Pictorial and biographical memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph counties, Indiana, together with biographies of many prominent men of northern Indiana and of the whole state, both living and dead, Part 50

Author:
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, Goodspeed Brothers
Number of Pages: 786

USA > Indiana > Elkhart County > Pictorial and biographical memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph counties, Indiana, together with biographies of many prominent men of northern Indiana and of the whole state, both living and dead > Part 50
USA > Indiana > St Joseph County > Pictorial and biographical memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph counties, Indiana, together with biographies of many prominent men of northern Indiana and of the whole state, both living and dead > Part 50

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JACOB WARD, Mishawaka, Ind. Among the substantial farmers and soldier- citizens of St. Joseph county our present subject holds a prominent position. George Ward, father of our subject, was of good old Pennsylvania Dutch stock, a native of Maryland, who went to Ohio when a young man and married in Montgomery county, of that State, Catherine Wagner, daughter of Jacob Wagner, a farmer of Montgomery county. To Mr. and Mrs. Ward have been born nine children: Chris- topher, Daniel, Elizabeth, Simeon, Jacob, Nancy, George, John, who died at the age of eighteen years, and Andrew. Mr. Ward came to St. Joseph county, Ind., between 1839-41 and settled between Mishawaka and South Bend, north of the river. He lived here two years and then settled on the farm now owned by Paul Judy, in Clay township, living here ten years, and partially clearing it up. He then settled one and a half miles northeast, where he bought 110 acres in the woods, cleared it and made here another good farm, added improvements, made everything first class, and this farm is now owned by Simon and Jacob Ward. His wife died many years before him and Mr. Ward spent his last days among his children, living to be eighty- seven years old and dying in 1885 at the residence of his grandson, Daniel Ward. Mr. Ward was an old farmer of Clay township and when he settled there it was a wilderness where wolves, deer and Iudians roamed at will. Mr. Ward was a very industrious man and endured all the vicissitudes of pioneer life. He and wife were members of the Lutheran Church, and he was an honest, upright and peaceable man who never had a lawsuit and was respected by all. Jacob Ward, his son and our

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subject, was born in Montgomery county, Ohio, April 14, 1833, and thinks he was eight years old when he came with his parents to St. Joseph county, Ind. The journey was made with a yoke of white cattle and one horse, hitched to an old-fashioned linchpin wagon. Jacob was brought up among the pioneers and went to school in the old log school-house about three terms, which educational advantages were distributed between the ages of nine and fourteen years. He early began to assist in the clearing of the land, packing brush, etc., and learned the life of a farmer by prac- tical experience and also the trade of cooper. He married, March 11, 1851, at the age of nineteen years, Catherine Replogle, born December 28, 1832, in Goshen, Ind., daughter of Daniel and Elizabeth (Baker) Replogle. Daniel Replogle was of sterling Pennsylvania Dutch stock and one of the old pioneer settlers of Elkhart county and was the father of eight children: Mary, Warren, Catherine, Levins, George, Noah, Warren and Martha. Mr. Replogle lived to the age of seventy-eight years and died at the farm at Crum's Point, Md. Both himself and wife were mem- bers of the United Brethren Church, and he was an honorable, hard-working man. He had two sons in the Civil war: Noah and William; the former served three years in an Indiana regiment and William was killed, after two years' service in an Indiana regiment, in battle on the same day upon which President Lincoln was shot. After marriage Mr. Ward settled in Mishawaka and followed coopering until he enlisted, at which time he was managing a business, having eight men in his employ. In May, 18-, he, with John Quigg, of Mishawaka, entered Company H, One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and served five months, his principal service being guarding the railroad through the Cumberland Mountains. Mr. Ward was injured by the exposure and was taken sick with pneumonia, was confined to the hospital for a week and has since then been not quite well. He served as nurse in the general hospital in Nashville for about one month, but was honorably discharged with his regiment at Indianapolis and returned to Mishawaka. He then resumed his business of coopering, employing men, but was not able to work himself. In 1870 he bought sixty acres of his present farm and by thrift and economy has added to this until he now owns 130 acres of good land with good improvements. To Mr. and Mrs. Ward have been born five children: Jane, Eliza- beth, Daniel, Adelbert and Minnie. Mrs. Ward is a member of the Christian Church of Mishawaka. Politically Mr. Ward is a stanch Republican. He is & public-spirited man, in favor of good schools, is now a member of the school board and has given his children all a good education. Jane married James Van Reper, a farmer of Penn township, and has three children. She was formerly married to John Keisler, deceased, and they have one child, More. Elizabeth married Frank Fiddler, a tinner, of Mishawaka, and has three children; Daniel married Sarah Miller, who is a farmer, living one mile from the old homestead and they have five children; Albert married Minnie Maynard at Toledo, Ohio, and Minnie married William Martin, a farmer on the old homestead, and has one child. Mr. Ward has always stood high as a respected and honored citizen of Penn township, and has seen the county grow from a wilderness to its present flourishing condition. He was always an industrions man, but since the war has been disabled. The family descends from good, old pioneer stock on both sides and may well take an honest pride in the sterling ancestry from which they spring.

VERY REV. EDWARD SORIN, founder of the University of Notre Dame, and one of the most noted of Indiana divines, was born in Ahuille, near Laval, France, in the year 1814. His extended learning and deep piety always attracted to him the different elements of society on which he invariably left a strong impress for good. When twenty-six years old he attached himself to the congregation of the Holy Cross, a society then recently formed at Mans for the education of youth and the preaching of missions to the people. To both these labors Father Sorin devoted his life. At the solicitation of the bishop of Vincennes in 1841, in company with six companions, he came to America for the purpose of establishing a branch society.

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The year following the bishop of Vincennes gave them a tract of wild land on the banks of the St. Joseph River on condition that a college be built there. This was originally purchased in 1830 from the Government by Father Badin, the first Cath- olic priest ordained in the United States. The new owners changed the name from St. Mary's to Notre Dame du Lac, since abbreviated to Notre Dame. The trials and adversities under which Father Sorin and his associates labored were incredible. On their wild tract of land they were first only able to build a small house. Gradu- ually clearings were made, land improved, buildings were erected, and God, in the fullness of His heart, showered blessings upon their efforts. Father Sorin was the first president, and to his executive ability and keen foresight was due the success of Notre Dame. From the first he manifested a deep love for his adopted country, notwithstanding his French birth, and was called American even by the Pope, who readily gave the apostolic sanction to his election as superior general of a chapter of a religious order which he was instrumental in establishing in this country in 1872. The memory of Father Sorin will never fade, so long as life lasts, from the hearts of thousands of youths whose education he has directed and to whose spiritual welfare he so faithfully administered. He is yet living, and although advanced in years is bright and yet capable of much good.

DAVID ROHREA LEEPER. Samuel Leeper, the father of the subject of this sketch, was a native of Washington county, Penn .; but in early life removed with his par- ents to Starke county, Ohio. While yet a lad, he found his way to Montgomery county, in the same State, where in 1828 he was married to Elizabeth Rohrer. The name Leeper is supposed to be Irish; such is the family tradition, and this is par- tially substantiated by the fact that the name is found in early Dublin records. The present branch of the family was intermarried with the name Kent, thus showing an admixture of English blood. The Rohrers were Pennsylvanians of German extrac- tion. One of the ancestors, Schauers, on the maternal side, came to America during the Revolution. It is not known when the others in the ancestral lines crossed the ocean, but it must have been at a very early date. The family record is very meager and obscure beyond the third generation from the present subject. The families on both sides were Protestant as far back as the record is known. Samuel Leeper, in company with his father-in-law, Joseph Rohrer, who was quite a conspicuous figure in the early history of this county, first visited the St. Joseph Valley in August, 1829. He was so impressed with the beauty and fertility of the country that early in the following year he removed hither with his family from Montgomery county, Ohio, arriving early in March. Gen. Wayne had built a road part of the distance, but the balance of the way was marked only by Indian trails, there being no bridges or ferry-boats on any of the streams. The hardships and perils encountered on the route furnished subjects which he was prone often to recount in after life. Mr. Leeper first pitched his tent on the left bank of the McCartney Creek, which runs across the westerly quarter of the present city of South Bend. The site was a few rods north of where the Michigan road now crosses that stream. Then a winding Indian trail crossing the creek at this point was the only thoroughfare. It was at that time much trodden by the savage, in all his native paraphernalia of the war- path and the chase. The first habitation was improvised by stretching the wagon- cover across a pole supported by two forks stuck in the ground. This sheltering place was supplanted, as soon as quick hands and an eager heart could accomplish it, by a rude round-log cabin duly chinked and daubed. When snugly ensconsed in this structure, upon the puncheon floor, by the spacious log fire in the chimney, he was wont to say that this was the happiest moment of his life. His cherished dream was now realized-he possessed a home, a castle of his own. In this cabin D. R. Leeper first saw the light, January 12, 1832. Before the record of his mem- ory began, his parents removed npon an unbroken thickwoods tract near the Sump- tion Prairie road, about three miles from the few houses skirting the river and known as South Bend. It was a hard locality in which to dig out a living, but the

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indomitable energy and business sagacity of the father were equal to the task. He had little schooling or chance for schooling during his boyhood, and this fact made him the more anxious that his children should have better advantages in this respect than he had enjoyed. One of the first objects of his solicitude was to awaken among his neighbors an interest in education. The abandoned cabins of the neighborhood were utilized for school purposes. Writing desks in the shape of boards supported by pins in the walls, and backless benches constituted the furni- ture. Usually oiled paper had to do duty for windows. The first regular school- house of the neighborhood was built on his farm by his neighbors and himself. The structure was somewhat pretentious, being made of logs faced inside and out- side. On this farm the mother died in 1842, two children having died shortly be- fore and and another soon followed her. A daughter, Mary Greene, and David R. are the only surviving children. The father died in 1886, while on the train return- ing home from Californis. On this farm, the subject of whom we are now specially treating resided until he was seventeen years old, meantime enjoying such rude social and educational advantages as the neighborhood afforded, supplemented by several terms of higher schooling under the tutorship of Prof. Wright and Prof. Cogswell, in South Bend. He was attending school at the old seminary building (which in due course of the march of improvement gave way to our present elegant and commodious high school building) when the news of the discovery of gold in California set the civilized world aflame with excitement. The school boy took the fever so violently that he gave his father no peace till he was fitted out for the pilgrimage to the scene of the marvelous discoveries. In company with several of his neighbor boys, with two ox teams and an ample supply of money and neces- series, he set his face thither from South Bend, February 22, 1849, the anniversary of the birth of our immortal George.

Mr. Leeper furnishes the following narrative of the journey: The country was still very new. Often there were intervals of ten to twenty miles between settlers. Accom- modations for both man and beast were therefore scarce and hard to get. The roads were unimproved, and the streams scarcely anywhere bridged. To add to our discomforts and inconveniences there had been s " February thaw," general break-up of winter, so that the streams were all booming, and the roads, especially on the mushy prairies, were about as wretched as they well could be. At La Salle, Ill., we were detained about s week by high water. Half of the town of Peru, a few miles below, was submerged by the floods of the Illinois. When, finally, we were enabled to cross (the Big Vermillion) it was by swimming our oxen, dragging our wagons through the aqueduct of the canal, and carrying their contents across on the heel- path. At Burlington, Iowa, we ferried the Mississippi, a distance of seven miles, on a rickety horse-ferry boat, the river being so far out of its banks that this was the nearest distance between the accessible landings on the opposite side. St. Joseph, Mo., was our objective point on the frontier. Here we were to launch directly into the land of the savage, a land then without autonomy and without a name. With the exception of a few honses at a mission not far from the Missouri River and a small group of mud huts at Fort Kearney and at Fort Laramie, we did not see a single habitation of the white man from the time we crossed the Missouri till we reached the Sacramento Valley, a distance by the route we took of more than two thousand miles. We found this frontier metropolis thronged with adventurers like ourselves, who had flocked thither to fit out for the journey across the plains. Many had gone out and many were still coming in. The long scow or flat-boat used for & ferry boat, was crowded to its utmost day and night in crossing the eager emi- grants over the booming " big muddy."

Our party pushed out upon the plains on the 16th day of May. We were henceforward to depend entirely upon the natural grasses for feed for our teams. Our route from Fort Kearney lay along the Platte River; thence along the north fork and the Sweetwater to the south pass. Here the road branched; one branch

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leading via Salt Lake, and the other known as Sublette's cut-off, leading via Bear River Valley. We took the latter. At the point where the Bear River makes sharp deflection to the southward to lose itself in the great Salt Lake, not far from where the present city of Ogden stands, a choice of two routes was again offered. We could proceed to Old Fort Hall on the Snake River, where the emigrant to Oregon and the emigrant to California must finally part company, or we might take a new route to the left called the Headpath's cut-off. The latter was chosen. In the course of two or three hundred miles westward, near the so-called City of Rocks, the three roads united. Thence to the Humboldt Mesdows there was but one road. Here, instead of going via the Humboldt link, we took the Lassen or Greenhorn's cut-off. This led northward, crossing the great Sierra Nevada Range near the Oregon line, and then turning sharply southwesterly entered the Sacramento Valley near the present village of Vina. We thus unwittingly added several weeks to our journey.

We reached this destination, practically our journey's end, on the 11th day of October, it having been seven months and nineteen days since we set out from home. We were now encamped on the banks of the Sacramento, of whose "glittering sands" we had sung upon leaving home. We were not long in hastening down to gaze upon its crystalline, magic waters. It was a moment of strange, deep, soul- stirring emotions. Was this indeed our journey's end? this the goal which had been the object of so many days, weeks, months of toil, privation, peril? Had some Pythagorian transmigration of soul overcome us? we could scarcely have felt less strange, fanciful, etherial. The journey had been truly an eventful period in life's brief span; an episode of quaint, varied, impressive scenes, incidents and experi- ences, which in the ordinary dull, plodding round of life must ever remain stamped in vivid outline on memory's tablet.

Except at & few points we did not see many Indians; and aside from some petty pilferings they gave us little trouble except at our first camp after crossing the Sierra Nevadas, when they stole and butchered six of our best oxen, happening to take one ox from each of the six teams belonging to our traveling party. With this exception we lost not a hoof on the route from any cause. The last day, however, was a most trying one upon the faithful animals. The few last days' travel before reaching the valley were decidedly the worst of the journey as to road and feed. The beasts bore up bravely till we reached the valley. Eight to ten miles were yet to make to camp. The strain was too great. One after another of the oxen dropped in the yoke. We could but let them lie where they fell and reconstruct our teams as best we could, thus worrying our way to camp. We were delighted next morning on observing our abandoned cattle grazing with the others, the coolness of the night having 80 refreshed them as to enable them to follow upon our trail.

The story of my sojourn in California will be briefly told. We first went to Redding's Diggings, at the head of the Sacramento Valley. The place did not please us. We started from there to Sacramento City, but the rainy season setting in and certain mishaps overtaking us, we became separated before reaching our destination. I never met my companions afterward. When I reached Sacramento City I was ill, penniless, and alone, having trudged through the rain and slush afoot thirty- six hours without food, and the clothes on my back and a pair of Mackinaw blankets being the sum total of my worldly possessions. My first work in the city was the making of several coffins from rough boards to receive the remains of some dead miners, who in their red shirts and blue overalls were laid out on boards in the rain in the rear of a hotel. From Sacramento I wandered up to near Coloma, where Marshall made the discovery of gold. I remained there and st Hangtown till the next fall, when I went north to the Trinity. I mined on this river and at Weaver- ville till the succeeding fall. While on the Trinity I was one of a small party that went afoot prospecting, on what has since become known as the Hay Fork. We were the first white men that ever visited the section, and the Diggers gave us a very

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warm greeting. I had an arrow sent through my leg, and another of the party an arrow into his foot. Hie was much the severer wound. He never entirely recov- ered from it, and a few years later the savages completed their work upon him by taking his life. That we were not all massacred was not from any lack of will on the part of the redskins. That fall I joined a party bound to Humboldt Bay with a view to enlist in the State militia, a call having been made for a force to suppress Indian depredations. The colonel was engaged in a contest for the Senate, his competitor being Gen. J. W. Denver, and was so engrossed in the canvass that he did not appear to muster us into the service.

Humboldt Bay is the chief lumbering section of California. It is the central home of the Big Redwoods. The lumbering interest had just begun to be developed. I was among the first to engage in the logging business then, and I continued in this occupation till the 1st of May, 1854, when I eailed on the schooner "Sierra Nevada" for San Francisco. From the latter port on the 16th of the same month, I took the steamer "Brother Jonathan" for San Juan del Sud, thence crossing through Nicaragau via the great lake of that name and the San Juan River to Grey- town, where I took the steamer "Star of the West" for New York. The "Brother Jona- than" was afterward lost on the Oregon coast with all on board, and the "Star of the West" was the vessel fired upon by the rebels when she was sent by the Government to relieve Fort Sumter.

After returning home, Mr. Leeper attended school several terms at the Misha- waka Institute, of which Prof. H. Fitzroy Bellows was principal. This schooling, with what he had previously acquired, gave him a pretty fair education in the ele- mentary English branches. His political antecedents were Whig, and when the Republican party was organized he became an ardent follower in its ranks. His zeal found frequent vent through the columns of the newspapers, his vanity in see- ing himself in print being first gratified by a letter of his being published in the Indianapolis Journal in 1855. The appearance of that article in print served to render him the inveterate friend of the editorial craft ever since. His most ambitious effort with the pen is entitled "The American Idea," a production of about one hundred and twenty-five pages octavo. Some of his friends, for whose judgment he has much respect, and who have kindly examined the MS., have advised him to publish the work, and G. P. Putnam's Sons have offered to produce it in their series of "Questions of the Day;" but thus far the MS. has lain on the musty shelf, a fate which has betided myriads of performances much more worthy of the printer's art.

In 1864 Mr. Leeper again get his face westward, this time going to Montana Territory, taking two ox teams laden with goods. He remained in the Territory till August, 1868, when he returned, coming by steamer down the Missouri River from Fort Benton to Sioux City. On this trip, when passing through the " Bad Lands," Mr. Leeper had the satisfaction of witnessing for the first time the buffalo in his glory, and also the mortification of seeing a sample of the wanton vandalism which have rendered such grand spectacles things of the by gone forever. The boat was several days steaming through their midst, and their numbers seemed to be millions. While in Montana he was engaged in mining and freighting, making his headquar- ters chiefly at Virginia City and Helena. At Helena, in 1867, he was nominated as a candidate for member of the Assembly from Lewis and Clark counties. It was a bad year for Republican candidates, there being scarcely one of that ilk elected in the Territory. Though defeated, Mr. Leeper had the satisfaction of knowing that among the delegation of four on his ticket for that office in the connty his name was in the lead on the tally sheets.

Ardent a Republican as Mr. Leeper had been, he left the party in 1872, not solely because Horace Greeley then broke with the party, but because of the influences which moved so many to abandon the Republican banner at about that time. He was that year nominated by the Liberals and Democrats by acclamation as a candi-

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date for the Legislature, but declined. In 1874 he was renominated by the same coalition for the same office, accepted, and was elected. The platform on which he was nominated was independent; but having been supported by the Democrate and been opposed by the regular Republican nominee, he from a proper respect for his obligations was impelled to vote with the Democrats when the choice was squarely made as to doing that or voting with the Republicans. He supported Joseph E. McDonald for the United States Senate. In 1876 he was re-elected to the same position; served on the committee of ways and means, and on several important special committees. In 1878 he was elected to the Senate for the counties of St. Joseph and Starke by nearly eight hundred majority. The differences between the Liberals and Democrats, whatever they had been, had now disappeared, and Mr. Leeper was nominated and elected as a Democrat. During his term as senator he served on the committees on finance, on railroads, on education, on public buildings, on banks, on several committees of conference on appropriation bills, and on other important special committees. He fathered the bill for the present game law of the State, and engineered its passage through both houses. He is proud of the support he gave to the bill for the erection of the new State house, and the bill for the erec- tion of additional accommodations for the insane of the State; both of which meas- ures were so much needed, but which from senseless wrangling had been so long neglected.

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Pictorial and biographical memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph counties, Indiana, together with biographies of many prominent men of northern Indiana and of the whole state, both living and dead, Part 50

Author: Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, Goodspeed Brothers Number of Pages: 786

Author:
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, Goodspeed Brothers
Number of Pages: 786