USA > Indiana > The history of Indiana > Part 23
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Merchants from the river towns frequently induced masters of small steamers to undertake to navigate the smaller rivers. In 1828 merchants from Indianapolis, Spencer, and Bloomington chartered the steamer "Triton," fifty-two tons burden, to carry a cargo from Louisville. It left Louisville, April 24, and in four days reached a drift fourteen miles below Spencer.22 Two years later the "Traveler," under Captain Smith, reached Spencer in three days from Louisville. As early as 1827 Noah Noble, later governor, tried to in-
22 Indiana Journal, May 15, 1828.
303
STEAMBOAT AT INDIANAPOLIS
duce the Kanawha Salt Company to send a steamer to Indianapolis, but was unsuccessful. The "Victory" came within fifty miles of the capital during the year, but was compelled to turn back.
On April 11, 1831, there appeared in White river, at Indianapolis, a real steamboat, the "Robert Hanna." Not only was there a real steamboat, but it was push- ing a heavily laden keel barge. The citizens of In- dianapolis had always claimed that White river was navigable. Now who could deny it? No excitement in the history of the town compared to this. Every man, woman and child lined up on the banks of the river. There was no time for sleep that night. Early the next day Capt. B. I. Blythe paraded his artillery company on the bank and fired a salute. The captain of the boat then offered to take the ladies who wished to go on an excursion up the river. There was no lack of volun- teers and the gallant captain had to make a second trip.23 The boat had been purchased by Hanna & Company, contractors on the National Road, to be used to haul stone from the Port Royal bluffs for the big bridge across White river. The boat was not built on the lines required and had to be sent back.
On its return trip it ran on a bar at Hog Island, a few miles down, and lay there till winter. However, the event added greatly to the reputation of the capital and limited the swaggering of the members from the river cities, Madison, New Albany, and Vincennes.
There were many attempts in the early years of Indiana to pilot steamboats to the upper Wabash towns. The best water came in March usually. In 1821 William C. Linton, a trader from Terre Haute, had a steamer run to that town, which they estimated to be three hundred miles from the Ohio.24 A merchant of Lafayette, named Isaac C. Elston, freighted a
23 Indiana Journal. April 16, 1831.
24 Miami Times quoted in The Western Sun, May 8, 1830.
304
HISTORY OF INDIANA
steamer to that town as early as 1825. On March 24, 1830, Capt. John Moon, of Ripley, Ohio, ran the "Para- gon" to the mouth of Rock creek, about twelve miles below Logansport. He reported good water-six and one-half feet-on the bar below Logansport. These reports, and the fact that boats could be loaded any- where along the river for the New Orleans market, brought a rush of settlers. The steamer "American," James L. Wilson, master, was during the time making regular trips from Louisville to Terre Haute.25 The steamer "Lawrence" from Cincinnati, 125 tons burden, chartered by Joseph L. Sloan and Landes, reached Covington March 18, 1827, only six months after the sale of lots for that town had been held. The same year a steamer made its way up to Lafayette.26
The shopkeepers of Delphi and Peru had tried, un- successfully for some years to secure regular naviga-
25 From the Western Sun of April 25, 1829, the following river news is taken : April 17, "Criterion" arrived from Lafayette to Shawneetown; 18, "Victory" from Lafayette to Louisville; 19, "Wm. Tell" from Cincinnati to Lafayette; 21, "Criterion" re- turned from Shawneetown with a barge of salt in tow. From the same paper, April 23, 1831, is the following: April 16, "Pearl" from Shawneetown to Eugene; April 17, "Fairy" from Louisville to Lafayette; April 18, "Pearl" on return to Shawneetown; April 20, "Forester" from Lafayette to Louisville; April 18, "Java" Louisville to Eugene; on the 23d, the "Experiment" made the trip, the first on record, from New Orleans direct to Terre Haute.
In the issue of March 27, 1834, these arrivals at Vincennes were noted: March 22, "Camden" from Lafayette, and "Shy- lock" from the mouth of the Wabash ; 24, "Salem" from Pittsburg, and "Tennessee" from Lafayette; 25, "Logansport" from Delphi ; "Sabine" from Pittsburg; "Fairy" from the mouth of the Wabash ; 26, "Tide" from Lafayette; "Wm. Hurlburt" from Cincinnati ; on 26, "Monroe" and "Salem" down from Lafayette. From April 14 to 27, forty-one boats landed at Terre Haute. The "Indian" was built that spring expressly to do the carrying trade from Cincinnati to Lafayette. While the stage of water would permit -during February, March and April-there was at least one boat per day at the Vincennes wharf.
36 Indiana Gazette, April 3, 1827.
305
STEAMBOATS ON THE WABASH
tion up to those towns.27 Finally, they prevailed on the master of the little steamer, "Republican," to make a trial trip. Accordingly, on the June rise, 1834, the start was made with a number of Logansport men on board, and also the interested merchants. The boat moved along beautifully till, a few miles above the Delphi landing, it began to strike. The crew had to get out at sandbars and lift and push. Hawsers were run ashore and used as tow lines. Finally it struck the Georgetown Bar and stuck fast. Captain Towe, as well as Colonel Pollard and Job Eldridge, who had goods aboard, got out in the water and pushed and hauled. It was no use. Twenty yoke of cattle were hitched on and the little "Republican," shorn of much of her prestige, but still alive, steamed into the harbor at Logansport. The return trip was never attempted. The boat bilged and sank near the mouth of Eel river.28 This, if not the first, was among the first of the steam- boats that ever went up so far. The soundings taken by the "Republican" showed that Delphi could be reached easily; and the next year a petition was sent to Congress by the Delphians asking that that place be made a port of entry.
A like excitement was caused on the St. Joseph three years later when the "Matilda Barney" steamed down to the South Bend on her way to Elkhart and Goshen. She had on board one hundred passengers and ten tons of freight, and was drawing thirteen inches of water. Everybody in reach rushed to the banks to see the wonder. Land along the river rose over night from $5 to $10 per acre.29 The most promis- ing point along the river at that time was the iron foundry at Mishawaka.
27 Sanford Cox, Recollections of an Old Settler, (1860).
28 Dr. James H. Stewart, Recollections of Carroll County, Cin cinnati, 1873.
29 Western Sun, . May 31, 1834.
306
HISTORY OF INDIANA
§ 52 THE FLATBOAT TRADE
IT is not beyond the fact to say that nine-tenths of the surplus produce of Indiana from 1820 to 1840 was carried to market on flatboats. The merchants did most, but by no means all, of the boating business. Early in the spring they put their boat carpenters to work. The finest poplars in the neighboring forest were marked for gunwales. Some of these were eighty feet long. They were usually cut before the sap rose in the spring and left in the woods as long as possible to season. By the first of the following March the boats must be completed and at the landing ready for loading. The loading of the boats was no ordinary event in the neighborhood. The produce had all been prepared beforehand and in many cases had been stored in a warehouse at the landing. The owners of the boats watched the stage of the water, and when it was thought to be favorable, they sent word to every- body in the neighborhood either to bring in their prod- uce or come with all hands and the teams to load the boats. It was usual for the women to come also, not only to cook for the hands, but to help wrap and store away the goods on the boat. It was a time of great gaiety. On the bank stood a barrel of whiskey with its head knocked in and a gourd to drink from. When the loading was done and the boats gone, a frolic at the nearest and most commodious house or barn closed the event.
By 1827 the New Orleans market was failing, not on account of the quantity of produce, but on account of the time and manner of reaching it. Three-fourths of the marketable produce of the Mississippi valley was run out in March. This deluge struck New Or- leans all at once, and, it being a small city, was unable
307
THE FLATBOAT TRADE
to care for it till it could be shipped to New York. In the spring of 1826, one hundred and fifty-two flatboats passed Vincennes loaded for New Orleans. They car- ried 250,000 bushels of corn, 100,000 barrels of pork, 10,000 hams, 2,500 live cattle, 10,000 pounds of bees- wax, 3,600 venison hams, besides hogs, oats, meal, chickens, etc.30 From these statistics it is evident that about three hundred flatboats left the Wabash each year.
From Lawrenceburg to Mount Vernon on the Ohio there was scarcely a five mile stretch but what had its "landing," where flatboats were loaded for the down- river trade. In 1828 David Guard & Brothers, farm- ers on the river above Lawrenceburg, bought the abandoned steamer "Scioto" and transformed it into a barge, on which they placed 600 live hogs, a large number of fat cattle, chickens, geese, corn, 500 kegs of lard, 500 barrels of pork, and other produce, all from their own farm, and set out, March 10, for New Orleans.31
From this same port twenty-seven such boats were run in one year. Down below, at Vevay, the Dufours and Schencks, known by their products throughout the east, loaded their annual fleet with wine, hay, straw hats, and other produce of this energetic French com- munity. Madison, the center of the pork-packing in- dustry in the State, did the largest down river business of any town in the State. Not only from the river- board but from the tributary streams, such as Pigeon and Anderson, Oil and Blue, Indian and Loughry, came numberless boats. Scores of busy little town-landings of that day have completely disappeared from the map. Such were Maysville, Hindostan, Palestine, Fredonia, Pittsburg, Port Royal and Darlington.
Passengers and pilots on upstream steamboats
30 Western Sun, June 17, 1826.
31 Lawrenceburg Palladium, March 15, 1828.
308
HISTORY OF INDIANA
counted hundreds of flatboats in a single day. John Matthews, a veteran boatman of Indiana, commenting on the large number of boatmen at New Orleans in the spring of 1829, observed that over half were from Indiana. 32
As far as possible the boatmen gathered in groups, often ten to twenty boats keeping company. When a fleet of them tied up in a down-river port like Paducah, Natchez, Vicksburg, or Plaquemine the crews had high revels. Old rivermen indulged in all kinds of jokes on green hands, then on their first trip. At New Or- leans there were sights to keep all on the alert. The splendor of the theaters, gardens, churches, and stores were such as the young boatmen had never dreamed of. Scarcely an hour was spent in sleep during the three or four days' stay by those on their first trip.
The merchant or master was busy during this time disposing of his cargo and buying goods with the pro- ceeds. Little cash was brought back to Indiana. The return trip was not so pleasant for the boatmen as the going. Until about 1840 most of the men returned on foot. This was not only tiresome but dangerous. The down-river country, and especially the roads fre- quented by returning boatmen, were infested by thieves and robbers. Gangs of gamblers, murderers, and river pirates preyed on the commerce from Cairo to New Orleans. Frequently, as in the case of the one at Cave-in-the-Rocks, Illinois, pirate bands were strong enough to overpower a flatboat crew and rob them.
After 1840, or thereabouts, the boatmen returned by steamer to the nearest Ohio river town, and thence walked home. Those from the Wabash towns landed at Evansville; those from the central part of the State landed at Leavenworth, or New Albany.
32 Indiana Journal, August 1, 1834.
309
MAIL ROUTES
§ 53 EARLY MAIL SERVICE
THE chief means of communication between Indian- ians and the outside world was the United States mails. These were necessarily infrequent and irregular. The mail routes were laid out and the service directed by Congress, and there seems at this date to have been little cause for complaint by the pioneers. Sometimes the carrier was delayed a few days by high water. Frequently he was drowned in trying to swim his horse across a flooded river. More frequently the postmast- ers took the newspapers from the bags and detained them until next trip-often a week-that they might read them. In 1827 the publishers of the Indiana Journal complained that half their papers were so de- tained.
At the same time the editor explained that he had issued no paper the previous week because the mails from Cincinnati had been delayed two weeks by high waters. There were at that time thirty routes in the State. Nearly all were weekly. On one the mail left Lawrenceburg at two p. m. Monday and arrived at Indianapolis at six p. m. Wednesday. This was a fair example of the service.
"Franked" congressional documents often clogged the mails to the exclusion of more important matter. Captain Sample, the postmaster at Connersville in 1828, complained that he had over a wagon load of this material, nearly all franked by T. P. Moore, a congress- man from Kentucky, to Jonathan McCarty-the Jack- sonian candidate for Congress in that district.
The postal receipts during the year 1828 for In- dianapolis were $379; Brookville, $142; Crawfords- ville, $139; Fort Wayne, $158; Terre Haute, $235; Madison, $323. For the whole State it was $7,905. There were then one hundred and forty-nine offices in the State, thirty-seven of which had been established
310
HISTORY OF INDIANA
that year.33 The development, however, was rapid. At the beginning of 1830 Indianapolis had a weekly mail to Madison, Louisville, Elizabethtown, Ky., Peters- burg, Terre Haute, Mooresville, Noblesville, Lawrence- burg, and twice a week to Brookville, and to Dayton.34
§ 54 SETTLEMENT OF THE WABASH COUNTRY
No description can give an accurate impression of the settlement of Indiana. One who has watched the rising waters of a flood overflow the land will appre- ciate the overflow of the State by the swelling tide of immigration. By 1825 the settlers were entering the northern half of the State. The "New Purchase" in 1818 opened almost all the land south of the Wabash to settlement.
As noted in the last chapter, land sales at Craw- fordsville had been opened by Ambrose Whitlock and Williamson Dunn, December 24, 1824, though there was no permanent land office established there till 1828.35
Crawfordsville became the converging point for all settlers northwest of the capital. The first settlers of Lafayette and Delphi, and what was then called the upper Wabash country, made their way from the upper Whitewater valley across by Andersontown, thence down White river to Strawtown, near Nobles- ville. There they took the Wilderness road by Thorn- town to Crawfordsville. From White river to Craw- fordsville there was not a white man's house along
33 American State Papers, Post Office, I, 20S.
34. Indiana Journal, Jan. 16, 1830. In 1832 the South Bend North Western Pioncer announced with great pride that South Bend had a twice-a-week mail from Piqua, Ohio. Before that a weekly mail from Fort Wayne had been sufficient; cf. Waldo Mitchell, "Growth of Indiana, 1812-1820," Indiana Magazine of History, Dec. 1914, where a number of the early routes are given.
35 Sanford C. Cox, Recollections of the Early Settlement of the Wabash Valley, 17.
311
SETTLING THE UPPER WABASH
this trace in 1825.36 A score of families constituted the little settlement at Crawfordsville and then the forest stretched unbroken to Terre Haute.
Along this trace, in October, 1824, came Sanford Cox, his father, mother, brothers and sisters, among the first to reach the Wabash country by this overland route. The Robinson family, Henry and his sons, Ab- ner and Coleman, their wives and children, from Day- ton, Ohio, had preceded the Coxes by only a few days. At Crawfordsville they selected their land, and cut a trace for their wagon into Carroll county, the earliest settlers in the vicinity of Delphi.37
The whole country to the northwest of Montgomery county was then known as Wabash county and was attached to Montgomery for administrative purposes. Early in the spring of 1825 Robert Johnson, the tavern keeper of Crawfordsville, surveyed for William Digby the town site for Lafayette. In January, 1826, Tippe- canoe county was set off by the General Assembly and in May following the commissioners located the county seat at Lafayette.38
Almost at the same time, March 28, 1826, John Tipton moved the Fort Wayne Indian Agency to the mouth of Eel river. April 16, 1828, the town site of Logansport was surveyed, and August 12, 1829, it became the county seat of Cass county.39
36 "Soon after crossing White river we passed Beckwith's place. Mr. Ogle, who drove the (ox) team, told us to take a good look at that cabin as it was the last we would see for forty miles." Sanford Cox, Recollections, 11.
37 Dr. James Hervey Stewart, Recollections of the Early Set- tlement of Carroll County, 13.
38 Dr. E. V. Shockley, in an article entitled "County Seats and County Seat Wars," Indiana Magazine of History, March, 1914, has given the location of the different county seats of the coun- ties of Indiana, showing the time, manner, and inducements, that led up to them. In the case of Lafayette the proprietor gave the even numbered lots to the county as a price for the location.
39 W. Swift Wright. Pastime Sketches. This is a series of ar- ticles written for, and read to the Cass County Historical Society.
312
HISTORY OF INDIANA
Fort Wayne had been the seat of a military post or Indian agency for nearly a century before any real settlement was made. In 1822 a land office was estab- lished there under charge of Joseph Holman and Sam- uel C. Vance. The first land sale was opened at the fort, October 22, 1823. Squatters and traders, such as Samuel Hanna, James Barnett, Alexander Ewing, Samuel Comparet and others, had already settled there. The General Assembly of 1823 laid out Allen county, the county seat being located the following year at Fort Wayne.40
As early as 1823 Alexis Coquillard, a fur trader, established a trading station where the city of South Bend now stands. Lathrop Taylor soon followed. The station was an outpost of Fort Wayne. Real settlers soon followed and by the time the Michigan Road reached the place a considerable settlement had sprung up.41
Settlers entered Lake county by way of Lake Mich- igan and the "Old Sac Trail." The Indian title to this section was not secured till 1828 and 1832. The Black Hawk War in the latter year scared away prospective settlers, but in 1833 a stage line from Detroit to Fort Dearborn, passing through, opened up the country to settlement.
It is thought that the first settlement in the region was made by a tavern keeper named Bennett, who located his hostelry near the mouth of the Calumet. Traces ran from Laporte to Hickory creek, Illinois, passing Cedar Lake. This latter was called the "Old Sac Trail."42
Settlers had established homes on the prairies about Laporte as early as 1830, there being about 100 fam-
40 Wallace A. Brice, History of Fort Wayne, 293.
41 Judge Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, 132.
42 Rev. T. H. Ball, Lake County, Indiana, 20.
313
"MOVERS"
ilies in that neighborhood by the close of 1832, when Laporte county was organized.43
These settlements indicate the main lines of immi- gration, but only the main lines. Thousands came up the Wabash; others came by trail to the Wabash from Lake Michigan, a harbor having been made on the Indiana shore as early as 1834.44
"Nothing is more common," wrote Rev. George Bush, of Indianapolis, November 20, 1826, "than to see fifteen or twenty wagons passing in a single day, each carrying the little belongings of the family that trudged along by its side. Indiana is now teeming with the hordes of immigration. As many as thirty wagons camp together for the night."45
"For a week our town has scarce been clear of immigrant wagons," wrote the editor of the Indiana Gazette, of Indianapolis, October 30, 1827.46 It was reported that 200 families passed through Centerville for the Wabash country during the two months of September and October, 1827. Since 1820 there had been organized in the "New Purchase" twenty-one counties whose population in 1827 totaled 55,000.47 There was no cessation in this rush of settlers. During the years from 1829 to 1835 the flood poured along the roads that centered in Indianapolis. From there they took the Crawfordsville, Logansport, or Terre Haute trails. The canal agitation, which began in 1827, quickened the movement and swelled the crowd. Sales of canal lands all along the route attracted speculators, city builders, and settlers in ever increasing numbers.
43 Gen. Jasper Packard, History of LaPorte County, 36.
44 Indiana Journal, Jan. 18, 1834.
45 Rev. George Bush. to Corresponding Secretary of the Home Missionary Society, Indiana Gazette, April 3, 1827. "Their des- tination is the Wabash above Terre Haute. We wonder why a merciful providence kept this country hid from civilized man, or why he did not create an especially gifted race for its occupation."
46 Indiana Gazette, Oct. 30, 1827.
47 Western. Sun, Nov. 10, 1827.
314
HISTORY OF INDIANA
Cities like Lagro, Peru, Miamisport, Pittsburg, Logans- port, Lockport, Lafayette, Williamsport, Eugene, Attica and Covington sprang up in a season and be- came flourishing towns.48
The bulk of population, as shown by the census of 1830, was still in the southern part of the State. The Whitewater valley was most thickly settled. Wayne county, with a population of 18,589; Dearborn, with 13,955; Jefferson, with 11,465; Franklin, with 10,990, were the leading counties. The immense throng of settlers, then crowding to the Wabash frontier, passed through these counties and thousands became perman- ent residents, who had intended to go to the Wabash.49
Another large body of population was located,
48 Paoli Patriot, quoted in Madison Republican, Oct. 9, 1834, "We presume not less than one hundred and fifty wagons have passed through this village in the last two weeks." The Indian- apolis Indiana Democrat, Oct. 3, 1834. "Our streets are one moving mass of living men, women, and children, carriages, wagons, cattle, horses, hogs and sheep, all joyously wending their way to their new habitations. The old, middle aged, and young go together. Nor is this moving spirit confined to one part of our State alone, but we believe tens of thousands are going by the lakes, and every leading road abounds with similar trains of emigrants." The Indiana Journal, Sept. 8, 1830, called attention to the heavy immigration then pouring through Indianapolis. The capital that year had a population of 1,094; Vincennes 1,560; Salem 853; Madison 1,752. The newspapers were filled with the advertise- ments of towns. Andersontown, Knightstown, Muncytown 1827, Delphi 1828, Blakesbury, Brentonville, Marion, Mooresville 1830, Lebanon, New Maysville, South Bend, LaPorte 1832, Michigan City, Allisonville 1833. New Bethel, Monticello, Plymouth, Ger- mantown, Northfield, Peru 1834, will give some idea how fast these towns were laid out and placed on the markets. The date given is the first advertisement for the sale of lots. There were scores of towns laid out and advertised which can not now be located on the map.
49 Dr. James Hervey Stewart, Recollections of the Early Set- tlement of Carroll County, 12, "On passing through Richmond and Centerville we were annoyed by croaking predictions of ill-luck uttered on all sides. 'You will never get through' said one, 'You will die if you go to the Wabash : every one that goes there dies in less than a year,' said another."
315
CENSUS OF 1830
roughly speaking, in the triangle of hilly country with its base resting on the Ohio from Madison to Leaven- worth and its apex at Crawfordsville. Most of these settlers had entered through Clark county, which then contained 10,719 persons.
As an evidence of the heavy immigration into the Wabash country, Tippecanoe county had a population of 7,167; Fountain had 7,644, either equal to that of Marion, with 7,181, or Montgomery, with 7,386.50
50 Vevay Messenger. Sept. 27, 1831, gave the following census report of Indiana for 1830:
County
Census.
County
Census.
County
Census.
Allen
1,000
Marion
7,181
Madison
2,242
Bartholomew 5.480
Montgomery _7,386
Parke
7,534
Clark 10,719
Morgan
579
Cass 1,154
Crawford
3,234
Monroe
5,678
Rush 9,918
Carroll 1,614
Orange
5,909
Ripley
3,959
Clay
1,616
Owen
7,090
Randolph
3,912
Boone
622
Posey
4,883
Sullivan
4,696
Dearborn
13,955
Perry 6,378
St. Joseph 287
Decatur
5,851
Putnam
8,495
Switzerland 7.111
Delaware
2,372
Pike
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