History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. II, Part 13

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 680

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. II > Part 13

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Thomas Montgomery has on his land, tract No. 274 of the Grant, three and a half miles from Henryville, a good exposure of iron ore. The ore in this bank was examined 'forty years ago by an iron master from Pennsylvania, John Works. He pronounced it good; made prepa- rations to erect a furnace, but the project was finally abandoned.

The ore crops out in almost every ravine in this region, and is everywhere of the same general character, containing about the same quantity of iron. Another deposit of considerable extent is on the land of Allen Barnett, near Broon hill, on the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago railroad. Some of it has rather a peculiar structure, and is made up entirely of an aggregation of coarse par- · ticles of hydrated brown oxide. It is what is usually denominated "kidney ore," and is scat- tered profusely over the surface. The whole country at the base of the knobs, where the New Providence shale outcrops, is rich in iron ore. It accumulates in the ravines and valleys by the washing down of the formation which con- tained it, and is generally easy of access.

It is probable that this shale, on account of

its mineral constituents and being highly fos- siliferous, will make a good fertilizer. A great number of mineral springs flow from the fissures occurring in this formation, the waters of which possess decided medicinal virtues. Some of their waters have a similar composition to that from which the celebrated Crab Orchard salts of Kentucky are manufactured; and their use has produced good results in certain diseases where a simple alterative or cathartic was required.

This shale, at the base of Caney knob, below New Albany, is capped by a thin stratum of fer- ruginous sandstone, while in the northwestern part of Clarke county it is covered by a thin fos- siliferous limestone, composed of an aggregation of crinoidal stems. Specimens of the stone, ground and polished, exhibit a fine variegated surface. Above this hard band of shale is a blu- ish, friable, micaceous shale, which is recognized to be the true knob shale. It ranges in thick- ness from one hundred and twenty to one hun- dred and sixty feet, and extends half-way or more up the sides of the knobs, and in many cases, where they are conical, it forms the summit. In other places it is frequently capped with massive sandstone or beds of impure limestone, contain- ing crinoidal stems. In these shales are fossil worm-tracks, fucoids, and concretions of iron ore of large size, often containing brachiopods.

The massive knob sandstone, where capping these shales, is from fifty to eighty feet thick, in beds of various thickness. The upper part is composed of ferruginous layers ten to fifteen inches thick, and contain ripple-marks on the under side. It hardens on exposure, and is used about New Providence for doorsteps and many other purposes.

Above this is the first knob limestone. It has a gray color with crystalline structure, containing in some parts concretions of chert, and varies in thickness from twenty to sixty-five feet. This is the stone extensively quarried near Mooresville, for building purposes about New Albany.

Just above this fossiliferous limestone are found a number of thin layers of bituminous shale, containing an occasional coal-plant fossil. The impure limestone capping these formations resembles the Devonian hydraulic limestone of the cement region, and, if properly tested, it will probably be found to answer the same purpose. It underlies the white sand which is mined for

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

glass-works in New Albany, near the intersection of Washington, Clarke, Floyd, and Harrison counties.

The members composing the knob series do not retain the same character throughout the district. They are not as uniform in composi- tion as the formations below them, and vary great- ly in thickness and color, and are thicker at the western than at the eastern outcrop.

The pentremital limestone has a thickness of twenty-five to fifty feet in the neighborhood of Greenville, where it outcrops near the summit of the hills. It contains many fossils. The soil immediately covering it is a tough, tenacious clay, colored with oxide of iron. Several good quarries are worked near Greenville, some of them developing the true St. Louis limestone.

Near the top of the hill towards Mooresville, beds of from ten to twelve feet of very soft, bright-colored, ochreous sandstone are exposed, portions of which make a good mineral paint.

SOME ELEVATIONS.

Buck creek, a branch of Indian creek at Mooresville, near the summit of the knobs on the Vincennes pike, is elevated one hundred feet or more above New Albany. The Corydon plank road, just above the eastern portal of the railway tunnel, is four hundred and fifty-seven feet above the miter-site at the Louisville and Portland canal. The elevation of the summit on which Edwards- ville stands, at the point where the tunnel line crosses, is five hundred and seventy-one feet above the same. This is the highest point on the knobs, and is distant from State street, New Albany, five and one-half miles. The elevation of the headwaters of Little Indian creek, at a point near the western portal of the tunnel, is four hundred and twenty-nine feet.

NATIVE WOODS.

The timber of the hills consists of chestnut, white, red, black, and post oak, black and white hickory, pine, poplar, dogwood, water maple, sumach, and guin-tree. In the valleys and low- lands are the walnut, chestnut, white, blue and prickly ash, shell-bark hickory, beech, elm, syca- more, wild cherry, sassafras, red and white mul- berry, pawpaw, persimmon, sugar maple, and sugar-tree, and many other varieties, some of which have become almost or quite extinct as settlement has progressed. Camp and Fourteen-

mile creeks are noted localities for buckeye trees, inany of which measure three to four feet in di- ameter and go fifty or more feet to their first limbs. Persimmon trees abound on the clay lands about Henryville. Beech and white oak grow numerously on the flats of the slate lands.

SUMMARY.

In the foregoing remarks have been enumer- ated the lithological, stratigraphical and, to some extent, paleontological characteristics of the rocks of Floyd and Clarke counties, including forma- tions from the Lower Silurian to the Sub-carbon- iferous. A section from the western line of Floyd to the eastern part of Clarke, on the Ohio river, shows these formations well developed in the following order and thickness:

I. Soil and clay 20 to 40 feet.

2. Knob limestone, Keokuk group 80 feet.

3. Knob sandstone.

4. Knob shale.

5. New Albany black slate ...

6. Crinoidal limestone.

7. Hydraulic limestone.

¿ Kinderhook group 344 feet.

140 feet.

8. Corniferous limestone, Upper Helderberg group. 22 feet.

9. Utica limestone. § 52 feet

IO. Magnesian limestone Niagara group 1 30 feet

II. Madison limestone Cincinnati group 207 ft.

The minute divisions of the groups in the above sections are not always accurately defined and are not everywhere present. They thin out in some localities to a knife edge. Especially is the latter the case in the neighborhood of the falls, where the characteristic fossils of the Niagara, corniferous, and Hamilton formations may be obtained within a vertical space of a few feet.

SOME POINTS OF ECONOMIC GEOLOGY.

The glass sand, lying in very compact beds at the summit of the knobs and near the in- tersection of Clarke, Floyd, Washington, and Harrison counties, is a fine, white-grained sand, used in the manufacture of plate glass at New Albany, by Messrs. W. C. DePauw & Co. This formation is of very great economical value, and is destined to play an important part and to add materially to the wealth of that portion of dis- trict under investigation. Its geological position is immediately above the sub-carboniferous hy- draulic limestone, as already indicated in previous sections. These beds of sand have been traced in isolated patches from a point south of Spur- geon hill, in Washington county, in a southeast- erly direction, to the present workable beds. The width of the sand formation increases as

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

the summits of the hills become broader and more level. No doubt the white sand on the Ohio river hills below New Albany, in Harrison county, is a part of the New Providence beds, and that this formation marks the shore line of an ancient beach, which extended northeast- wardly in the direction of the Ohio valley.

The sand beds are very uniform in thickness and quality. The quarry of the Star Glass works at the summit of the knobs, three and a half or four miles distant from New Providence, and three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet above the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago railroad, has been worked extensively. Following is a section of the beds at this quarry: First, soil of a stiff clay loam, two to four feet; second, yellow sand, colored by the overlying clay, one to two feet; third, white sand, used for glass manufacture, sixteen feet; fourth, fragments of chert, with bryozoa, six inches; fifth, hydraulic limestone, at the bottom of the cut, four feet.

The surface of the ground above the quarry is heavily timbered with white oak. The stripping is continued until the third bed of the section is reached, where the sand is mined by blasting, in the same manner as is pursued in quarrying hard rock. After being thus loosened, it is easily re- moved with a shovel.

The sand used by the New Albany Star Plate Glass Work company, of which Mr. W. C. De Pauw is president, when required for the manu- facture of plate glass, is washed in an ascillating trough to free it from a small amount of impuri- ties. Ten or more men are employed in quarry- ing and washing the sand, and they can prepare it as fast as twenty-five wagons can haul it to the station of New Providence, four miles distant. The larger quantity is shipped to the Star Glass Works, at New Albany, but some shipments are made to Louisville and Cincinnati. A bushel of sand weighs one hundred pounds or more before washing, and ninety pounds afterwards.

An outcrop of the sand occurs on the land of Michael Brock; another on the farm of R. G. Scott and Mr. Jonathan Miller, all in the same neighborhood.

· The shipment of sand and cement has necessi- tated the establishment of numerous cooper- shops through the counties composed of this district. Some of these shops are operated by

steam and are on a large scale, manufacturing a large number of barrels yearly.

BRICK CLAY.

The clays of Clarke and Floyd counties fur- nish the very best material for making brick, many thousand of which are manufactured every year in the neighborhood of New Albany and Jeffersonville. No doubt, if returns were at hand from all these yards, a very large capital would be found employed in this business. The material employed is a clean, tough alluvial clay, containing sufficient iron to give the bricks a fine red color. Formerly Louisville was largely supplied with brick from these yards.

POTTERY.

Another important branch of industry, at New Albany, Jeffersonville, and Port Fulton, is the manufacture of salt-glazed pottery, commonly called stone-ware. The material used is an allu- vial blue clay obtained from the lowlands in the vicinity of the works. It is also used in the manufacture of drain-tiles, an industry yet in its in fancy in this region.

RUNNING WATERS.

The lands of Clarke and Floyd are well watered by never-failing springs and numerous small branches, which rise in the knobs and flow into the creeks that empty into the Ohio. The creeks are numerous, but few are large. The chief of them in Floyd county are Falling run, Middle, Knob, Big and Little Indian, and Buck creeks. Between this and Clarke county, but principally belonging to the latter, is Silver creek with its numerous branches, the finest inland water of this region. Other streams in Clarke are Fourteen-mile creek, so called because emptying into the Ohio fourteen miles above Louisville; Owen and Camp creeks, below Bethlehem; Wolf Run creek, Cany and Miller's fork, Cane run, and Blue Lick, tributaries of the north fork of Silver creek; Dry and South forks, Persım- mon, Indian Camp, Turkey, and Knob runs, affluents of the west fork of Silver creek, and others too unimportant for mention here.

SOIL, NATURAL PRODUCTIONS, ETC.

That the underlying or outcropping rocks in a very great measure determine the nature of the soil, is plainly seen in Floyd and Clarke counties, where there are extensive outcrops of so many different formations, each giving rise to a charac-

Mrs. J. hr Garle-

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

teristic soil. A striking illustration of this may be learned from a passage in our history of Bethlehem township, Clarke county. A few miles back from the headwaters of Camp creek, therein mentioned, the lands are wet, and the soil is light-colored clay that holds water. In the vicinity of New Washington the soil is a light clay and sand, and has a better drainage. The land here is well adapted for growing grass and wheat, and in some localities excellent corn.

From the mouth of Fourteen-mile creek, reach- ing as far down the river as Utica and the Sink- ing fork of Silver creek, the land is rolling and much broken, especially on the river. The pre- dominating rocks are corniferous and cement limestones, the base of a limestone soil; and this is the "blue-grass region" of the county. Charlestown is situated right on the summit of the corniferous limestone, from which flow abundant, never-failing springs. The drainage of the country is excellent. The easy-weathering limestones render the soil of this region not only well adapted to blue-grass, but likewise better suited to a variety of crops than any other part of the county. Its soil is also well adapted to clover; and in some localities, especially on the river, fruits of all kinds are grown in great pro- fusion.

A part of the land in Utica township has not only the wash of the corniferous and Niagara limestone of this region upon it, but is in good part a river terrace, composed of altered drift, sand, and gravel, with numerous aboriginal kitchen heaps. This is a noted tract for market gardens, and it is also favorable to corn and grass. Wheat does well, and ripens early.

On the lands just west of Jeffersonville the New Albany black slate cuts off the limestone. The soil here is an ash-colored clay, except when mixed with decomposed slate, which darkens its color and increases its fertility. Drainage is imperfect on the flat land, but good where it is rolling; and with proper tillage this soil is very productive.

The slate lands in Clark county are discon- nected, appearing on one farm and absent from the next, or even present and wanting on different parts of the same farm. When in large bodies they give rise to beech and white oak flats, in- clined to be wet and difficult to drain.

The land about Memphis is well timbered,

and the bottom lands produce good corn and grass crops. The highlands here are clay, and yield generous returns to fertilizers.

South and west of this is the Blue lick region, whose soils are derived chiefly from the New Providence shale of the knobs-a soft, light- colored, arenaceous clay-stone, containing some sulphate and carbonate of lime, with magnesia.

The soil about Henryville (which is forty feet below the top of the New Albany slate) is clay to the base of the knobs, belonging to the altered drift and alluvium in the creek bottoms, where the soil is very productive. The clay land is light-colored in the valleys, but changes to deep ochre shades towards the knobs.

The New Providence valley is about eight miles long, and one to two miles wide. The shifting of the bed of Silver creek, which forms it, has created a rich surface loam, enriched by decaying leaves and other vegetable matter from the hill sides, with a deep subsoil of gravel. It is well suited to all staple farm products, which are not here materially affected by drouth. Ap- ples do well, and strawberries and other small fruits grow in great perfection. The water in the streams and shallow wells of this valley is noted for its softness. It does not even decompose soap, and is much in request for laundry pur- poses.

The line of the knobs, and the river bluffs, are found as the best fruit-growing region of southern Indiana or the West, as shown by the success of the orchards situated on the elevated lands below New Albany, and thence to Morrisville, Scottsville, New Providence, and as far north as Salem, in Washington county, and the walnut ridge west of Salem. This includes the southern and western knobs. The northern range above Henryville, going toward Vienna, in Scott county, and the river bluffs, from Utica to Marble Hill, in Jef- ferson county, are all favorably situated for fruit growing; especially peaches, for the tender buds are not liable to be injured by spring frosts, which are confined to the valley's below, and sel- dom reach as high up the hillside as the orchards.

Extensive orchards are planted on the hills above Henryville. The business of peach-grow- ing is becoming one of the leading industries in this part of the State. The peach orchards of Messrs. Willey and his son-in-law, Mr. Poindex- ter, at Chestnut flats, have from fifteen to twenty-

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

five thousand peach trees. Owing to a good ex- posure afforded the knobs, the peaches here growing have a fine color, and no doubt better flavor than fruit grown in the valley.

CHAPTER II.

OLD GEOGRAPHICAL DESIGNATIONS-THE CLARKE GRANT-CONGRESS LANDS.

NEW FRANCE.

This is probably the first geographical designa- tion for any subdivision of the North American continent including the present tract of Clarke and Floyd counties. The Ohio and Indiana country was already claimed by the French, in the seventeenth century, as an integral part of their great North American possessions, "New France," by virtue of the discovery of the Ohio river by her brave explorer, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, and the earlier voyage (1640) of the Jesuit Fathers Charemonot and Brebœuf, along the south shore of Lake Erie. With the Iroquois also claiming it they were constantly at war, and the claims of the confederate tribes to the territory weighed nothing with the aggressive leaders of the French in the New World. When, some time in the first half of the eighteenth cen- tury, the French built a fort on the Iroquois lands near Niagara Falls, the Governor of Canada proclaimed their right of encroachment, saying that the Five Nations were not subjects of Eng- land, but rather of France, if subjects at all. But, by the treaty of Utrecht, April 11, 1713, Louis XIV., Le Grand Monarque, renounced in favor of England all rights to the Iroquois coun- try, reserving only the St. Lawrence and Missis- sippi valleys to France. Boundaries were so vaguely defined, however, that disputes easily and frequently arose concerning the territories owned by the respective powers; and in 1740, the very year after that in which the Ohio Land company of the Washingtons, Lee, and others in Virginia, was organized under a grant from George II., to occupy half a million acres west of the Alleghanies, De Celeron, the French com- mandant of Detroit, led an expedition to the Ohio, dispatched by the Marquis de la Gallis-

soniere, commander-in-chief of New France, and buried a leaden tablet "at the confluence "of the Ohio and Tchadakoin" (?) "as a monu- ment of the renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those that therein fall, and of all the lands on both sides, as far as the sources of said rivers"- a sweeping claim, truly. He ordered the English traders out of the country, and notified the Governor of Pennsylvania that if they "should hereafter make their appearance on the Beautiful river, they would be treated without any delicacy." The territorial squabble which then ensued led to the French and Indian war of 1755-62, which closed by the cession to England, on the part of France, of Canada and all her American posses- sions east of the Mississippi, except some fishing stations. Thus this region at length passed into the undisputed possession of the British crown.

IN THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC.

In 1766 (though some confidently say 1774*), the British Parliament insisted upon the Ohio river as the southwestern boundary and the Mis- sissippi river as the western limit of the dominions of the English crown in this quarter. By this measure the entire Northwest, or so much of it as afterwards became the Northwest Territory, was attached to the Province of Quebec, and the tract that now constitutes the State of Indiana was nominally under its local administration.

BOTETOURT COUNTY.

In 1769 the Colony of Virginia, by an enact- ment of the House of Burgesses, attempted to extend its jurisdiction over the same territory, northwest of the river Ohio, by virtue of its royal grants. By that act the county of Botetourt was erected and named in honor of Lord Botetourt, Governor of the Colony. It was a vast country, about seven hundred miles long, with the Blue Ridge for its eastern and the Mississippi for its western boundary. It included large parts of the present States of West Virginia, Ohio, In- diana, and Illinois, and was the first county or- ganization covering what are now Clarke and Floyd counties. Fincastle, still the seat of coun- ty for the immensely reduced Botetourt county, was made the seat of justice; but so distant from it were the western regions of the great tract,

*As Isaac Smucker, in the Ohio Secretary of State's Re- port for 1877.

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

that the thoughtful Burgesses inserted the follow- ing proviso in the creative act:

Whereas, The people situaled on the Mississippi, in the said county of Botetourt, will be very remote from the court- house, and must necessarily become a separate county as soon as their numbers are sufficient, which will probably hap- pen in a short time, be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the inhabitants of that part of the said county of Botetourt which lies on the said waters, shall be exempted from the payment of any levies to be laid by the said county court for the purpose of building a court-house and prison for said county.

ILLINOIS COUNTY.

Government was still nominal, however,so far as the county organization was concerned, between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers; and the Indians and few white settlers within those borders were entirely a law unto themselves. After the con- quest of the Indiana and Illinois country by Gen- eral George Rogers Clarke in 1778, the county of Illinois was erected by the Virginia Legislature (in October of the same year) out of the great county of Botetourt, and included all the territo- ry between the Pennsylvania line, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the northern lakes. Colonel John Todd was appointed the first county lieutenant and civil commandant of the county. He perished in the battle of Blue Licks, August 18, 1782 ; and Timothy de Montbrun was named as his successor. At this time there were no white men in Indiana, except a few Indian traders and some French settlers.

The Legislature of Virginia, at the time Illi- nois county was created, made provision for the protection of the country by reinforcements to General Clarke's little army. By another enact- ment passed in May, 1780, the act of 1778 was confirmed and somewhat amended, and further reinforcements ordered into the wilderness. West Illinois county, however, was not destined to make any large figure in history.

CONFLICTING CLAIMS.

At the preliminary negotiations for peace in Paris in November, 1782, between England and her revolted, successful American colonies, both France and Spain, for similar reasons of discov- ery and partial occupancy, filed their protests against the claim of either of the lately contend- ing parties to "the Illinois country." It can not be too often repeated, to the everlasting honor of General Clarke, that it was his conquest in 1778 that determined the controversy in favor of

the infant republic, and carried the lines of the new Nation to the Mississippi and the northern lakes. Otherwise the east bank of the Ohio, or possibly even the Alleghanies, would have formed its western boundary in part. The final convention signed at Paris, September 3, 1783, confirmed the claim of the United Colonies as made good by the victories of Clark.

On the 20th of October, 1783, the Virginia Legislature, by solemn enactment, transferred all her rights and tities to lands west of the Ohio to the General Government. Illinois county was thus virtually wiped out.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.

After the title of the United States to the wide tract covered by Illinois county, acquired by the victories of the Revolution and the Paris treaty, had been perfected by the cession of claims to it by Virginia and other States and by Indian treaties, Congress took the next step, and an im- portant one, in the civil organization of the country. Upon the 13th of July (a month which has been largely associated with human liberty in many ages of history), in the year 1787, the celebrated act entitled "An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio," was passed by Congress. By this great organic act-"the last gift," as Chief Justice Chase said, "of the Congress of the old Confederation to the coun- try, and it was a fit consummation of their glori- ous labors"-provision was made for various forms of territorial government to be adopted in succession, in due order of the advancement and development of the Western country. To quote Governor Chase again: "When the settlers went into the wilderness they found the law al- ready there. It was impressed upon the soil itself, while it yet bore up nothing but the forest." This measure was succeeded, on the 5th of October of the same year, by the appointment by Congress of General Arthur St. Clair as Governor, and Major Winthrop Sargent as Secre- tary of the Northwest Territory. Soon after these appointments, three territorial judges were appointed-Samuel Holden Parsons, James Mitchell Varnum, and John Armstrong. In January the last-named, not having entered upon service, declined his appointment, which now fell to the Hon. John Cleves Symmes, the hero of

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. II, Part 13

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 680

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 680