USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 6
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On the next day Lafayette was taken across to Jef- fersonville aboard the steamer General Pike, and grandiloquently welcomed to Indiana by Governor Ray, although rain prevented his attending a large barbe- cue which had been arranged in his honour. With the further incidents of his stay in America Perry County had no part, and Indiana but little, save that one of her counties, organized 1834, the year of his death, and its county seat commemorate the title of his French cha- teau, La Grange, still occupied by his descendants, and a shrine much visited by Americans abroad.
Until the floods of the eighties the little log cabin had bravely weathered six decades of storm and sun- shine, but is now only a memory, though the bubbling spring still pours forth its refreshing waters beside the winding turnpike road from Cannelton to Deer Creek.
A contemporary heirloom preserved in one of Can- nelton's oldest homes is a quaint cream jug in "old blue" china, having an established catalogue value among collectors as the "Lafayette Pattern," and now used by the third generation in descent from its orig-
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inal owners, Joshua B. and Rebecca (Lang) Huckeby, who were married at Rome in the year of its manufac- ture, 1824. A picture of Lafayette's vessel landing at Castle Garden, New York, with the Battery guns belching forth a fiery salute, appears on the sides of the pitcher, the front showing a medallion inscription. The ware is much sought by china connoisseurs for its historic design no less than its rarity, as specimens are now seldom seen outside of art museums or prize cabi- nets.
Lafayette's love for America lasted with his life. Not only was his only son called George Washington, but Virginia and Carolina were names chosen for his daughters. Returning to his native land to die, it was yet his wish to repose in American soil, hence, at his request, when he bade a last farewell to these United States, the frigate Brandywine which bore him away carried also a hogshead of earth from the summit of Bunker Hill. It was taken from the very spot where General Warren fell, so the same ground which drank the blood of Warren surrounds today the ashes of an- other patriot-soldier, no less gallant, whose life was happily spared for a longer career of usefulness and bravery.
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CHAPTER VIII
LINCOLN FAMILY IN PERRY COUNTY.
So MUCH concerning Abraham Lincoln's boyhood connection with the vicinity of Troy has been told and published that no historian of Perry County would dare omit some reference thereto, yet a regard for ac- curacy forbids the claim of authenticity to the greater number of
"these legends and traditions,"
so that only a few of the simplest facts, which have been indubitably verified, will here be given space.
As all the world knows today, Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in LaRue County, Kentucky, near the village of Hodgenville, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln being his parents. While the Lincoln family came of worthy stock in Rockcastle County, Virginia,-tracing their direct descent through "Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman" (whose will was recorded, 1735, in the Register's Office at Phila- delphia) to that Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England, his father, the first of the line in America-no nation's hero ever made his advent under more unpromising circumstances of adversity than Abraham Lincoln.
Of all his biographers none can be considered to out- rank John Hay and James G. Nicolay, and their joint work speaks with an authority which can not be ques- tioned. In its pages we are told that "by the time the boy Abraham had attained his seventeenth year the social conditions of Kentucky had changed consider- ably from the early pioneer days. Life had assumed a more settled and orderly course, the old barbarous equality of the earlier times was gone; a distinction
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of classes began to be seen, those who held slaves as- suming a distinct social superiority over those who did not.
"Thomas Lincoln, concluding that Kentucky was no country for a poor man, determined to seek his for- tune in Indiana. He had heard of rich, unoccupied lands in Perry County in that state, and thither he de- termined to go. He built a rude raft, loaded it with his kit of tools, and four hundred gallons of whiskey, and trusted his fortunes to the winding water-courses. He met with only one accident on the way; his raft capsized in the Ohio River, but he fished up his tool- kit and most of the ardent spirits and arrived safely at the house of a settler named Posey, with whom he left his odd assortment of household goods for the wil- derness, while he started on foot to look for a home in the dense forest."
This "settler named Posey" was, in all probability, the same Francis Posey listed among Perry County's taxpayers in 1815, living at or near Troy, then the only settlement along the Indiana shore of the river below New Albany, and the county seat as well.
Messrs. Hay and Nicolay go on by telling us that "He selected a spot which pleased him in his first day's journey," and the vigourous frontiersman, such as Thomas Lincoln was, would think nothing of sixteen miles' walk between sunrise and sunset, that being the distance from Troy to the tract of land which he en- tered the following year.
We are told further that "he then walked back to Knob Creek (Kentucky) and brought on his family to their new home. No humbler cavalcade ever invaded the Indian timber. Besides his wife and two children his earthly possessions were of the slightest, for the backs of two borrowed horses sufficed for the load. In- sufficient clothing and bedding, a few pans and ket- tles were their sole movable wealth. They relied on Lincoln's kit of tools for their furniture and on his rifle for their food. At Posey's they hired a wagon,
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and literally hewed a path through the wilderness to their new habitation, near Little Pigeon Creek, a mile and a half east of Gentryville, in a rich and fertile for- est country."
While Messrs. Hay and Nicolay give no exact date for this removal, their general description tallies closely with the recorded fact that on October 15, 1817, Thomas Lincoln made entry of a tract of land upon which he had squatted a few months before, a part of Section 32, Township 4 South; Range 5 West. At the time it was included in Hurricane Township, Perry County, but now belongs to Carter Township, Spencer County, and is embraced within the plat of Lincoln City, laid out in 1874, by Henry Lewis, of Cincinnati, at the building of the first railroad through Spencer County.
Thus, while the Lincoln family became residents of Indiana first as citizens of Perry County, they re- mained such less than a twelvemonth; that is, until the separation of Spencer County by legislative enact- ment of January 20, 1818, so the further incidents of their sojourn in the State belong properly to historians of Spencer County, not Perry.
Nancy Hanks Lincoln died, however, on October 5, 1818, and was buried upon a spot which is now main- tained at state expense as a beautiful memorial park, along one side of which runs the Cannelton Branch of the Southern Railway, so Perry County has no chance to forget her as one of its pioneer women.
Abraham Lincoln's tribute acknowledging his in- debtedness to his "angel mother" pays her appropriate honour, yet a word of praise, likewise, is due his step- mother, Sarah (Bush) Johnson, whom Thomas Lin- coln married within a year after being left a widower. She filled a mother's place to Nancy Hanks Lincoln's two children, generously sharing with them the addi- tional resources she had brought into their home from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and giving them advantages
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for the scanty educational opportunities which were the best the neighborhood afforded.
Thomas Lincoln appears, however, to have been of a roving disposition, always ready to move, and in 1830 he disposed of his encumbered acres to Mr. Gen- try, sold his crop of corn and hogs, and packing his family with their household goods into a wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen, left Indiana forever, emigrating into the newer state of Illinois, with which the Lincoln name was thereafter permanently identified.
Thirteen years of boyhood and young manhood were the limits of Abraham Lincoln's residence in the vicin- ity of Perry County, and many of the incidents related of him by the elder generation had a substantial basis of fact, sufficient for their acceptance as truth, al- though unrecorded by his serious biographers. Others were highly apochryphal, some contradictory and even patently impossible from the point of time.
All describe him correctly as large and awkward in frame, doing the "general utility" work which fell to the lot of pioneer boys in his day, chopping wood, feed- ing cattle and hogs, and driving them to the river for slaughter, to be salted down and shipped South by flat-boat. The mouth of Anderson River was a fre- quent harbour for craft of this kind, and large pack- ing houses were conducted there by James Taylor, of Troy. The Lincoln family and neighbours would nat- urally dispose of their produce at the nearest point accessible, hence Abraham himself was frequently in the village of Troy, and even attended school there for a short time.
No bridge spanned Anderson River, then officially classified as a 'navigable' stream, all crossing having to be done by skiff, and Lincoln's remarkable physical strength may have led him to 'hire out' for awhile as ferryman. Hay and Nicolay write of him that he felt too large for the life of a farm hand, and his thoughts -after the manner of restless Hoosier lads who were his contemporaries-turning naturally to the river as
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an avenue of escape from the forest, he asked an old friend to give him a recommendation to some steam- boat man on the Ohio. But on being reminded that the right to dispose of his time was yet vested in his father for another year or so, he conscientiously de- sisted from the purpose.
The same reliable authorities tell us that in 1828 an offer was made to him by Mr. Gentry to accompany the latter's son, Allen Gentry, with a flat-boat of pro- duce to New Orleans and return. Gladly was the op- portunity embraced for a glimpse of the world such as the long voyage afforded. This is the only river trip mentioned by Hay and Nicolay, and as the start was undoubtedly made from Troy, it was most likely in connection with other vessels controlled by James Tay- lor and Troy citizens, since the flat-boats commonly journeyed in fleets for mutual assistance and protec- tion.
A well-written account of Lincoln's having been once arrested in Kentucky opposite Troy and tried before a Hancock County magistrate for ferrying with- out license, in violation of privileges held by others, was printed in 1913, with some effective illustrations and interesting circumstantial detail, including a mythical love affair with a certain damsel (a picture of whose grave was shown) from whom he gallantly withdrew as a wooer upon learning that she was the betrothed of another.
Lincoln's straightforwardness in the simple plead- ing of his own cause was said to have obtained his prompt release by Esquire Pate, who gave him good advice toward further legal study. Altogether a ro- mantic narrative, and not without some ground, one may readily believe, although it had probably lost nothing in being handed down through more than sixty years.
Of the love-affair, a story had been published, some fifteen years earlier, which bore strong points of re- semblance, except that the maiden's name was wholly
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different and her suitor had less faith in the sincerity of Lincoln's withdrawal from the field, engaging him in personal conflict in a corn-crib whence Lincoln emerged with a scar above one ear which he bore to his grave.
Summing up everything, therefore, a conclusion is reached whose expression may be couched in phrase- ology borrowed from the subject himself :- in other words, some of the incidents related of Abraham Lin- coln as occurring at Troy might have been true, but all could not have been true.
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CHAPTER IX.
EARLY RESIDENTS, SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES-DERBY.
IN THE same year of Lafayette's visit to America a young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight who came into Perry County bore the name John Mason, a scion of the distinguished Virginia family, collaterally de- scended from the Colonial statesman, George Mason, author of the famous Bill of Rights, whose estate in Fairfax County overlooking the Potomac, "Gunston Hall," was adjacent to "Mount Vernon."
John Mason's first venture into Indiana had been into Pike County, but foreseeing a career of advance- ment for the Ohio River counties he sought a home in Perry County, establishing himself in Troy Township, Section 16, Township 6, South, Range 3, West. There, some two or three years later, he married Mrs. Sarah (Elkins) Webb, a native of Maine, the widow of Asa Webb. Of their seven children the eldest, William Floyd Mason, was the first-born child within the limits which afterwards became the city of Cannelton, his birth occurring January 21, 1830.
A few other scattered families were neighbours, as country people reckon such distances, the names of Cavender, Hoskinson, Holman and Wentworth being represented, but among them John Mason's vigourous personality made him distinctively foremost. He was energetic in his farming operations and-added to a disposition of singular kindheartedness and benevol- ence-possessed keen penetration and sound fore- thought which made him judicious while venturesome.
Coal as a steam-producer was brought to the notice of steamboat engineers by him among the first, and he was one of the earliest shippers introducing coal as
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a fuel in the city of New Orleans. While the commer- cial development of the region about his home became a little later the work of others, it must not be over- looked that his scrupulous honour in the payment of security debts thrown upon him had for a time severe- ly cramped his financial status, and a just chronicle may not deny the credit which others have failed to pay John Mason as the true pioneer in recognizing the vast material resources latent in the rock-ribbed hills of Perry County.
That old-time conservatism yet existed in the 'twen- ties along the Ohio River, especially upon its southern bank, is quaintly attested by a grand jury indictment brought in 1827 for what is believed to have been the only genuine duel ever fought in Perry County, reading :
"State of Indiana, Perry County-ss :
In the Perry Circuit Court, in the term of September, in the year of Our Lord, one thousand eight hun- dred and twenty seven.
The Grand Jurors empanelled and sworn to enquire for the State of Indiana and the body of the County of Perry, present that Daniel Stephens, late of Tobin Township in the County of Perry and State of Indiana, Gentleman, on the fourteenth day of August, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, with force and arms, at said township in said County and State aforesaid, did fight a duel with a rifle loaded with gunpowder and ball, with one Stanley Singleton, by then and there shooting and dis- charging said rifle, loaded as aforesaid, at said Stanley Singleton, contrary to the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State of Indiana.
Charles I. Battell, Attorney, Prosecutor for 4th Indiana Circuit."
A corresponding indictment was returned against Stanley Singleton, and the cases remained for several terms upon the docket before finally nollied, as the
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duellists were outside the State and, without extradi- tion papers, could not be haled before an Indiana court.
Both men were Kentuckians, and Daniel Stephens, an extensive landowner in Breckinridge County, just opposite the mouth of Bear Creek, adjacent to the present stations of Holt and Addison on the Louis- ville, Henderson & St. Louis Railway. The land was a portion of that entered by his father, Captain Rich- ard Stephens, of Virginia, as a Revolutionary grant, and Singleton was a neighbour and personal friend. A violent quarrel, however, had arisen over political dif- ferences, so that a challenge was sent and accepted, the challenged party selecting the pioneer's weapon-the rifle-for the conflict. In order to evade Kentucky law the two men, in company with their seconds, and pos- sibly a doctor or one or two servants, crossed the river into Tobin Township and exchanged two shots apiece. Singleton escaped with only a shot through the lobe of his ear, but at the second discharge Stephens re- ceived a severe wound in the hip, from which-after a tedious recovery-he suffered during the remainder of his life. The friendship between the men was cor- dially resumed, just as if there had been no duel.
One year later was held the first trial for murder,- the State of Indiana vs. William Rockwell for killing William Pitman. On May 12, 1828, the two men were in a skiff on the river and became involved in an alter- cation, during which Rothwell struck Pitman on the back of the head with an iron implement called a 'sheep's foot,' (a metal bar formed into a hammer head at one end and a claw at the other,) fracturing his skull and causing his death after a few days.
An indictment was found against Rothwell, followed by his arrest and trial at the September term. Samuel Frisbie was attorney for his defense, with Charles I. Battell as prosecutor, and Aaron Cunningham fore- man of the jury. 'Guilty,' was the verdict returned, whereupon defendant's attorney filed a plea for a new trial on the ground of no jurisdiction, which was
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allowed by Judge Goodlett, it being construed at that time that Kentucky alone had jurisdiction over crimes committed on the Ohio River along Indiana borders. The prisoner was therefore delivered to the authorities of Breckinridge County, but on the eve of his trial at Hardinsburg a change of venue was taken to the county of Hancock, just organized, and Rothwell suc- ceeded in escaping from the primitive Hawesville jail and was never recaptured.
Samuel Frisbie was appointed Probate Judge in 1829, holding the office until elected senator the follow- ing year when James Reily became his successor, Stephen Shoemaker following Robert Gardner as County Agent, also in 1830. In September, 1831, the county business was placed in the hands of three com- missioners, John Bristow, Hart Humphrey and Saf- ford Haskell. They divided the county into forty-one road districts, naming the hands of each, or such able- bodied citizens as were required to give two days' manual labour on the roads. For example: John Frakes was appointed supervisor of the Vincennes Road, "from Oil Creek to Smith's Sugar Camp," with Thomas Sprinkle, Abishai Dodson, Samuel Ewing and Graham Ewing as his assistants.
Much gerrymandering of road districts appears to have been indulged in, and an idea of road surveying at that period may be gleaned from a description placed on record in 1828 by Samuel Connor and Thomas Wheeler, who had been appointed 'to view a road from Tobin's Ferry to Rome.' It reads :
"Proceeding up the Ohio River until coming to the upper line of the widow Rebecca Weatherholt's Plan- tation ;- thence leaving the bank of the river, on the line of said plantation until crossing the principal slash ;- from there bearing to the right on a small ridge as marked, until Abraham Finch's corner ;- thence following the old Rome road to a blazed way formerly agreed on by George Tobin and Charley Polke until it intersects the Rome road ;- thence following
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the Rome road as formerly opened to the blazes form- erly made by Richard Polke and brothers ;- and fol- lowing said blazes with some alterations made by them to Buck's Run ;- thence up said run 59 or 80 yards to a log across the run where the marking again com- mences; crossing the run and proceeding near the corner of Henry Miller's oat-field ;- where following said blazes to the Troy road to Rome."
The taxes for 1830 were fixed at a session of the board as 'the same as last year except horses 50 cents each and oxen 25 cents,' a reduction, as shown by the 1829 levy, quoted in full, and reading :
"First rate land, 871/2 cents per acre
Second rate land, 75 cents per acre Third rate land, 621/2 cents per acre Horses and mules $ .561/4 each
Oxen .311/4 each
Gold watches 1.00 each
Silver or pinchbeck watches .311/4 each
Town lots 1.00 each
Ferry licenses were variously rated: Samuel Con- nor's, $9. James McDaniels', $4. Edmond Jennings', $4. James Tobin's, $3. Peter Barber's, $1. All store- boats were taxed at one dollar per month and no license was to be issued for less than one month. Resi- dent merchants were also taxed, it appears, as Uriah Cummings paid $10 for the privilege of keeping store one year.
For a short period about this time the southern ex- tremity of Tobin Township, or such portion of it as coincided with Congressional Township 7, South, ex- isted under the name of Athens Township. Whether such title was bestowed as a further tribute to the an- cient classics already twice honoured in the county, or because the residents considered themselves as veritable Athenians in culture and the desire for "some new thing," the present generation can never hope to know.
At the March, 1832, term of court three new attor-
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neys were admitted, Lyman Leslie, Eben D. Edson (afterward prosecutor, in 1835,) and George Burton Thompson, a member of that Kentucky family to which Congressman Phil Thompson, of the Harrodsburg dis- trict, belonged. George B. Thompson was elected joint- senator in 1833, and representative in 1845.
It is said that Rome was first incorporated by a spe- cial act of the Legislature which Doctor Thompson's efforts carried through while in the upper house, and a curious recognition of the equal franchise issue oc- curred in the provisions of the bill, which extended the suffrage privilege within the corporate limits to women who were property owners. Goodspeed's History of Perry, Spencer and Warrick Counties (1885) asserts that this was done in order to secure as heavy a vote as possible against the granting of liquor licenses, but when the test came, the result was not what the tem- perance advocates had reckoned upon, and the town corporation lapsed after but a few years of existence.
Three changes on the judicial bench occurred dur- ing the decade of the 'thirties, Judge Goodlett after serving twelve years being followed by Samuel Hall who, at the September term, 1832, presented a com- mission signed by Noah Noble, Governor. His sound interpretation of the law is attested by the fact that very few of his decisions in the Fourth Circuit were reversed by the Supreme Court. He was accurate, de- liberate and dispassionate; popular with his court as a good reader of human nature.
Charles I. Battell succeeded him in 1835, filling the position only one year. Possessing more grace in ora- tory than Judge Hall, he was yet unequal to him in hard common sense. Plodding studiously through ancient authorities had no attraction for Judge Battell, who aptly acquired legal lore through practice. He was a better attorney than judge, and still more a pleader rather than counsellor.
Elisha Embree, of Evansville, appointed in April, 1836, to the judgeship which he held for ten years, was
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the superior of either Hall or Battell, and a man above the average in all branches of his profession. He is described as reliable, skillful, adroit, fluent, and not easily confused by any depth of conflicting testimony or argument; qualifications which made him later a valuable public servant in the higher position he was called to occupy, Representative for the First Con- gressional District.
Most of the development of Perry County thus far traced has been of occurrences immediately adjacent to the Ohio River, but it must not be assumed thereby that the northeastern region was without settlers, or that a more detailed individual mention of them has been intentionally omitted.
Into the extreme northern end of Tobin Township had come Thomas Cummings from Virginia as early as 1807, and inside the next three years he was followed by his son, Uriah Cummings who, on his way to In- diana, had married in Kentucky, Sarah Lanman, like himself a native of the Old Dominion. They located upon land which the father had entered, and became the parents of four sons and seven daughters, so that their descendants are numerous and found in other townships as well as on the original homestead, the name of Uriah having been handed down through each generation to the present.
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