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 78
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SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP
which immediately adjoined the Harlan plat, only divided from it by the section line, and called it Maysville. These apparently rival towns did each other no harm. As a matter of fact Mr. May's land accommodated so many of the ordinary industries of a pioneer town that it is some wonder that he did not plat a village sooner. At all events the towns grew together side by side, not even divided by a hyphen, nor needing one to unite them. The postoffice re- ceived the name of Harlan, but for a time Maysville was the more popular name. The tide has turned, however, and the title Harlan is growing more and more into publie favor.
The Maysville Flouring mill, erected in 1859 by John Hawkins, was an important factor in the development of the village. It passed through a maze of proprietorships representing a large pro- portion of the township names, but subsided by 1890 into the hands of Ober, Mann and Anderson. The saw and shingle mill built in 1862 by Seymour Coomer and Jacob Bickhart was nearly as vari- ously owned, besides being destroyed by fire in 1876, rebuilt by Jacob Hollopeter, and passing from him to Cummins and Reichel- derfer during the eighties. Isaac Bickhart founded a planing mill in 1875 and built a sawmill in 1879. The Harlan lodge of F. and A. M. was chartered in May, 1864, and Prospect lodge of the Odd Fellows, in June, 1869. The Odd Fellows purchased the old graded school building for a lodge home, about 1889, and later tore it down and erected a new building on the same spot. The early newspapers of the twin village were failures. The first of these was the Harlan Independent, published by D. M. Allen, until he was obliged to discontinue it to take up his duties as County Surveyor. It was re-established for a time, by James Forsythe, from New York. The Maysville Breeze, started in 1887 by J. M. Shutt, blew quite steadily for two years, and only subsided because the office was de- stroyed by fire. Among the lines of business represented in Mays- ville and Harlan thirty years ago were general merchandise, hard- ware, furniture, drugs, blacksmithing, harness and undertaking, besides the livery stable and the hotel. The business roster of that date included the names of Eminger, Grubb, Minnich, Hays, Omo, Carrington, Webber, Page, Brown, Oberholzer and Umstead. Four of these names survive in the business directory of today, which should read: William A. Reichelderfer, general store; C. C. Diehl and Son, general merchandise; J. H. Zimmerman, Harlan Depart- ment Store; shoemaker and postmaster combined, Mr. Mack (Har- lan postoffice has three mails in and two out daily) ; S. W. Dingman, general store; harness, Albert Umstead; C. E. Cummins, jeweler ; blacksmithing, wood-working and gas welding, William Valieu; Philip Helfer, general 'smithing; William Page, blacksmith; E. C. Carrington, fine furniture and undertaking; garages, J. J. Gold- smith brothers; restaurants, George T. James and S. V. James; meat market, C. A. Hartzell.
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The mills of Harlan have become past history. The largest industry there at present is the W. H. Hood packing house, where Hood's famous country sausages are made, to the extent of one and one-half tons weekly, all winter. The plant includes slaughter- ing and general curing and packing of meats of high grade.
The Odd Fellows have built a large addition to their lodge home, providing a hall with seating capacity of six hundred, for all public
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uses. The Harlan Herald, edited by William E. James, is printed at its own plant. The Harlan State Bank, established June 15th, 1911, with capital stock of $25,000.00, has resources, according to latest statement, of $178,000.00. The president is Thomas Hood; vice-president, G. A. Reeder; cashier, L. V. Likins.
The Masonic lodge has an Eastern Star chapter, and the Odd Fellows, not to be outdone, have a Rebekah lodge. The Harlan Cul- ture Club and the Woman's Country Club show the activity of the feminine element in Springfield society.
Dr. H. E. Adams, the oldest physician in Harlan, came in 1866, after being a Maumee township boy for eighteen years before begin- ning practice. He was contemporary with Doctor Cosgrove, and had practiced steadily until one year ago, when his health failed. He has seen the country from Harlan to Woodburn change from almost solid forest to its present aspect. For the first twenty-five years of his professional career the only practical method of reach- ing patients was by horseback, as a buggy was only available on main traveled roads. Dr. W. H. Thompson and Dr. C. F. Swift, son of Philetus Swift, a settler of 1854, are the present occupants of the field of medicine. The Starr Hotel, opened in 1874 by Charles A. Starr, was for many years a popular place of entertainment for Ridge road travelers, and pleasure parties as well. Its genial pro- prietor was an ideal host, and ably seconded by his wife, who was Miss Eliza Lillie. Mr. Starr was a republican, and received the appointment of postmaster at Harlan under President Harrison. His death occurred some years ago, and his widow married Ira Grubb, the son of Nelson and Martha Notestine Grubb, who had made Springfield township his home since 1852. Mrs. Grubb was again left a widow, and in 1913 married a Mr. Meeks, of St. Joseph, who died about a year later. Mrs. Meeks's death followed soon after, and the old Starr Hotel is no longer a landmark. Mrs. G. A. Reeder has assumed the hospitable duty of looking after Harlan's transient guests in her commodious home on the opposite side of Water street from the old traditional stand.
Harlan has four churches, all in trim repair: The Methodist Episcopal, the Evangelical Lutheran, the Disciples and the Prot- estant Methodists. The latter have a new church building, the old one which they moved to Harlan from Cuba being converted to other uses. The J. H. Omo drugstore, built by him after his return from the war, has been moved to the corner of Water street and the Ridge road, and is the property of Mr. Reeder. The old Cosgrove drugstore is also removed from the grounds of the homestead, which is now the summer home of Aaron Reichelderfer. The old Boulton homestead in Harlan has been bought in by Oscar Boulton, who will live in Harlan henceforth. The John D. Reichelderfer cottage at Harlan, prettily situated above the Ridge road in the center of the town, is now slightly remodeled and occupied by Mrs. Anna Hoff- man, mother of Edward G. and John C. Hoffman, prominent lawyers of Fort Wayne.
Harlan is most agreeably situated for a rural town, and the highways that traverse it are a lure to tourists. It is frequently the route over which hundreds of new automobiles are sent to the consignces when railroad shipping is unavailable.
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SCIPIO TOWNSHIP
Harlan has two large schoolhouses, the grade school and the model Harlan High, which have a splendid attendance. Springfield has a school enumeration of 456, and a grade school enrollment of 287, while the "High" enrolled 63 students. Thirteen graduates from each department finished in June, 1916. All the figures given are from the reports of 1915-1916. There are fifteen teachers em- ployed, and eleven schoolhouses are in use. The average attendance for one hundred and sixty days was two hundred and twenty-nine. Total salaries paid to teachers : Grades, $5,156.40; High, $2,840.00. Upkeep expenses : Grades, $1,876.06; High, $751.00. Per capita expense : Grades, $24.50; High, $57. The libraries total about a thousand volumes. Harlan's population, once stated to be seven hundred, is short of that now, and it was even then a harmless exag- geration, no doubt. Leading Harlan citizens are at present content to place the estimate at five hundred.
Scipio Township
There is an excuse, doubtless, but no discoverable reason, for the name applied to the extreme northeastern township of Allen county. The "short and simple annals" of Scipio, smallest of the townships, may be, like its territory, limited in volume, but the matter they seek to perpetuate shares the quality of the Springfield settlement, as both townships shared the principal stream, their natural agricultural advantages, the forest which once covered them and their first highway, the Ridge road. The division is purely arbitrary, and might impress the uninformed as an injustice to the lesser township to be so artificially cut off after the manner of a "mill-end." Yet no remnant need deem itself superfluous which is ample enough to include the life-size figures of Platte Squire and Jehial Parks, who settled here in 1836, before a separation from Springfield was contemplated.
Platte Squire and his wife, Aurilla Goodspeed, were both na- tives of Vermont, always known as a good state from which to emigrate-a reputation borne out in the keen executive activity of its sons in Indiana. The native state of their companion in arms is not remembered, but the name "Jehial Parks" smacks strongly of New England, while it suggests the long-armed man of might his brief biography shows him to have been. It sounds like the sweep of steel and the resounding cut of the axe into the tree trunk, and one can imagine the ringing echoes that followed his strokes.
Lucius and Nathan Palmer arrived in 1837, accompanied by families. The Palmers were not permanent settlers in Scipio, but they bore their full share in pioneer activity during the years of their residence, and left well-cleared farms for others to till. A son of Lucius Palmer remained in possession of the tract cleared by his father. Nancy Palmer was the teacher of the first school taught in Scipio.
The year 1838 is marked by the entrance of George and Robert Dorsey, and Philip Shell, who came in March. The Dorsey brothers were sons of Benjamin Dorsey, who emigrated to America in 1830 from Yorkshire, England, his wife and seven children following him over the next year. They settled first in Milan county, Ohio,
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whence George and Robert came to Scipio. Their mother, Jane (Jefferson) Dorsey, died in Ohio, and the father came on to Scipio with the three younger members of the family, Mary Ann, John and Thomas. In this year George Dorsey was married to Miss Elizabeth Boulton, born in England, and, later, Mary Ann Dorsey became the wife of William Boulton. Robert Dorsey married Margaret R., the daughter of Priam and Lois Moore. The Dorseys were genuine home-makers and have been from the first an integral part of the social structure of their township. If by chance one happens upon an elevation of land in Scipio called "Opossum Knobs," let him recognize in it Robert Dorsey's "first forty acres." Dorsey has been, numerically, about the strongest name in the township. With the addition, in the latter part of the year 1838, of William Bice and Samuel Wentworth, chips must have flown fast in Scipio colony. Mr. Wentworth's brothers Jolin and Henry came on from the Mau- mee river settlement in 1840, and William Moore came about this time, with his father's family, for whose support he largely pro- vided. Mr. and Mrs. Adam Burrier, both natives of Maryland, came in 1849, by which time Mr. Burrier was already fifty years of age. He was, however, equal to the task he set himself of clearing a tract of two hundred and forty acres of heavy timber land.
The first white child born in Scipio was Lafayette Squire, in 1838. In contrast to this auspicious event was the tragic death of the little boy's sister Laura, in April, 1840, caused by her clothing catching fire as she played too near a maple sirup caldron in the grove where her parents were condensing sap into one of the few pioneer luxuries. The burial was made on the homestead grounds, as no cemetery had yet been provided.
The first religious service was held in 1840 at the house of Jehial Parks, by Benjamin Dorsey, who had become a local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal faith before coming from England. Mr. Parks gave the land for the township cemetery in 1842. Mrs. Carvin, of DeKalb county, was the first to be buried there. The cemetery, which lies near the Methodist Episcopal church, on the Ridge road, is still in use.
The first school taught was opened in 1841, with Miss Nancy Palmer as teacher. It was supported by subscription, and the build- ing was a log cabin.
Dorliska Bracey became the wife of William Moore in 1842, and shared the struggles of his first decade or two in the wilderness with the fortitude shown by all pioneer women. In company with Henry Boulton, the first sawmill of the district was built, on the Springfield township line. It proved a failure, and Mr. Moore lost his entire small capital and found himself deeply in debt at the close of the venture. He had also operated the first thresher in the region, and though the sawmill failure was neither the first nor the last of his struggles, by continuous application to the threshing business he retrieved his fortunes, and became, in time, as prosperous as his sterling industry deserved. The Moores left a large family to per- petuate their memory.
A blacksmith's forge was set up in 1849 on the site of William Letcher's abandoned potash factory, which had been a profitable industry of the days when ashes from the clearing were very plen-
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tiful in that locality. The first election was held April 3d, 1843, at the schoolhouse on the Ridge road. Lucius Palmer was inspector by appointment, and Platte Squire was elected Justice. He held this office, with a few intermissions, for twenty years. For two years during the Civil War days a postoffice was maintained at the house of John Murphy, but after 1864 Scipio's mail was received at the postoffice in Springfield township, until the establishment of rural free delivery.
Scipio's school conditions are on a par with the rest of the county. From the report of 1915-1916 the following statistics are taken : Eighty-one of the one hundred and one children enumerated are enrolled in the three one-room schools of the township. The school year is one hundred and sixty days, with an average daily attendance of sixty-two pupils. Only one pupil finished the eighth grade in June, 1916. Teachers' salaries amount to $1,350.40, and upkeep expenses to $233.99, the per capita cost being $19.56. The estimated value of the school buildings is $8,000.00. Over five hun- dred volumes are now counted in the school libraries.
Scipio is touched by no railroads, but its highways have relieved the early remoteness of the population, which was the only essential disadvantage of this region. The same merry cavalcade of auto- mobiles noted in Harlan characterizes the Ridge road traffic, and the other roads make practical the transportation of agricultural products to market.
Maumee Township
Maumee township, the first to be set apart from the original St. Josephi territory, was so named, probably, because the Maumee river, flowing broadly through the northern half, was then its only very distinguishable feature, aside from its wonderful timber lands. Topographically, the township is rather flat, and at that time was decidedly swampy-in fact, remained so for very many years-and because of this the actual occupation of the district was delayed somewhat beyond that of nearly every other township. In 1836 settlement had scarcely commenced. Forest fires destroyed a vast area of the magnificent timber in the early '70s, but the land is so splendidly productive that it has been richly worth while to drain and improve it.
Forty to forty-three years ago the land where Woodburn now stands was a vast expanse of wild vegetation, beautiful and other- wise, ablaze in springtime with wild flowers so gorgeous as to almost tempt the traveler to dare the boggy muck in which they grew, but which teemed with snakes of nearly every variety known to the United States. But it was not at this point that settlement of the township began. Back in that realm of local history which is only tradition, a hunter of the early days, arriving at a rapids in the river, made a landing, and there encountered a buffalo bull, which he was fortunate enough to slay. From this incident the name "Bull Rapids" fastened itself to the locality, the convenient landing af- forded by the shallow waters helping to spread the story and the title.
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In 1833 one Gregory Jackson, espying an opportunity to profit, built a large log house at the spot, and kept a wayside tavern for accommodation of the travelers who came prospecting for homes or for investments. This Mr. Jackson is scarcely entitled to be called a pioneer, for he did little or nothing toward settling Maumee, or clearing the land he had taken. Still, something of credit is due him, since his tavern entertained many who were genuine settlers, or who had much to do with the development of the locality. The immediate effect of his tavern was the collection, at a near point on the east side of the river, of several rude cabins, the center of which was a low groggery to which flocked the roughest element of all the country around, and where lawless incidents multiplied until the name of Bull Rapids became a noisome reproach. The tavern keeper removed when his trade fell away, and the advent of large land buyers from the settlement at Defiance, Ohio, scattered the ill-favored colony. James Shirley became one of the extensive land owners at this point, and in 1836 came to the scene and platted a town to which he gave the name of "Indiana City." The new name did not stick, and the proposed town never developed, but it is doubtful if a town of any name could have lived down the repu- tation of the locality. The shallows in the river are now spanned by a bridge, to which the designation "Bull Rapids" still clings.
In the meantime settlement had begun at other points, a Mr. Barnes stopping near the state line, while Lloyd Lemart and William Johnson located near the center of the township. Late in the autumn of 1836 Ulrich Saylor, Sr., bought land on the tract known as Knagg's reserve, and settled there temporarily, but in the following June he moved to a tract which lay on the state line, part of it being in Ohio and part in Indiana, and whether by accident or by whimsical design built there a house which also bestrode the state line. But that he felt himself a citizen of Indiana is proved in the creditable history he at once began to make for the township. He planted the first orchard (on the Indiana side!), thereby setting a good example which his son and son-in-law, Ulrich, Jr., and Solomon Swisher, respectively, followed the same season. Solomon Swisher had set apart a plot of land to be used as a burial ground, and from the "Stateline house" the first funeral procession filed forth, bear- ing a son of the house, John D. Saylor, who was the first to die in Maumee. In this house also was celebrated the first wedding of the township, that of Mathias Saylor to Miss Ann Maneary, in 1836. Since it is accounted a Maumee township wedding, we may take it for granted that the ceremony took place in the west room, and though we have no description of the event we may almost imagine the jests that were cracked across that state line upon the occasion. In 1847 Miss Betsy Saylor was wedded to Charles Harding, but whether before or after her father's removal to his third home in the township is a particular not vouchsafed the annalist. It was in the same year, however, that Mr. Saylor, Sr., relocated at a point on the canal, building his house near a lock which thereafter was called "Saylor's Lock." Here, in 1853, Mr. Saylor opened the first store, putting in the old-fashioned "general" stock, and carrying on a thriving business. Here also the first postoffice was opened, known as "Saylor's postoffice," but its receipts were so small that it was
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soon abandoned. The swampy condition of a large part of Maumee township made it a not very desirable location to the small home- seeker, and not all of those who came to the wilds of Indiana were gifted with appreciation of the timber wealth in its forests, which were unsurpassed. General settlement of the district was somewhat delayed. Even the attention of investors had not yet been attracted to a great extent as early as 1836. But a list of very good names . appears on the records, and settlers were numerous enough to secure a favorable response to a petition for the setting apart of the town- ship. Ulrich Saylor headed the list of petitioners, and the division was effected in March, 1836. George Platter was appointed in- spector of elections, and the first election was held in April at his home. Lloyd Lemart was chosen first Justice of the Peace, and Jabez Phillips first Constable. The principal settlers at this time, in addition to those who have been mentioned, were James Johnson, Washington Corpse, J. N. Sweet, Charles Harding, Benjamin John- son, James Shirley, Flint, Crapeau, and John and George Ashley, father and son. The latter pair came from Catskill, New York, and planned to build a mill. They cleared a tract of land, and began the erection of the building, but the difficulty of constructing the necessary dam across the Manmee river loomed large and too discouraging, so they abandoned the project midway, the senior Ashley returning to his former home. The Shirleys, al- ready a numerous and prominent pioneer family in Ohio, contrib- uted several of their number to the peopling of the newer territory of Indiana, where the name has continued to multiply with succeed- ing generations. Enterprise was rife even in the earlier days of settlement history, several towns having been constructed before 1840, by draughtsmen, which perished with the paper on which they were constructed. "Geneva" was one of these, and another was "Bengal," the projectors of which were Joseph Sinclair and Thomas Tigar (Was that why he named it Bengal ?). Geneva, a plat of forty ambitions blocks laid out by Andrew Dykes, clearly asked far too much of the future. A plat of a third town, more modest in its demands, was set forth in 1871 by E. D. Ashley at a point on the Maumee river, and for a time a postoffice was established here (Edwardsburg), but a village never developed.
Woodburn, at first but a station on the Wabash railroad, was platted in 1865 by Joseph K. Edgerton and Joseph Smith. It is the only incorporated town in Maumee township. Circumstances ad- verse to the growth of any town were long militant against the development of Woodburn, but in the last twenty-five years it has come gradually into its own. The application of capital, private or organized, to the reduction of virgin territory from primal nature to a state of cultivation is admittedly less poetic in the telling than the hand-to-hand fight of the individual pioneer. Nevertheless, the story of such districts as that through which the Wabash railroad was cut in Maumee makes very neat prose, though it unquestion- ably owes its development to the far-seeing application of capital. of which the steel avenue of transportation was the first instance. The Wabash and Erie canal, so advantageous to the major portion of the Maumee valley, did not compare with the railroad in what it afforded the southern portion of Mumee township in Indiana. "Rail-
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road" might almost have been spelled "opportunity" in the great timber tracts flanking the Wabash for miles on either side. Only capital was bold enough to seize the opportunity, however, and to that boldness we must give the honor due. More than half of Maumee township was once held in the name of Joseph K. Edgerton. Over eight thousand acres of timber, unsurpassed in the United States for variety and condition, awaited his disposal in 1866. A woodland railway station, thus far called "Phelps" by the com- pany, was the strategic point for attack, and the plan of campaign has been already broached in the plat of Woodburn, a name chosen because of its fitness, and because it was fresh and unhackneyed, but one other town in the country bearing that name, and that situ- ated in a distant state. By consent of the railroad company "Phelps Station" was forgotten in the more distinguished title. At this time a famous feature of this forest was the wild pigeon roosts, the congregation of these birds being estimated around the
million mark. When settling for the night, the sky would be darkened by the dense flocks, and the noise of their moving wings, mingled with their cries, resembled the approach of a cyclone. Mr. C. P. Edgerton, a lad at that date, relates seeing the roosting pigeons settling in so great a mass on a single limb as to break it, some- times-if it were a dry branch-to snap it short, the calamity caus- ing a tremendous commotion in the frightened flock. , One marvels at the complete disappearance of birds once so prolific and numer- ous, but the tale of their ruthless slaughter by hunters and trappers for food purposes and for market is ample explanation, as it is of the disappearance of deer and other wild life. It used to be said of Woodburn station that the trains boarded more slain deer than live passengers there.
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