USA > Indiana > Adams County > Standard history of Adams and Wells counties, Indiana : An authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and country, Volume I > Part 10
USA > Indiana > Wells County > Standard history of Adams and Wells counties, Indiana : An authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and country, Volume I > Part 10
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
TOLEDO, ST. LOUIS & WESTERN
In 1878 a narrow gauge line was built through Adams County in a generally east-and-west direction, under the name of the Delphos, Bluffton & Kokomo Railroad. It was afterward consolidated with other lines under the title of the Toledo, Frankfort & Burlington, and later with other short roads, to form the Toledo, Cincinnati & St. Louis. This was a continuous narrow gauge line from Toledo to the Mississippi River. But the railroad did not prosper, and in 1886 was purchased by a reorganized company known as the Toledo, St. Louis & Kansas City. Soon afterward the tracks were widened to standard gauge. The interested townships and individuals in Adams County donated $45,000 to aid in its construction, and it has long been known
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as the Toledo, St. Louis & Western. It passes through St. Mary's, Washington and Kirkland townships, in a generally northwesterly direction to Decatur and thence south-by-west. Outside the county seat, the main stations on the line are Pleasant Mills, in St. Mary's, and Peterson, in Kirkland. The Western has about twenty-four and a half miles of main track in the county. It is so popularly known as the Clover Leaf that many residents of the county are not aware that it has any other name. In fact, one of the most bitter arguments which the writer remembers to have heard within recent years was between a sturdy country woman and a country man, old residents of the county, who pluckily stood to their guns on opposite sides of an argument on the question. The lady just knew it was the Clover Leaf and had never been anything else; that it should have any other name was silly, and that ended the matter!
THE CHICAGO & ERIE RAILROAD
This line, which is nearer a dircet east-and-west line than the Clover Leaf, crosses the northern portions of St. Mary's and Wash- ington townships, takes a nick out of the southwest corner of Root Township and thence runs straight across the southern border of Preble Township. It was originally built as the Chicago & Atlantic Railroad in 1881-82 and received about $35,000 from the townships named. It gave the most direct connections with Chicago, and its original eastern terminus was Marion, Ohio. The main purpose of its construction was to encourage through business from Central Ohio to the lake metropolis. The Clover Leaf was also primarily a Chicago road. These two trunk lines, with the Grand Rapids & Indiana, place Adams County in elose communication with Ohio, Illinois and Michi- gan. The Erie Road has more than fourteen miles of main track in the county, its stations being Rivare (Bobo), Decatur, Preble and Mag- ley. The total trackage of the three railroads whch accommodate Adams County amounts to 55.74 miles.
TRACTION AND AUTOMOBILE LINES
The traction and automobile lines have so added to the transporta- tion conveniences of Adams and Wells counties within the past dec- ade that there is no point of any real consequence which cannot now be easily reached. Altogether, there are nearly nineteen miles of traction lines in Adams County, the Fort Wayne & Decatur Traction Company owning and operating the longest and most important line. Vol. I-6
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It runs directly to Fort Wayne, where it connects with the Fort Wayne & Northern Indiana Traction System. The Bluffton, Geneva & Celina line joins the latter at the county seat of Wells and has not been ad- vanced beyond Geneva in Southern Adams County. Linn Grove is a station on the road. The line named has not been a profitable invest- ment, was placed in the hands of a receiver and sold at auction in November, 1917. In addition to the traction lines named, Decatur's means of communication include an automobile 'bus line which fur- nished daily transportation to Bluffton, Huntington and intermediate points over one route and from Decatur to Geneva over another, through Monroe and Berne.
CHAPTER VII
THE TIMES OF LONG AGO
A COUNTRY HOME OF THE '40S-BUILDING THE LOG HOUSE-THIE CHIMNEY AND FIREPLACE-THE DOOR AND LATCHISTRING-INTERIOR OF THE CABIN-COOKING UTENSILS- TRUE HOMINY AND SAMP- OLD-STYLE STRING INSTRUMENTS-SUSPICIOUS "BOUGHTEN" CLOTHES-VARIETY IN DRESS, THEN AND NOW-HOSPITALITY OF THE OLDEN TIME-IN THE TIMES OF BARTER-PELTRIES, NEAR- MONEY-STUFF THE STAYERS WERE MADE OF-GRINDING CORN BY IIAND-MILLS AND AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS-HOG SHOOTING AND STICKING-PORK PACKING AND MARKETING-FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE-ERADICATING THE WILD HOGS-EXTERMINATING THE WOLVES-HUNTING BEES-AFTER THE SNAKES-HOW YOU FEEL WITH CHILLS AND FEVER-THE SPELLING SCHOOL THRILLS-MORE FOR FUN THAN MUSIC-INDUSTRIOUS AMUSEMENTS-SATURDAY, A HALF HOLIDAY-A MILITANT CAPTAIN-WOLF AND BEAR STORIES -RUNNING DOWN INDIAN HORSE THIEVES-OVERLOOKING THE VITAL POINT.
Before the writer makes a business of exploiting Adams County and of methodically dissecting its various institutions and developing movements, there are certain fragmentary pictures which should be etched as background. They are not only produced as meat to place on the bones of necessary facts, but as really a feature of the history which, in no wise, could be omitted with any pretense of completeness. Modern history, especially that dealing with circumscribed areas, must depiet the people and their ways as keys to their actions and their institutions. This chapter, therefore, expressly avoids method and classification ; it simply is written to introduce the pioneers of Adams County as a people, with occasional mention of individuals to illustrate a special phase of their life or a special trait of character, and if they and their lives are brought to the clear comprehension of readers whose lines have not crossed this human field of history, much of the narrative covering the later periods will be more clearly comprehended and the comforts and blessings of the present more fully appreciated.
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A COUNTRY HOME OF THE '40S
The following description of a model country home in Adams County was given to John F. Snow by an old resident, as representa- tive of the '40s: "Our house was a single-room cabin of round logs with puncheon floor and clapboard roof. At the front we had a porch. The clapboard roof was held in place by weight poles. The puncheon floor was hewed smooth on the upper side and was substantial and solid. It had a stick chimney plastered with mud, with 'nigger head'
LOG CABIN OF OUR ANCESTORS
hearth and fire-place. The door hung on wooden hinges and was made of thick clapboards. Our loft had a clapboard floor, and we went up stairs on a ladder made of iron-wood poles. The openings between the logs were chinked with small pieces of wood and daubed with clay mortar. We had plenty of fresh air from above, as the clapboard floor was not very closely laid. We had two pole beds with one post each. The two back corners of the room by means of an auger hole in the logs at the side and end of the wall, made good sides and end fastenings. Over these sides smaller poles were
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placed and held by linn bark tied at the ends, which made a very comfortable bed. Now, to save light and fuel and for general con- venience, we arranged to have our kitchen, dining room, sitting room and parlor all in the same room, and, when the occasion demanded it, we converted this room, which was about sixteen by twenty feet in size, into a shoe shop, a corn-grating shop, a spinning and weaving room, and sometimes used it for a gun shop, spinning room and ax- handle factory. So thus the years came and went, and we enjoyed them in our simple cabin houses and were happier in our freedom than a king on his throne. Then every settler knew every man, woman and child in the neighborhood, and could count them without much trouble or figuring."
BUILDING THE LOG HOUSE
After arriving and selecting a suitable location, the next move on the part of the forehanded Hoosier pioneer was to build such a log house as fell within his means and his constructive abilities. Trees of uniform size were chosen and cut into logs of the desired length, gen- erally 12 to 15 feet, and hanled to the building site. On an appointed day the few available neighbors would assemble and have a "house- raising." Each end of every log was saddled and notched so that they would fit as closely as possible, and on the following days the pro- prietor would chink and daub the cabin to keep out the rain, wind and cold. The cabin had to be re-daubed every fall, as the rains would wash out much of the mortar. The usual height of the house was 7 or 8 feet. The gables were formed by shortening the logs gradually at each end of the building near the top. The roof was made by laying very straight small logs or stout poles about two and a half feet apart from gable to gable, and on these poles were laid the claphoards after the manner of shingles, showing about two and a half feet to the weather. Weight poles fastened the clapboards, and the latter were held in place by chunks of wood about 20 inches long fitted between . them near the ends and called runs or knees. Clapboards were made from the best of oaks by chopping or sawing the logs into four-foot blocks, and splitting these with a frow, or a broad blade fixed at right angles to the handle.
THE CHIMNEY AND FIREPLACE
The chimney of the cabin was made by leaving in the building a large open place in one of the walls, or by cutting one after the house
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was raised, and by building on the outside from the ground up, a column of stones or sticks and mud. The fireplace thus made was sometimes large enough to receive firewood 6 to 8 feet long; the back log might be as large as a good-sized saw log. In those days the pio- neer considered it a great advantage to burn up wood as rapidly as possible, as the sooner he elcared the timber from his land the more rapidly approached the day when he could cultivate his farm to ad- vantage. So the old-time fireplace was usually a hot place even in cold weather.
THE DOOR AND THE LATCHSTRING
For a window the old settler cut out a piece of one of the wall logs about two feet long and closed the hole with greased paper, greased deer-hide, or thick green glass. If a saw was among the household belongings, a doorway was cut through one of the log walls ; otherwise it would be made by shortening the logs at the proper place. The door itself was fashioned by pinning two or three wooden bars to clapboards, and was hung on wooden hinges. A wooden latch, with a catch, finished the door; the latch could be raised from the outside by pulling a leather string. For security at night this latchstring was drawn in; but for friends and neighbors, and even strangers, if the householder was of a specially sociable or confiding disposition, "the latehstring was always hanging ont."
INTERIOR OF THE CABIN
In the interior of the cabin over the fireplace would be a shelf called a mantle, on which stood the candlestick or lamp, some cooking and table-ware, possibly an old clock, and other articles. Well within the fireplace would be the crane, of iron or wood, on which were hung the cooking pots. Over the front door, in forked cleats, hung the rifle and powder horn, as necessary a part of the pioneer furnishings as the crane itself, as they stood for a vital item of the family pro- visions.
COOKING UTENSILS
To witness the various processes of cooking in those days would alike surprise and amuse those who have grown up since cooking- stoves and ranges came into nse. Kettles were. hung over the large fire, suspended with pot-hooks, iron or wooden, on the crane, or on poles, one end of which would rest upon a chair. The long-handled
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frying-pan was used for cooking meat. It was either held over the blaze by hand or set down upon coals drawn out upon the hearth. This pan was also used for baking pan-cakes, also called "flap-jacks," "batter-cakes," ete. A better article for this, however, was the east- iron spider or Dutch skillet. The best thing for baking bread in those days, and possibly even yet in these latter days, was the flat-bottomed
OLD-TIME CHIMNEY CORNER
bake-kettle, of greater depth, with closely-fitting cast-iron cover, and commonly known as the "Dutch oven." With coals over and under it, bread and biscuit would quickly and nicely bake. Turkey and spareribs were sometimes roasted before the fire, suspended by a string, a dish being placed underneath to catch the drippings.
TRUE HOMINY AND SAMP
Hominy and samp were very much used. The hominy, however, was generally hulled corn-boiled corn from which the hull, or bran,
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had been taken by hot lye; hence sometimes called "lye hominy." True hominy and samp were made of pounded corn. A popular method of making this, as well as real meal for bread, was to cut out or burn a large hole in the top of a huge stump, in the shape of a mortar, and pound the corn in this by a maul or beetle suspended on the end of a swing pole, like a well-sweep. When the samp was suf- ficiently pounded it was taken out, the bran floated off, and the de- licious grain boiled like rice.
The chief articles of diet in early days were corn bread, hominy, or samp, venison, pork, honey, beans, pumpkin (dried pumpkin for more than half the year), turkey, prairie chicken, squirrel and some other game, with a few additional vegetables a portion of the year. Wheat bread, tea, coffee and fruit were luxuries not to be indulged in except on special occasions, as when visitors were present.
OLD-STYLE STRING INSTRUMENTS
Besides cooking in the manner described, the women had many other arduous duties to perform, one of the chief of which was spin- ning. The "big wheel" was used for spinning yarn, and the "little wheel" for spinning flax. These stringed instruments furnished the principal music of the family, and were operated by our mothers and grandmothers with great skill attained without pecuniary expense and with far less practice than is necessary for the girls of our period to acquire a skilful use of their costly and elegant instruments.
The loom, was not less necessary than the wheel, though they were not needed in such great numbers. Not every house had a loom; one loom had a capacity for the needs of several families. Settlers hav- ing succeeded in spite of the wolves in raising sheep, commenced the manufacture of woolen eloth; wool was carded and made into rolls by hand cards, and the rolls were spun on the "big wheel." We still occasionally find in the houses of old settlers a wheel of this kind, sometimes used for spinning and twisting stocking yarn. They are turned with the hand, and with such velocity that it will run itself while the nimble worker, by her backward step, draws out and twists her thread nearly the whole length of the cabin.
SUSPICIOUS "BOUGHTEN" CLOTHES
A common article woven on the loom was linsey, or linsey-woolsey, the chain being linen and the filling woolen. This cloth was used for dresses for the women and girls. Nearly all the cloths worn by the
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men were also homemade; rarely was a farmer or his son seen in a coat made of any other. If, occasionally, a young man appeared in a suit of "boughten" clothes, he was suspected of having gotten it for a particular occasion, which occurs in the life of nearly every young man.
VARIETY IN DRESS, THEN AND NOW
Linsey, neat and fine, manufactured at home, composed generally the outside garments of the females as well as the males. The ladies had linsey colored and woven to suit their fancy. A bonnet, com- posed of calico, or some gay goods, was worn on the head when they were in the open air. Jewelry on the pioneer ladies was uncommon; a gold ring was an ornament not often seen.
The chronicler of to-day, looking back to the days of 1830 to 1840, and comparing them with the present, must be struck with the tendency of an almost monotonous uniformity in dress and manners that comes from the easy intereommunication afforded by steamer, railway, tele- graph and newspaper. Home manufactures have been driven from the household by the lower-priced fabrics of distant mills. The Kentucky jeans, and the copperas-colored clothing of home manufac- ture, so familiar in the long ago, having given place to the cassimeres and cloths of noted factories. The ready-made clothing stores, like a touch of nature, made the whole world kin, and may drape the char- coal man in a dress-coat and a stovepipe hat. The prints and silks of England and France tended to give a variety of choice and an as- sortment of colors and shades such as the pioneer women could hardly have dreamed of.
HOSPITALITY OF THE OLDEN TIME
The traveler always found a welcome at the pioneer's cabin. It *was never full. Although there might be already a guest for every puncheon, there was still "room for one more," and a wider cirele would be made for the new-comer at the log fire. If the stranger was in search of land, he was doubly welcome, and his host would volun- teer to show him all the "first-rate claims in this neck of the woods," going with him for days, showing the corners and advantages of every "Congress tracts," within a dozen miles of his own cabin.
To his neighbors the pioneer was equally liberal. If a deer was killed, the choicest bits were sent to his nearest neighbor, a half-dozen miles away, perhaps. When a "shoat" was butchered the same cus-
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tom prevailed. If the new-comer came in too late for "cropping" the neighbors would supply his table with just the same luxuries they themselves enjoyed, and in as liberal quantity, until a crop could be raised. When a new-comer had located his claim, the neighbors for miles around would assemble at the site of the new-comer's proposed cabin and aid him in "bittin' " it up. One party with axes would cut down the trees and hew the logs; another with teams would haul the logs to the ground ; another party would "raise" the cabin ; while several of the old men would "rive the clapboards" for the roof. By night the little forest domicil would be up and ready for a "house- warming," which was the dedicatory occupation of the house, when music and daneing and festivity would be enjoyed at full height. The next day the new-comer would be as well situated as his neighbors.
An instance of primitive hospitable manners will be in place here. A traveling Methodist preacher arrived in a distant neighborhood to fill an appointment. The house where services were to be held did not belong to a church member, but no matter for that. Boards were raked up from all quarters with which to make temporary seats, one of the neighbors volunteering to lead off in the work, while the man of the house, with the faithful rifle on his shoulder, sallied forth in quest of meat, for this truly was a "ground-hog" case-the preacher coming and no meat in the house! The host ceased not to chase until he found the meat, in the shape of a deer; returning he sent a boy out after it, with directions on what "pint" to find it. After services, which had been listened to with rapt attention by all the audience, mine host said to his wife, "Old woman, I reckon this 'ere preacher is pretty hungry and you must get him a bite to eat." "What shall I git him?" asked the wife, who had not seen the deer; "thar's unthin' in the house to eat." "Why, look thar," returned he; "thar's a deer, and thar's plenty of corn in the field; you git some corn and grate it while I skin the deer, and we'll have a good supper for him." It is needless to add that venison and corn bread made a supper fit for any pioneer preacher, and was thankfully eaten.
IN THE TIMES OF BARTER
In pioneer times the transactions of commerce were generally carried on by neighborhood exchanges. Now and then a farmer would load a flat-boat with beeswax, honey, tallow and peltries, with perhaps a few bushels of wheat or corn or a few hundred clapboards, and float down the rivers into the Ohio and thence to New Orleans, where he would exchange his produce for substantials in the shape of
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groceries and a little ready money, with which he would return by some one of the two or three steamboats then running. Betimes there ap- peared at the best steamboat landings a number of "middle men" engaged in the "commission and forwarding" business, buying up the farmers' produce and the trophies of the chase and the trap, and sending them to the various distant markets. Their winter's accum-
JOSIAH CRAWFORD, SETTLER OF 1839
ulations would be shipped in the spring, and the manufactured goods of the far East or distant South would come back in return; and in all these transactions scarcely any money was seen or used. Goods were sold on a year's time to the farmers, and payment made from the proceeds of the ensuing crops. When the crops were sold and the merchant satisfied, the surplus was paid out in orders on the store to laboring men and to satisfy other creditors. When a day's work was done by a working man, his employer would ask. "Well, what store
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do you want your order on?" The answer being given, the order was written and always cheerfully accepted.
Money was an article little known and seldom seen among the earlier settlers. Indeed, they had but little use for it, as they could transact all their business about as well without it, on the "barter" system, wherein great ingenuity was sometimes displayed. When it failed in any instance, long credits contributed to the convenience of the citizens. But for taxes and postage neither the barter nor the credit system would answer, and often letters were suffered to remain a long time in the postoffice for the want of the twenty-five cents de- manded by the Government. With all this high price on postage, by the way, the letter had not been brought 500 miles in a day or two, as is the case nowadays, but had probably been weeks on the route, and the mail was delivered at the pioneer's postoffice, several miles dis- tant from his residence, only once in a week or two. All the mail would be carried by a lone horseman. Instances are related illustrat- ing how misrepresentation would be resorted to in order to elicit the sympathies of some one who was known to have "two bits" (25 cents) of money with him, and procure the required governmental fee for a letter.
PELTRIES NEAR-MONEY
Peltries came nearer being money than anything else, as it came to be custom to estimate the value of everything in that commodity. Such an article was worth so many peltries. Even some tax collectors and postmasters were known to take peltries and exchange them for money required by the Government.
STUFF THE STAYERS WERE MADE OF
When the first settlers came into the wilderness they generally supposed that their hard struggle would be principally over after the first year; but alas! they often looked for "easier times next year" for many years before realizing them, and then they came in so grad- ually as to be almost imperceptible. The sturdy pioneer thus learned to bear hardships, privation and hard living, as good soldiers do. As the facilities for making money were not great, they lived pretty well satisfied in an atmosphere of good, social, friendly feeling, and thought themselves as good as those they had left behind in the East. But among the early settlers who came to this state were many who, ac- customed to the advantages of an older civilization, to churches, schools
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and society, beeame speedily home-siek and dissatisfied. They would remain perhaps one summer, or at most two, then, selling whatever elaim with its improvements they had made, would return to the older states, spreading reports of the hardships endured by the settlers here and the disadvantages which they had found, or imagined they had found in the country. These weaklings were not an unmitigated eurse. The slight improvements they had made were sold to men of sterner stuff, who were the sooner able to surround themselves with the necessities of life, while their unfavorable report deterred other weaklings from coming. The men who stayed, who were willing to endure privations, belonged to a different guild; they were heroes every one,-men to whom hardships were things to be overcome, and present privations things to be endured for the sake of posterity, and they never shrank from this duty. It is to these hardy pioneers who could endure that is mainly eredited the wonderful developments that have brought every seetion of Indiana from a wilderness to a finely developed Ameriean product.
GRINDING CORN BY HAND
Not the least of the hardships of the pioneers was the procuring of bread. The first settlers must be supplied at least onee a year from other sources than their own lands; but the first erops, however abundant, gave only partial relief, there being no mills to grind the grain. Henee the necessity of grinding by hand-power, and many families were poorly provided with means for doing this. Another way was to grate the corn. A grater was made from a piece of tin, sometimes taken from an old, worn-out tin bucket or other vessel. It was thickly perforated, bent into a semi-eircular form, rough side up- ward, on a board. The eorn was taken in the ear, and grated before it got dry and hard. Corn, however, was eaten in various ways.
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