Delaware County, Indiana - Chapter 4: Early Settlement: the Pioneer Period, 1924

Chapter 4: Early Settlement: the Pioneer Period

Upon taking up a consideration of the days of early settlement and of the pioneer period of the region now comprised within the confines of Delaware county, the reader should keep in mind the fact set out in the preceding chapter that the Indians still were in possession of the lands in this region up to the beginning of the third decade of the past century, or until their departure for the West following the cession of their lands to the white man in 1818.

After the treaty at St. Marys in that year the Indians were given two years in which to wind up their affairs here. Then the surveyors came in and the lines of the newly acquired lands were "run," these plats being turned over to the land office as a guide to prospective settlers. This work was not completed until in the summer of 1822 and thus lands for entry here were not available until in the fall of that year. Nine entries of land in the region now comprised within this county were made in 1822, and a few of these were merely speculative entries. There was no immediate "rush" of settlers in this direction. It was not long, however, until the desirability of these lands became recognized and the more attractive sites gradually were taken and settled on, until by the middle of the '20s there were a sufficient number of settlers here to begin the talk of making a separate county government and in 1827 this growing demand became crystallized in the movement which led to the formal erection of Delaware county.

The Work Of The Government Surveyors

When it is recalled that when the lands now comprised within the bounds of Delaware county were opened for settlement following the exodus of the Indians here in the early '20s of the past century this region was a practically unbroken wilderness of deep forest and pathless swamp, save for the Indian trails connecting the water ways, it may be conceived that the Government surveyors who "ran the lines" hereabout had their job cut out for them. The survey of this section of the New Purchase was made in 1821 and 1822, this work not having been begun until the expiration of the three-year extension of time granted the Delawares to prepare for their departure following the cession of their lands here at the treaty of St. Marys in 1818. By this time government land-office regulations had become so revised and systematized that those entering lands here after the survey had been completed had a little better assurance that they would be able to hold their lands than had many who had settled in the earlier settled portions of the state.

It will be recalled that during the first few years after Indiana was admitted to statehood (1816) the price of government land, the so-called congress land, was held at $2 an acre, one-fourth of which must be paid down and the balance in three equal annual payments, a year of grace following the date when' the last payment became due being granted before forfeiture of the claim was exacted, interest then being due on the extended installments. This government system caused many men to "bargain" for more land than it was possible for them to pay for. In many cases they would borrow sufficient money to buy a half section or a section of land, or as much as their ambition prompted and their credit could stand, paying in at the land office one-fourth of this $2 an acre government charge, or 50 cents an acre. To them no doubt the proposition looked good on the face, but in many instances they "counted their chickens before they were hatched," failing to recognize that their wilderness lands could have no earning value, in cash, during the period allowed them for taking care of the deferred payments. Speculators possessed of ready money often were able to take advantage of these terms by "unloading" on incoming settlers, for good lands quickly began to advance in price, but the bona fide settler often found himself utterly unable to meet his second or third payments and thus not only forfeited his initial payment but suffered the loss of his time as well as the initial improvements made on his insecure holdings and was left a broken and buffeted hanger on on the fringe of the advancing settlements, compelled to start in as a tenant farmer or as a woodsman on lands which he had hoped to hold as his very own. There were many such tragedies of blasted ambition.

for those who were unable to raise the money to meet their deferred payments, thousands finding it utterly impossible to meet their obligations. Then, as one commentator on the trials of that period writes, the subject ''was brought up before congress and the plan that was agreed upon was probably most favorable to the people of any that could have been adopted. All interest, which then amounted in many cases to more than one-third of the debt, was released. Lands entered, that part payments had been made on, were allowed to be relinquished and the amount that had been advanced was applied on such lands as the purchaser would select, paying for it in full. The lands were thereafter sold for cash only at $1.25 an acre." And this was the situation with respect to public lands when the lands here were opened for entry and settlement in 1822.

Patient Surveyors Face Toilsome Job

The lines of the townships incorporated within the present bounds of Delaware county were surveyed by B. Bentley, D. Hillis and J. Hendricks, government surveyors, who worked here in 1821, and by Thomas G. Noble, D. Hillis and J. F. Polk, who finished the task in 1822. One of the chain bearers on this government job was Robert A. Gordon, who remained here, afterward became a contractor and at the time of his death in 1891 was the oldest man in the county. The task which faced these surveyors and their crews of chain bearers and axmen may better be imagined than described. Back and forth, back and forth, through streams and swamps and through almost impenetrable forests, these plucky technicians forced their way, "blazing" their marks, setting their stakes and compiling their field notes amid difficulties that now might seem almost unsurmountable and which in view of the present well drained, cleared and improved condition of the lands hereabout certainly cannot properly be appreciated. A review of the transcript of the official plats of the original survey on file in the office of the county surveyor is deeply interesting, particularly as pointing out the swamp tracts that then created in northeastern Indiana a situation that hardly could be described in other words than as "the abomination of desolation." These are points, these primal conditions, that the youngsters of the present generation ought well to consider. They may thus come to entertain a more appreciative respect for the work done by the men and women who made habitable this once dreary and inhospitable waste.

In the plat of township 21, range 9 (Harrison), surveyed by T. G. Noble in 1822, there is marked a tract about a mile in width running northeast and southwest through sections 14, 15, 16, 21, 20 and 19, marked "Fallen Timber," apparently marking the course of a tornado which some time before had swept over that region. In sections 8, 7 and 18 of township 21, range 10 (Hamilton) there also is carried a notation of a tract of fallen timber. In township 22, range 9 (Washington), at the sharp bend of the Mississinewa, where Wheeling now is situated, just off the south bank of the bend, "Sulphur Spring" is plainly marked. It is interesting to note that the original surveyors, in all instances save one, made it Mississineva, the exceptional employment of the "'w" instead of the "v'" being in the Polk survey of township 21, range 11 (Delaware), made in 1822.

The Hackley Reserve

In township 20, range 10 (Center), the Rebecca Hackley reserve is indicated as carrying 672 acres. It will be recalled that the text of the treaty of St. Marys by which this reserve was created granted to Mrs. Hackley but "one section of land," or 640 acres, "so that it shall extend on both sides to include 320 acres of the prairie, in the bend of White river." It is understood that Mrs. Hackley refused to accept as a part of this "one section" the lands covered by the stream and in consequence of her stand in the matter the surveyors were instructed to plat her tract so that it would carry a full section or 640 acres not including the river course covering thirty-two acres, hence her tract of 672 acres in the original survey. This failure to include the bed of the river in the Hackley reserve was an interesting source of contention in a local law suit twenty years and more ago. In fact the survey of this reserve was for years the despair of local abstracters, but long ago abstracts were definitely established so that transfers of title have since been effected automatically and without confusion, the normal adjustments of time and records having done their perfect work.

Here on this original plat of the township, on the north bank of the river, on the outer bend of the curve, is indicated "Munsee T." (town), with a half dozen or more marks in red representing the tepees of the Indians at about the point now covered by the county fair ground. This Munsee town is the only village indicated in the original plats of the townships now comprising Delaware county. The field notes accompanying the survey of the tract now included within the city of Muncie set out that the land here is "second rate." In the plat of township 21, range 11 (Delaware), in section 21 of that township, on Campbell's creek (unnamed in the plat), there is a notation calling attention to 'Good Mill Site." While on the subject of township plats, it is proper to say that in many homes and offices of this county there are carefully preserved copies of the old _ "Atlas of Delaware County," published by Griffing, Gordon & Co., of Philadelphia in 1887, "from actual surveys;" an interesting and informative compilation covering that period, now of much historical value.

According to the tract book in the office of the recorder of Delaware county there were 13 entries of land registered as of the lands comprised within the present bounds of this county in 1822, the year in which lands in this region were opened to entry. Two of these entries are of date October 24, 1822, Uriah Bulla having entered the east half of the southeast quarter of section 19, township 20, range ~ 9, east (Mt. Pleasant township), and David Hillis, the northwest quarter of section 29 of the same township and range. On October 31 of the same year John Conner entered an eighty in town 19, range 11, east (Perry). On the following November 6 Jack Branson entered the west half of the southeast quarter of section 12 of the same township and on November 11 James Jackson and Lewis Reese entered tracts in township 20, range 11, the former taking the east half of the southeast quarter of section 21 and the latter the east half of the northwest quarter of section 31, both along the river. On December 2 James Bryson entered the east half of the southwest quarter of section 4, township 19, range 11, and on the 24th of the same month entered the east half of section 25 of township 20, range 10 (Center). On December 9, William Blunt Sr. entered the west half of the northwest quarter of section 28, town 20, range 11 (Liberty), and a week later, December 16, Wilder Potter entered the west half of the southwest quarter of the same section and three other tracts in that same township.

With these entries the tide of emigration began to turn in this direction and during the '20s there came to be a sufficient population hereabout to call for the erection of a new county and it was thus that in 1827 Delaware county as now constituted was organized, though at that time there were some of the present townships of the county that did not have a single settler. Following are the names of the persons (besides those mentioned above) who entered lands here during the '20s:

In township 19, range 8 (western tier of sections in Salem township) - Campbell Dale, Chamberlain Hutson, Thomas Fastnaugh, Isaac Carpenter, Benjamin F. and Joseph Nichols.

In township 20, range 9 (Mt. Pleasant) - -Samuel W. Harlan, Solomon and Benoni Tindall and Samuel Cosman (granted as an Indian reserve under Art. 7 of the treaty at St. Marys, October 3, 1818), Robert Gordon, Joseph VanMatre, Timothy Jones, Joseph Bell, William Hardwick, Absalom Doughorty, William Jones, Samuel Bell, Timothy Stewart, Lime Newland, George Michael, Joshua Baxter, John Luman, Powell Scott and Ralph Heath.

In township 20, range 10 (Center) - Joseph Bennett, Owen Russell, Conrad Mutter, Lemuel G. Jackson, Philip Moore, William Blunk Jr., William Brown, John Trimble, George Truitt, Lewis Moore, Elijah Reeves, Solomon Hobaugh, John Brown, James Murphy, James Thompson, Isaac Tilden, Thomas Collins, Goldsmith Gilbert (the Hackley reserve located under provisions of Art. 7 of the treaty at St. Marys in 1818), James Jackson and Charles Stout.

During the succeeding decade the lands hereabout were pretty much all taken up and neighborhood settlements had become well established. Though there were some land entries made during the '*A0s, and a few even as late as in the early '50s, the basic settlement had been effected by the close of the '30s. Therefore the names above set out and those that follow may be regarded as those of the real "fathers" of the community, the pioneers who blazed the trails and made easy the ways for the oncoming generations. Some of these names, of course, are those of mere land speculators, persons who did not become settlers, and whose names thus did not become continuing names in this community, but in the main the names here given are those of real settlers who came in and buckled down to the hard task of building homes and carving farms in and out of the forest wilderness. Following are the names of those who entered their lands here during the '30s of the past century:

Some Stories Relating To The Early Settlers

The older chronicles relating to this county carry much informative matter regarding the pioneers that to students possesses a continuing interest. These are available and are taking on a growing value. This is particularly true of the "History of Delaware County" compiled by Thomas B. Helm in 1880 and published in the following year by Kingman Bros., Chicago. Through the co-operation of many then living who were here during the settlement period some exceedingly valuable first-hand information was obtained and preserved. In that work also was preserved a story of Delaware county's part in the Civil war, compiled by Prof. E. Tucker, which is regarded as basic in its line. This local military history was further amplified in an exhaustive narrative supplied by A. L. Kerwood for a second "History of Delaware County" compiled under the editorial supervision of Dr. G. W. H. Kemper and published by the Lewis Publishing Company (Chicago) in 1908. Then there is John S. Ellis's interesting little volume, "Our County, Its History and Early Settlement by Townships; Entry of Public Lands, Present Owners, Reminiscences of Pioneer Life, Etc., With Original Poems," published in 1898 and printed by the Neely Printing Company of Muncie. In this largely informative volume are a series of sketches of pioneer life compiled by Mr. Ellis for newspaper publication and printed in the News (Muncie) and later revised and amplified for book publication. This is a book of 194 pages, with numerous pictures of scenes in the county at that time. In 1897 a volume of local biography was published by A. W. Bowen (Chicago) that also contains much interesting "side-light" information relating to pioneer times.

Value Of Newspaper Files

The newspapers also have long been helpful in "writing up" and thus preserving in their files interesting stories of a local historical character, and much valuable matter relating to the days of the pioneers thus has been preserved. Of course the newspaper files in themselves are the continuing records of local history and the fact that they have for many years been systematically preserved in the public library gives to this community the advantage of a continuing narrative of local affairs that will be invaluable as source material to the reviewers of future generations. Beginning in the fall of 1896 the Muncie Herald (Frank D. Haimbaugh then editor) carried on a singularly interesting and informative series of such articles, under the head of "Men of Muncie," biographical sketches, with portraits, of men "who have helped to make the city."" The newspapers of the present day are rendering valuable service to the cause of local history by their presentation from time to time, as special features, of articles bearing on the history of the local community.

As the Star said in commenting on the prospectus upon which this present volume is based: "Counties generally in Indiana are awakening to the fact that much of the basic material upon which their history rests has been relegated to 'the dust of old oblivion' and now are beginning anxiously to pick 'from the worm-holes of long vanished days' such details as will render demonstrative the foundations upon which have been reared the social and civic structures that have arisen here since the days of the pioneers." And the newspaper files are an invaluable supplement to the public records in the county's archives, an unimpeachable record of the doings of these "long vanished days" that to future reviewers will be of incalculable value, even as the current files have been valuable to the present reviewer.

Another Valuable Local History

Though not, of course, relating to the pioneer period there is another book relating to Delaware county's history that merits high mention. This is "Delaware County in the World War," a book of 134 pages, compiled by Lannes McPhetridge and published by the Enquirer Printing and Publishing Co., Indianapolis, in 1919. The title page of this very comprehensive review of the activities of Delaware county during the period of this country's participation in the World war carries the indorsement that it was "reviewed under the direction and censorship of the Delaware County Council of Defense" and it has come to be recognized as an invaluable source of reference for information with relation to the local activities during the stressful period which the review covers. Thoughtfully selected illustrations from photographs of the time give an additional value to the work, which will grow in value as the years pass.

It is understood that there was a fairly adequate distribution of this work in the community, thus insuring the preservation of the records there carried for future generations. A partial review of the table of contents of this work will reveal something of its scope, the book covering stories relating to the County Council of Defense, Woman's Council of Defense, conference on war work, war time on the farms, home war gardens, saving food in the homes, county fuel administration, merchants' economy committee, county conscription boards, farewells to the soldiers, merchants' war chests, service flags, "gold star" record, local company of the state militia, Student Army Training Corps, publicity in war times, Liberty loan campaigns, other money-raising campaigns, social service and war relief work of various local organizations, Red Cross activities, civilian forces at work, local factories in war work, colored people in war work, etc., in fact a general review of local activities during that period that will be invaluable for reference in years to come. As the preface to this book sets out, it was "intended not only as a history, but as a guide to coming generations should they be called upon, as were the patriots of the present, to rally their forces in defense of the country or of the world." :

The Ellis reminiscences have it that what probably was the first court held in what is now Delaware county was in the Vanarsdal settlement in Perry township, the settlers there setting up their own court and selecting John Rees, afterward one of the first associate judges of the county, as judge to try "Old Obediah," a negro chicken thief, who was duly found guilty and then permitted to make his escape to other parts as a riddance to the neighborhood. Another local offender, 'Old Tom" Hall, a white man, was sentenced by this same court, in the lack of a formal jail, to be confined in a wolf pen - a log trap - for two days for bee stealing.

The lands now included in Perry township naturally were the first to be settled, as lying nearest to the settlements on the east, the Vanarsdals and the Blunts and the Richardsons and one or two other families having come over as early as in the spring of 1820 to "squat" pending the formal opening of the lands to entry. The Helm chronicle has it in this connection that "one of the first acts of our pioneer party was the erection of rude cabins for the shelter of their families. Within a few days after their arrival four new families joined them. Mr. Vanarsdal, with the hospitality characteristic of the times, took them into his own cabin, there to remain until they could erect homes of their own. His house was about fifteen feet square and the inconvenience of having five families in such narrow quarters may be better imagined than described. Two weeks elapsed ere the inmates of this house completed their respective abodes." The first land entrant in this township, as has been noted, was John Connor. Among other earlier settlers were the Bransons, the Reeses, the Stumps, the Sanfords and the Wallings, all of whom came in during the '20s. It also was in this township that Goldsmith Gilbert, the New York trader who later developed the Muncietown village site, first established himself, at the mouth of Prairie creek, in 1822 or 1823. He did not make formal entry of the land on which he settled and made his improvements and an enterprising yankee (Wilder Potter), who had been making his home with him, presently went to the land office, filed his claim to the land and took possession. It was then that Gilbert moved on up onto the Mississinewa and started his trading post, later buying the Hackley Reserve at the bend of White river and establishing there the townsite. It was in this township that the first religious services in what is now Delaware county were held and the first school house erected, as is told elsewhere. Social seniority thus properly is claimed by the people of Perry township. Mrs. Jane (McClellan) Vanarsdal, one of this first group of settlers in Delaware county, lived to be ninety-six years of age, her death occurring in 1885.

It is a matter of continuing regret that no story of the official beginnings of the several civil townships in Delaware county is possible, the destruction of the early records of the commissioners' court by fire having removed forever the records of 'the delimitation of these townships that would have afforded source material for such a narrative. It is known, however, as is pointed out in the chapter relating to county government, that when the lands now included in this county were under the civil jurisdiction of Randolph county, before the erection of Delaware county, they were comprised within a vaguely defined area styled Liberty township. When the lines of the present civil township of Liberty were defined is not known. The first entry of land made within these present confines was made by William Blunt on December 9, 1822, he having settled along the river just southwest of where the Smithfield settlement presently was established, and he is regarded as probably the first permanent settler of that township. By the time Delaware county was erected in 1827 there were about twenty families settled in the township. It is said that the first election held in what is now Delaware county was held in this township, the fall election of 1824, at the cabin of William Williams, which cabin also was the local stop for the mail carrier, Harvey Fitzpatrick, on his way through the settlements. The total number of votes at this election, it is said, did not exceed twenty and the ballots and tally sheets were carried to Winchester by Samuel Simmons, a deputy sheriff for this district, and then a resident of what is now Perry township, who was county agent when the county seat was established in 1827. Among those who were here in the 720s were Wilder Potter, the Bransons, the Ashleys, the Jacksons, the Casteels, the Truitts, the Stouts, the Thornburgs, the Coxes, the Wiers, the Fowlers, the Conners, the Boltons, the Lewis Reeses, the Marshalls, the Duncans and the Clines. The Smithfield settlement sprang up around the water mill erected there by David Stout in the middle 720s, and not long afterward John G. Deeds erected a second mill. These settlements were effected along the river. It was not until ten years later that settlement began in what then were regarded as the less desirable lands in the northern part of the township. The pioneer cemetery was established at a point about a mile west of the present Mt. Tabor church and when the church later was erected the bodies were removed to the church yard.

The first white resident of what is now Monroe township is said to have been Jonathan Mills, a Tennesseean, who had come over into Indiana from Greene county, Ohio, and had gradually pushed his way westward, hunting and trapping, until he was found here, a squatter, in 1821. Two or three years later he was joined here by his kinsmen, the three Gibson brothers. In 1826 came the Mansfield brothers, James and John, who settled on the west side of Buck creek. Before the end of that decade there were several others here, including the Beesons, the Lenoxes, the Crums, the Taylors, the Hodges, the Antrims and the Howells, but the rush of settlers did not come until in the '30s, the last land there having been taken up in 1837. The first mill was that erected by Amaziah Beeson on Buck creek in 1831, the settlers prior to that time having had to drive down to Crull's mill in Wayne county. The first road "viewed" through the township was the road running down from Muncie along east of Buck creek through the Macedonia settlement and on into Henry county, which was laid out in 1829. It is narrated that "a draft for labor was made upon all the able-bodied men and boys along the line, and it is said they responded to the call with a hearty good will." Roads naturally were the first consideration in those days and all "pitched in" to help cut a highway through the woods or build corduroys over the swamps.

In Salem township, in the southwestern part of the county, effective settlement did not begin until in the middle '20s, though in common with other portions of this region, hunters and trappers haa been present here earlier, from the time of the departure of the Indians. It is said that the first permanent settler was William Dilts, who had come up here from Henry county in the spring of 1824. In the spring of the next year David VanMatre came here "spying out the land," and in the fall of that year (1825) entered the southwest quarter of section 21, along the Henry county line. He made some improvements on the place and in the spring of 1827, the year in which Delaware county was erected, was joined here by his family, his wife and ten children. William VanMatre, a member of this family, became the first clerk of Delaware county and the first postmaster at Muncietown.

While the VanMatres were getting established three other families joined his settlement, the Windsors, the McCullochs and the Wilsons, who had leased lands in the adjoining school section (16). In 1880 it was written of David VanMatre, who then was still living on the land he had entered, that "in the early years of his residence in the township he was a robust, hearty man, and was always present at house-raisings and log-rollings and rendered cheerful assistance to his neighbors in their efforts to build their homes and improve their farms." Lawrence Wilson, one of these neighbors who had leased a tract of school land, did not acquire title until in the fall of 1834. Not long afterward he was killed by a fall from a horse. Aquila Davis, a Virginian, came in in 1825. He took an active interest in stimulating settlement "'and made a practice of piloting new settlers to their lands and showing choice locations to prospective settlers." Among the other settlers in Salem township during the '20s were

Robert Williams, James Marsh, Ralph Heath, John Tomlinson, John Lain, Campbell Dale, John Luman, Thomas Fastnaugh, Chamberlain Hutson, Isaac Carpenter, Daniel Shawhan, John VanMatre, Ransom Makepeace, Samuel Johnson, John Perdue and Enoch Nation, the latter of whom became a member of the first board of commissioners for Delaware county.

The first cemetery in the township was established on a plot of ground donated by Ralph Heath. The first formal road "viewed" in the township was an east-and-west road designed to cut into the old Richmond road at New Burlington and running on west toward Chesterfield. This road later was intersected by the Muncie-Middletown road opened in 1832. It is said the first saw mill was put up by John Tomlinson, then an associate judge of the circuit court, in 1835, and that in this same year the first kiln of brick was burned by Ralph and Harvey Heath and John Lain, the settlers thus being enabled to replace their log cabins by structures of plank or brick. The first school was built on the David VanMatre place in 1828. At a meeting held in the home of Judge Tomlinson in 1831 the Methodists effected an organization and for fourteen years the Judge was the leader of the class. The story of the founding of the village of Daleville is told elsewhere.

_ Elsewhere also is set out the story of the founding of Oliver H. Smith's town of Yorktown in the township of Mt. Pleasant, adjoining Salem on the north, as well as of the Indian reservation on the site of which the town came to be laid out. The first man to enter land in this township was David Hillis, whose entry to the northwest quarter of section 29, along the river, bears date of October 24, 1822. It is said that Hillis made some improvements on his place and then moved on. And then in the next year (1823) came the VanMatres, Joseph in section 20 and William (mentioned above) in section 19, about where Mud creek empties into the river. Other settlers during the later '20s were Joseph Landry, the Newlands, the Bells, the Hardwicks, the Stewarts, the Bentleys, the Joneses, the Davises, the Browns and David Kilgore, afterward judge of the circuit court, who came in in 1829 "with just enough money to purchase his land." In 1831 he married Mary G. VanMatre, the ceremony being performed by William Jones, the first justice of the peace of the new township which had just been erected in that year. | This was 'Squire Jones's first magisterial act and it is written of this ceremony that he "was only able to perform his part after a careful drill by the groom."

David Kilgore was a Kentuckian, born in 1804, and was thus about twenty-five years of age when he came to Delaware county. In Brookville he had studied law with James Brown Ray, afterward. Governor of Indiana, and then, with four law books in his possession, came up here and entered a tract of land. In 1832 he was elected to represent this district in the Legislature, in 1839 was elected to the circuit bench, in 1850 he represented this district in the state constitutional convention and in that same year was elected to Congress, in which he served for several terms. He was a successful manager and came to be the owner of nearly one thousand acres of land in this county. His last days were spent on his home farm in Mt. Pleasant township, where he died in January, 1879. Judge Kilgore taught the first school held in Mt. Pleasant township, in 1831, in an abandoned cabin on the Jonathan Bentley farm. The first mill was that built alongside Buck creek, at the present site of Yorktown, by William Hardwick in 1830, six years before Oliver H. Smith platted the town. This was a combination saw mill and grist mill and it later came into possession of Smith, who turned it into a woolen mill, which was operated for many years thereafter. The flour mill was expanded by M. C. Smith, a son of the former owner, and both it and the woolen mill were flourishing industries in pioneer days.

Harrison township, to the north of Mt. Pleasant township, was originally included within the bounds of the latter township and did not attain a separate civic identity until about 1834 or 1835, as there was little settlement there during the early '30s. Lands had been open here for ten years before an entry was made as of the lands in the present boundaries of Harrison township, the first entry having been that of Isaac Adamson in 1832. Not long afterward Adamson, who had established his home on his place, died from the effects of an injury sustained in helping a neighbor raise his house. Oliver P. Jones entered a tract in the fall of 1832 and in the next year Archibald Parker moved up from the Yorktown neighborhood and entered a tract in section 36. It was Parker who presently circulated the petition which prompted the county commissioners to set off a new township and it was at his suggestion that the name Harrison was given the township, for he was a soldier of the War of 1812 and desired thus to honor his old commander. Parker moved over into Madison county in the '40s and thence some years later migrated to Iowa, where he died in 1878. Carvender Conner settled in section 28 in 1833 and in that same year William Patton, who later became one of the first justices of the peace in the township, located on an adjoining farm.

The Helm narrative has it that "for several years the township settled slowly and as late as 1837 the arrival of new settlers was marked by as much interest as at an earlier date. Enoch Garner came with his family in that year, and it is said by his son Vincent that they were as much alone, to all appearance, as if they were the only settlers in the township. Their nearest neighbor was Charles Stout, who lived about two miles southeast, while Samuel Brady lived three miles north, and Job Garner three miles east."" The Enoch Garners had settled over on the western edge of the township in what came to be the King's Chapel neighborhood. The early roads in Harrison township were little more than neighborhood makeshifts and the first road laid out with any particular attempt at system is said to have been the Delphi and Muncie state road. The state surveyors "blazed the way" for this road through the woods and then left it for the local supervisors to cut the way through and finish the job, with the result that "a number of years elapsed between the date of its location and the time when it was cleared and opened for travel." The first mill was a corn cracker (hand power) put up by Charles Stout for the convenience of his neighbors and not long afterward Samuel McCune erected a horsepower mill. Then in the fall of 1842 Joshua Howell erected a water mill on Killbuck, south of Bethel, and in that same year Jesse Stout set up a distillery on his place along the creek in that same neighborhood. Stout was a local preacher of Baptist persuasion and "between the labors of his distillery, it is said, he would preach and exhort with great power and force." It also has been written of this early enterprise that ''the demand for the article he manufactured was so great that it was purchased by his patrons as fast as it could be made. They bought it red-hot from the still and cooled it in tincups at the neighboring creek." When the township was organized Stout was elected one of the first justices of the peace.

It is said that the first school in the township was that conducted in a cabin on the Job Garner place in the winter of 1834-35. This became an early social center and the first formal religious services held in the township were carried on there, the school house being used by any and all denominations that sought to "hold forth." It was at this center that Jacob W. Miller put up a little brick building and started the first store in the settlement. He also served as postmaster and carried on until he presently sold out to William Moore, who had established himself at Bethel, which then became the postoffice. That was in the early 750s. Olive Chapel was not built until twenty years later. Harrison township was handicapped by its large area of swamp lands and thus got a bad start, but those former swamp lands now are just about the richest in the county.

Settlers Face Difficult Problem

The same may be said of Washington township, adjoining Harrison on the north and constituting the northwestern corner of the county, where the settlers faced an exceedingly difficult problem of clearing and draining. These swamp lands long retarded settlement in that part of the county and with the exception of a few settlers who had gathered along the river in the vicinity of the trading post at the present site of the village of Wheeling little development work was done there until in the late 380s and early '40s. In 1823 David Conner entered a tract of land in what is now the Wheeling neighborhood and established on this place his trader, a man of the name of Broderick, who for some years thereafter carried on his traffic with the Indians who were ranging up and down the Mississinewa, the trade with the Pottawattomies and the Miamis still continuing profitable here in the New Purchase. Broderick kept up the post for three years, the only white man living in what now is Washington township, and was succeeded by another of the Conner traders, Robert Sanders, who remained on the scene after settlement began to grope along up that way, and presently started a tavern which proved a great convenience when the government road opened up a main highway to the north and west.

In 1829 William Heal and Thomas Littler entered lands in that same neighborhood (section 15) and established their homes there, the first farmers to come into the township. John W. Heal, son of William Heal, born in February, 1831, was the first white child born in the township. John Graham, who came in from Ohio in 1830, helped clear and farm the Heal tract and his daughter Mary was the first female white child born in the township. The only other settler to enter land here in the '20s was John Dillie, who came in in 1829 with his two sons and their families and settled along the river in section 12, the northeast corner of the township. Later settlers in this township were the Wilsons, the Lansings, the Whartons, the Ginns, the Watsons, the Reynoldses, the Beouys, the Dunns, the Whartons, the Carmens, the Moores, the Ashcrofts, the Richardsons and the Kains, who were here by 1834 and most of whom held to the river bottoms. Thomas Beouy and John Dunn were the first to open lands in the central portion of the township and in due time all the township was taken up. In 1830 a road was viewed from Muncie to intersect the old government road and this (to the Wheeling settlement) became.the first post route in the township.

The first school in the settlement was carried on by Mrs. William Heal in her home, and in that house also was conducted the first religious services, the Methodists having charge, and there a class was organized which later put up a log meeting house on land donated by Thomas Littler and called it the Olive Branch church. Mrs. Heal's name was Olive and the pioneer community sought thus to honor her services in the name of the new church. The first brick kiln was put up by William Heal. The first miller was Uriah Powers, who also had a distillery. Under various changes of management this distillery was maintained until about 1870, when it was destroyed by fire. Incendiarism was suspected and the suspect was arrested, but promptly acquitted. Powers also was the first store keeper besides the earlier post traders. His place was on the farm of Joseph Wilson, who had an interest in his milling business, the two operating both a flour mill and asawmill. The first run of stones in this flour mill were "niggerheads" taken from the river and dressed down. The mills got their power from the river. This mill site provided the nucleus for a village to which the name of Elizabethtown was given and for which the proprietors had high hopes, but it long ago lost its place on the map. Further mention of Wheeling and New Corner (Gaston), earlier known as "Snagtown," in this township is made elsewhere.

Union township, over east of Washington, got going in the way of settlement about the same time as the latter, the river, which flows through the township, also proving the incentive to early settlement. Though there were several "squatters" here along the river in the late '20s, there were but two formal land entries as of that township in that decade, those of Tristram Starbuck and Nimrod Jester, both entering in section 22, but the latter did not occupy his land until some years later. Starbuck came in from Wayne county, established his home there along the river just west of the present city of Eaton and became one of the leaders in the settlement that presently grew up. In 1830 John Ginn, a native of Ireland who had been living in Pennsylvania, came in with his family and settled down. In the next year he put out an orchard, bringing the slips up from Wayne county, and this is said to have been the first orchard in the township. Among the other settlers in 1830 was William Easley, who settled at the mouth of the creek which still bears his name, just east of Eaton. In the spring of 1831 Francis Harris came in with his family and set up a mill along the river, making his buhrs from "nigger-heads" taken from the river and utilizing a hollow sycamore log as a boltingchest. This mill, which provided a sort of a community center, became the nucleus around which the present city of Eaton gradually expanded. .

The desirability of these bottom lands and the fact that the Mississinewa continued to hold its own as a traffic way brought settlers - in rapidly after a start had been made and by the middle '30s most of the best land had been taken up, the last entry as of that township having been made in 1837. It must be recalled that in those days, before systematic drainage had brought the streams to their present low levels, the Mississinewa and the White rivers were regarded as navigable for pirouge traffic the greater part of the year and a considerable trade was carried on along these waterways, the traffic down to Peru being particularly worth while for those engaged in it. As an older chronicle has it, "there was a good market at fair prices for the products of the settlement, and cash began to take the place of furs as a circulating medium." The old military road, cut during the campaigns hereabout in connection with the War of 1812, from Greenville to about the present site of Marion, was more or less available to the pioneers of Union township - with a good deal of clearing of the second growth stuff which meanwhile had all but obliterated the old trail, and this thus early became the chief highway into the settlement.

It is said that the first school in the township was conducted in a cabin on the Junius McMillan place in section 24, where the Eaton settlement later developed. The first church service is said to have been held in the home of John Ginn, up in the northwest corner of the township, at the mouth of Lick creek, the class there organized and a class organized at about the same time in the home of Tristram Starbuck later merging into the Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal congregation, which put up a meeting house at the cross roads north of the river about the center of the township. The limestone quarries at Eaton were a valuable early asset to the community. When the railroad came along in 1870 the settlement began to "look up" and when less than twenty years later the gas "boom" came on the town began to flourish and for years has held its own, contesting with Albany the claim to be the second town in the county in point of population. At the election held on July 5, 1878, to determine the matter of incorporation of the village, there were twenty-eight votes cast and every one favored incorporation. The last census gave Eaton a population of 1,214.

Niles township, just east of Union and occupying the northeastern corner of the county, is traversed in its southwestern sections (31 and 32) by the Mississinewa, along the left bank of which is located the ancient trading center of Granville, which long ago had a measure of commercial importance it no longer possesses. With the exception of that corner of the township traversed by the river, this was really the "remote" township of the county in the days of the beginning of a social order here and its settlement was much retarded by the generally wild character of the land before the work of clearing and draining had brought it to its present admirable state. There were no land entries made as of this township in the '20s. Indians still occupied the lands along the Salamonie, to the north, and the prospect here was not attractive to those who early began to seek out locations in this section of the New Purchase. It is said that the first white man to make his habitation in what is now Niles township was one Hessenflow, who had "squatted" on the left bank of the Mississinewa about where the Granville settlement later came to be effected. He is said to have been there in 1828, but his name is not included among those who later took up lands in the township. In those southwestern sections there along the river lands began to be taken up in 1831, among the early settlers thereabout being found the Gregorys, the Jameses, the Hances, the Hillmans, the Shaws, the Venards, the Thomases, the Engards, the Battrealls, the O'Neills, the Ruggleses, the Kyles, the Suttons, the Prices and the Downings. Samuel C. Clark, who came over from Champaign county, Ohio, and settled in section 29, just north and east of the Granville settlement, as late as 1835 is quoted in an older chronicle as having declared that at that date "he could have traveled from his claim to Ft. Wayne without passing the habitation of a human being excepting the cabin of the old Indian, Godfroy, on the Salamonie river." It was in that same year that Thomas D. Berry, who for years served as township trustee, came over from Highland county, Ohio, and settled in section 25. In the next year (1836) came John Buckles, also an Ohioan, and presently erected the first brick house put up in the township. Elder John Buckles, a cousin of the Rev. Abram Buckles, father of the late Judge Joseph S. Buckles, became pastor of the Mississinewa Old School Regular Baptist church of Niles township and was for many years a preacher in his district, carrying four charges, "and never received a salary from any church or pay for attending a funeral." The same also has been said of Abram Buckles, who for forty years preached for the Muncie Baptists without pay. The settlers in that part of Niles township had use of the old Greenville-Marion trail and the first road formally "viewed" through the township, north and south, was the Smithfield-Montpelier road surveyed in 1836. An older chronicle says that "one Sunday morning in the year 1841 John Buckles and his brother Timothy blazed a road from his farm to Sutton's (now Dunkirk), a distance of a mile and half, taking the rays of the rising sun as their guide to a direct line. A subsequent survey of this route proved that their lines varied but slightly from a due east course. This road was extended entirely across the township and that part laid out by the brothers Buckles was only slightly modified." The section line road running through the township one mile west of the county line was called "Greene street" because the majority of the settlers on both sides of the road were former residents of Greene county, Ohio. Greene township,

John Gregory was the owner of the tract where the Granville settlement grew up as a trading center surrounding the opening of stores there along the river about 1836, James A. Maddy and David Shideler being mentioned as the first merchants. The first school is said to have been taught in 1837 in the cabin put up by John Sutton three or four years before and the first church services were held in the cabin of Eli H. Anderson, the Methodists there organizing a class of seven members in 1836. In the same year, at the house of Isaac Martin, the Baptists effected an organization under the direction of Elder Jesse Mellet. These were the Regular Predestinarian Baptists. The Christian church people effected an organization about the same time, under the ministration of Elder John Battreall.

Delaware township, situated just south of Niles, also got a late start in the way of settlement, there having been no land entries as of this tract until in the '30s, by which time the desirability of the lands along the Mississinewa, which traverses the upper part of the township, began to be recognized by incoming settlers. There was at least one white man here in the '20s, however, for the older chronicles carry mention of John Boyles, who had apparently been living among the Indians there along the river some time prior to 1828, when his presence first was noted by white men. It is said of Boyles that "he was as much like an Indian in his habits as a white man could be, and the terrible scars that covered his neck and person, he said, were received in fights with the Indians." When settlers began to invade his domain Boyles in 1832 entered his formal claim to the tract of land he had been occupying along the right bank of the river in section 7 and on which he had erected a crude corn cracker. He thus probably was the first miller in the township. John Black presently bought him out and on the opposite side of the river erected a mill which for three generations was known as Black's mill.

Among the others who were here during the late '20s was the family of Andrew Kennedy, which had become established along the river in section 2, the present site of the town of Albany. The Kennedys, however, did not make entry of their claim and in 1832 sold the improvements they had made to William Venard, who made formal entry of the land and in the next year laid out the Albany townsite, as is told elsewhere. William Venard's brother Francis took a claim in section 3, just west of his brother's, at the same time. In 1835 Kennedy took a claim farther down the river, in section 15. A contemporary of Venard's in section 2 was David Jones, who settled there in the fall of 1831. When the township in time received separate civil jurisdiction he was elected justice of the peace. Among the settlers in 1832 were James Dean and the two Boots brothers, Joseph Bantz, Joseph O'Neal and Lewis Stoner. Others who took up bottom lands there during the early '30s were the Pendroys, the Strongs, the Bantzes, the Joneses, the Quinns, the Crons, the Densmores, the Brights, the Staffords, the Thomases, the Malcoms, the Depoys, the Godloves, the McCoys, the Wilsons, the Martins, the Baldridges, the Wilcoxons, the Richardsons, the Lennons, the Whites, the Brights, the Keevers, the Lees, the Custers, the Pittingers and the Orrs. Settlers then began to come in rapidly and by 1838 all the land in the township was taken up.

The first road laid out through the township, excepting the old river trail, was a highway to connect Deed's mill (Smithfield) with the Albany settlement, which was cut through about 1834 but was not formally surveyed and straightened until in 1840. In the western part of the township there was a similar highway running up from Muncietown to Boyle's mill and thence to Granville. And thus began a system of highways which in course of time was. to evolve into the present admirable system. It is said that the first store in the township was started by Granville Hastings, who had come up from Wayne county and had started a mill on his place in section 15. To this early flour mill he presently added a saw mill and these with his store proved a great convenience to the neighborhood, this center coming to be known as Sharon. Uriah Pace, it is said, was the first merchant in the Albany settlement. The old Boyles mill site in 1838 was bought by John Black, who put up a mill much better adapted to the needs of the growing settlement. The old Sharon mill presently came into possession of Joseph Godlove and passed through several other hands before finally being abandoned. It is said that the first school in the township was taught in the kitchen of the Joseph Godlove home. Later the William Venard cabin was turned into a school house, and thus the Albany schools got their start. It was about this time that a class of Methodists was organized in the home of Jacob Pendroy, and not long afterward a log meeting house was erected on

John W. Strong's place for the accommodation of both church and school. The social order thereabout thus early became established. When the railroad came along in the '70s the line of the survey took in Albany, which profited greatly by the consequent development. The coming of the gas "boom" later gave another impetus to the town and later development has been about normal, the present population of the town being given as 1,333.

Lack Of Waterways A Disadvantage

Hamilton township, lying west of Delaware and north of Center, progressed about evenly with its neighbors in the way of settlement, although naturally the location of the county seat in Center township gave the latter an advantage. Hamilton was at a disadvantage in its lack of waterways, which had proved helpful to those of the townships through which the rivers run, and during the '20s there were but three entries made to lands in the territory now comprised within Hamilton township, these having been the claims of Owen Russell, Joseph Bennett and Thomas Reeves. Owen Russell, a Virginian, came in with his family from Alliance, Ohio, in the fall of 1829 and settled on a tract in the lower part of what later came to be organized as Hamilton township, about two miles north of Muncie, taking over there the improvements that had been made on the place by Andrew E. Boggs, also an Ohioan, who had "'squatted"' there some time prior to its formal entry by Russell, the latter giving Boggs a yoke of oxen for his labor in clearing a cabin site. Bennett settled in that same neighborhood. Following these, within the next year or two, came Adam Shaffer, Samuel Massey, James Nottingham and a few others, but there was little real movement in the way of settlement until in the middle '30s, by which time the Kirkpatricks, the Smiths, the Martins, the Robertsons, the Colliers, the Slovers, the Turners, the Moores, the Collinses and the Freemans are found as land entrants.

In 1836 and 1837 others came in until, including the lands taken over by speculators, all the land in the township had been taken up. A list of freeholders in 1840, made for the tax duplicate, shows 118 such, though quite a number of these were non-resident speculators. The census of 1850 gave Hamilton township a population of but 462, the smallest of any township in the county. It is said the first white child born in the township was Riley, son of Adam Shaffer, in 1831. Owen Russell is said to have set out the first orchard, in 1830. The first school in the township is said to have been taught in a cabin on the Thomas Reeves place, which also was used as a place for holding neighborhood religious meetings. The township is understood to have been erected into a separate civic entity in 1838. When the railroads came in, and three of them new traverse the township, trading points were established at Shideler, Royerton and Anthony, but the proximity of these points to Muncie and Eaton operated to prevent any considerable development and Hamilton township has remained an essentially agricultural region, blessed in its fine consolidated school at Royerton and in its rich farms.

Beginning Of Settlement In Center

Center township had no "boom" in the way of settlement until the county was organized in 1827 and the county seat was established at the old Munsee Town there at the bend of the river where Goldsmith Gilbert had set up his trading post upon his acquisition of the Hackley reserve the year before, and he and Lemuel Jackson and William Brown were on the ground as landowners there and in a position to donate a townsite for the county seat when the commissioners appointed to erect the county were looking about for a likely point for the establishment of a center of local government. The news of the location of the county seat attracted some attention among prospective settlers and by the end of the '20s no fewer than twenty land entries had been made as of the lands now comprised within the confines of Center township. Though definite official records have been lost, it is apparent from collateral records that the commissioners or "justices" erected Center township contemporaneously with the erection of the county and that its original confines took in not only the present Center but Hamilton and the lands north, for Delaware county at that time comprised much more than its present territory, as will be noted presently in another chapter. The development of Center township, as now constituted, has been so intimately connected with the development of the city of Muncie, which occupies the geographical center of the township, that further reference to it will be deferred for general treatment in the chapter relating to the county seat.

This somewhat sketchy review of the development of the several townships of the county and of the period of the pioneers is but introductory to the more comprehensive details of development that follow.

Further details regarding the social, commercial and industrial life of the community in general will be found in succeeding chapters and in the biographical section of this work, wherein is carried the life stories of many of the men who were leaders in the business life of the community in days gone by and of many who now are equally active and influential in their generation. Concerning these biographies and the wealth of information they carry, it may be well to bear in mind, as one thoughtful writer has put it, that "biography is the foundation of all history, for the processes of achievement grow out of what men do as men. These real things, the story of these individual achievements, must be recorded that they may bring back to the generations that are passing and those that are coming the memories of what they and their fathers did. The successors of these founders must know what were the foundations of our community history, that they may have in them and their builders that pride without which we cannot become and remain a united force. If our people cannot learn how their heritage has been created they will not have either the interest or the intelligence to know and understand the larger things in the world about them."

First White Person Born In Present Limits Of Muncie

The first white person born within the present limits of the city of Muncie was Mary Jane Gilbert, daughter of Goldsmith C. Gilbert, the pioneer merchant and miller, and of the latter's first wife, Mary Bishop, who had bravely accompanied her adventurous husband out here from New York about the time lands here in the New Purchase were opened for settlement and whose last days were spent here, her death occurring about 1830, she thus long having predeceased her husband, who died in 1844, while serving as a member of the Legislature from this district. Mary Jane Gilbert was born in 1825 here on the Hackley Reserve, which her father had bought and on which he had established a trading post, which became the nucleus for the development of the present city of Muncie, the date of her birth thus having been two years before the formal erection of Delaware county and the establishment of the county seat at the site of the trading post, her father, out of his land holdings here, having made a donation for a town site.

many years ago and now in the possession of her daughter, Mrs. Julia Williamson. This sampler, which bears the date line, "Muncietown, June 6, 1837," incontestibly sets out the fact that "Mary Jane Gilbert was born in the year of our Lord 1825." Then in the same childish though exemplary lettering follow the letters of the alphabet, after the manner of samplers, both "caps" and "lower case" letters being represented, this being accompanied by the working into the sampler of an ornamental house and tree, with a representation of what seems to be a well-sweep alongside. Mrs. Williamson has several such souvenirs of the younger days of her mother, these now constituting priceless relics of pioneer days hereabout.

Mary Jane Gilbert lived to be near eighty years of age and all her life was spent in Muncie, she thus having lived, as the Muncie Herald put it at the time of her death, "to see a wilderness changed into a great center of population and activity." 'Rounded out to almost four score years," concluded the Herald, "a beautiful life is ended and the blooms and blossoms of the place of her birth cover the last resting place." Her death occurred on June 24, 1904. A contemporary appreciation of the life and services of this real pioneer said: "As during life, she was ever ready for all emergencies, so at death her household was in order." She was twice married. Her first husband was Dr. Daniel H. Andrews, a New Yorker and one of the most forceful of the pioneer physicians of this county, to whom she was married on October 31, 1844, and who died on March 12, 1856, leaving four children, the daughter, Julia (widow of J. H. Williamson), and three sons, Samuel, John E. and George R. Andrews, who survive. On March 17, 1858, the widow Andrews married Joseph Edmonds, also of Muncie, who died in 1892 and whom she thus survived for about twelve years.

Some Interesting Reminiscences

Mrs. Edmonds retained to the end her vivid recollections of the early days of the settlement here and from time to time had contributed to the local press interesting reminiscences of the days now long gone. In one of these, published in the Times of November 22, 1895, under the head of "Reminiscences of Muncie's Oldest Settler," she wrote that "my father, Goldsmith Coffeen Gilbert, and my mother, Mary Bishop Gilbert, were pioneers of Delaware county. They first settled on Prairie creek, but soon moved near the Mississinewa river.

There they had two cabins, one to live in, the other to use as a trading house, for father then was trading with the Indians. While away from home for supplies for his business, the Indians got into a drunken row, burned his trading house, almost killed my mother and - little brother and killed the cattle and a big dog. The latter they cooked in an iron kettle and ate it as they danced around the fire in their drunken frenzy. My mother was hidden in a pile of furs and cared for by some friendly Indians until the rest had sobered up and my father returned."

This narrative then takes up the matter of the purchase of the Hackley Reserve by Mrs. Edmonds' father and settlement at the Munsee town and continues: "After building his cabins, father built a saw mill, two blacksmith shops, two cooper shops, a grist mill, a still house, a woolen factory and several houses. The woolen factory was five stories high. He managed all his business in the building I have mentioned - kept tavern, also burned lime and did not neglect politics when there were enough settlers to be represented in the Legislature. He brought apple sprouts and currant slips on horseback from Ohio, and peach, pumpkin and garden seeds he carried in his saddle bags from the same state." The story then goes on to say that Mrs. Edmonds was the first white child born in Muncietown and the first white female child born in the present limits of Delaware county, stating that Scott Richardson (Perry township) was the first white male child born in what is now this county. The place of Mrs. Edmonds' birth was the Gilbert cabin which stood on the square now occupied by the Wysor residence (418 North Walnut street), the site of this old Gilbert residence occupying the full square north of North street, between Walnut and Mulberry, and with its beautifully planted grounds and quaint old house, now owned and maintained by Harry Wysor, son of Jacob H. Wysor, a pioneer merchant and miller, constituting one of the most picturesque urban sites in eastern Indiana.

Continuing, Mrs. Edmonds' narrative says that "father kept a tavern in a two-story building that stood where the Delaware county jail now stands (on High street in the block north of the public square). The old sign read 'entertainment for man and beast,' and every tavern had a big barn or shed and feed lot for the stock that movers were taking to their new homes. It was no unusual thing to see as many as five families quartered in one room."

Among the "firsts" pointed out in this narrative of Mrs. Edmonds was that "Mr. (Jeremiah) Jewett burned the first lime kiln (north bank of the river, off Walnut street). Robert Gordon (an Ohioan) was the first man employed by my father in the Hackley Reserve. He owned the first sun glass in this neighborhood. The first cook stove here was owned by Eleazar Coffeen (cousin of Goldsmith Gilbert). They also had the first candle molds and Mrs. Coffeen showed me how to use them. Before this we always 'dipped' our candles, making a quantity each fall and spring. The first buggy Jim Frazell brought from Vermont. He and his bride rode from that state here in it. He also brought the first matches. He traded the buggy to Volney Willson for something to go to housekeeping with. Dr. and Mrs. S. P. Anthony had the first flowered (ingrain) carpet and cane-seated chairs. Mrs. Stephen Long had the first sideboard. She sold it to John Jack. I traded Mrs. Jack a pet colt for it and the remains are now (1895) used by J. H. Williamson for a desk.'"' Among the keepsakes of her mother preserved by Mrs. Williamson is an old school "certificate of merit" given to her mother when the latter was nine years of age. This time-stained certificate is written on a bit of coarse paper and is as follows: "Class 3 - This certifies that Mary Jane Gilbert is head of her class and has behaved in a manner that does honor to herself. She has made good improvement of her time at school and deserves the esteem and approbation of all patrons of learning and good behavior. Miss E. Keelor, teacher. February 21, 1834."

Not the least interesting of these keepsakes now regarded as priceless by Mrs. Williamson is a copy of the David Gharky "Life," a review of which is made elsewhere, and many interesting documentary relics of other days, including letters written to her grandfather, Goldsmith C. Gilbert, and quaint invitation cards of the '40s, when her mother was one of the society belles of old Muncietown. One of the Gilbert letters that is particularly interesting because written by Lewis Rees, one of the first associate judges of Delaware county, to Mr. Gilbert while the latter was serving this district in the Legislature, is as follows: "Muncietown, Delaware county, Indiana. Mr. Goldsmith Gilbert after our respects to you and other we wont you to atend to that Road that is the Hogesdon Road without fail to apint a vewer on said Road as hit was done last winter but hit was not known at that time that hit was maid a law then all we want is you to apinte a vewer from Malen Bransons To New Burlington We sent a few lines Down to you in Decembe but Cant find out wether hit was Don or not or Wheather you got the Letter Mr. g gilbert send us a few lines Derect your Letter To Lewis Rees January 10, 1842." The postage notation on this letter was 10 cents, to be paid, of course, on delivery. |

Evidences Of Early Gaieties

Among the invitation cards, now yellow with age, is the following, printed with a blank line in which is written the name of the recipient: 'Independence Ball - The company of Miss Mary Jane Gilbert is respectfully solicited at a BALL to be given at the ASSEMBLY ROOM of the Central Hotel, Muncietown, Indiana, on Monday, the FOURTH OF JULY, at 5 o'clock, P. M. Volney Willson, John Bowen, Samuel Andrews, Managers, June 28, 1842." Wedding invitations in those days were likely to be guarded in tone, as witness the following, gracefully written in blue ink: "Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Gilbert's compliments to Miss Mary Jane Gilbert, and would be happy to see her at their residence next Wednesday at 5 o'clock, p. m. Muncietown, February 6th, 1843." The guests gathered at the John A. Gilbert residence on that evening were witnesses to the marriage of Volney Willson and Miss Betsey Gilbert, daughter of the host and hostess. John A. Gilbert was a nephew of Goldsmith Gilbert and was one of the New Yorkers who had come out here on the solicitation of the latter, founder of the town. Another of these old invitation cards follows: 'Washington Ball - The company of Miss Mary Jane Gilbert is respectfully solicited at a Ball, to be given at the American House on Thursday Evening, 22d February, 1844, at 3 o'clock - Managers, Jacob H. Wysor, Mark Walling, S. H. Russey, Wm. H. Iddings. Muncitetown, February 12, '44."

Among the old pieces of furniture representative of that period which Mrs. Williamson has preserved is what perhaps may be regarded as the first piece of real substantial cabinet-making turned out in this community. This is a chest of drawers, a bureau or highboy, made by Levi Bishop, brother of Mrs. Goldsmith Gilbert, and an expert cabinet-maker, who brought to Muncietown the first kit of cabinet-making tools brought to that place and numerous samples of whose skilled work are still treasured in this county. The piece in question is made of cherry and curly maple taken from the native woodlands and still carries the original glass knobs on the drawers. Among the old papers preserved by Mrs. Williamson is a receipt dated Cincinnati, July 9, 1842, carrying a memorandum of sale by James Williamson, father of Mrs. Williamson's late husband, J. H. Williamson, and a pioneer packer and dealer in live stock, to I. Scott of 164 pounds of ham at 2 cents a pound, or a total of $3.28 for the transaction. And it must be kept in mind that transportation to Cincinnati in 1842 was by wagon train. What the carter got for his freightage and just what was the packer's net profit on this transaction is not stated.

In this collection are account books of the old Muncietown Mills and of the Gilbert general store and distillery, carrying the transactions of those pioneer enterprises through 1838-40, the oldest of these books opening as of July 24, 1838. Accounts as of the transactions at the distillery show that whisky was retailing at 19 cents a quart. "To 1 bbl. of whisky, 49 gal., $26.93," is a notation in account with Winiford Stout, dated April 30, 1839. The character of some of these accounts would indicate that the Gilberts also were doing a sort of accommodation banking business for some of their customers.

Among the miscellaneous papers in this collection is a hand bill of the early '40s headed 'War in Texas" and informing the public that "The undersigned now informs those of his customers who pledged themselves to settle their accounts in September, 1842, that the time has now expired but that their accounts may be found in his hands until the first day of November, next, when they will be left with Esquire Gilbert for collection. Come up and redeem your pledge and save costs and most of your credits. N. B. - Merchantable wheat and flax seed will be taken in exchange for goods. J. H. Wysor, Muncietown, October 10, 1842."

Reminiscences Of Nathaniel Fuller Ethell

A series of chatty reminiscent letters from the pen of the late Nathaniel Fuller Ethell, in his generation one of Muncie's best known and most influential newspaper men, running in the Sunday Star (Muncie) during the summer of 1913, carry much particularly interesting and informative matter relating to the history of old Muncie. Mr. Ethell left here in 1908 and died at Glenwood Springs, Col., in 1915, he then being eighty-one years of age. Nathaniel F.

Ethell was born in the village of Utica, in Licking county, Ohio, January 15, 1834, and was a son of John and Mary Ethell, Virginians, who came over into Indiana with their family in 1839 and settled at old Muncietown, young Nat then being five years of age. The lad grew up in the village, where he learned typesetting, and when he had completed his studies in the old Delaware County Academy went to the state university at Bloomington. He supplemented his schooling by a course in French and German in the private school of Professor Hoshour at Newcastle and in 1851 took up civil engineering and afterward acted as assistant engineer of the construction of the Marion & Mississinewa Valley railroad (now a part of the Pennsylvania system) from Marion to Logansport, and also took part in the construction of the G. R. & I. from Ft. Wayne to Grand Rapids, Mich. During the middle '50s he was for some years engaged in business in Chicago. In 1859 he married Millie Turner, daughter of Minus Turner, one of Muncie's most stalwart pioneer citizens, and was thereafter for a year or two engaged in newspaper work in Indianapolis in association with John D. Defres, and thus started on his newspaper career. In the winter of 1859-60 he returned to Muncie and on January 1, 1860, began the publication of the Muncie Times, which in 1869 he sold to Tom Brady and went to Washington, D. C., where he was employed as a foreman in the Government print shop until in 1872, when he took employment in the Interior Department and was for a year thereafter engaged as clerk in the land office at Independence, Kans. In 1873 he returned to Muncie, bought the plant of the Liberal, a newspaper that had been struggling along there, changed the name of the paper to the News and as editor and publisher of this paper, which in 1878 he changed to a daily, continued in business until he sold the plant to C. W. F. Neely in the fall of 1885.

In the reminiscent letters here referred to Mr. Ethell pointed out that when he arrived at Muncietown as a small boy in January, 1839, "the principal industries of the place were along the mill race - the Walling tannery in the flat below the race; the Gilbert saw mill and adjoining grist mill, the distillery on the site of the Hibbits flouring mill [along the river just north of the present electric power house on North Walnut street], and, at the foot of Franklin street, the woolen factory, a large frame building, red in color. In connection with the distillery were two log pens built across the tail of the race, in which pens fat hogs were still further distended with mash from the still and otherwise fitted for the Cincinnati market."

Old Home Of Dr. Samubl P. Anthony Evolution Of The First Dentist

"In the '30s and '40s," continues Mr. Ethell's reminiscences, "there was plenty of game in the nearby woods and much of the living for many families was procured by hunters - amateur but generally successful - from the little town. There were but few dwellings unsupplied with a rifle or shotgun, and one or more of the family were familiar with their use. Naturally, so to speak, guns often needed repairs or renewal, this requiring the skill of a gunsmith. The first gunsmith, if I recall correctly, was a man named Lefevre - I think his place of business was in North Walnut street, but he went away and for a while there was lack of gun repairing until a young man, who had stopped at Yorktown for a while, came fap and settled in Muncietown.

"This was Samuel O. Budd, a skilled mechanic and an honest man, always earning his pay in a pleasant and satisfactory way. His shop was opposite the public square - a small frame building, half way between High street and the alley east. For some. years his business was good and he succeeded, by industry and thrift, in getting a firm foothold in the growing town. While doing this he studied dentistry, which, being of a mechanical turn and of good memory, he soon mastered, and set up his shop in the middle room of his modest building, where for many years he successfully followed his vocation. A few years ago he removed his office to his residence, corner of Main and Monroe, doing what work his increasing age made possible. I remember him years ago going from his office in Washington street to his home and back again, wearing a long plaid Scotch shawl in lieu of an overcoat - a garment much in vogue here then and affected by many of us old-timers. He was a consistent and steady advocate of total abstinence from intoxicating beverages, his opinions always respected because of their sincerity and the fine arguments sustaining them. A fine specimen of intelligent citizen, doing his good part in the making of the town, dying recently in years with honor." ;

Referring to the growth of the village, Mr. Ethell's review pointed out that by 1840 the town "had grown fast, considering circumstances, the depth of the forests and its almost inaccessibility owing to bad roads. At the latter date there were probably 500 or 600 inhabitants, struggling mightily to get out of the woods into the sunlight. All the trades necessary for the building of houses were represented, besides others; along with doctors, preachers, teachers, a few ne'er-do-wells - the last often found cuddling acquaintance with the worm of the still, quarreling, fighting or otherwise handicapping the industrious; a fair share of lawyers, tailors, shoemakers - even a hatter, and a pottery making ware for the domesticities."

There Were Giants In Those Days

"Looking back through the glasses of memory, I see many tall and stalwart forms among the pioneers of the-town and county," continues Mr. Ethell's reminiscences. ''Topping all are the forms of Job Swain, John Cecil and Joseph Edmonds. Jacob Calvert, out of whose fertile acres Normal City was made, was tall, with swarty complexion, as also was his son William. He was of a Maryland family, I think. The Neelys, Thomas and Moses, were tall and large men. Robert Meeks was tall and in later years heavy - a tremendous worker. His brother Isaac, also a great worker, was slighter in build but above medium height. Doctor Willard was taller than his brother Charles, who was more heavily set, but over medium in height. The Gilberts were a sturdy set of medium height, setting the pace for industry and thrift, building the town. The Carmichaels, south of town, were tall and spare, as were the Gibsons - spare, broad-backed men, shouldering their way into the sunlight through the forests and turning up the soil among the stumps, making farms of value. Jesse Nixon was tall and large in frame, while his neighbor, Liberty. Ginn, was equally tall, if not more so; thin of chest, slightly round shouldered, thin and keen of face - a twain hard to beat. Henry and Arch Hamilton were taller than their father, Stephen, whose brick farm house three miles north of town on the Granville road, was for many years a landmark in the fertile region round about.

"Thomas Bishop, who made a place west of town on White river, was a large man. The most of the Reeses were of medium height - another sturdy set of fine farmers. The Fusons were large men, as also were the Mansfields. The Driscolls were of medium height, somewhat stocky, built for service in the fight against the wild. Nate Branson was large, strong and never averse to a scrap, if it was fair, always ready to do his part in the hardships of the time. The Ribbles, whose fine farms were along White river east of town, were spare men, rather above the medium height, good men. William McCallister was large and tall, equally capable, along with his neigh-

'bors, the Shoemakers and Cromers, in making a farm paradise in the Richwoods. Thomas Kirby was tall, spare, with a ruddy complexion and a good word for everybody, one of the foremost men of the county, a model of thrift, urbanity and public spirit.

"Minus Turner was of medium height only, but what he lacked in height he made up in muscle that never tired, strength that endured and determination equal to any emergency, forming an important link in the chain of townmakers, building more houses of brick and wood, or both, for himself and others, than any other one man - a fine specimen of pioneer and American manhood - a worthy colaborer with the Gilberts, the Willards, the Kirbys, the Carpenters and other men foregathered to form the town out of hickory and walnut groves, hazel brush, hoop-poles, thickets, black haw trees, swamps and other century-old accumulations of natural growth and decay. James Nottingham, a carpenter, was tall and large, as was his son Osie. John, the brother of James, was much shorter but fully capable of making a farm far out Riverside way, and always able besides to get to the Methodist church, where his 'amens' were conspicuous for sympathetic following of the exhortations and prayers of emotional ministers, vieing in frequency with those of Brother Sample, in his chair facing the audience, rising now and then and beckoning late incomers to vacant seats near the mourners' bench.

"The Straddlings were not noted for height or size, but not anywhere were better farmers or honester men. But for giants, reference is made to Sampson and Abraham Jetmore, living out that way. If old King Frederick of Prussia had been overlord of Delaware county, Indiana, some twenty years after the state had been admitted to the Union he might have recruited a platoon of tall soldiers he so much admired and so widely sought for. I think, however, the recruits would have kicked that hobby of his into fertilizers for the worn out lands of the aristocracy. One could not imagine such men as the Cecils, Swains, Neelys, Gibsons, Carmichaels and Wysors tamely licking the shoes of even so potent a ruler as that old king. The Truitts were large, tall men, with the possible exception of Joshua. The Gregorys were large men of great height. The Heaths were slender and tall. The Armitages were large men. Henry Wysor was a large man, mentally and physically, of great public spirit.

"The Orrs, up Smithfield way, of Irish descent, were not noted for size, except Samuel, the largest and tallest - all good farmers and talkers of ability. Samuel F. Anthony was of good size, round shouldered, bald headed - wore a wig, had a great head for business, besides being a good doctor. At one time he was reported to have forty rental properties in town besides large holdings of land northwest and south of town. His son Edwin was a large man. The Williamsons of Yorktown and thereabout were men of good size. J. H. Koontz was a large man, a great good citizen, representing the county in the Legislature. Judge Kilgore was a large, tall man - represented the district in Congress, a prominent lawyer, also doing stunts as a farmer. There were many others worth naming in this connection, men of mental and physical worth - a small army of them recruited rapidly, the fame of the fertility of the land going broadcast. There was not a county in the state settled by men more uniformly| able-bodied, strong in heart and muscle, determined and effective, than those who came up here in the '20s and '30s from widely separated regions and tackled the virgin forests with ax and fire and turned up the rich soil with plow and grubbing hoe, sowed and reaped, threshed wheat with flails, and kept faith with enduring industry. The size and grit and muscle and brains of these men in a great measure account for the high standing of the county in agriculture, in education and in social and material advancement."

John M. Graham, a retired farmer, living at 310 West Adams street, Muncie, is believed to be the oldest continuous resident of Delaware county, he having lived here more than eighty-eight years. Mr. Graham was born in Virginia in March, 1835, and was but an infant when he was brought by his parents to Delaware county in the fall of the same year, his father, Jahiel Graham, who for many years was better known in this county as "Squire" Graham, settling with his family in Liberty township in what later came to be the Selma neighborhood. Smithfield, on the river, then was the trading point for the people of that community. All of John M. Graham's conscious memories thus are associated with Delaware county. His first trip to Muncie was taken when he was about ten years of age, when he accompanied his father on a horse-trading trip to town. He still recalls that the impression he carried back home with him was that the county town was a wonderful place, where one "could see people everywhere." He has distinct recollections of the old corduroy causeway which was constructed when the first railroad came to connect

Walnut street, from about Charles street south, with the depot. The swail which then covered much of that section necessitated this bridgeway. Otherwise the street would have been impassible for much of the year as far south as the railroad. The first depot was built in the fall of 1851, in preparation for the railroad which was completed through to Indianapolis in the summer of the following year. Mr. Graham continued farming until his retirement in 1886, and has since been making his home in Muncie. He was married in April, 1859, and he and his wife have thus been living together for nearly sixty-five years, which is believed to be the record for this county. Mrs. Graham was born in Liberty township in 1838 and is believed to be the oldest native-born surviving and continuous resident of Delaware county. Her father, John Smith, a Vermonter, was one of the pioneers of Liberty township.

Charles F. Willard, now living at Muncie, is the oldest surviving native Muncietonian, though not a continuous resident of the town. He was born at Muncietown in 1842. Wallace Hibbets, retired miller, still living at Muncie, has been a continuous resident of the town since the fall of 1839. He was born in Ohio in the spring of the same year. Martin L. Meeks, veteran mortician at Muncie, is believed to hold the record for the greatest length of continuous service in business in that town. He is past seventy years of age and has been connected with the undertaking establishment, of which he long has been the head, succeeding his father, who founded the business, ever since the days of his boyhood, his actual formal connection with this business thus covering the'period since the late '60s. There are several nonogenarians in Delaware county, but none whose continuous residence in the county approaches the periods covered by those whose names are here mentioned. John Sullivan, a native of Ireland, who came to America in 1861, died at Muncie, on January 19, 1924, at the age of 101. He had been a resident of Muncie since 1863.