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 73
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telephone exchange, and its own municipal electric lighting plant. The Ohio Electric line takes one either towards Springfield or Fort Wayne. The Citizens' State Bank is a solid institution, old enough now to be no longer the sensation of the hour. The cashier is C. P. Mitchell. The sidewalks are excellent; the streets are kept smooth and oiled and one is being macadamized. The six churches, the Methodist, United Brethren, Christian, German Lutheran, English Lutheran and St. Rose Catholic church with its large parochial school, are all fine edifices, and kept up to date in every respect. Its two elevators are of imposing capacity, and include coal and general produce, and milling industry. Diebolt and Niswonger is the newer of the two, that of J. B. Niezer having been for so many years the standby of Monroeville which has floated it over its dis- astrous fires in days gone by, that the bystander is tempted to call it "Fortress Monroe."
The real pride of Monroeville is its commissioned high school, John DeLong, superintendent, which takes rank with the best in the state in its administration. The building is modern and hand- some, provided with running water by independent pumping system, from pure deep wells, has a fine gymnasium and auditorium com- bined, and the special departments are at present housed in the old building which stands in the same grounds. There is a four-acre plot ready for the agricultural course some day not so far off. The domestic science course does excellent work under a fine teacher, and has a most enthusiastic class. In the manual training depart- ment the visitor meets a vigorous personality rejoicing in the name of Benjamin F. Clem, grandson of Noah Clem, under whose direc- tion is being done work that is pronounced by the state inspectors to be unsurpassed in any school in Indiana. Wood from old desks, old benches, old buildings, and old furniture is being worked over into modern articles of the very best models. Library tables that it were a joy to own; piano benches that are gracious to the touch of hands; and other articles, too numerous to mention, are being made by the boys from grades seven to twelve. New cedar chests, brass bound by hand, and grateful to eye and nostril, are also made, and nearly all the product is sold before it is finished.
The local printing industry has its home at the office of the Monroeville Weekly Breeze, the editor and proprietor of which is John D. Alleger, who came from Pennsylvania with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. David Alleger, in 1854, and made Fort Wayne his starting point. The editor's training advanced through several remarkable stages, not always included in an editor's education, beginning as Fort Wayne's first boot black, and being successively promoted to carriage boy, newsboy, printer's devil, and finally, to all-around newspaper man, in which capacity he published the New Haven Palladium, under Thomas Foster, and while there gave to Alexander Lipes, now manager of the Fort Wayne branch of the Western Newspaper Union, his first training in type work. In Jan- uary, 1884, Mr. Alleger went to Monroeville and purchased the "Democrat" from F. P. Hardesty, changed its name and published it as an independent newspaper. Only once for a few years has Mr. Alleger divided his attention to the Breeze with another object,- when he was foreman of the Fort Wayne. Gazette for a while. He married in Monroeville and his father and mother make their home
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with him there. If, as someone has said, and very aptly, the lungs of a town are situated in its newspaper, then John D. Alleger is the pulmotor which has kept the breath of life in the town of Monroe- ville. Monroeville must appreciate him, for it has kept him as Justice of the Peace for thirty-one years, which is considerable honor to lay upon the shoulders of the little newsboy who used to deem it luxury to sleep under the benches in the waiting room of the old Pennsylvania depot, in the kind but thoughtless city of Fort Wayne. The Alleger family, careless themselves in the spelling of the name, have had it so variously mis-spelled that little short of surgery was necessary to eliminate the contributed letters. There may be some who remember seeing it spelled "Alligear." When in 1890 Mr. Alleger visited his grandmother, then aged ninety-eight, she straightened that orthographical puzzle with one brief sentence. Without waiting to greet her grandson, who had not crossed her threshold in thirty years, she said, sternly, "John, I want to tell you one thing right now. When you go back home, you spell your name right." Mr. Alleger has obeyed.
Conservative business men of Monroeville place the population of the town at the modest figure of nine hundred and fifty, but if that is all, it is not going to stop there. Monroe township's school enumeration is five hundred and thirty-one, and seventy-six of that number were enrolled in the high school alone for the year 1915- 1916.
Milan Township
Lying between St. Joseph on the west and Maumee on the east, Milan township was first organized in 1838, but its boundary lines were indefinite and irregular at that time. Though duly christened and set apart, it was not until 1840 that the present limits were fixed. Topographically, Milan is very similar to Maumee, the same circumstances having conspired to render the southeastern portion swampy by the time settlement began. This part was unattractive, at first, but artificial drainage has long since reclaimed it and it is now the scene of good farms. Early settle- ment, however, was made chiefly along the route of the Ridge road, which was surveyed through this part in 1839. Two creeks known as "Ten" and "Twelve Mile" wound through the middle part of the township, and joined the Maumee river. These were afterward made to form part of the extensive ditch system which characterizes this part of the Maumee valley at the present time. Milan as a township lacks any distinguishing historical features, but shares with all the territory through which the Maumee river winds the traditions of early traffic on that stream, also on the canal, and the building not only of that but of the railroad which displaced it.
As nearly as can be ascertained, John Nuttle of New York was the earliest settler to fix upon a home site in Milan. He came with his wife, who was a native of Scotland, about 1833. Mr. Nuttle's mother was a first cousin of Hon. John Jay, a distinction which her son cherished with proper pride. The Nuttles chose a site in section thirty-one, the extreme southwest of the territory, while Nathan Lake, of Vermont, who came with his family in 1835, and Charles Shriner, who brought his wife and children in 1836, settled in sections three and four, some five or six miles to the north-
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east. John Heath and Wilkes Gillett came in 1836 or 1837, and both settled in section eighteen, about half way between the two first settlers. Stephen Heath came soon after, and settled on the Ridge road. Alvin Hall came out the same summer, and selected a site in the same vicinity, and then returned to Ohio for his family, bringing them out to the new' home in 1840. The Halls were not, however, an Ohio family, but of old New England stock. Mr. Hall was born in New London, Connecticut, in defense of which town his father was killed during the War of 1812. Alvin was then but two years old. Leaving home when a lad of fifteen or sixteen, he spent the next several years in New York where he learned the trade of carpentry, which afterward made him so useful a citizen of the new country.
In 1837 a town called Fairport was platted at a point con- venient to both river and canal by a company of capitalists from the east. George Foxtater and John Irvin both built houses designed to accommodate travelers by river, road, and canal route and for several years they had some custom. An effort was made to found a town. A postoffice was secured for the point, and when at last in 1842, the first election was ordered, it was held at the tavern house of George Foxtater. Stephen Heath had named the township Milan in honor of his native town in Ohio, and at this election Andrew Wakefield was chosen Justice, and John Nuttle constable. Salaries did not pertain to these offices, the honors of which were rather empty ones for some years, so it required a degree of public spirit to carry them. John Irwin received the postmastership of the new office at Fairport, the year following the election. In the decade between 1840 and 1850, settlement was much more rapid, and among the names of this period are William Fitzgerald, sr., Edward Nugent, the Lynes family, Daniel B. Strong, Joseph Donner, William Tilbury, William R. Herrick, Richard Beebe and Samuel Archer. Joseph Mosier, Lorenzo D. George, Miller, Brooks, Spind- ler, Benninghoff and Doty are still more recent names. The first frame house in the township was built by Charles Shriner, in 1838. It was attached to the original log cabin, and with it was permitted to decay in after years. When Alvin Hall arrived, about Christmas, 1840, he built a log house for his first residence, but the second frame house in Milan was his home, and it was a good one, attest- ing well the builder's carpentry. The first store kept in Milan was the small general merchandise stock put in by Stephen Heath at his own house, which was a great convenience to his neighbors, saving them many a long and tedious trip to Fort Wayne or eastern points for necessities. Nathan Lake was born in Connecticut, as was his wife, Jerusha, but their early married life was spent in Vermont, and there were born their eight children of whom the late Curtis Lake was one. The Lake family had started west in 1835 from Vermont, but the trip was disastrous, and lasted longer than ex- pected, as all their goods were lost by accidents which befell and it was well towards 1837 when at last they reached Allen county. Mr. Lake at once took possession of the land which was the family home for so many years, but while getting a start, took his family to a rented farm near Fort Wayne, where they could maintain them- selves while they recovered from their losses, and a home could be cleared and built. The grain they produced was stored at the
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Rudisill mill, where they could secure a "grist" as necessity de- manded. Curtis Lake was his father's helper in cutting a six-mile road through the forest, by which to reach the land chosen for their home. And they made it their home, though at the cost of unremitting toil, rewarded in the end by seeing their whole family in comfort; but the father did not live to advanced age. In the fall of 1844, the first log school house was built near the Alvin Hall farm, on the Ridge road. Tradition hints that the work was done by the united efforts of the settlers young and old, who then sup- ported it by the "subscription" method, as was the custom. The first term of school was taught that winter by Miss Catharine Shields. The first religious services were held in the log school house the same year, by Rev. True Pattee, the well-known Metho- dist pioneer preacher. No church was organized for some time, and no church edifice was erected previous to 1880. Curtis Lake, by that time arrived at the age of twenty-four, helped to build that log school house, and afterward made up for lost time by attending school there, eventually wedding the pretty school ma'am who taught the second term. Subsequently his own children started up the hill of learning at those old log steps. The Lakes, father and son, were Whigs, and voted for William Henry Harrison and for every succeeding Whig and Republican candidate for president, through life. The homes of Alvin Hall and Wilkes Gillett were favorite stopping places for travelers along the Ridge road for many years. Fairport, however, did not develop, and the patronage at the tavern of George Foxtater fell away as the traffic on the canal was transferred to the railroad gradually; and a new post- office being established at a more populous point, upon the petition of Alvin Hall, in 1856, that at Fairport was abolished. The land reverted to the government, and was re-sold in farms. The new postoffice at "Chamberlain," was carried on by Lorenzo D. George for the first four years, he being succeeded by Enoch Baker, and later by Solomon Benninghoff, until in 1870, it was transferred to St. Joseph township. One more town was attempted, in 1854, by Joseph Mosier, on his own land, in section thirty-five. "Mosier" did not materialize, though the only town in the township now is very near the place, being in section thirty-four, about one mile to the west. This is Gar Creek, where an independent postoffice is still maintained, and where there is the nucleus of a village, partly rural, partly railroad, which has grown up at the Wabash station. The Ridge road, completed in 1840 after the survey by Horace Taylor, assisted by Martin Weeks, Platt Squire and Henry Tilbury was made (familiar names, those four, in the annals of old Allen !), is still the most populous district of the township. The first free school, built in 1857, by Alvin Hall, occupied a position on the same lot as the original log structure. It was in use to a date so recent as to cause remark if it were not remembered that Alvin Hall built it, and that the woods of Allen county at that day furnished the sort of lumber which does not warp or decay in a decade. The estimated cost of the ten school buildings in Milan at present is $32,500.00. Only eight teachers are employed at this time, there being 197 pupils enrolled in the public schools, with an average attendance of 156 for the 160 days taught in 1915-6. The total school enumeration is 419, of which number sixty-one are enrolled
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in parochial schools. The total of salaries paid to teachers in the same year was $3,583.00, and the upkeep expense, $2,243.00, making the per capita cost $29.57. The library began the year with 645 volumes, to which were added sixty-three new volumes. Six pupils were graduated from the common schools in June, 1916.
Good roads, good schools, the introduction of the automobile, the extension of telephone lines into the remotest farming districts and the establishment of rural free delivery of mails has done away to a large degree with the ambition of rural communities to build towns which result in failure, and at the same time is building up the rural population. Like Maumee township, Milan has acquired a large number of Mennonite and Amish families, who are applying themselves to the cultivation of the soil with characteristic energy and persistence.
Jefferson Township
Jefferson township lies directly east of Adams, and south of Milan townships. The Maumee river flows for the length of barely a mile through the extreme northwest corner of the six miles square of territory. By the same token, the Wabash and Erie canal also was cut across the same corner, but deeper into the square; also the river road; and through this same region lay the trail by which Gen. Wayne led his men from Fort Defiance to Ke-ki-on-ga. Through this township passes the watershed dividing the valleys of the Maumee and the St. Mary's rivers, a somewhat winding irregular elevation which must have been practically undiscoverable except to the engineers who surveyed along this low height of land the "Sugar Ridge" road (or Van Wert) in the earliest days of the town- ship's history. The numerous creeks by which Mother Nature formerly tried to drain the district have been dredged into the usual "ditches," replacing the poetry they filched from the landscape with prosperity-which is far more sustaining. The Wabash rail- road, built across the township at some distance south of the canal bed, and the P., Ft. W. & C. (the "Pennsylvania") railroad cross- ing the southwest quarter, were almost simultaneously added to the traffic routes of the township in 1855, and later on the N. Y., C. & St. L. railroad, the "Findlay" route (steam) and the Ohio Electric Interurban line (from Fort Wayne to Lima, O.,) have successively augmented its transportation facilities, until today, no township in the county except Wayne and Adams, can boast of more direct lines than Jefferson.
Tradition has set up two rival claimants to the title of "first settler" of Jefferson. The honor is generally ascribed to Jared Whitney, of New York, who arrived with his family in May, 1833, and after spending the summer in a temporary location on the Maumee river, took up permanent residence on a tract in section seven. Yet it is also chronicled that Joseph Gronauer came to Jefferson township from Virginia, in 1832, bringing his entire earthly possessions with him in a one horse wagon. Mr. Gronauer, as dates will show, brought no family with him, but his per- sonal priority as a settler may hardly be denied, since it is clear that he came before the land was opened for sale, or the government survey completed. The land he took up was situated between the
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Maumee river and the canal, in section six, and his squatter's rights were respected when the sales were opened, he receiving an allow- ance of three hundred dollars on his purchase price in return for the improvements he had already made. Mr. Gronauer was married in 1848 to a wife who, like himself, originally came from Germany, though at a later date. Wolves were still a dread of winter time, and Indians still a familiar sight when Mrs. Gronauer came to Indiana with her parents, and she was witness to the departure of the last Indians from Logansport. Mr. Gronauer died in 1872. The Gronauers had one son, George, born April 28, 1851, who mar- ried, in October, 1875, Miss Caroline Muhlfeith, the daughter of parents who came from Germany about 1840; the young people re- mained on the farm which Joseph Gronauer had won from the wilds, and where his wife spent the long afternoon of her life. Remains of the old road and bridges built by General Wayne in his expedi- tion against the Indians were still to be seen on the Gronauer farm as late as 1890, and are possibly still preserved. Many other relics of the expedition have also been found on the ground, which may have been used as a camp.
With justice thus fully done to the young German immigrant who "made him a home ere he got him a wife," it may safely be said that the Jared Whitneys were the "first pioneer family" to locate in Jefferson township. In the same year, Wilhelm and Henry Tuschknagen settled near the neighborhood with their families. The brothers were sober, industrious men, and both families were soon held in high esteem by the settlers,-who kept coming more rapidly as time sped on. Before the end of 1833 Christian Wolf, Mr. Blackmore, William Henderson and Simon Rogers had settled and begun the work of clearing. Simon Rogers sold his clearing to Eben Burgess the following year, 1834. The first frame house of the settlement had been built in the meantime upon this farm, by a man named Blakely, but when Mr. Burgess came to occupy the place himself, he built, in 1837, the first brick known to the town- ship, and converted the frame house into a barn. The year 1834 is to be remembered in the acquisition of Aretas Powers of New York, who brought his wife, Sarah Stilson Powers, and a thriving family of children; also of the transitory residence of James Post; and, signally, as the year of the first orchard, planted by Jared Whitney; and the first corn crop, harvested by Mr. Blackmore. Neither Mr. Blackmore nor James Post was a permanent settler. The first death in the settlement was that of a little child of the Blackmores, which was buried on their place, on a little knoll op- posite the house. James Post's residence was more transient than that of the Blackmores. The Posts took a station on Seven Mile Creek, but the year following, 1835, they pulled up their stakes and left, after suffering a tragic bereavement in the death of their little son, who strayed away from the cabin and was lost in the woods. After several days the searching party found the little lad drowned in Seven Mile Creek. No cemetery was yet established, and the body was taken to Fort Wayne for burial. Jared Whitney, in 1838, donated land for a township cemetery.
The first wedding in the settlement occurred in 1835, when William Henderson and Miss Elizabeth Rogers were
married. Shortly after this, Mr. Henderson sold his clearing to Elias Shaffer,
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who in turn sold it to Morgan Bentley, a permanent settler. William Harper was another permanent acquisition of 1835. Late in this year Henry Castleman (whose daughter married John Till- man in 1841) settled near the center of the township, where he lived for twelve years before removing to Monroe. Aretas Powers and Henry Castleman were both famous sportsmen, and often hunted together. Castleman was reported to have brought down more deer than any one settler in the county. In 1837, about the same time as Eben Burgess' brick, Jeremiah Lusey, an arrival of 1836, built the first hewn-log house of the settlement. This year, 1837, was the date of the second wedding in Jefferson, that of Reuben, son of Aretas Powers, and Miss Evaline, daughter of Jared Whitney, the ceremony being performed by William Brown, Esquire.
The "Sugar Ridge" road had already been surveyed through the township, but up to this time had been only a footpath, and never cut through for traffic. The settlers needed the road sorely, and took counsel among themselves. They did not, like the citizens often quoted, "put their heads together and make a block pave- ment," but they did gather, on the last night of the year, 1837, and, thoroughly accoutred with axes and camping necessities, sallied forth to the edge of the township, near New Haven, where they set to work to hew the highway along the ridge. Great execution was done by the devoted band, who within a fortnight had cut an open road which soon became a famous public thoroughfare. Scarcely any pioneer incident need have been more picturesque in the doing than this midwinter expedition, inspired by co-operation and public spirit. Difficult indeed it is to credit this worthy group of liberal- minded pioneers with the behavior ascribed to them in an old tale of the time,-a clouded page in Jefferson township's fair history. It seems that a son of one of the Tuschknagen families purloined a piece of cloth from a Fort Wayne store, was apprehended, and placed under arrest. A neighbor kindly secured his release by going bail for him, and the young man went home, but disappeared, never to return, before his case came to trial. Why the son of a prosperous family should have stooped to commit a petty theft of such sort, is so incomprehensible that it might easily argue an erratic mental slant, perhaps inherited. His family was crushed by a sense of disgrace, which, it is said, was so deepened by the overt suspicions (and covert accusations) of criminal complicity, and their social ostracism by the neighbors, that they became mentally unbalanced and secluded themselves, becoming more and more peculiar, and failing in physical health as well. A religious fanaticism is reported to have taken possession of their minds, and the last survivor of them all was a pitiable wreck familiarly called "the Prophet." If this were indeed the result of cruel prej- udice on the part of their once friendly neighbors, then it is not matched nor approached in the annals of any other township in Allen county. But it fits in so ill with the generous kindliness that characterized our early settlers here and elsewhere, that it seems probable that the theory of neighborly cruelty may have been advanced by some later observer, and afterward accepted as the fact and incorporated in the story. Certainly this dreary page seems foreign to our text. Let us turn the leaf.
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The first school house in Jefferson was built in 1838 on a small corner lot given by Christian Wolf from his farm, for the purpose. He, with Jared Whitney, Aretas Powers, William Harper, and others all of whom had children to be educated, united in establish- ing the school, which was of course, sustained by subscriptions. The building was a log cabin, and housed, beside the school, the first religious services held in the township, which were conducted by Rev. David Pattee, 1838.
The organization of the township took place in 1840, upon the petition of Jared and Alanson Whitney, Aretas and Reuben Powers, Henry Castleman, Joseph Gronauer, and William Harper. Henry Castleman was appointed to be Inspector of Elections, and the first election took place at his home, on the first Monday of April. Aretas Powers was chosen Justice of the Peace, and Alanson Whit- ney became the first constable. By this time there were among the resident pioneers of Jefferson, Jesse Adams (formerly prominent in Adams township), Thomas MacDougall, John Monahan, John
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