Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 13: Rono and Northeastern Portion of County, 1916

Troy was the second community in Perry County to become an incorporated town, the enactment being the work of Dr. Robert G. Cotton, a resident of the place, who represented the county in the Legislature of 1837, and later in the same year the first board of trustees was elected, consisting of Jacob Protzman, James B. Worthington, John Bristow, John Daniel and John Huff. This organization lapsed after a few years, however, - perhaps three or four - and an attempt to revive the corporation about ten years later resulted in failure. In the spring of 1859 the town was reincorporated, with Dr. Magnus Brucker, Cullen C. Cotton, Samuel K. Connor, Jacob Daunhauer and William T. Washer as trustees; David R. Hubbs, clerk, treasurer and assessor. Their first meeting was held May 4, 1859, when town ordinances were adopted, a corporate levy fixed, and the municipality has maintained a continuous existence thenceforward.

Investigation having discovered around Troy a deposit of brown marly clay of the quaternary epoch, from which it was believed that the finer white wares so extensively manufactured in England could be produced, in 1838 a charter was granted the Indiana Pottery Company "to manufacture at Troy, from the fireclay beds there, Rockingham and other stoneware."

Among the stockholders were Samuel Casseday, John Bell, William Garvin, E. T. Bainbridge and Perley Chamberlain, of Louisville, besides Reuben Bates of Troy, who subscribed as his portion of the investment a tract of 160 acres of land adjoining Troy, under which lay the clay. Means to erect the required build-

By way of insuring success to the new enterprise, it was regarded as essential to import experienced labour, and potters of supposed skill were induced to come in considerable numbers from England. While some few of these brought out were trained men of industrious character, the majority arriving were the cast-off idlers and worthless scum of the Staffordshire potteries, who came to America merely as a holiday, having nothing to lose; or to evade the unsavoury reputation they had earned for themselves in the Five Towns.

The Troy pottery started up with flattering prospects, but in a short while the impossibility of making white ware from the clay was demonstrated, and the labourers showed themselves in their true light, spending over half their time in sheer idleness when presumably at work.

After a year of anxious effort by the company, business suspended, and the plant was placed in charge of Samuel Casseday, who leased it from time to time for various periods to some of the English workmen. He became the recognized owner and leased it in 1851 to Samuel Wilson and John Sanders, who continued the manufacture of yellow and Rockingham ware, through sundry vicissitudes of fire and calamity, becoming absolute owners of the property about 1860 when a twostory brick building was erected by Wilson alone. Sanders' death occurred in 1863, when his interests were leased to Benjamin Hinchco, an Englishman, like his associates.

In the extreme eastern portion of Perry County no town plat has ever been regularly laid out and recorded, but in very early times the home of an old settler on the river bank, some few miles below the Crawford County line, came to be known as Dodson's Landing, where there was a woodyard, and where passing store-boats stopped to traffic with the few neighbour- ing residents, Jesse Martin later carried on the woodyard for some years, until his death about 1840, after which his widow continued the business.

Job Hatfield, one of several brothers in an Ohio family, came down the river about 1842 in a store-boat, and after remaining for a year or two afloat though tied to the bank, with increasing trade at this point, finally landed his boat above high-water mark and conducted the store as a fixed establishment, moving his family into a log dwelling which had been commenced by the Martins.

From that time to the present the Hatfield family, through the lines of Job, Lorenzo Dow and William, have been associated with the frowning cliffs of ''Buzzards' Roost," which come close to the river north of the rich bottom land between Oil Creek and the Ohio. In earlier days they were of important connection with the mercantile, professional and political affairs of Perry County, but the family name and stock is now more largely represented in Spencer, Warrick and Vanderburg Counties.

When a mail route was established in 1848 between Leavenworth and Cannelton, extending to Rockport, Job Hatfield was appointed postmaster and the settlement appears under the name Rono. This was said to be the name of an old dog once owned by Jesse Martin, which lived to an extraordinary age. Whether or not a true story, the hamlet remained as Rono until 1896, when the postal department changed it to Magnet, the present title.

The most important, if not the only, commercial interest of early Rono was the slaughtering and packing trade carried on for many years by the Hatfields, a massive stone smoke-house, built after a disastrous fire in 1856, yet standing in testimony to their extensive operations. They also conducted a business in general produce and merchandise, shipping flatboats South like most other dealers of their time.

who held office in the old court-house at Rome, and an interesting story, not without its exciting side, is recalled concerning an incident of his term, 1856-1860.

There were then no banks in the county, available as depositories, and the county funds were kept in such places of security as the treasurer could devise. On one occasion of taxpaying, when certain exceptionally large sums had been paid in, some circumstances aroused Treasurer Hatfield's suspicions, so that he determined to leave no money in the rather fragile county safe that night.

Carrying home, therefore, after dark all the coin and bills, in a huge sack whose weight was about all he could handle, he put it into a coal-scuttle which he next filled to the brim with loose coal, completely hiding the money-bag. Then calmly going to sleep, the first news to greet his awakening was that the treasurer's office had been "robbed," the safe broken into and all its contents stolen.

Hatfield received the startling messages with no sign of disturbance, merely saying that he would be at the court-house for business at his usual hour. And so he was, quietly bringing with him the money which he had in private removed from its place of concealment, so that no one, not even his immediate family, knew until long afterward just where the county treasure had been hidden over night.

The first physician of Rono was Dr. Hiram M. Curry, born September 23, 1827, in Brown County, Ohio, a son of William and Hannah (Adkins) Curry, who were natives, respectively, of Virginia and New York. After attending an academy in Maysville, Kentucky, and Shurtleff College, Alton, Illinois, he took a three years' course in Ohio Medical College, soon afterward locating in Perry County, where for two years he was associated with Dr. William P. Drumb, of Leopold.

Later, he practiced alone at Rono, and for one year (1853) at Rome while filling out the unexpired term of William Van Winkle as auditor. Still later he lived at

Grandview, at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at Cannelton, and lastly in Spencer County again. His first marriage was to Julia A. Hatfield, of Rono, May 18, 1855 ; Letitia Lamar, of Spencer County, becoming his second wife in 1864; and Fannie W. Smith, his third, in 1883. The offspring of these three unions keep up the Curry name elsewhere in Southern Indiana.

Probably the earliest minister of the Gospel in eastern Perry County was Joseph Springer, who organized a Methodist class, meeting first in his own home and later at the log "Springer School-House," one of the most conspicuous school-buildings of the time in its locality. Meetings were also held near Leopold, where some of the members resided, as people then went many miles for the privileges of divine worship. Circuit riders came once a month, or more seldom, and a journey of six or eight miles was considered nothing.

The Springers, Hatfields, Currys, Barrs, Borers, Heddens and Daileys were pioneer Methodists, and an early organization of the United Brethren (eventually disbanded) had several branches of the Myers and Figgins families as its principal members. Among the Universalists near Rono who held meetings at Beech Grove School-House were the Ewings, Tates, Spencers, Richardsons, Ballards and Millers, while Weedman, Farmer, Stiles, Cost, Rosecrans and Sinclair were names constituting the membership of a strong class who built a Disciples of Christ church some few miles west of Rono.

Some distance farther to the interior, and nearer to where Branchville was laid out in 1866, the Oil Creek Baptist Church was organized in 1851, by the Rev. R. M. Snyder and the Rev. J. Armstrong. Among its original members were James Falkenborough and his wife Barbara. Polly Frakes, Nancy Shaver, Daniel Rhodes and Charles A. Cunningham, the first clerk. The Cunningham family have maintained to the present their active support of this denomination and rank among the foremost Baptists in Perry County.

Although material and commercial development was more marked elsewhere, the eastern section of the county furnished the earliest example of systematic effort toward mental and social culture, especially commendable in view of the sparsely settled region. The first regular organization (other than religious) recorded in Perry County was "The Flint Island Lyceum," whose initial meeting was held January 19, 1843, its preamble then adopted stating that: "We, the citizens of Perry County, Indiana, being desirous of literary improvement and the dissemination of useful knowledge, agree to form ourselves into a literary society."

W. A. T. Blakeburn was chosen permanent president, and Israel Stevenson, secretary, while among others signing the constitution and by-laws appeared the names of William Stark Minor, Jonathan D. Esarey, J. H. Esarey, Fielding Deen, Joseph Deen, J. E. Springer, John Peckenpaugh, Richard Myers, William Myers, I. W. Myers, James Myers, William Figgins, Reily Figgins, W. L. Sapp, William Hatfield, Joseph McFall, Wesley Riddle, Stephen Martin, Andrew Gilliland, Thomas Gilliland, J. A. Gilliland (non-residents) and others. During the lifetime of the society it was well conducted, with the usual exercises of debates, discussions, declamations and orations, until its eventual abandonment.

The Sons of Temperance organized about 1847 at Rc.me a branch of the national order which had been established five years earlier in New York City, continuing their zealous work for several years, extending to Cannelton and other points nearby, though without long duration.

The first of the great fraternal societies to enter Perry County was the Masonic order, Morris Lodge No. 97, F. and A. M., being instituted April 27, 1849, at Cannelton, with N. H. Ewing, W. M. ; Elijah Moore, S. W., and E. M. Clark, J. W. Its charter was granted one month later, May 29, 1849, with the following

Owing to internal differences this lodge surrendered its charter after three years and was granted a dispensation October 7, 1852, as Cannelton Lodge No. 152, with M. F. Ross, W. M. ; E. Moore, S. W. ; and Joseph M. Gest, J. W., to whom a new charter, still in effect, was granted May 26, 1853.

James Lodge No. 100, L 0. O. F., was instituted November 29, 1851, in Cannelton, by G. B. Jocelyn, D. G. M., with Willard Claflin, N. G. ; Ziba H. Cook, V. G. ; M. Fitzpatrick, Secretary; Jacob B. Maynard, Treasurer. January 21, 1852, is the date of its charter and Thomas Hay was its first initiate.

Its career has been one of uniform success, and it is the only order (1915) in Cannelton owning its hall. A building fund was commenced in 1866, $1,500 being realized by a notable fair held in Mozart Hall, a notable assembly-place in Cannelton's earlier years, still standing at the corner of Front and Madison Streets. Now put to prosaic uses, its fort-like stone walls give no hint of gaieties they once beheld.

On November 28, 1878, the present Odd Fellows' Hall, a substantial brick edifice at the corner of Third and Washington Streets, costing over $10,000, containing handsome and appropriately furnished lodgerooms, was formally dedicated by official ceremonial, followed by an elaborate banquet, and a ball, at night, which was one of the most brilliant semi-public functions ever witnessed in Cannelton.

Rome Lodge No. 133, F. and A. M., was chartered May 26, 1852, with John C. Shoemaker, W. M. ; Isaac W. Whitehead, S. W. ; William Hyde, J. W. Its membership, at first small, became later large and active, but has undergone the usual vicissitudes of a declining community, though always a high standard of enthusiasm and efficiency. Some of Southern Indiana's most learned brethren of the compass and square took their work as neophytes in the hall of old Rome Lodge. Noteworthy among these were three sons of Elijah Brannon Huckeby - Lawrence Brannon, George Perry and Robert Thompson Huckeby - each of whom became profoundly versed in ritual of the ancient craft. Troy Lodge No. 256, F. and A. M., was organized August 20, 1859, under a dispensation authorizing the institution exercises, when the officers installed were: Remus W. Tong, W. M.; William T. Washer, S. W.; S. S. Amos, J. W. ; J. G. Heinzle, Treasurer; William Basye, Secretary ; Charles McNutt, S. D. ; Dr. Magnus Brucker, J. D. ; Henry Jordan, T. The charter was issued by the Grand Lodge of Indiana, May 30, 1860, and the rolls show John D. Williamson to have been the first candidate raised.