USA > Indiana > Allen County > Fort Wayne > The pictorial history of Fort Wayne, Indiana : a review of two centuries of occupation of the region about the head of the Maumee River, Vol. I > Part 67
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direction. The Richardville Reservation, one of the most picturesque regions of Allen county, and also the largest single reservation in the county, was ceded to the Miami chief, Jean Baptiste Richardville, in 1818 by the treaty made at Marysville, Ohio. Had the Indians but known the first rudiments of sociology, or could they have realized the advantages of genuine labor such as every white settler engaged in, the reservation was enough to have made several gener- ations wealthy. The story of Edward Rockhill throws sidelights on the downfall of the reservation Indians. Mr. Rockhill, an early pioneer of Wayne, whose surname is familiar to everyone in Allen county through numerous descendants and family connections, ought to be remembered for his own merits. His native state was New Jersey, from which he came in 1826, settled in the woods near the fort village, and began with despatch to clear away the timber and open his farm to cultivation. His double-log cabin was chiefly of his own construction and was quite individual and ingenious in some of its features. Its roof was held secure by the contrivance of weight poles instead of nails or spikes, which perhaps were difficult to obtain at the time he needed them. The Indians were still camping in the woods at this date, few among them seeing the advantage of adopting any other mode of life, and subsisting precariously upon the products of the forest. Yet they liked the taste of white man's food, and frequently visited the Rockhill cabin in quest of meal and potatoes. The pioneer treated the Indians with much benevo- lence, though it was of a quiet sort. His habit was to ask them if they had money to pay for food; if they replied that they had, he would direct them to the house of some neighbor, saying that he himself had nothing to spare; but if they proved to be penniless, the meal and potatoes were at once forthcoming. Naturally, this treat- ment created the most amicable understanding between him and his Indian acquaintances. The whiskey obtainable at the village was a lure which drew the Indians constantly toward Fort Wayne, where they squandered what money their fitful efforts won, only starting for their encampments when it was exhausted. They often fell intoxicated by the way, where many might have frozen to death in severe weather had it not been for the Good Samaritanship of their white friend, who used to carry them into his comfortable cabin and shelter them until the effects of their sprees had worn off. Mr. Rockhill died at his cabin in 1848, leaving a family of eight. Two of his sons moved to Lake township subsequently. All of the early settlers were not missionaries of kindness, however, or a different story might be written of the Miamis in Wayne.
Richardville's three daughters constituted his family, therefore his name died with him. He built a home where they lived on the reservation in 1827, though from 1836 he maintained another estab- lishment at the Wabash Forks, where he kept a trading store, his housekeeper there being Margaret La Folia, a Frenchwoman. Richardville was held in high esteem by his people, who obeyed him implicitly, as they trusted him. His death occurred in 1841 at his family residence, and he was buried with much honor by his daugh- ters in the old cemetery which occupied the southern portion of "Cathedral Square" in Fort Wayne. At a later date a marble shaft was erected to his memory by his daughters, LaBlonde, Susan
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and Catharine. Catharine married Francis La Fontaine, who was the immediate successor of Richardville as chief of the Miamis, his home being established at the Forks of the Wabash in the property belonging to Catharine, who inherited it from her father. The name of La Blonde's husband cannot be ascertained at this time; but her daughter, Montosoqua, born about 1835, and reared at the reserva- tion homestead, became the wife, in 1845, of James R. Godfrey, son of Chief Godfroy (or Godefroi), the successor of Little Turtle. James R. Godfrey was popularly called "Chief Godfrey" and the reservation became the home and property of the Godfreys and their heirs. The Miamis had been transported to the far west by this date.
In 1835, about the time Chief Richardville established his Wabash Forks headquarters, he sold the entire portion of the reser- vation lying on the east side of the St. Mary's river, presumably to obtain the funds for the purchase of the new place. So it was to a vastly decreased estate that Godfrey became master and head of the family, after the death of La Fontaine. To the Godfreys were born twelve children, six of whom died in infancy or early childhood. The eldest son at the age of fifteen enlisted in the army, in 1861, but died of disease contracted in camp, being barely able to reach his home after being discharged. Godfrey, like his father, was a man of giant physique, and muscular force that was matched only by his good temper, which became proverbial. He was fond of visiting the town and frequented the Court House to greet the lawyers, with whom he was on friendliest terms. He never met one of them without shaking hands, an ordeal which soon came to be dreaded by the lawyers, as it practically disabled the member for some minutes after being shaken. At last they adopted the practice of giving but one finger to the crushing cordiality of that grip. Godfrey was quite unconscious of his strength. It is said that on one occasion the chief most unintentionally killed a man with whom he was playfully wrestling by the sheer power of his clutch about the body. In many ways, Godfrey was a good citizen. He educated his family as far as they wished. His daughters were all graduated from St. Augustine's Academy, in Fort Wayne. The family were brought up in the Catholic church, and were confirmed by Father Benoit. (One son, George Lewis Godfrey, afterward became a member of the Methodist church.) Montosoqua died in 1885, but her husband lived for some years longer, retaining his faculties with wonderful keenness. Always a famous shot, it was his good- natured custom, in his later years, when aroused from his dozing in the afternoon sunshine by visiting lads, to reach lazily for his rifle (always standing handy in the porch corner), sight without rising from his chair the mark the boys had set up on some distant post, send the shot unerringly home, and immediately settle back to his interrupted nap. Strange that in this remarkable man's descendants there was not more vigor and tenacity of life. Only four of Monto- soqua's children survived her, and of the descendants but one repre- sentative of the name now lives in this vicinity. He is a member of the police force in Fort Wayne. The failure to maintain posses- sion of the reservation property is less difficult to understand. Not- withstanding the mixture of French blood, the Indian was strong
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enough in the whole race to account for the lack of financial ability with which to manage the affairs of such an estate, not one acre of which has belonged to a Godfrey for many a year. The Indian was unable to comprehend the law of labor and product. Idleness begot indolence, and indolence with its attendant evils may be said to be the chief cause of the decay of the family and its consequences. George L. Godfrey, the son who was longest on the place, is said, in an old chronicle, to have followed farming "as an avocation." This seems probable, in view of the fact that his real vocation must have been that of joining. He joined no less than seven Masonic lodges, and had attained the highest degree of any Indian in the State, if not the world. He joined the Knights of Pythias; he joined the United Foresters; he joined the Patriarchal Circle; he joined the church; if the Improved Order of Red Men arose before he left the Reservation for the Happy Hunting Grounds of his fathers, un- doubtedly he joined that. Verily, he had little time left for his avocation, farming. Small marvel that the reservation acres lay fallow while the family, which at the death of James R. Godfrey numbered nearly seventy persons, scattered to the ends of the earth and are untraceable.
That feature in the traffic avenues of old times, the junction of the feeder canal with the waters of the Wabash and Erie, was effected in Wayne township, near the aqueduct now replaced by the New York Central bridge across the St. Mary's. From that point the canal extended southwest across the township, and through Aboite. The Illinois and Huntington roads lead out from Fort Wayne in the same locality, parting at the old road house known as the "Bootjack." The first grist mill built in the township was erected on the west bank of the St. Mary's, near the crossing of the Bluffton road, by James Barnett and Samuel Hanna, in 1827. It became successively, the property of Louis Davis, Capt. Asa Fair- field and Samuel Freeman, A. C. Beaver, and George Esmond, under whose ownership it was burned in 1878, rebuilt with Oscar Simons as one of the company, but again destroyed by fire in 1888, after which it was not rebuilt. The Stellhorns, who first came to the township in 1844, built in 1861 a sawmill on the St. Mary's about three and a half miles from the town of Fort Wayne. In 1885, the mill was enlarged to accommodate grist-milling. The Stellhorn bridge is built at the point. The only village ever platted in the township is Lewisburg, in section 38, done in 1837, the development of which was never visible to the eye. The rapid spread of Fort Wayne to the south would naturally discourage the growth of a village in that part. But in a manner unheralded in print, the township has been developed into splendid farms, the fame of which has traveled far. Many of these farms of the earlier days have already been swallowed up by the city, sometimes the farmer him- self being swallowed with his farm, thus despoiling the township annals of what should belong to their pages. The first Fairfield farms went thus, though Capt. Asa Fairfield held tenaciously to his as long as possible. A group of much significance to the township were the Fairfields of Kennebunkport, Maine. The father, Capt. William Fairfield, was not as stated in a previous chronicle, a sea captain, but a staff officer under Washington, who spent three years
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with him, was with him at Valley Forge, and in the Battle of Mon- mouth, through which he fought in boots worn entirely to nothing as far as feet were concerned, his vicinity being tracked by the marks of his bleeding feet. All three of his sons, however, did follow the sea, the oldest, Asa, being promoted to the captaincy of the ship upon which he was first mate, when its captain died in a foreign port. Beginning a penniless sailor lad, he retired from the sea after many years the possessor of the comfortable fortune of thirty thousand dollars, which he brought to Allen county and in- vested. The Fairfield brothers, Asa and Oliver-who never became a sea captain, though he rose to good position-were both engaged in the war of 1812 and both were captured at sea by British men-o'- war. Capt. Asa was a prisoner at Dartmoor prison, England, for six months, and Oliver was held at Halifax, N. S., for sixteen months. Charles Fairfield, born in 1809, went to sea when less than fifteen, and followed the mast until 1835, when the three brothers and their father came to Allen county, Indiana, to begin an inland life. The first regular canal boat (barring that one that was built for pleasure in 1834, and used in the celebration) was built for old Capt. William Fairfield, who named it "Indiana," and put his son Oliver in charge of it. From this circumstance Oliver, also, gained the title of "Cap- tain." Asa Fairfield and his wife, Olive (Stone) Fairfield, brought with them their four children, William Augustus, James Monroe, Olive, and Cyrus King, then an infant of six months. The latter, now in his eighty-third year (1917), is the only surviver of this family. Of Oliver Fairfield's family none have been living for many years. One daughter married A. S. Evans; another, Mary, married Jenkins, and died within a very few years ago at the age of ninety-three; and his son Oliver was lost in a storm on Lake Erie. Asa went to farming at once, purchasing a large tract south of the city, which extended from Hoagland Avenue west as far as Broad- way, and from Taylor street south to beyond the Packard factory. All of the beautiful old homes which so long were the pride of Fort Wayne's suburb, South Wayne, were fractions of Asa Fairfield's farm. But he didn't stop being a farmer as long as there was room enough left to farm or garden, and his youngest son followed farm- ing and gardening until it was too crowded. The Fairfield children went to school in the original old log cabin school house of Wayne township, built at the point where Cottage avenue now comes out on Broadway, and at that date taught by an old time advocate of the hickory stick. This doughty old pedagogue was wont to visit the woods daily to lay in supplies of rods wherewith to enforce disci- pline. If the offense were very heinous indeed, the rod was baked in the fire and rolled with the boot sole to make it very tough. Yet even Cyrus Fairfield, who with his brother James hid a pig in the school room one day to surprise the teacher, admits at this late day that he and James got about what they deserved. The name of this jolly old pedagogue is forgotten, but his works do still rise up and follow after him. The old Asa Fairfield home, a double-log house, was built on the hill top where Cyrus Fairfield afterward built the residence which he sold to D. Nestel, the father of Charles and Eliza Nestel. The street, Creighton avenue, Mr. Fairfield graded himself, using the earth to fill up the swamp land through which
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Fox avenue was cut some time later. Capt. Fairfield for some years conducted, without leaving his farm, a soap and candle fac- tory, facing on Broadway. The three Fairfield brothers were con- temporary with the group which included O. W. Jefferds, George Little and Hugh McCulloch, all of whom came from the Kennebunk and Kennebunkport vicinity in Maine, Hugh McCulloch and Mrs. Asa Fairfield being first cousins. Captain Fairfield never held an elective office though a man of great force and influence, but was, for a time, supervisor of certain roads. His will, dated in 1859, was the very first will and one of the first legal instruments ever drawn by Judge Robert S. Taylor, then a very young lawyer. Capt. Fairfield died in 1868. Like his father, a most exemplary man, he never touched cards, never drank liquor of any variety, used no tea nor coffee, nor tobacco in any form, nor any other drug, never took medicine, never had a headache, never was ill until his final break came. Cyrus Fairfield decided when a young man that his father's example was good enough to follow, and has all his life adhered to that decision, with a record of unbroken health for eighty-two years to show for it. He was married in early life to Miss Anna Fields, who died young, leaving one daughter, Ida, who grew to a beautiful and talented young woman, but, like her mother, went home early. Mr. Fairfield married, second, a daughter of Capt. William Bryant. James Monroe Fairfield left a large family, all of whom have removed to distant points with the exception of two daughters, Mrs. Charles Hayes and Mrs. Zimmer. The youngest of the Fairfield brothers, Charles, also clung to the soil and seemed as well content to plow furrows in the soil as he once had been to plow less stable furrows in the high seas. His first farm was in Wayne, where he built his first frame house, on what is now Broad- way, just south of the Wabash railroad. He married, in 1837, Miss Sarah Browning, the daughter of Barzilai Browning, a settler of 1832. It was but a short time until the Broadway farm, supposed to be safely in the country, was disturbed by the rustle of the future city's outskirts, and to St. Joseph Charles Fairfield fled for another place. But Wayne township claimed him again, and he bought and lived upon a four hundred acre farm on the Bluffton road, until 1863. Then the county commissioners, on the lookout for a more central location for a county poor farm, bargained for the Bluffton road farm, and Mr. Fairfield took over the tract in section 29, which the commissioners had first bought, adding much more to his hold- ings from time to time. The Poor Farm, including not only the Fairfield four hundred acres, but the farm of Robert Fleming, adjacent, has been in continual operation ever since, but has lately been sold and the county farm will soon be located in another town- ship. Of his family, Charles Fairfield junior, now retired and living on Pontiac street, Fort Wayne, remained a farmer for many years. Many of his descendants are farming in other townships, and he counts not only grandchildren but great-grandchildren, when there is a gathering of the clan.
Many of the famous farms in the vicinity of Fort Wayne have been converted, recently, into beautiful residence plats, and country and suburban homes of great elegance are multiplying all over the township. Home building of the highest order characterizes all
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these developments. The Winchester road, South Fairfield avenue and South Calhoun street (the old "Piqua" route) on which the Decatur interurban line runs to the south, are all scenes of wonder- ful suburban development. Summit farm, the famous dairy farm of C. H. Philley, is almost at the point of passing into the Moloch jaws of Fort Wayne, in the wake of those already devoured. To the west of the city the Country club with its growing neighborhood of country places, is another indication of the passing of the town- ship. Already the well-known country roads are given the title "avenue" or "street." Between the homes of Theodore F. Thieme and the late Perry A. Randall, and Lindenwood Cemetery, a new "Wildwood" suburb has been platted, and lots are being sold. And the end is not yet.
In the matter of schools, Wayne township has no written his- tory. Nevertheless, it has and always has had, since it needed them, country or township schools; and at the present time they are in the same healthy condition noticeable elsewhere in Allen county, as a glance at the late statistics will show. Fort Wayne occupying so lionlike a share of the field, the school enumeration appears low for the capital township. Seven hundred and fifty-two children of school age reside in the rural districts of Wayne township. Of this number 478 are enrolled in the schools, of which there are nine, aggregating a total estimated value of $60,000, with thirteen teach- ers in charge. The school year is one hundred and eighty days, and the average daily attendance for the year 1915-16 was three hundred and sixty. Eighteen pupils finished the grade schools in June, 1916. The total of salaries paid for teaching that year was $8,840.15, and the "upkeep" expense was $1,412.95, making a per capita cost of $21.45. The schools have access to a library of two thousand and five volumes.
Adams Township
The first settlement of import within the territory subsequently known as Adams township was effected in 1823, three years before the earliest sub-division of Wayne township, which at first included all of Allen county. An eloquent story of the steady tide of emigra- tion which set westward toward the newly opened wilderness is told in the frequent subdivisions that followed, resulting, in little more than twenty years, in as many independent townships, each with its nucleus of population.
Among the group of pioneers who cleared homes for them- selves and their families in the thick forests which covered the land to the east of Fort Wayne was Jesse Adams, of Rochester, New York. It seems a noteworthy fact that so large a proportion of the very early settlers of Allen county migrated from New York or the extreme east, stamping, as they must have done, the wilderness life with the more refined standards of the life they had left behind them at the call of Fortune. Whatever may be said on this point it is not to be questioned that the New Yorkers of that epoch left an indelible impress on the public character of Fort Wayne and its vicinity. Easily a leader, owing, possibly, to superior training added to native ability, Mr. Adams was elected 'Squire of the new' township at the election following its establishment in 1826. In
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the year following he performed the first marriage ceremony cele- brated in the township, the principals being Ruth, the daughter of Samuel Brown, lately settled from Ohio, and John McIntosh, who had taken up land in the district in 1823. On Mr. Adams' farm, located near New Haven, was the site of the first burying ground for the settlement, the pioneer's own daughter being the first to be interred there, in 1825. It would require a separate biography to do justice to the first 'Squire of Adams, but, pervasive as his person- ality must have been in pioneer society, it bespeaks his fine character that though he christened it, the township was not named for him- self, for he declared the name to be in memory and honor only of the great John Quincy Adams. Jefferson township was the scene of the later years of Mr. Adams' life.
The first township election, at which 'Squire Adams was elected, was held the second Monday of March, 1826, at the home of Elipha- let Edmunds, who with William Caswell, Israel Taylor, Philip Fall, the three Weekses-Charles, sr., Charles, jr., and Martin-and Capt. Hurst complete the original group of Adams township settlers. Closely following them in 1823 were others of equal mettle, and the year was not old when the name of John McIntosh-previously referred to-was added to the list, which in 1824 was further in- creased by the arrival of Henry Cooper and Judge Wolcott, and in December, 1825, by that of John and Jabez Rogers, who took up land in the forest. John Rogers was from Ohio and brought with him a large family whose descendants are still counted among the county's best citizens. A son christened John S. was born to Mr. and Mrs. Rogers the same year, who is to be remembered notwith- standing the briefness of his life (which ended in Fort Wayne only twenty years later), as the first white child born within the township limits. The hewn-log house erected by Mr. Rogers during the year 1826 was the first of its style to be built in Adams township and was deemed a triumph of pioneer architecture. After an active career of twenty-five years in the township Mr. Rogers removed to Fort Wayne, where he resided until his death in 1877.
Henry Cooper, destined to become famous as a pioneer lawyer, shirked none of the hardships of pioneer life. His legal studies were pursued by the light of log fires in his own clearing, after the day's work was done. Young Cooper sowed the first wheat in the township, and the old story about the venture is that though the . season (November 15th) was very late, his wheat crop was a success. This was in 1827, a year that was marked, among other notable features, by the survey of the first road leading east from Fort Wayne to the further boundary of the present site of New Haven. The road, which was later extended to Defiance, Ohio, and is still a well known and much traveled thoroughfare, called variously the "river road," the "Maumee road," or the "Fort Wayne road," was the stage and post route of the early days. The daily stage that now traverses the Lincoln Highway between New Haven and Fort Wayne is a survival of the pioneer stage traffic.
Following the advent of Samuel Brown and Henry Tilbury, both of whom came to Adams in 1826, the ensuing year witnessed the arrival of a goodly number of sturdy and capable men in the settlement, some, at least, bringing families. Judge Nathan Cole-
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man, John Troutner, Thomas Daniels, John Blakely, John Senseny, Joseph Townsend and Abraham and David W. Miller are all re- corded to the credit of this year. David Miller and Rachel Town- send were the high contracting parties at the township's second wedding, two years later. Jeremiah Bateman seems to have been the only arrival in 1828, but early in the next year the four Smith brothers, William, John, Thomas and Joseph, began the clearing of their farms. The name of Thatcher had also appeared on the town- ship records. Just when Absalom Holcomb settled in Adams is uncertain, but that he was established on a farm there in 1828 is certain, for he set up the first tannery on his farm that year. The first mill in Adams township was built in 1828 by Joseph Townsend, on his own land on "Six Mile" creek, from which stream the mill- power was obtained. The mill was primarily intended to be a saw- mill, but Mr. Townsend added a contrivance most useful to the settlers, known as a "corn cracker," the popularity of which practi- cally superseded log-sawing. John Gerard's lime-kiln, started the same year, was a failure. Adams township's first blacksmithy was not started until 1837. The rural 'smith was John Brown, and his forge was located on land which became known in later years as "Willow Tree Farm."
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