Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 30: Adyeville, Branchville, Bristow, Siberia, 1916

St. Augustine's parish at Leopold, with the Rev. Augustus Bessonies as its founder, was the mother church of the Roman Catholic faith in Perry County, and Troy may be considered one of its elder children in the work upon which Father Bessonies actively engaged. In 1849 sufficient ground was acquired there for building and cemetery purposes and a brick structure, 33 by 48 feet, was erected and dedicated to St. Pius, the patron saint of gentle 'Pio Nono' (Piux IX) who was then Pope.

In course of long years parsonage and school were added and in the early 'eighties a new brick church was built. Its interior finish and decoration is probably the handsomest of its kind in Perry County, attesting the generosity of its congregation whose devotional spirit has been further shown through the number of its members who have embraced the religious life in conventual or monastic orders, or in the priesthood.

While it is incontestable that spiritual needs received less consideration than material affairs in early Tell City, there were among the colonists some twenty-five Roman Catholic families, by whom St. Paul's parish was organized in 1859, the first offices being performed by the Rev. Michael Marendt, of Cannelton, who built the original church at a cost, with site, of $900. During several years directly following. Father Marendt was absent in South America, so the work was intermittently supplied from Cannelton or from the Benedictine Abbey at St. Meinrad, until 1863, when the Rev.

The present edifice was commenced in 1870 when its cornerstone was laid by the Rev. Bede O'Connor, but after the walls were roofed, in 1873, the work languished until 1877, when the Rev. Edward Faller, who then transferred from Cannelton to Tell City, pushed to completion the work toward which he gave largely from his individual means. The building is 48 by 114, with a nave 40 feet high in the clear and twin towers reaching a height of 134 feet. In architecture it departs strikingly from the familiar ecclesiastical Gothic type, belonging to the Byzantine order, the same style as more recently adopted for the immense Westminster pro-cathedral built in London since 1900, which is the most imposing Roman Catholic church ever erected in England. Parsonage and school house were also the fruit of Father Faller's labours, though a more extensive school building was put up in 1814, with modern equipment throughout, in which the Benedictine sister^ conduct a large school along certified lines of training.

In 1866 the First German Evangelical Society was organized in Tell City, with Ernst Birnstengel, Henry Keller, Justus Rode, Jacob Kleiber and Ludwig Wade as trustees, who in the following year built a church costing $3,500. The Rev. Jacob Knaus, of St. John's Church, Cannelton, was the first pastor, but a Sunday School of fifty scholars was conducted by B. Steerlin. This has grown into one of the largest and most vigourous in the county, being foremost in activity in the Perry County Sunday School Association, which is afl^liated with the state organization. It is an index to the work of the entire local body, which was at first a free society, belonging to no synod prior to May, 1885. The costly modern brick church, built 1913, contains the finest pipe organ in Perry County, a memorial to the late Adolph Zuelly, and is the centre of devoted endeavour for a large and earnest congregation.

Church were held in Tell City by the Rev. Dr. A. Kinney Hall, rector of St. Luke's parish, Cannelton, and a small frame structure under the name of Grace Church was built at the corner of Ninth and Pestalozzi streets. The Right Reverend Joseph Cruikshank Talbott, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Indianapolis, officiated there at a confirmation service, September 28, 1873, but the time was not yet ripe for exclusively English missionary work and the effort was dropped a year later upon Dr. Hall's departure from Cannelton. The Brazee, Hubbs and Combs families had been the principal supporters during its brief existence, and all these resumed their membership in St. Luke's parish.

Rural parishes of the Roman Catholic Church in the county commenced with St. Croix (Holy Cross) Church, in Oil Township several miles north of Leopold, where the families of Jean Dupaquier and several others settled about 1849 and were soon visited by Father Bessonies. The Rev. J. P. Dion, from Cannelton, organized and named the mission in 1855, buying forty acres of ground on which the first log church and parsonage were built. The cornerstone of the present stone church was laid June 26, 1882, under the pastorate of the Rev. Charles F. Bilger. Father Marendt in 1860 purchased in Anderson Township for church and school purposes an acre of land on which stood a small frame building, saying the first mass in what became St. Mark's Mission. Father Dion added more land, and in 1867 work was begun upon a stone church, 36 by 65, finished after two years labour and still in use. It now has a resident pastor, the Rev. John B. Unversagt having been the first, and is completely equipped, oflfering privileges of Divine Worship to a large though scattered flock. Its annual midsummer picnics are a distinctive feature of county social life, bringing together a large crowd for jollification.

Four miles from Rome, in the German Ridge vicinity, Father Marendt built St. Peter's Church in 1868, but its attendance has been so diminished through deaths.

In March, 1869, St. Martin's Mission was organized in the extreme north of Clark Township near the Dubois County line, where a number of Russo-Polish families (indicated by such names as Bombolaski, Skrynecke and others) had settled as the latest foreign colony coming into Perry County. A town site to which the name of Siberia was given was platted by the Rev. Isidore Hobi, O. S. B., and the ground practically surveyed February 18-19-20, 1869, by Jacob Marendt; with George Uebelher and Mathias Warken as his chain carriers, Nathan Hobbs and Michael Uebelher, flag bearers.

The village lies in the northeast quarter of southwest quarter of Section 22, Township 3, South, Range 3, West, and contains forty-nine lots each 100 feet square, with three fifty-foot streets - Perry, Dubois and Spencer - running from north to south, intersected from east to west by six others of the same width, beginning at the south, with Church street, then First, Second, Third, Fourth and Oakbush. Father Hobi's acknowledgment of the plat, dedicating these streets to public use, was acknowledged March 13, 1873, before Joseph George Stum, a notary public for Spencer County, and on August 12, 1874, was entered on Page 396 of Deed Book 6, by James Peter, Recorder Perry County.

Irregular services were held by the clergy from St. Meinrad's Abbey for several years after the church was built and blessed, the Rev. Charles F. Bilger becoming about 1880 the first regular pastor in conjunction with St. Croix. St. John's-on-the-Ridge, also in the northern part of the county, and Sacred Heart, near Galey's Landing in eastern Union Township, were the latest rural stations established.

In 1866 Jesse C. Esarey, a descendant of the pioneer family who were the earliest settlers of Oil Township in 1810, erected a saw and grist mill near one of the branches of Oil Creek, where a settlement began to spring up, and in 1874 Daniel R. McKim laid out a regular town plat to which the name Branchville was given, Miss Mary C. Reily becoming the first postmaster. Its location is on the section line between the southeast quarter of Section 13 and the northwest quarter of Section 24.

John S. Frakes and John C. Newton, partners in general merchandise, were the first business men and Dr. John W. Lang the first physician. The Rev. William H. Sabine dedicated the Methodist Church built in 1867 near Branchville, although services had been held in school houses and other buildings ever since 1817. Branchville Lodge No. 496, F. and A. M., was chartered in 1873, with John S. Frakes, W. M. ; Hiram Esarey, Jasper Deen, James S. Frakes, John H. Deen, John D. Carr and Absalom C. Miller as charter members. A two-story building, 20 by 40, costing $1,000, was erected by the order and the lodge is still in existence.

Adyeville's first settler was John E. Newton, who opened a store there in a log cabin about 1848, and the point became locally known as Bridgeport, because of the old-fashioned covered bridge across Anderson River, on the highroad leading from Clark Township into Harrison Township, Spencer County. It thus appears on early state maps, but in 1861 when a postoffice was established the name Adyeville was conferred, taken from a prominent resident, Andrew J. Adye, who became the first postmaster.

Twelve years later when the town-plat of Adyeville was surveyed by Daniel R. McKim, County Surveyor, June 18, 1873, he was the owner of all but four lots out of eighteen in the new village, the others being in possession of William T. Chewning, A. J. Mills and George Zeiler. Main street, thirty feet wide, followed the county road with Walnut and Willow respectively north and south of it. State, Cherry and Church were the three streets crossing these at right angles, with a public square at the intersection of Main and State and a church lot, 418 by 104.5 feet, at the corner of Walnut and Church streets. James Peter was Recorder of Perry County when this survey was entered, December 2, 1873, in Miscellaneous Record Book B, Page 482.

Andrew J. Adye, who was born January 15, 1831, in Chautauqua County, New York, was the fifth son of Andrew and Laura (Whicher) Adye, who removed in 1837 from the Empire State to the Hoosier State, finding a location in Clark Township where the father died in 1845. Andrew, Jr., when a youth, made numerous flatboat voyages out of Anderson River - then considered a 'navigable' stream - down the Ohio and Mississippi. At the age of twenty-three, however, he settled down to mercantile pursuits near the home farm and December 13, 1857, was married to Barbara Ann, daughter of Jacob and Sarah (Miles) Kesner, four children being offspring of the marriage.

He was practically the founder of Adyeville, entering its town plat in 1873 and serving nineteen years as postmaster. While almost self-educated, his own research made him a man of unusual attainments, especially in nature study and the allied sciences, and he discovered several medical remedies of vegetable compound, which earned prosperity for him in his later years. As township trustee and county commissioner he held elective offices, being an ardent exponent of the Jacksonian Democracy taught by "Old Hickory" whose name he bore.

The Adye family were vigourous Baptists, affiliating with the church of that belief organized in 1847, and were also connected with an early school of exceptional merit, conducted for several years at private expense in their neighbourhood.

Another name identified with the Baptist Church, besides prominent politically and otherwise in Clark Township during its early days is that of McKim, John McKim, who was one of the two magistrates chosen at the first tov/nship election in 1819, having reared a family of ten children by his marriage with Permelia, daughter of the pioneer Ephraim Cummings. Thirty years later (1849) he was elected Representative of the Legislature by the Democratic party. A son, Daniel R. McKim, served sixteen years as County Surveyor, being elected to the office in the campaigns of 1856, 1870, 1876 and 1880. Another son, the youngest, William M. McKim, enlisted August 20, 1862, in Company K, Thirty-fourth Kentucky Infantry, for three years and was discharged June 24, 1865.

Active Methodists in the same locality were Thomas and Sarah (Stapleton) Wheeler, both natives of Kentucky, through whose seven children an extensive progeny is the result, the third generation having scattered into other localities, some of its members having attained special prominence in medical circles of Indianapolis.

Wheeler, as a Perry County name, is also particularly identified with Tobin Township, whither came at a very early day James and Sarah (Claycomb) Wheeler, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland, whose family lines met in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. Six sons and five daughters were born to this marriage, most of whom in turn married in their own neighbourhood, so the connection is now a very wide one, represented far beyond the original county and state.

Van Winkle is the name of earliest conjunction with the settlement of Bristow, which has grown to be the principal town of Clark Township and northern Perry County. Alexander and Phoebe (Miller) Van Winkle, and Letitia (Jarboe) Weedman were owners of the site surveyed by Daniel R. McKim, Deputy County Surveyor, signed and acknowledged by them March 14, 1875, before Walter Hunter, County Surveyor.

Fifteen lots, besides a school lot, were embraced in the original plat, described on Page 68, of Miscallaneous Record Book C, by Israel L. Whitehead, County Recorder, March 16, 1875. The location was well chosen, just north of the East fork of Anderson River, giving water power for a successful mill. Main street was the principal thoroughfare laid off, 66 feet wide, running due north and south. Oak street, 49 feet wide is parallel to it, one block east, with a I6I/2 foot alley bisecting the blocks, which were crossed at right angles by Water and First streets, each 23 feet in width.

Elisha S. Weedman opened the first store ; the second being kept by T, J. Duncan in connection with the postoffice, which he held until Smith McAllister was appointed his successor. Thomas K. Miles conducted a hotel for a number of years, besides dealing extensively in horses and stock on his large farm. The first resident physician, still one of Bristow's foremost citizens in every movement looking toward its growth, was Dr. William Lomax, who settled there permanently in the spring of 1881, following his graduation from Indiana Medical College. Two years later he married Hettie, daughter of Thomas J. and Sarah (Jeffers) Dugan, and Bristow has been their home continuously ever since, and the birthplace of their children.

The growth of the village in twenty-five years called for additional building lots, so Main street and Oak street were continued northward and Second street laid out to cross them, extending from the Baptist Church lot to the county road leading northeast from Bristow to Adyeville. This survey was made October 19, 1896, for William T. and Emeline Van Winkle, William and Hettie Lomax, Jacob H. and Nancy Aders, with Samuel Lasher and John Lanman, Trustees of the Baptist Church; although not placed on record until May 17, 1900. Four years later, July 22, 1904, William and Emeline Van Winkle entered for record a second addition lying west of the original town, containing nine lots, through which Van Winkle street leads, parallel with Main.