Clinton County, Indiana - Chapter 1: Introductory, 1886

Within one brief generation a wild waste of unbroken prairie has been transformed into a cultivated region of thrift and prosperity, by the untiring zeal and energy of an enterprising people. The trails of hunters and trappers have given place to railroads and thoroughfare for vehicles of every description ; the cabins and garden patches of the pioneers have been succeeded by comfortable houses and broad fields of waving grain, with school-houses, churches, mills, postoffices and other institutions of convenience for each community. Add to these the prosperous city of Frankfort and numerous thriving villages, with extensive business and manufacturing interests, and the result is a work of which all concerned may well be proud.

The record of this marvelous change is history, and the most important that can be written. For fifty years the people of Clinton County have been making a history that for thrilling interest, grand pi-actical results, and lessons that may be perused with profit by citizens of other regions, will compare favorably witli the narrative of the history of any county in the Northwest; and, considering the extent of territory involved, it is as worthy of the pen of a Bancroft as even the story of our glorious Republic. While our venei'able ancestors may have said and believed opened to industry and civilization until a variety of causes had combined to form, as it were, a great heart, whose animating principle was improvement, whose impulses annually sent westward armies of noble men and women, and whose pulse is now felt throughout the length and breadth of the best country the sun ever shone upon - from the pineries of Maine to the vineyards of California, and from the sugar-canes of Lousiana to the wheat fields of Minnesota. Long may this heart beat and push forward its arteries and veins of commerce.

Not more from choice than from enforced necessity did the old pioneers bid farewell to the play-ground of their childhood and the graves of their fathers. One generation after another had worn themselves out in the service of their avaricious landlords. From the first flashes of daylight in the morning till the last glimmer of the setting sun, they had toiled unceasingly on, from father to son, carrying home each day on their aching shoulders the precious proceeds of their daily labor. Money and pride and power were handed down in the line of succession from the rich father to his son, while unceasing work and continuous poverty and everlasting obscurity were the heritage of the workingman and his children.

Their society was graded and degraded. It was not manners, nor industry, nor education, nor qualities of the head and heart that established the grade. It was money and jewels, and silk and satin, and broadcloth and imperious pride that triumphed over honest poverty and trampled the poor man and his children under the iron heel. The children of the rich and poor were not permitted to mingle with and to love each other. Courtship was more the work of the parents than of the sons and daughters. The golden calf was the key to matrimony. To perpetuate a self-constituted aristocracy, without power of brain, or the rich blood of royalty, purse was united to purse, and cousin with cousin, in bonds of matrimony, until the virus boiling in their blood was transmitted by the law of inheritance from one generation to another, and until nerves powerless and manhood dwarfed were on exhibition everywhere, and everywhere abhorred. For the sons and daughters of the poor man to remain there was to forever follow as our fathers had followed, and never to lead ; to submit, but never to rale; to obey, but never to command.

"Without money, or prestige, or influential friends, the old pioneers drifted along one by one, from State to State, until in Indiana - the garden of the Union - they have found inviting homes for each, and room for all. To secure and adorn these homes more than ordinary ambition was required, greater than ordinary endurance demanded, and unflinching determination was, by the force of necessity, written over every brow. It was not pomp, or parade, or glittering show that the pioneers were after. They sought for homes which they could call their own, homes for themselves and homes for their children. How well they have succeeded after a struggle of many years against the adverse tides let the records and tax-gatherers testify; let the broad cultivated fields and fruitbearing orchards, the flocks and the herds, the palatial residences, the places of business, the spacious halls, the clattering car- wheels and ponderous engines all testify.

There was a time when pioneers waded through deep snows, across bridgeless rivers, and tlirough bottomless sloughs, a score of miles to mill or market, and when more time was required to reach and return from market than is now required to cross the continent, or traverse the Atlantic. These were the times when our palaces were constructed of logs and covered with " shakes " riven from the forest trees. These were the times when our children were stowed away for the night in the low, dark attics, among the horns of the elk and the deer, and where through the chinks in the "shakes" they could count the twinkling stars. These were the times when our chairs and our bedsteads were hewn from the forest trees, and tables and bureaus constructed from the boxes in which their goods were brought. These were the times when the workingman labored six and sometimes seven days in the week, and all the hours there were in a day from sunrise to sunset.

"Whether all succeeded in what they undertook is not a question to be asked now. The proof that as a body they did succeed is all around us. Many individuals were perhaps disappointed. Fortunes and misfortunes belong to the human race. Not every man can have a school-house on the corner of his farm; not every man can have a bridge over a stream that flows by his dwelling ; not every man can have a railroad depot on the borders of his plantation, or a city in its center; and while these things are desirable in some respects, their advantages are often times outweighed by the almost perpetual presence of the foreign beggar, the dreaded tramp, the fear of fire and conflagration, and the insecurity from the presence of the midnight burglar, and the bold, bad men and women who lurk in ambush and infest the villages.

The good things of this earth are not all to be found in any one place ; but if more is to be found in one than another, that place is in our rural retreats, our quiet homes outside of the clamor and turmoil of city life.

In viewing the blessings which surround us, then, we should reverence those who have made them possible, and ever fondly cherish in memory the sturdy old pioneer and his log cabin.

Let us turn our eyes and thoughts back to the log cabin days of a quarter of a century ago, and contrast those homes with comfortable dwellings of to-day. Before us stands the old log cabin. Let as enter. Instinctively the head is uncovered in token of reverence to this relic of ancestral beginnings, early struggles and final triumphs. To the left is the deep, wide fire-place, in whose commodious space a group of children may sit by the fire, and up through the chimney may count the stars, while ghostly stories of witches and giants, and still more thrilling stories of Indians and' wild beasts, are whisperingly told and shudderingly heard. On the great crane hangs the old tea-kettle and the great iron pot. The huge shovel and tongs stand sentinel in either corner, while the great andirons patiently wait for the huge back-log. Over the fire-place hangs the trusty rifle. To the right of the fire-place stands the spinning wheel, while in the farther end of the room is seen the old-fashioned loom. Strings of drying apples and poles of drying pumpkins are overhead. Opposite the door in which you enter stands a huge deal table ; by its side the dresser whose pewter plates and "shining delf" catch and reflect the fire-place flames as shields of armies do the sunshine. From the corner of its shelves coyly peep out the relics of former china. In a curtained corner and hid from casual sight we find the mother's bed, and under it tlie trundle-bed, while near them a ladder indicates the loft where the older children sleep. To the left of the fireplace and in the corner opposite the spinning wheel is the mother's work-stand. Upon it lies the Bible, eviddntly much used, its family record telling of parents and friends a long way oflf, and telling, too, of children

Her spectacles, as if but just used, are inserted between the leaves of her Bible, and tell of her purpose to return to its comforts when cares permit and duty is done. A stool, a bench, well notched and

Let us for a moment watch the city visitors to this humble cabin. The city bride, innocent but thoughtless, and ignorant of labor and care, asks her city-bred husband, "Pray, what savages set this up?" Honestly confessing his ignorance, he replies, "I do not know." But see the pair upon whom age sits " frosty, but kindly." First, as they enter, they give a rapid glance about the cabin home, and then a mutual glance of eye to eye. "Why do tears start and fill their eyes? "Why do lips quiver? There are many who know why; but who that has not learned in the school of experience the full meaning of all these symbols of trials and privations, of loneliness and danger, can comprehend the story that they tell to the pioneer? "Within this cliinked and mud-daubed cabin we read the first pages of our history, and as we retire through its low doorway, and note the heavy battened door, its wooden hinges and its welcoming latch-string, is it strange tliat the scenes without should seem to be but a dream ? But the cabin and the palace, standing side by side in vivid contrast, tell their own story of this people's progress. They are a history and a prophecy in one.