter of fencing, and here again, in splitting the most rails in a day, was another opportunity for a standing in general estimation only to be compared with that won at the "raising" or the "logging." The "crack shot" was not in it for comparison, for wild game was so plentiful and money so scarce they would not waste ammunition on anything they could trap. Meat, like raiment, was a secondary consideration ; the question was to get breadstuffs.
The newcomers had nothing provided for the first year and for several years had a four days horseback journey, to and fro.
3I
EARLY ILISTORY
to Bruce's Mill, over in Ohio, when they had any considerable grist to grind. Some few had iron handmills, a la coffee grinders, while others improvised huge grates by perforating an old tin bucket with a nail, on which they would rasp the corn before it got hard ; but partial relief came in the fall of 1807, when three tub mills were built in various parts of the valley, at a combined cost of about $500. Then corn-dodgers, pones, hoe-cake and Johnny-cake became less a luxury, as compared to boiled or roasted corn and lye hominy ; nor did mush much longer reign as hasty pudding. In lien of imported coffee at fifty cents a pound-the price of a calf-the bread crust, corn meal, wheat and potato coffee was used ; and in lieu of tea, they made use of sycamore chips and beech leaves when sassafras and spicewood were not in season. The hogs they raised for domestic meat proved as wild as the game from running in the woods, and more dangerous than any save the bear and wolves. In the annual hog hunts, some would escape for several years, and with tusks several inches long they would rip open a dog with a single flirt of their snout and compel men with- out guns to climb trees for safety. The deer not only furnished the most desirable wild meat, but also raiment, for dressed deer skins supplied the belted blanket coat, breeches and moccasins for the majority. Some had homemade blue cloth trousers and linsey hunting shirts, but most women, before their children grew up to help them, had enough spinning and weaving to do to keep up a quantity sufficient of "stuff" for themselves and daughters. Ging- ham and calico was as rich raiment for them as shoes and Ken- tucky jeans were for the men.
The wife of that epoch was a helpmate in fact, under most ad- verse circumstances. To cook as they did would drive a chef of to-day to suicide. With kettles suspended on hooked-end "tram- mels" from strong poles embedded back in the wide fireplace; with long handled frying pans and three-legged "spiders" a la skillets, they had to do all manner of cooking, at the cost of singed hair, blistered hands, if not faces, and scorched clothing, until "cranes" and "reflectors" came to modify their troubles, in advance of cooking stoves. But the good wife did not complain, so long as her husband had to trudge through sod and roots with his bar- share plow with wooden moldboard, then "drag" his field with an improvised harrow, put his seed in with a bushy topped sapling, using husk collars and rawhide traces for harness, and later on harvested his wheat with a little sickle or reaphook, before cradles came ; then thresh it with a flail-the "swingle" of which was liable to brain him-and "winnow" it with a tow-linen sheet.
32
MEMOIRS OF WAYNE COUNTY
Amid such tribulations, privations and poverty, they began their internal improvements, including the erection of churches and conducting "subscription" schools in them, thoroughly grounded in the belief that "whenever there is true religion, there are schools." The churches or school-houses were built like their primitive dwellings, heretofore described, with a long slab for a writing desk, under the greased paper window, supplied with goose quill pens, on which the ink would often freeze, and the course of instruction was confined to "readin', writin', spellin' and 'rith- metic" for many years. But that was only the beginning. Before there was any legislation in the interest of education, and crude as it was, this community was far in advance of other pioneer settle- ments, an advance subsequently maintained and at length giving to the county a reputation among educators that has proved most gratifying to all public-spirited citizens. The first school was taught "the first year the Quakers came" (1807), and in 1811 their meeting had a standing committee on schools. They, or their fathers, had had advantages "in Pennsylvania" before going to North Carolina or coming here, and their "concern for the educa- tion of our youth" was doubtless the most potent influence in the upbuilding of schools for the first two decades in the county's history.
The records on school law show an act of the State legisla- ture as early as 1824 and another in 1828, but the record of our schools show no results until after the act of 1831. Then elemen- tary schools were established, and after the State school fund of $573,502.96 was created by the distribution of the surplus revenue of the General Government in 1837, common schools received ma- terial aid, but it was not until after the act of 1849, increasing the school revenue by direct taxation, that district schools became common here as well as elsewhere in the State. But a comparison, to invite favorable comment for Wayne county, is found in the last census prior to the above date, i. e., 1840, which shows that in Indiana at large one adult person in seven was illiterate, whereas there was only one in 222 in Wayne county ; that is, of 9,349 only forty-two could not read or write. Meanwhile, in addition to her many district schools, the County Seminary was built, in 1828, at Centerville, the county seat, another in 1839 at Cambridge City, which flourished under the instruction of Rev. Samuel K. Hoshour, whose name will never fade from the honor roll of Indiana's edu- cators; an academy at Dublin in 1837, and divers secular schools at Richmond, besides what is now Earlham College, the chief edu-
33
EARLY HISTORY
cational institution in the county, one of the leading colleges of the State and one of the four principal colleges in the United States conducted by Friends. It was in 1832 that the Indiana Yearly Meeting purchased the farm, 120 acres, for the purpose of estab- lishing an industrial school, to which a number of academies in various parts of the State were to be made contributory. But ere this project could become active, the proposed State system of public schools began engrossing public sentiment. It was not until 1847 that the "Friends Boarding School" was opened, and it was not until 1852-4 that it was completed at a cost of $46,000, not including about $3,000 expended for apparatus and library, with which it continued as an academic institution until 1859. Then it got its college charter and was christened Earlham College, in grateful acknowledgment of a substantial donation from an af- fluent English Friend, whose estate was known as "Earlham."
With the growth of education came about as many churches as school-houses, and that other requisite to modern civilization, the newspaper press, each supporting the other and all conspiring to stimulate culture, morality, good government and progress in internal improvements of every kind. There is hardly a hamlet in the county that has not one or more churches; the leading de- nominations are represented in all the larger towns and Richmond is called a City of Spires; the first newspaper appeared in 1820, since which time their number has been legion and scores have expired after labors well performed, leaving many survivors to continue the good work, in which they are doing valiant service, the Richmond press being especially superior for a city of its size to support as many.
Internal improvements were comparatively early enjoyed in Wayne county, yet in the light of the present age, the wonder is that the opened highways, mud and corduroy roads were not sooner superseded by better ones, with such a superabundance of excellent gravel so near the surface. The act of Congress authoriz- ing the construction of a turnpike from Cumberland, Md., to Ohio, at the expense of the Government, which was passed the year the Quakers made their first settlement in this valley, in 1806, was destined, at a rather remote period, to give the first real impetus to the building of the unsurpassed system of turnpikes that was in store for Wayne county. The Cumberland Road, or National Road, as it subsequently became known, was extended as settle- ments grew to the West, but it was by measured strides, appro- priations being fought as unconstitutional or inexpedient, and the
34
MEMOIRS OF WAYNE COUNTY
project was finally relinquished to the States through which the road passed after it had been opened to Vandalia, 1H., and bridged as well as graded, a greater part of the way, and then, in Indiana at least, it was relinquished by the State to the counties, and in turn to private companies. The Wayne County Turnpike Company was chartered during the legislative session of 1849-50, and during the latter year the twenty-two miles of road that threaded the county was completed. Then followed the rapid building of other pikes to intersect it, affording communication to distant town- ships, and next, tributary roads to the latter, so that the first authentic reward of the turnpikes in the county, fifteen years later, shows twenty-one in number, averaging 148 miles in length, many of which extended into adjoining counties; and from this latter period the enterprise in building free gravel roads rapidly resulted in sapping the pecuniary value of the tollroads, until their stockholders have surrendered the less profitable ones and gladly disposed of the others to the respective townships, until there is not a tollroad in Wayne county.
The building of canals was begun under the Internal Improve- ment bill passed by the legislature during the session of 1835-36, but in 1839 the State had to abandon all public works and square itself to face an accumulated debt of $14,000,000. Thereupon, the White Water Valley Canal Company was chartered, 1841-42, with $400,000 capital stock, to complete the canal (then built from the Ohio river to Brookville) to Cambridge City, at which place operations were begun July 28, 1842. The day was made the occasion for a big barbacue, attended by about 10,000 people, and boats began running in 1846; but 'midst a prosperous freight and passenger business, the company sustained about $100,000 damage from a great freshet, in January, 1847, from which they had only began to recover when another nearly as great came in November, 1848. But still they struggled on. Meanwhile, in 1847, the Hagers- town Canal Company had completed its canal, to be operated in connection with the White Water canal, between Hagerstown and Cambridge City, and hope was still entertained by the Richmond & Brookville Canal Company, on which project $45,000 of the $80-, 000 contracted had been expended, when the freshet of 1847 de- stroved about all of it. However, the Richmond & Brookville Company had had no assistance from the State, and the stock- holders were too fearful of the grade of their canal-a fall of 273 feet in thirty-four miles-after what they saw of that freshet and also of the prospects of a railroad that was already coming on to
35
EARLY HISTORY
Richmond to proceed with the project at an estimated cost of $508,000, and the Hagerstown canal, with but a few small boats, was not proving a very material auxiliary; so the White Water canal was abandoned a few years later. It was in fact "run over by the locomotive," the present White Water Valley branch of the Big Four railroad being built on its towpath and bed most of the way from Hagerstown to Harrison, Ohio.
The first railroad incorporated in Wayne county was the Richmond & Miami, Jan. 19, 1846. Its charter was amended Jan. 24, 1851, to include the Dayton & Western, with which it was connected by a branch from the Ohio and Indiana State line. An- other branch to the State line, only about four miles from Rich- mond, was built in conjunction with the Eaton & Hamilton, which subsequently passed into the hands of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, from which it was acquired by the Panhandle ( Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis) people only a few years ago, when they continued it from Hamilton to intersect their Little Miami division near Cincinnati. The next was the Terre Haute & Richmond, chartered Jan. 20, 1847, but an'act of Jan. 20, 1851, limited that road between Terre Haute and Indianapolis, while creating a new company, the Indiana Central, to build that part between Indianapolis and Richmond, or the Ohio line. On this, regular trains began running Sept. 19, 1853, and the same year witnessed the completion of the New Castle & Richmond, char- tered Feb. 16, 1848, on which train service began early in 1854, in conjunction with the Eaton & Hamilton. In time its construction was continued to Chicago, and then as now afforded a through line between that city and Cincinnati. What is now the Cincinnati, Richmond & Ft. Wayne road, operated as a part of the Grand Rapids & Indiana, was chartered Feb. 24, 1853, but, after spend- ing much time and money, its projectors had to let it remain statu quo, until liberal subscriptions were obtained by changing its northern route, April 7, 1809. from Camden and Bluffton to Portland and Decatur, and additional appropriations were voted it, whereupon it was speedily completed and put in operation, Jan. I, 1872. What was originally known as "Junction" road and now forms a part of the Ft. Wayne, Cincinnati & Louisville branch of the Lake Erie & Western, was completed in July, 1865, and a con- tinuance of it was made from Cambridge City to New Castle in 1867, while the "Cambridge City Extension" (of the Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis ), now operated by the Panhandle, to con- nect with the Louisville division at Columbus, Ind., was made the
36
MEMOIRS OF WAYNE COUNTY
same year, thus completing 85.95 miles of main track and about fifteen miles of sidetrack, or a total of 100 miles of trackage in Wayne county.
By the same act of the Territorial legislature forming the county of Wayne, in 1810, John Cox, John Addington and George Holman were commissioned to locate a county seat, on or before the first Monday in May, 1811. Meanwhile, however, court was held at the rude residence of Richard Rue, as indeed it was subse- quent to locating the county seat, pending the building of a log court house. The first court was held Feb. 25, 181, but it was not a judicial session, the purpose being to divide the county into two districts, or townships, and appoint such officers as overseers of the poor and fence viewers, the county business being done by judges-Peter Fleming, Aaron Martin and Jeremiah Meek; the clerk was George Hunt, the sheriff, John Turner, and the prosecu- tor, James Noble. At the next session, in March, the first grand jury was impaneled, and at the June term it was declared that the commissioners appointed by the legislature had failed to discharge their duty in selecting a county seat, and a new commission, con- sisting of Samuel Walker, Richard Maxwell and Benjamin Harris, was appointed for the purpose. The original commission had not been derelict in its duty, however; they had failed to agree. Two of them, sticking to the text of the legislation to select a site near the geographical center, had done so, about a mile north of the present town of Centerville, but the third had dissented on the ground that the quarter-section named had not yet been sold by the Government, and the latter's minority report was sustained by the court, which instructed the new commission to select a site between Richmond and Centerville. To hit the bull's eye in the center, they selected a sixty-five-acre tract, belonging to Samuel Woods, just midway between the two towns, and the embryo seat of justice was named Salisbury. Thereupon Smith Hunt, Samuel Woods and James Brown were appointed trustees to plat the town, while Andrew Woods and John Meek superintended the building of a jail and estray pen. A log court house also came in turn, the records showing the first court to be held in it Oct. 28, 1811, and the logs it contained are today hidden in a modernized Richmond residence, while the bricks that were in the second jail built at Salisbury are also in the inside walls of a Main street business house and an old Richmond residence.
The dissension in regard to the "center" and Salisbury sites for the county seat led to the first "court house war." which was
37
EARLY HISTORY
destined to be followed by two others ere the scales of justice were to be permanently poised in Richmond. The central faction de- nounced the court in unmeasured terms and the census of the community was taken, resulting in 330 subscribing to the majority report of the legislative commission and only 150 to that of the commission appointed by the court. Despite the feeling, however, Salisbury "held the fort" and, in 1816, boasted of thirty-five houses, two stores and two taverns, one of which latter is supposed to still stand, as the only landmark on the site of the otherwise totally obliterated first county seat. That year. 1816, Indiana Territory was admitted to the sisterhood of States and the factional fight was carried into the legislature, where an act was passed, authoriz- ing the removal of the county seat to Centerville, providing the advocates of the removal supply good buildings, i. e., a court house, jail and estray pen, free of cost to the county, and pending their erection, to equal in point of convenience and value those at Salis- bury. The Centerville trustees were to provide and furnish a suit- able place for holding court and transacting public business gen- erally.
The act bears date of Dec. 21, 1816, and further provides that its provisions should be complied with on or before Aug. 1, 1817, yet it was not to be in force until June 1. However, the Center- ville faction was only too willing to accept the terms thereof and, as a guarantee of good faith, gave a $10,000 bond, with ten of their best men as sureties. The commissioners held their last session at Salisbury, in August, 1817, and the county seat was removed to Centerville during 1817-18, but the buildings were not completed until 1821-22, and the removal was not accomplished without much bitterness of feeling and stubborn opposition. David Hoover, who had led the van of North Carolina Quakers here, was with the Salisbury faction and had a most formidable following. At the organization of the county, in 1810, he had been made justice of the peace; next, in 1815, associate judge of the Circuit Court, and, in 1817, clerk of the court. So hostile was he to Centerville that he refused to remove his office fixtures there, and among the archives is an order from the commissioners, addressed to the clerk and authorizing a deputized third party to remove the "pub- lick stove from Salisbury to Centerville on the 26th day of De- cember. 1820." One of the commissioners, Isaac Julian, married Judge Hoover's sister, but he was a Centerville man with all the determination that characterized his French-Huguenotic ancestor, Rene St. Julien, under the Prince of Orange, and the stand he took
38
MEMOIRS OF WAYNE COUNTY
against the former resulted in a mutual semi-estrangement ever after. For Judge Hoover was also fixed in his way of thinking, as is indicated by the fact that though he was so popular as to be re- elected again and again for nearly fourteen years, he steadfastly refused to remove to Centerville from the homestead he originally chose, in 1807, immediately north of Richmond. A biographical sketch referring to him as clerk of the court from 1817 to 1834 says "he might have continued in the office had it not been that, owing to his domestic tastes, he could not be prevailed on to remove to the county seat, which the people required him to do." But it was not alone "domestic tastes" that actuated him, as the reader may infer.
With the completion of the court house and jail, in 1821-22, simultaneously began the growth of Centerville and the decadence of Salisbury, which latter now has only a place in memory, where it may be worthy of note to add, it is associated with the fact that at just this time, Aug. 4, 1823, there was born there the most dis- tinguished personage in the history of the State. This was the Hon. Oliver P. Morton, whose name will forever be associated with the leaders of the United States Senate, but whose chief glory was attained as Indiana's War Governor. Yet, Centerville claims him as her son, as that was the theatre of his life from boyhood to the hour of his fame-as the boy apprentice in a hatter shop, stu- dent, lawyer, judge, and politician. Indeed, Centerville was the theatre in which divers men of future renown made their debut, but from 1850 the development of Richmond, every year, empha- sized the probability of the county seat being again removed, and two decades later the third and certainly final "court house war" was come. Rumors of the war had preceded it, and to fortify against such an issue the Centerville people essayed to anchor the county seat there by building an elegant new jail and designat- ing much needed fireproof vaults for the accumulated records. But the recognized necessity for better court house facilities, coupled with the evident purpose of the Centerville faction, only sufficed to precipitate the war they had hoped to avert. In 1867 the jail was built at a cost of about $70,000, but Richmond had now become too formidable a rival for the county seat to be thiwarted. She had increased in population from 320, when Centerville was made the county seat, to nearly 10,000, which was more than six times her population when she got her first railroad, and an increase of fifty per cent. since the war began, while she had in all other re- spects developed in like ratio. Hence, in point of legal business
39
EARLY HISTORY
and the diversified relations of the seat of justice to the rest of the county, she was pre-eminent and there was no staying the tide in her favor. On June 3, 1872, there was presented to the Board of County Commissioners a petition signed by 4.948 legal voters of the county, praying for the removal of the county seat to Rich- mond, and in September following, having taken ample time to consider the petition, the merits of the claim made by its sub- scribers, and the facts as they found them, the commissioners notified the Governor that all preliminary conditions for such re- moval had been complied with and received their approval. Ac- cordingly, the Governor appointed appraisers to value the county property at Centerville and, at their December meeting, the com- missioners authorized the auditor to advertise for bids for the construction of new buildings at Richmond, whereupon the at- torneys for the opposition applied to the Circuit Court for an injunction against letting the contract, but the court held that the order of the commissioners was supreme. From this decision an appeal was taken, and when the order was made to remove the records, upon completion of the Richmond court house. in August, 1873, another judge granted a temporary restraining order, but it was soon revoked. Thereupon, during the latter part of Septem- ber, the sheriff deputized a posse to tear down the jail at Center- ville, which effort was opposed with a determination that was not short of mob violence and for the time prevented the execu- tion of the commission. To prevent absolute bloodshed the mat- ter was again taken into court and an injunction was granted, re- straining the sheriff from "razing" the jail pending an investiga- tion and the decision of the Supreme Court relative to the removal of records and archives. But for the latter they had to wait only till Oct. 10, and as the supreme tribunal affirmed the decision of the lower court, the second restraining order was promptly an- nulled. Yet so hostile was the feeling that the opposing faction was not ready to abide by the decision, but per contra filed a peti- tion for a rehearing the day the decision was made known, and
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.