Dubois County, Indiana - Chapter 12: Pioneer Highways and Means of Transportation, 1910

Natural landmarks as guides to travelers - Buffalo trace - Ox teams - Caleche - State roads - Old Troy road - Taverns - Mail routes - Revenue for state roads - Road tax - Ferries - Patoka river, a highway - Navigation in Dubois county - White river - Flat-boats - Products carried on flat-boats - Trips made - Stories told by flat-boat men - Difficulty of travel - Early citizens of Dubois county who owned flat-boats - Flat-boat pilots - Dangerous points in the Mississippi river - Steamboat.' - Jokes - Pork - Indentured servants.

During the first year of the nineteenth century no white man lived permanently within the present limits of Dubois county. There were no roads, no bridges, no paths, but those of wild men and beasts - nothing to indicate the presence of civilization. The woods had never felt the edge, nor heard the sound of an ax. The trees and brush grew thick, and the ground was covered with a tangled mass of briers, vines, and creepers, making it almost impassable for man or beast.

It is related that the early Catholic priests in traveling from one part of southern Indiana to another traced their ways by blazes upon trees. In 1840, Father Bessonies was sent from Vincennes to Leopold, in Perry county. The entire southern part of Indiana was then very sparsely settled and mostly covered by forests. He spoke the English language very imperfectly. The chapel to which he was directing his steps was unnamed, and situated in the woods. The way to it at that time would have puzzled even an experienced back-woods man. Father Bessonies was told to go to Jasper, and there get further directions from Father Kundeck. He arrived safely at Jasper. From there he traveled by a map drawn by Father Kundeck. His route was indicated by lines traced from one natural landmark to another, such as creeks, hills, rocks, etc.

The pioneers of Dubois county found Indian trails, deer paths, the "Buffalo Trace" and other paths, which when widened proved lines of travel. Many of these afterward became permanent, through travel, legislation, and improvement. Part of the state road leading from Haysville to near Crystal is on the old " Buffalo Trace." The old trails in many places, have become, by the labors of three generations, the public highways of to-day. The first generation cleared the forests and filled in the wet places with logs, forming corduroy. Surface roads followed; finally, in 1903, rock-road building began. There never were any toll-roads in

Dubois county. There were only about three months in the year when traveling was sure and safe : a month in mid-winter when the ground was frozen, and two months in summer, when it was dry.

The roads became the lines of transportation, which was generally carried on by ox teams. Troy and Louisville, via Paoli, were the gates to the outer world. It often required three days to go to Troy, on the Ohio river. Often the teamsters on the road would double up their teams, and, with six and sometimes nine yoke of oxen to one wagon, would pull it a short distance and then go back and hitch to another one and thus advance until they found a stretch of good road upon which all could move alonoat one time. Very often they had to " tack " to the right and left, not to find the road, but to get out of it, and find places where the mud was thick enough to bear. These old pioneer teamsters, in accordance with the common lot of all, have departed, one by one, until nearly all of them have passed away.

Some pioneers used a caleche as a means of travel. A pioneer caleche was a two-wheeled affair, the wheels being mere disks cut from a log ; the bed was a raised platform with side boards kept in place by wooden pins ; but it was useful, and a necessity.

Often one hears old people refer to old roads, in Dubois county, as "state roads." There was a time when state roads were located and built through the wilderness by order of the state legislature. The old town of Troy, in Perry county, on the Ohio river, was a prominent place in the early history of Indiana. In 1829, the legislature of Indiana passed an act to locate a " state road "from Troy to Washington. This act named James Carnahan, of Daviess county, Jared Bowling, of Dubois county, and Thomas Pride, of Pike county, commissioners to view, locate, and mark the road. They were instructed, by the act, to meet at Troy, on the first Monday in May, 1830, to be sworn in and to begin their work. The road was to be thirty feet wide, and to cross White river, at Casee's ferry. To this day, a road leading out of Washington is referred to as the old Troy road. Other old roads through Dubois county had a similar origin. A new state road in pioneer days was considered as much of an advance movement as a railroad is at this time.

It should be remembered that even state roads in those days had no bridges. As late as 1824, judges and attorneys in going from one county to another had to swim their horses across all streams.

In 1825, the seat of government was removed from Corydon to Indianapolis. Though the distance was only one hundred twenty-five miles, such was the state of the roads that it required about ten days to make the journey in a wagon.

There was no need of a carriage or buggy, and there were none in the county. Travelers "put up" at the nearest house, when night came on. In 1812, William McDonald "kept tavern" on the "Buffalo Trace." This is the first record we have of an inn or tavern in the county. Sometime afterwards, Gibson Brown, and later, James S. Brace, conducted a tavern at Haysville. The local roads of the county were made, as a rule, by individuals, by the pioneer interested in getting to his neighbor's house, to a blacksmith's shop, to mill, to a store, school-house, church, or a halfcleared burying ground. These pieces of roads finally became united and formed a public highway. That accounts for the old highways of the county being crooked, and passing mills, graveyards, old church-houses, springs, etc., they thereby formed the groundwork and the location of the future roads of the county.

The old state roads became mail routes, and in time the stage coaches came. An old map published in 1838, shows that Jasper had mail routes leading to Paoli and Petersburg, to Mount Pleasant in Martin county, to Mount Pleasant, in Crawford county, to Fredonia, in Crawford county, and to Rockport, in Spencer county. From these centers mail continued forward to its destination. With the old stages have disappeared the old taverns, with their uniform charge of twenty-five cents for a bed or meal, and a"fip"for a " dram " - prices set by law. " Fip " is a contraction of " fippenny bit," a Spanish coin, worth six and one-fourth cents. These charges seem low, but several rich men in Dubois county can trace their father's fortune to these old taverns. Pork was bought at $1.25 per hundred, eggs at three cents a dozen, whiskey at twenty-five cents a gallon, and all other supplies at correspondingly low rates. As late as 1850. corn meal sold at Jasper, at twenty-five cents a bushel; butter, ten cents a pound ; chickens, twelve cents apiece ; eggs, six cents a dozen ; lard, seven cents a pound; potatoes, twenty cents a bushel; and wheat, fifty cents a bushel.

It was not until four years after Indiana had been admitted as a state that any definite system of roads were projected within her borders. It is, therefore, no surprise that Dubois county had poor roads in her pioneer days. State roads were in demand, and by an act of the legislature in 1820, twenty-six state roads were projected. Most of these were in the southern part of Indiana.

The state's revenue for the opening and the maintaining of these roads was derived from three distinct sources. The first was known as the 3 per cent, fund, and was of the nature of a donation from the general Government. Out of the sale of public lands 5 per cent, was set aside for purposes of internal improvement. Of this, 2 per cent, was to be expended by the United States on works of general benefit - such, for example, as the National road - and the remaining 3 per cent, was given to the state for improvements within her borders. With the acreage of the state running up into millions and the most of it selling at $1.25 per acre, the resulting 3 per cent would make no mean gift, and as early as 182 1 we find $100,000 of this fund appropriated and apportioned out among twenty-two roads in sums ranging from $1,000 to nearly $9,000.

The other sources of maintenance were both internal. One was a system of taxation on real estate in general as a road tax, "an amount equal to half the amount of state tax." Town lots were assessed "an amount equal to one-half the county tax," and non-resident land owners were assessed an amount equal to both one-half the state and one-half the county tax. The land owner was entitled to discharge such road tax in work on the roads. In addition to this real estate assessment there was a personal tax which made it incumbent on all male inhabitants between the ages of twenty-one and fifty, except ministers and sundrj^ others, to work the roads two days in a year. This was a state law, and under it some of our state roads were cut out through the forests. Traveling was a hardship not onl}- in Dubois count)', but in adjoining counties. Innumerable stubs of saplings sharpened like spears by being shorn off obliquely waited to impale the unlucky traveler who might be pitched out upon them. The probability of such an accident was considerablj- increased as the lumbering wagon plunging over a succession of ruts and roots, described an exhilarating see-saw with the most astonishing alternation of plunge, creak, and splash. Streams had to be crossed sometimes by unsafe fording and sometimes b)' very rude ferries.

It did not pay the ferrymen to keep constant watch for travelers, for sometimes a whole day would pass without making a single crossing. But he would generally be at work near by, perhaps in his "clearing," and the traveler would "hallow the ferry" until the ferryman came.

Most of the year a journey over these roads was simply a slow, laborious wallowing through mud. In parts of the county, the low land was passable only by the use of corduroy, and this corduro)' of poles, laid side by side, stretched out for a mile at a time. It was often weighted down with dirt to prevent the poles from floating off when high waters came. Aside from the work the state did on our state roads the pioneers did much work upon them. Even then they were hardly more practicable than the drift-choked streams which the legislature gravely declared navigable.

Such roads were, with the exception of outlets furnished by Patoka and White river, the only means of transportation for Dubois county. How seriously it handicapped commerce and held in check the influences that are essential to modern development any one can readily see. Yet, so they remained, with but slight improvement, except as to bridges, until February 14, 1879, when the first train ran into Jasper.

On January 22, 1829, the governor of Indiana approved an act of the thirteenth Indiana legislature, which declared all that part of Patoka river below Enlow's [Eckert's] Mill to be a public highway and that it shall be the duty of the boards doing county business [now called county commissioners], in Dubois and Pike counties, respectively, to cause the said highway to be laid off into road districts, appoint supervisors, set off hands, and cause all obstructions therein to be removed, and the same to be kept free from obstructions in the same manner as other highways are opened and kept in repair. In 1828 the legislature had appropriated $300 to have Patoka river cleaned out, and named John R. Montgomery, of Gibson, a commissioner to carry out its orders. The same legislature appropriated $1000 to have the east fork of White river cleaned out. These acts show that rivers, even though as small as Patoka, were valuable as highways for the transportation of the products of a county or state.

Navigation in Dubois county seems odd, yet, in 1850, Patoka river was considered to be one hundred miles long, fifty yards wide, and navigable, in high water for over sixty miles. Patoka is deep for its width but narrow for its length; it drains but a small land area, as the White river and the Ohio river are not far away. Patoka river is a very crooked stream. By actual measurement it is thirteen miles, three thousand seven hundred ninety-one (3791) feet, as it meanders, from the iron bridge at Dubois, down to the site at Klingel's mill. From the Klingel mill site to Eckert's mill, as Patoka meanders, it is six miles, three thousand three hundred fifty-six (3356) feet, and from there to the railroad bridge, down the river, it is six miles, five thousand fourteen (5014) feet. These measurements certainly indicate a very crooked stream, since in running six and one fourth miles south and seven miles west, the water actually travels a distance of twent}^- seven miles, sixteen hundred one (r6oi) feet.

The water below the dam at Dubois and the top of the marble tablet in the north abutment of the iron bridge at Eckert's dam, are on a level. The average fall of the water of Patoka, is one foot to the mile, as the river meanders. Anderson river was considered navigable for flat-boats, in high water for thirty miles. In some of the old laws the east fork of White river was called the " Embarras Fork." The Indians called White river Wahpihani. Anyone erecting dams or otherwise impeding navigation on streams declared "navigable " were subject to a fine of from ten dollars to five hundred dollars.

various counties through which it ran. "Boards of justices" were to appoint supervisors and establish districts, and citizens within two miles on either side were to work the river three days in each year. White river was declared navigable in 1820, and was considered a great factor in the early settlement of Dubois county.

It should be borne in mind that not only did water facilities for transportation mean vastly more then than they do in this era, but that owing to the almost impassable roads, the streams were considered necessary to the future development of the country.

One of the first means of gaining a knowledge of the world, and of bringing the news home in early days was the flat-boat. Flat-boats were made by native carpenters. They were from twenty to twenty-five feet wide, from seventy-five to one hundred twenty-five feet long, and from five to seven feet high. The high tulip poplars that abounded in the forests of Dubois county, easily worked with the ax, afforded good timbers, long and broad enough for the sides, and the simple attaching of planks to these for the bottom, ends, and deck, could be readily accomplished by the pioneer with such tools as were at his command. When finished it was a mere float, flat-bottomed, but strong enough to stand any amount of ordinary thumping as it drifted down with the current. It was the best craft for our rivers because of its light draft, its carrying capacity and its cheapness of construction. Eight hundred flat-boats have entered the Ohio river from the Wabash in one month, during pioneer days. It is estimated that such crude boats carried south from out the Wabash valley one million dollars' worth of produce annually. Three hundred barrels of pork were often on one flat-boat.

The stern of the flat-boat was occupied as a kitchen, and sleeping room. On top of the boat were great long oars, working upon pivots, which boatmen used in directing and propelling the boat. The front oar was called a " ganger," the one in the rear was called the "steering oar," and was handled by the pilots. The two on each side were called ' 'sweeps.

Flat-boats began to run down Patoka river, in Dubois county, in the early "thirties." The boats were loaded with various products of the country, such as corn, hides, bear meat and bear oil, "deer-saddles," hooppoles, pork, beans, venison, staves, lumber, cabbage, and potatoes. The flat-boat owner would sell his goods at Memphis, or at New Orleans; sell his boat, if possible, and then begin his long, tedious journey homeward on foot through tangled everglades, swamps, and canebrakes, for he always kept as near the river as possible. Thus he walked and toiled for months before he reached home, yet he thought but little of his long walk and great hardships. This was in the days before steamboats became numerous on the large western rivers. When he and his boatmen returned home, they would be the center of local intelligence, and neighbors, for miles around, would "gather in" to hear wonderful tales of travel, stories

Strange and true, and have the cities along the Mississippi pictured to them in the peculiar vernacular language of the flat-boat-man. Great would be their stories of the " Father-of- Waters " and its banks of cotton and sugar-cane. They brought back dark pictures of slavery, and inklings of the approaching of the great civil conflict.

In the leisurely forties, the stories told by the flat-boat-man were the joy of the .settlements. He was the sovereign guest for whom the log fire burned brightly and the grease lamps did their utmost to add light to the occasion. He was given the best chair, and sat between the two sources of light. Each member of the pioneer family would hospitably struggle to be first with the welcoming hand. When the pioneer family was comfortably seated, all, with eager ears, would listen to the tale of his trip to New Orleans. Everything in those days was remembered, and discussed between whiles. All listened attentively and kept alive the pleasures of the stories told by talking it over and over. For adventure to make the young pioneers sit stark, sta5'ing awake till cockcrow in the morning, for romance to bind them fast in fetters of deepest fascination, for mystery to tantalize, baffle, and inspire them to see the world, the tales told by the returning flat-boat-man had no equal.

The pioneers believed that people who could radiate sunshine and carry gladness and good cheer wherever they went, although they were poor, were of infinite greater value to society than the man of money, who pauperized everything he touched, and everybody who came in contact with him, by his close, contemptible methods. Largeness of heart and generosity of soul were qualities appreciated by early settlers. Cheerfulness was a potent factor of success, and pioneers recognized its power.

Their lives spanned an era when people did not have to depend on rich furnishings, costly tapestry, and gold plate for good cheer. Character was so enriched by travel and by the upward growth of the settlement that surroundings, however costly, would have been considered but a cheap setting for a real precious stone. A good observer and a good talker were always appreciated.

Flat-boating was continued at intervals until 1877. The combined results of these trips to the Southland in the days of slavery formed a great factor toward its elimination. Lincoln's flat-boat trips had much to do in developing in his mind adverse opinions on slavery. After a flat-boat was built and loaded it remained until the rains raised the water in the river, and then amid the waving of handkerchiefs, the music of the band, and the goodbyes of their friends, the boatmen cut the boat from its anchorage, and the long voyage to New Orleans began. Frequently a fallen tree would retard the boat until the hardy ax-men could cut the drift loose. This was an exceedingly dangerous undertaking and occasionally an ax-man would lose his life by falling into the river and floating beneath the driftwood before assistance could reach him. Gerhardt Schroeder, of Jasper, lost his life in such a manner. After the flat-boat reached the Wabash river, the ax-men would return home, and the captain and his crew would continue on their voyage.

Among the early citizens of Dubois county who were the owners, or took flat-boats down Patoka river, may be mentioned CarlBuchart, Francis X. Eckert, Ignatz Eckert, George Kapp, Sr. , Jesse Corn, Sr., Jos. Friedman, Sr. , John Mahan, Wm. Hardin, Younger Hardin, Thos. Poison, Dr. J. H. Hughes, Robert Poison and John Buchart.

When we reflect that the trip to New Orleans, upon a flat-boat, meant a voyage of over one thousand miles, we begin to realize its magnitude.

The boats that went down from Jasper were usually built on the banks of Patoka in the neighborhood of the bridge southeast of the town. To launch one of these boats was no small undertaking, and always very dan- gerous. Henry Kunkler, a workman, lost his life on the south bank of Patoka, near the stone quarry, at Jasper, while launching a boat. It was no small undertaking to pilot a boat successfully to the southern markets. Occasionally one would sink, and with its cargo, be a total loss to its owner. A cargo was often worth $3000. Among the early flat-boat pilots were Capt. John G. Eeming, Joseph Shuler, Sr., Francis Lechner, Jesse Corn, Sr., Ignatz Eckert, Chas. Osborn, Sr., and Michael Dennis.

These pilots were autocrats, and their word was law while in command. This was to avoid loss, for there were many dangerous places on the river. Two dangerous points in the Mississippi river for all the boatmen were:

" Old Town Bend " where the current sat into the timber, and it is said by boatmen that no flat-boat ever went around the bend without having every man of the crew on " the sweeps" and oars. The other was Coal creek. The current of Coal creek would shoot the boat across the river and into the opposite bank.

One year nine boats left Jasper for the south. Pilot Ignatz Eckert took the last boat from the "port of Jasper" in 1877. Occasionally, during high water, a pilot could reach the Wabash river on the fifth day out from Jasper. This, however, was a good run. Sometimes the boatmen were compelled to raise the huge wooden bridges that crossed Patoka river, in order to let their boat go under.

After steam-boats became numerous on the large rivers, a trip home from New Orleans was one of pleasure rather than toil. The flat-boat-man would sell his cargo, and boat in New Orleans, and come to Troy or Rockport on a steamboat. Sometimes he was a victim of the gamblers who were plentiful on the steam-boats of the early days on the Mississippi. The pioneer boatmen of Dubois county always looked upon the bright side of life.

It was in keeping with this spirit that caused so many jokes to be told upon the cook of these boats. The cook was usually a "green hand" and upon him all tricks possible were played. He was a fit subject upon which to perpetrate any joke that originated in the fertile imagination of the deck hands. These began to show themselves after the boat had reached the Mississippi river. The following will serve to illustrate their general nature: Imagine the boat about to anchor for the night. The pilot gives his men the signal, and all appear before him in a column, and with a look of intense earnestness upon their faces. The pilot calls each workman by his particular occupation and asks him a series of apparently important questions. Finally he says, "Mr. Cook, have you enough bread for to-morrow?" "Yes, sir." " Have you enough meat?" "Yes, sir." "Coffee?" "Yes, sir." " Have you your stove ready ?" "Yes, sir." " Did you grease the anchor?" " No, sir." " What!" exclaimed the pilot, "you let us run into the Mississippi river all day, ready to anchor for the night and criminally neglect to grease the anchor?" The pilot grows angry, the cook gets nervous, and frightened, and is sent post haste down into the kitchen for the grease. He soon returns, cup and brush in hand and begins to grease the anchor. Then the sailors set up a 3'ell, such as would frighten a Comanche Indian, grab the cook and plunge him into the river, drag him out, and he never hears the end of the gibes at his expense, until the next landing is reached, and he supplies "the sailors " with a gallon of whiske3\

The building of the railroads in the county ended the profits of flatboating. Flat-boats were also piloted down White river. Capt. John G. Leming, of Portersville, was a " White river pilot."

In 1S19, Col. Simon Morgan and Jacob Harbison took a flat-boat load of pork from Portersville to New Orleans and returned home on foot. In pioneer days it was not such a difficult matter to get a flat-boat load of pork, for hogs were plentiful. Through most of the year the pioneer paid no other attention to his hogs than to ascertain where they ranged, visit and salt them occasionally, mark the young ones, and shoot or drive up such as had grown fat on the nuts or mast in the fall of the year. If killed at the time, the meat was u.sed for home consumption, being too oily for the southern markets; but when hogs had been fed on corn for six or eight weeks their former mode of feeding had no bad effect upon the meat. Sometimes immense numbers of these hogs were to be found away from any settlements. They were as fierce, and when attacked almost as dangerous, as the bear or the panther. When full grown, wild and unmarked, they were shot as other game, with but little scruple; but not unfrequently very serious quarrels arose as to the alteration of marks and other evidences by which an ownership in those animals was claimed.

The father of Joseph Shuler, the pilot mentioned above, came to America as an indentured servant, and was to work three years to pay for his transportation to America. He worked two years, and then his purchaser died and he was liberated. This incident certainly indicates the cost of transportation in pioneer days. Joseph Shuler, the pilot, served Dubois county as a county commissioner and died March 14, 1905.