USA > Indiana > Grant County > Fairmount > The making of a township, being an account of the early settlement and subsequent development of Fairmount Township, Grant County, Indiana, 1829 to 1917, based upon data secured by personal interviews, from numerous communications > Part 34
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The Making of a Township.
the ground. Then she sprang to her feet with open mouth, and the men could hear gnashing of teeth and snarly growl as she came swift and fast in leaps. Just at the right time a ball penerated her heart. The forest rang with yells.
One day, when my father was returning from Jonesboro, he spied a large eagle on the old school house chimney. Quickly he got his gun. then as near as possible. I remember, though a very small boy, father's coming home, the great bird in hand. He measured seven feet from tip to tip. with big head and large eyes, his feet and legs full of porcu- pine quills, showing that some time or other he had tackled a big por- cupine.
Hundreds of times have I listened to find a moment's interval that I could not hear a bird sing. In the summer time the woods would chime with melody, not a moment but some little warbler would be happy. I took great comfort in listening. Bluebirds were very numer- ous, tomtit, pewee. cathird. robin. the jaybird in the top of the tree. a neighbor to the hawks and crow. not far off the owl's "who-who." I did not like the woodpecker family-they were numerous, cruel and de- structive, though they cond make a noise in their way. There was a very large kind of woodcock, now almost extinct, nearly as large as a prairie hen, that had a coarse voice. To me, the pheasant made a lone- some noise, sounding like distant thunder. With the cooing of the dove a solemn feeling would pervade my tender heart. I remember I would think of Heaven. AAbove all. the pigeon took the lead in number. Mil- lions of them would visit our country in the spring and fall. To me it was a halo of joy when the pigeons would come, drove after drove. At times the sun could not shine until they had passed. They would alight on trees, so many as to break off great limbs. We had our different kinds of traps. Great numbers would alight in our fields in search of food, then fly over each other, then alight, looking like a rolling, glis- tening. high-tide wave. Quail were very numerous. Their "Bob White" was to be heard from morning till night. In cutting grass we one day found sixty eggs, another day ninety-six.
Often a drove of pheasants would fly around and alight on the cherry trees near the house, and in the spring we heard the "gobble- gobble" of wild turkeys in the distance. Squirrels were to be heard almost constantly in the daytime. It was my lot to protect the corn from them and the birds by going around the field before breakfast sounding the alarm, "Hooppee, shoe ve, yo, show show shoe, ye vo!" with the rattletrap in hand. That was made with a big notched wheel fixed in a frame, a board a foot and a half long so placed that as I
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Personal Recollections.
turned the wheel with a crank it made all the noise to my desire. After all this, the different kinds of birds and squirrels would take every hill, so we would have to replant three and four times to get a stand of corn. Squirrels had homes in large trees in the fields, and there they would carry the corn. Late corn they did not trouble so much, for by that time they would go to the woods and give us a little rest.
To take the place of the first rude camp, my father built a good. strong house. The timber to the south was thick, tall, beautiful. I can remember when almost the entire country was a wilderness of great forest trees. It is like a dream to me when I think of those towering, majestic trees that had stood unmolested for ages, so thick and dense, defying the storms and the Indian's tomahawk. I have never visited a country, never heard of any land with such variety of large trees-tow- ering oak. a few rods away a fine, straight poplar ; close by a grand old sugar maple, a rugged elm : a little lower down a few big walnut and sycamore ; then again a cluster of oaks, with all kinds mixed in between. -till we had a mass of timber through which the sun's rays could hardly reach the ground to make a shadow.
The undergrowth was ironwood, beech trees, shellbark and hickory. cherry that grew very straight and slender. locust of the thorny kind. but without many thorns, because in the shade the thorns could not grow well, a variety of "saplins" that would run up straight and beau- tiful. Then, to make it more like a jungle, the spicebrush was very thick-a bush that would sprout up from the roots, six or eight feet high. I have seen the woods so dense a deer could hardly run through. It was interesting to see the large bucks, with great heads of horns, run through the woods with their horns folded over their backs, their noses stuck right straight out, dodging things.
Not all the woods were like this. There were places more open. Later. the big fires, the axe, the cattle browsing, finally thinned out the brush. While cutting his timber my father could kill game without hunting-the deer would come to browse, the turkeys would pass in droves. They had plenty of the very best of food, though at first it was almost impossible to get corn and wheat ground. and at times their bread was hominy. But few people know anything about pioneer life. It is one continual struggle, yet I sometimes think it is the happiest life. if one will only take it just as it comes. I often heard my parents say they were the best days of their lives.
Often there was scarcity of food for stock in winter and we had to resort to cutting down lin (linden) and elm for cattle and horses to browse.
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The Making of a Township.
What has become of the millions of pigeons that migrated in the spring and fall is a mystery. They were a slightly larger and longer bird than our tamer pigeon, and darker.
Deer would visit the fields after night. I could hear them in the corn. My father and Uncle Seth Winslow were extra-good marksmen and often helped their neighbors to save crops. Wolves and panthers prowled around, raccoon, opossum, mink and weasel were all cunning and moved about in the dark. In the fall my father hunted bees and gathered much wild honey.
I was about four years old when our big dog got his mouth full of porcupine quills while coon hunting. The dogs had caught a big por- cupine before the men could help and had their mouths full of quills. My dog's head was put between the rails of the high fence and men held his feet and head, then my father with the nippers pulled out the big quills one by one, the dog howling at a terrible rate. I thought my good old dog would die.
Occasionally the Indians would come around, and they were great beggars. They made a wild appearance in our cabin, folding their old blankets around their dusky bodies, watching a chance to steal some- thing. Mother was a good hand to satisfy their wants.
In the winter of 1848 James Cammack came to our home from Wayne County to locate a saw-mill in this country. Father went with him to look out a location. They finally settled near Back Creek, where Fairmount now stands. Soon, Joseph W. Baldwin started a very small store. The mill was a success. Logs were brought here from ten miles around to be sawed into planks. I well remember the building of the first house in Fairmount.
My mother was an exhorter in the church, quoting Scripture readily. and dwelling much on the rich things in store for the righteous, she standing upright, very straight in a plain Friends costume of the old fashion, with a white shawl. and always a white cap with a modest plait or fold, which gave her a dignified appearance.
Our good mothers and sisters spun with little wheels, my mother spinning till midnight. When but a little boy I could hear the "buzz" of the wheel all times of the night-it was the way our shirts and little coats were made.
-From the Journal of Rev. Nixon Rush.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
FRAGMENTS.
The first death occurring in the Township was that of a child of Charles Baldwin, of scarlet fever.
Caroline, wife of Exum Newby, was the first person buried in old Back Creek Graveyard. Her death occurred on September 24, 1831.
The first saloon I ever saw was in Fairmount, where Ab. Jones' residence now stands. The next saloon in Fairmount was started by Paul Williams in a little shanty which stood where N. A. Wil- son's store now is. I remember how they got rid of it. My mother and some other ladies took their knitting and a chair and sat in front by turns and knit him out.
EZRA F. VINSON.
Jonathan P. Winslow, my father, was Trustee when the two- story frame school house was built. Many thought it entirely too big, that there would never be children enough to fill it. But when William Pusey (who can tell who the other two teachers were?) Cal Thornburg and Mary Winslow Bogue started in there wasn't many vacant seats. Jesse E. Wilson and J. P. had quite a time running after Captain Wells to get him headed for Fairmount with the Cincinnati, Wabash & Michigan Railroad. They used to go to Goshen and Elkhart to attend railroad meetings. It took about three days to make the round trip. They would go to Harrisburg (Gas City), take the train for Logansport, and I don't know where from Logansport, but it took about twenty-four hours to get to Goshen or Elkhart from Fairmount. Father spent about $500 at- tending these meetings.
J. A. WINSLOW.
Ontario, Oregon, March 27, 1917.
"It will be strange to the people of today to think that at one time here the squirrels were so bad that the people had to make shooting matches to get them out of the way," writes the late William G. Lewis, in his book of reminiscences. "Two men would choose the gunners and they would choose a driver. The driver was not supposed to carry a gun, but this rule was not always carried out. I chose for my driver old Uncle Lewis Harrison. He
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The Making of a Township.
was a soldier in the War of 1812, a good shot and used a flint-lock gun. The squirrel was very apt to drop when he shot. Lewis Harrison was the father of Luther Harrison and Mrs. Henry Deshon. The first day we killed eighty-seven squirrels, crows, owls and hawks. A crow would count for five squirrels, an owl and hawk the same. The squirrels would work on the corn in the spring and in the fall. The fields were not large, and woods all around, so they had a good chance. My father was paid fifty cents a day and ammunition found for shooting squirrels around the fields of the Simonses and the Todds. They were all gray squirrels. The fox squirrels came in long afterwards. They were not so plentiful and they were more shy than the gray squirrels. The blackbirds were very numerous and destructive to grain, wheat and oats suffering most. The farmers used to make what they called a horse fiddle. It turned with a crank and made a noise that could be heard quite a distance. The noise did not frighten quite everything to death, but it would scare these pests away. We would take this rattle trap and go around the field several times a day in order to scare the intruders away. Wild turkeys were very plentiful, and bad on corn. The hunter would take his gun and slip around the field and many times get a turkey. And some- times they would build a pen and dig a trench for them to go in. cover the top over, and when Mr. Turkey would go inside he did not know how to get out. A great many were caught in this way. I heard my father say he caught nine at one time."
WILLIAM G. LEWIS.
Fairmount in 1853 .- As I remember it I settled here August 12, 1853 (was a featherweight on that date, weighing only eight and one-half pounds), on the lot where Dale's hardware store now stands. My father, Nathan Vinson, was the first carpenter in Fairmount, and he was building the old barn on the Joseph Ratliff farm. I think Milton Winslow owned it then. The first old settlers I remember were "Dippy" Baldwin, Seaberry Lines, Mincher Cox and Micajah Wilson.
EZRA F. VINSON.
From Iowa in Covered Wagon .- My name is David, or D. L. I am named for my grandfather, David Stanfield, and Lancaster Bell, an uncle. I was born in Linn County, Iowa, in 1854, and came to Marshall County in 1867, where I have resided most of the time since. When I was about five years old our family drove
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Fragments.
to Indiana in a covered wagon, leaving here in the fall and return- ing in the spring. The roads were very bad, and it was a long, hard journey. Grandfather was in poor health, which caused us to go. This is the only time I ever saw him or Indiana. He recovered from this sickness and lived a few years after. My father's name was Samuel Vernon Stanfield. My father had a brother, David, who, while in a row boat, went over the dam and was drowned at Union, Towa, before the Civil War. I never knew very much about my Indiana relatives. My mother was a Baldwin. Both parents died at Clear Lake, Iowa.
D. L. STANFIELD.
Union, Iowa, March 24, 1917.
Jack Brunt was generally on the safe side of the guessing in his hog buying. His death a short time ago, leaving more than $1,- 000,000, would indicate that his judgment in business affairs had generally redounded to his benefit. He gave $125,000 to the erec- tion of a Young Men's Christian Association building in Anderson. So, if he sometimes got the better of the pioneer in his guessing, he has returned to their posterity many fold blessings in the further- ing of a cause which will no doubt bless generations yet unborn. Jack, as he was called, while he was a quaint character and not always understood, wore the rough side out, and his work in buying and driving the hogs of your early pioneers to market was a blessing attended with many hardships on his part, and one which a man of less sturdy character would have hesitated to have undertaken.
J. M. HUNDLEY.
David Smithson, one of the early pioneers, once related in my presence that when he was married his wife's people objected to David taking their daughter for a wife. The young folks were determined to marry. David said that inasmuch as Betsy was willing, there could be no harm in stealing her (eloping, as it is called nowadays). He told that about midnight he rode his horse to the home of Betsy's parents. She came out and got on the horse behind David and rode a number of miles, where they were married. I never knew how David squared himself with the church, as at that time it was against rules to marry outside of meeting. My mother had a birthright in the Friends Church, but was disowned when she married a Catholic. She later joined the Wesleyan Methodists and died in that faith. I am told that father
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The Making of a Township.
was a member of the Friends Church at the time of his death. I only mention this to show what time has done.
T. B. McDONALD.
Road Building .- Prior to 1854 there had been but little, if any, agitation for the improvement of roads. Such highways as had up to that year been opened for travel were built along the ridges, where the land was high and dry. This accounts, to a large extent, for the angling, crooked roads of the early days. It was not until several years after work was started on a more extensive scale that efforts were made to build roads on Range and Township lines, making travel easier and the highways straighter. The Jonesboro and Fairmount turnpike was projected in 1860, being the first gravel road constructed. Jesse E. Wilson and Jonathan P. Winslow were among the promoters and organizers of the company which built this pike. In 1869 the Marion and Liberty gravel-road was constructed to Center school house in Liberty Township. The work progressed rapidly after these pikes were built. and has ever since occupied much of the attention of all classes of citizens. The Liberty and Fairmount pike was promoted in 1869 by William S. Elliott, Jesse E. Wilson and Elwood Arnett. These men sold $4,000 worth of stock, and the work proceeded. William S. Elliott served as Secretary and Treasurer of the Company.
Sarah Baldwin, in 1845. rode horseback from Fairmount to Rich- mond to attend Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends. The route was south to Alexandria, then to Middletown and on through New. Castle. On this journey she was accompanied by her father, Nathan Morris, and Milton Winslow was along a part of the time. Winslow was on his way to Wayne County to see his best girl, Mary Roberts, who later became his wife and the mother of Thomas Winslow, now living on a farm two miles and a half northeast of Fairmount.
Amaziah Beeson, in 1830, operated a copper distillery two miles cast of Fairmount. He also built the first brick house ever erected in Fairmount Township. Daniel Thomas built the second one. This house is now occupied by William A. Beasley and family. Beeson distilled sassafras, horehound, peppermint, golden rod and pennyroyal, the extract being used for medicines. Dennis Mont- gomery was employed as Beeson's assistant.
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Fragments.
Otho Selby built a frame school house about three miles north- east of Fairmount, in 1850, on land now owned by John Selby. This is where Otho Selby first taught school. It was sometimes re- ferred to as the Prairie Seminary.
Jonathan Baldwin, in 1858, built the big two-story frame house on the old Baldwin homestead. The original Baldwin cabin, which stood near the hackberry tree, was torn down and removed to the northeast corner of Second and Main Streets, which was afterwards used as the finishing room of the old tan-yard. In 1883, Robert Bogue bought ten acres of the Baldwin homestead.
The Wide-a-Wakes were active in 1856. Henry Clay made a speech at Marion in this year. Among those who went to hear him were Jonathan Baldwin and family and Mary Hall Hollings- worth. In 1856 William Hall lived on the Henley lot, on South Main Street.
William Hall kept the first toll-gate about the year 1859. The gate was located just south of town, but was afterwards moved across the street, to the east side, where Solomon Thomas collected toll until his death, in 1873.
There was a Methodist Episcopal Church at Bethel, many years ago. In the Bethel graveyard lie the remains of John Suduth, a soldier of the Revolutionary War.
The Big Tree .- The big tree seems to loom up again. I had almost forgotten it until Jack Stivers mentioned the tree in his communication. I am equally at a loss to know what tree Stivers alludes to, as Nixon Rush and I saw three large trees which were very nearly the same diameter. Two were oak and the one Seeley speaks of was black walnut. One of the oak trees stood not a great way from our homestead cabin in Kansas. It was an immense tree, not so tall as the walnut, but had a number of large limbs that came out a pretty regular distance that circled the body of the tree. By the aid of an Indian ladder one could reach the first big limb, then by a spiral climb around the body of the tree from limb to limb one could gradually ascend as high as one cared to. There was a large opening in the body of the tree about forty feet from the ground which we thought would be a good place to find a fat coon, as we were a little short of meat. So we arranged to go up. Mr. Coon was not in at that hour, although the evidence was good
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The Making of a Township.
that he frequented the retreat. The other oak stood near a mile west of the Wesleyan Campgrounds, on the west end of the south eighty of the land that Iredell B. Rush owned a few years ago west of the Range line. It, too, was a coon den, but too tall to climb or too large to cut down. I think James Nixon managed to burn it down when he owned the place. Nixon Rush and I were often investigating something that was a little out of the ordinary. A. HENLEY.
Melbourne. Florida, May 29, 1917.
Fairmount Township has furnished several Grant County of- ficials. J. H. Parker served two terms as County Treasurer ; Thomas Winslow served as County Assessor ; William Hall, Samuel C. Wilson. J. J. McEvoy, M. S. Friend and Oliver P. Buller have each served as Representatives in the State Legislature ; Charles C. Lyons was elected for a term of four years in the State Senate and Solomon Thomas, Edmund Duling. Jonathan P. Winslow, John Kelsay and T. J. Lucas have all at different periods represented Fairmount Township and the Third District on the County Board of Commissioners.
Fairmount in May, 1853 .-- I will just scribble down a few words of things as I remember them and as I saw them when I arrived in Fairmount in May, 1853. David Stanfield lived on his farm, just south of town. The first house north of the Stanfield home, close to what is now Dr. Glenn Henley's place. was occupied by William Hall, and he was then the Postmaster. I remember Mr. and Mrs. Ilall distinctly, as I used to have to pay twenty-five cents for every letter I got from home. Then there was a little reddish brown house just across the street. Solomon Parsons was living in it. 1 think some of Gonner Knight's were staying with him. Any- how, Knight's folks got me to bring a parcel from Malden, Eng- land, and I delivered it to Mr. Parsons. He was mending some shoes when I took the parcel to the house. Joseph W. Baldwin had a little store on the corner of the Seth Winslow lot, and Isaac Stanfield lived across the street where the Robert Bogue store was. The old Friends Meeting House was west and a little north. I settled with my brother, John Seale, on the farm west of Nathan D. Wilson's and lived there seven years. I remember we had quite a time. If we needed a doctor we had to go to Jonesboro to get one. Dr. Ilorne, Dr. Meck and old Dr. Johnson practiced then. They used to ride horseback all the time. Jonathan Baldwin lived
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Fragments.
north of town in 1853. Nathan Vinson was the main carpenter and Isaac Roberts used to work with Vinson. Roberts was a black- smith. I think Daniel Ridgeway started a tanyard in 1854. and James Cammack started a saw-mill. It was an up-and-down sash saw.
WILLIAM P. SEALE.
Whittier, California, January 26, 1917.
Exempt from Execution .- My friend, George Pence, former Au- ditor of Bartholomew County, was kind enough to draw my atten- tion to the following schedule of property which by law might escape seizure for debt in our great-grandfathers' day. I thought it might be of interest :
An Act to Exempt Certain Property from Execution (Approved December 24. 1818)
One spinning wheel and reel, one Bible, one bed and the neces- sary bedding for one bed, six chairs, one dinner pot, one bake oven, one frying pan, one kitchen table with the necessary articles of table and cupboard and furniture to an amount not exceeding ten dollars, one cow and calf, one sow and pigs, six sheep with the wool growing thereon or the yarn and cloth made thereof, any amount of flax (being the growth of half an acre of ground in one year or the cloth and yarn made thereof), and breadstuff, meat and salt sufficient to supply the family three months, also their wearing apparel, one chopping axe, and one weeding hoe, provided the property exempted shall not exceed the value of $100.
THOMAS DEAN BARR.
Indianapolis, Indiana, May 9, 1917.
Jack Brunt bought hogs in the south part of Fairmount Town- ship from 1858 to 1868 and how much longer I do not know. He often received hogs at my father's farm during this time. A few farmers wanted to know how much their hogs weighed. They realized that the buyer was a better judge of the weight and had the advantage in guessing the weight. The means of weighing were very crude at that time. Father purchased a 600 pound beam. A box was made which would hold two hogs (if they were not too large). The beam was fastened to a pole, which was fastened to a tripod. The leverage was so arranged that one man could easily suspend the box so that the weight could be ascertained. This was
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The Making of a Township.
slow work but it satisfied the people who desired to know the correct weight. Often it would require two or three days to re- ceive the hogs contracted for. They were driven to Anderson to be shipped. Jack Brunt told the writer that the Irishman and his Quaker neighbors always had good hogs.
T. B. MCDONALD.
A great many who were not pioneer inhabitants of the Town- ship were directly connected with its interests and made frequent visits to Fairmount, social, religious and for business, my father often for all three-usually accompanied by my mother, who had near relatives in Fairmount, among them Amy Seale, who was a first cousin. My uncle, Joshua Freeman, grandfather of Arthur Brewer, was said by Nixon Rush to have killed the last bear known in that region. Uncle Joshua was a typical pioneer hunter, trapper and fisher, and was with that company away out on the Santa Fe trail along with Nixon Rush, Dr. A. Henley, and others. Uncle Joshua went to the Civil War and came home to die. in 1862. His widow married Lindsey Buller. His old log cabin used to be standing out Little Ridge way when I first came to Fairmount, but is now torn down. I believe. But that is in Liberty, not in Fair- mount Township. Last fall a covered one-horse wagon pulled by a gray mare and bearing the sign, "Stove repairs," stopped at our place. Needing some repairs on our kitchen range we gave the man a job and asked him to dinner. In the course of the conversa- tion I remarked that I was from Indiana. He was a talkative man. "I used to live in Indiana," he remarked. I told him I was from Fairmount, near Marion. He said, "Well! I lived near Marion when a boy. I was a desperate young scalawag whom no one thought could be managed, and so I was placed in the home of an old Quaker named Coggeshall. I guess they thought he could re- form me. He lived, as near as I can remember now, about six miles in a southerly direction from Marion."
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