USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 2
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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
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County. His entry was transferred within a few years to Nicholas J. Roosevelt, of New York City, a great- uncle of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, 1902-1908.
Roosevelt's purchase of the land may be accounted for by the circumstance that he commanded the first craft propelled by steam upon Western waters, the New Orleans, built after Robert Fulton's model, which made one successful trip from Pittsburg to New Orleans in the late autumn of 1811. That this boat landed at Troy is a longstanding tradition of creditable probability, and may be readily accepted as true, though equal credence can not be given to the parallel story that Robert Fulton, the inventor, was himself in Troy at the same time. The most reliable contempor- ary records accessible give no indication whatever that he was on board the New Orleans, even as a passenger, when the steamer left the upper Ohio.
Nicholas Roosevelt's idea was, most likely, the estab- lishment of a wood-yard as a depot of fuel supply for future passing steamboats; such as the Tarascon family early maintained at Shippingport (Louisville), but his sojourn in the Middle West was of short dura- tion and his lands were soon transferred into the name of Robert Fulton.
Abraham Smythe Fulton, a brother of Robert, is said to have come to Troy, making plans for a residence upon the highest eminence near by, and a famous 'log- rolling' was arranged for. With the boundless hos- pitality of the age, people were invited from many miles around, even as far as the scattered pioneers in Pike (later Dubois) County, along the "Buffalo Trace" whose existence had a singular influence in the settle- ment of Southern Indiana.
Only the seal of the commonwealth is today a re- minder that buffaloes once ranged in countless num- bers all over the state, and so many thousands of the animals made their annual pilgrimage between the licks of Kentucky and the prairie savannas of Illinois,
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crossing into Indiana at the falls of the Ohio, that a well defined trail eventually marked the entire distance.
A winter of extraordinary severity near the close of the Eighteenth Century froze so completely all vege- table growth that hundreds of wild animals perished from starvation and the buffalo herds never regained their loss, the last ever seen coming or going being within the first years of the Nineteenth Century.
But along the pathway beaten by their hoofs, fol- lowed by the swift coureurs des bois, missionaries, salt- traders and other French pioneers, the eager feet of ambitious Virginians had already begun to press, and its eastern end was surveyed in 1805 by William Rector, while Buckingham's "Base Line" was run prac- tically parallel with the original Buffalo Trace across Pike County some miles north of what was once Perry County.
A swiftly tragic end came, however, to the merri- ment on Fulton Hill. A mighty forest monarch, hewn through by sturdy hands, caught in its fall Abraham Smythe Fulton himself, crushing out his life beneath its ponderous weight. The material already prepared was left to decay upon the ground and Fulton's was the first body interred in the Troy cemetery. No stone ever marked the spot, but old inhabitants of Troy long pointed out the grave. His mercantile interests in the village were transferred to Vivian Daniel and John Daniel (the later a son-in-law of Joseph Wright,) but the woodland acreage stood in Robert Fulton's name for another generation, known as the 'Fulton Tract' event through several interesting changes of owner- ship.
Aaron Fontaine, of Jefferson County, Kentucky, en- tered land near by about 1813, but was also a non-resi- dent owner, always making his home some miles west of Louisville, where he kept a ferry which still gives its name to Fontaine Ferry Park, an attractive pleas- ure resort in the now immediate suburbs of that city.
Wait Vaughan was among the earliest to locate near
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HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 1
Cannelton's present site, entering on Section 15, Town- ship 6, South; Range 3, West; where his grave, with some others of his family, is still marked by inscribed stones standing on a hill-slope of "Wilber Farm," long the property of the late Ebenezer Wilber and now the home of his eldest son, Henry H. Wilber.
Cavender, Cummings, Hoskinson and Thrasher were other pioneer landholders, besides Dosier and Cassel- berry whose names are preserved by two small creeks, respectively north and south of the original plat of Cannelton.
Tobin Township, unquestionably, can boast the greatest number of very early settlers, as well as some of the most prominent if not actually the first in point of time, while no other portion of the county has re- tained perhaps so many of its pioneer families to the present day, lineal descendants in the same name occupying the identical lands entered over a century ago by their ancestors.
This is due to the inducements for permanent resi- dence offered by the fertile soil of the rich 'bottom,' almost surrounded by an immense horseshoe bend of the Ohio River, scant two-and-a-half miles across at its narrowest point although washed by some fifteen miles of the stream's devious course. A hundred years of continuous abode, with the resulting intermarri- ages, have brought about a mingling of relationship in every degree among the old families, involved almost beyond the most expert genealogist and requiring a Herald's College to disentangle.
At the extreme southern end of the bottom, land was entered in November, 1807, by the Rev. Charles Polk (then spelled Polke), the pioneer member in Perry County of a prominent and widespread American stock tracing their direct descent from Robert Polk and Magdalene Tasker, his wife, of Somerset County, Maryland, a stronghold of Irish Presbyterianism whither they had fled with other families of high posi- tion, leaving behind them valuable estates in the
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mother-country and taking refuge in the province from internal dissension at home.
In 1689, the names of Robert Polk and some of his sons appear among the list of loyal subjects in Somer- set County who addressed a letter to King William and Queen Mary. "Whitehall," the handsome estate, de- scended to William Polk I, the second son among nine children, himself the father of six. From his eldest son, William Polk II, who married M. Margaret Taylor, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, sprang eight children, of whom Thomas I became a general in the American Revolution and father of William IV, a Revolutionary colonel, whose son, in turn, Leonidas, Bishop of Louis- iana, was a general under the Confederacy.
Of the same generation (sixth) as the Bishop, James Knox Polk, of Tennessee, (grandson of Ezekiel, brother to Thomas I, of North Carolina, who signed the Meck- lenburg Declaration of Independence,) became eleventh ยท President of the United States.
The second son of William Polk I was Charles I, known in family chronicles as 'the Indian trader of the Potomac,' the father by his wife, Christiana -, of five children, William V. Edmond I, Thomas II, Charles II and Sarah. The spelling Polke appears first in this generation.
Nine children were the fruit of Edmond's marriage, the second being Charles III (the Reverend) whose wife, Willey Dever, bore him ten children. Several died in infancy, and the most conspicuous survivor was perhaps Greenville Polk, who became a colonel in the Indiana Militia.
Jacob Weatherholt, who was a Revolutionary vet- eran of the Virginia Department, took up land in October, 1808, near the Rev. Charles Polke, and during the same year a tract two miles farther up the river was purchased by Alexander Miller. The Polk and Miller lines were early united through the marriage of his grandson, Henry J., son of Robert and Mary
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Elizabeth (Evans) Miller, to Nancy, daughter of Greenville and Matilda (Simms) Polk.
John Winchel was born, 1760, on the estate of the "Great Nine Partners," Dutchess County, New York, and at the age of nineteen was married there to Rachel, daughter of Alpheus Avery. They came in 1809 to Indiana, and although John Winchel lived but two years in the new home, dying September 14, 1811,- perhaps from some of the strange ailments which mys- teriously swept away so many sturdy pioneers in their prime-nine out of his ten children grew to maturity and married, rearing families of their own.
These Winchels of the second generation may be here named, with their marriages, although considerations of space forbid carrying the line further. 1. John, Jr. 2. Smith, m. Annie Mallory, 1805. 3. Catherine, m. Arad Simons. 4. Phoebe, m. Daniel Ryan. 5. Charity, m. Benjamin Wilson. 6. Margaret, ("Peggy") m. Israel Lamb. 7. Uriah, m. Sarah Weatherholt. 8. Roxana, m. Robert Graham. 9. Mary, m. Edmond Polk. 10. Cassandra, m. Matthew Ferguson.
Perry County, as such, was unthought of when John Winchel's family settled in one of its choicest spots, as may be noted in the entry of the land which he bought in 1809, and for which a final grant was issued by the Government in 1818. In faded yet still legible ink, on parchment yellowed by ninety-seven years, one may read :
"James Monroe, President of the United States of America :
To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting: Know ye, that John Winchel, of Knox County, Indiana, having deposited in the General Land Office a Cer- tificate of the Register of the Land Office at Vincennes, whereby it appears that full payment has been made for the west half of section thirty-three, of township seven (south,) in range two (west,) of the Lands directed to be sold at Vincennes, by the Act of Con- gress, 'An Act Providing for the Sale of the Lands of
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the United States in the Territory northwest of the Ohio and above the mouth of Kentucky River,' or the Acts amendatory of the same; There is granted by the United States unto the said John Winchel the half lot or section of Land above described, To have and to hold, the said half lot or section of Land, with the appurtenances, unto the said John Winchel, his heirs and assigns forever.
"In testimony whereof, I have caused these Letters to be made patent, and the seal of the General Land Office to be hereunto affixed.
"Given under my hand at the city of Washington, the twentieth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the forty-second.
'By the President, JAMES MONROE. (Signed.) "Recorded in Volume 2, Page 77, Josiah Meigs, Com- missioner General Land Office."
This interesting document, one of very few-if not the only original-of its kind preserved in this vicinity, is now owned by a direct descendant of John Winchel (Doctor Arad A. Simons, of Cloverport, Kentucky,) through the marriage of Catherine Winchel to Arad Simons II, who came in 1816 to Perry County. He was born February 18, 1783, in Mansfield, Connecticut, a son of Arad Simons I (who had been in the Connecti- cut Marine Service, later a civil engineer) and his wife, Bridget Arnold. The Simons relationship in Tobin Township is extensive through the female line, though the name itself, as a consequence, is not so frequently met in the present generation as that of many other pioneer families.
In this same region lands were taken up during 1814 by Thomas and Henry Drinkwater; in 1815 by Nath- aniel Ewing; in 1816 by Smith Winchel, George Tobin and Thomas Tobin (the latter of whom married Sarah, a sister to the Rev. Charles Polke,) George Ewing and
(2)
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Lemuel Mallory, Revolutionary soldiers from New Jer- sey and Connecticut respectively, entered lands in 1817; Abraham Finch, 1817; Martin Cockrell, 1819. Farther from the river settled Alexander Van Winkle, 1815; Samuel and Daniel Hinton, 1817; Charity Sand- age, 1818; John Crist, 1818.
Near the present site of Rome, in Section 3, Town- ship 7, south ; Range 3, west; on August 21, 1807, 182.3 acres were bought by Samuel Connor, who was a con- spicuous figure in his generation. The son of a Revolu- tionary veteran, Terence Connor (or O'Connor) he was himself a captain during the War of 1812, and later a brigadier-general of militia. Terence Connor entered land in 1812, and two other Revolutionary soldiers, Richard Avitt and Abraham Hiley took up claims in 1816 and 1817 respectively.
John Lamb, 1809; Benjamin Huff, 1811; John Riggs, 1813; William Frymire, 1813; (both near the "Big Hill" west of Rome;) John Crist, 1814, (the ground afterward a donation toward the county seat;) and John Claycomb, 1816; were all in the same general locality. Just south of where Derby now stands, along the river, John Faith bought 255.62 acres in Section 4, August 21, 1807; Thomas Cummings, 208.03 acres, in Section 9, September 26, 1807; Abraham Barger and David Groves, 1810; Dade Connor, 1815, Adam Shoe- maker, 1815; John Shoemaker, 1817; Ansel Hyde, 1817, and Adam Glenn, 1818.
Anderson Township took its name from the river, or creek, whose meanderings water its entire extent, and owing to the consequent irregularities of surface- high rocky hills intersected by deep valleys-but few entries of land were made prior to 1820 in a region now thickly dotted with comfortable homes of prosperous farmers.
The earliest pioneers recorded were William Horner, Section 25, Township 5, South; Range 3, West; Eph- raim Cummings, Section 6, Township 5, South; Range 3, West; John Donnelly, Section 8, Township 6, South;
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Range 3, West. These, however, do not strictly coin- cide with the present boundary lines of Anderson Township, which then probably extended farther east than now.
At an election held August 7, 1820, at the house of Daniel Purcell in Anderson Township, twenty-nine votes were polled, but it must be remembered that voters in that day were permitted to cast their ballots at any convenient polling-place, wherever they might be. Precincts, registration, Australian Systems, or voting machines were then undreamt of. Only a few names, therefore, are recognizable in this list today as still of Anderson Township: Jesse Barber, John Beardsley, John Cassidy, John Davis, Richard Davis, Theodorus Davis, Gideon Draper, Samuel Eslick, John Farris, Thomas Fitzgerald, David Gregory, Daniel Hendricks, James Hendricks, Caleb Hicks, William Hicks, Smiting Irish, (! sic Goodspeed's History, 1885.) John Jarboe, Richard Kennedy, John Lanman, Samuel Morgan, Stephen Owens, Daniel Purcell, Wil- liam Royal, John Stuck, William Taylor, John Terry, Thomas B. Van Pelt, John Wheatley and William Woodall.
John Terry, with his wife Esther (Brown) and their family, came on packhorses about 1815 from Botetourt County, Virginia, into Perry County, and during their journey of several weeks met many wild animals and Indians. The twelfth of their fourteen children, Elias Terry, whom his mother carried all the way in front of her saddle, married four times, becoming himself the father of eighteen children. He was 'a mighty hunter before the Lord,' having in early times killed as many as six deer in one day.
Two of his wives were of the Sandage family, daugh- ters of Thomas and Nancy (Simonson) Sandage, who came on horseback from South Carolina to Indiana, settling in Perry County about 1812. They had seven children, of whom the eldest, Nathan, married twice and had twelve children. Powell and Royal were other
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American families coming early into Anderson Town- ship, but its later settlement and development has been more marked through the thrift and industry of many Belgians, French, Swiss and Germans.
Clark Township is said to have been thus designated to honour a prominent early settler, Robert Clark, who on November 27, 1819, was chosen a justice of the peace at an election polling fifteen ballots. Robert McKim also was elected to a similar position, and be- sides the two candidates the other votes were cast by John Asbell, Solomon Byrne, Ephraim Cummings, Alexander Cunningham, John Faith, Thomas Faith, William Goble, George Hensley, Wilson Hifel, Henry Hill, Robert Hills, James Lanman and William Rowe.
Ephraim Cummings' was the earliest entry of land, Section 31, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1816; John Faith, Section 17, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1817; James Ingram, Section 30, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1818; Robert Ewing, Section 3, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1819; Allen D. Thorn, Section 25, Township 3, South, Range 3, West, 1819.
Bradshaw, Chewning, Dyer, Goble, Hobbs, Lasher, Miles, Mosby, Van Winkle and Sumner all are names of constant recurrence in Clark Township, from its organization down to the present, as substantial citi- zens, landholders and politicians, no less than linked together by a network of intermarriages bringing about a perplexing entanglement of kinship back and forth unto the third and fourth generations.
As an example it may be mentioned that James Lasher, a native of Pennsylvania, who had served under General Harrison in the War of 1812, and had laid the foundation of the Perry County court house and jail at Rome about 1820-22, was married there to Elizabeth Comstock (born in Kentucky) by whom he was the father of ten children, eight living to maturity : Abraham; Clarissa, m. P. H. Esarey; Isaac; Rebecca, m. Calvin Drysdale; Jacob; Elizabeth, m. Samuel
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Aders; Daniel; and Mary, m. Louis W. Goble. That both parents were of profound piety, according to the tenets of the Regular Baptist persuasion, finds evidence in the predominantly Scriptural names chosen for their offspring.
Abraham Lasher, a native of Bullitt County, Ken- tucky, July 11, 1823, was married June 16, 1844, to Sarah, daughter of John and Martha (Thrasher) Lan- man, ten children being born to this union. Following her death, he took as his second wife, Sarah, daughter of William and Rachel (Litherland) Bennett, who bore him nine children. Nineteen grand-children in only one branch of the second generation suffice to show that the Lasher lineage can not be carried further within the limits of an ordinary chapter.
Thirteen children were born to Hardin and Maria (Combs) Chewning; Daniel and Nancy (Spurrier) Weedman were the parents of fourteen; and other pioneer families of Clark Township were similarly pro- lific.
Of famed prowess as a hunter and trapper in the central and northern part of Perry County was John Archibald, of whom an exciting adventure was related by the older generation. One day Archibald and his wife treed a bear near their log cabin, and the former proceeded to cut down the tree, but in its fall became entangled in the branches and was pinned to the ground with a broken leg.
The bear rapidly made off into the forest, followed by the dogs, who had him again treed when Mrs. Arch- ibald arrived on the scene, panting from her swift pur- suit of the quarry. With her own trusty rifle she despatched the dangerous animal before missing for the first time her husband. Hastening back she learned only then the cause of his detention, so set to work with axe and handspikes to release him. Then almost carrying him into the house, she set out for a doctor, who dressed the wound and set the broken limb,
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although its use was never fully recovered, after which she brought home the slain bear.
Oil Township, like Anderson, derived its appellation from a stream of similar name flowing through its borders, Oil Creek emptying into the Ohio River near Derby and along whose banks the first comers found many indications of crude oil, never sufficient, however, to prove commercially profitable.
The first permanent settler in this northeastern por- tion of Perry County was unquestionably John Esarey, a native of Wales, who, prior to the American Revolu- tion, came over into Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where in 1776 he married Sarah Clark. The Clark name has been perpetuated through each succeeding generation of the Esareys down to the present, and verbal tradition has always claimed a connection with the family of George Rogers Clark. This, however, is open to doubt, in the lack of documentary evidence, as George Rogers Clark's lineage was Virginian, and it seems far more probable that Captain John Clark, of Revolutionary fame in Pennsylvania, who in 1774 was a grand juror from Northumberland County, and later lived in Union County where he died February 22, 1809, near Mifflinburg, was the military relative of Sarah (Clark) Esarey. Such is the data furnished by Miss Martha Bladen Clark, an expert genealogist, who is Corresponding Secretary of the Lancaster County Historical Society, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
John Esarey emigrated in 1783 to Kentucky, living several years near Louisville, afterward on Doe Run and later at Hill Grove, in Meade County. From there he crossed over to the Hoosier State in January, 1810, at "Indiana Ferry," landing at the mouth of Little Blue River.
Through singular coincidence the mouth of Big Blue River, some twelve miles farther up the Ohio, was rendered yet more dramatically historic in the family by a grandson, Captain Jesse C. Esarey, commanding the Second Battalion of the Home Guard, which cap-
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tured on June 19, 1863, Captain Hines' invading Con- federate cavalry, the first instance of the War Between the States where Southern troops actually crossed the border into any Northern commonwealth, antedating by a fortnight both Morgan's Raid and Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania.
A man named France rowed the pioneer Esarey family in a small canoe, while the laden packhorses bearing the household effects were encouraged to swim across. From the landing point on Little Blue River, John Esarey, aided by his several sturdy sons, hacked a way twelve miles through the virgin wilderness, locating at length upon what is now known as the A. W. Walker farm in Perry County, then a part of Knox. From that day to the present there have been Esareys in Perry County, and their Centennial Reunion in September, 1910, was the first of its kind ever held in the county.
One of John and Sarah (Clark) Esarey's sons was Jonathan David, who married Sarah Shaver, a daugh- ter of Jacob and Nancy (Allen) Shaver, whose brother, Peter Shaver, married an Esarey daughter, thus early beginning the complication of intermarriages follow- ing ever since.
Jonathan D. and Sarah (Shaver) Esarey were the parents of twelve children, of whom only three will be mentioned, to illustrate the prolific offspring: Hiram Esarey, born April 10, 1813, married October 10, 1834, Sophia, daughter of Robert and Delilah (Phillips) Walker, born January 28, 1810. They had nine chil- dren, among whom Eliza and Matilda married, respec- tively, John S. and James S. Frakes, sons of Grayson and Mary (Shoemaker) Frakes.
Jesse C. Esarey married Susanna Hughes, and among their eleven children the eldest two, Mary E. and John Clark, married a brother and a sister, John W. and Barbara Ewing, children of Samuel and Maria (Falkenborough) Ewing. Another daughter became Mrs. John W. Frakes.
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Jacob Esarey, born August 17, 1829, married, No- vember 6, 1851, Barbara, daughter of Andrew and Melinda (Falkenborough) Elder, born July 28, 1832, and by her was father of eleven children. Two of these, Melinda A. and Eva E., married brothers, Emile and John A. L. Dupaquier, sons of John and Mary (Shoppie) Dupaquier, who came from France into Oil Township toward the middle of the Nineteenth Cen- tury.
In 1813 Robert Walker entered land on Section 18, Township 4, South, Range 1, West, (then Warrick County) and in 1815 William Deen came across from Kentucky and in the same section took up land which has never passed out of the family during a hundred years, but is owned and occupied in 1915 by his great- grandson, Thomas J. Deen. He also entered land in Union Township, on which were then some interesting earthworks, remains of the Indians or of the Mound Builders, which Time has long since obliterated.
Although William Deen I and his wife, Mary Hardin, were parents of only three children,-William, Stephen and Richard-the third generation was given a good start through the marriage of William Deen II to Ary Shirley, ten children being the fruit of their union. John, their eldest, married Mary ("Polly") Abel, who bore him six children, while eleven children were off- spring of the second child, Richard, by his marriage with Christina Springer.
Joshua, their first born, married Helena, daughter of William and Rachel (Shoemaker) Reily, and through one of their four children-Robert L., who married Eveline Frakes-the Deen line has now been carried two generations further, to the seventh.
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