USA > Indiana > Morgan County > The pioneers of Morgan County : memoirs of Noah J. Major > Part 14
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The contractors came in due time with a small army of Irishmen with their carts and wheelbarrows, picks and spades. Shanties were hurriedly improvised near the line of work where beds and board were furnished the sons of Erin, with three "jiggers" of whisky per day. The whisky was intended to browbeat the malaria that was always lurk- ing in the river bottoms, particularly in the summer and fall months. On Sundays the dose was doubled to make doubly sure the antidote, as it had long been known that malaria renewed the fight about once in seven days. Salve was kept hard by for the heads that were "peeled" during the hours of recreation. Shillalahs could usually be had
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for the cutting on either bank of the canal, while Irish wit lent enchantment to the work. At Waverly the Irish brawn made the dirt fly out of muck ditch and canal, while the woodwork which was to take the place of masonry for the time being in the great feeder and locks, aqueducts and bridges was given to live Hoosiers, who knew how to swing the ax and broadax to perfection, while an Irishman was as awkward with these instruments as a woman. Farmers along the line were called in with their huge teams of three and four yokes of oxen to haul out the trees and grubbed stumps, preparatory to excavation. Every tree and stump for the width of one hundred feet was grubbed out and the muck ditches cut on both sides before the digging could begin. The roar of axes and the shouts of the teamsters fairly made the welkin ring, while the bosses were busy directing and urging on the rather slow movements on the running boards. More or less work was done in our county for a distance of nine miles. Some sections were nearly completed so far as the earthwork was concerned ; and thou- sands of feet of large hewn timbers were strewn along the line for bridges, locks, and aqueducts, while many more thousands were left lying in the woods to rot after the work ceased.
Engineers looked after the work and made estimates once a month upon which the contractors drew their pay and "precedent" to pay off their hands. The pay was about 50 cents per day for unskilled labor and from $1.00 to $1.50 for the more skillful. Work continued until some time in 1839. The last section worked on in this county was under contract to a Mr. Schofield, and ended four miles north of Martinsville.
When the State could no longer borrow funds the con- tractors "threw up the sponge," and paid the men, if they had money-otherwise not. Everything was in chaos and
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swearing went on until the atmosphere was as blue as the people. Our hopes were unceremoniously buried without the aid of a brass band. Then "hayseed" came forward and opening his mouth again, said: "Verily, ye are the people and wisdom will die with you."
ยง23. MILLS AND MILLWRIGHTS.
As mills for grinding grain and sawing lumber are abso- lute necessities to civilized people, the early settlers set about erecting them as soon as possible. In the very be- ginning there may have been a few corn mills propelled by horse power. We are inclined to believe there was one of this kind which stood about three miles east of Martins- ville on the road to Morgantown, but we have forgotten the name of the owner. It had been abandoned before the year 1832.
Morgan county was well supplied with mill streams in those early days. Besides White river, which was a never failing source of water power, there was White Lick creek, accounted one of the best mill streams in the State, on which, fifty years ago, there were no less than five grist- mills, besides a few sawmills. Among the names of owners of mills in the early times were those of Colonel Lyons and sons, Harrison, Alfred, and Jonathan, who bought out Cuth- bert at what is now Brooklyn, and proceeded to remodel the whole concern and make it an up-to-date mill, to which the old Colonel added a tanyard, distillery, and country store.
Taking it all in all, about the year 1833 Lyons's mill was one of the best business points in the county. James S. Kelly, then a young man, superintended the business affairs of the Colonel, and with the money earned at the place set up for himself and afterward became one of the promi- nent business men in that part of the county.
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Samuel Moore, for whom Mooresville was named, owned a mill about a half-mile west of the village, which was re- modeled and operated about the year 1846 by George W. Olds, who was one among the best millwrights and me- chanics in the county. Coming from Mooresville to Brook- lyn, when on the bridge spanning White Lick, if one will look west, at a distance of a fourth of a mile one will see the remains of Moon's old millhouse. This is the last rem- nant of the numerous water mills of the county, which prepared meal and flour for the hungry souls a half cen- tury ago. Between this mill and Brooklyn there were two other mills owned respectively by Moss and Sutliff and, at a later date, one of them was owned and remodeled by Mr. Paddock.
Passing from White Lick to Sycamore creek, we find that Daniel McDaniel, father of the late Ira McDaniel, many years ago built a mill on the little stream some three miles south of Monrovia. Coming on down this wet weather stream fifty years ago, we would find John Albertson's sawmill and corn-cracker, built originally by George W. Olds. This mill stood about three miles west of Centerton. Still farther toward the mouth of this creek, on what is now the Bradford farm, Mr. Olds built, about the year 1840, a sawmill and corn mill, which afterward was oper- ated by William Wall. And now we must tell you of Daniel Reeves's little mill. It stood forty rods east of the last named. On Mr. Bradford's farm, then owned by Reeves, there is a fine spring of large dimensions. Mr. Reeves conveyed water from this spring through hollow logs and other contrivances, for a distance of four hun- dred yards to a bluff bank, where he turned it on a little overshot wheel. This mill was short-lived, for we often passed by its seat more than sixty years ago, and noth- ing much remained then but the ditch and the little "nig-
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gerhead" mill stones, which were eighteen or twenty inches in diameter.
About the year 1837 William Story built a saw and gristmill on Burnett's creek, a short distance above where the bridge now spans the stream on the road be- tween Martinsville and Gosport. It did not prove to be a profitable investment. However, Mr. Story kept it running for several years. Mr. Story was a native of Ireland and one of the most intellectual men who ever came to Morgan county. He had the best private library in the county and was thoroughly acquainted with it. There are few men now living among us whose minds are so well stored with the facts of history as was his. He died many years ago, leaving a wife, a daughter, and two sons.
There are many citizens still living who remember the Wilson mill, which was situated on Indian creek some two miles south of Martinsville. This mill was origi- nally built by William Wilson, father of the late William W. Wilson, and maternal grandfather of Isaac and Rob- ert Nutter. Mr. Wilson was a native of South Carolina, who, in company with numerous relatives, came to Indi- ana about the year 1816 and settled first near Brooklyn ; thence he moved to Ripley county. From this fact he was called "Ripley Bill," to distinguish him from his cousins, "Cuffy Bill" and "Jockey Bill." He afterward received the title of "Hero Bill" because of his many adventures, both successful and otherwise. William Wil- son (Hero Bill) came to this county about the year 1828 and purchased land around the proposed mill seat and at once proceeded to erect the mill which for so long a time went by his name. This was for forty years the most convenient and accommodating mill south of Mar- tinsville. Mr. Wilson was a man brimful of energy and
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resources, proposing to overcome all obstacles by per- sistent effort. This doubtless gave rise to the epithet "Hero." As a wagoner, he stood at the "head of his class." He was a good judge of horses and kept a fine team for many years. When on the road with his team he made it a rule to clean off the mud and rub every horse thoroughly dry before he went to bed. He was a first-class pioneer and lent a helping hand to the bread- winners of the long ago.
Mr. Stratton had a mill on Sycamore creek, near Mon- rovia, which did a good business for several years. There was also a mill at the old camp-meeting ground, but the owner's name is not remembered, and one at the Dewees farm. These mills were all running in the '40's, making six on Sycamore, five on White Lick, one on Burnett's creek and one on Indian creek. There may have been others of which we knew nothing in our youthful days.
We now turn to the river mills to which the people went during the summer months when the waters ran low in the little mill streams; for, no matter how dry the season might be, the river was a never-failing source of power.
John W. Cox, who moved from Ohio to this county in 1823, built the first river mill about two and one-half miles north and a little west of Martinsville. The reader will please pardon me if I linger too long around this historic mill yard, once so full of life and energy, now nothing but a dreary little corn field. Once the hum of machinery was heard from Monday morning till Satur- day night, and in the dry summer months never ceased, day or night. People came from near and far, waited all night and two days for their turn, putting in their time fishing, for nothing pleased a "highlander" better than to drop his baited hook into deep water and wait
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for a "bite." Sometimes there was nothing to do but wait, as the bass seemed to have gone on a picnic ex- cursion.
It was here for many years that house and barn pat- terns were sawed out; here, also, was sawed the lum- ber for flatboats each returning year from 1830 to 1856. Here, too, the greatest boatyard in the county was estab- lished. Boats one hundred feet long by twenty feet wide were built and turned in the basin above the dam.
These boats were used for freighting pork, corn, and wheat to the city of New Orleans. They had a capacity of 400,000 pounds each and were manned by nine men. In the fall season you could hear the sledge and hammer of the boat builders for a distance of two miles. There was not a place in Morgan county that excelled this one in useful industry during the palmy days of these mills. Mill property often changed owners. Mr. Cox, however, held his property until 1848. Soon after the death of his wife and the marriage of all his children he sold his mills to his son, James, and son-in-law, George W. Clap- per, and went in company with the late Andrew Wamp- ler to California in search of gold. They went by sea, doubling Cape Horn, and after a long and tedious voyage arrived at San Francisco, where Mr. Cox soon after died, having taken sick on board the ship. Mr. Wampler re- turned overland and passed the remainder of his life in Martinsville.
Clapper & Cox made a most excellent firm. James Cox, both by nature and grace, was a born miller, while Mr. Clapper was equally gifted in the management of mill property. We are inclined to think that when the property passed into this firm's hands, it was encumbered for about all it was worth; but they proceeded to put everything in trim, and carefully "watched the corners."
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They soon had a large run of custom, both for the grist and sawmills. They kept a splendid log team of oxen, which was in those days a very useful adjunct to a saw- mill. Timber trees, cut on the road leading to Green- castle, could be had almost for the asking. The times were more propitious for the boys than they had been for the father. He had passed through the panic of 1840 which had sent the bills of many business men and farmers to protest; but from 1848 to 1868 was a period of unparalleled prosperity in this county, and the firm of Clapper & Cox, at the time of its dissolution, could count $18,000 each, saved up during its existence. This was the only real prosperous period in the history of those mills. At the dissolution of the partnership, the property passed to James Cox and William J. Sparks. They erected a large woolen mill in addition to the other mills. This added still more to the business stir about High Rock, as the mills were called. Soon after every- thing was in running order and doing a large business, the buildings accidentally got on fire and were utterly consumed. This was the third time that fire had swept away these historic mills.
The last effort to re-establish the mill business at this place was by Charlie Smith, son-in-law of Mr. Sparks. He rebuilt the gristmills at a large expense ; but neither the man nor the machinery met the demands of the peo- ple. Trade had turned elsewhere and High Rock, as then known, dwindled away, died, and was shrouded in a mortgage.
I passed by this place one evening last summer, as the sun was gradually sinking behind the western hills and the evening shadows were growing longer. Silence reigned supreme. I thought of the long ago, and of those with whom I so often met and touched hands at
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the old mill at High Rock, and of the enduring friendship of the owners which began more than half a century ago and continues to this day, never marred, never dimmed.
I thought of Father and Mother Cox, and of the time, 1823, when they pitched their tent in the wilderness; of their three interesting daughters-Mary Ann, who mar- ried Mat Graham; Harriet, the wife of the late Aquilla Jones, of Indianapolis ; Martha Jane, the youngest, wife of George W. Clapper, and the only one of the daughters now living. I thought, too, of the sons, William and James-William, the boatman, and later in life our effi- cient town marshal, now dead; and James, one of the most popular millers in the State, and perhaps as good a fisherman as Peter. But nine-tenths of those who con- tributed to the busy scenes of life around this interesting spot of earth, lie mouldering in their graves. Some in far-away States, and some in nearby country graveyards, beneath briers and brambles, where the mocking bird greets the early dawn with his cheerful chirp. A few- just a few-sleep beneath marble shafts pointing toward the stars. All, alike, are in the "windowless chamber of the dead," but none in a place more lonely and silent than the old millyard at High Rock.
The second mill built on the river in this county was by Joshua Evilsizer and was located not very far from the iron bridge near Paragon. It passed from Evilsizer to Ambrose Burkhart in an early day, who operated it a few years and sold out to a Mr. Pumphrey, who, we think, was its last owner. It probably went out of busi- ness about the year 1850. It was in the recoiling waves below the dam of this mill, one cold winter day, that the sad drowning of Leander S. Lankford and a man named Crocket occurred in the presence of half a dozen or more men who were unable to rescue them. They were cross-
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ing the river above the dam, when by some mismanage- ment, they let the canoe drift over it and were caught in the surging waves below. A small boy, son of Crocket, clung to the canoe and was saved. This acci- dent happened as many as fifty years ago.
Mr. Lankford was one of the best esteemed citizens of Lamb's Bottom, and his sudden taking off cast a gloom over the entire neighborhood.
Not very far below this mill, just in the edge of our county, was Mr. Myers's mill, completed and put in running order at a later date than the Evilsizer mill. This mill became noted for the wrecking of flatboats on its dam, there being no less than five boats more or less damaged within three days' time, while on their way to New Orleans. Some of the cargoes were worth $6,000. The summer before these disasters occurred Myers raised the height of the dam from one to two feet and this, together with an unusually low tide, caused the boats to hang on the dam long enough to pull apart at the splicing. As cargoes were insured against accident, considerable litigation followed. The shippers had re- course on the insurance company and the insurance com- pany in turn tried to recover off of Myers. The point raised by the insurance company was that White river, having been declared a navigable stream by Congres- sional enactment, no man had a right to place such an obstruction as a mill dam across it. But Mr. Myers's whole property would not meet one-half the loss caused by the wrecking of the boats. This mill, like all the water-power mills, ceased to be profitable and became dead property many years ago.
The Waverly mills were the outgrowth of the feeder dam and lock, built at that place in 1836 for the Central Canal, which was a part of the internal improvement
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system adopted by Indiana in those days, by which the State squandered ten million dollars. But the dam and lock afforded a splendid mill power that was leased by the State to Cornelius Free, who, in 1837, proceeded to build and equip one of the finest flour mills in the com- monwealth of Indiana.
The house was four and one-half stories high and of sufficient size for the equipment of four runs of mill- stones. To this was added a sawmill, a carding machine, and finally, a spinning jenny. People came to these mills from every direction, especially in the summer and fall months. An adequate idea is given of the business done here when we refer to a remark of Mrs. Mckenzie, daughter of Cyrus Whetzel, that she had seen no less than one hundred wagons a day come to and go from these mills. At this place many flatboats were laden with flour, kiln-dried meal, and sawed lumber to be taken to New Orleans or the "coasts" this side of that city.
Cornelius Free was a man of towering energy and full of resources. For a time he was the leading man of Waverly, a typical business pioneer, brushing away all obstacles and developing the resources of the county to a marvelous degree. This splendid property, after changing owners a few times, went the way of all its predecessors. The dam wore out, the lock rotted, and the steam engine with its wonderful improvements stepped in and the old water wheel stepped out, never again to appear as a "motor" in Morgan county.
We have mentioned seventeen water mills-thirteen on the creeks and four on the river-that served the people well fifty years ago. To these must be added two horse mills mentioned by the Madison township corre- spondent of the Mooresville Guide. I am also indebted to my old friend, Milton W. Gregory, for the knowledge of
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the horse mill east of Martinsville belonging to Benjamin Roberts in a very early day. Also the Elijah Dawson mill on Clear creek, which stood about forty rods east of Stine's mill. Mr. Gregory says it was the rule at the Roberts mill for the customer to furnish the horse and do the driving while grinding the grist. This was, probably, the rule of all horse mills. The contrast be- tween building a mill to-day and one sixty years ago is indeed striking. Then all the work was done by hand at the carpenter's bench.
Everything was made and put together at the mill yard, excepting the mill spindles and a few journals and boxes and iron bands. It is probable that the buckets in the water wheels were, at first, made of wood by hand, a's were the mouldboards of the Cary plow. A little later on, a cast iron bucket came in use. All the frame tim- bers, from the mill sills to the rafters above 4x4 inches were hewed in the woods and drawn to the mill yard by strong teams of oxen, and framed with old-fashioned tools. Sometimes the posts were thirty feet high, and a mill raising was a tedious and dangerous business. There was no block and tackle to facilitate the work and render it safe. Everything was done by "main strength and awkwardness," of which a plentiful supply was found with the sixty or seventy men in waiting. It was an exciting scene to look at seventy men pushing up a millhouse bent fifty feet long and thirty feet high and see the watchful eye of him who was chosen to manage the props and spar poles. What if a spar were to snap, or a prop slip out and let this mass of timber fall on the men? Yet there were but few accidents on such occa- sions, owing to the watchfulness of the foreman and the precautions taken to insure the safety of the lifters. There were giants in those days, whose sinews were like
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coiled wires and whose backs were springs of steel. The modern athlete may be a better trained, all-round man, but the old "log roller" would have put his nose to the ground every time they "hitched" under a handspike. The pioneer was a lifter who will never again be dupli- cated. In those days all men, everywhere, considered it their duty to help raise mills; and went, day after day, far and near, to do so, asking nothing in return but their dinner.
Of the typical millwrights in those days we may men- tion Velorous Butterfield, late of Brooklyn, son of John Butterfield, who settled in Clay township in 1820; George W. Olds, son of Jared Olds, who came to the county about the same date, and Van R. W. H. H. King, long and favorably known as a minister of the Christian church, for be it known to all men now living that the pioneer local preacher could do anything any other man could do. He was often the foremost man at a log- rolling, house-raising or boat-turning. Many of them were carpenters, cabinetmakers, blacksmiths, as well as farmers. They worked all the week as other men, using the evenings and spare moments as best they could for preparation. It was sometimes "poor preach," always poor pay.
The business of the whole country has become so revolutionized that to write the plain truth will seem like fiction to our young people. The miller, like the ferryman, had the price of his work fixed by law. The miller was allowed one-eighth bushel for grinding, but was not allowed to give preference to any customer in regard to the time of grinding his grist. Each grist was to be ground in the order it came in. The miller was not bound to fan it through a wheat fan, though some- times it was so dirty he did so. There were no smut
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mills fifty years ago, and between the dirt and the poor mill work there was much bad flour. The corn meal was cleaner and superior to the meal of to-day. Hail to the hoecake of the pioneer ; it has never been excelled. With the improvement in mill machinery, the hungry world is treated to the whitest and best wheat flour that ever went through a bolting cloth. But the millers have it all much their own way. They grind no more by grists, though we do not think the law compelling them to do so has been repealed. They swap you flour for wheat, but are like the darkey's trap-"sot to kotch de coon goin' or comin'." They fix the grade and price of your wheat, and the price of your flour, "bofe for you, Dinah, now take your choice." A few years ago we sold some good wheat to a miller for 60 cents per bushel. With the last load we sent the request to exchange flour for wheat. He sent us one hundred pounds of flour for four bushels of wheat-twenty-five pounds of flour for sixty pounds of wheat, whereas a bushel of good wheat used to return us forty pounds of flour and ten pounds of bran, after paying the toll. There are now but few exceptions to this rule that we are aware of. Not long ago we sold wheat at 90 cents per bushel and were charged $3.60 per hundred for flour at the same elevator.
Wheat may go down with a thud, like "Soap bubble" Leiter, but flour is slow to take the hint that a slight curtsey to the public would be in good form.
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V.
THE LAW-MAKERS: SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THE SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES OF MORGAN COUNTY.
Since our last article, we have endeavored to collect the names of those who, from the time of the county organization to the present, have represented us as sen- ators and representatives in the General Assembly of Indiana. We have not attempted to draw the line where the old settlers stop and the new ones begin-we do not know where to locate it. It is like the overlapping of two centuries. Neither can we claim always to be correct as to dates or incidents, because some of the Journals of the House of Representatives have been lost or mislaid. Perhaps this happened when the archives were moved from Corydon to Indianapolis. But we think enough of correct information on the subject of repre- sentation can be found in these sketches to be of interest to the many readers of the county papers, and especially to the descendants of those who, from time to time, have been honored with seats in the General Assembly of our State. We have grouped the members of the Houses together according to their respective terms of repre- sentation.
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