St. Joseph County, Indiana - Chapter 4: The St. Joseph County Pioneers, 1907 (part 2 of 2)

' ' Friends and Neighbors : When that worthy pioneer, Ashbury Lindley, of Warren township, asked me to talk to the old settlers of St. Joseph and Berrien counties, and when I began to consider what I should say on this occasion, it occurred to me that I ought to be in full sympathy with any gathering of Indiana and Michigan people. I am myself a native of Michigan, and lived in that goodly state until the days of manhood; but I have now lived in Indiana even longer than I did in Michigan. I have therefore some right to count myself both a Hoosier and a Wolverine. Though not born in Berrien county, I have yet many precious recollections of that splendid county and of her people. When I was first on my way to the Hoosier state, the last town in which I rasted was the pretty city of Niles. There I took the old-fashioned stage coach for the south; in those days this was the only means of travel from Niles to South Bend. It was an early morning in February, in 1859, long before daylight, when the mighty, lumbering stage, drawn by four great horses, began its journey south through the darkness, swaying from side to side along the lower river road, once the trail of Pottawatomies and Miamis passing to and from old Fort St. Joseph's. The only stop which we made before entering Indiana was at the tavern in Bertrand. Located at the junction of the St. Joseph river with the Chicago road, the great Sauk trail, known of old to Indian and early settler, that pioneer village was at one time a more important place than either Niles or South Bend. But Bertrand, the famous trading post, has disappeared from the face of the earth. Its pretty gardens and its business lots are but a part of the rich farm lands of the St. Joseph valley. Its Indian neighbor, too, Pokagon's village, just across the river, can be seen no more. Civilization has eliminated Pokagon and his band; the noble chieftain, friend of the white man, is no more. The railroad has removed the stage coach, and with that has gone the ambitious village of Bertrand.

"It was three years after that early morning ride in the stage coach when I came back again to Berrien county and to Michigan. It was February again. There was civil war in the land; and, like many another youth, I thought it my duty to offer my service, if need be. my life, for the preservation of the Union. Wlien the question came as to what regiment I should join, I thought at once of my native state. I was not then old enough, had not been long enough away from my childhood's home, to be weaned from Mother Michigan ; and so down I went to Niles and was taken into Company I of the Twelfth Michigan infantry, then in winter quarters at old Camp Barker. I did not knoAV a single soul in the regiment ; but it was a Michigan regiment, and I should defend my country in the companionship of boys of my native state. That was enough for me. Noble fellows, too, were those Twelfth Michigan soldiers. Many of them, including those of Company I, were residents of Berrien county. A better citizen, a purer patriot, a worthier American gentleman, than our captain, DariiLs Brown, could not be found in all the ranks of the Union ai-my. Lightly rest the green sod upon his breast, where he sleeps in peace by the banks of the St. Joseph. Many another citizen soldier of that brave regiment, the living and the dead, has a se- (nire place in the memory of his comrades and of his fellow citizens. From Berrien Springs they came, and' from Buchanan; from Three Oaks and Galien ; from Niles and St. Joseph, and Benton Harbor and New Buffalo, and from every farmhouse and hamlet of the county; simple-hearted and brave pioneer patriots, who thought it nothing that they should go forth and bare their breasts to the sword that sought to strike at the heart of their country. And so am I doubly bound to the pioneers of Indiana and Michigan ; by the strong bonds of mature manhood no less than by the tender ties of youth.

''And what manner of men and women were those pioneers? They were of hearts as brave as those of the children whom they raised up to do battle for their country. They came out into the wilderness with little else than their own stout hearts and strong arms to help them. They cut down and removed the forest, or turned over the stiff sod of the prairie, and so changed the desert into farm lands and gardens. It was often a lonely life, not to speal? of the terror of wild beasts or wilder Indians. I .very distinctly remember in my own home, when we could see no habitation but our little log house, in whatsoever direction w^e turned our eyes. We knew that an uncle lived off to the south, but it was through the dense forest to get to his house. To the east a pathway by a swamp, over a barren knoll and through a fearfully lonely woods, led to the nearest neighbor in that direction; and memory still elings to that triumphant day, when as a boy I first found my way through that terror-haunted woods and back safe home again. To the north, far beyond the marshes, stretched an almost endless forest, and beyond that we knew there lived one of our most valued and respected friends. To the west we never penetrated, though there was in our minds some vague knowledge of woodland denizens in that direction. The trees were our near, and the hills, marshes and swamps our more remote landmarks. The 'hooked tree' and the 'forked tree' were then as well recognized objects in our confined landscape, as are now to us the stand pipe at South Bend or the Michigan Central railroad bridge at Niles. And there was another well known tree where, once upon a time, brave chanticleer had chased a hawk, and not content to drive off the robber, had followed him into the air, lighting upon a limb high up on the great oak, which ever after was known to us as the 'rooster tree.' The daring feat of this rooster was the theme of admiration at many a winter's fireside thereafter. The 'bear's hill,' half a mile into the mysterious western woods, was the spot where, on a never-to-be-forgotten morning, a company of thirty hunters, with dogs and guns, had finally eome up with big brown bruin ; and ever after when the morning sun shone through the trees and rested upon that hillside we imagined that, through the fluttering leaves and shadows, we could still see the hunters and their dogs, and the big bear in their midst. A more graceful picture rises before us when we call to mind the pleasant morning when the dew drops glittered over the north marshes as we boys went to bring the oxen from pasture, and saw far off, near to the edge of the woods, two deer from the forest contentedly grazing, as if they were themselves a part of our domestic cattle.

"But the pioneer life was not all beauty and romance. It was, even more, hard and unremitting labor. The courageous toiler must cut away the underbrush and burn it, he must cut do^n the trees and make them into rails, boards and shingles. Ah, what endless work it was! But the little clearing was finally made; the logs were la.id up, one over the other, until the walls of the cabin were completed, and the rude roof of split shingles was laid over it. And then came also the brave young wife, who accepted the prospect before her like the heroine that she was. Year after year, the clearing was enlarged, and a crop grown among the stumps. The marshes and swamps were drained and so converted into meadows. Alas, with this stirring up of the new soil, this reclaiming of the morasses, rose up also the germs of malaria. Regularly as the season came, August and September found the pio- neer, and sometimes the faithful wife and helpless little ones, shivering by turns and burning with the everlasting ague. Happy was it for them if the ague did not develop into bilious or intermittent fever, or even the dreaded typhoid. Many a brave pioneer, many a struggling wife, many a stricken boy or girl succumbed to those malignant diseases, and the tired bodies found rest in the little graveyards that spread out from year to year around the country churches. In those days, men and women became old at forty-five and fifty years; and only the hardier constitutions lived through that first period of labors, privations and sickness. But the hardier ones did live through it all. Year after year, the forest, the prairie, the marsh and the swamp, put on, little by little, the appearance of the farm and the garden. Wheat and oats, corn, potatoes and buckwheat, grew and ripened among the stumps; and finally the stumps themselves disappeared, and great fields of grain and vegetables and orchards filled the places once occupied by the underbrush and the dark and silent woods. The marshes were turned into pastures and hay fields. The rail fences gave way to boards, to hedges and to wire, until finally the wild rule of wandering cows and young stock was done away with, and domestic animals were fenced in, and need no longer be fenced out. The roads that were once only Indian trails and traces, pathways and stray tracks through the desert, crossing the streams or rivers by fords or ferry boats, were straightened, drained, graded and graveled, and substantial bridges or culverts thrown across the streams, until the highways along the farms became almost as fit for travel as the paved streets of the cities. The rude log house, laid up by the pioneer's own hands, was set aside, and in its place appeared, at first, the neat frame structure, and afterwards, perhaps, the brick or stone mansion. The stick chimney yielded to one of brick. The log sheds and barns disappeared : and in their place were discovered the comfortable frame shelters and the great bank barns, swelling with hay and corn and wheat. Intellectually and morally, a like transformation took place. Well do I remember the old log school house, half hidden in the woods. There gathered the childtrenof the pioneers from December to March, stamping into the warm room every morning, half frozen from the deep snowbanks; and then again bundling up just before dark every evening, to take the same roads to their homes. Many an ambitious boy, sitting on one of the split log benches of those school houses, and facing one of the lean-to writing desks that lined three sides of the building, thought seriously of the time when he should be congressman, or governor, or, it might be, president ; or the more modest youth or maiden, while perhaps enamored of one another, became even more enamored of science, literature and scholarship. And the best of it is that a goodly number of those day-dreams came true. From the log school house went forth many a distinguished man and woman of the nation; and there is little doubt that the toils and privations of home, the long walks from home to school, and the studioiLs quiet of those winter abodes of learning, have all combined to give earnestness, resolution and courage to the young scholars; so that when afterwards they met with their more luxurious city rivals they found no trouble in distancing them in the race of life. The pioneer schools were rude ones, but they were nurseries of robust, virtuous and successful citizens in eveiy walk of life.

"But the log school houses have passed away. More commodious and elegant homes of learning have taken their place; and the modern school building and the neat church edifice ornament the pleasant slopes and cozy valleys throughout all the smiling farming lands, where once the pioneer struggled and triumphed in the hard battle with rude nature. Yes, the pioneer has triumphed. Cultivated fields, pleasant homes, churches and school houses, line all the well kept highways ; and where fifty years ago the wilderness frowned upon the first invasion of the axe, the spade and the plow, there civilization lifts her glorious banner over the wide landscape. Let the pioneers and their children then gather together in those annual harvest reunions to commemorate the noble work, the joys and the sorrows, that laid the foundations of the blessings which we now enjoy. The pioneers builded well; they were the founders of a great nation, the greatest that has ever blest the earth. Let them and their children and their children's children meet from year to year, forever, as we fire meeting this afternoon at Clear lake, to keep green the memory of those heroic days and to shed honors forever upon those noble pioneers."