Marion County, Indiana - Chapter 5, 1884 (part 1 of 2)

Chapter 5

The second period of the history of Indianapolis is broken by conspicuous events into three divisions of nearly equal length, - first, from the removal of the capital to the incorporation of the town in 1832 ; second, from that event to the abandonment of the public works in 1839; third, from that time to 1847, when the impulse of improvement ran ahead of the opening of the first railroad. The whole period was so Uneventful, and in the main so unpromising (except during the unfortunate real estate inflation that accompanied the " Internal Improvement System"), that it can be treated more intelligibly by associating its events in logical rather than chronological connection.

The removal of the State capital to Indianapolis produced two beneficial changes. It improved the tone of society by a large annual admixture of the best intelligence of the State. The meeting of the Legislature was for nearly a generation the great event of the year. The members came usually on horseback, with the now-forgotten "leggings" and " saddle-bags." In later days such as were on stage lines had the aristocratic privilege of riding. It was not till 1852 that they began to come mainly on railways, and to be regarded as of little more consequence than other men. The hotels were all " taverns" for many a year, and the modes of life as simple and primitive as they were in any country town. Farmers came in with their families to see the Legislature. Visitors from other parts of the State, besides those with " axes to grind," came often, and it was long before even the townspeople lost their curiosity to see its proceedings. There were strong men among the legislators of the State in those days. The pay was a trifle, and a trifling man could not afford to take such a place. It was usually a man who was needed by the interests of his locality or a man of conscious ability who took a place in one house or the other as his first step in the ladder. Elections were rarely riotous and never corrupt, though electioneering then no more disdained mean arts and artifices than now. There was no money to buy votes, the consequence was a better class of men, in the average, than do the law-making now. Moreover, most, if not all, of them were immigrants, with the push and persistence of men who have enterprise enough to go from home to seek fortune, and brains enough to take advantage of the chances that offer. In a little town numbering but a hundred families the preceding spring, and probably not more than six hundred inhabitants when the first legislative session was held here, the advent and free association of such a body of men could not but be improving.

The other benefit following the change of the capital was the improvement in the material prospects of the village. With no immediate or decided change, there was a confidence of prosperity that held up the courage of the settlers against the terrors of annual chills. The fulfillment of this promise was long in coming. It took twenty years to bring the first evidences of probable prosperity and progress beyond a country town.

The Legislature was always ready to do all that might be properly done to help the place, and frequently stepped in with relief laws for the embarrassed purchasers of town lots. At its second session here, on the 20th of January, 1826, it came to the relief of the ague-shaken debtors who could not pay the deferred installments of the purchase-money of their lots and extended the time for payment, and allowed the cash payments on lota that the holders could not keep and wanted to surrender to go upon the lots that were kept, thus wiping out in a large measure an indebtedness that would finally have proved ruinous. The condition of things urging this action is clearly set forth in a little article in the Journal of Dec. 15, 1825, about a month before the bill was passed. After remarking that a bill to consolidate payments on lots would be introduced in a few days, the Journal - it had then borne this name less than a year - said, " Many circumstances combined to make lots sell for more than they were worth. At the time of the sale treasury paper, with which payments were authorized to be made, was plenty and at a considerable discount. Now payments which were expected to be made in depreciated paper, and in consequence of which lots sold very high, have to be made in specie or its equivalent. Many persons also paid enormous prices for lots contiguous to the State-House Square, under a belief that a State-House would be speedily erected, and that their property would consequently rise in value. We hope the Legislature will give this subject due attention, and if they do not see the propriety of the measure suggested they will probably agree to extend the time of making payments." The Legislature did both. It was wiser than its latter-day successors, and took the suggestions of the press with becoming alacrity and deference. There is a considerable ray of light let in upon the condition of things in the first year of the new capital by this little exposition. The donation outside of the town plat was partly sold by an act of Jan. 24, 1824, when eighty acres were laid ofi' in four-acre blocks, - the size of the city Squares, - and sold on the 25th of January, 1825, by auction, the highest bringing one hundred and fifty-five dollars, the lowest sixty-three dollars. On the 12th of February of the first session here, in 1825, an act was passed ordering twenty more four-acre outblocks to be laid off north and south of those previously sold, - they were on the north and south sides of the city, thus making a double tier on those two sides, - and sold on the 2d of May. The same act ordered the sale of the reserved lots on Washington Street, the clearing of Pogue's Kun Valley at an expense not to exceed fifty dollars, and the lease of the ferry at the foot of Washington Street for five years. The second series of out-blocks brought fourteen hundred and sixty-seven dollars, or about eighteen dollars an acre. The Washington Street reserved lots, even under the elevating influence of the possession of the State capital, did not approach the figures of the first sale nearly four years before. The highest brought three hundred and sixty dollars, the lowest one hundred and thirty-four dollars. An aggregate of street frontage equal to three squares brought but three thousand three hundred and twenty-eight dollars.

The relief act for embarrassed lot^holders had the effect of concentrating the settlement in the centre of the town plat, along Washington Street, as heretofore noted. The court-house and State capitol in one was east of a central line, and the taverns and business houses were gathering upon that direction. So the lot-holders who wished to surrender any of their purchases gave up those nearest the river, and applied the money paid upon them to lots farther east which they wished to keep. This tendency away from the river continued till the " internal improvement" impulse became so strong as to force the great " improvement system" through the Legislature of 1836. Anticipating this a real estate speculation took wing in 1835, and from that time till the panic of 1837 got this far west the course of development was westward towards the line of the canal on Missouri Street, where warehouses were to grow thick and mills wake the echoes all night long. When this westward bulge was broken by the hard times the town's business settled down hopelessly on the two sides of Washington Street from Delaware to Illinois, while the residences spread about two blocks farther east and west, and only in widelyscattered clumps or single houses got as far north as North Street or as far south as South Street. In February of 1826 a local census showed a population of but seven hundred and sixty, with a Sunday-school attendance of one hundred and sixty-one, - a very large and healthy disproportion.

For convenience and coherence, all the legislation of the State directly affecting the town, during the interval from the change of capital to the first incorporation, may be thrown together in this connection. The first act was on the 26th of January, 1827, ordering the State's agent to survey and sell seven acres on the river for a site for a steam-mill. The company that bought it at a mere nominal price was incorporated a year later, on the 28th of January, 1828, and was mainly composed of the oldest and most prominent citizens, - Nicholas McCarty, James Blake, James M. Ray, Daniel Yandes, Noah Noble, William Sanders. This steam-mill, which stood till 1853 very i near the east end of the old National road bridge, was the first manufacturing enterprise in the history of the place, and on that account may be particularly noted here. The Legislature favored it to an extent I that would be tolerated for no enterprise now. On the 6th of January, 1831, the company was given the right to extend the time of completing the mill another year, and next day were given authority to cut any timber they needed on any of the lots held by the State. With good transportation facilities this grant alone would have been a nice little fortune. The mill was a very large frame, three stories high, with a two-story attic, so solidly put together by a noted workman of the time, James Griswold, that after thirty years of neglect, abuse, and total abandonment, it was as strong when it was burned as it was the day it was erected. The western and smaller and lower division was a saw-mill, the lower part of the main building a grist-mill, and the upper stories a wool-carding mill. The machinery was brought here from Cincinnati, partly by wagon and partly, some say, by the first and only steamer that ever came so high up White River. The building was finished in December, 1831. The saw-mill, a less formidable structure, was finished and at work the fall before. The grist-mill began operations in January, 1832, for the first time since the settlement of the " New Purchase," giving its customers bolted flour. Previously flour, like corn-m^al, had to be sifted at home. For over two years the establishment was maintained in an ineffective way, frequently idle and never remunerative, and was finally abandoned in 1835 and the machinery offered for sale. For a number of years, however, portions of the saw-mill works were left for idle boys to abuse or break up and sell for old iron, and the building was made the haunt of thieves and strumpets, except during the occupancy of the Messrs. Geisendorff with their woolen-factory, from 1847 to 1852. The enterprise was too big for the place. It could supply a home demand treble that ta, which it could look for business, and beyond that it could do nothing. The cost of getting flour to the Ohio River or any shipping market would have been as much as the cost of the flour itself. It is among the traditions of this first enterpri.se and failure that it took a hundred men two days to raise the frame- work, and that they used no liquor in the labor. The singularity of this abstinence no doubt gave life to the legend. Liquor at a " house-raising" or " log-rolling" or " corn-shucking" or any of the co-operative labors or neighborhood frolics was as indispensable as food or Rouse's or Bagwell's fiddle, though, as previously noted, mis- chievous excesses were far less frequent than now. Three of the men conspicuously connected with this enterprise were quite as conspicuously connected with the whole history of the earliest development of the city's industrial and commercial interests. These were Nicholas McCarty, Daniel Yandes, and James Blake. Others, like Calvin Fletcher, Morris Morris, Hervey Bates, and James M. Ray, were as closely identified with the general progress of the city, but less so with the special interests indicated. Mr. McCarty and Mr. Yandes were the chief capitalists, so far as can now be learned. The former stands as the representative of the commercial as the latter and Mr. Blake of the manufacturing development of the city. Though Mr. McCarty was behind neither of his compeers of their own special direction, he is best known as the leading merchant of Central Indiana.

Nicholas McCarty was born on the 26th of September, 1795, in the town of Moorefield, Harding Co., W. Va., among the Alleghanies. His father dying when he was very young, his mother removed to Pittsburgh, Pa., where he remained until he was well advanced toward manhood, with little opportunity for early school education. While still under twenty he left Pittsburgh for Newark, Ohio, where as a bov he won the favor of Mr. Buckinsham, then one of the leading merchants of Ohio, by the sterling qualities that in later years won him the respect of every honorable man to whom he was known. He speedily made himself master of the mercantile business, so far as it was developed within his range, and Mr. Buckingham made him superintendent of one of his branch houses near Newark. His success was as speedy and conspicuous here as in a lower position, and in a few years he had acquired both the experience and the means to begin business for himself. His trade was large and prosperous from the beginning. Here his career gives the keynote of his character, - a sensitiveness of honor that feels a reproach like a stab, a strength of gratitude that counts no sacrifice a loss in returning the goodwill he has received. Finding that his business was growing at the expense of his benefactor's, when he had counted confidently on a sufficiency for both, he

He established himself in a building on the southwest corner of Washington and Pennsylvania Streets, known for thirty years as " McCarty's Corner," and south of this building some years later built an imposing brick residence, the home of the family for many years. He was the first merchant educated to business who conducted it systematically. He began in a larger way, too, than others, and his success was proportional. He established branch stores in Laporte, Greenfield, Covington, Cumberland, and Waverly, and trained several young men afterwards conspicuous in the business of the city or State, imbuing them all with his own scrupulous and resolute integrity. It was reserved for the great crisis of his life to exhibit his best qualities at their best. When the panic of 1837 and the subsequent hard times had made his great resources, largely in real estate, unavailable, he became involved, and made a settlement with his creditors upon such terms as to enable them to realize more than the principal and interest of his obligations.

James Blake had come to Indianapolis in 1821, Under the advice of some Philadelphia friends, with an eye to the preparation of ginseng - a profuse growth of the woods all about the settlement at that time - for shipment from Philadelphia to China, where it sells at high figures, and its use is universal now, as it was then. He established a drying and purifying apparatus in a little house south of the creek, on the present East Delaware Street, and Mr. McCarty here, and by his agents at his branch stores and elsewhere, collected the roots from farmers and their families, who frequently helped out a short corn crop with what they called " sang." A little hoe was made especially for this use called a " sang-hoe," obsolete for forty-five years or more. The extent of his business in a little place of less than two thousand people may be judged by the fact that the freezing of the Ohio in 1829 compelled him to haul in wagons his entire season's stock from Philadelphia, requiring sixteen six-horse Conestoga wagons to do it. The freight of ginseng back made the audacious enterprise profitable, - an illustration of his business perception and prompt decision, for the cold snap froze the Ohio just as his goods reached Pittsburgh to take steam passage to Madison. Besides his ordinary mercantile business, he took large contracts for Indian supplies, and made himself quite familiar with the dialects of two or three of the tribes on the " Miami Reservation."

His enterprise appeared repeatedly in attempts to introduce new industries or develop new resources. He was largely interested in the effort to establish silk-growing about 1835, and went with characteristic energy into the planting of the Morns multicaulis. A few years later (about 1840) he began one of the most important enterprises of his life, though the distress of the country was too great and general to permit it the success it would probably have achieved a half-dozen years later. This was the cultivation and manufacture of hemp on his "bayou farm," now "West Indianapolis," where are located the "stock-yards," "car-works," and other improvements. The fibre was rotted, broken, and cleaned in vats and mills on the bluflF bank of the creek just below the present line of Ray Street at Church, Carloss, and Wilkins Streets. Proving unprofitable, the enterprise was abandoned in two or three years.

Mr. McCarty's personal popularity was so great that the Whigs, who had been placed under the cloud of "hard times" from 1843 onward, thought it possible to save a seat in Congress by him, and ran him against Judge Wick in 1847. It was his first experience as a politician, but his native shrewdness served him better than many an older politician's more devious ways. He made no pretence of oratory, and for that reason made a stronger impression by his solid sense and effective humor than his opponent, who was really an unusually good speaker when he chose to be. But the Whigs were not strong enough to win even with a man stronger than the party. A few years later he ran for the State Senate in the county and was elected, serving three years, the last three under the old Constitution. In 1852, much against his inclination, he was unanimously nominated by the dying Whig party for the first gubernatorial term under the new Constitution. He made an admirable canvass against Governor Joseph A. Wright, one of the best " stumpers" in the United States, and by familiarity with public speaking had become a ready, perspicuous, and forcible speaker. The Democrats, however, being greatly in the majority, he was defeated.

He was married in Boone County, Ky., July 27, 1828, to Margaret, daughter of Rev. Jameson Hawkins, one of the earliest of the Baptist preachers of the county, and died May 17, 1854, in his fiftyninth year. Three children survive him, - Margaret, (Mrs. John C. S. Harrison), Nicholas, and Francis J. Susannah, the eldest daughter, and wife of Rev. Henry Day, many years pastor of the First Baptist Church, died several years ago. Mr. McCarty was an example of Christian purity, integrity, and charity during his whole life. He was generous " as the day," tolerant of offenses that afiected only himself, peaceable, frank, and honorable. No man that ever lived in the city was more sincerely or generally loved and honored, and certainly none ever deserved it better. He was always prompt in his aid of benevolent efforts, and one of the most active in urging the organization of the Orphans' Home. A meeting of the citizens held on the occasion of his death adopted the following resolution, prepared by a committee consisting of James M. Ray, Robert Hanna, Bethuel F. Morris, Calvin Fletcher, John D. Defrees, John M. Talbott, and Nathan B. Palmer :

" Resnhed, That in the departure of our fellow-citizen, Nicholas McCarty, Esq., we realize the loss of one who, since the early days of the city, has deservedly ranked as a most worthy, generous, and valuable man, and who, by his affectionnte heart, clearness of mind, and strict integrity of purpose, had warmly endeared himself to all who knew him. In the important public trusts committed to him - as commissioner of the canal fund in effecting the first loan of the State, as senator of this county, and in other engagements - he manifested remarkable judiciousness and ability. It was with reluctance he was drawn into the pursuit of official station, and with decided preference enjoyed the happiness of an attached circle of family and friends. His hand and heart were ever at command for the need of the afflicted, and his counsels and sympathies were extended where they could be useful with unaffected simplicity and modesty."

The Capital In The Woods

County, Pa., in January, 1793, when it was yet a new country, with fertile soil, a hilly but beautiful surface, and underlaid with coal. He was the son of Simon Yandes, whose wife before marriage was Anna Catharine Kider, both natives of Germany. His parents lived upon a farm near the Monongahela River west of Uniontown. They had two sons, Daniel and Simon, who received only the limited education usual at that time. Both of the sons worked on the farm. They enlisted in the year 1813 under Gen. Harrison, in the last war with Great Britain, and served six months in Northern Ohio, but were not engaged in battle. The father of Governor Albert G. Porter enlisted in the same company. In 1814, when Washington City was first threatened by the British, they again enlisted, and Daniel Yandes at the age of twentyone was elected major of the regiment. Before leaving the place of rendezvous the order to march was countermanded, and the troops were not again ordered out. In 1815 occurred the most fortunate event of his life, and that was his marriage to Anna Wilson, the oldest daughter of James Wilson and his wife, Mary Rabb. James Wilson was a leading farmer and magistrate of the county. The Wilsons wore Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and the Rabbs Scotch - English Presbyterians, and Anna Wilson was a Presbyterian. Her educational advantages were but moderate as compared with those at present. James Wilson's father, Alexander Wilson, was born in 1727, and removed from Lancaster County, Pa., to Fayette County, where he died in 1815.

After the marriage of Daniel Yandes, he acquired a mill and opened a coal-mine. In 1817 his father died, at the age of eighty-four, and in 1818, when the advantages of the fertile soil of Indiana were heralded in Western Pennsylvania and enthusiasm aroused, he, with his wife, mother, and two children, floated down the Ohio to Cincinnati, and went from thence to Fayette County, Ind., where he opened a farm in the woods near Connersville. In the spring of 1821 he removed to Indianapolis, which had been fixed upon as the seat of government for the State, and resided there until his death in June, 1878, at the age of eighty-five years and five months. His portrait and signature represent him at the age of eighty. His first residence was a log cabin which he built near the northeast corner of Washington and Illinois Streets. In 1822 he erected and resided in a double log cabin near the southwest corner of Washington and Alabama Streets, opposite the Court-House Square. In 1823 he built a new frame residence of three rooms in that locality. About 1831 he erected a two-story brick residence where the Citizens' National Bank now stands, and part of the same building included a store-room where Harrison's Bank now is. In 1837 he was the owner of an acre of ground where the First Presbyterian Church now stands, and where he built a large plain two-story brick residence. Here he lived until it was sold to the above church in 1863, and here his wife died in 1851. After her death he did not marry again.

He came tp Indianapolis with about four thousand dollars, and, strange as it may seem, that constituted him the largest capitalist of the incipient metropolis for the next ten years. That amount included the total of his inheritance and of his own acquisitions up to 1821. He was, in common with pioneers generally, a man of rugged health, and hopeful, confiding, and enterprising. He was fond of building mills, manufactories, and introducing other improvements. On his arrival in Indianapolis, with his brother-in-law he erected the saw- and grist-mill on the bayou southwest of the city where the McCarty land now is, the 4am being built across White River at the head of the island which was opposite the Old Cemetery. This is said to have been the first mill in the New Purchase.

About 1823 the firm of Yandes & Wilkens established the first tannery in the county, and continued in that business together about thirty years. The active partner was John Wilkens, a man well known for his uncommon merits. Afterwards Daniel Yandes continued the same business with his nephew, Lafayette Yandes. After the death of Lafayette he formed another partnership with his nephew, Daniel Yandes, Jr., and James C. Parmerlee in an extensive tannery in Brown County, and in a leather-store at Indianapolis. About the year 1825, Mr. Yandes became the partner in a store with Franklin Merrill, brother of Samuel Merrill. Stores in the early history of Indianapolis contained a miscellaneous assortment, more or less extensive, including dry-goods, groceries, queensware, hardware, hate, shoes, etc. About 1831 he became the partner of Edward T. Porter, and the store of Yandes & Porter was in a brick building which preceded that where Harrison's Bank now stands. At nearly the same time he started Joseph Sloan in business as a merchant at Covington, Ind., and continued his partner for several years. In 1833 he and Samuel Merrill, treasurer of State, dug a race along Fall Creek, and built a grist-mill, a saw-mill, and the first cotton-spinning factory in this region. A few years afterwards he and William Sheets, then late Secretary of State, built on the canal west of the State-House grounds the first paper-mill in the county. About the same time he became the partner of Thomas M. Smith in a store, and about 1838 was the partner of John F. Hill in another store, both of which were on the north side of Washington Street, a little west of Pennsylvania Street. In 1839, under great diflSculties, he alone built at Lafayette, Ind., a grist-mill, saw-mill, and paper-mill, and opened with his son James a large store. While engaged in this enterprise the panic was precipitated upon the country, and Mr. Yandes found himself involved heavily in debt, both as principal and indorser, at Indianapolis and Lafayette. While he enjoyed the good-will of his creditors, he did not command their entire confidence as to his solvency, and during the years 1839 to 1844 judgments in Marion County accumulated against him to the amount of over twentytwo thousand dollars, when he sacrificed some of his most valuable property at much less than cost. At the same time he was under protest at the bank at Lafayette. In due time, however, he paid the full amount of his debts, and it is a matter of honest pride that he and his children have always paid in full individual and all other indebtedness. About the year 1847 he and Thomas H. Sharpe built the College Hall, a brick building, which preceded the Fletcher & Sharpe bank and store property, at the corner of Washington and Pennsylvania Streets ; and a few years afterwards he erected the brick building where Ritzinger's Bank now is. In 1847 he built ten miles of the Madison Railroad, which was completed about September of that year, and was the first railroad to

Indianapolis. The same year he joined in building a grist-mill at Franklin. In 1852 he and Alfred Harrison built thirty miles of the eastern end in Indiana of the Bellefontaine Railroad. Previous to this time he had twice ventured successfully in sending large cargoes of provisions by flat-boats from Indiana to New Orleans. About the year 1854, during the Kansas excitement, his desire for the freedom of that State impelled him to aid some young men to settle there, whom he accompanied to the West. About 1860 he joined Edward T. Sinker as partner in the Western Machine- Works, where he continued for some years.

One of his most curious traits was the manifestation of unusual energy and labor for a series of years until an enterprise could be put upon a solid basis, after which he evinced unusual indolence and inattention to details for several years until he became again enlisted in a new enterprise. As a consequence, after new enterprises were fairly started and tested he lost interest in them, and in a few years would usually sell his interest. He was senior partner, and in most cases the capitalist. Although he matured his plans patiently and carefully, he was nevertheless a little too fond of hazard.

If his business career had terminated when seventyfive years of age he would have been a successful business man ; but an undue fondness for enterprise, and a hopeful enthusiasm, together with the fascinations of the far West, an over-confidence in others, and the deterioration incident to old age, with his unwillingness to be advised, resulted in disaster. He lost a considerable amount in mines in the West, and a large sum in the Brazil Furnace, stripping him in efiect of his property when he was past the age of eighty. One of these mines is now more promising.

In politics he was a very decided Whig and Republican, but cared little for the distinctions of oflBce. He was, however, the first treasurer of Marion County, and in 1838 Governor Noble, unsolicited, appointed him one of the Board of Internal Improvements to aid in carrying out the extensive system of improvements provided for by the Legislature in 1836.

Indianapolis in early times, he became a Presbyterian, and was for some years one of the first elders and trustees of the Second Presbyterian Church. From 1823 to 1845, and until the failure of his wife's health, his house was one of the favorite stopping- places of the Presbyterian clergy. Ilev. Mr. Proctor, and afterwards Rev. George Bush, were his guests for months. He was liberal to charities and the church, having given away up to 1865 about sixty thousand dollars. It would require at least double that amount, according to the present value of money, to be an equivalent.

Five of his children died young. His daughter, Mary Y. Wheeler, died in 1852, leaving five children, three of whom yet survive. His children yet living are Catharine, the widow of Rev. Elijah T. Fletcher ; Elizabeth Y. Robinson ; Simon, formerly a lawyer ; James W., formerly a merchant ; and George B., now president of the Citizens' National Bank.

Besides the favor extended by the Legislature to the enterprising spirit of the town in the cheap sale of the steam-mill site, a direct appropriation of four thousand dollars was made to build an oflScial residence for the Governor in the Circle. This was done on the 26th of January, 1827. A contract for the work, at a cost of six thousand five hundred dollars, was made on the 17tli of March, with Austin Bishop, Robert Culbertson, William Smith, and William Speaks, by Samuel Merrill and Benjamin I. Blythe, on the part of the State. It was of brick, about fifty feet square, two stories high, with a sort of Mansard roof, containing a level space in the centre about fifteen feet square, surrounded by a railing, standing upon a basement some six feet above the ground, with a large hall-door in the middle of each of the four sides, and separated by ten-feet halls crossing each other in the middle into four large rooms in each corner. Its complete exposure on all sides made it an undesirable residence for a family, and it was never occupied except for public offices, chambers of the Supreme Court judges, and in its later days for almost any use that respectable applicants desired it for. As heretofore related, it was sold for old brick and torn down in 1857. School-boys used to make a " circus" of its basement-rooms, and one day, some forty years ago, a wild turkey, scared by hunters from the noted " turkey-roost" in the sugar grove near the line of Seventh and Illinois Streets, ran into one of these basement-rooms, and was caught there by a school-boy of the period. Another house, built at the same time, was the little brick at the east gat^ of the Court-House Square, for an office for the clerk of the State Supreme Court. At the preceding session the Legislature had ordered the State agent to contract with Asahel Dunning for a two-story brick ferry-house near the foot of Washington Street, on the south side. It was built in 1827, partially burned in 1855, repaired, and reocoupied until some half dozen or so years ago, when it was torn down.

In this connection belongs the act ordering the first I State-House, which passed 10th of February, 1831, ' upon the recommendation of a committee at the session of 1829-30. The report estimated the cost at i fifty-six thousand dollars, and stated that the unsold land in the donation would be fairly estimated at fiftyeight thousand dollars. James Blake was appointed commissioner to attend to the work and obtain material (three hundred and sixty perches of stone by the second Monday of May was specified), with an appropriation of three thousand dollars. He was instructed to ofi"er one hundred and fifty dollars for a plan, embracing halls for the two houses, rooms for Supreme Court and State Library, and twelve rooms for committees, with such others as would be needed, and report to the next Legislature. The cost was limited to forty-five thousand dollars. The commissioner procured a plan from Ithiel Town, a distinguished architect of New York, and I. J. Davis. The Legislature approved Jan. 20, 1832, and appointed Noah Noble (Governor), Morris Morris (auditor), and Samuel Merrill (treasurer), Feb. 2, 1832, as commissioners to superintend the work, employ architects, and use the material purchased by Mr. Blake. The work was to be finished by November, 1838, and to be examined and approved by a committee of five from each house before acceptance. The contract was made with Mr. Town at fifty-eight thousand dollars. Work began in the spring of 1832. The site, previously a dead level, was plowed and scraped into an elevation in the centre under the survey and supervision of Gen. Thomas A. Morris, then a young West Pointer, after serving a faithful term at the printer's " case." The building was so far completed as to be ready for occupancy when the Legislature met on the 7th of December, 1835. The actual cost was sixty thousand dollars, but two thousand dollars in excess of the estimate. It was two hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide, and two stories high. The style was the Doric of the Parthenon, spoiled by a contemptible little dome that was about as suitable in that place as an army-cap on the Apollo Belvidere. The basement was of blue slate from the BlufiFs, and soon began decaying. The whole exterior was stuccoed, and looked well till frost and thaw, damp and heat began to make it peel off, and then it looked worse than a beggar's rags. It was so dilapidated as to be unsafe before it was torn down in 1878. The trees planted in the square made a fine grove there, which was the favorite resort of Sunday-school celebrations of the Fourth of July and the usual out-door place for political meetings.

At the same time the order was made to sell the steam-mill site all the reserved, forfeited, and unsold lots in the town were ordered to be sold. It was done on the 7th and 8th of the following May, when one hundred and fifty-three lots, of which twenty-four were on Washington Street, were offered, with over thirty squares of four acres each. Sales were made of one hundred and six lots at one hundred and eighty dollars an acre, and thirty-eight out-lots and squares at twenty-three dollars an acre. On the 22d of January, 1829, an act extended the time of payment of the deferred installments of the purchasemoney of out-lots, and declared inoperative the forfeitures worked under the existing law by delinquent payments. The next legislative order touching the town and the State's property was made on the ^th of February, 1831, when the agent was directed to plat the whole donation outside the town into out-lots and sell them at public auction. The subdivision was made, and the aggregate of lots offered in and out of the town plat was nearly nineteen hundred acres. The divisions ranged from two to fifty acres. The minimum price was ten dollars an acre, but only a portion was sold. It may be noticed here that the order for the clearing of Pogue's Run Valley was never executed, probably because the fifty-dollar limit was too little. Property-holders, however, gradually cleared it, and improved the health of the place by it. The low, swampy " bottom" and dense woods and underbrush made the very home of malarious disorders, and they trooped out in force during the sickly season. There is nothing but two or three shivered stumps left of this dense woods now, except for a short distance above the mouth of the creek and near the Morris Street bridge. Here some old sycamores and elms still remain, but one of them was blown over by the tornado that did such damage to some of the manufacturing establishments on the West Side last summer. All the papaws, black haws, apple haws, ginseng, prickly ash, spice-brush, and hazel-bushes are gone as completely as if such things had never j for the sale of forfeited and reserved lots certain squares and alleys were vacated. Square 22 was reserved for a State hospital, and square 25 for a State university ; it is now University Park. The " State University" at Bloomington has tried to get possession of this valuable property under cover of a title it has assumed since that dedication was made, but has failed. On the 26th of January, 1832, the agent was empowered to lease the square to the trustees of Marion County Seminary for thirty years, with the proviso that if it should be needed for a university in that time a half-acre should be sold in fee-simple in either the southwest or southeast corner, where a seminary building was authorized to be erected under the lease. The trustees built the " Old Seminary" in the southwest corner in 1833-34, the most noted local school of the State, and maintained with unvarying success and wide benefit for twenty years. It will be noticed more fully in the department of this work assigned to "Schools." In October, 1827, Miss Matilda Sharpe, the first milliner, came to Indianapolis, - not the least important event of the year.

While the Legislature, as above related, was disposing of unsold lots, erecting buildings, and forwarding the improvement of the place, the citizens were not inactive in their own moral and social interests.

though it was late before their enterprise turned to i points of business advantage, and with no great good ; fortune to encourage them when they did turn. In | April, 1825, the Indianapolis Bible Society was formed, and is still living in the Indianapolis Female Bible Society, a most active and beneficent agency among the soldiers during the civil war. Mrs. Margaret Givan was the first president, and the wife of Professor George Bush, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and since then known all over the literary ' world for eminence in oriental scholarship, was one of its most active promoters. On the 13th of November, 1825, the Marion County Bible Society was formed, with Bethuel F. Morris as president and James M. Ray as secretary. It may be noted here that Mr. Ray was secretary of pretty much every organization ever formed during the first thirty years of the city's existence. Whether town-meeting or bank directory, fire company or missionary society, James M. Ray was invariably made its business manager or secretary. It is to his undying honor that he always served and was never paid. He was born in the first year of this century, in New Jersey, and learned the trade of making coach lace, came West to Kentucky when a young lad, and worked there with his family ; came later to Lawrenceburg, in this State, and came here in the summer or fall of 1821. His intelligence, activity, and integrity put him at once among the foremost men of the settlement. Quiet, unobtrusive, vigilant, never idle, never careless, his word was as good as any other man's oath, and his aid in any good work as confidently expected as the continuance of his existence. It would be impossible to gather up here all the associations of which he was secretary at one time or another in more than fifty years of active life in the settlement and city, but it is really no exaggeration to say that the first generation of settlers trusted him with every work of that kind that they had to do. He was the first county clerk, as already noted, and served till he was made cashier of the old State Bank in 1834. He continued in that position as long as the bank lived, and then went into its successor, the " Bank of the State." He was Governor Morton's most trusted agent during the war, and managed all the external finances of the State during that momentous period. Financial disaster overtook him in some unfortunate mining operations to which he had given his means largely, and several years of his later life were passed in an easy but well-paid position in the Treasury Department at Washington. During the last year or so he returned to his old home, and died here Feb. 22, 1881.

The Indianapolis Tract Society was another kindred organization made during the same year, 1825; and on September 3d the first agricultural society was formed by the late Calvin Fletcher, Henry Bradley, Henry Brenton, and others. The following year an artillery company was formed under Capt. James Blake, upon the reception of a six-pounder iron gun sent here by the government. It blew off William Warren's hand while firing a salute to the " Bloody Three Hundred" in 1832, when mustering to march away to the Black Hawk war. It afterwards blew off one of Andrew Smith's hands. Mr. Smith is still living in the county, a hale and venerable gentleman, far beyond the scriptural limit of life, after many years of service in important county offices. On the 20th of June, 1826, the first fire company was formed, with John Hawkins as president and James M. Ray as secretary. Its implements were buckets and ladders, and its alarm general yelling and the ringing of church and tavern bells. It was incorporated in 1830, and continued in existence till the formation of the " Marion Fire-Engine Company" in 1835, when the old company was absorbed into the new one. In July, 1828, the Indianapolis Library Society was formed, the library being made up of donations. It lasted half a dozen years or so. A musical association called the Handelian Society was formed in the spring of 1828. In August a cavalry company was formed by Capt. David Buchanan. On the 24th of April, 1829, the Methodist Sunday-school was colonized from the Union School on the completion of the old church on the southwest corner of Circle and Meridian Streets. It began with eleven teachers and forty-six scholars, and in a year had twenty-seven teachers and one hundred and forty-six scholars. In November, 1829, the Colonization Society was organized, with Judge Isaac Blackford as president. On the 11th of December, 1830, the Indiana Historical

Society was formed, with Benjamin Parke as president and Betliuel F. Morris as secretary. John H. Farnham was afterwards secretary, and the books and papers were long kept in the office of Henry P. Coburn, clerk of the Supreme Court. The library was given to the Union Library Society about 1846, and when that association went to pieces the library went to pieces too. The Historical Association numbered among its members some of the most distinguished men in the State, and among its " honorary members" were Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, John C. Calhoun, and other men of national renown. It has been revived within a few years by some of the leading citizens of the State, who are interested in historical affairs, and promises to be a useful as well as durable organization. In the fall of 1831 the Indianapolis " Lyceum" or " Athenaeum" was organized to promote literary culture by lectures and scientific discussions. It lasted usefully for a few years, and was succeeded by the Young Men's Literary Society in 1835. This organization was superseded by the Union Literary Society, composed mainly of the elder pupils of the " Old Seminary," which collected a considerable library, was iucorporated in 1846 or 1847, and began the lecture system here by procuring lectures from Mr. Beecher, Rev. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Fisher, of Cincinnati, and others. It was disbanded by gradual decay, but in 1853 its last effort obtained a lecture by Horace Greeley on Henry Clay.

In 1831, near the end of the first division of the city's second period or stage of growth, came the first illusive promise of public improvements, which soon grew strong enough to realize itself partially, and to send a forecast nearly twoscore years ahead of the fact that only began to be forcefully felt in 1850 or just before. The Legislature on the 2d and 3d of February chartered a group of railroads that reads in its titles very much like a time-table in the Union Depot today. There was the Madison and Indianapolis, the Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis, the New Albany, Salem and Indianapolis, the Ohio and Indianapolis. Surveys were made on all them, and some grading done in patches, but nothing came of any of them except the Madison and Indianapolis, which was incorporated in the State's great and disastrous " Internal Improvement System" of 1836. This reference is all that need be made here, as the history of the city's railroad system will appear fully in its proper place.

Almost contemporaneously with the charters of these railroads came the only steamer that ever reached Indianapolis. It was on the 11th of April, 1831. The steamer was the " Robert Hanna," owned by Gen. Robert Hanna, one of the prominent citizens, and some of his associates, who intended to use it in the transportation of stone and timber for the work on the National road, a contract for which they held. The arrival created a great excitement. Between a steamer actually at the wharf, as it were, and the recent charter of four or five railroads the victims of chills and many disappointments began to take heart and hope that their dreams, when the capital came, might be prophecies after all. The cannon was fired, crowds visited the vessel, a public meeting was held on the 12th, with Judge Blackford, president, and Judge Morrison, secretary, to make a formal welcome, and a banquet for the officers and owners. Resolutions demanded the improvement of the river, and the speeches expressed the usual invariable confidence of " the realization of our most sanguine expectations." That was the end of it. After making a couple of little excursions up the river on the 12th, she started back down the river on the 13th. It was a slow voyage. The pilot-house and chimneys got in the way of the tree limbs, the bends were too short for her length, the bars too frequent and shallow. She knocked off her pilot-house and damaged her wheelhouse in one of her excursions, and scared her unfamiliar passengers so badly that a good many jumped off into the water. With such ill omens and a slow voyage down, probably nobody was surprised to hear that she had grounded at Hog Island, where the captain's child was drowned, and never got off till the fall rise came. Hopes of river navigation never flourished after this experiment. It was a very general belief that the river would be made practically navigable as Congress had formally declared it to be, and to this impression must be attributed the early preference of settlers for locations near the river. On the 12th of February, 1825, Alexander Ralston, who had laid out the town, was appointed by the legislative commissioners to make a survey of the river and estimate the cost of clearing out the obstructions and the extent of practicable navigability.

During the summer he made the survey, and reported that an annual outlay of fifteen hundred dollars would make the stream navigable for three months in each year. From Sample's Mills, in Randolph County, to Indianapolis was one hundred and thirty miles, from here to the junction with White River proper two hundred and eighty-five miles, and from there to the Wabash forty miles, with a fall of eighteen inches eight miles above Martinsville, and another of nine feet in three hundred and ten miles above the junction, with a great drift at the line of Daviess and Greene Counties. On the basis of this report Congress was several times petitioned by the Legislature to make an appropriation for the proposed improvement, but nothing was ever done. The State made some considerable appropriations, expended by the County Board along the river, but no improvement of any real value could be made by such disjointed labors and slender means, if indeed anything could be done by any possible expenditure short of a system of '' slackwater" dams and locks. Schemes for this sort of improvement were urged upon the Legislature by John Matthews and others for several years after 1830, and renewed again in 1851, when the "White River Navigation Company" was chartered for twenty years. That was all that was ever done. In 1865 a little picnic steamer called the " Governor Morton" was built by some of the citizens, and made some short excursions during the year following, but she never amounted to anything. She sank below the old bridge after a life of a year, and her machinery was taken out and put into some sort of a mill. This is all of the history of the navigation of White River, except that the steamer " Traveler" came up as far as Spencer in 1830, and the " Victory" came up within fifty-five miles of this place the same year. Of the use of the river for commercial purposes more will be said under the head of " Transportation."

The first stage line into the town was started by Mr. Johnson, a relative of Col. Richard M. Johnson, to Madison in the summer of 1828. Mr. Johnson about the same time established a coach-making or repairing shop on the block where the post-ofiice and the Odd-Fellows' Hall stand. On the 8th of July, 1827, the National road commissioner, Mr. Knight, was in the town, and fixed the line to this point. The next year, in September and October, the contracts for the work were let, greatly to the satisfaction of the town, which had been so long locked up by cow-paths, Indian trails, and swampy roads crosslayed. The old bridge across the river was built by William Wernweg and Walter Blake for eighteen thousand dollars, on plans furnished by the late Lazarus B. Wilson. It was completed in 1834, the contract being let July 26, 1831. The macadamizing of the road was completed nearly through the town and about three miles west, just beyond Eagle Creek, and abandoned in 1839 in consequence of the failure of Congress to continue the appropriations. The road following Washington Street enabled that thoroughfare to get the first improvement that any street ever got in the place, but no sidewalk work was done for several years. After remaining in this incomplete condition for a number of years Congress finally surrendered to each State the portion of the National road in its limits, and about the time the railroads began advancing pretty rapidly the State gave the road to a " Plank-Road Company," which covered it with narrow, heavy oak plank, and made an admirable road till the plank began to warp. In a few years the plank-work was abandoned and the road, like hundreds of others all over the State, was heavily graveled and made an excellent turnpike, in which condition it remains to-day.

The first " show,'' McComber's Menagerie, appeared in the town on the 26th and 27th of July, 1830, and exhibited on the open space back of Henderson's tavern, about where the Central Engine house is, or a little north and east of it. Another exhibited at the same place on the 23d and 24th of August of the same year, showing among other curiosities a " rompo." Tradition does not retain a description of this mysterious beast. The next summer saw the introduction here of the first soda fountain in Dunlap & McDougal's drug-store on East Washington Street, near the middle of the block be- tween Pennsylvania Street and the alley west of it on the north side, subsequently kept by Scudder & Hanneman. In February, 1831, the first artist, a portrait-painter by the name of M. G. Kogers, came here for a professional visit. The 8th of January, so long celebrated in one way or another by the admirers of " Old Hickory," was celebrated in Indianapolis for the first time in 1830, when an address was delivered by Alexander F. Morrison, brother of the late Judge James and the banker William H., who had recently removed here and started an administration paper called the Indiana Democrat. It succeeded the Gazette, and became the Sentinel in 1841, as will appear more fully in the history of the press. The celebrations of the Fourth of July were kept up, and in 1830 there were two, one of the Sundayschools under Marshal James Blake, and one of the citizens under Marshal Demas McFarland. The deaths of Adams and Jefferson were celebrated here on the 12th of August with appropriate funeral ceremonies. The first three-story brick building was erected by William Sanders, north side of Washington Street, a little west of Meridian, in the summer of 1831. It is still standing in an improved condition. That same summer showed Indianapolis the first elephant, two of them in fact, an adult and a baby. They were not in a menagerie, but traveling on their own merits. The population of Centre township by the census of 1830 was one thousand and ninety-four.

Pretty nearly midway between the statement of the census and the condition of the settlement at the removal of the capital is the estimate of February, 1827, in the Journal. The town had then the new " court-house, a Presbyterian Church with thirty members, a Baptist Church with thirty-six members, a Methodist Church with ninety-three members, worshiping in a cabin but building a brick church," the. walls of which were completed and inclosed in the fall. A Sunday-school had been in existence five years, and had then twenty teachers and one hundred and fifty pupils. There were twentyfive brick houses in the place, sixty frames, and eighty hewed and rough log ; rents were high and houses in demand. The Governor's house in the Circle was then in progress, and six two-story and five one-story brick houses with a large number of frames had been built that year. The editor thought the condition of things promising enough to inaugurate an era of manufactures and steam-power to produce at home the ten thousand dollars' worth of goods brought from abroad. Among the year's importations were seventysix kegs of tobacco, two hundred barrels of flour, one hundred kegs of powder, four thousand five hundred pounds of yarn, and two hundred and thirteen barrels of whiskey, besides seventy-one made here (Bayou Blue), a pretty profuse supply of whiskey for a population of but little more than one thousand, and a considerable number of them women and children, who could not be expected to drink much. Probably half was sold to the country around or even farther away, but even the half, or one hundred and forty-two barrels, about five thousand gallons, would make five gallons for every mouth, little and big, in the donation, and twenty probably for every adult male. The large importation of powder shows that no little dependence was still placed in the rifle as the food provider.

On the 3d of June, 1832, the news of the outbreak of the Sac and Fox Indians under Black Hawk reached the town, and next day a call was made for a hundred and fifty men of the Fortieth Regiment, belonging to this county, and for as many more from the adjoining counties, to rendezvous here on the 9th, each man mounted, and armed with rifle, knife, and tomahawk, and a supply of powder for the campaign. When assembled here they were organized in three companies, under Capts. James P. Drake, John W. Redding, and Henry Brenton. There was some competition for the command of the battalion between Col. A. W. Russell and George L. Kinnard, a member of Congress in 1835, and scalded to death by the explosion of a steamer on the Ohio, while on his way to the national capital. He began here as a school-teacher a few years before this military expedition. An adjustment was made which gave the command to Russell and the adjutancy to Kinnard. The night before the expedition started a considerable portion was encamped on the southeast corner of the Military Ground, at the present crossing of Wash- ington and West Streets, and the next morning, while the people of the town were gathering round observing the unwonted spectacle, the men were moulding bullets by their camp-fires, or throwing tomahawks at a mark. When all were mounted and ready to march they made as fine a body of men as could have been found in any army in the world. They went from here to Chicago, then a fort and an Indian trading-post, guided by William Conner, found the war virtually at an end, and marched round the end of the lake to South Bend, where the late John D. Defrees, then editing a paper there, gave them the name they have worn ever since, and will as long as the memory or history of the expedition remains, the " Bloody Three Hundred." It was said that some of them wanted to fight about it, but the cooler heads dissuaded them. The only warlike incident of the little campaign was the firing of a frightened picket at a vagrant cow one night, which alarmed the whole camp. The battalion returned on the 3d of July, and took part in the celebration next day. The following January they were paid by Maj. Lamed. William Warren, whose hands were blown off while firing a salute to the command, was afterwards pensioned by act of Congress, obtained by Mr. Kinnard, under some neat little confusion of him with the military expedition, with which he had no more to do than he had with the " Russian Expedition." He was digging a cellar when he joined the gun squad. The "good old times" were not so much more squeamish or scrupulous than ours after all.

During the summer and early fall of 1832 subscriptions were made and steps taken to build a market-house, the leading men being Charles I. Hand and the late John Givan, then a prominent and honored citizen, in later life a pauper and semitramp. It was built the following summer where it still stands, greatly extended to be sure, but otherwise unchanged, and wholly inadequate to its purposes. Efforts have very recently been made to replace the old structure with one suitable to the size and needs of the city, built with the bequest made some years ago by the late Stephen Tomlinson, but considerable opposition was made in consequence of the coupling of a city hall with the market building, and the alleged probability that the expense would exceed the bequest and create a necessity for more city tax, and some technical oversight in letting the contract brought an injunction from the court on the project, and thus it still lies. Thomas McOuat, Josiah Davis, and John Walton were the committee charged with the supervision of the work on the first and present market-house. Under the act of Jan. 26, 1832, authorizing a lease of a seminary site to the trustees of the county seminary, Demas McFarland, Dr. Livingston Dunlap, and J. S. Hall, the trustees, obtained the lease the .same year, and began measures for erecting the building. The most important event of this year, however, was the incorporation of the town under the general law.

There was no separation of the town from the rest of the county till now. All had been governed alike by State laws and the officers appointed by them. On the 3d of September, 1832, a public meeting was held in the court-house, and it was decided to incorporate the town under the general incorporation act. An election for five trustees was held the same month, and Henry P. Coburn, John Wilkins, Samuel Merrill, Samuel Henderson, and John G. Brown were chosen. They organized by making Mr. Henderson president and Israel P. Griffith secretary. Five wards were made of the old plat, - First, all east of Alabama Street ; Second, from Alabama to Pennsylvania ; Third, from Pennsylvania to Meridian; Fourth, from Meridian to Tennessee ; Fifth, all west of Tennessee. The first marshal and collector was Samuel Jennison ; the first assessor, Glidden True ; the first market-master, Fleming T. Luse. Other officers were appointed later. In December two general ordinances were published, one for the general regulation of the town, the other relating specially to the markets. The general ordinance created the offices of clerk, marshal and collector, treasurer and assessor, all held under bond and security. Assessments were to be made in January, and tax collections reported to the treasurer in June. It will not be uninteresting to note the leading offenses defined by this first act of municipal legislation, - firing guns or flying kites on the streets, leaving cellar-doors open or teams un- hitched, driving across or on foot-paths, racing horses, letting hogs run at large, keeping stallions on Washington Street, keeping piles of wood on the same street more than twelve hours, or piles of shavings anywhere more than two days, keeping a drinking-house or a "show" without license. Offenders were to be sued in twenty days before a justice of the peace in the name of the trustees. Meetings of the Board were to be held on the first Friday of each month, but at any time on a proper call. The market ordinance provided for markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays, two hours after daylight, the market-master to look after weights and the qualities of marketable articles, as he does now. Huckstering was prohibited. Town elections were to be held annually in September.

Under this first municipal organization the town continued till 1836, then the Legislature passed a special act of incorporation legalizing the action of the trustees previously. The wards were left unchanged, but the election was shifted from September to April. The trustees were to elect a president, clerk, marshal, lister or assessor, collector, and other customary town officers. They were also to levy taxes and improve the streets and sidewalks at the cost of the owners of the adjacent property. The rate of taxation could not exceed one-half of one per cent., and could only be levied on property within the town plat. The act of incorporation included the whole donation for all purposes but taxation. The new Board continued the old ordinances mainly unchanged. Settlement was made by the former officer to April, 1836, the treasurer showing the receipt of a revenue for the year of sixteen hundred and ten dollars, and the expenditure of all but one hundred and twenty-four dollars, afar more liberal margin than can be found between receipts and expenses nowadays. On the 17th of February, 1838, a reincorporation act was passed, making no material change, however, except increasing the wards to six, electing the president of the Board by a general popular vote, and each ward trustee by the voters of the ward. Previously all had been elected by a general vote. The Board was to be the " Common Council," and elected annually, four to make a quorum. The president had the jurisdiction and powers of a justice of the peace, and the marshal those of a constable. The trustees received twelve dollars a year, or one dollar for each regular monthly meeting. The new wards were : First, all east of Alabama ; Second, to Pennsylvania; Third, to Meridian; Fourth, to Illinois; Fifth, to Mississippi ; Sixth, to the river. Tax sales for delinquencies could be made by the new charter, and the first was made on the 26th of October, 1839. The four boundary streets of the city plat, North, South, East, and West, had previously been mere alleys, or closed altogether in places, but the new Council ordered them opened. This city organization continued until it was changed for something like a regular city government of a mayor and Council, in 1847. Some amendments were made from time to time, but nothing that affected the general course of public business. In February, 1839, the taxes collected in West Indianapolis (now Indianola), west of the river, were ordered to be expended, and alleys were authorized to be opened in the donation. In 1840, in February, councilmen were required to serve two years instead of one, and were given twenty-four dollars a year. In February, 1841, the marshal was elected by popular vote, and on Jan. 15, 1844, all the town officers were changed from appointment by the Council to election by the people. No efi'ort at street improvement was made till 1836, and no city engineer employed till that year. No grading or paving of sidewalks was attempted till 1839 or thereabouts. The first survey attempted for any such purpose was made by William Sullivan, for many years a justice of the peace, at one time a teacher in the Old Seminary, and one of the most honored of the old residents. He made a survey of the street and alley between Meridian and Pennsylvania, north side of Washington, in 1838. In 1841, James Wood was employed to make a general survey, and did so. His grades were followed till it was found that his whole scheme of survey was based on the idea of turning i the city surface into an inclined plane sloping to the ! southwest corner and into the river, without regard to natural features favoring a less artificial and expensive drainage. Of the changes of municipal govi ernment after the first organization as a city in 1847,

For the first twelve years of the existence of the town its history and that of the county are identical. The laws and officers of both were the same, the taxes, improvements, and changes the same, so far as they were dependent on public and official action. For a period still longer, as before suggested, there was a close identity of social condition. The separation legally came in 1832, but the other only became distinct a decade later. There is not much to say of the county outside of the town in this period of identity. After the erection of the public buildings, already noted, there was little to do and little means to do with. The following statement of receipts for the first half-dozen years of the county organization will tell the story of its financial condition. Treasurer Yandes' report for 1822 shows that the total receipts from licenses and taxes was nine hundred and seventy-five dollars and eighty-four cents. Another statement shows the net revenue of this first year to be eight hundred and fifty-five dollars. The following table of receipts and expenses of the county from its organization to the separation of the town by incorporation is compiled from the records of the County Board :

The County Board, when the county was organized, consisted of three commissioners, as already noted. On the 31st of January, 1824, an act of the Legislature changed this mode of doing county business for a board composed of all the justices of the peace of the county. This was repealed in February, 1831, and the board of three commissioners restored. In 1835 this was again made to give place to a board of justices, which was once more and finally displaced by commissioners in 1837. The first meeting of the board of justices was on the 6th of September, 1824, at the house of John Carr, the court-house not being quite finished yet. Joel Wright was elected president over Wilkes Reagin and Obed Foote. The members present were Joel Wright, Henry D. Bell, Obed Foote, Jeremiah J. Corbaley, John C. Hume, William D. Rooker, Sismund Basye, Wilkes Reagin, and Joseph Beeler. It may be noted as a mark of the culture of the times that the president of the board signs himself " Preasadent of the Bord."

The work of the Board, whether of justices or commissioners, was largely of a routine character ; receiving petitions for the opening of county roads and neighborhood roads, appointing " viewers" to examine and report on the proposed lines, allowing little claims for services or labor of one kind or another, licensing stores composed the bulk of it. Occasionally a constable was appointed and a list of grand and petit jurors provided for the clerk to draw from in court terms. The first roll of grand jurors, selected from among the tax-payers of the county at the May session, 1822, and numbering " fifty-four discreet householders," will not be uninteresting :

A sample of the ordinai-y business of the county will serve as well as a full copy of the records to inform the reader of its character. Here is an allowance : " It is ordered that Calvin Fletcher be allowed five dollars and fifty cents for three days' services in appraising town lots under the direction of the lister (Col. James Paxton), and Caleb Scudder be allowed one dollar and fifty cents for one day's similar services, all payable out of the county treasury." " Allowed Joseph Clark, for making two jury boxes to contain the selected names for the grand and petit jurors, one dollar." " It is ordered that Calvin Fletcher and John Packer be appointed to serve as overseers of the poor in Centre-Warren township for, during, and until the next session on the second Monday of May next." " Allowed Francis Davis, David Wood, and Demas L. McFarland one dollar and fifty cents each for two days' services in viewing Harding's road (line of old National road), and to Alexander W. Russell, for two days' services in surveying the same, two dollars, payable," etc. Whenever a road was petitioned for and favorably considered - usually the result, though sometimes remonstrances were put in and the road disallowed - three reputable citizens and householders were appointed to " view" it, and upon their report the road was ordered opened. The routes were always indicated by the lines of the Congressional survey, " section," " township," and " range," and marked, as the reports frequently say, "with two hacks with tomahawk" or " two chops with an axe" on the trees at certain points. Some petitions wanted the road opened " to the centre of town." There were no cleared streets, not even Washington, at the first meetings for county business. Roads out of and through the town were cow-paths or stumpy openings too densely closed in with trees and brush to allow one neighbor to see the house of another within hailing distance. These will serve as specimens of the county road-work, and it was a large portion of all that half-dozen road petitions to act on, " viewers" to appoint, and reports to receive. Here is a specimen of a " store license :" " James Givan and son having satisfied the Board that they have not in amount more than one thousand dollars in stock of foreign merchandise, it is ordered that on producing the treasurer's receipt for ten dollars they receive a license to retail foreign merchandise in this county for one year." The tavern license was twelve dollars, and three taverns paid it in 1823, - Hawkins', Carter's, and Blake & Henderson's. Occasionally allowances were made for the support of paupers by private citizens for a short time, and like allowances were made to doctors for services to the same class. Once in 1825 an allowance of three dollars is made to Samuel Duke for a cofiSn for a drowned negro, apparently the first person drowned in the settlement. The following order possesses the interest of novelty, at least to the great majority of readers, who are not aware that debtors could be imprisoned like thieves in Marion County in early times : " Allowed to Hervey Bates for meat and drink furnished to John J. E. Barnett and Samuel Roberts (one of the first constables), insolvent persons confined in the county jail at the suit of the State." The amount is not given, as the item is one of several allowed to Mr. Bates as sheriff. The appointment of supervisors of roads, of school districts, of the poor, the resignations and elections of justices and constables, levies of taxes will about complete the list of the labors of the County Board, added to those above named, during the twelve years that the town and county governments were identical.

The events and incidents illustrating the development of the town during seven years, from the organization of the first municipal government in 1832 to the abandonment of the public works in 1839, which forms the second division of the second period of the city's history, may be treated in four groups : 1st, The temporary improvement in business and real estate values, originating in the confidence of an early completion of the State's " Internal Improvement System ;" 2d, The first establishment of some of the industries which are now among the chief agencies of the city's prosperity ; 3d, Enlarged educational ad- ist. Within three years after the organization of the town government the swell of the " Interna) Iidt provement" tide began to be felt. Prices of lots stiffened and speculation began to reach out for chances. The State had spent one hundred thousand dollars in making roads, but that could not go far in creating transportation facilities in a country of dense woods and few settlements. What the people wanted was means of getting away and getting home with goods and produce, and country roads were a very inadequate provision. Railroads were a recent improvement about which the whole country was excited, and Indiana wanted railroads. The Wabash and Erie Canal was advancing with the help of Congressional grants, but water-ways were wanted for the central and eastern parts of the State. A canal to connect the Ohio with the Wabash Canal was to pass through here. A railroad to make a similar connection higher up the Ohio was also to pass through here. Other railroads, as before noted, aimed here either as a terminus or necessary junction. The Legislature of 1835-36, the first that met in the new State-House, was confidently expected to go largely into the improvement business and give Indianapolis an especially elevating lift. Thus started the first speculative movement in the history of the city. The Legislature did not disappoint expectation. The " Internal Improvement Bill," giving State aid to five or six railroad, turnpike, and canal projects, notably the Central Canal and the Madison Railroad, and ordering the issue of ten million dollars of bonds to make the aid efiective, was passed on the 26th of January, 1836, and was welcomed in advance on the 16th with bonfires and a brilliant illumination, the first ever witnessed here, and the saddest in the outcome that was ever witnessed anywhere. The canal it was known would pass through one of the western streets, and speculation moved that way. Some of the heaviest sales that had ever been made were of lots on Washington Street, along the two blocks between Mississippi and Missouri. William Quarles, one of the most prominent criminal lawyers of the State, built a residence as close to the line of the canal as he could get. The settlement which had so long been moving eastward, away from the river and the site of the first settlement, began moving back. Houses were rising rapidly and settlers coming in encouragingly. The great crash came the next year, but it did not disturb the confidence of the people here. The State's bonds still supplied money, kept the public works going, and furnished means of speculation and appearances of prosperity; but in 1839 the shock fell with full force here, after sending ahead premonitory tremors for several months. Prices fell and speculators were ruined ; business was universally embarrassed ; real estate, both town and country, was abundant but unavailable, - it would not bring cash and could not pay debts. A good many sacrificed all they had and even then did not pay all they owed. Many others made compromises that enabled them to look around and wait for chances, and finally canae out with a good start in another race. The Bankrupt Act of 1841 proved a great help to struggling honesty with unavailable means, yet fewer of the business men of Indianapolis than of probably any town in the State sought its relief. The great " Internal Improvement System," which was expected to prove so great a blessing, turned out an almost unmitigated curse. For six years it burdened the tax-payer and for twenty discredited the State. The failure to keep up the interest in 1841 and thence on to 1846, when the Butler compromise with the bondholders was completed (by giving up the Wabash Canal for seven million five hundred thousand dollars, half of the principal debt, and issuing two and a half per cent, bonds for the unpaid interest and five per cent, bonds for the other half of the principal), placed Indiana among the repudiating States, and was a drag on her and the capital town for many a year.

The canal and railroad intended for this place were not wholly thrown away, however. The Madison Railroad was completed and running north to Vernon a year or two before the panic struck it. Until 1843 the State operated it with little advantage to anybody. Then it was sold to a company, as will be more particularly related in the part of the work treating of " Transportation" and railroads. The canal was worked in many places at once along a large part of its length, but mainly from the river at Noblesville to the lower part of Morgan County. A large force was engaged in and near the town, and it was at that time, from 1837 to 1839, that songs of " the canawl" were so popular with the "uncultured." Some allusion to them was made in the preceding chapter. Of course there were frequent rows and bloody fights. On one occasion in 1838 two factions of the Irish hands kept up a fight nearly all day, engaging some hundreds altogether and furnishing a good many surgical subjects, but none fortunately for the sexton. For two years long lines of little shanties, stuck in among heaps of sand and piles of logs and brush cut out of the line of the canal, were conspicuous features of a dreary scene that they made doubly dreary. Simultaneously with the canal work was going on the grading and metaling of the National road, and the two evil attractions brought here an unusual force of worthless or mischievous characters, as noted in a previous chapter. Their outrages both of violence and theft became intolerable, and a public meeting was called to devise a remedy. It was decided to make an organization of the citizens, something like a Vigilance Committee, with the conspicuous difierence that it was intended to enforce instead of supersede the laws. This movement had a wholesome efiect, which was strengthened afterward by the rough handling of the leader, Burkhart, as related in the sketch of the history of camp-meetings.

The canal was entirely completed between the city and Broad Ripple, where there was a feeder-dam, and for a time used a little for the legitimate purpose of transporting wood and corn and occasional loads of hay or lumber, and a good deal for the less legitimate purpose of bathing and fishing. If passengers ever used it they did it in a skiflT. An eager run was made for water-power, as will be noticed further along in the account of the manufactures of this period. A stone lock was put in at Market Street, and a raceway taken westward north of Market, as may be seen to-day, for mills nearer the river. Two wooden locks were put in at the bluflf of the swamp called " Palmer's Glade," near the line of Kansas Street, but never finished. The canal was never used for anything but a mill-race below the stone lock, and for many of its last years it was not used for that. It was made a sort of open sewer, into which everybody who lived handy threw their old boots and dead cats, ashes and rotten cabbage, till it was too offensive to be borne. In 1870 it was abandoned altogether below Market Street, and a sewer was laid in the bottom of it from Market to Louisiana Street, where it connected with the main sewer down Kentucky Avenue. Then it was rapidly filled up as far down as Merrill Street, and in scattered places farther south, till it was measurably effaced. Recently it has been built in and over, and on the site of the steel-rail rolling-mill has been so completely destroyed that the most familiar eye fails to discern its place, and only in a short " reach" above Morris Street can any remains be detected. From Market Street to the Ripple it is now an important adjunct of the water-works, and is used for boating, swimming, fishing, skating, and in packing far more than the river is or ever was. The account of the changes in this portion of it belongs to the sketch of the waterworks. The owners of the ground (or their assignees) through which the canal diverged eastward from Missouri Street at the crossing of Merrill, reaching nearly to Tennessee Street, when abandoned by the State's assignees as a means of navigation and hydraulic power, reclaimed their proprietary rights. The Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Lafayette Railroad Company, which had purchased of the State's assignees the lower part of the work, brought suit to restrain them from filling it up or obstructing it. Judge Drummond, of the United States Court, in an elaborate opinion, sustained the rights of the original owners of the ground, and thus this costly work was legally allowed to be wiped out, so far as the lower station of it is concerned. It was virtually, finished, except an aqueduct at Pleasant Run and some of the southern creeks, nearly or quite to the Bluffs, but after the abandonment of 1839 it was never used, never held water, and was soon overgrown with underbrush.

2d. Before the organization of the town government no attempt was made at manufacturing other than the usual custom work of the mechanics who are among the early settlers of all towns, except in iron, leather, pottery, and the preparation of ginseng. There were two pottery establishments in the place as early as 1832 or earlier, and a third not far from the same time. One of the early two was on Maryland Street, near Tennessee, the site of the Chamber of Commerce, belonging to a Mr. Myers ; the other was removed to make room for the State Bank building in 1840, and was established by Robert Brenton. It occupied the peak between Illinois Street and Kentucky Avenue, very near the first school-house. The third was on Washington Street, north side, near New Jersey, and set its furnace in the " ravine" that ran through the ground down to the creek, as described in the " topography" of the town. These probably made ware for stock, besides what was made on order, before the town organization. Daniel Yandes, one of the industrial pioneers and benefactors of the settlement, in connection with John Wilkins, carried on a tannery on Alabama Street, near the site of the city station-house, for several years before. As early as 1830 or earlier James Blake and Nicholas McCarty established a ginseng or, as it was called in its day, a " sang"-factory, on the south bluff of Pogue's Run Valley, near the Cincinnati Railroad depot site. Mr. McCarty bought the ginseng of farmers here, and through his agents and branch stores in other places, and Mr. Blake attended to the preparation of it and its shipment to Philadelphia for the Chinese market. Very near the time of the first town organization Joshua Grover did some iron foundry work, .but nothing of any importance was attempted till August, 1832. Then R. A. McPherson & Co. established a considerable foundry on the west side of the river, at the end of the bridge then in progress. It fiiilcd, however, about the same time the big steam-mill enterprise failed, as before related. These are all of the more extended industries that preceded the town government. There were the grist- and saw-mills and carding-machines, and the usual blacksmith, carpenter, wagon-maker, tailor, shoemaker, cabinet, and other shops, and the town fiddler, Bill Bagwell, made cigars on the southwest corner of Illinois and Maryland Streets, but the workmen usually kept no journeymen, and did all their own work for customers. For twenty years or more apprentices were taken under indenture to learn the trade and live with their masters, getting a sum of money and a suit of clothes at twenty-one, but the apprentice system passed away with the changes brought by the railroads. It is supposed that Mr. Johnson, who established the first stage line in 1828, opened a shop for coach repairs, and later for manufacture, about the time of the establishment of the town government.

Enterprise began to appear more conspicuously soon after this. In 1834, John L. Young and William Wernweg started the first brewery, on Maryland Street, south side, half-way between Missouri and West. About 1840 it was taken by Joseph Laux, and later by Mr. Meikel. About the same time a rope-walk was started on Market Street, east of the market-house, and a linseed-oil mill was put in operation by John S. Barnes and Williamson Maxwell in a stable on the alley south of Maryland Street, near Missouri, close to the grounds of the present ward school. Scudder & Hannaman got it the next year, and moved it to the river bank in 1839. In 1835 the same enterprising firm began the manufacture of tobacco in the log building on Kentucky Avenue, below Merrill, where a carding-machine, run by horse-power, had previously been operated. In that year James Bradley, with one or two associates, cut, cured, and packed pork in Myers' old pottery-shop, on the site of the Chamber of Commerce, for the first time in the history of the place. It was the feeble beginning, ending in failure, of what has grown to be the largest industrial interest of the city. Its illfortune warned enterprise away for several years, but when it came again, a halfdozen years later, it "came to stay." In 1835, Robert Underbill and John Wood started a steam foundry on Pennsylvania Street, near the site of the Second Presbyterian Church, and maintained it successfully in making plow points, mill gearing, and domestic hollow-ware till 1852, when he removed to South Pennsylvania Street, began a larger establishment, failed, and left the building to other uses, and it was burned in 1858. In 1836-37, Young & Pottage, carrying on the hardware business, on the southwest corner of Meridian and Washington Streets, engaged John J. Nash to make carpenters' planes, and the excellence of his work commanded a profitable trade as long as the firm continued. In 1836, Hiram Devinney began the manufacture of mattresses, cushions, and similar work, near Maryland Street and the lino of the canal. In 1839, Scudder & Hannaman built a carding-mill on the river bank, near the site of the water-works, and added some spinning, weaving, and fulling machinery. About the same time Nathaniel West established a mill of the same kind at the crossing of the canal and the Michigan road, long called Cottontown. He also carried on cottonspinning there at the same time. At very nearly the same time a German by the name of Protzman, the first leader of the first brass band in the town, began the manufacture of soap, on the canal, near McCarty Street, then a lane, among cow-pastures and cornfields ; and about that time, too, Nicholas Mc- Carty began the manufacture of hemp, grown on his Bayou farm, on the canal, near the present line of Ray Street. Within a few months William Sheets established the first paper-mill on the canal and race at Market Street, and maintained it successfully nearly all his life after. In 1839 or 1840 a haypress was set up on the lot opposite the northwest corner of the State-House Square, and a considerable quantity of hay was pressed there for shipment by flat-boats down the Mississippi River. There were two or three at one time, but the business was not maintained long. These early industries will be noticed more particularly in the department of Manufactures. It will be noticed that several of the industries referred to here were started in 1838 and 1839, just before the failure of the public works. The canal, it was confidently believed, would some time be completed, and, in any event, it supplied a considerable water-power, which could be leased on favorable terms of the State. This is the explanation of the matter. By the 11th of June, 1838, sites were leased for one woolen-mill and one cotton-mill, two paper-mills, one oil-, two grist-, and two saw-mills, and the buildings soon after erected and set to work. There was long complaint of the inadequacy of the power, and the frequent obstructions from grasses and other vegetable growths, and of the ofiensiveness of the canal-bed when the water was shut off to allow ^he grass to be cut. The Legislature ordered it sold

Jan. 19, 1850, and it was sold in 1851 to Gould & Jackson, who sold the next fall to the " Central Canal Hydraulic Water- Works and Manufacturing Company," an association whose multitudinous name was the best part of it. From that concern the canal passed to other hands, and finally, as already stated, into the possession of the present Water-Works Company, where it is likely to stay.

In February, 1835, the State Board of Agriculture was chartered by the Legislature, with James Blake, Larkin Simms, John Owen, and M. M. Hcnkle directors, of whom Mr. Blake was president, and Mr. Henkle secretary. They offered premiums for essays, and made rules for the organization of county associations. A State Agricultural Convention was held in the State-House Dec. 14, 1835, and two or three smaller meetings were held annually afterwards, but the enterprise was premature. A County Society was formed in June, 1835, with Nathan B. Palmer as president and Douglass Maguire as secretary, and collected subscriptions for a premium fund, aided to the extent of fifty dollars by the board of justices, which was disbursed on the last day of October in one hundred and eighty-four dollars of premiums on exhibitions made in the court-house yard at that time. For the premiums of the next fair four hundred dollars was subscribed, and the exhibitions promised to become as permanent as the State Fairs are now, but the crash of 1837 ruined this with many another promising project of improvement. The " Benevolent Society," still the most extensive, active, and effective of the city's charities, was organized in November, 1835, with much the same arrangement as now, - a president, secretary, treasurer, depositary, and visitors. The latter collected clothes, money, household goods, groceries, anything that the destitute could use, and stored them with the depositary, to be delivered on proper orders. Several associations have been formed on the same plan since, particularly the " Ladies' Relief Society" and the " Flower Mission," but one has disbanded, and the other, active and beneficent as it is, can hardly hope to reach the extent of service of the association now nearly a half-century old.