USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 25
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dent; George Reimann, secretary ; John Birchler, treas- urer, and the Reverend William Kemper, spiritual di- rector, were the original officers.
The centenary of Washington's first inauguration, which had a nation-wide observance on April 30, 1889, was not ignored in Perry County. Red-white-and-blue decorated homes, business houses and public buildings, appropriate exercises were held in the principal towns, perhaps the most distinctly commemorative being the brief religious service in St. Luke's Church, Cannelton.
It is a matter of national history that Washington, who was a communicant of the Church of England, when Virginia was a royal province, and a vestryman of Christ Church, Alexandria, devoutly attended wor- ship in St. Paul's Chapel (Trinity Parish), New York, just after the inaugural ceremonies. He was accom- panied thither on foot from Federal Hall by the Vice- President, the Speaker, the two houses of Congress, and all who had taken part in the inauguration. They passed through a military guard into the church, where services were conducted by the Right Reverend Samuel Provoost, Bishop of New York, who was also Chaplain of the Senate. After prayers for the day were read and a "Te Deum" of thanksgiving had been sung, the President entered his state coach and was escorted to his lodgings.
The pew in which he sat is marked by a suitable in- scription today, and on April 30, 1889, was occupied by another President of the United States, Benjamin Har- rison, of Indiana, who took part in the same words of prayer and praise, read from the original Colonial pray- er-book by another Bishop of New York, the Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter.
In grateful recognition of Divine benevolence, the Bishops of the American Church ordered the same ex- act ritual to be used in all the Episcopal churches on the anniversary day, so the identical offices in which the Father of his country had participated were rev- erently conducted a hundred years later in St. Luke's
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Church, Cannelton, by the rector, the Rev. Dr. R. Noyes Avery.
Eighteen and eighty-nine was a year of patriotism everywhere, and saw the first military organization (except during war time) in Perry County since the days of old militia musterings. This was a troop of Cannelton's young men, induced to enlist in the state guard through the persuasiveness of William Cleve- land Henning, who had just returned from DePauw University where he had belonged to the cadet corps while pursuing his law studies.
He was elected captain of the Cannelton Light In- fantry, Company D, First Regiment Indiana Militia, with George Palmer first lieutenant, and Edward Ev- erett Cummings second lieutenant. Mozart Hall was obtained for drill purposes, its name becoming "The Armoury," and the company made a creditable show- ing during the period for which its men enlisted, at- tending state encampments, giving exhibition drills, dress parades, etc., and holding enjoyable military balls in the hall. The company's name was changed to the Ewing Guards in compliment to one of the state officers, but it was not reorganized after expiration of its term of service.
Captain Henning was his father's namesake and the eldest son born to the third marriage of William Hen- ning, Sr., a native of Pennsylvania, December 17, 1829, but who was taken when six months' old to Germany by his parents, John and Dorothea (Hildebrand) Hen- ning. At the age of twenty he came back to America, living for a time near his birthplace but later in the "panhandle" of (West) Virginia, and in Ohio. Here he studied law, and in December, 1858, at Columbus, was admitted by the Supreme Court of Ohio to the practice of his chosen profession.
His first marriage took place June 2, 1850, at Johns- town, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Helfenbein, who bore him one child. After her death, in 1854, Lena Howiler became his wife, at Millersburg, Ohio, and was the
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mother of two children. She died in 1858, and Sep- tember, 1860, he was again married, to Sarah Elizabeth Cleveland, of Calais, Ohio. This union lasted into its fortieth year, William Henning's death occurring March 27, 1900, and nine children grew to maturity as its offspring. Of these, eight were born in Can- nelton, which was the family home after 1866.
William Henning and William Cleveland Henning practiced law together and were especially active in promoting the erection of the Cannelton water-works and electric light plants, whose construction work was done during the years of 1892-93. William W. Taylor, of Pennsylvania, a brother to Bayard Taylor, the poet, was builder and first superintendent, making his home for a time in Cannelton. Some five years later the Tell City people installed their municipal system of light and water, the cornerstone of the power-house being laid with formal public exercises.
In proportion to its population no part of Indiana or of the nation showed greater interest or enthusiasm in the Columbian anniversary. October 12, 1892, found all of Perry County aglow with light and colour for "Columbus Day," and no sight more picturesque was ever witnessed in Cannelton or Tell City than the torchlight procession of that night, with their sym- bolic floats. Master Louis Gerard Snyder represented Columbus in the reproduction of the "Santa Maria" at Cannelton, carrying the royal Spanish standard, handwrought in satin, and on another float Queen Isa- bella in the midst of her courtiers was impersonated by Miss Sarah Lillian Dwyer (Mrs. Robert Curtis Clark).
Cannelton can claim with certainty to have been one among the earliest of Southern Indiana towns enjoying a public library, although the present officially ac- knowledged public library is separated by a half-cen- tury's distance from the modest little collection of books brought together in the early 'fifties under the style "Workingmen's Institute."
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This was one out of 160 "institutes" profiting through the will of the famous William Maclure, of New Harmony, who bequeathed almost his entire for- tune toward the founding of "associations for the dif- fusion of useful knowledge," at his death March 27, 1840, in San Angel, Mexico. His estate was left to trustees who were to appropriate a sum not exceeding $500 to any institute or club of workingmen in the United States that could give satisfactory evidence that they were properly organized and had a reading room of one hundred volumes.
As might be expected, applications poured in from many states, until the whole fund was distributed. Cannelton was among the fortunate ones, but had no endowment for further maintenance after buying five hundred dollars' worth of books. No record is in evi- dence as to the dissolution of the Workingmen's Insti- tute, and its existence is only to be traced by some of its volumes yet treasured on the private shelves of old families whose members were among its original patrons.
But the taste for reading never died out. In the summer of 1893 some fifty citizens joined in forming a subscription library, open to members and their fam- ilies on payment of an entrance fee and small monthly dues. At the beginning three hundred volumes were purchased and others were added as rapidly as the lim- ited income would permit. The books (kept in a private office), circulated widely, even beyond authorized bounds, proving the genuine demand for good reading matter. This, the city council came to recognize in 1896, by making a tax levy of one-half of one per cent. for the establishment and support of a free public library under jurisdiction of the municipal board of education.
This was felt to mark an era of progress by those who had so long and patiently striven to create and mould a local sentiment toward this end, and the im- mediate popularity which followed the opening of the
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library fully justified the sanguine hopes of its opti- mistic promoters. As a recognition of the faith- ful and arduous individual efforts exerted in three special instances, Mrs. Isabelle (Huckeby) de la Hunt, Solomon H. Esarey, and Thomas J. Truempy were ap- pointed the original Book Committee, and in such ca- pacity continued for several years to supervise the selection of new books. Semi-annual purchases were usually made, thus keeping somewhat abreast of cur- rent literature, though the standard classics were never ignored, and the resulting accumulation of nearly three thousand volumes has come to represent a liberal judgment along many lines.
The first librarian was Mary Catherine Adkins (Mrs. William May), who held the post until 1900, when fol- lowed by Edward Everett Cummings, Charles A. Loesch becoming his successor after two years. In September, 1902, the library was moved from its pre- viously cramped quarters in a narrow hallway to an airy, spacious and well-lighted room on the ground floor of the City Hall, where the books have since been kept. Direct access to the shelves has always been permitted, and through the personal labour of the Woman's Travel Club in 1915, a card catalogue was in- stalled, although the numbering is simply that of ac- cession and does not follow any of the standard sys- tems of library cataloguing, such as the Dewey-Deci- mal or the Poole.
It is distinctly creditable to Cannelton that such an institution has been founded and kept up, even upon so small a scale, purely by civic pride. No donations have ever been received other than the volumes originally comprised in the subscription library, yet the eye of Hope still turns toward the munificence of Indiana's already liberal benefactor-Andrew Carnegie.
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
NEW COURT HOUSE-FIRST HIGH SCHOOL.
AMONG numerous early stories often repeated but wholly impossible to substantiate, has been found the insistent claim of Troy to have had the pioneer news- paper printed in Perry County, represented by the Troy Gazette as founded in the year of Indiana's ad- mission. Interesting, however, as is the subject, it is yet one altogether without documentary evidence for its verification a century later, so the case must be reluctantly dismissed with the old common-law "Scotch verdict"-Not Proven.
The only serious reference in print to any such paper which could be found was in an Illustrated His- torical Atlas of Indiana, published, 1876, by Baskin, Forster and Company, Chicago. In its sketch devoted to Perry County (page 327) is found the brief state- ment: "In 1816 the first paper was established. It was published at Troy, and called the Troy Gazette."
Without depreciating the worth of the volume from a geographical standpoint, its historical material, in- so far as Perry County is concerned, can not be trusted, the same page bristling with such absolute errata in dates as completely to discount its value as an author- ity. Merely quoting a few of its most glaring inaccu- racies, the book states: "Perry County was organized in 1815" (1814). "In 1812 (1811) the first steamboat surprised the settlers." "* * * Henderson (Ander- son) Creek. At the mouth of this latter Thomas Lin- coln and his illustrious son Abraham kept a ferry from the spring of 1814 to that of 1817, when he re- moved to a farm about eight miles north of Rockport, Spencer County." "Henderson" Creek is recognizable
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as Anderson, but the "illustrious son Abraham" was just five years old in "the spring of 1814," certainly a tender age to qualify as ferryman and just three years before Thomas Lincoln himself made his first trip alone to Indiana. "About" is quite safely chosen to modify the "eight miles north of Rockport," where Lincoln City now stands on the "farm" in Spencer County, which was Perry County when the Lincoln family emigrated from Kentucky. Comment is super- fluous, though further extracts would be equally laughable.
The theory of strongest probability, based upon minute and painstaking research carried on at Indiana University by the Department of Western History (whose chair is worthily filled by a loyal son of Perry County, Logan Esarey, Ph. D.), favours the conclusion that the Troy Gazette story had its origin in an allu- sion made to such a paper in the columns of the Vin- cennes Western Sun, as newly established in the year 1816.
Files of the Western Sun, Indiana's first newspaper, established 1804 and still published, are preserved in the University Library, and as no state was mentioned in speaking of the Troy Gazette, readers in after years assumed Indiana was meant while it was, in point of fact, New York. The Gazette, of Troy, New York, was founded in 1816, and some later items quoted from its columns by the Western Sun clearly indicate their source as from an eastern periodical. The American Antiquarian Society, of Worcester, Massachusetts, founded 1812, and the supreme authority of the United States on all such points, has given this decision, so the Troy Gazette of 1816 can not possibly be listed as an Indiana journal.
To John B. Bacon, of Troy, a son of Dr. Jesse D. and Emma (Leming) Bacon, is therefore due the distinc- tion of establishing in 1890 the Troy Times, the first paper actually printed in Perry County's oldest town. For two years he continued its publication as a Demo-
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cratic weekly, selling out in April, 1892, to Louis J. Early, of Daviess County, Kentucky, who had been en- gaged in journalism at Louisville, associated with Wil- liam Stone Sterett ( a son of the witty "Jeff" Sterett, of the Hawesville Plaindealer), of Hancock County, in a sparkling Sunday weekly, "The Girl," devoted to so- ciety personalities, the drama, etc., printed on paper of an attractive pink tint.
The Cannelton Telephone was founded October 25, 1891, by Joseph Sanderson, of Evansville, and Edward C. Schuetz, of Cadiz, Kentucky, joint editors and pro- prietors until the former's withdrawal, August 12, 1892. Schuetz continued publication alone until De- cember, when Early removed the Troy Times plant to a larger town, and the two papers were consolidated under the name Cannelton Times-Telephone. During 1893 the hyphenated title was dropped and May 1, 1894, Schuetz sold out his interest to Early, who has ever since continued as sole editor and proprietor of the Cannelton Telephone, whose politics have remained unvaryingly Democratic.
Tell City's first permanently successful Democratic newspaper is almost contemporary, Philip Zoercher having founded the Tell City News, April 10, 1891. He remained for several years in full control, placing the sheet upon an established basis, but with increas- ing claims upon his time abandoned journalism for pol- itics and his profession of the law, the News then be- coming the property of his younger brother, Louis Zoercher, still its editor and proprietor, besides post- master of Tell City.
The disrepair into which the county jail and sher- iff's residence had fallen during forty years of usage, led in the early 'nineties to some vigourous effort on the part of Tell City looking toward a third re-location of the county seat. As a preliminary move, strong oppo- sition was made to the expenditure of any money on the new buildings proposed at Cannelton, but the issue was settled by the commissioners favourably to the
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old site, and the present modern pressed brick sheriff's home, with stone jail in the rear, was duly erected about 1891-92.
There was still latent, however, a pardonable spirit of discontent with the antiquated court house, built about 1856 as a school house, and only remodelled for court purposes in 1859 in the emergency of moving the county seat from Rome. Its accommodations were altogether inadequate, no less than unsanitary, which Cannelton's citizens thoroughly realized along with the rest of Perry County.
The matter of distance a mere detail of two miles -was not an argument to carry any weight against the costly modern municipal building under process of construction in the middle of Tell City's park, should it be offered as a donation to the county when com- plete, so Cannelton raised a fund approximating $30,000, and employed a Louisville architect, John Bacon Hutchings (whose father had formerly owned much property in Cannelton), to design what many cultured critics have pronounced the most truly artis- tic court house in Southern Indiana.
A pure example of the Italian Renaissance style (fol- lowed later in the superb marble Federal Building at Indianapolis), carried out in straw-coloured pressed brick, with cut trimmings of Bedford limestone, its perfectly balanced symmetry of line is an effective illustration of the proverb, "Beauty is its own excuse for being."
Its corner-stone was laid in the presence of an im- mense crowd, September 10, 1896, with the Masonic symbolism of corn, wine and oil. On the Fourth of July preceding, an elaborate industrial parade had been given in Cannelton, one float being a handsome model of the building-to-be, exact in every particular of colour and ornament, built to quarter-inch scale by Charles Hafele's Sons, proprietors of the Cannelton Planing Mill. Girls from the high and grade schools represented the states of the Union on another float, grouped
i
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around "Liberty," Miss Martha Hodde (Mrs. John J. Franzman, Jr.), "Columbia," Miss Adelia Clark (Mrs. Richard Turner Cash), and "Uncle Sam," Michael Cas- per. This was followed by a barbecue dinner, with dancing and other sports, at Wittmer's Avenue Garden.
In June, 1897, the completed edifice, whose interior arrangement was all that professional skill could devise in point of convenience, was turned over to the County Commissioners, who readily accepted a generous gift against whose acceptance no reasonable objection could be alleged. The old court house and square were given back to the city of Cannelton, and have been turned into a city hall, public library and park, whose shade trees form a foreground setting to the county build- ings, much as if planned with the idea of a "civic cen- tre" for which so many larger communities are striving.
The first property, other than court house or jail, which Perry County had officially acquired, was the county asylum and farm, for which provision was made in the late forties, although care of the unfortunate had begun with the organization of the county. In every township overseers of the poor were appointed, whose duty was to see that the indigent were suitably maintained, and who periodically presented their ex- pense accounts to the county board for allowance.
Taylor Basye, Jehu Hardy and William Hatfield were appointed in June, 1847, as a special committee to se- lect and purchase a county farm. In September they reported having bought from Terence Connor for $900, 180 acres in section 33, township 6 South, range 1 west, lying in Tobin Township some two miles north of Rome, Joshua B. Huckeby, Samuel T. Groves and James Boyle were authorized to erect necessary build- ings and repair those already standing, which was done at a cost of $216, and in 1848 Allen M. Ferguson built a new frame asylum costing $650, so that the entire place represented an approximate investment of $1,800.
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In September of that year Jonathan McMillan became the first superintendent.
It argues favourably for the industry or the gener- osity of the time that the number of inmates rarely ex- ceeded five, so about 1853 the commissioners discon- tinued the asylum as a needless expense, renting the farm to tenants and placing the poor again in charge of their respective township trustees.
Cornelius Markum became superintendent in 1857, and the farm was again used as an asylum until 1860 when the county seat was moved to Cannelton. Mi- chael Dusch, commissioner from the Cannelton district, was then empowered to rent suitable quarters for an almshouse and engage a temporary superintendent, so for several years many of the county poor were boarded under contract at 45 cents per diem by Mrs. Sarah (Stonebridge) Dwyer, in a large frame house at the corner of Sixth and Taylor streets in Cannelton, which had been erected as a boarding house for cotton mill operatives. This building is yet standing, the pri- vate residence of Mrs. Stella (Hargis) Bush, but has been so completely and expensively transformed that its original use could never be suspected.
The Tobin Township farm was first rented to John K. Groves for three years, then offered for sale at pub- lic auction, passing through the hands of Elijah B. Huckeby, Madame Félicité (Le Guerrier) Longuemare and Samuel T. Whitmarsh, none of whom ever com- pleted their payments, until in 1879 it was bought by Mrs. Anne Fuchs, and was later known as the Eitel- george place.
Proposals for a tract of not less than five or more than twenty acres near Cannelton, Tell City or Troy, and suitable for a county farm, were called for by the commissioners in March, 1866, and in August twenty- three acres, a half-mile east of Cannelton on St. Louis Avenue extended, were bought of Lawrence Richardson for $1,265. Plans and specifications for a brick asylum were prepared the next year, James A. Burkett and
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Benjamin H. Rounds being awarded the contract in June, 1867, for $8,948.45. The work was completed and accepted in December of that year, Patrick Lahey becoming the first superintendent in the new building.
John C. Wade succeeded him in 1869, and the two years of his incumbency were notable for the efficient ability shown by his wife as matron. Mrs. Jemima (Edwards) Wade was a woman of strong character and marked personality, and the comparatively short time of her service in county work of charities and correc- tions developed traits which later brought her into a similar, wider field where she laboured for many years with noble success. In 1881 she was selected as first matron of the newly organized Christian Home in Evansville, a position which she held until the end of her life, January 30, 1911. Her mental powers and bodily activity were retained to a marvellous degree, and it was only when past ninety that she consented to resign active work, when elected Honourary Matron for Life, remaining the personal guest of the trustees with executive supervision as before, up to the time of her death.
Samuel King followed John C. Wade as superintend- ent in 1871, and his successors during the next decade were August Nettelbeck, 1875 (when a wing to the asylum was built) ; William W. Scott, 1876; Wesley C. Reid, 1881; Henry M. Howard, 1884. Among the later superintendents, particular praise is due the late Will- iam T. Tinsley, who served from 1903 to 1907. With his wife, Mrs. Nancy (Colvin) Tinsley as matron, the institution was maintained at a high standard and their work received official commendation from the State Board of Charities.
The same month of September, 1896, which saw the corner-stone of the new court house laid, witnessed also the beginning of the first regularly commissioned high school in Perry County, that at Cannelton, and the major credit for having brought its work up to the requirements of the State Board of Education is due to
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the energetic superintendent, George Perry Weedman, himself a native of Perry County and a lifelong edu- cator. While the school system in Cannelton had for some years given advanced work, it was not accredited by higher institutions and its students had no recog- nized standing in other schools.
John R. Weathers, who took the principalship in September, 1882, formulated a curriculum of three years' high school work, and on June 19, 1885, the first. "commencement" in Cannelton was held, although the diplomas were practically nothing more than certifi- cates from a school of no established affiliation, no matter how thorough a course of study had been pur- sued. Six young ladies were graduated: Misses Lulu Bemiss (Mrs. - ), Etta Cummings (Mrs. Charles Steinsberger), Harriet Gingell (Mrs. Schwaderer), Ella May Henning (Mrs. William Ellsworth Richey), Sissie Hurley, Daisy Permelia Marshall (Mrs. John Adam May), Hannetta Mueller (Mrs. John Vogel) and Genevieve Palmer (Mrs. Sanders). Their essays re- flected the usual sentiment of academic programmes and the most individually original touch lay in the class motto which they chose for themselves: "Genius Has No Brother."
A second class was graduated under Professor Weathers' superintendency, in 1886, its membership including one young man, Walter Mark May, and six girls, Misses Lulu Cummings (Mrs. James Ulysses Powell), Sara Tevlin (Mrs. William E. Dougherty), Eliza Scott Shallcross (Mrs. Frederick Jennings), Mar- garet Teresa Mitchell (Mrs. E. C. H. Sieboldt), Kather- ine Hurley and Nellie Grace Robinson. During the sub- sequent ten years some several diplomas were annually awarded, as a rule, but the ceremonies were seldom more elaborate than the "public examinations" which were then regarded as an indispensable feature of "the last day of school."
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