Clark County, Indiana - Chapter 8: The Fifth Decade - 1840 to 1850, 1909

Chapter 8: The Fifth Decade - 1840 to 1850

On January 23. 1841, Jeffersonville expanded once more. The Jeffersonville Association, Dr. Nathaniel Field, agent, promoted the eastern division enlargement. This division extended from the river with the line of Port Fulton (which is the dividing line of C. and D. of tract No. 2, of the Illinois grant) to Eighth street, thence with Eighth street to within six hundred and sixtyfive feet of Fulton street (which is the east line of Benson's addition) thence with this line to the Ohio river, comprising blocks one to sixteen, including Chestnut Grove cemetery.

A flouring mill, tannery and foundry were started in Jeffersonville at this period. In 1847 Samuel H. Patterson and James Callahan erected a brick flouring mill on Spring street. This was the first steam flouring mill in the city and was run for two or three years when I\Ir. Patterson bought out the interest of his partner and soon after sold the business to John F. Howard, of Louisville. In 1841 James Lemaire started a tannery at the corner of Eleventh street and Broadway. He carried on this business until 1848, when he sold out to John A. Ingram and J. AI. Ross.

The Anderson foundi-y which was carried on in a small shop near the ship yard, was moved, about 1844. to a location on Spring street. This firm, consisting of Charles C. Anderson, James Keigwin, Hamilton Robinson and Richard Goss, did business at this location for a number of years, but finally in i860 removed to their present plant on Watt street, between Maple and Court avenue. The necessity for a better wharf prompted the city council oi Jeffersonville to have the present wharf between Spring and Pearl streets graded down in 1843. Originally the ground stood some six or seven feet higher than the pavement on Front street and extended out nearly two hundred feet level. On this plat of ground was a row of large trees at the edge of the bluff, while just to the rear of them was an old graveyard which had been used by the garrison of Fort Steuben in 1790 for their burials. Haiwey McCampbell had the contract to grade down the earth and the city council had the bodies of the old soldiers there removed to the Mulberry street cemeterv. At different times during this decade Clark county was tlie host for several of the national political leaders. July 5, 1842, Gen. William Henry Harrison visited Jeffersonville and Charlestown. At the latter place he made a speech describing the battle of Tippecanoe and refuting several charges which had lieen made as tcj his mismanagement of the troops in this laattle. While here he spoke in the most commendatory manner of a great many officers who had fought at Tippecanoe, but never mentioned Bigger or Beggs. These olificers had performed vahant service, and during the whole campaign had done their duty in a brave and honorable manner. The General's neglect of recognition to these officers not only in his speeches but in his reports of the campaign and the battle was noticed. It was and is a matter of regret that these officers and the men who fought under them in this memorable action. did not receive the public recognition which was their just due.

Richard IM. Johnson came, too. in the course of the fall, and delixered his speech to attentive listeners. He was received by a committee, and from here went to Salem, in W'ashington county. At the foot of the knobs he cut hickory canes for the committee, which were preserved as relics of much value. Thomas J. Henly delivered the reception speech in behalf of Clark county. In 1844 James K. Polk visited Jeffersonville. He had been elected President, and had been brought across the river to Jeffersonville, to a reception given in the old Methodist church on Wall street. President Polk was on his way east and his escort wore scarlet coats. \\'hen the boat landed at the foot of Spring street, there was a great crowd to receive him, a band was playing, and cannon were booming. In the crowd was a raw-boned individual, named IMaybe, who was an ardent Polk man. Some one made a slighting remark about the scarlet coats and a fight ensued in which Maybe whipped about twenty men. Such encounters as this were common in those days, all men were plucky and were as willing to fight as to eat.

In 1844 also Ben Hardin, of Kentucky, was the speaker at a great Henry Clay meeting held at the "Springs." About four thousand people were here to hear him, and the "Springs'" which were then in the glory of their popularitv, was crowded to the gates. In 1849 Gen. Zachary Taylor visited Jeffersonville and was received in the church on Market street, between Spring and Pearl. He was on his way to Washington to be inaugurated President. Millard Fillmore spoke in Jeffersonville in 1850 from the small porch in front of the building on the southwest corner of Market and Springstreets.

In 1845 Charlestown and Clark county suffered the loss of one of its oldest and most prominent citizens. Gen. John Carr. In the Southern Indianian, a county paper published at Charlestown by William S. Ferrier, is the following account :

"It becomes our painful duty in this week's paper to announce the death of Gen. John Carr, who died on the 20th instant (January 20, 1845) after a long and very painful illness. His death created a space which cannot soon be filled. General Carr was a man of no ordinary character. He had long occupied an elevated standing among his fellow men. He was born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, on the 6th of April, 1793, and hat! at the time of his death nearly completed his fifty-second year. He emigrated from that state with his father to the then territoiy of Indiana, in the spring- of 1806, having been a citizen of this county ever since - a period of thirty-nine years. During the summer of 181 1 he was engaged in several scouting parties on the frontier, and in watching and guarding against the approach of the Indians, who were then known to entertain hostile feelings toward the settlers. At this tune he was but eighteen years of age. In the fall of the same year he joined tlie Tippecanoe expedition, with Captain Bigger's company of riflemen, and was engaged in that memorable and bloody conflict, which occurred on the 7th of November of that year. On the declaration of war in 1812 he was appointed a lieutenant of a company of United States rangers, authorized by an act of Congress and organized for the defense of the western frontiers. During the years of 181 2 and 1813 he was activeh' engaged in se\'eral important and fatiguing campaigiis. which were attended with extreme hardship and peril. The Mississinewa and Illinois or Peoria campaigns were particularly distingtiished for their many pri\-ations, difficulties and hairbreadth escapes ; in all of which he participated. During much of his time the command of his company devolved upon him, in consequence of the absence of the captain. Though then but a youth he was equal to any emergency.

After the war he filled successively several military offices. Aniimg these were brigadier and major-general of the Militia of Indiana. The latter office he held at the time of his death. General Carr was repeatedly honored with the confidence of his fellow-citizens in the election to several civil offices of trust and honor. He filled at various times the offices of Recorder, agent for the town of Indianapolis, Clerk of Clark County Circuit Court, to which he was re-elected, and Presidential Elector on the Jackson ticket in 1824. All these duties he discharged with honor to his country and himself. In 183 1 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives of the Twenty-first Congress of the United States, and continued to serve in this body for six consecutive years. In 1837 he retired, but was re-elected for the fourth time in 1839, and sen'ed two years more, making in all eight years" service in that body. His Congressional career w'as noted for industiw, efficiency and usefulness. He originated the sale of lands in forty-acre lots, thus bringing within the reach of all the home that so many needed. He assisted in passing the pension act, by which so many of the old Revolutionary soldiers received pensions and afterward aided many of them in establishing their claims to this hard-earned bounty of their Government. In private, as well as in public life, he was distinguished for his nice sense of honor and the uprightness of his conduct. Of him it may be said in truth that he was one of God's noblest works, an honest man." Carr township was named for General Carr.

In 1843 there appeared in the heavens a great comet which ahnost rivaled the splendor of the sun itself. It became visible in America on March 6, 1843. As observed in this country the greatest length of the tail was about fifty degrees, and its size and brilliancy may be imagined when we learn that it was visible at midday, near the sun. with the naked eye. It remained within vision about a month and caused the greatest excitement, as its appearance was coincident w-ith the prophecv of \\'illiam Miller that the millenium would be in

\\'illiam Aliller was Ijnrn in Massachusetts in 1782 and held a captain's commission in the \\'ar of 1812. He held peculiar views concerning the second advent of the Saviour, and began to preach his doctrine in 1833. In 1840 the first general conference of the Second Advent believers was held in Boston, and the work spread with rapidity from that time on. All the calculations of the sect were to the effect that in the year, 1843 '^^'^^ to be the great da}' when the faithful were to be caught up in the air and enter into the realms of celestial bliss forevermore. In Clark county this sect had many followers. Mordecai and Christopher Cole in Charleston and Dr. Nathaniel Field, of Jeffersonville. were the leaders in the Millerite following in these localities. April 14. 1843. was the revealed date and as the great day approached, many of the believers in Clark county, as well as elsewhere, were waiting in their white ascension robes to be caught up in the air, or were on the house-tops or in the grave yards watching. Many disposed of their worldly goods. For some days preceding this time, their secular business w-as, for the most part, suspended, and those who looked for the advent, gave themselves over to the work of preparation for that event, as they would have done if they had been on a bed of sickness expecting death. Notwithstanding the ridicule heaped upon them by the public, they continued to maintain their societies even after their great disappointment, and the Second Adventists still huve churches in the countv.

Sellersburg was laid out in 1846, by Closes W. Sellers and John Hill. Sellersburg is very irregularly laid oft. None oi the forty-two lots have a riglit angle. It resembles an isosceles triangle pressed together from its base. One writer says, "Sellersburg resembles a linx twisted and squeezed together." Sellersburg together with Cementville and Speeds is a great shippinif point for cement, an industry which will l)e treated later on.

New Market became a post-office about 1845. Mails were formerly carried through the eastern end of Oregon township on their way to Bethlehem and Madison, from Charlestown. Poke Run was the only office for many years in the township. Dr. John Covert was postmaster here for fourteen years. The way of carrying mails was on horseback with a pair of saddlebags: or in summer, a light \-eliicle was sometimes used, when a passenger might be picked up along the route. After the Ohio & Mississippi liranch was built, Poke Run ceased to be a post-office. New Alarket liad grown sufficiently to gain the right of having an office within her limits. Accordingly the old route was abandoned and a new one established, which ran from Charlestown to New Washington via New Market. The first postmaster was John W. Haymaker. After him came 'Sisney Conner, D. M. Turner, and James A. Watson.

The first post-office in Union township was established at Sylvan Grove, one-quarter of a mile south of Memphis, on the route which led from Charlestown to Bedford, in Lawrence county, Indiana. The office was established in 1847, with John Y. Wier as the first post-master, and who held the office for many years. Some time in i860 this route was abolished and the office taken to ^Memphis. The first postmaster in Memphis was J. F. ]\IcDeitz : then came U. S. Reynolds, A. P. Jackson, Daniel Guernsey, and John D. Coombs. Blue Lick was established about 1842 by the efforts of the Thompsons. Guernseys, McDietzes, Kelleys and Hawses, with Thomas McDietz, Sr., as the postmaster.

But few of the smaller post-offices established in this decade remain. The rural free delivery has wiped them out of existence, and has replaced them with a service far superior to what was given before.

Lt Jeffersonville the state prison was changed from its old location to the present in 1845, and the wall and buildings at the corner of Ohio avenue and Market street were torn down, and the brick sold to various purchasers in Jeffersonville. The old house at the southwest corner of Market and Locust streets was built from these old prison brick. The State Reformatory is in Clarksville, not Jeft'ersonville. The first warden of the prison south in its new location was William Lee. This institution from its log cells at Ohio avenue and Market street to its new location, and its change in management and principle, will be described in a separate chapter. In 1845 the historic old Governor's mansion at Fort and Front streets burned down. It was here that Governor Posey retired when he left Corydon, and it was here that General LaFayette was received in 1825.

In 1847 the second great flood swept down the Ohio valley leaving waste and destmction in its path. It reached its highest December i8th. and rose to the height of forty and eight-tenths feet, only four and six-tenths feet below the record of February 19. 1832.

The idea of building a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, which seems to have had a periodical recurrence in Jeft'ersonville, took on a tangible form again in 1848. On December 6th, of that year an act to incorporate the "Indiana Canal Company"' was passed by the Legislature and the following were named as incorporators : Athanasius Wathen, \\'illiam D. Beach, ^^'illiam G. Armstrong, Samuel H. Patterson. John D. Shryer, Thomas J. Howard, Samuel Merriwether. George F. Savitz, of Clark county; Shepparrl ^^'hitman.

James Brook. Randal Crawfcird. Jolin Bnjwn. Somerville E. Leonard, Henry H. Royse, John Austin, William A. Weir, of Floyd county : John Law. of Knox county; William Carpenter, of Vanderburgh county: Richard W. Thompson, of Vigo county: Abijah \\'. Pitcher and John W'oodburn, of Jefiferson county: George H. Dunn, of Dearborn county: James Morrison, of jMarion county : Jacob Burnet and Josiah Lawrence, of Cincinnati. Ohio : Benjamin Loder, of New York City : Erastus Corning, of Albany. Xew York, and Henry B. Stone, of Boston, Massachusetts. The capital stock was five hundred thousand dollars, but the directors had power to increase this amount by the sale of additional shares as they thought necessary. The tolls which, were to be charged were as follows : For steamboats, sea vessels, barges or keel boats, any sum not exceeding seventy cents per ton : for each flat boat, not exceeding twenty dollars : for each raft of timber, plank or other lumber, not exceeding twenty dollars, for each sixty feet in length and twenty feet in width. The state of Lndiana fnot the United States) was given the right to transport troops, munitions of war and provisions free of toll in time of war.

On June i6, 1849, the directors met at JefTersonville and elected James C. Hall as president : Amos Lovering, secretar}\ and William D. Beach, treasurer. A\'illiam J. Ball was appointed chief engineer and he made a voluminous report dated January i, 1850. He enumerated several schemes, the first of which is the opening of a navigable channel in the middle of the river : second, the digging of a canal from the head of the middle chute to the foot of the Kentucky chute : third, a canal near the Lidiana side to the head of big eddy, thence with locks through Goose Island ; fourth a canal through Goose and Rock Island, but with a dam across the river at the head of Goose Island instead of the canal from that point up to the head of the Falls ; fifth, a new canal on the Indiana side from Jeffersonville to just below the point of rocks, to be fed from the upper pool of the Ohio : sixth, a new canal to be built on the Indiana side from Jefifersonville to "Falling Run," canal to be fed from the upper pool of the river; seventh, a new canal built on a high level, to be fed by a navigable feeder from Columbus. Indiana, to Jeffersonville. eighty miles in length. The plan adopted was a canal from one hundred feet to two hundred feet wide, extending from above the drift of the Falls to the whirlpool, at which point the locks were to be located. From this lower end the natural channel was to be improved.

The length of this proposed canal was one and three-fourths miles, the lockage twent}' and twelve one hundredths feet, and the total cost was to be six hundred and eighty-eight thousand thirty-three dollars and sixty-five cents. The project never got beyond the paper period, and the idea of transporting boats around the F"alls was allowed to sink into innocuous desuetude until another genius conceived the new idea of building a railroad from the head to the foot of the rapids and hauling steamboats around on cars.

The Mexican war peiiod in Clark county like other counties throughout the state was one of excitement, particularly so to this county because the regiments all came to the southern part (jf the state to embark on their journey. Fort Clark, called Camp Joe Holt in the \\'ar of the Rebellion, was the scene of rendezvous of the Fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and as they embarked on steamboat here the war was brought very near to home. In the chapters of the military annals of Clark county, appear accounts of these events.

Following the ^lexican war the gold fever occupied the minds of the more adventurous and some few left to try their fortunes in the far West.

Cholera appeared again in 1849, but with far less mortality than in 1S35. A not very bright description of the sanitary and health conditions of Jeffersonville is given in Doctor Drake's treatise published in 1850.

"It stands about a mile above the Falls of the Ohio, on a terrace, the south or river side of which is forty feet above low water, and about four hundred and twenty feet above the sea. This terrace, like most others along the Ohio, declines from near the river and is liable to inundation, so that in high floods the town becomes inundated. Both above and below it there are small streams entering the Ohio, which are the channels by which these overflows are effected. To the north and northeast, near the town, there are ponds skirted with marsh, one of which has lately been drained. The surface, like that of the plain on which Louisville stands, on the opposite side of the river, is argillaceous, and retains the water which rains or flows upon it. It will be obsen-ed that all the insalubrious surface lies to the summer leeward of the town, but the flats and stagnant waters near the mouth of Beargrass creek, on the opposite side of the Ohio, are directly to the windward of this town, with only the river intervening. Jelfersonville is also to the leeward of the Falls, and exposed therefore to any insalubrious gases which may be liberated by the agitation of the waters. Two miles north of the town a watershed, between the Ohio river and Silver creek, commences and runs to Charlestown, thirteen miles north. At its commencement this terrace is sixty feet above the level of the town, and its rise afterward is about ten feet per mile. Doctor Stewart, to whom I am indebted for several of the facts in this article, informs me that autumnal intermittents and remittents are decidedly prevalent in Jeft'ersonville and its vicinity. The penitentiary in the state of Indiana, stands in the western part of Jeffersonville (not so - in Clarksville). Doctor Collom, its physician, informs me that the convicts are every year invaded by autumnal fever, but in a degree rather less than the inhabitants of the town." This condition, we are happy to say has been obliterated and Jefifersonville together with the rest of Clark county has a good health record.

On April 23, 1839. John Fleming surveyed the west half of C of Grant No. 2, of the Illinois grant, and the plat was certified to on May 17, 1848.

Baird S History Of Clark Co., Ind. Io3

This addition to Jeffersonville lay between Fulton street and the west line of the eastern division, and from the Ohio river to Eighth street. It was called Benson's addition and was divided into blocks numbered from one to twelve. In Benson's addition Fleming gave names to all the alleys, as follows : Wagoner, Cherry, Virgin, Cypress, Sassafras and Wood.

In lx3th Charlestown and Jefifersonville schools of no small merit were established in the latter part of the decade. In Charlestown the Rev. H. H. Cambern, in 1849, bought up the old Masonic hall, or rather the original seminary, made additions and erected boarding houses, and opened a female seminary for the first time in Charlestown. Rev. George J. Reed was the first teacher. In this school all the higher branches were taught, the ladies leaving, in many instances with a diploma. Cambern's seminary lasted for fifteen or twenty years. The Rev. Mr. Reed was succeeded by John F. Lindley, of Frederickstown, Ohio. He was succeeded by Zebulon B. Sturgiis about 1859. Sturgus had previously been teaching in a frame building on upper Thompson street in what was known as the Charlestown boys' school. Here Sturgus made considerable reputation, his students coming from different states along the Ohio river. But in course of time changes were made. Untoward circumstances threw the old teacher out of his position. Students gathered here from all sections, and the faithful old teacher had the pleasure of seeing- in after years some of them quite distinguished lawyers, statesmen and philanthropists. Henry Crawford, one of the prominent lawyers of Chicago, and Senator Booth, of California, received much of their early education from Sturgus. The old teacher was a strict disciplinarian. Tobacco-chewers and swearers were not allowed among his students. It is related that when the first locomotive passed over the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, he whipped all the scholars for imitating the engine. Sturgus is no more: the old schools are gone, and the present generation is reaping their golden grain.

In Jeffersonville a 'Mr. Hibben established a seminary on the north side of jMarket street, just below Pearl street about 1850. This school was a high class institution and had quite a reputation, receiving scholars from a distance and for that day .giving them an education above the average. In Professor Wylie's history of Indiana University in Bloomington, appears the following: "He (Hibben) completed his sophomore year at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and was graduated at Transylvania University September i, 1848, from which university he received the degree of A. M. He then began his career as a teacher in Jeft'ersonville, Indiana." This school lasted until in the fifties and was known as the Jeffersonville Seminary. In 1850 the population of Clark county was fifteen thousand eight hundred twenty-eight.