USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 10
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
None of these offenders was ever found by officers or brought to justice. Although slavery was not per- mitted on Indiana soil, sentiment in the river counties recognized it as a vigourous institution flourishing just over the border, and it was a statutory crime anywhere in the state to harbour fugitive slaves, so that pursuit of Dupree or the Harrisons was regarded as unim- portant.
The last in line of associate judges before the office was abolished were: Thomas Tobin, 1837; Stephen Shoemaker, 1838; Amos L. D. Williams, 1844; James Wheeler, 1845; John Groves, 1846; Daniel Curry, 1851; and Samuel Miller, 1851. Among the attorneys ad- mitted were Lemuel Q. De Bruler, George W. Williams and William H. Hanna, 1846; Thomas F. DeBruler and
Digitized by
122
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
Nathaniel C. Foster, 1847; David T. Laird and James E. Blythe, 1848. These men were all from other coun- ties, though the De Brulers and Laird, who lived in Rockport, were regularly identified with Perry County practice during their generation.
In 1849 Cannelton's first resident lawyer was ad- mitted, Charles H. Mason, who had just taken up his abode there after the customary short period spent in Kentucky. He was a native of New Hampshire (Wal- pole, his Cheshire County, birthplace, being also Gen- eral Seth Hunt's home town), belonging to that old Colonial family of the Captain John Mason who with Sir Fernando Gorges had founded, in 1622, the royal province of "Laconia" under charter from James I. It was after a division of this grant that Captain Mason bestowed upon his portion the name New Hampshire, to commemorate the English shire of Hants (Hamp- shire) where the Masons had long held estates.
Charles Holland Mason, born August 9, 1826, was the son of Joseph and Harriet (Ormsby) Mason, and received a thorough classical education to fit him for the law, a profession for which he seemed to possess a hereditary bent. A near collateral relative, to whom he bore a striking personal resemblance, was the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, of Boston, for many years the law partner of Daniel Webster.
No resident lawyer practicing before the Perry Cir- cuit Court, or upon the Common Pleas bench, where he sat twice during the existence of that court, ever ranked higher than Charles H. Mason. Of distinc- tively oratorical temperament, profound in legal lore, he was a strong speaker, witty, high-minded and elo- quent. He founded Perry County's first newspaper, the Cannelton Economist, in 1849, maintaining it at a remarkable standard while its editor, and in later life was a constant contributor of brilliant miscellany to many journals and some of the best magazines. Under the nom-de-plume of "Sandstone" his writings, pur- porting to come from Rock Island, were a feature of
Digitized by Google
7
123
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
Cannelton journalism during the sixties and seventies, along the same line of humourous character sketches which have given "Abe Martin" a place in current lit- erature.
March 21, 1852, in Cannelton, Charles H. Mason was married to Rachel Littell (Huckeby) Wright, a daugh- ter of Joshua B. and Rebecca (Lang) Huckeby, but no children were born to the union, which was of thirty years duration, terminated February 26, 1883, by Mrs. Mason's death. In 1890 Judge Mason, who had con- tinued to reside in Cannelton, was appointed by Presi- dent Benjamin Harrison as United States Commis- sioner for the Indian Territory (before the organiza- tion of Oklahoma) with headquarters at Vinita, where he died in June, 1894.
In 1850 Thomas O. Stonements was admitted to practice before the Perry County bar, and the follow- ing year the names of William A. Wandell and John W. Grimes were recorded.
In October, 1851, Gove, tor Joseph A. Wright com- missioned as successor to Judge Lockhart for the Fourth district circuit, a ma i whose personal distinc- tion was the highest of any ever wearing judicial er- mine or holding aloft the scales of Justice in Perry County, Alvin P. Hovey, of Mount Vernon, a native Indianian whom his fellow citizens delighted to hon- our, and who at his death forty years later, November 26, 1891, was loyally serving them in the most exalted office within their gift-as Governor of Indiana.
His ability more than sufficed to grasp the most tan- gled intricacies of law, solving every problem with equity and a conservatism which rigidly sustained the dignity of the bench under all circumstances. Such a standard of authority had not been habitual in nisi prius courts, and while Judge Hovey's personality commanded for itself the highest esteem of all, his natural disposition was better fitted for the Supreme Bench which he later adorned.
His military record as Brigadier-General during the
Digitized by Google
- -
124
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
War Between the States was that of a brilliant com- mander; beloved, from his staff-officers down to pri- vates; surpassed by none in patriotic devotion to his state and his country. Recognition of this was made in President Johnson's appointing him Envoy Extraor- dinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Peru, where he figured as a polished diplomat, choosing as his First Secretary of Legation a young Perry County man, Thomas James de la Hunt, who had previously been a favourite Adjutant on his staff.
Burwell B. Lea was prosecuting attorney in 1848, living at Rome, and was described as a keen, shrewd lawyer, not particularly well-read but so fluent before a jury that his clients with little of law or equity in their favour were frequently rewarded by a far greater success than they had reason to anticipate.
William A. Wandell, of Cannelton, admitted in 1851, was probably an abler man, though of somewhat the same type, and obtained his first prominence in the criminal court of Hancock County, Kentucky, where he assisted in defending the notorious Robert and Moses Kelly.
These two brothers were hanged in Hawesville in the spring of 1853, after a trial which found them guilty of brutally murdering three men-Gardner, Mil- ler and an unidentified deckhand, Friday night, Octo- ber 22, 1852, on board the flatboat Eliza No. 2, tied up near Thompson's Ferry, between Troy and Lewis- port. Their execution was the first ever held any- where near and was witnessed by thousands of specta- tors, so that it became a standard by which all other public gatherings were measured for years after- ward, and "the biggest crowd since the Kellys were hung" became an oft-repeated saying.
Judge Hovey was the last President Judge who sat between Associate Judges upon the bench in Perry County, as the courts of Indiana underwent a radical change by the adoption of the new constitution of 1852. Many of the old common law proceedings were forever
Digitized by Google
- -- --
125
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
dispensed with, and the stream of litigation appears to have flowed in a smoother channel when that class of contentious actions known as "Trespass on the Case," "Trover," "Assumpsit," "Case," and others of similar nature passed from sight.
The present code has been in force since May 9, 1853, upon which date, it has been said, "there were buried beneath reform in pleading and practice the remains of John Doe and Richard Roe, who had been familiar to every lawyer from time immemorial, and had sup- plied a legal fiction in actions for recovery of real es- tate, but the new law provided that every case should be prosecuted by the real party in interest, and upon the real party complained of."
John Doe and Richard Roe were mythical personages who had so long appeared as plaintiff and defendant in common law that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The cheerful alacrity with which John always stepped in to vindicate the alleged right of the man out of possession, and the equal promptness of Richard to insist that the man in possession was the lawful owner and entitled to retain his tenancy, were such that the final leave-taking of these doughty knights-errant of the common law was not free from regret.
With an abolition of these fictions, a modification and simplification of many terms by which land was held in feudal times, much of the intricate learning of the old law has faded away, save as mere matters of his- tory. Those who had studied common law and by long years of practice had become thoroughly imbued with its principles, admired it for its grandeur, wisdom and equality, and because it embodied the right system of social and political economy.
It had been rooted in the experience of ages and its adherents were awe-struck at any attempt to prune it of even the smallest branches. Innovation was re- garded as sacrilege by many of the elder practitioners, who refused to become reconciled to the change, and
Digitized by Google
126
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
not a few went so far as to abandon the practice of their beloved profession. Subsequent years, however, have proven beyond shadow of doubt that the legisla- tion of 1852 inestimably faciliated the practice of law in Indiana.
Ballard Smith, a native of Durham, Strafford County, New Hampshire (a brother of Hamilton Smith), who had become a resident of Cannelton in 1853, was the first attorney admitted to the Perry County bar under the new code, at the November term, 1853, and was also the last admitted by Judge Hovey.
William E. Niblack became the next circuit judge, in May, 1854, coming from his home in Martin County, where he had practised for only a few years at Dover Hill, and was unusually young to be called to a position of such importance. Notwithstanding his inexperi- ence, he made an excellent judge, as extraordinary common-sense came to his aid when legal lore proved lacking, enabling him to administer equity if not law. Honesty and uprightness, added to kindness and affa- bility were qualities which made friends throughout the circuit, so that he was sent later by his district to Congress, and afterward became an important member of the Indiana Supreme Court.
Another change in ownership of the thousand-acre tract lying along the river northwest of Cannelton, en- tered 1811 by Nicholas J. Roosevelt but soon trans- ferred to Robert Fulton and held for some thirty years by the Fulton heirs in chancery, brought into Perry County as a distinguished citizen, Elisha Mills Hunt- ington, who had been a resident of Terre Haute since 1822 and who in 1841 had received from President Van Buren his appointment as Judge of the Indiana Dis- trict Federal Court.
Judge Huntington belonged to that noted Connecti- cut family which furnished as a Signer of the Declara- tion of Independence Samuel Huntington, whose name took its place in Indiana history when the county, town-
Digitized by Google
127
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
ship and city of Huntington were simultaneously or- ganized in 1834.
Elisha Mills Huntington was the youngest son of Nathaniel and Mary (Corning) Huntington, and was born March 27, 1806, in Butternuts, New York, receiv- ing his educational training at Canandaigua. After locating in the Middle West he married, November 3, 1841, Mrs. Susan Mary (Rudd) Fitzhugh, born Janu- ary 8, 1820. She was a daughter of Dr. Christopher Rudd, of Springfield, Washington County, Kentucky, belonging to an old Maryland family closely related to Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Her mother's name, Ann Benoist Palmer, denotes the Huguenot lineage of Carolina, and John C. Calhoun was a relative through the Caldwell family.
To rare personal beauty, whose charm was famed far beyond the two states of her nativity and adoption, Mrs. Huntington added mental poise and equipment placing her abreast of her husband and in the fore- most ranks of Indiana's talented women until the day of her unhappily early death, December 3, 1853. One of her latest activities was heading a movement by which a piece of plate was presented to Robert Dale Owen, of New Harmony, in recognition of his services in protecting the rights of women under the new Con- stitution, adopted, whereby both sexes were placed on an equal footing of property ownership in Indiana. One dollar was set as the maximum donation, but the superb silver pitcher still treasured by Judge Owen's descendants shows that Indiana's grateful women re- sponded appreciatively to Mrs. Huntington's appeal.
For ten years "Mistletoe Lodge" was a name to con- jure with among the country-seats bordering the Ohio River, none on either bank surpassing it in lavish hos- pitality, princely even when measured by old-school standards. Under the low-pitched roof-tree of the rambling mansion were welcomed many notable per- sonages. Around its mahogany both master and mis- tress prided themselves upon keeping alive and intensi-
Digitized by Google
128
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
fying that neighbourly kindness between Indiana and Kentucky, which was the pride and glory of the two great sister commonwealths.
Upon selling these broad acres in 1858 to the Swiss Colonization Society, Judge Huntington again took up his residence in Terre Haute, and the streets of a new town were cut through the forests of "Mistletoe Lodge" whose very site became lost under the side- walks and business houses of a later generation.
Some of his children lived in Cannelton for several years during the sixties and seventies, held there by property interests in the American Cannel Coal Com- pany, of which his brother-in-law, Hamilton Smith, was long the president, but Judge Huntington came back no more. Declining health brought about his end, four years after his departure from the riverside re- treat of his happiest years, and he died October 26, 1862, at Saint Paul, Minnesota, whither he had gone seeking strength through a change of climate.
His masterly record on the bench was made in a wide field whereof Perry County was but a small fraction, yet to every local enterprise of Cannelton he gave that encouragement so essential to success, and the deepest interest toward furthering its advance. While his charges to grand juries on questions of vital import to the state and country at large brought him a national reputation second to no judge in the Union, he adorned his lofty position by the serene, polished dignity of his manner, no less than by his commanding talent as a jurist.
This gracious urbanity shone even more attractively in the amenities of private life. His personal corre- spondence and frequent contributions to the press were vivified by a sparkling sense of humour, yet ever be- trayed the classic scholar. As a politician he was emi- nently conservative, without sympathy for extremists of any party. Reared a Whig, and only ceasing to be such through the dissolution of the national body, he carly embraced and ever taught the same lessons of
Digitized by Google
129
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
reverence for the law, loyalty to the Constitution, and love of country which animated those luminaries of wisdom, Webster and Clay, his personal friends as well as his party leaders.
What richer legacy could his posterity ask?
(9)
Digitized by Google
-
CHAPTER XV
MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES AT CANNELTON
At the time the town plat of Cannelton was revised and re-surveyed with additions, Thomas Brashear, John Briggs, James Hay and Thomas Hay were the only resident lot-owners aside from the American Can- nel Coal Company, whose officers were Stephen Fair- banks, President; Henry Loring, Secretary; Andrew T. Hall, Treasurer; Jacob Beckwith, James Boyd and Hamilton Smith, Directors. Jacob Beckwith owned 726 shares of stock; Francis Y. Carlile, 250; Fair- banks, Loring and Company, 72; Perley W. Chamber- lain, 36; Stephen Fairbanks, 30; Hamilton Smith, 12; Andrew T. Hall, 10; besides an otherwise varied dis- tribution of the remainder.
The general offices, which had previously been in Boston, were moved during 1846 to Louisville, where for many years afterward the director's meetings were held. Through the activity of James Boyd who, as lessee, had assumed control of operations in 1843, the annual production of coal had increased from a few thousand to almost a half million bushels; all of the soft, bituminous variety, semi-coking with a sulphur- ous parting. Practically no cannel coal was ever found in any paying quantity, though the original belief in its existence had furnished a name (Lucus a non lu- cendo) to the promoting company and to the city itself.
Such extensive fuel shipments, besides those of lum- ber and other products in large quantities, brought Cannelton prominently before the notice of capitalists seeking investments, so men of large means in the East, as well as in the important river cities of the Middle West and South became interested in this
Digitized by Google
131
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
locality. By the Indiana Legislature of 1847 twelve charters were granted for manufacturing companies designed to carry on business at or near Cannelton.
As illustrating the class of men embarking upon these enterprises, several of the projected undertak- ings, with their incorporators, shall be mentioned, al- though only one was carried to success,-the present Indiana Cotton Mills, founded under the name Cannel- ton Cotton Mills. Of the original Indiana Cotton Mills the incorporators were John Helm, (Governor of Kentucky, 1850-1851,) Charles A. Lewis, George W. Meriwether, Thomas N. Lindsey and William F. Pet- tet, all Louisville men except the first, whose home was the ancestral "Helm Place" in Hardin County, near Elizabethtown.
Louisville also provided incorporators for the Taylor Cotton Mills in Angereau Gray, Edward H. Hobbs, Ira Smith, John S. Allison, David Hunt and John McLean, Jr., besides Zachary Taylor (President of the United States, 1849-1850,) Joseph P. Taylor and William Taylor. The Taylors were allied by blood to the Hawes family, pioneer settlers of Hancock County, Kentucky, for whom its county seat was named Hawesville, hence had personal ties with the vicinity of Cannelton, but their factory was a structure on paper only, though Taylor Street in the town serves as a reminder of "Old Rough and Ready's" heroism in the Mexican War, hav- ing then been named.
The Ward Cotton Mills represented Ward, Ward, Johnson and Jones, of Louisville. Robert J. Ward, one of the wealthiest men in Kentucky and one whose name a fine steamboat bore, is still remembered best as the father of the renowned beauty, 'Sallie Ward.' Her career of social triumph was a national topic, lasting through four marriages and half a century of fame whose echoes yet linger wherever tales of fashion are told.
McKnight, Anderson, Brown, Martin and Everett in- corporated the Perry Cotton Mills, which, like the
Digitized by Google
132
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
Ward mills, went no further than articles of incorpora- tion, although some year later Anderson established in Meade County, Kentucky, near Grahamton, a cotton mill which was long operated by the water power of Doe Run. The Cannelton Glass Manufacturing Com- pany had at its head Stephen M. Allen, of Boston, with Frederick Boyd, of Cannelton, and George A. Lewis. Griswold, Weisiger and Hanna, of Louisville, incor- porated the Cannelton Paper Mill; and the Cannelton Foundry represented Beckwith, Beatty and Beatty.
Few, if any, industrial projects of the late 'forties could claim men of higher distinction than the incor- porators of the Cannelton Cotton Mills. Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, Chief Justice of the United States Su- preme Court, 1864-1873; Charles T. James, of Rhode Island, United States Senator, 1852-1858; Elisha M. Huntington, Judge of Indiana District Federal Court, 1848-1862; Randall Crawford, of New Albany; James Boyd, of Cannelton; John N. Breden, Jacob Beckwith, Perley W. Chamberlain, James Low, Thomas M. Smith and Hamilton Smith. Of these the last two were brothers, born in New Hampshire of old Colonial stock, who had come to Louisville some years earlier, and to Hamilton Smith is due all praise as a foster-father to the young community which Francis Y. Carlile had established.
Full organization of the Cannelton Cotton Mill Com- pany was effected September 22, 1848, though its name soon became the Indiana Cotton Mills, and the follow- ing officers were then chosen: William Richardson, President; Alfred Thruston, Treasurer; Hamilton Smith, Secretary; William F. Pettet, Thomas C. Cole- man, James C. Ford, Lewis Ruffner, C. W. Short, Oliver J. Morgan, Perley Chamberlain and William McLean, Directors.
The number of stockholders had been augmented by forty or more, so that all the names will not be given here, but among the more prominent of those who held shares were the distinguished brothers, Robert Dale
Digitized by Google
-
133
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
Owen and Richard Dale Owen, of New Harmony; the Right Reverend Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Louisiana, founder (1857) of the University of the South, Sewa- nee, Tennessee, and later a Confederate General; Maunsel White, of Louisiana, grandfather of Chief Jus- tice Edward D. White, of the United States Supreme Court from 1910 to the present; Henry Bry, also of Louisiana; James E. Breed, John S. Morris, Eusebius Hutchings, John B. Smith, Willis Ranney, S. H. Long, R. G. Courtney, John M. Robinson and Brother; Rob- inson, Peter and Carey ; all of Louisville, where the con- trol of the stock came ere long to be held.
Such concentration of capital and influence seemed to forecast the inevitable further development of Can- nelton's peculiar advantages for manufacturing. With- in easy access were bountifully deposited nature's valuable gifts coal for motive power; iron for all its various uses ; clay for pottery and brick; sandstone for building; timber for the construction of boats to ply the majestic river. Encouraged by these generous re- sources some of the most sanguine optimists even went so far as to predict that the Cannelton Cotton Mill would prove the first movement on a large scale event- ually resulting in the transfer of the seat of cotton manufacturing from New England, no less than from the Mother Country, to the inexpensive power and low- priced food of Southern Indiana. A Utopian vision!
The early spring of 1849 found, nevertheless, Can- nelton in a period of amazing activity, everyone busy, newcomers arriving daily, to engage in every variety of occupation. Among these was naturally a journa- list, to lend the aid of printer's ink in giving publicity to such a promising settlement as the young com- munity. Charles Holland Mason, of New Hampshire, who had been in Louisville for a year or so, following his graduation from law school, came to Cannelton through the influence of Hamilton Smith, and at once decided to begin a journalistic career.
On Saturday, April 28, 1849, therefore, appeared the
Digitized by Google
134
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
initial number of Perry County's first regular news- paper, The Cannelton Economist, whose prospectus de- scribed it as "A weekly journal devoted to the estab- lishment of manufactures in the South and West, to agriculture and the cause of labour." For two-and-a- half years, or until November 15, 1851, when its own- ership changed hands, the paper was characterized by its zeal for home institutions, the strong, dignified tone of its editorials, and the exceptional standard of its literary selections.
General Charles T. James, of Providence, Rhode Island, one of the Eastern stockholders, who had al- ready built and equipped several successful mills, was placed at the head of the construction of the Cannelton Cotton Mills, as general manager and supervising arch- itect. The active architect and contractor was Alexan- der McGregor, another Rhode Island man, residing in the twin capital of Newport, where he was a civil engineer on the Government work at Fort Adams. Higher testimony to their professional skill could not be paid than the edifice itself, an imposing model of rare grace and symmetry, which has often been pro- nounced the handsomest factory building in the state if not in the Union.
That beauty, no less than substantial utility, was sought by its designers is indicated by the pair of lofty towers which overtop by many feet the five-story building in whose western façade they are the central feature, dominating the long front with its two-story wings. In the northern tower a ponderous bell of cathedral-like tone was ensconced before its walls were complete, and served as a summons to the operatives until 1914, when-worn thin in places where its iron tongue had struck for three-score years-it had to give place to a modern steel bell, which still signals the same hours from cock-crow to curfew as its predeces- sor so long announced. A broad flight of stone steps leads from the ground to the main entrance between the towers, and the wide doorway is crossed by a stone
Digitized by Google
1
135
HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY
lintel on which is carved "Erected 1849." This was elevated to its place by Architect McGregor on Friday, September 7, 1849, the thirty-fifth anniversary of Perry County's organization. The premises lying be- tween Washington, Adams, Front and Fourth Streets, were a donation from the Coal Company, and the original plan called for the erection of tenements to face either side of an esplanade running from the principal entrance westward to the river, but the idea was abandoned after planting two rows of trees down the centre. A tramway was built from the mill grounds to the quarry in the hill east of town where at least two hundred men were employed as stone-cutters. Practically as many more were occupied in the work of excavating for the foundations, and other operations upon the immediate site.
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.