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 77
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The schools at Grabill are not administered as county schools, the "school city" of Grabill being regularly incorporated and in- dependent. While this is a situation that may soon change, since no other city except Fort Wayne now works under this plan in Allen county, it must go on record as a matter of history, that for the first ten years of its life as a town, its schools were incorporated under the city name. The report for the year 1915-6 is :- School enrollment, fifty-three ; school houses, one; teachers, three; number of days taught, one hundred and fifty; average daily attendance, forty-seven ; completed eighth grade, June, 1916, two. The library is small but new, containing a little over fifty volumes. The per capita expense of education is $19.28.
Cedar Creek township has similar features to Perry, in its
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northern part, where the crest of the moraine ends, and the creck winds tortuously in a never changing channel at the foot. The stream is the prettiest in this quarter of the state, as it is the only clear water creek near. Two tiny gem-like lakes, of the variety germane to morainic regions, lie in the northwestern part of the territory, one of them known as "Viberg's" and the other as "Hollo- peter's." The highest point of elevation above sea is nearly a thou- sand feet.
Springfield Township
It was no longer a question of daring or risk to pioneer in Allen county in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-six. The reputa- tion of previous settlement had by that time made success a certain- ty to any settler who could rely upon his health and ability to per- severe to the end of a known task. The pioneer who came to Springfield township at that date or after no longer was called upon to "risk his all upon the hazard of a die." So surely could he rely upon substantial reward, he might safely have burned all his bridges behind him, for it is not recorded that any of them ever went back because of disappointment in the country. Some, indeed, went farther, but the majority were satisfied to become fixtures. It is even told of one young man that he worked as bond servant in Ohio for six years, to pay for a tract of land in Springfield town- ship, a bargain entered into by "the evidence of things not seen."
Springfield township, without possessing any topographical features peculiar to itself, has natural advantages as an agricultural locality which are not surpassed, if they can be equaled, in the whole of Allen county. The watershed between the St. Joseph and Maumee rivers traverses the territory from southwest to north- east, and the rich black soil, with sand underlying or mixed, is by its own character and the natural undulation of the surface, provided with drainage into the streams which water it. The St. Joseph river cuts across the northwestern corner, and other small rivulets flow mostly toward the Maumee river, the chief among them being Black creek and Twelve Mile and also "Mary Delorme" creek as the name appears on the maps. The true name of the latter stream given to it by early travelers, is Marais de Orme (French for Elm Swamp creek; Marais, swamp-de Orme, elm). Early map-makers, however, failing to understand the French words or accepting the distorted English pronunciation, have compelled the little stream to ripple down through the years bearing the suggestively Hibernian name of "Mary Delorme." The crest of the watershed is the ridge along which the Hicksville road was surveyed in 1839. No road had been located through Springfield township previous to this "Ridge" road, but it was only a year and a half later that the road to Spencerville was surveyed. Settlement had begun in 1836, so there need be no minimizing of the hardships and privations which the pioneers had to undergo in settling this territory, splen- did as they found it to be. But the day of every township is recognized as having brought with it men who were sufficient thereto. The trio of men who broke into the forests of Springfield were eminently so. Ezra May, Isaac Hall and William Sweet-these were the pioneers who stamped the new township with a certain
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character which the events of eighty years or more have not dis- placed. Jeremiah Whaley, of New York, visited Springfield in 1836, and selected a tract of land which he entered, preparatory to returning with his family the following year. The earliest addi- tions to the colony in 1837 were Richard Glaze, who came from Ohio with his wife and son Absalom in January; Henry Gruber and his brother Christian, who arrived in February; James King of New York, and Jeremiah Whaley and his family, who came during the spring; Estes Howe, from near Oswego, New York, who came, at first to take employment under Ezra May, bringing his wife and young child in July ; and William Ringwalt, of Ohio. Ezra Worden came in 1838, to choose and purchase a site, to which he returned and settled three years later. The year 1838 is also stated to have been the date of Nathan Lake's coming to Springfield, but it is probably more correct to say that Mr. Lake "entered" his Spring- field tract that year, but tarried the settling of his Milan township land, which was then left in the hands of his eldest son, Curtis C. Lake. Mr. Lake's location in Springfield was on the site where Cuba was laid out in 1855. Richard Anderson was an arrival of 1839, and John D. Reichelderfer, of 1840. About this time im- migration began to "come not single spies, but in battalions" judg- ing from the personal annals of the period. Glimpses into the experience of individual settlers portray more truly the conditions and progress of Springfield township than a mere recital of events which of themselves are of only average interest.
William Sweet, the first of the original group of 1836, brought his family with him, and set about providing maintenance for them with the determination of which the early days show so many fine instances. The Springfield tract was cleared, and improved, and after several years' residence on it, Mr. Sweet sold out and, having some interests there, removed to Maumee township where he lived near Bull Rapids for the rest of his life. Isaac Hall, second figure of the 1836 group, was born in western Pennsylvania, but had spent his life from infancy on what was the pioneer frontier in Ohio, a school of experience which made him exceptionally fit for the life which lay ahead of him, when in May, 1836, he started, with his family and goods aboard a prairie schooner, for the deep woods of Indiana. Encountering the new and little traveled roads in the Maumee valley, progress became very difficult and slow, so that in spite of their early start, the promised land was closed for the season, as far as the sales office was concerned, and they were obliged to halt in the Maumee settlement until September, when the purchase was at last made and the journey completed. Mrs. Hall (Margaret Bardue) never saw the new home. Death over- took her before the log cabin was finished, and the orphaned little ones were left to the devoted care of her sister. Jane Bardue, who afterward was married to Mr. Hall. Isaac Hall became one of the most prominent men of early days, filling the office of town- ship trustee for several years, acting as Justice in Scipio township for eight years, and being elected county commissioner one term. His son, Nelson B. Hall, afterward resided in the quarter section southwest of the homestead place, and the Ridge road ran through both parts, in each of which a "Hall's Corners" may be noted. Mr. Hall gave to his children the best advantages the time and
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locality afforded, and from 1853 to 1868 his son, Nelson Hall, was a teacher in Allen County. At Mr. Hall's house, in October, 1837, was held the first election of the township, Ezra May being elected Justice of the Peace.
In the spring of that year Richard Glaze, Ezra May and William Sweet had set out the first orchards of the settlement. The first wedding known to the township had also occurred, the parties being Washington Corpse, of Maumee township, and Miss Runnels. During months in 1837 and 1838, Ezra May built the first grist mill. A year or two later he built the first blacksmith shop, em- ploying a man to do the 'smithing. Mr. May was the back-log which kept many fires burning in Springfield township, as the inci- dents of succeeding years tell. Estes Howe, born in Saratoga county, New York, son of Benjamin and Sarah Stewart Howe, was married, in Oswego, to Susan Whaley, whose grandmother, Mercy Madison, was a near relative of President Madison. With their in- fant son, George B., this young couple came to Springfield in 1837, Mr. Howe to work at his trade of shoemaker in the shop established by Ezra May, where the village of Maysville now stands. After keeping the township well shod with boots and shoes for two years, Mr. Howe gave up this form of pioneering and began earning land for himself, by taking contracts to clear timber land, receiving his reward in uncleared acres. During the succeeding years he cleared not only the hundred and forty acres on which he spent his middle life, but fully one hundred acres for others. In ad- dition to that, at odd times he still made good shoes for others' wear, and always made his own shoes. One of his early experiences was the purchase of a bushel of corn, walking eight miles and splitting 400 fence rails for it. The first white child born in Spring- field territory was Henry, son of Henry and Leah Gruber. This event occurred in November, 1838. Several more children came to the Grubers, but after a number of years, during which young Christian Gruber, the brother, grew to independence and bought his own farm, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gruber went to Hicksville, Ohio, to live. . In later years, Fort Wayne became the home of the major part of the family, one of whom entered the ministry, while others took up railroading in some capacity. The first death occurring in the settlement was in the family of Ezra May, when his daughter, Mary E., was taken, September, 1838. She was laid away in a plot which her father had previously given for a township cemetery. In the same year at Mr. May's house, Rev. True Pattee conducted the first religious service ever held in the settlement, which he con- tinued to visit once a month until the organization of the first Methodist class in 1843. The Ridge road went through the next year, opening the way for the rapid filling up of the township. Richard Anderson, who came from Washington county, Pennsyl- vania, in 1839, settled his forty acres and made a beautiful little farm, where he lived for twenty-eight years. A wanderlust seized him at this time, but a year's trial of farming in Tennessee freed him and brought him back to Springfield and the society of pioneer friends.
Springfield township's first school, opened in 1840, was housed in a double-log dwelling on the property of Ezra May, on the site
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afterward the home of the Odd Fellow's in Harlan. The floor was puncheons, and there were no desks, the pupils being seated on benches of split slabs, whereon each pupil's "reservation" was marked in chalk by the teacher, Miss Sarah Bracey. Here the pioneer children who could attend acquired the rudiments of learn- ing, which many of them afterward added to at larger institutions in Fort Wayne and elsewhere. A second school house was built by subscription in 1841, on the farm of William Sweet. The old schoolhouse was the place where the Methodist church was organ- ized, also its Sunday school, and the meetings were held there until the building of the church in 1854. The old English Lutheran Sunday school was also organized there, in 1845, the superin- tendent's name being remembered as Samuel Hitchcock. The chil- dren of John D. Reichelderfer were among those who attended this Sunday school, and Jacob Reichelderfer, who was ten years old at the time, recalls how the girls as well as the boys went barefoot to Sunday school, the girls pausing when the sacred precincts were approached, to don their stockings and shoes before entering-and removing them again as they began the homeward journey, to save them. There are but two of the pupils of this Sunday school living (in 1917), Mandred Anderson and Jacob Reichelderfer. The latter was among the first class confirmed (September 13th, 1851), by the Rev. Alexander S. Bartholomew, the first pastor of the church known as "Walnut Ridge" congregation, from the location of the chapel, which may still be seen, although it has long been empty, the descendants of its congregation attending the Evangelical church in Harlan. Jacob Reichelderfer is the only one of this class still living.
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Glaze had the great misfortune to lose their son, the second year of their residence, and this blow resulted in their return to Ohio. William Ringwalt, and his wife, Catharine, who located in Springfield in 1837, had emigrated from Pennsyl- vania to Ohio in 1835, where he cleared an eighty acre tract before coming to Indiana. Mr. Ringwalt was a well trained man, and a valuable addition to the settlement. He was one of the seven voters at the organization of the township, and afterwards served four years as Constable. Their son, William H. Ringwalt, aged seven- teen at the date of the Civil War, enlisted in the 23rd Indiana Battery, and served until the end of the war, during which he was participant in eighteen battles. After returning to the home- stead, he developed into as good a citizen as he had been a soldier, and as good a farmer as he was successful in the brick and tile business which he conducted on a part of the farm.
A notable group of Springfield settlers numbered several who came before 1840, to secure land, after which they returned to their families, and worked to save the necessary means for the trans- ference of their affairs to the new country. Cyrus Hollopeter, whose parents settled in Cedar Creek, earlier, "bought" his majority from his father when nineteen years old, by clearing seven acres of Cedar land. In 1838 he bought fifty-three acres in Springfield which he improved, and traded for forty better located ones, also in Springfield. He developed into one of the township's best men, was married to Lydia Conway, in Fort Wayne, by 'Squire DuBois, 1850, was a prominent Methodist, a Constable for twelve years, a school director twenty years, and a member of the "Regulators."
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John Zeimmer and Frederick Omo purchased their land in 1836. William Letcher, Ira Johnson and John Alderman were all on the ground and in the tavern business along the Ridge road by 1840. Thomas Lucas, who came to Fort Wayne in 1837, must also have had his eyes fixed upon Springfield township as his ultimate goal before 1840. The wedding of Miss Matilda May to William Letcher in the spring of 1840 though the second ceremony to be performed in the township, was really the first among the actual settlers, that of Washington Corpse (of Maumee township) and Miss Run- nels being, from best advices, performed en route. Jeremiah Whaley remained in Springfield township until 1855, and then tried farming in Iowa. Later, he arranged to return, but died before the trip was completed. Of the three Reichelderfer brothers, John D., Lewis and Charles, the latter came in 1840, and settled near Harlan, adjacent to the land which his brother John had chosen for a home. Lewis made his purchase in 1840, then went back to Ohio until after his marriage in 1842, to Miss Julia Ann Ranck. Their long career in Springfield where all their large family grew up from babyhood, was crowned with material success as well as universal esteem. Among their sons are three names as familiar as household words in Allen county: Elihu, ex-representative of Allen county, William, ex-trustee of Springfield township, and Aaron, ex-sheriff of Allen county. John D. Reichelderfer pur- chased his first tract of land in 1835, and then returned to the care of his wife and children in Ohio. In 1837 he visited Springfield again and contracted with Henry Gruber to clear two acres for him, and afterward built a hewn log house in the clearing, to which he brought his wife, Hester Markel, whom he married in April, 1832, and their little family. The Reichelderfers worked day, and often night, too, at the clearing of the farm, Hester assisting in the burning of brush and waste timber after dark, and, in planting time, by putting out crops. She was proud to tell of their work to- gether, and of her own exploit in planting ten acres of corn in one day, with the assistance of the old-fashioned "jumper," and a boy to ride the horse. To the end of his life Mr. Reichelderfer kept the old-fashioned anvil on which he was wont to hammer out the old Dutch scythe,-and the scythe and whetstone with it. Their son, Jacob Reichelderfer, who at the age of eighty-two is still bright and active, lives just east of Harlan with his faithful and devoted youngest daughter, Sarah Katharine. Full of years and honor is this fine old man of Springfield township. With gentlest reverence he exhibits the quaint heirlooms of the house, telling their story as far as it is known, with scrupulous exactness. There is the old musket, brought from Berks county in Pennsylvania in 1806. by his great-grandfather and grandfather, when they settled in the Ohio wilderness. Grandfather Reichelderfer carried the musket through the war of 1812, and after it came to Springfield township with his father, its half ounce home-made bullets ended the life of more than one bear, while as many as five deer fell before it in a single day. And there is a tiny "fat lamp" or lard lamp, of wrought iron, now over four hundred years old, which Hester Markel brought from her home amongst her housekeeping treasures, and which had been handed down to her through five generations on the mother's side. Besides these, there is a massive old German Bible of the version authorized by Martin Luther, brown with
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age and the cover, hand-tooled in traditional designs, well mended, at some day a hundred years or more back, with thin metal sheets fastened on with blacksmith's nails. The German text, in spite of the date 1745, is clear and legible, although the capitals are somewhat different from the style of letter now' used. Mr. Reichel- derfer has never learned German, but his father was able to read the volume, which came to his hands by an incident which is purely pioneer in character, and is eloquent of different phases of pioneer life. In the very early forties, this book, then nearly a hundred years old, was brought by a man named Slough, living somewhere on the Maumee river, to the Springfield township set- tlement and traded to Jeremiah Whaley for a gallon of whiskey- then of very little value, as it could be bought for from twenty- five to fifty cents. The Bible seemed of little worth to Mr. Whaley, who could not read in German, and he readily sold it to John Reichel- derfer, who hastened to offer him three dollars for it after hearing the story of the sacrilegious trade. So the rare old book was rescued, to last another hundred years in the Reichelderfer homestead.
John Zeimmer could not come to his Springfield land until 1843, and then to many privations, through which, happily, they came out, successful. Mr. Zeimmer helped Mr. Reichelderfer to clear several miles of township roads of the underbrush which kept them useless, was for five years a township school director, and gave land to each of his children as they grew up and married. His oldest son, Martin, was a great help to his father, learning to plow when he was so short that he had to reach up to his handles, and had to invent a method of his own for releasing the plow when it encountered an obstacle.
Another settler of 1840 was Frederick Omo, the son of a French soldier under Napoleon, who emigrated to America in time to do military service for the United States in the war of 1812, after which he married Mary Mercer, of Pennsylvania German origin, and Frederick was their fourth child. The boy was but seventeen when he purchased, through a brother of Elizabeth Shields, who afterward became his wife, sixty acres of wild land in Springfield township. From 1836 to 1840 he worked as a hired hand to earn the money with which to begin his independent career. It took three years more to make a home for Elizabeth to come to. Like the father, Simon Omo, Frederick and Elizabeth Omo were strong Methodists, in which church, Mr. Omo was a steward twenty years, and a class leader four years. He was also a mem- ber of the board of township trustees, and with Estes Howe and Linas Cutts assisted in the first appraisement of school lands in the township. A supporter of William Henry Harrison in 1840, Mr. Omo remained a staunch republican to the end of his eminently successful life. Ezra Worden, who after a boyhood passed amid circumstances of bitter hardship, bought, in 1838, with money it had taken him ten years in service to save up, eighty acres of wild land in Springfield. He was still too poor to take it up at once, and went back to service for three years, at the end of which he married brave Elizabeth Walsworth, in New York, and together they began their struggle for independence and comfort in a log cabin in the Indiana woods. They won out, and reared a family of seven children besides. He was constable for two years. He served through the Civil War, in which he was twice wounded, and twice taken by the enemy, spending two or three months in Libby prison.
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Henry Cummins, born in Vermont, learned his trade of carpenter in New York state, and spent his first pioneer days in Ohio, where he married. He came to Springfield in 1841, and cleared ncarly one hundred and sixty acres of heavy timber land. He was a famous hunter and frequently followed his quarry through miles of forest trackless except for the hoof prints of the deer he sought, and careless of nightfall. His last kill of deer, numbering ten or eleven, was sold in Fort Wayne for about sixty dollars. His oldest son, Joseph, was his right hand in boyhood, and served the country in the Civil War, in the Eighty-eighth Indiana Volunteers under Capt. Scott Swan. He was in eleven of the celebrated battles and also with Sherman on the march through Georgia to the sea. Ephraim Markel or Markle, whose wife was Elizabeth Reichel- derfer, began his long career in Springfield in 1842. Henry Boul- ton, born in England, came in 1843, and Daniel Knisely, who worked six years to earn the land he never saw until it was his, came in 1846. Isaac Dreisbach also came in 1846, and in the years follow- ing the names of Snyder, Herrick, Driver, Boston and others appear. These men all worked under more or less difficulty even from the pioneer standpoint, but found a straight road to fair prosperity, albeit they had to hew it for themselves. Gilbert Starr, whose mother, Abigail Barnum Starr, was a cousin of P. T. Barnum, came to Springfield in 1851 and settled in the woods north of the site of Harlan, the country being still so densely timbered and so sparsely settled that there were but three houses between his own and Spencerville. His son, Charles A., was nine years old at that time. Dr. Franklin K. Cosgrove came to Springfield township as a young physician in 1852, and spent his life in the profession with the exception of the service he gave as a soldier in the Civil War. His wife, Malinda Phelps, was a step-sister of Mrs. Laura Sutten- field and Horace Taylor. Their oldest son was for several years deputy sheriff of Allen county. Dr. Cosgrove was the first phy- sician of the township, successful in practice, and universally es- teemed. Price, Henderson, Oberholzer, Peters, Haifly, Harter. Greenawalt and Hoffman and a host of other names belong to this period in the history of Springfield, of which more than mention cannot be made here, yet whose owners are widely known outside of the township.
The first postoffice of the township was located at Cuba in 1849, but before that little village was platted. In 1851 another office was awarded to the eastern border, and established in Isaac Hall's home with the title "Hall's Corners." Andrew Metzger platted Cuba in 1855, and the little town started off with something of a flourish. The Protestant Methodists organized there under Rev. David Pattee, and built a frame church of rather pretentious size for the times. But it was a little too late, for in December, 1853, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Reichelderfer had platted a town from part of their own land a mile or so northeast, which presently began to draw attention and settlers toward it, as a trade center. The new town was called Harlan. Cuba drooped, and when the post- office was removed to Harlan it folded its hands and subsided into afternoon quiet, except on Sundays, when the worshipers flocked to the meeting house. The unique incident of Springfield town- ship's metropolis came when, in 1859, Ezra May platted his land,
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