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 71

Author: Griswold, B. J. (Bert Joseph), 1873-1927; Taylor, Samuel R., Mrs. The story of the townships of Allen County
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago : R.O. Law Co.
Number of Pages: 760


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 71


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The first tavern was opened, 1837, in a log house on the Piqua road, with John Karn as its host. It was purchased two years later by Miller and King, a firm who put in a stock of merchandise and conducted it as a store as well as tavern. The place changed hands several times, and on the establishment of the Piqua road stage line was torn down and rebuilt as "The Nine Mile House," by John Holmes. This latter place has been a landmark to tourists over the Piqua road for nearly seventy years.


Philo Whitcomb's frame house was an example quickly fol- lowed by others, several new homes replacing the older ones during 1839.


The first death of a white person known to have occurred on Marion township soil was that of William McCannaughey, who after quitting work in Fort Wayne started on foot for his home in Ohio. He was not alone, it seems, one John Barleycorn traveling the same road-which afterward became the "Piqua." Either


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fatigue or this companion persuaded Mr. McCannaughey to tarry a while by the roadside. It was deep winter, 1827, and very cold. His frozen body was found by a party of Indians the next day, and buried by people from the fort settlement on land included later in the Small farm. This death, however, should hardly be on record as the first death in the township, for Marion was not then begun. The Thompson family, 1833, was the first to be visited by the grim reaper in that settlement, the elderly father of Thomas Thompson being laid low shortly after their arrival. Several weeks later Miss Martha Thompson, his daughter, followed him, and after a very brief interval Miss Jane Merriam, a young girl friend who visited at the Thompsons, was cut down in the flower of youth. It is apparent that even as late as 1833 it still took courage to face the perils of the settler's life.


The first school in the township was taught by Mrs. Parker, in 1837. It was housed in a log cabin on a spot where John Small afterward engaged in brick making. Mrs. Parker had been given thorough training during her youth in New York, and her school was one of genuine excellence. By special subscription she was engaged to teach an additional term in summer, and thus rounded a practical year of teaching in the district. The winter of 1840 Nelson McLain opened the front room of his house for a school, himself the teacher. The only schools were those supported by subscription, and when the interest failed, as it sometimes did, there were no subscriptions taken. It was to provide a school in one of these times when interest failed that Judge Mclain made this educational venture, and the dozen of students who took advantage of it brought the volunteer school master little income but much loyal effort and the satisfaction of having given opportunity to some who needed it. The following year the stimulus of this school was felt to the extent that the first school house was built, and Nelson Parker was retained as teacher for four winters thereafter. A hewn log school house was erected on Judge McLain's farm in 1842, this being the initial step in the establish- ment of free schools. It was partly provided for from Congres- sional funds belonging to the township, the balance being made up by private subscription. The teacher was William Wilson Smith, son of pioneer Thomas Smith, of 1837. He received $25 for his three months' service, and we are not informed if he was "boarded a-round." The log cabin taught in was located on the Piqua road opposite the old Wells house. When the State school law went into effect, the first district school house was built in 1853, and Marion township "caught step" with the forward march of education.


Religious services were first held in 1835, at the house of Jesse Heaton, by Rev. James Harrison, Methodist, and Rev. Robert Tisdale, Baptist. The next year the Methodists organized with a membership of eight, and continued to hold their meetings at Mr. Heaton's house for ten years, when the membership was so increased that the services were transferred to the school house at Middletown. In 1852 a church edifice was built in the village, . and a union Sunday school was organized by Jared Wharton under the church's auspices. In 1842 a second Methodist church was organized, the meetings heing held for some years at the house


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of John Snyder, and later at the school house, until a church was built at Williamsport, where the Bethel Baptist church organized in 1838 by Rev. Robert Tisdale, also had its building, after holding services for eleven years at the home of Christopher Lipes.


Hesse Cassel is the location of St. Joseph's Catholic church, organized in 1841 with a membership of twenty-nine families, and first ministered to by Rev. Joseph Hamion and Rev. Julian Benoit, who did missionary service among the pioneer citizenry of their faith all over this part of Indiana. A large church and parochial school are maintained.


St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran church was organized in 1845, and a log chapel erected on Wayne Trace, which was replaced in after years by a larger edifice on the same thoroughfare. The English Lutherans organized and built their place of worship in Middletown, in 1855, afterward rebuilding to suit more modern needs.


Villages in Marion township have had a various history. Middletown, platted in 1851, after the planking of the Piqua road was begun, seemed for some years to be realizing the great expecta- tions indulged in by its founders. Trades and industries located in the new town and flourished as the population increased, and rapidly rising real estate values inflated the hopes of the citizens. Seven years only did the little town's brief glory last. Then came the news of the new railroad to be built from Fort Wayne down to Richmond and Cincinnati. Traffic was to be diverted to another route than that on which Middletown's aircastle was built. The railroad was not coming their way. Middletown's bubble came tumbling to the dust. Merchants left in a panic, taking their goods to a more promising market; the stage travel fell off; in a few years only that dreariest of all sights, a deserted village, was left, to degenerate, as time passed, into a straggling ruin, past which the Decatur Interurban line runs. Williamsport, a pretty town platted in 1874, near "Muldoon's Mills," has an attractive location for a rural community, and in 1900 had attained a population of one hundred, with a number of local industries. It derived its name from William Essig, who owned the land upon which it lies. This name being already on the map of Indiana, the postoffice established there was given the title of "Poe." This is the latest postoffice to be abandoned in Allen county, rural free delivery now taking its place. Hesse Cassel, the prosperous neighborhood nestling in the shadow of St. Joseph's Catholic church and school, is also platted as a little village, though the plat is not very conspicuous in the arrangement of the houses, which is more cozy than formal. It is the outgrowth of a settlement of German families of rather earlier date than that of most of the German groups. Hesse Cassel was the end of the first R. F. D. route served from Fort Wayne. Soest is a locality similar to that at Hesse Cassel, or Goeglein, but the settlers here were Lutherans, as the large Lutheran church of St. Paul with its accompanying parochial school gives evidence. Gorham is merely a flag station on the Grand Rapids and Indiana railroad, and completes the tale of town building in Marion.


The pioneers of Marion township who deserve mention beyond the mere mention of a name are numerous, but out of them all the


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annalist may only enlarge upon a few whose experiences tend to show the difficulties the settlers had to overcome, and their steadfast courage in meeting them. Amongst the German families were John Herber and his wife Margaret, from Hesse, who came in August, 1834, with their companions, John Hake and the four Sorg brothers, to make their home in Marion township. John Felger settled in this neighborhood also. John Hake worked two years on the canal at Fort Wayne, before purchasing his land in Marion. In 1837 Mr. Hake married Miss Gertrude Neireiter, and together they began their housekeeping in a log cabin of rude description, with no water nearer than the farm of Joseph Small, three miles away, from whence Mrs. Hake had often to carry it through woods so dense that she had lost way if the path had not been "blazed." Like circumstances were common in the setlement. Mrs. Hake's neighbors shared this hardship with her. Henry and Wilhelmina Berning were a young German couple who came early to try fortune winning in the new lands of Indiana. The fortune they brought with them may be estimated from the manner of their trip up the Maumee river from Toledo. They were with a party, whose whole possessions in a worldly way were loaded, with the women of the group, into one pirogue, leaving room for the owners of the craft, who poled it up the stream while the men of the party walked along the shore. Arrived at Fort Wayne, they settled first at the Feeder dam on the St. Joseph, but were driven by the malaria to seek a new foothold in Marion township. Their voyage across the Atlantic had been long and perilous, and their pilgrimage across the states had been long and laborious, but still there was courage in their hearts to wrestle with the forest for the possession of the rich soil which finally yielded them the competency they sought.


Isaac Harrod, who came to Marion in 1838, was a pioneer by inheritance, each of three preceding generations of Harrods having pioneered when pioneering was a more precarious method of wooing fortune than it was in the late thirties in Indiana. Associates of Daniel Boone, James Harrod, an ancestor, built the first log house in Kentucky, and while plowing their fields, his brother Thomas was killed by Indians. James himself is supposed to have met death the same way as he never returned from a hunting expedition, nor was heard from again. Samuel Harrod, a brother of these Kentuckians, was with General Wayne when the expedition against the Indians at Ke-ki-on-ga was undertaken. It is related that he shot an Indian-against orders-while on scout duty, thus reveng- ing his brothers' deaths. He escaped discipline for his deed by the recital of his grievances to the doughty General. Levi Harrod, a fourth brother, was the ancestor of the Harrods of Marion, although his son William was the first and only one of his immedi- ate family to visit the wilds of Indiana. William's oldest son, Isaac Harrod, came to Marion in 1838 and took up his residence in the forest. His decendants are still numerous, although, the family consisting of eight daughters, the Harrod name has disappeared in that branch. Eli Harrod, a brother of Isaac, came in 1844, and buying forty acres on the Piqua road, laid it out in town lots, thus becoming the founder of the short-lived village of Middletown. However, he gave also to the new country a large and fine family


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of sons and daughters not at all short-lived, among whom are numbered teachers, physicians, college professors, ministers, good business men and office holders, good home-keepers and citizens.


The Small family, too, grows in interest with study. The mother, Margaret Duncan, was a "State of Maine girl," but daugh- ter of Scotch parents, while the first American Small arrived on board the Mayflower. Their family of eleven adult sons and daughters, with whom they settled in Marion township, aided their parents in the struggles and shared in the prosperity which came as a reward. The first of the series of brickyards where the first bricks used in the township were made was established by Mr. Small and his sons on the original tract, now the property of Timothy Kennark; and two later ones were set up on the Whitcomb farm after the marriage of Miss Almira Whitney to Robert Small, and that of her sister, Lucinda, to John Small.


The daughters of the Small household married and for the greater part removed to more or less remote points, as did the second generation in their brothers' families. Mrs. Marion Small, Emma, the only daughter of John L. Robinson, of Madison town- ship, still lives in Hoagland with her only surviving brother James. Daniel Small, son of Robert and Almira Small, who left Indiana twenty or more years ago, has recently returned to Allen county and contemplates a permanent residence in Fort Wayne. The Smalls of Marion township are the lineal decendants of Joseph Small, one of five brothers who landed at Plymouth in 1620. Joseph Small, jr., their immediate ancestor, was the first child born in Old Borden, Maine, 1778.


Philo Whitcomb, Marion's first citizen, was a cousin of Gov. Whitcomb, the family coming from New York state. Mrs. Whit- comb and Jesse Heaton, sr., natives of Connecticut, were brother and sister. Mr. Heaton arrived with his wife and son, Jesse, jr., in 1833, when the latter was about four years old.


The Heatons, father and son, were averse to office holding, yet active in every movement for the good of the township, and no name of early Marion settlers is more widely known than theirs at this date. Mrs. Jesse Heaton, jr., born in New York (Samantha Caroline Larcome), is still living in the enjoyment of excellent health. Their son, Judge Owen N. Heaton, long an incumbent of the Superior court bench, was born on the farm but has spent all his adult life as a citizen of Fort Wayne.


William Essig, who founded Williamsport, or Poe, died in 1881 and his son, J. J. Essig, who resided in the little village until 1916, now has his residence in Fort Wayne, where his son and grandson at present manage the Majestic theatre. John Lipes, son of David Lipes, the oldest living resident of Marion, makes his home in Poe, but the younger generations all have removed to the city. The population has dwindled to a maximum of seventy persons, but the little trade center still supports two stores, one of which is the old Metcalf store; a blacksmith shop operated by "Doctor" Mercer ; and the Chapman undertaking house. The Methodist Episcopal church there and a two room township school is the center of young life for a large district.


The Merriam family were from Massachusetts. Mrs. Merriam's son Amza married Miss Miller, the Millers being also


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very early settlers of Marion-though the date is not recorded,- who came from New York. Two children of Mr. and Mrs. Amza Merriam have made Fort Wayne their home within the past five years, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Merriam (nee Harrod) and Mrs. William Essig. The pioneer mother herself married some time after coming to Marion township, a Mr. McEwen. Many a worthy name, however, must be left unmentioned, for want of space in a record like this, whose owners, less conspicuous, were none the less valuable and essential to the development of the community. It is to the large families which many settlers brought with them, or which were born to them in the wilderness homes, and grew up to help them in the tasks of settlement life, that the rapid enpopula- tion of the county is due. In those days every man meant a wife, and often meant several brothers and sisters, not full grown, per- haps, but who grew up with the settlement and ought to be recorded as pioneers, while many more meant a family of children while only a name was registered. And every young emigrant couple, with all their worldly goods tied up in one bundle, promised a full quota of pioneer babies in the near future. Thus was the wilderness peopled.


The public school system so valiantly inaugurated in Marion township has not grown as fast as those of other townships on account of the large immigration of German Lutherans and Ger- man Catholics into this territory. These churches both maintain large parochial schools, and necessarily drain the attendance at the public schools. They are, however, excellent schools, that at Hesse Cassel, under the patronage of St. Joseph's church, being now an entirely free school, and accommodating the children from nearly seventy-five families. The Lutheran church at Soest is nearly as large. Marion's school enumeration is three hundred and sixty-one, of which only eighty-six were enrolled in the township schools in the year 1915-1916. An average attendance of sixty-one daily, for the one hundred and sixty days taught, is a fair record. The township owns nine school buildings, including the two-room build- ing at Poe, which are estimated at a value of $14,000.00 but only six teachers are now employed. Three pupils completed the eighth grade in the public schools in June, 1916. Teachers' salaries for that year amounted to $3,040.00, and the upkeep expense to $1,231.00 which, against the small enrollment, makes the per capita cost, $49.66, seem high. The library is proportionately small but grow- ing, and now has close to four hundred and seventy-five volumes.


Madison Township


Not until the year 1836 was the solitude of the region subse- quently named "Madison" disturbed by a woodman's axe. Richly covered with timber chiefly oak, ash and poplar, it might well have invited the investment of the mere lumberman as well as the hunts- man or the genuine settler. Fortunately for the county, however, it was the latter sort of men who came, and Madison township became almost pre-eminently a home community, in which fraternal spirit was a living fact rather than an Utopian theory. The forest did, indeed, experience a brief occupation early in 1836, by Barzilai Browning, who entered a claim near the site of Hoagland,


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flung together a rough log cabin shelter, and devoted himself to hunt- ing. But his sojourn was very brief, as he had vacated his dwelling before the arrival of the other 1836 settlers, and it lay idle until the fifties.


In the wake of the temporary Mr. Browning came the three first settlers of Madison, John Edwards, Andrew Meek and George Eagy, all of whom entered land and returned to their homes to prepare for migration. These men were all from Carroll county, Ohio, though George Eagy had already migrated to Adams county, near Monmouth, where his wife and babies were settled upon a small clearing which had been brought under cultivation. Mr. Meek engaged George Eagy to clear his land for him, and this work was begun early in the spring of 1837. Mr. Edwards and his family arrived the same season, and the Meeks came on in the fall of the year. George Eagy went back to Adams county for the winter, returning to Madison township in 1838 to settle, with his little family, on the forty acre tract he had entered two years before. Until the fall of 1839, these three families were the only inhabitants of the township, their homes being located in the south- eastern part, near the site of Massillon. The late autumn of that year brought another Carroll county delegation, consisting of the families of Charles Peckham, John Myers, Jesse Todd and Adam Robinson, all of whom settled in the southeast quarter of the town- ship, while further to the north tracts were taken up by David Patrick, William Hill, Milton Holmes and William Reynolds. The names of Dawson, Tate and Clear also appear at this date, although there is no local trace of them now. Immigration Madisonward was so continuous at this period, it would almost seem as if one settler "did tread upon another's heels, so fast they followed." This is the more remarkable when it is remembered that there was no road in the township until 1841, and that previous to the location of that amateur highway, the route to mill or market was a most circuitous one through the forests. Elias Hobbs, whose seven sons all were voters, was of this period, also Jacob Marquardt and family. Jabez Shafer and family, Martin Kemp, John P. Neff, Charles Jones, John Gault,-two of whose sons are still living near the eastern edge of the township,-and Samuel Stopher.


The colony, for such, in effect, the Madison settlers constituted, held its first election on the first Monday of April, 1840, at the house of David Patrick. Andrew Meek, Milton Holmes and Jesse Myers, son of John Myers, were chosen as trustees; Martin W. Kemp be- came the township clerk, John Myers the treasurer, Elias Hobbs the constable, and Adam Robinson the first Justice of the Peace. The seven sons of Elias Hobbs were a factor to be reckoned with at elections. A rude and hardy set of men, they were numerous enough to swing the balance at any of the early elections if they so chose, and no candidate could rest secure until "the Hobbs boys" had cast their votes. Customarily these men went barefoot, and if the November snow fell before election day, their reaching the voting place was not always a certainty until closing time, the opposing political camps brooding darkly on the possibilities of defeat, in the interim. Apparently this once formidable family group has scattered to other parts, leaving no remnant to bear the name.


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The school house was built soon after the election, a hewn log structure, the best the settlers could afford. The school term only lasted during the winter when the older boys and girls could be spared from farm and house work, and was, as in other new settle- ments, at the mercy of chance in regard to teachers, who were their own credentials-sometimes valid, and sometimes quite otherwise. George Eagy was the first in the settlement to build a hewn log house (his family having been housed over the first winter in a hastily made shelter of round logs from the clearing) one year before the building of the school house. The walls of the new home were plastered with mud inside, and in comparison with the first cabin it was a veritable palace.


Little Dan Cupid had settled in Madison, and was very active from the start. Justice Robinson was twice called to the same home within his first year and a half of office. The first summons was to officiate at the wedding of Miss Polly, daughter of Trustee Andrew Meek, to Jesse Myers, also a trustee; and the second, the occasion of Miss Martha, second daughter of the house, being wedded to Martin W. Kemp, the township clerk. After recording these in- stances, it is a simple matter to recognize the familyhood of the Madison township colony, and to understand the community spirit which filled it. From statements made long since by Justice Robin- son, the atmosphere of the settlement is made clear. They worked hard, but the good health of the settlement was scarcely equaled, and the social life was as free and cordial as between brothers and sisters. Little money circulated in Madison, but little was needed, as the forests furnished the meat, and the other necessities were forthcoming from the clearings. Mink, 'coon and deer skins were, practically, currency, as they could command money at every trad- ing point. The wedding cake of those first days was apt to appear in the guise of corn bread, and for roast fowl, venison was a fre- quent substitute; but the divorce lawyer was as unknown as he was unneeded after those weddings, and there was no lack of wedding gaiety. Temperance, however, marked all the pioneer gatherings of the colony. The Madison settlers proscribed the use of liquors even at the house-raisings and the log rollings, which, nevertheless, were jolly occasions. All of the neighbors from five to six miles around were wont to gather to assist in these operations, and would divide themselves into teams under two "captains," the ensuing contest being characterized by a rivalry that was certainly friendly, . since the Justice then stated that only twice during his thirteen years' incumbency was the offense of assault and battery brought before him for trial, and one of these cases emanated from another township.


The method of constructing then in vogue is typical, and in consequence, interesting. Neither sawed lumber, shingles nor nails were used. The shells of the dwellings were made of round, or sometimes hewn logs; the floors were of puncheons, and the roofs of split slabs. Clapboards were also split, and wooden pins served in place of nails for securing them. Doors and shutters were fastened together by the same means, and hinges and inside latches were contrived of wood and manipulated by thongs of buck- skin. Window "glass" was merely stout paper made semi-trans- parent by plentiful application of melted tallow or lard. Roofs


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and walls were weighted down with heavy poles by means of ropes, chains or buckskin strips. Even the fireplaces were wooden cribs, set into the wall and lined thoroughly with clay mud, which baked like brick. The chimneys were of the same construction, only lighter built. Few indeed were the houses of that day which boasted more than one apartment. To one who travels the excep- tionally good roads of Madison township in this Year of Grace, 1917, immediately after a long look at this old memory picture, it seems as if some fairy's magic had transformed the landscape. But it was only the magic of hopeful labor.




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