Marion County, Indiana - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 3 of those read), 1884 (part 1 of 2)

Chapter with an unread heading (no. 3 of those read)

First Period - Early Settlements - Organization of Marion County and Erection of Townsliips - Erection of Public Buildings - Notable Events and Incidents of the Early Settlement and of Later Years - Opening of Roads - Original Entries of Lands in the County.

Although the treaty of 1818 expressly conceded the occupancy of the " New Purchase," as it wa.s called by the whites, to the Indians till 1821, its profusion of game, its fertility, its abundance of excellent building timber began to allure settlers from the White Water Valley before a year had passed, and from the Ohio River before the reservation had expired. It will give the reader a suggestion of the natural attractions of the country to suggest that Mr. William H. Jones, a leading dealer in lumber in the city, aided when a boy, in 1824, in catching young fawns in the vicinity of the present site of the Vandalia Railroad depot and of the corner of West and Merrill Streets ; that Robert Harding, one of the earliest settlers, killed a deer on the area called the " donation" for the first Fourth of July celebration and barbecue in 1822 ; that as late as 1845 or later wild turkeys in their migrations made a roost in a large sugar grove that covered the portion of the present city site about Meridian, Illinois, and Tennessee Streets above the crossing of St. Clair or thereabouts. As late as 1845 a turkey scared from this roost by hunters ran into the city and into the basement of what was called the " Governor's House," in Circle Park, and was caught there. Lost quail were frequently heard piping in the back yards of residences. In 1822 saddles of venison sold at twenty-five to fifty cents, wild turkeys at ten to twelve and a half, a bushel of wild pigeons for twenty-five cents. An early sketch of the condition of the country says, " A traveler who ascended the river a few years prior to the settlement saw the banks frequently dotted with wigwams and the stream enlivened by Indian canoes. At night parties for ' firehunting' or ' fire-fishing' were frequent among the

The first settlers drawn to the New Purchase were Jacob Whetzel and his son Cyrus. The former was the brother, the latter the nephew of the noted scout and Indian-fighter, Lewis Whetzel, or Wetzel, distinguished in the bloody annals of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. " The elder Whetzel," says Mr. Nowland, in his " Promment Citizens," " soon after the conclusion of the St. Mary's treaty went to Anderson, head chief of the Delawares, who lived in the large Delaware town named for the chief and retaining the name still, and from him obtained permission to ' blaze a trace' from the White Water in Franklin County to the Blufis of White River." It may be as well to explain for the benefit of later settlers that " blazing" was cutting away a large strip of bark and wood from a tree-trunk on the side next to the proposed "trace" or road. Such a mark would remain conspicuous for many months in an interminable forest without a sign of human presence except that, and a series of them close together along the line of a proposed road would be a sure and easy guide to or any traveler with sense enough to be trusted alone. The two Whetzels came to the Blufi's in the spring of 1819, before the government surveys were completed or commenced in some cases. Their settlement was a little below the present south boundary of the county.

" The first white residents of the county," Mr. Duncan (before referred to) says, " were Judge Fabius M. Finch, his father and family, who came to the site of Noblesville or near it in the spring of 1819, ' that region being then a part of the county, but separated in a few years. In the fall of 1818 one Dr. Douglass came up the river from below to the Bluffs, and remained there a short time, and in January, 1819, James Paxton came down the river from the upper waters to the site of the city, and came again a year later in 1820. The first settler in the present area of the county will probably remain an unsettled ques- t tion for all time, as it was a disputed point in 1822, has been ever since, and is more peremptorily disputed now than ever. The prevailing tradition Is that George Pogue, a blacksmith from the White Water settlements, came here March 2, 1819, building a double log cabin on the line of Michigan Street a little way east of the creek, on the high ground bordering the creek bottom, and lived there with his family, the solitary occupants of Marion County within its present limits, till the 27th of the following February, when John and James McCormick arrived with their families and built cabins on the river bank near the old National road bridge. The priority of settlement lies between these families and Mr. Pogue's. Within a few months past one William H. White, of Hancock County, claims that he was born on the city site Oct. 4, 1819, near where Odd-Fellows' Hall now stands, on the corner of Washington and Pennsylvania Streets. Old settlers as early as 1820-21 have no recollection of any account of such an occurrence, and births were too rare in those days to allow the first one in the county or any suggestion of it, however vague or doubtful, to be forgotten. The impression seems to be that Mr. White has been misled by some accidental confusion or by the failing memory of his relatives. He may be right, but he is distrusted by settlers who arrived here within a year of the alleged occurrence, and discredited by. the opportunities of knowing the truth of many who arrived within two years and repel his claim.

In the summer of 1822, a little more than a year after Pogue's death, Dr. Samuel G. Mitchell, the oldest physician in the place, published in the Gazette, the first paper in the place, a discussion of the pretensions of Pogue to the honor of being the first settler, in which he maintained that the McCormicks were the first, and that Pogue came a month later, about the time the Maxwells and Cowan came. No reply was made to this direct attack on the general opinion of the settlers, which certainly suggests a reasonable probability that its statement was indisputable, and that the tradition of a general concurrence in awarding Pogue the credit is ill-founded. But there comes in here the countervailing consideration that the pioneers of the backwoods were little given to glorifying the pen or looking to the papers for instruction. Nobody may have been disposed to take the trouble to contradict what he knew nobody but Mitchell believed, or he may, very fairly, have concluded that in a little two-year-old village in the woods it would be less trouble to contradict the story " by word of mouth" to every man in the place than to attempt so unusual a feat as writing for the papers. But this early and public contest of Pogue's claim by an intelligent man, at a time when there could hardly have been an adult, male or female, who did not know the truth, creates a strong doubt against the current of tradition. The probability inclines to Mrs. Pogue's statement at an " Old Settlers' " meeting in 1854, as Mr. Robert B. Duncan remembers it. She was more than fourscore years old then, but her memory of early events seemed clear and accurate. She said that her husband and family came here on the 2d of March, 1820, and the McCormicks came on the 7th of the same month. This seems to be final as to the first settlement being made in 1820 instead of 1819, as has generally been believed, whether it settles the question of individual priority or not. Where two or three families arrive at a place in a primeval forest within four or five days of each other, and a mile or two apart, it is easy to see how each set of the separated settlers may suppose itself the first. Virtually they are simultaneous arrivals, and the truth, or at least the probability, of history compromises this long-mooted question by concluding that the Pogues and McCormicks were all first settlers.

Whether Pogue was the first man to live here or not, he was certainly the first to die here. Mr. Nowland's description of the man and account of his death so strikingly exhibit some of the characteristics of the time and country that it is reproduced here. " George Pogue was a large, broad-shouldered, and stout man, with dark hair, eyes, and complexion, about fifty years of age, and a native of North Carolina. His dress was like that of a Pennsylvania Dutchman, a drab overcoat with many capes, and a broad-brimmed felt hat. He was a blacksmith, and the first of that trade to enter the ' New Purcha.se.' To look at the man as we saw him last, one would think he was not afraid to meet a whole camp of Delawares in battle array, which fearlessness, in fact, was most probably the cause of his death. One evening about twilight a straggling Indian, known to the settlers as well as to the Indians as Wyandotte John, stopped at the cabin of Mr.

Early Settlements

Pogue and asked to stay all night. Mr. Pogue did not like to keep him, but thought it best not to refuse, as the Indian was known to be a bad and very desperate man, having left his own tribe in Ohio for some oflFense, and was now wandering among the various Indiana tribes. His principal lodging-place the previous winter was a hollow sycamore log that lay under the bluff and just above the east end of the National road bridge over White River. (Above the site of the bridge, Mr. Nowland means, as the bridge was not built for more than ten years after.) On the upper side of the log he had hooks, made by cutting the forks or limbs of bushes, on which he rested his gun. At the open end of the log next to the water he built his fire, which rendered his domicile as comfortable as most of the cabins. After John was furnished with something to eat, Mr. Pogue, knowing him to be traveling from one Indian camp to another, inquired if he had seen any white man's horses at any of the camps. John said he had left a camp of Delawares that morning, describing the place to be on Buck Creek, about twelve miles east, and near where the Rushville State road crosses that creek ; that he had seen horses there with iron hoofs (they had been shod), and described the horses so minutely as to lead Mr. Pogue to believe they were his. Although the horses were described so accurately, Mr. Pogue was afraid that it was a deception to lure him into the woods, and mentioned his suspicions to his family. When the Indian left the next morning he took a direction towards the river, where nearly all the settlement was. Pogue followed him for some distance to see whether he would turn his course towards the Indjan camps, but found that he kept directly on towards the river. Mr. Pogue returned to bis cabin and told his family he was going to the Indian camp for his horses. He took his gun, and with his dog set out on foot for the Delaware camp, and was never afterwards seen or heard of. We remember that there were a great many conflicting stories about his clothes and horses being seen in possession of the Indians, all of which were untrue. There can be no doubt that the Wyandotte told Mr. Pogue the truth in regard to the horses, and in his endeavor to get possession of them had a difficulty with the Delawares and was killed, at least that was the prevailing opinion at the time. Nothing has ever been learned of his fate to this day, further than that he was never seen or heard of again, though the settlers formed a company to search all the Indian camps about within fifty miles to find some indication that might lead to a clearing up of the mystery." Pogue's Creek, once the pride and now the pest of the city, takes its name from the proto-martyr, if not proto-settler, of the city and county.

Within a week or two after the arrival of the Mc- Cormicks, John Maxwell and John Cowan came and built on the high ground near the present crossing of the Crawfordsville road over Fall Creek, very near the site of the City Hospital. During the following three months a number of new-comers arrived, and settled principally in the vicinity of the river. Those best remembered are the Davis brothers (Henry and Samuel), Isaac Wilson (who built the first cabin on what was afterwards the old town plat in May), Robert Harding, Mr. Barnhill, Mr. Corbaley, Mr. Van Blaricum. About the time of the arrival of the last of this first group of pioneers the State capital was located here by the commissioners appointed by the Legislature for that purpose.

When the State was admitted into the Union, April 19, 1816, a donation of four sections - four square miles - was made by Congress for the site of a capital, to be located wherever the State might choose upon unsold lands of the government. No selection had been made or attempted in the four years since the State's admission. The capital, which bad been kept at Vincennes by Governor Harrison during his administration as Territorial Governor, from 1801 to 1812, was removed to Corydon, Harrison Co., by the Legislature, May 1, 1813, and remained there till its permanent settlement here in the fall of 1824. On the 11th of January, 1820, the Legislature appointed ten commissioners to make selection of a site for a permanent capital. They were John Tipton (an old Indian trader), John Conner (brother of William above referred to, and like him reared from childhood among the Indians, the founder of Connersville), George Hunt, John Gilliland, Stephen Ludlow, Joseph Bartholomew, Jesse

B. Durham, Frederick Rapp, William Prince, Thomas Emerson. They were ordered to meet at Conner's place (north of the city) early in the spring. Apparently only half of them served, as only five votes were given in determining the selection. But Mr. Nowland says there were nine when the party got to Conner's, Mr. Prince alone being unable to attend. If this is correct there must have been four commissioners who did not like any of the sites examined and declined to vote. A part of them met at Vincennes about the middle of May, 1820, and were joined there by the father and uncle of Mr. Nowland, who were on their way to Kentucky from Illinois, but were persuaded to accompany the commissioners. The party ascended the river to the BluflFs, where the Whetzels had settled the year before and had been joined by four or five other families. After resting a day at this point and making an examination of it, they came on up to the mouth of Fall Creek, and remained a day, some of them expressing themselves pleased with the country and disposed to put the capital here. Mr. Nowland told the commissioners that if the location were made here he would move out in the fall, and do all he could to induce other Kentuckians to join him. The mouth of Fall Creek had been the customary place of crossing the river by the whites ever since the White River Valley had been known to them. Mr. Nowland (the author) says that Lieut, (afterwards General and President) Taylor told him that he had crossed the river here with his force when going from Louisville to the Wabash to build Fort Harrison, now Terre Haute, in 1811. While the force was here Col. Abel C. Pepper, United States Marshal of the State under Taylor, met Tecumseh, who was on a mission to the Delawares, doubtless to induce them to join his combination against the whites. The party went on to Conner's, some sixteen miles north, as before stated, and examined the situation there. One or two seemed to favor it, but the whole party returned here, and after re-examining the country, decided on the 7th of June, 1820, by vote of three to two, for the Bluifs, to locate the capital here. On the 6th of January following, 1821, the selection was approved by the Legislature and the location decided irrevocably.

The commissioners reported that they bad selected Sections 1 and 12, east and west fractional sections numbered 2, east fractional section numbered 11, and so much of the east part of west fractional section numbered 3, to be set off by a line north and south, as will complete the donation of two thousand five hundred and sixty acres, in Township 15, Range 3 east. The Legislature, after approving the location, named the future city and capital Indianapolis, the " city of Indiana." The name was suggested by the late Judge Jeremiah Sullivan, in the committee charged with the preparation of the confirmatory bill. He gave an interesting account of the affair in a letter to Governor Baker, which may be pertinently introduced here :

" I have a very distinct recollection of the great diversity of opinion that prevailed as to the name by which the new town should receive legislative baptism. The bill, if I remember aright, was reported by Judge Polk, and was in the main very acceptable. A blank, of course, was left for the name of the town that was to become the seat of government, and during the two or three days we spent in endeavoring to fill the blank there was in the debate some sharpness and much amusement. Gen. Marston G. Clark, of Washington County, proposed ' Tecumseh' as the name, and very earnestly insisted on its adoption. When it failed he suggested other Indian names, which I have forgotten. They all were rejected. A member proposed ' Suwarrow,' which met with no favor. Other names were proposed, discussed, laughed at, and voted down, and the House, without coming to any agreement, adjourned until the next day. There were many amusing things said, but my remembrance of them is not suflSciently distinct to state them with accuracy. I had gone to Corydon with the intention of proposing Indianapolis as the name of the town, and on the evening of the adjournment above mentioned, or the next morning, I suggested to Mr. Samuel Merrill, the representative from Switzerland County, the name I proposed. He at once adopted it, and said he would support it. We together called on Governor Jennings, who had been a witness of the amusing proceedings the day previous, and told him what conclusion we had come to, and asked him what he thought of the name. He gave us to understand that he favored it, and that he would not hesitate to so express himself. When the House met and went into committee on the bill, I moved to fill the blank with Indianapolis. The name created quite a laugh. Mr. Merrill, however, seconded the motion. We discussed the matter fully, gave our reasons in support of the proposition, the members conversed with each other informally in regard to it, and the name gradually commended itself to the committee, and was adopted. The principal reason in favor of adopting the name proposed - to wit, that the Greek termination would indicate to all the world the locality of the town - was, I am sure, the reason that overcame the opposition to the name. The town was finally named Indianapolis with but little if any opposition." One may well feel puzzled to understand the force exerted by the argument that " the Greek termination of the name would indicate the locality of the town." The termination means " city," and that is all. The other half of the name would indicate locality though, and the combination would fairly enough suggest a State capital, so that its aptness is evident, whether the argument that secured it was sound or not.

By the same act of approval and naming the new capital the Legislature appointed Christopher Harrison (no relative of the general's), James Jones, and Samuel P. Booker commissioners to lay off the town. They were directed to meet on the site on the first Monday of April, 1821, to perform that duty, and make plats or maps of the town, one for the Secretary of State and one for the State agent. They were also to advertise and hold a sale of the lots as soon as practicable, reserving the alternate lots. The proceeds of the sales were to be used in erecting the buildings required by the government. Harrison was the only one of the commissioners who attempted to perform his duties. He was a Mary lander by birth, a very eccentric man, of excellent education and cultivated tastes, who came to Southern Indiana early in the century, and some years after the completion of his work as commissioner returned to Maryland, and lived to a ripe old age. It is said on good authority that he was engaged to be married to Miss Elizabeth Patterson, a noted belle of Baltimore, but the attentions of Prince Jerome Bonaparte overpowered her scruples and her faith, and she married the brother of the great Corsican, only to find herself repudiated by him and excluded from the ambition that had betrayed her. Mr. Harrison came to Jefferson County about 1804, and lived there the life of a hermit with his dogs and books for several years, then removed to Salem, Washington Co., and there his rare attainments - rare in the backwoods at least - and his abilities forced him into public life, and finally into the position of founder of the city of Indianapolis. He came to the little yearling village at the time appointed, and selected as surveyors Alexander Ralston and Eliaa P. Fordham, with Benjamin I. Blythe as clerk of the Board of Commis.sioners.

Mr. Blythe lived to an advanced age in the city, and was one of the earliest of the enterprising men who laid the foundations of the city's pork-packing prosperity. Of Mr. Fordham little appears to have been known at the time, and nothing can be learned now. Ralston was a Scotchman, a man of marked ability and rare attainments as well as high character. When quite young he had been employed in assisting the laying out of Washington City, and may have got then the preference for wide streets and oblique avenues which he exhibited so signally and beneficially here. He became associated with Burr's expedition, presumably in ignorance of its real character, as most of the conspirator's following were, came West in connection with it, and remained when it failed. He remained in Indianapolis after completing his work, and in 1825 was appointed by the Legislature to survey White River and make an estimate of the expense of removing the drifts and snags and other obstructions to navigation, and reported the following winter. He built a brick residence on West Maryland Street, a half-square west of Tennessee, and lived there till his death, early in 1827. He was buried in the " Old Cemetery," and his grave was long unknown. A few years ago, however, some old residents made a close examination and found it, or were confident they had.

The Indiana Journal of Jan. 9, 1827, contained an obituary notice of him, which from his prominence in the settlement may be reproduced here. He died on the 5th, at the age of fifty-six. " Mr. Ralston was a native of Scotland, but emigrated early in life to America. He lived many years at the city of Washington, then at Louisville, Ky., afterwards near Salem, in this State, and for the last five years in this place. His earliest and latest occupation in the United States was surveying, in which he was long employed by the government at Washington, and his removal to this place was occasioned by his appointment to make the original survey of it. During the intervening period merchandise and agriculture engaged his attention. In the latter part of his life he was our county surveyor, and his leisure time was employed in attending to a neat garden, in which various useful and ornamental plants, fruit, etc., were carefully cultivated. Mr. Ralston was successful in his profession, honest in his dealings, gentlemanly in his deportment, a liberal and hospitable citizen, and a sincere and ardent friend. He had experienced much both of the pleasures and pains incident to human life. The respect and esteem of the generous and good were always awarded to him, and he found constant satisfaction in conferring favors, not only on his own species, but even on the humblest of the brute creation ; he would not willingly set foot upon a worm. But his unsuspecting nature made him liable to imposition ; his sanguine expectations were often disappointed. His independent spirit sometimes provoked opposition, and his extreme sensibility was frequently put to the severest trials. Though he stood alone among us in respect to family, his loss will be long lamented." Mr. Nowland adds that the old bachelor's house " was kept for him by a colored woman named Chancy Lively," who was the second colored person in the place. Dr. Mitchell brought the first, a boy named Ephraim Ensaw. These were the first colored residents, but a colored man came out with Mr. Maxwell in 1820, and remained here a few months. His name was Aaron Wallace, and a few years ago he returned here to reside .permanently, after an absence of nearly sixty years. " Aunt Chaney," as she was called, was well known to the South Side school-boys forty-five or fifty years ago. Her residence was the northwest corner of Maryland and Meridian Streets. She married a barber named Britton.

On the completion of the surveying force, work was begun at once in marking out the sections and fractions selected by the locating commissioners io June, 1820. The whole donation lay upon the east bank of the river except a fractional section on the west bank, where Indianola stands. A plat of one mile square was set in the middle of the donation, and almost in the middle of the plat the Circle was placed, to be made the site of the Governor's residence. It was not used for that purpose, however, though a large house was erected there in 1827 at considerable expense, some six thousand five hundred dollars. The publicity of the situation made it undesirable as a family residence, and it was used exclusively as rooms for the judges of the Supreme Court, the State auditor and engineer, the State Library and State Bank, and occasionally for local or individual purposes. It was proposed at one time to add wings on each side and make a State- House of it. It was sold as old building material in April, 1857, for six hundred and sixty-five dollars, and torn down and carried off in the last days of the same month. The Circle was not put in the centre of the donation, because if the centre of the town had corresponded with the centre of the donation, it would have thrown too much of the central portion of the town plat into the valley of Pogue's Creek. The point where the four sections of the donation " corner" is about ten feet west and five feet south of the southeast corner of the lot occupied by the Occidental Hotel. The Circle was set nearly a square east and two squares north for the purpose stated. A natural elevation at this point, thickly covered with a growth of tall straight sugar-trees, aided its nearly central situation in making it the centre of the original town plat. It contains between three and four acres, and is surrounded by an eighty-feet street.

Extending north and south from the Circle on a meridian line is Meridian Street, and crossing the latter from east to west is Market Street, both carried to the limits of the city, except the west end of

Market, which is blocked at Blackford Street. Parallel with Market and one square south is Washington Street, the main thoroughfare of the city, one hundred and twenty feet wide. The whole plat, one mile square, is surrounded by ninety-feet streets, called respectively, from their location, North, South, East, and West. The area inside these limits is divided into eighty-nine blocks and fractions by nine streets north to south and nine east to west, each ninety feet wide except Washington. The blocks are four hundred and twenty feet square, and are divided into four equal parts, each containing one acre, by alleys fifteen feet wide running north and south, and thirty feet running east and west. All of the streets, except the two central ones meeting at the Circle, the main street, and the four bounding the plat, are named for the States of the Union in 1821. The most marked features of the original design of the city are the Circle and the avenues radiating from it, and starting at the corners most remote from it of the four blocks that adjoin it. These are named for States like the others. The squares are broken by six fractions and three considerable irregular tracts in Pogue's Run Valley, so that the number of completed squares is only eightynine. The intersections of the streets would have made one hundred if completion had been possible. Three lots were made of each quarter of a square or acre, giving to each lot of the original plat one-third of an acre. Few of these now retain their original dimensions. They were sixty-seven and one-half feet wide on the streets by one hundred and ninetyfive feet deep, being longer where they abutted upon the narrow alleys. The half-mile of the donation lying all round the mile square in the middle of it, except on the river side, was not platted. In 1822 the Legislature ordered the fraction west of the river to be laid off in tracts of five to twenty acres by the State agent, and in 1831 he was ordered to lay off all the remainder of the donation, some nineteen hundred acres, into lots of two to fifty acres, and sell them at a minimum price of ten dollars an acre. These were used chiefly for farming purposes and pastures till the growth of the city began to overrun them. It was never imagined that the city or town would extend to these exterior lots at all, and that they should be covered by it would have been as incredible as an Arabian Night tale. Now the city covers nearly three times the area of the donation. The four streets bounding the old plat - North, South, East, and West - were not in it at first, but were put there at the solicitation of James Blake, who represented to Commissioner Harrison the advantages such streets would be as public drives and promenades when the town grew up.

The act of the Legislature creating the commission to lay off the town required the appointment of an agent of the State at six hundred dollars a year for a term of three years, who was to live at Indianapolis and attend to the disposal of the lots. Gen. John Carr was the first agent. The place was subsequently held by several persons, among them James Milroy, Bethuel F. Morris, Ebenezer Sharpe, B. I. Blythe, clerk of the commission, Thomas H. Sharpe, and John Cook. The duties were finally transferred to the Secretary of State. The commissioners, or rather one of them, having completed the survey and plat, advertised the first sale for the second Monday in October, 1821, and it took place at the tavern of Matthias Nowland, father of John H. B., author of " Prominent Citizens of Indianapolis." This stood near Washington Street, west of Missouri; and at the request of the State agent, Mr. Nowland had built an addition to serve as an ofiBce. Oct. 9, 1821, was " a raw, cold day," says a sketch of the city's early history written some twenty-five years or more ' ago ; " a high wind prevailed, and a man in attendance came near being killed by a falling limb." The town was very much crowded. Strangers from various quarters had come to settle in the new place or to secure property. The three taverns, kept by Hawkins, Carter, and Nowland, were crowded, and in many cases the citizens were called upon to share their homes with the new-comers till they could erect cabins. The bidding at the sale was quite spirited, and, considering the position and advantages of the settlement, high prices were obtained in some cases. " The reservation of alternate lots was begun by the commissioner by reserving lot No. 1." The best sales were north and east of the bulk of the settle- ment, which was on and near the river, owing to the prevalence of chills and fever the summer before, when everybody, old and young, was down at one time or another, except Enoch Banks, Thomas Chinn, and Nancy Hendricks. This visitation gave an eastern impulse to settlement, and accounts for the higher prices of lots more remote from the river. The number of lots sold amounted to three hundred and fourteen, mostly in the central and northern parts of the plat, and the total value of the sales was thirtyfive thousand five hundred and ninety-six dollars and twenty-five cents. The highest price brought by a single lot was by the lot on Washington Street, west of the Court-House Square, which brought five hundred and sixty dollars. That on the same street, west of the State-House Square, brought five hundred dollars. The intervening lots sold from one hundred to three hundred dollars each. The conditions of the sale required the payment of one-fifth of the purchase-money down, and the remainder in four equal annual installments.

The sales continued a week, and the amount paid down was seven thousand one hundred and nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. Thomas Carter was auctioneer, and the late James M. Ray clerk of these first sales. Not a few of these lots are now worth one thousand dollars a front foot, some are worth more. " Outlots" that were sold at first for ten, twenty, or thirty dollars could not be bought now for as many thousands, in some cases twice that. Of the lots purchased at this first sale, one hundred and sixty-nine were afterwards forfeited, or the payments made on one lot were transferred to another, under an act passed a little later " for the relief of purchasers of lots in Indianapolis." The early sketch already referred to says, " These forfeited lots and the reserved lots were once or twice afterwards offered at public sale, and kept open for purchase all the time. But prices became depressed, money scarce, sickness caused general despondency, and for several years after the winter of 1821-22 there were but few lots sold. The amount of cash reserved by the State for donation lands up to 1842 was about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars." This the law made a public building fund, out of which was erected a State-House, court-house. Governor's house (in the Circle), treasurer's house and ofiice, ofiSce of clerk of the Supreme Court, and a ferryman's house at the foot of Washington Street.

The settlers brought to the new capital by the report of its selection for that purpose speedily trebled its population, and more. During the summer and fall of 1820 there came Dr. Samuel G. Mitchell, John and James Givan (among the first merchants), William or Wilkes Reagan, Matthias Nowland, James M. Ray, James Blake, Nathaniel Cox, Thomas Anderson, John Hawkins, Dr. Livingston Dunlap, Daniel Yandes, David Wood, Col. Alexander W. Russell, Dr. Isaac Coe, Douglass Maguire, and others unnamed and not easily identified as to the time of arrival. Morris Morris is said by one of these early sketches to have come here in 1819, in the fall (probably inadvertently for 1820), when he came only in the fall of 1821. Mr. Nowland says that James M. Ray, James Blake, Daniel Yandes, the Givans, Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Coe, Dr. Dunlap, Col. Russell came the following spring and summer, 1821, and with them Daniel Shaff'er, the first merchant, who died in the summer of 1821, Robert Wilmot, and Calvin Fletcher, the first lawyer. It is impossible now to make a complete list of the settlers up to the laying out of the town and the first sale of lots, but with the help of such records as have been made, and such memories as are accessible, a muster-roll of considerable interest can be made :

Some thirty-three years ago the late Samuel Merrill, Treasurer of State at the time of the removal of the capital from Corydon to Indianapolis in the fall of 1824, and charged with the supervision of the work, prepared a map illustrating the progress of the town at different periods, 1821, 1823, 1835, and 1850, to accompany the first historical sketch of the city, prepared by him for the first " Gazetteer," issued in 1850 by Chamberlain & Co., booksellers in the town. The reader, understanding the old plat of the city, and observing that its western boundary at West Street was about a quarter of a mile from the river, will see quite accurately the size and location of the infant settlement of 1821 from a description of the outline on this map. It extended along Washington Street, wholly south of it, to a point a little less than a block east of West Street, and was less than a block in width for a distance equal to two blocks, when it began widening, and at the river reached from about the point where Georgia Street strikes the bank to the old National road bridge. The little settlement of Maxwell and Cowan farther north, near the site of the City Hospital, seems to have been completely detached from the main body of the village. In 1823, the year before the arrival of the capital, the settlement had shifted entirely away from the river, its western extremity being near West Street, and it extended in a narrow line about a block in width on each side of Washington Street to Meridian Street, where a point ran south to Georgia Street on each side of Meridian, while east of it, and passing east of the Circle, another point projected north as far as Ohio Street, and a third point along Washington carried the settlement to a point about half-way between Alabama and New Jersey Streets. The shape of it is an exact cross, with one arm a little higher than the other. In 1835 the town had been under its own government by trustees for two or three years, had established a brewery and several manufactures, besides those for custom service, had been the capital for over ten years, had nearly completed the State-House, had a population of about two thousand, and the county that year, as announced by Mr. Calvin Fletcher in a public address, contained thirteen hundred farms, and had produced one million three hundred thousand bushels of corn. In this condition of things the town formed an irregular figure, much like a balloon, with the neck near West Street, and the " bulge" opening pretty rapidly up north to Michigan Street, reaching east to New Jersey, and then south to Georgia and a little below ; at the widest place, north to south, covering seven squares, and its greatest length along Washington Street very nearly covering the mile of the plat. In 1850 it covered all of the plat but the northwest, southwest, and southeast corners, and more than made up for these deficiencies by projecting beyond it on the northeast, the east, and the south along the BluiF road or South Meridian Street.

In May, 1820, in three months after the first settlement, or in any case after the first indications of a possible settlement of more than a family or two, there were fifteen or twenty families on the donation. These increased to thirty or forty during the succeeding year to July, when the sales of government lands in this and adjoining counties began at the landoffice in Brookville, Franklin Co. Happily for the pioneers of 1820, there was not so much sickness as might have been expected, and nothing comparable to the visitation the next year, and, quite as happily, nature had provided a " deadening," in which they raised with little labor comparatively all the corn and vegetables they needed to make a comfortable subsistence with the abundance of fish and game to be had close at hand and with little trouble. This natural " deadening" lay at the northwest corner of the donation, and contained some hundred or more acres. The trees had been killed by eaterpillars, and the pioneers cleared o£F the underbrush together, and held the field in common, simply marking off each family's share by what Mr. Nowland calls " turn-rows." This was known as the "big field" for several years. Its products were chiefly corn and pumpkins. In addition to this provision for the staples of vegetable food, each family had a truck-patch in the rear of their log cabin, where they raised such vegetables as they required for immediate use, including the " love-apple," or tomato, which nobody dreamed of eating for twenty years afterwards. Little more belongs to the history of this first year of the city's settlement than an account of the condition and modes of life of the settlers, and that being much the same for all the early years of the settlement will be told for all at once.

The year 1821 was an eventful one for the infant capital. During the summer the donation had been surveyed and the original city plat made, and a number of the men who were to be most conspicuous in its after-history, in spreading its business, establishing its industries, founding its schools, maintaining its morality, its Fletcher, Yandes. Blake, Ray, Morris, Russell, Dunlap, Brown, Landis, had come or were on the way. It was a year of universal sickness, privation, and suffering. Says an early account, " Towards the end of summer and during the fall epidemic remittent and intermittent fevers and agues assailed the people, and scarcely a person was left untouched. (In another place it is told that Nancy Hendricks, Enoch Banks, and Thomas Chinn were all that escaped.) The few healthy ones were employed day and night in ministering to the wants of the sufferers, and many instances of generous and devoted friendship occurred at this time. The recollection of their bitter sufferings bound the early settlers together in after-life. The new-comers might well be appalled at the prospect before them, and it is no wonder that extravagant stories were circulated of the sickness at Indianapolis. Although nearly every person in the settlement was more or less assailed, and several hundred cases occurred during the prevalence of the epidemic, not more than., twenty-five terminated fatally. As winter approached the health of the community improved, and by the end of the year it was entirely restored. No cause was discovered for the unparalleled visitation, which the old settlers hold to this day in vivid remembrance." The report of this calamity went abroad, and for many years more or less affected the otherwise strong inducements of the settlement to new settlers, and for thirty years malarial disorders came almost as regularly as the seasons. The " sickly season" was as well known and well defined a period as the " dogdays," and continued so till the general clearing of the county and drying out of low bottom lands and swamps had diminished the sources of malarial influence. The effect of the epidemic of 1821 on the settlement was to force it back from the river, and extend it eastward past the Circle and Court-House Square along Washington Street.

The first death in the settlement, by tradition, was that of Daniel Shaffer, a merchant, who came early in the year, opened a store on the high ground south of the creek, near the present line of South Street, and died in the summer following. The first woman that died was the wife of John Maxwell, one of the first two settlers after the McCormicks in the spring of 1820. She died 3d of July, 1821, and was buried on the bluff of Fall Creek, near the site of the City Hospital. Eight persons were buried there during the epidemic. Mr. Commissioner Harrison was scared off home by it, but before he went he authorized Daniel Shaffer, James Blake, and Matthias R. Nowland to select a site for a cemetery. " One Sunday morning early in August," says Mr. J. H. B. Nowland, " they selected the place now known as the Old Graveyard. One week from that day Mr. Shaffer was buried there." If his memory is correct Mrs. Maxwell's was the first death in the settlement, and the traditional burial of Shaffer near the corner of South and Pennsylvania Streets, and subsequent removal to the " Old Graveyard," now " Greenlawn Cemetery," is a mistake. Most of the burials during the epidemic were in that first cemetery.

Following this visitation came another hardly less intolerable. The universal sickness prevented the cultivation of the " caterpillar deadening," and the influx of settlers at and after the first sales of lots made provisions distressingly scarce. Coffee wivs fifty cents a pound; tea, two dollars; corn, one dollar a bushel ; flour, four to five dollars a hundred ; coarse muslin or " factory," forty-five cents a yard. There were no roads into the settlement, nor anything better than cow-paths. All goods and provisions had to be carried on horseback from the White Water Valley, sixty miles away. The nearest grist-mill was Goodlander's, on the White Water. Corn was mainly bought of the Indians up the river and brought down in boats. Later keel-boats brought considerable cargoes of flour, whiskey, and powder, chiefly up the river. The settlers considered each one's stock of provisions the property of all that needed it, and divided with unstinted generosity.

The year 1821 was marked by the establishment of the first business house, the store of Daniel Shaffer. He was followed in a short time by James and John Givan, the latter of whom became a vagrant and pauper, supported by an annuity contributed by the merchants of the city, and died only a few years ago, a very old man, with a marvelous memory of events and persons of that early time. Robert Wilmot began merchandising about the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, near the present corner of Washington and West Streets, in a row of cabins called " Wilmot's Row." Luke Walpole opened in the same business in the fall on the southwest corner of the State-House Square, Jacob Landis on the southeast corner, and Jeremiah Johnson on the northwest corner of Market and Pennsylvania. The first log school-house was built the same year, about where Kentucky Avenue enters Illinois Street, near a large pond. The first teacher was Joseph C. Reed, afterwards the first county recorder. The first log house on the old city plat was built by Isaac Wilson in the spring of 1820, on the northwest corner of what was afterwards the State-House Square. The first frame house was built by James Blake on the lot east of Masonic Hall in the fall of 1821. The timber had been cut during the summer by James Paxton on the donation. This was the first plastered house. That winter Thomas Carter, the auctioneer of the lot sales, built a ceiled frame tavern about where No. 40 West Washington Street is, and called it the " Rosebush," in the old English fashion of naming taverns, from a rough painting of that object on the sign. It was long after removed to a point near the canal, and then to West Street near Maryland. John Hawkins had built a log tavern the fall before on Washington Street, north side, near the middle of the block east of Meridian. It may be noted in this connection, though chronologically dislocated, that the first brick building was erected for John Johnson in 1822-23, on a lot opposite the site of the post-oflBce. It was torn down a few years ago to make room for a better structure. Though the Johnson house was undoubtedly the first brick building in the town, it is not so certain that it was the first in the county. Old residents of Wayne township, like Mr. Slattern and Mr. Gladden, say that a two-story brick residence was built by John Cook in 1821, in what is now Maywood, near the line of Wayne and Decatur townships. In its latter days, thirty-five or forty years ago, it cracked through the middle, and was held together by a hoop of large square logs, notched at the corners and wedged tight, between the lower and upper stories. It was a rare style of repair for a building of any kind, and may still be remembered by old residents on that account. It stood on the northern bluif of a low, level, wet prairie, the only one in the county, of which the now drained and cultivated remains, with possible patches of the original condition, are on the southern border of Maywood, and near the residence of Fielding Beeler, Esq. James Linton built the first two-story house, a frame, in the spring of 1822, on the site of No. 76 West Washington Street. He also built the first saw-mill on Fall Creek, above the Indiana Avenue or Crawfordsville road bridge, and about the same time built the first grist-mill for Isaac Wilson on Fall Creek bayou, now known as " the race," near the line of North Street.

The year 1821 saw the beginning of moral and intellectual culture as well as business. A school was taught by Mr. Reed during the latter part of the year, and Rev. John McClung, a preacher of what was called the " New Light" denomination, preached in the spring, some say in the sugar grove on the little knoll in the Circle. It is a question among the few old settlers who remember the occurrence whether that was the first sermon heard in the New Purchase or one preached not far from the same time by Rev. Rezin Hammond. Mr. Nowland says that if Mr. McClung preached in the settlement that spring it must have been at Mr. Barnhill's, who belonged to the same denomination but lived outside of the donation. An old settler wrote in one of the city papers recently that Mr. Hammond preached near the site of the old State Bank, corner of Illinois Street and Kentucky Avenue, near a pond, which must have been close to the site of the first schoolhouse, while others say he preached in the woods on the State-House Square. Mr. Nowland, years afterwards, met Mr. Hammond at Jeffersonville, and this first sermon was recalled. The party surveying the town, under Ralston, were then at work near the Circle, and they prepared on Saturday evening for the sermon next day by rolling logs together for seats and building a rough log rostrum. Not more than forty or fifty persons attended. " A few moments after the services commenced," says Mr. Nowland, " an Indian and his squaw came by on their ponies. They halted a moment, and passed on towards the trading-house of Robert Wilmot. He was in the congregation, and at once rose and followed them ; but before he was out of hearing Mr. Hammond said, ' The pelts and furs of the Indians had more attractions for his Kentucky friend than the words , of God.' There can be little doubt," Mr. Nowland concludes, " that this was the first sermon preached in Indianapolis ; it was so regarded at the time." In August of the same year Rev. Ludlow G. Gaines, a Presbyterian clergyman, preached in the grove south of the State-House Square. No church organization was attempted, however, till the spring of 1823. In July it was completed, and steps taken to build a church on North Pennsylvania Street, on the site of the Exchange Block. It was finished, at a cost of twelve hundred dollars, and occupied in 1824. The " Indianapolis Circuit" of the Methodist Church was organized by Rev. William Cravens in 1822, under authority of the Missouri Conference, but Rev. James Scott had preached here in private houses as early as October, 1821, by appointment of the same authority. A camp-meeting had been held in 1822, September 12th, and a second one in May^ 1823, after the organization of the circuit, but no house was occupied specially as a church till the summer of 1825, when a hewed-log house on Maryland Street near Meridian was bought for three hundred dollars and used for four years. In 1&28-29 a brick building was erected, at a cost of three thousand dollars, on the southwest corner of Circle and Meridian Streets, which became, when replaced in 1846, "Wesley Chapel." The first Baptist Church was organized in September, 1822, but held services in private houses or in a log school-house " on and partly in Maryland Street," between Tennessee and Mississippi Streets, which could be had " without interruption," as a committee reported in May, 1823, till a brick house was built on the southwest corner of Maryland and Meridian Streets in 1829. These were the beginnings of the three pioneer churches in Indianapolis and the New Purchase. They are noted here to present as complete a view as possible of the early settlement and history of the city and county.

In the summer of 1821 the first marriage occurred. The bride was Miss Jane Reagan, the groom Jeremiah Johnson, who had to walk through an unbroken and pathless forest sixty miles to Connersville for his license (this county at that time having no organization), and the walk back made one hundred and twenty miles. He was an eccentric man, witty, cynical, with a fashion of retracting his lips when talking so as to show his yellow, tobaccostained teeth, giving him something of the expression of a snarling dog. He was full of humorous conceits and quaint comparisons, and a delightful companion for young men when he was " tight" enough to feel jolly, as he frequently was. When the first telegraph line was completed to the city in 1848, " Old Jerry" saw it as ho was passing along Washington Street comfortably " full," and broke out in a sort of apostrophe, " There ! they're driving lightning down the road, and with a single line at that !" Any one who has seen a team driven by a " single line" will appreciate " Old Jerry's" joke. He died very suddenly in 1857.

Among other first events that have traditionally marked this year was the birth of the first child. But the tradition of that interesting occurrence is contested by two living witnesses, who rather confuse one's faith, and leave a slight leaning to the skepticism which would doubt if any child was born at all. The traditional opinion, supported by two or three historical sketches, is that Mordecai Harding was that memorable infant, but tradition and history are both impeached by Mr. William H. White (before referred to) and by Mr. Shirts, of Hamilton, who claims that Mr. Corbaley's son Richard was the first, in August, 1820, at his residence in the western part of the donation. Mr. Nowland denies the donation, says Mr. Corbaley lived west of the west donation line, but concedes the principal fact. Mr. White's claim is disputed by the general opinion of old settlers, but the other seems to be settled.

During the whole of the year 1820 the " New Purchase" formed part of Delaware County, which, then unorganized, vaguely covered most of the northern and central portions of the State, and was attached for judicial purposes to Wayne and Fayette Counties. The residents of White River Valley were sued and compelled to answer in the courts of the White Water Valley, sixty miles away, and the compulsion was costly, irritating, and intolerable. The jurisdiction was disputed and resisted, and the Legislature, to avoid further and graver trouble, passed an act of Jan. 9, 1821, authorizing the appointment of two justices of the peace for the new settlements, with appeals to the Bartholomew Circuit Court. In April, 1821, Governor Jennings appointed John Maxwell, but he retained the office only a few months, and resigned. The settlers then elected informally James Mcllvaine, and the Governor commissioned him in October. He is described by the old residents who remember him, and by the sketches that speak of this period of the city's history, as holding court at the door of his little log shanty, on the northwest corner of Pennsylvania and Michigan Streets, with the jury sitting on a log in front, his pipe in his mouth, and Corbaley, the solitary constable, vigilantly crossing the plans of culprits to get away into the thick woods close about, as they are said to have done sometimes in spite of him. The late Calvin Fletcher was then the only lawyer, and the primary court of informal appeal for the easily-puzzled old squire. The po- sitions of counsel and judge are not often consolidated in the same hands, - it is too easy for one to use and abuse the other ; but it was never charged that Mr. Fletcher misled his confidant in his own interest.

The first especially exciting incident in the quiet course of the settlement brought the judicial power into a dilemma, from which it escaped by a process that did more credit to its ingenuity than its sense of justice. On Christmas-day, 1821, four Kentucky boatmen who had come up White River from the Ohio in a keel-boat to the BluiFs, thought that the new settlement farther up would be a good place for frolic, and they came and got howling drunk before daylight at Dan Larkins' " grocery," as liquor-shops were called in those days, and frequently were a mixture of saloon and grocery-store. As usual with the " half-horse and half-alligator" men of the Mike Fink breed, the predecessors of the " cow-boy," they began smashing the doggery as soon as they had got all the liquor they wanted. The row roused the settlement, and the gentlemen from Kentucky were respectfully requested to desist and make less noise. They responded with a defiance backed by knives. The settlers consulted. They did not want the whiskey wasted, and they did want a quiet Christmas, or at least to make their own disturbance. They determined to put down the rioters. James Blake proposed to take the leader single-handed if the rest of Indianapolis would " tackle" the other three, and the consolidated remainder of the embryo capital agreed. Blake and the Kentuokian were both large, powerful men, but the Hoosier was sober and resolute, and the Kentuckian drunk and furious, so the rioters were captured and taken to Squire McUvaine's. They were tried, fined severely, and in default of payment ordered to jail. There was no jail nearer than Connersville, and it would cost as much as their fines to take them there in the dead of winter under guard, so they were kept under guard here, with instructions to allow a little relaxation of vigilance in the night, and the hint was followed by the convenient escape of the whole party.

Notwithstanding the appointment of justices, the courts of Wayne and Fayette Counties still claimed jurisdiction, and doubts were entertained of the va^ lidity of the appointment of Maxwell and Mcllvaine. To remedy all difficulties the citizens held a meeting at Hawkins' tavern to discuss the matter, and James Blake and Dr. S. G. Mitchell were appointed representatives of the settlement to attend the next session of the Legislature at Corydon as lobby members to secure an organization of the county. On the 28th of November the Legislature legalized the acts of Commissioner Harrison, he having acted alone in surveying the donation and laying off the town. It may be noted here as an indication of the readiness of the Legislature to encourage the growth of the place that on the 31st of December, 1821, an .act authorized Gen. Carr, the agent, to lease to McCartney and McDonald forty acres of the donation for ten years free, to be occupied as a mill-seat. On the same day an act was passed organizing the county, and requiring the organization to be completed on the 1st of April, 1822. It applied the present Court- House Square to that purpose, and provided for the erection of a court-house fifty feet square and two stories high, and appropriated eight thousand dollars to it. The courts that held sessions in the capitol, Federal, State, and county, were to use it forever if they chose, and the State Legislature was to use it for fifty years or till a State-House should be built. Two per cent, of the lot fund was to be given for the founding of a county library. The sessions of court and the elections were to be held at Gen. Carr's till the court-house was built. Johnson, Hamilton, and a large part of Boone, Madison, and Hancock were attached to this county for judicial purposes. Marion, Monroe, Owen, Greene, Morgan, Lawrence, Rush, Hendricks, Decatur, Bartholomew, Shelby, and Jennings Counties were formed into the Fifth Judicial Circuit. William W. Wick, of Connersville, was elected president judge by the Legislature, and Harvey Bates, of the same place, was appointed sheriflF by the Governor. They both came on and assumed their offices the following February, 1822. The latter, by a proclamation of Feb. 22, 1822, ordered an election to be held on the 1st of the next

April for two associate judges, a clerk, recorder, and three county commissioners. The voting precincts were fixed at Gen. Carr's, in the town ; John Page's, at Strawtown, in Hamilton County ; John Berry's, Andersontown, Madison Co. ; and William McCartney's, on Fall Creek, near Pendleton. Returns were to be forwarded by the 3d of April.

William W. Wick was a Pennsylvanian by birth, but came to Connersville, in this State, when a young man, and from there came to Indianapolis to assume the duties of his office. Ex-Senator Oliver H. Smith said that in 1824 " he, though a young lawyer, had had a good deal of experience in criminal cases." During his term as judge of the huge circuit, now formed into a half-dozen, he was elected brigadier-general of militia, no unimportant position in those days to an ambitious young man. He was Secretary of State for four years, from 1825 to 1829, then prosecuting attorney, and in 1833 was beaten for Congress by George L. Kinnard. He was successful though in 1839, and served in the House during the memorable " log cabin and hard cider" campaign of 1840. He was elected again in 1845, and re-elected in 1847. In 1853 he was made postmaster by President Pierce, and on the expiration of his term in 1857 he retired from public life altogether. Soon afterwards he went to Franklin and made his home with his daughter, and died there in 1868.

Hervey Bates, who was appointed sheriff by Governor Jennings, was a son of Hervey Bates, who was a master of transportation during the Indian war under Gens. Wayne and Harmar, and chiefly engaged in forwarding provisions and munitions of war from the frontier posts to the army in the wilderness. His son Hervey, the subject of this biographical sketch, was a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, and born in that place in 1795, when it was called Fort Washington. When but about six years of age he lost his mother, and, his father having married again, he left the paternal roof, and in Warren, Lebanon County, Ohio, met with friends through whose agency he received a sufficient English education to qualify him for the ordinary pursuits of life. On attaining his majority he came to Brookville, Franklin County, where he married

Miss Sidney Sedwick, cousin of the late Gen. James Noble, United States senator. During the year 1816 he cast, in Brookville, his first vote for a delegate to form a new constitution for the State of Indiana. Soon after Mr. Bates' marriage he removed to Connersville, and made it his residence until February, 1822, when Indianapolis, then a mere hamlet, became his home. Jonathan Jennings, the first Governor after. the admission of the State into the Union, appointed William W. Wick president judge of the then Fifth Judicial District, and Hervey Bates, sheriff of Marion County, which then embraced several neighboring counties for judicial purposes, investing the latter with full power for placing in operation the necessary legal machinery of the county. This he did by issuing a proclamation for an election to be held on the first day of April, for the purpose of choosing a clerk of the court and other county officers, which was the finst election of any kind held in the new purchase. Mr. Bates was, at the following election held in October, made sheriff for the regular term of two years, but declined a subsequent nomination, having little taste for the distinctions of office. Mercantile pursuits subsequently engaged his attention, to which he brought his accustomed energy and industry, and enjoyed success in his various business enterprises.

Mr. Bates was the earliest president of the branch of the State Bank located in Indianapolis, and filled the position for ten years, during which time it enjoyed a career of unparalleled success, and greatly advanced the interests of the business community. Through the substantial aid afforded by this bank, most of the surplus produce of this and adjacent counties found a profitable market. Mr. Bates was also instrumental in the formation of the earliest insurance company, was a stockholder in the first hotel built by a company, in the first railroad finished to the city of his residence, the earliest gaslight and coke company, and in many other enterprises having for their object the public welfare. In 1852 he began and later completed the spacious hotel modern improvements added, making a total cost of seventy-five thousand dollars. Many other public and private buildings in various portions of the city owe their existence to the enterprise and means of Mr. Bates. He was a generous contributor to all worthy religious and benevolent objects, and willingly aided in the maintenance of the various charitable institutions of Indianapolis. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher found in him a cordial friend when a resident of the city, and in his less prosperous days. The death of Mr. Bates occurred on the 6th of July, 1876, in his eighty-third year, his wife having died previously. His children are Hervey Bates and Mrs. L. M. Vance, both of Indianapolis, and Elizabeth H., deceased.

While this first election is pending a return may be made for a moment to pick up some incidents of the settlement that occurred between the sale of lots in October, 1821, and the election, April 1, 1822. No clearing of the streets had been attempted when the sales took place. Each little cabin was stuck away in its own little hole in the dense woods, and they were so dense that a man standing near the site of Bingham & Walk's jewelry-store could not see a house half-way down the block on the other side of Washington Street, west of Meridian ; so say old settlers and common tradition. Gen. Morris once said that it was just like camping out in a forest on a hunting expedition when he came here with his father in 1821, except that the camping-places were cabins instead of tents or brush houses. One neighbor could not see the next one's house. Hawkins built his tavern of logs cut on the lot in the very centre of Washington Street. For many years the less settled streets were more or less filled with trees and brush, and the only way along them was a cowpath. In order to open Washington Street, which the plan of the town had appointed for the principal thoroughfare, an offer was made by the settlers to give the timber to anybody who would clear oflf the trees. It would have been a very profitable contract a year later. The oiFer was accepted by Lismond Basye, a Swede, who had come from Franklin County that same fall. The trees were oak, ash, and walnut chiefly, and he thought he had a small fortune safe.

When he had got them all down, and the street " to be" was worse blocked than before, aod there was no mill to saw them, he gave up the job in despair, and the people burned the super'o timber as it lay. In January, 1822, the Legislature ordered the opening of a number of roads, and appropriated nearly one hundred thousand dollars to it, greatly to the satisfaction of the entirely isolated settlers. In the same month the State agent was instructed to lease unsold lots on condition that the lessees would clear them in four months, and this, as a step towards getting the settlement in something like civilized condition, was a gratifying measure. The lessees were allowed forty days to remove their improvements if the lots should be sold during their occupancy of them.

On the 28th of January, 1822, the first newspaper of the settlement was issued by George Smith and Nathaniel Bolton, his step-son, called the Indianapolis Gazette. Mr. Nowland's memoir of Mr. Smith says " the printing-office was in one corner of the cabin in which the family lived," and the cabin was near a row of cabins built by Mr. Wilmot, called " Smoky Row," west of the line of the future canal and near Maryland Street. In the second year the office was moved to the northeast corner of the State-House Square. Mr. Smith learned the printer's trade in the office of the Observer of Lexington, Ky., and subsequently worked upon the Liberty Hall and Gazette of Cincinnati, under the noted editor, Charles Hammond. In later life he lived in a frame house on the northeast corner of Georgia and Tennessee Streets, the ground now forming a part of the Catholic property about the St. John's Cathedral and the bishop's residence. Here about 1840, John Hodgkins established the first ice-cream or " pleasure garden," as it was called, and built the first ice-house, and laid down a little circular railway with a little locomotive to run upon it. Mr. Smith served two terms as associate judge of the county, and was the first man in the place to open a real estate agency, which he did in 1827. Some years before his death he bought a farm at Mount Jackson, which now forms part of the grounds of the Insane Asylum, and there he died in April, 1826, at the age of fifty-two. He was rather an eccentric man, but notoriously liberal to the poor.

He and Governor Ray wore " cues"- in the old Revolutionarj' fashion. .The Governor discarded his in his old age, but Mr. Smith held to his as tenaciously as a Chinaman. Some catarrhal affection, probably, brought a fit of sneezing on him nearly every morning early after he had dressed and got out of doors, and that sonorous sound could be heard by all the neighbors as far and as plainly and about as early as the morning song of his roosters.

Nathaniel Bolton was a book-binder by trade. He became much better known to the Indianapolis people than Mr. Smith. He continued to edit the Gazette after the other had sold out his interest, when he had a larger constituency to speak for, and his wife, Sarah T. Barrett, of Madison, the earliest and most gifted and conspicuous of the poetesses of the State, helped his reputation by the abundance of her own. He was made consul at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1853, whence his wife wrote many letters to the Journal, then under the direction of an old friend, Mr. Sulgrove. In May, 1857, he came back in consequence of failing health, and died in a few months. For several years after he had sold his interest in the Gazette, he and his wife kept a country tavern on the farm that Mr. Smith lived on before his death at Mount Jackson. Mrs. Bolton is now living in a pleasant house in the country about three miles southeast of the city, and still frequently publishes . fugitive verses on passing occurrences that interest her, especially the death of old friends, marked with all the fertility of fancy and grace of style of her earlier poems.

The mechanical processes of the first paper were primitive enough. The ink was partly compounded of tar, and the press-work was slow and hard. Composition rollers were unknown till the secret of making them was brought here just ten years later by the late David V. Culley, for many years president of the City Council. There were no mails at all at first, and when a post-route was established soon afterwards its deliveries were so irregular that the editors had to apologize once for the deficiency of matter by saying that the failure of the mails had left them without any news from abroad or any suitable material. Several post-routes were opened during the spring, in addition to one to White Water, opened a few weeks after the paper appeared first, but they came too late to relieve the urgent necessity of the winter and spring. The incessant and heavy rains greatly obstructed the main mail-route, and com-( pelled the entire suspension of the paper from the 3d of April to the 4th of May by catching the editors away from home and keeping the streams too deep to be forded. The first number appeared on the 28th of January, the second on the 11th of February, the third on the 25th, the fourth March 6th, the fifth on the 18th, the sixth April 3d, the seventh May 4th. The growth and changes of the Gazette will be noticed particularly in the sketch of the " Press."

The first mail came very closely after the first paper. For nearly two years such correspondence as had been maintained between the new settlement and the older ones east and south on the White Water and the Ohio, had been carried on by the hands of neighbors and occasional travelers. On the 30th of January, 1822, a meeting of citizens was held at the " Eagle Tavern" (Hawkins') to devise means to maintain a private mail. The hope of a government mail does not seem to have been strong enough to be cultivated. Aaron Drake was selected for the duty of private postmaster and mail-carrier. He notified the postmasters all around of the arrangement that had been made, and askfed them to forward all letters for Indianapolis to Connersville, where he would get them. " He returned from his first trip," says an early sketch of the city, " shortly after nightfall, and the loud blasts of his horn were heard far through the woods, and the whole people turned out in the bright moonlight to greet him and hear the news." This effort aroused the general government, and President Monroe appointed Samuel Henderson first postmaster in February, 1822. He opened the ofBce the first week in March. A history of the oflSce will be found in its proper place, and nothing more need be said of it 'here, except that the first list of letters awaiting delivery contained five names, one of them that of Mallory, the colored barber, > and first barber in the place. For some years, it is hard to say just how long, the mails were carried on horseback, subsequently they were taken in stagecoaches, and Indianapolis became nearly as conspio- uous a stage centre as it is now a railroad centre. For many years the J. & P. Vorhees Company had large stables and coacH-making and repairing shops here on the southwest corner of Maryland and Pennsylvania Streets. They were abandoned about 1852, when the advancing railroad lines began to absorb mails and passengers ; but the music of the " stagehorn" was long a pleasant sound in the ears of the old settler, for it brought him the principal variation of the monotony of a village life, except the regular winter sessions of the Legislature. For a short time during the administration of Van Buren a mail-route or two was run here on horseback in extra quick time, and called " express mails." The riders came galloping along Washington Street, blowing little tin horns with a din that delighted the school-boys, and for many a week they made night hideous with their horns.

The winter of 1821-22, in spite of the prostration and starvation of the preceding summer and fall, was pleasantly passed in the main. The settlers becoming better acquainted, and frequently rendering each indispensable neighborly offices in sickness and destitution, were naturally well disposed to relieve the loneliness of an unusually severe winter in an impassable forest with such social entertainments as were within reach, so they kept up an almost unbroken round of quilting and dancing parties and other modes of killing time when there was nothing to do to enable them to make a better use of it. " A mania for marrying took possession of the young people," says the early sketch, " and there was hardly a single bachelor left in the place." The snow was very deep, and the river frozen so hard that large logs were hauled across it on heavy " ox-sleds." On the 25th of February the Gazette said that a good deal of improvement had been going on. Forty residences and several work-shops had been built, a grist-mill and two saw-mills were in operation, and more were in progress near the place. There were thirteen carpenters, four cabinet-makers, eight blacksmiths, four shoemakers, two tailors, one hatter, two tanners, one saddler, one cooper, four bricklayers, two merchants, three grocers, four doctors, three lawyers, one preacher, one teacher, seven tavern-keepers. These alone would indicate a population of about three hundred. But these were not alone : there we^e probably enough more adult males to complete a roll of one hundred, and show a population of five hundred.

The first election was coming close as the protracted winter began to loosen its grip on the iron ground and let the spring blossoms out to the sunlight. Candidates were pretty nearly as numerous as voters. There were two parties, but not separated by national party divisions. This was the " era of good feeling" in national politics. The old " Federal" and "Republican" differences were growing dim and the names unfamiliar. The division in the first election in Indianapolis was geographical. " White Water" and " Kentucky" were the names of might, and the voters took sides according to the direction they had traveled to get here. Just what sort of a compromise was made by the settlers who came in the first place from Kentucky, and resided for a while in the White Water before moving to the New Purchase, there is no indication to direct. The " White Water" leader was James M. Ray, the " Kentucky" chief Morris Morris, father of Gen. Thomas A. Morris, the real general and victor in the first campaign in West Virginia. The candidates for associate judges - there were two - were Robert Patterson, James Mcllvaine, James Page, Eliakim Harding, John Smock, and Rev. John McClung. The candidates for clerk were James M. Ray, Milo R. Davis, Morris Morris, Thomas Anderson, and John W. Redding. For recorder there were Alexander Ralston, James Linton, Joseph C. Reed, Aaron Drake, John Givan, John Hawkins, William Vandegrift, and William Townsend. No record is left of the candidates for the three county commissionerships, but it is said there were about fifteen of them. There were no caucuses or conventions or primaries, and no obstruction to the ambition of any man that wanted to be a candidate. The poll in the town showed two hundred and twenty-four votes, a little more than one hundred probably being residents on the donation. In the county three hundred and thirty-six votes were cast, including a good part of all the counties around it. James Mcllvaine and Eliakim Harding were elected associate judges ; James M. Ray, clerk ; Joseph C. Reed, recorder ; and John McCormick, John T. Oshorn, and William McCartney, county .commissioners. James M. Ray received two hundred and seventeen votes, which was the highest vote for any candidate.

The newly-elected county commissioners qualified and held their first session on the 15th of April, in the house at the corner of Ohio and Meridian Streets, On the next day they divided the county, embracing the very large area already described, into Fall Creek, Anderson, White River, Delaware, Lawrence, Washington, Pike, Warren, Centre, Wayne, Franklin, Perry, and Decatur townships. The first four were in the territory afterwards formed into other counties. The following are the formally declared boundaries of the townships as first oonstituted, which have composed the county ever since, with a very few slight changes. Only the "corners" are given, as they will enable any one to follow the lines readily :

" Lawrence" township, in the northeast corner of the county, was given the following corners : The northeast corner of Section 15, Town 17 north of Range 5 east, is the northeast corner of the township; the southeast corner of Section 15, Town 16 I north of Range 5 east, is the southeast corner ; the - southwest corner of Section 15, Town 16 north of ; Range 4 east, is the southwest corner ; and the northwest corner of Section 16, Town 17 north of Range 4 east, the northwest corner. The township contains forty-nine sections, seven each way.

" Washington" township, immediately north of Centre, has the following corners : On the northoaht, northeast corner of Section 17, Town 17 north of Range 4 east ; on the southeast, the southeast corner of Section 16, Town 16 north of Range 4 east; on the southwest, the southwest corner of Section 15, Town 16 north of Range 3 east; and the northwest, the northwest corner of Section 16, Town 17 north of Range 3 east. This township contains forty-nine sections, seven each way, like Lawrence. Three sections were subsequently taken from Pike, in Town 16 north of Range 3 east, so that the southwest corner of Section 16, Town 17 north of Range 3 east, is the southwest corner of the township.

county, is now somewhat different from the bounds set by the commissioners at this session. The four corners as set by them at this time are as follows : The northeast is the northeast corner of Section 17, Town 17 north of Range 3 east ; the southeast is the southeast corner of Section 16, Town 16 north of Range 3 east ; the southwest is the southwest corner of Section 16, Town 16 north of Range 2 east; the northwest is the northwest corner of the county. The east and west boundaries were both changed after this, so that the southeast corner is the southeast corner of Section 17, Town 16 north of Range 3 east, giving to Washington three sections ; and on the west the bounds of the county were changed, giving the four east halves of sections to Pike, thus making the area forty-four sections, seven miles north and south, six miles on the south side and six and a half on the north side.

" Warren" township, on the east of Centre, was described with the following corners : The northeast, the northeast corner of Section 22, Town 16 north of Range 5 east ; the southeast, the southeast corner of Section 22, Town 15 north of Range 5 east; the southwest, the southwest corner of Section 22, Town 15 north of Range 4 east; the northwest, the northwest corner of Section 22, Town 16 north of Range 4 east. The township contains forty-nine sections, seven sections each way, being almost exactly square, and has never been changed.

" Centre township shall consist of the territory included within the following bounds, to wit : Beginning at the northeast corner of Section 21, Town 16, Range 4; thence south on the section line to the southeast corner of Section 21, Town 15, Range 4; thence west to the southwest corner of Section 22, Town 15, Range 3 ; thence north on the section line to the northwest corner of Section 22, Town 16, Range 3 ; thence east on the section line to the place of beginning." The township contains fortytwo sections, seven miles north and south, six east and west, and has never been altered.

" Wayne" township had and still has the following corners, having remained unchanged : The north-, east, the northeast corner of Section 21, Town 16 north of Range 3 east ; the southeast, the southeast corner of Section 21, Town 15 north of Range 3 east ; the southwest, the southwest corner of Section 21, Town 15 north of Range 2 east; the northwest, the northwest corner of Section 21, Town 16 north of Range 2 east. The township contains forty-nine sections, being of tlie same shape and size as Warren.

" Franklin" township is of the same size and shape as Centre, but has its greatest extension east and west. The corners are as follows : The northeast, the northeast corner of Section 27, Town 15 north of Range 5 east ; the southeast, the southeast corner of the county ; the southwest, the southwest comer of Section 22, Town 14 north of Range 4 east ; the northwest, the northwest corner of Section 27, Town 15 north of Range 4 east. This township also has never been changed.

" Decatur" and " Perry" townships were at first given bounds which made them parallelograms, but they have since been so changed that the river forms a boundary line between them. The four corners of " Perry" township were as follows : The northeast, the northeast corner of Section 28, Town 15 north of Range 4 east ; the southeast, the southeast corner of Section 21, Town 14 north of Range 4 east ; the southwest, the southwest corner of Section 22, Town 14 north of Range 3 east ; the northwest, the northwest corner of Section 27, Town 15 north of Range 3 east. This made an area of forty-two sections, the same shape and size as Franklin, seven miles east and west, six north and south. The township now, however, has about forty-five sections, making the river the west boundary line.

" Decatur" township had the following corners : The northeast, the northeast corner of Section 28, Town 15 north of Range 3 east; the southeast, the southeast corner of Section 21, Town 14 north of Range 3 east ; the southwest, the southwest corner of the county; the northwest, the northwest corner of Section 27, Town 15 north of Range 2 east. This gave the township thirty-six sections, while it contains now but about thirty-three sections.

" On account of lack of population" certain of the townships were, until other regulations were made, to be united and to be considered as one township. They were Centre and Warren, to be called " Centre- Warren" ; Pike and Wayne, " Pike- Wayne" ; Washington and Lawrence, " Washington- Lawrence" ; Decatur, Perry, and Franklin, all three to be known as " Decatur-Perry-Franklin" township. Each combination was assigned two justices except Centre- Warren, which was given three.

Some of them were soon separated, the first being Decatur township, which was disunited on the 12th of August, 1823. The next separation was of Pike township from Wayne, on the 10th of May, 1824, a petition to that end having been presented by some of the citizens of the township ; and the commissioners considering the population sufficient to warrant the order, Warren and Centre townships were separated by an order of the Board, May 1, 1826.

On the next day after the townships were formed the County Board ordered the election of " magistrates" in all the townships, assigning two to the joint townships of Washington and Lawrence, two to Pike and Wayne, two to Decatur, Perry, and Franklin, and three to " Centre- Warren," as it is always written in the records. The 11th of May was set for the election. In Centre- Warren, Obed Foote, Wilkes Reagan, and Lismund Basye were elected, and their election contested by Moses Cox. The case was heard by the Board at a special session on the 16th of May, on a summons by the sheriff, with whom notice of contest had been filed. Some preliminary argument and ruling were made, and the next day the Board decided that the election should " be set aside and held as null and void." A second election was ordered on the 25th of May, eight days later, which was duly held, and the same men reelected. That election was not disturbed.

At the same May session of 1822 the first constables were appointed : for Washington and Lawrence, William Cris and John Small ; for Pike and Wayne, Joel A. Crane and Charles Eekard; for

Erection Op Public Buildings

Centre-Warren, Israel Harding, Joseph Duval, Francis Davis, George Harlan, William Phillips, Caleb Reynolds, Daniel Lakin, Lewis Ogle, Samuel Roberts, Joseph Catterlin, Henry Cline, Joshua Glover, and Patrick Kerr, - a larger force than the two townships have ever had since.

At the April session, on the evening of the 17th, a county seal was adopted, thus described: "A star in the centre, with the letters ' M. C. C around the same, with inverted carved stripes tending to the centre of the star, and ' Marion County Seal' written thereon." On the 14th of May this seal was changed for the present one, thus officially described : " The words ' Marion County Seal, Indiana,' around the outside, with a pair of scales in the centre emblematical of justice, under which is a plow and sheaf of wheat in representation of agriculture." The first roads opened or ordered in the county were considered upon the petition of William Townsend and others, and " viewed" by Joel Wright, John Smock, and Zadoc Smith for the one running " to the Mills at the Falls of Fall Creek," - the old Pendleton road ; and by William D. Rooker, Robert Brenton, and George Norwood for the other, running from " the north end of Pennsylvania Street to Strawtown," - the old Noblesville road. The next road was along the line of the present National road, upon petition of Eliakim Harding ; the fourth, a road to McCormick's Mills, on White River, upon petition of John McCormick ; the fifth, the old Mooresville road, upon petition of Demas L. McFarland. These were all in May, 1822.

On the 17th, continuing the same session, the County Board established the following tolls " on the ferry on White River opposite Indianapolis," which was established by an act of the preceding Legislature :

The tax-payers of to-day will be interested in the modes and rates of taxation fixed by the County Board in the first year of the county's organization.

" Provided, That persons over the age of fifty years and not freeholders, and such as are not able from bodily disability to follow any useful occupation, . . . and all idiots and paupers shall be exempt from said last-named tax."

At the same session in which the tax rates were settled an order was made for the erection of the first jail. The sheriff, Hervey Bates, was appointed county agent to receive bids. The specifications required as follows :

" It is to be built fourteen feet in the inside, two stories high, of six and a half feet between floors, to be of hewed logs twelve inches thick and at least twelve inches wide, with two rounds of oak or walnut logs to be under ground;" and "the second floor and the side logs to be of the same size of walnut, oak, ash, beech, or sugar-tree ;" and " the third or upper floor to be of logs six inches thick and at least one foot wide." The roof was to be of jointed shingles. There was to be a window in the lower story or dungeon twelve inches square. The grate-bars for it were to be one inch and a quarter in thickness; and there was a window two feet by six inches in the second story, opposite the door by which the jail was entered. This door was four feet by two, of two thicknesses of two-inch oak plank, with a heavy stock-lock between, and also heavy strap hinges. There was to be a ladder leading up on the outside to the door in the second story, and another door, a trap two feet square, in the floor of the second story, leading down into the lower story, which was to be fastened with a hasp and padlock."

The contract was awarded to Noah Leaverton, some time in Mayor June, 1822, by Hervey Bates, and was submitted to the commissioners for inspection, and accepted on August 12th.

" The Board approve, adopt, and permanently establish the building erected of hewed logs . . . on the Court-House Square, near the corner of Market and Delaware Streets, in Indianapolis, as the county jail." It cost three hundred and twelve dollars. (Pages 27, 28, 29, Commissioners' Record.)