USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 7
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From 1815 to 1829 Uriah Cummings I operated a saw- and grist-mill on Poison Creek, afterward con- ducting a store in a building on his farm until he died, July 30, 1831. His donation, in 1816, of forty acres, had secured the location of the court house at Rome, but the condition attaching thereto, (providing for reversion to his heirs in case Rome ceased to be the county seat,) was disregarded when the county offices were moved, in 1859, to Cannelton, and through some technicality the claim of the Cummings heirs to the property was defeated.
Another early mill was run by the natural water- power of Poison Creek at a point some three miles
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from the river, above the old State Road. While its date of origin could not be definitely ascertained, it was known as the Waterbury Mill prior to 1850, and the locality was of sufficient importance to be indicated as "Waterbury" upon a state map in Colton's Atlas of that period. Samuel Burton was one of its proprietors, and the families of Anson, Bryant, Carr and Glenn were among those who lived near.
John Hargis, who had come from Kentucky with his wife, Nancy Allen, among the pioneers, was un- fortunate in losing the land he had entered in Section 13, owing to an accidentally erroneous description of its location, only discovered and taken advantage of by other parties after he had made considerable improve- ment of the property.
He bought other land near by and for several years operated a large horse-mill, the power whereof was con- ducted by a band of raw bull's-hide, with the hair still on, cut out in a circle beginning at the centre of the hide. This business was so profitably managed that he was the owner of a half-section (320 acres) of land at his death, October 17, 1838. His widow survived him forty years, dying at an advanced age in June, 1878. Their descendants through twelve children are of great number, scattered through many states, be- sides represented in the old neighbourhood and con- nected by marriage with numerous Perry County families.
William Mitchell founded the third town in Perry County, on Section 33, Township 5, South, Range 2, West, which he had taken up in 1818, after coming from Virginia through Kentucky, with his wife, Mary Bruner, and their several children. On November 4, 1835, John Cassidy, then conducting a store at the mouth of Oil Creek (but who had been County Survey- or in 1819) laid out for William Mitchell a town-site comprising 21 lots 90 by 60 feet in dimensions, with a 50-foot street (Water Street) along the river front, and Second Street, parallel therewith, 33 feet wide, one
(6)
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square back. These were intersected at right angles by three alleys, 161/2 feet in width.
Of this plat, however, the encroaching river has de- voured so much that one can scarcely recognize today the original plan as recorded December 4, 1835, on Page 18, of Deed Book B, by Samuel Frisbie, Recorder, per Joshua B. Huckeby, deputy. It has always been told that Samuel Frisbie was the town's sponsor, choosing its name to honour the Old World home of his ancestors.
Almost directly after the first house was built in Derby, William Mitchell erected a distillery on (and partially in) the hillside. When in operation its daily output was between twenty and thirty gallons of whiskey and brandy, for which a ready local market was found at a price far from prohibitive, twelve-and- a-half cents, or "a bit," per gallon.
After some twelve years the building was turned into the first chair-factory in Perry County and used as such for several years by Jesse Inman. He employed three or four other men, each of whom turned out a dozen chairs as a daily average, the work being per- formed entirely by hand.
School in the vicinity was first taught in a private house by John Stephens, shortly followed by the erec- tion of a small log school house in a neighbourhood, in which Jesse Inman taught several terms. It was very inconveniently located for the majority of those who should have been its patrons, the notion seeming to have long prevailed among the pioneers that a school house should be situated outside the villages and in the woods remote from any public highway whose passing traffic might possibly disturb the pupils. This idea is borne out by the location of many other early school houses in the county, and, also, obtained to some extent in fixing sites for certain of the churches.
There was no early church in Derby itself, the near- est being some few miles south on the Rome road, Union Universalist Church, built in 1835-36. This con- gregation was founded by the Rev. E. B. Mann, its first
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pastor, and during early years ranked as one of the strongest organizations of that belief in Indiana, many of its membership-which is stated to have included representatives of the Connor, Cummings, Ewing, Groves, Humphrey, Hyde, Simons and Tate families- coming some distance from other parts of the county to attend service, or 'preaching' as the term was then in vogue. During the 'forties, Roman Catholic mis-, sionary work was begun by the Rev. Augustus Besso- nies, who organized St. Mary's congregation and built the church which still stands as the only religious edi- fice in Derby.
Oil Township's first teacher is said to have been James Reily, a man of exceptionally good education for his time, who had located there in 1817, but it is not definitely known just where he taught, nor where the first religious worship was conducted. Probably both were held in private homes. Reily also taught a night session, known as a 'grammar school,' at which many adult pupils attended. Among his patrons of different ages were members of the Deen, Esarey, Ewing, Falk- enborough, Frakes, Walker and Willett families.
Robert Walker and Delilah (Phillips) Walker were notably active pioneer Methodists, and a prominent cir- cuit-rider of the period was the Rev. John Hughes, who had fought gallantly in the Indian wars, and later served his widespread flock as a pious shepherd until seventy-five years of age. Walls and Seaton were the names of other early preachers of the Gospel.
The Ewings (John and Eleanor) and the Jamisons (Samuel and Catherine) were of the old-school Pres- byterian belief, but no preacher or church organization of that faith can be noted until about 1838. At a date which some give as 1817 a combined school house and church edifice, 20 by 24 feet in size, was built of logs, half a mile east of where Branchville now stands, and in it-the earliest of its kind recorded in Oil Township -societies were organized by the Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists.
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Irregular meetings were held in the late 'thirties among the numerous German families who had come into the central portion of Tobin Township, and the name "German Ridge" came to designate the hill-dis- trict in which they formed a colony. Its postoffice is now 'German,' the termination 'Ridge' having been dropped by the government at a time when all such names were abridged by the Postal Department.
Preaching in their own language was naturally wished by the pious farmers from Prussia, Wurttem- burg and the Rhenish provinces, so about 1838 a Ger- man Methodist class was regularly organized, the lead- ing families being those of Mueller, Plock, Klein, Wer- ner, Schank and Ackarman. For its first years the class was in a wide circuit served semi-occasionally from Boonville, but was later a part of the "Hunting- burg Mission," which comprised, besides work in Du- bois County, the field of Perry County also, including the German Methodists on the Ridge, at Oil Creek and -somewhat later-at Cannelton.
Their first pastor was the Rev. Conrad Muth, and under his charge a log cabin was built, about three miles from Rome, on a hill above Bear Creek, and giving a glimpse of the distant Ohio River. This church was followed about 1873 by a frame building in use by the congregation.
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CHAPTER X.
MINING DEVELOPMENTS OF COAL HAVEN AND CANNELTON
AS MANY of the pioneer settlers came into Indiana through Kentucky, so may an interesting parallel be drawn in observing that the earliest awakening to the real possibilities of the site which is now Cannelton came through Hawesville, on the opposite side of the river; although coal mining on a small scale had been conducted among the hills of Troy Township by John Mason for several years before his efforts brought it to the serious notice of outside capitalists as affording favourable opportunities for profitable investment.
Some time during the summer of 1835, General Seth Hunt, of Walpole, New Hampshire, a wealthy Eastern gentleman, who was passing up the Ohio River, ob- served while landing at Hawesville a heap of bitumin- ous coal which, he learned upon enquiry, had been mined in Hancock County, near that village. With characteristic Yankee energy he delayed his journey long enough to lease from Mrs. Rebecca (Sterett) Lander a tract of land on the ancestral estate inherited from her father, the late Captain John Sterett, then proceeded home, where he immediately interested other New England men of means in the natural but un- developed resources of a region which he regarded as most promising.
Samuel J. Gardner, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and James T. Hobart, of Boston, joined him in raising some $10,000, with which he returned to the Middle West, purchased from Mr. Cooper a tract of coal land also near Hawesville, contracted for other lands at a price of about $50,000, to be paid for within a few months,
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employed hands and began mining. He sent to New Orleans many flatboat loads of coal, many of which encountered the misfortune of sinking on the way. Other cargoes, while sold at high prices, were never realized upon, General Hunt's agents decamping with the proceeds. The building of a saw-mill, at a cost of $10,000 proved a partial loss, and the purchase of a small steamboat was no more of a pecuniary success. The vessel met with countless mishaps, at length run- ning aground upon a sandbar where it remained all summer, or until, in a fit of temper tried beyond en- durance, General Hunt tore the boat to pieces as the ultimate cause of his financial disaster.
James T. Hobart had come in the meantime to this region, and after a thorough inspection, concluded that facilities for the production of coal were better on the Indiana side, so commenced preparations for work in Perry County. In the name of Gardner and Hobart, on October 30, 1836, he bought from Alney McLean and Tabitha McLean, his wife, three hundred and forty acres, lying in Sections 15 and 16, Township 7, South, Range 3, West, for $600. Part of the tract is within the present city limits of Cannelton, the corporation line following for some distance the north and south line between the two sections described.
During the next twelve months he appears to have procured the backing of additional Eastern capital, as, by an Act of the General Assembly of Indiana, on De- cember 23, 1837, the American Cannel Coal Company came into existence, with a capital stock of $300,000, with liberty to increase the same to $500,000, should the company's business require it. James T. Hobart, Seth Hunt, Elijah Livermore, J. B. Russell, John D. W. Williams and their associates, successors and as- signs, were named as incorporators, the object of the company being set forth as : "to mine stone coal at Coal Haven, Perry County, Indiana, and elsewhere; to mine iron and other minerals; to manufacture iron, cop- peras and lumber; to build steam- and flat-boats for the
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transportation of coal, iron, lumber and other pro- ducts ; and to build mills, furnaces, forges, etc."
In 1837 the company purchased from Gardner and Hobart, John D. W. Williams, Nicholas Hawley and others, 3,740 acres; from James Cavender, early in the next year, 330 acres; afterward 320 acres from Elijah Livermore; and later 930 acres from other parties. By additional smaller purchases from time to time, the grand total amounted to 6,456 acres. In lapse of years, much of this naturally changed hands, (the company in every instance of sale retaining full mineral rights, with privilege of approach,) so that their acreage is now but a fraction of what it once was.
General Hunt, in 1839, exchanged his holdings in the company for the exclusive right to work the copperas interest of the mines, entering energetically into the new venture with all his remaining means. He erected costly apparatus on the hillside, near the head of the stream which for many years flowed down Washing- ton Street in Cannelton, sending to New York for a cement that was warranted to resist the action of copperas water. It took him about a year to complete his copperas factory, and meanwhile he perfected ar- rangements to manufacture quercitron bark from the chestnut oak, of which he made a small quantity. At the first trial his guaranteed cement utterly refused to perform its promises, other important details were a complete failure, and General Hunt, reduced to his last dollar and much broken in zeal, went back East to return no more. In 1846 he was found dead in his chair at Walpole, leaving to his heirs only the exclusive right to manufacture copperas at Cannelton, a privilege still vested but never claimed.
Extensive operations were planned by the general agent, James T. Hobart, who began by laying off and fencing small tracts of arable land on which were erected rude log houses to be rented by miners, lumber- men and labourers, so that within a few months the population of Coal Haven comprised a dozen families.
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Several mines were opened, the principal one being in the hill to the rear of where now stands the parochial school house built in 1915 for the Benedictine Sisters connected with St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church.
From this a tram-way, designed by John Mason, led in a westerly direction to the river bank at a point now occupied by the Southern Railway station, and along its rails the coal was conveyed in crude cars, or carts, to a tip from which it was dumped upon a large float- ing platform. Here a large painted sign called atten- tion of passing steamboats to the new fuel, lauding its cheapness and extolling its merits as a steam producer. The first quantities taken on trial were small, and in- creased but slowly, though steadily ; yet for some years the sale of wood was also maintained, being kept cut and corded on the shore, as most of the boats still used it. Near the head of what is now Taylor Street, be- sides near Sulphur Spring, other mines were opened, from which coal was hauled in wagons to the wharf.
Two saw-mills were started; one below the coal-slide, the other above, nearer the north bank of Casselberry Creek, at a point now the corner of Taylor Street and occupied by a tennis-court of velvet turf in the private grounds of E. Curtis Clark. A brick yard was also started by the company, but was shortly abandoned, a small grist-mill proving more successful.
Late in 1838 a large frame hotel was erected and leased to John Wentworth, the earliest boniface of the settlement, though his career as such was brief. Some time during the autumn of 1839 a fire broke out, against which there was no protection, so that hotel, stores, mills and residences were practically all swept away. Only the copperas factory which General Hunt had just deserted, escaped, its buildings, vats, troughs, etc., re- maining until blown down by a high wind at a date some twelve years afterward.
General Hunt's departure was so quickly followed by the fire and the exodus of workmen whom it ren- dered homeless, that Coal Haven's annihilation seemed
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certain. The financial losses of the company had crippled their enthusiasm, and the spring of 1840 found weeds starting a rank growth in the deserted village. But four families continued to reside in its vicinity,- John Mason, James Cavender, James Hoskinson, John Wentworth,-and of these the first three had been resi- dents prior to the company.
To the Hon. Francis Yates Carlile, of New Orleans, who arrived during the early summer of 1840, is due the renascence of Coal Haven, and his descendants may justly claim for him the distinction of having been the real founder of Cannelton, since his was the execu- tive ability which placed upon an ultimately permanent basis the community which today exists as an enduring monument to his energy.
He was born about 1812 in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of William and Sarah (Yates) Carlile, both of whom died in his infancy, so he was reared by his maternal grandfather, Esquire Yates, of Salem, Massa- chusetts, who gave him the advantage of an education at Harvard. His great-grandfather, Thomas Carlile, had come from Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, and was a sterling patriot, appointed in 1777 as Cap- tain of an Artillery Company in Providence, and re- appointed in 1780.
After entering upon mining operations in Indiana Francis Y. Carlile habitually spent his winters in New Orleans, engaged in real estate, forwarding and com- mission business, meanwhile doing much in the field of journalism, a profession which he later followed, after leaving Cannelton, for several years in Evansville and Memphis, where he died February 16, 1866.
For thirty-five years he was survived by his widow, to whom he had been married, September, 1851, in New Orleans, Anna Louise Howard, of Matagorda, Texas, a daughter of Charles and Anna Walden (Blount) Howard, formerly of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mrs. Howard was the granddaughter of Jacob Walden, who was on board the Ranger with
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John Paul Jones and was by his side during his battle with the Drake. He also piloted Washington's army across the Delaware, and in Trumbull's celebrated painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware," Jacob Walden's is the figure next to that of Washington.
A gifted woman, intellectually her husband's peer, coming as a bride to join him in establishing their resi- dence beside the Ohio River at the edge of the village he had created, Mrs. Carlile made "Elm Park" the earliest notably individual home in Cannelton. Three children were born to them-Francis Howard, Grace Lee (Mrs. Bolton-Smith) and Nathaniel Endicott, the two elder surviving as residents of Memphis.
An old print of the estate shows the mansion to have combined the characteristic Southern feature of a wide gallery surrounding the lower floor with many gables in the upper story, while the carriage-drive and ornamental planting bespeak a studied attention to landscape gardening, then everywhere in its infancy, though with the famous Downing as its American foster-father.
Some few of the old cedars outlived the dwelling itself, which was destroyed by fire during the 'seven- ties, after passing through several changes of owner- ship. A singular fatality has seemed thenceforward to overhang the place, three other houses on the site having been burned in succession, so the spot is now untenanted, its gardens a mere field, though a part of its osage orange hedge has grown to tree-like propor- tions.
February 27, 1841, Joseph B. Ball, then county sur- veyor by appointment, laid out a new town plat by order of the American Cannel Coal Company, 266 lots in all, comprising the central portion of the present city of Cannelton, in which have since been made only a few changes, such as widening the 16-foot alleys to 20 feet. It was thought that a new title might dispel the ill-luck of early Coal Haven, so from among Cannels- burg, Cannelton, Hobartsville, Huntsville and others
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suggested, the choice fell upon the first name, although Mr. Carlile's preference was for Cannelton and its use soon became general, so when a second survey was made, in 1844, on a larger scale, the name officially adopted was "Cannelton." This plat was recorded by Frederick Connor, of Troy, a grandson of Terence Connor, of Rome, and a cousin of Elias Rector, the pioneer surveyor under whom he had served the ap- prenticeship of his profession.
In 1843 James Boyd, a Scotch-Irishman of Boston, who had just become a stockholder in the company, erected a large store building on the river-front close to the north bank of Casselberry Creek, and somewhat later built his residence in the block below, between Taylor and Washington Streets; a long, low structure which stood until the early 'seventies, shaded by a pic- turesque weeping willow tree harmonizing with its cottage type of architecture. This house is shown in a lithographic view of Cannelton, of which only one copy is known to exist, reproduced from a pencil drawing made about 1850-52, from the cliff back of Hawesville by a Louisville artist whose name is not preserved, al- though Captain Joseph W. Carlton, of Hawesville, who was a lad with him when he made the sketch, recalled the circumstance with perfect distinctness sixty years later.
The burning of Boyd's store by incendiarism led to an indictment for arson against William Ritchey, who was brought for trial before Judge Embree in Rome at the May term of court, 1844, James Lockhart as prose- cutor represented the state, Samuel Ingle, of Evans- ville, appearing for the defendant, who received a two- year sentence upon conviction. An appeal to the Su- preme Court was taken by Ingle, on the ground that no value of the store burned had been alleged in the declaration. A reversal of decision was handed down, followed by a re-indictment and a second trial which resulted in Ritchey's acquittal.
Close to the former site, or at the south-east corner
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of Taylor and Front Streets, another store was erected, of such durable material as to be practically fire-proof, its massive rock walls and slate roof-with the inscrip- tion "Built by James Boyd, 1844" deeply carved into the stone lintel of the central doorway-remaining a landmark along the river-front for three-score years, or long after its disuse as a business house. In 1904 the Cannelton Flouring Mills put up their modern four- story manufacturing edifice on the Boyd corner and a portion of the original stonework is now comprised in the walls of their boiler room.
It is told that early religious worship was held in the Boyd building by the Methodist class which the Rev. Othniel A. Barnett had organized about 1838, with some twelve or fifteen members, among whom were William Knights and Lydia (Webb) Knights, Thomas Bristow and his sister-in-law, "Aunt Barbara" (Bloch- er) Mason, (whose first husband had been a Bristow,) long remembered as a most vigourous class-leader ; and Israel Lake and wife, at whose home in the river road the first services were conducted, before the log school house was used for meetings.
This school house stood near the first cemetery, close to the banks of Casselberry Creek as its course then ran, a few graves still remaining in the long neglected burying ground. The selection of such locality was decided, beyond question, by the fact that it was in fractional Section 16, which the law then arbitrarily set aside for school purposes, without the slightest regard for practical considerations of convenience. No names of the pioneer teachers have been preserved, and the schools had so little patronage from the miners as scarcely to deserve the title. James Boyd, by his per- sonal effort and influence, did more than any other to- ward introducing Massachusetts ideals of education into early Cannelton, and through him a small frame structure was soon built on the school lot. The land later became the property of James Hoskinson when the school was removed elsewhere in town, and is now
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a part of Mr. and Mrs. George Kendley's (Lucetta Johnson) poultry farm.
An addition to the original Cannelsburg plat was laid out for Francis Y. Carlile to the south of Casselberry Creek, and touching the nickname "St. Louis," by which it has always been locally known, a story was long related which is here given for what it may be worth.
When the first large hotel built by the Coal Company was burned down in 1839, its lessee and landlord, John Wentworth, thrown out of business by the fire, an- nounced his intention of moving to St. Louis, Missouri. He made full arrangements, but changed his mind on the eve of departure and merely went to the other side of Casselberry Creek. Much raillery, both good- natured as well as sarcastic, was indulged in at his expense by the few citizens, who dubbed his new loca- tion 'St. Louis,' a name still clinging to Cannelton's first ward and to an election precinct through which runs the turnpike officially designated St. Louis Avenue upon entering the southern limits of the city corporation.
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