USA > Indiana > Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900; or, A view of our region through the nineteenth century > Part 8
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CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAKE MICHIGAN WATERSHED LINE.
As we leave the lakes and streams, the natural and artificial water courses, it may be a matter of interest to some, in another generation, to have the dividing line between Lake Michigan waters and Mississippi River waters traced with some degree of definiteness, for the drying up of water courses and the draining by means of ditches have already almost consigned to oblivion the names and the winding beds of some of the small streams that were well known to the Illinois and Indiana pioneers. This line will not be given as though taken from a surveyor's field notes, yet it will be sufficiently accurate for the purpose for which it is here inserted.
The substance of it may be found in a published volume of the papers read before the Indiana Acad- emy of Science, but this is not taken from that vol- ume.
This line, commencing at the head waters of the Des Plaines River in Wisconsin, a few miles from the shore of Lake Michigan, passes southward, winding slightly, passing within eight miles of Lake Michi- gan, and then, just west of Chicago, passes by the south arm of the peculiar Chicago River, and going still southward passes west of Blue Island eight miles west of the Indiana State line. It then passes southwest around the head waters of Rock Creek, and
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
then southeastward around Thorn Creek, which is its most southern point in Illinois and is near Eagle Lake, two miles west of the Indiana line and directly west of the Lake County village of Brunswick and twenty-three miles south of the State line monument on the shore of Lake Michigan. The line now passes northward and enters Lake County in section 36, township 35, range 10, near the head waters of West Creek. It then bears southeastward to a high
ridge one-fourth of a mile north of Red Cedar Lake, and passes along a low, curv- ing ridge, on which was once a wagon road, and which is the most beautiful and well de- fined portion of the line in Lake County. It passes now three miles over timber table-land, winding slightly, three miles eastward and nearly two miles south of the center of Crown Point, it passes across section 17, then 16, township 34, range 8, and then south on the east side of the old Stoney Creek. It then passes east across sections 35 and 36 and into section 31, where is now LeRoy. It here turns north- ward, having reached its extreme southern limit in Indiana, now not quite eighteen miles from Lake Michigan. Winding here around the head of the south branch of Deep River, passing between that and Eagle Creek, bearing eastward, south of Deer Creek, and northward, it leaves Lake County almost due east of the center of Crown Point, distant seven and a half miles and nearly a mile and a half south of its point of entrance into the county. It soon passes north of a little lake from which flows Eagle Creek. It now passes eastward and then a little south, wind- ing around Salt Creek, three miles and a half south of Valparaiso between ranges 5 and 6, having crossed
119
THE LAKE MICHIGAN WATERSHED LINE.
section 12 in range 5. It passes, now, about due north just east of Valparaiso to Flint Lake, three miles north of the center of that city and the source of its water supply, and winding around the north of Flint Lake it passes on in a northwest direction to West- ville, and then passing northeastward to a ridge two miles north of La Porte and eleven miles from Lake Michigan, which ridge is said to be, according to some barometer, two hundred and seventy feet above Lake Michigan. Passing north of the lakes around the city of La Porte, and north of the head waters of the Little Kankakee, and near the line of the railroad track, near by the village of Rolling Prairie, passing eastward but a few miles from the north boundary of Indiana, it comes into Portage Township, St. Jo- seph County, where on the portage between the Kan- kakee and St. Joseph rivers this notice of it will end.
Here seems to be a suitable place to notice those "lake ridges" which cross La Porte, Porter, and Lake counties, "which are nearly parallel to the present lake shore." According to Professor Cox they mark the ancient shore lines from which, time after time, the lake has receded. Five of these continuous sand ridges Professor Cox has counted. The last one in- ward is that ridge along which now runs the water- shed line, the highest ridge of land in La Porte County. The theory of formation of these ridges is this: That the sand which the dashing lake waves cast upon the beach, sparkling in their apparent play- fulness sometimes as they dance along, and then breaking in their fury far up on the beach when the fierce north wind sends them rolling in, in their might, this sand soon becomes dry. "Then the wind takes it and drives it like drifting snow to the first
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
barrier of trees and bushes, when it is checked, and be- gins to accumulate, forming a ridge. The vegeta- tion, well rooted, reproduces itself, growing to the top as the sand rises, and finally a range of hills is the result of the combined action of wave and wind on the moving particles of sand."
In this way, most probably, was that quite large ridge of sand formed at the northeast of the Red Cedar Lake in Lake County, by the influence of the strong southwest winds that so often prevail, and not, as some have imagined, by the melting there of some great iceberg.
All the sand ridges in Lake County seem to be due to the action of water, or of wind and water com- bined. Most of them lie north, but some are south of the watershed.
Professor Cox found no evidences that the lakes around La Porte were ever a part of our Lake Michi- gan; but that its southern limit there was the high ridge distant now eleven miles.
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
barrier of trees and bushes, when it is checked, and be- gins to accumulate, forming a ridge. The vegeta- tion, well rooted, reproduces itself, growing to the top as the sand rises, and finally a range of hills is the result of the combined action of wave and wind on the moving particles of sand."
In this way, most probably, was that quite large ridge of sand formed at the northeast of the Red Cedar Lake in Lake County, by the influence of the strong southwest winds that so often prevail, and not, as some have imagined, by the melting there of some great iceberg.
All the sand ridges in Lake County seem to be due to the action of water, or of wind and water com- bined. Most of them lie north, but some are south of the watershed.
Professor Cox found no evidences that the lakes around La Porte were ever a part of our Lake Michi- gan; but that its southern limit there was the high ridge distant now eleven miles.
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CHAPTER IX.
TOWNSHIPS AND STATISTICS.
The maps in this book will give the names and show the locations of the townships in some of the counties ; but they may fittingly all be named here.
Of La Porte County they are: Commencing at the northeast, Hudson, Galena, Springfield, Michi- gan, Cool Spring, Center, Kankakee, Wills, Lincoln, Pleasant, Scipio, New Durham, Clinton, Noble, Union, Johnson, Hanna, Cass, and Dewey-19.
Of Porter County: Pine, Westchester, Portage, Liberty, and Jackson; Washington. Center, and Union; Porter and Morgan; Pleasant and Boone-12.
Of Lake they are: Hobart, Calumet, North; St. Johns, Ross; Winfield, Center, Hanover; West Creek, Cedar Creek, and Eagle Creek-II.
Of Newton: Lincoln, Lake, McClellan, Colfax ; Jackson, Beaver; Washington, Iroquois; Grant and Jefferson-10.
Of Jasper : Kankakee, Wheatfield, Keener, Union, Walker, Gillam; Barkley, Newton, Marion, Hanging Grove; Milroy, Jordan, Carpenter-13.
Of White: Cass, Liberty, Monon; Princeton, Honey Creek; Union, Jackson; West Point, Big Creek, Prairie, and Round Grove-II.
Of Pulaski: Tippecanoe, Franklin, Rich Grove, Cass; White Post, Jefferson, Monroe, Harrison ; Van Buren, Indian Creek, Beaver, and Salem-12.
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
Of Starke the townships are: Oregon, Davis; Jackson, Center, Washington; North Bend, Califor- nia ; Wayne and Rail Road-9. In all 97 townships.
Having looked at some of the physical features of this region, having looked over the names of some of the early settlers, having reviewed some characteris- tics of pioneer life, and having seen the beginnings of organic civil life, before entering upon the records and changes in the last half of this century, the fol- lowing table, which will show the growth of twenty years of pioneer life on the north side and south side of the Kankakee River, is worthy of attention.
Population, Farms, and Families in 1850-
Counties.
Pop.
Farms. Families.
Lake
3,991
423 .
715
Porter
5,234
467
885
La Porte
12,145
1,116
2,150
Starke
557
53
IOI
Pulaski
2,595
286
454
White
4,761
458
825
Jasper (then including New-
ton)
3,540
343
592
Total
32,823
3,146
5,722
At this time there were in these counties, included in the population as given above, of free blacks, in Lake I, in Porter 5, in La Porte 78, in Starke o, in Pulaski o, in White 9, in Jasper, including Newton I.
It seems families were larger then than now, there being between five and six members in each family. We now average about four in a family.
Our towns at this date were all small. In 1850, the largest one, Michigan City, had a population of 999, ranking next in the State to Columbus, which
123
TOWNSHIPS AND STATISTICS.
then had as its population 1,008. At that time New Albany, the largest city in the State, had of inhabi- tants 8,181, and Indianapolis, ranking second, 8,091. There were then in Indiana twenty-three other towns, counting Columbus, with a population above one thousand, but only nine others having over two thou- sand. The railroads had not cut up North-Western Indiana when the census of 1850 was taken. Indiana then had ninety-one counties.
CHAPTER X.
MODERN OR RAILROAD LIFE-1850 to 1900.
With the opening of the last half of the Nineteenth Century there came from the eastward railroad build- ers, pushing their roads onward to the young city of Chicago; and before these roads could reach that city they must cross the counties of La Porte, Porter, and Lake. When the children and the deer and the water fowls heard the whistle of the engines tliat drew the freight trains, pioneer life came to an end.
A short review of that variety of life has, in a former chapter, been given ; and in this, by means of contrast and of historic records, an attempt will be made to give some true impression of the railroad life or mod- ern life of the last fifty years.
So soon as these earliest roads, the Michigan Cen- tral and Michigan Southern, passed through, Michi- gan City and Chicago, where the schooners could take away grain, were no longer the only markets, for La Porte, and Old Porter or Chesterton, and Lake Sta- tion, and Dyer, were railroad stations where goods could be landed and from which grain could be shipped.
Miss Florence Pratt, in a paper on the Presby- terian history, in "Lake County 1884," assigning a reason why the church building, commenced in 1845, was not completed till 1847, says: "But money was very scarce, the country wild with very few roads
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MODERN OR RAILROAD LIFE.
or horses. Lumber was hard to get, and must be brought on ox-carts from Chicago or Porter County." And so for twelve years the people of Crown Point held their religious meetings in their homes and in their log court house ; yet, before they heard the first railroad whistle, they did "arise and build" two frame meeting houses. But now, when the railroad stations became shipping points, lumber was brought in and the true era of frame buildings, for dwellings and for churches, commenced. The log cabins, comfortable as they had been made, became out-houses, stables and cribs and granaries, and the family homes were clean, new, sightly, frame dwellings with ceiled or plastered walls, with good brick chimneys an outside that could be painted and inside walls that were not daubed with clay. Carpets soon were on some of the floors, large mirrors leaned out from the white walls, furniture such as the log cabins had not sufficient room to contain now graced the more spacious apart- ments, instruments of music began to be seen and heard in many a home, and comforts and even luxur- ies found their way wherever the freight cars could unload goods and take on grain and hay, and cattle and sheep and hogs, and butter and eggs and poultry. Soon there was much to be sent off, and much, for all the farming community, was brought back in re- turn. Changes in modes of living, in dress, in furni- ture, and then in farming implements, were not, of course, instantaneous, but they came very rapidly along. Instead of beating out the wheat and oats with flails, or treading it out on smooth ground floors with oxen or horses according to the old Oriental method, as was needful to be done at first, thresh- ing machines came to the farms, even before the
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
railroads were built. And then, instead of cleaning out the chaff by means of the wind, fanning mills came into use, and one was needed on every farm; and next the separator machine came, and so one im- provement followed another as the harvest times came round. For a few years in each July many would go from distant neighborhoods to the large grain fields on Door Prairie, a good cradler receiving sometimes two dollars for a day's work, and one who could rake and bind and keep up with the cradler receiving the same. From three to four acres a day was a good day's work. But the mowers came, the reapers came, unloaded from the cars they were taken out to the farms, and men no longer swung the cradles hour after hour and day after day. And, at length, the last triumph of human skill in this line seemed to be reached when the great harvesting machines came, the self-binders, cutting the grain, raking it into bun- dles, binding those bundles, all done by a machine drawn by horses, driven by one man.
In the earliest years of settlement, and through all the pioneer period, oxen were quite generally used as draft animals. They were on almost every farm ; they drew the plows, the wagons, the harrows, the sleds. They were on the roads drawing the heavy loads to the market towns. They were strong, pa- tient, hardy, quite safe, not taking fright and running away, could live on rough food with not much shelter ; but generally they were slow. A few could walk, and draw a plow, along with ordinary horses, but only a few. On the road an ox team did well to make three miles an hour. A more true average would probably be two and a half miles per hour. It took but a few mo- ments to yoke them. The yoke was put on the neck of
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MODERN OR RAILROAD LIFE.
the ox on the right, called the "off ox," first, the bow put in its place and keyed ; then the other end of the yoke was held up, and it was instructive to see how the other ox, when well trained, would walk up and put his neck under the yoke, in the proper place for the bow to come up under his throat to the yoke, and there to be fastened with a wooden, possibly with an iron, key. When well treated, they were gentle, pa- tient, faithful animals, as for many generations, along a line of thousands of years, their predecessors had given their strength and endurance, in many lands, to the service of man.
But now, as here the modern railroad era opened, and changes in niodes of agriculture and living took place, horses for farm work and road work began largely to take the place of oxen. Mowers and then reapers came to the farms as early as 1855 and then onward, and for these and all the modern improve- ments that followed horses were found to be more serviceable. So in some neighborhoods in Lake County, the yoke was removed from the necks of the oxen as early as 1855; in other neighborhoods not until 1862 and 1863, when large quantities of beef be- gan to be wanted in the country; and when the year 1870 was reached oxen as working animals had al- most disappeared north of the Kankakee River. One farmer sold his last yoke for $150. In Jasper and Newton and Starke, as newer counties and not feeling so soon the influence of the railroads, the use of oxen continued into later years.
There are many children and young people now who never saw a yoke of oxen ; many young farmers who would not know how to yoke them, to unyoke them, or to drive them; to whom the ox-chains, and
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
the tongue bolts, and the ox-whips for directing the movements of three or four yoke of oxen in one team, would be quite strange farm furniture. To them, many allusions to oxen in sacred and classic story have little significance and beauty. Muzzling the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn, they do not understand; of how much land a yoke of oxen would plow in a day, they have not much idea. Some things we have lost, while many things we have gained. Well and faithfully through all the pioneer time, these truly noble domestic animals served well in their day. Each one, as a rule, had a name, and old is the teaching, the ox knoweth his owner, but horses and steam and electricity have quite fully taken the place now of these once trusty servants of man. Their necks are free from the yoke and their shoulders from the bow. An ox-yoke is itself a curiosity now.
Our yokes were generally shorter, heavier, with more work put upon them, and not so straight as those used in the Pine Belt of the South, where oxen still do much heavy work.
Returning once more to the pioneer period, peo- ple travelled then on horseback, or in ox-wagons, and in large, two horse wagons which were used for any farm purposes. Buggies and carriages had not, to much extent, been brought in. But soon, when the railroad period opened, the young men purchased buggies and trained their horses for the harness in- stead of the saddle, and soon the farmers had buggies. and in these later years, good covered carriages, so that even the stylish carriage and fine horses of Joseph Leiter, then the millionaire, the brother of "the first lady of India," who in the summer of 1897 was ac- customed to drive every week from Crown Point to the
129
MODERN OR RAILROAD LIFE.
Red Cedar Lake, were but little in advance of the car- riages and horses of our own citizens who count 110 higher up than into the ten thousands.
And where once, not so long ago, at our public gatherings were the ox teams and heavy farm wagons, now, when the hundreds and the thousands gather, covered buggies and close carriages are the general rule. As La Porte County is the oldest, the most populous, the wealthiest of these counties, there, as might be expected, costly carriages made their ap- pearance first.
It was quite a struggle for a few years for the farmers to make headway and secure the conveniences which the railroads supplied, for many were in debt for their land, and prices for farm products were rather low, and money not very abundant, until the changes came from 1860 and onward, as the nation was entering into the scenes of the great conflict. Those who are only about forty-five years of age can- not realize how financial matters were managed be- fore any "greenbacks" were issued. But since that change took place in the currency of the nation, changes in prices being connected with it, great im- provements have taken place in the homes of the farm- ers. Little remains now on the farms of the earlier farming implements. The entire mode of planting and sowing, of cultivating crops and of gathering, has changed. It is singular how so many once familiar objects have disappeared.
In the more costly and elegant mansions now, beautiful and costly and massive, like those in the large cities of the land, may be seen elegant furniture, costly engravings and beautiful pictures upon the walls, on the center tables, papers of various kinds,
130
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
choice magazines, the best published in the world, and near at hand, accessible readily to the family, and to visitors, the standard dictionaries and encyclo- pedias and large libraries of the noted and standard English and American books. There is as yet no private dwelling that has cost half a million, but there are, even in this corner of Indiana, some few who may be called millionaires, although as yet no city is here having of inhabitants twenty thousand. About fifteen thousand is now the limit.
In the counties south of the Kankakee River, rail- road life commenced in 1860, and not fully until 1865, when the road now called the Pan Handle passed through Monticello and North Judson direct to Chi- cago; and but a small part of Newton County felt the direct influence of the age of steam until the Chicago & Eastern Illinois road passed through Morocco in 1889. Lake Village is yet, as the capital of Florida used to be called, "inland."
Along these years, from 1850 to 1900, when one railroad after another was built across our borders, and stations were established nearer to the homes of many of the farmers, and villages and towns were growing, changes and quite rapid improvements were constantly going on among all the farming conimu- nities. Not only were new farming implements intro- duced, not only were much more showy and commod- ious dwelling houses and barns and granaries con- structed, not only were stylish vehicles often seen in the carriage houses of the farmers, but the social life, the school life, the church life, all were materially changed, and the farmers were, many of them, ac- cumulating much property. The domestic animals were largely on the increase, except in the exclusively
131
MODERN OR RAILROAD LIFE.
grain producing neighborhoods, and such large addi- tions had been made to the fixed capital and also to the circulating or loose capital in all this region of Indiana, tliat a stranger, a visitor, might well say, this is a largely prosperous, a contented and happy community.
Yet it may after all be questioned whether real happiness or satisfaction, as connected with the ac- tivities of life, is any greater now, than in the early pioneer days. The men and the women and the very children were founders and builders then, looking eagerly often, surely hopefully for- ward, to the times of greater abundance and enlarged comforts, which they felt sure would come; but the very activity and effort were large elements in the enjoyments of that life. When one has reached the position of assured competence possessed by one of the grand pioneer men, a mem- ber of one of our old settler associations, who ex- pressed himself in this figurative language, that he had come to the condition in which he did not care "whether school kept or not," it soon becomes evident that after all he is not perfectly contented. Well said that learned and wise philosopher, Sir William Ham- ilton, "It is ever the contest that pleases us and not the victory." And he quotes the "great Pascal" as saying: "In life we always believe that we are seek- ing repose, while in reality, all that we ever seek is agitation." And he quotes Jean Paul Richter as say- ing: "It is not the goal, but the course, which makes us happy." And he quotes, in the same line of senti- ment, Malebranche, one of "the profoundest thinkers of modern times," as saying: "If I held truth captive in my hand, I should open my hand and let it fly, in
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NORTHWESTERN INDIANA.
order that I might again pursue and capture it." And on this same principle, the enjoyment to be found in well directed human activity, if a young man in this, our modern railroad life, could choose for himself an inherited abundance or a reasonably sure inherited or acquired ability to gain for himself that abundance, he would do well to let the inherited abundance go. Like the philosopher, let truth fly in order to have the opportunity to pursue and capture., So here it may be repeated, it is quite questionable whether, with all the present abundance, the comforts, the luxuries of the present, there has come any greater happiness than was enjoyed in the old pioneer days. The fact, however, is, the prosperous farmers as well as the business men in towns and cities are not "sleeping in their carriages," to quote a figure from the once noted Chesterfield, but are eager and active to still gain more and more. The pioneer activity was a very healthful activity. Perhaps there is a little fever- heat connected with the rush of railroad life now.
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