Vanderburgh County, Indiana - Chapter 1, 1897

Chapter 1

Introductory Remarks - The Author's Advent to the Toivn - His Long Business Career Has Made Him Thoroughly Acquainted with Every Step of the Progress of Evatisville and Vanderburgh County - Personal Incidents - An Interesting Letter - List of Business Men in 1837.

Introduction

AVhen Columbus, coutrolled by ideas beyond those at Salamanca and the wiseacres of his day, pushed out across the undiscovered Atlantic under the directing haud of Queen Isabella and discovered America - or marked the ^\'ay for its discovery - he knew not what a mighty nation would develop upon the new-found land. He dreamed not of the magnificent cities that would spring up nor of the golden principles of government that the mixed races would evolve, nor of their high grade of liberty which would be a pattern for all the nations of the earth. He conceived not of the relief that would be afforded the congested people of P^urope by emigration to the New World. He could not surmise that the new form of liberty of this wondrous nation would be so broad and tolerant that it would invite the oppressed of all nations to its shores. The marvelous discovery opened up not only a vast country of unsurpassed fertility but found a home for a higher freedom and a deeper civilization than the world ever knew before.

For one thing this higher development showed there was need tor it in the world, showed the undeveloped state of social relationship, showed the extent of barbarism yet trammeling and enthralling the people, showed the imperfect economical relations that existed between man and man. So the oppressed of many lands found a welcome in America - fleeing from English, from German, from French, from Spanish, from all forms of European oppression.

Under the providence of an all- wise and beneficent God the thirteen American colonies, despising taxation without representation, threw off the British yoke after a long, hard, bloody, self-sacrificing, patriotic struggle for freedom and blessed their descendants with a priceless bequest of liberty of conscience, liberty of thought, liberty of body. The war of the revolution gave its experiences and its lessons, revealed the logical meaning of a wider tolerance and a deeper charity, educated in wiser measures of human government, and gave sovereignty to the people, the true source of all power. If there is any meaning in the thought of progress, men, nations, and the world go on developing continually, and so the beauty of American civilization was beheld with wonderment and Delphic prophecies. The war of 1812 was not in vain in the progress of personal and national rights which it distinctly brought into prominence. The war with Mexico was a preliminary step - speaking of the final results - that culminated in the fratricidal struggle of 1861 and ended in the severance of the shackles from so many Africans imposed on them by an unwi.se social and economical system. It is "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right," as Lincoln said, that our glorious republic has finally come to administer affairs, and as far as may be consistent with individual liberty grants equal opportunities to all men.

The Indian wars only helped, it may be said, to confirm the original settlers in the possession of the land and bring prosperity out of the virgin soil. That liberty of conscience, so distinctly an inheritance of American development, gave us an educational system that is at once the admiration of the world and the maker of men of letters, professors, statesmen, men of science, ministers and business men.

Such have been some of the influences at work shaping American character and American methods of thought. The pioneers, it maj' be said, were the makers of these influences that have practically filled the whole earth like the stone "cut out of the mountain." Such men settled at Evan.sville, in the beginning, and we to-day are their descendants. Their career, as far as it has been preserved, is a most interesting one. The object in writing this book is to bring prominently to the front the worthy old citizens, now gone over the river of death, and to preserve a class of facts that are in danger of being forever lost sight of and perishing like the men themselves. This volume, it is not extravagant to say, is a social reflex of the people and the days long gone by, and a presentation of the growth that has gone on since, in their descendants and the city. It is not too farfetched to speak of it as a growth - Phoenix like - out of the ashes of the past.

It is hoped, dear reader, it may not seem improper in the writer, who touched shoulders with those grand, old first settlers, to refer occasionally, as the case may seem to require, to his own relationship to this tast-fading past. The reader, of course, will readily understand that in writing the original history of a community, the historian must of necessity rely upon tradition to a limited extent as well as the few x-ecorded facts. In point of fact, these people, now carved in cold type herein, so to speak, were not the pathfinders of the great wild west but the pathmakers. And naturally they had no time, opportunity, nor inclination to record the transpiring events of the day - scarcely time enough to make distinctions as to propert}- rights. The telegraph, the railroad, the newspaper, the telephone, the matches, all came after their day and generation, and there was no daily record of the jjassing panorama as there is for us now. Then they were satisfied to have their families around them ; now we have turned Gypseys and Meander over the face of the earth. Then, when death, from which there is no appeal, broke the family circle, an entry was made in the family Bible and a life-history was deemed complete ; now the progressive human race has various ways of writing the biographies of the departed ones. In this impulsive vast-recording age the living human creature makes a record beginning with the cradle and ending only with the grave. The memorial volumes in black, the picture on the wall, the inscription in granite, the obituary column in the church and local papers, the resolutions of friends and orders, the column of character eulogy and loving tribute by a friend, the reporter's biography at the time of death, contain a complete record now of our passing old friends ; then our forefathers tenderly laid the father and mother away on the hill, watering the earth with their tears and cherishing the departed one's memory to the last.

It is not a vanity - and this phrase is not an apology - that induces the author to refer to the fact that his grandfather and two granduucles participated in the first unpleasantness with John Bull & Co. It is not a vanity that leads him to speak of his father, whom many remcmher as a man of many parts, and whose i-eraains now rest in Oak Hill Cemetery, as a man of righteousness and justice combined. These things .show how far hack into the past the author's lite reaches, and how near his own finger-tips, so to speak, touched those of the great and good Washington. Indeed, it has l)een his good fortune to know personally such men as Henry Clay, Thomas Mar-shall, Richard M. Johnson, John J. Cj-ittenden, Ca.ssius M. Clay and others, and he knew in a great degree the inward facts of their lives.

Now, the information caught up and recorded here for present and future generations is not the work of an hour, but, in a sense, of a lifetime. As the work progressed the writer was more and more impressed with its significance and magnitude. It grew on his hands. He has not followed the old stereotyped formula of delivering himself of local afiPairs and events, but has, like a pioneer, blazed out a way of his own. It is his fond hope that some good may be done in this work, some help be extended to some one in some way.

Not desiring to be discursive or digressive, nor to develoj) uuduly any particular fact or fancy in the author's mind, he yet begs to say one more thing. In his ojjinion the muniment of our liberties is the great charter giveu us by our foreiathers, aud as long as that is jealously guarded and scrupulously honored American independence and civil liberty will not be a myth and a hiss. Law, natural or divine, may not be violated with impunity. Slavery brought its sorrow and shame upon us aud humiliated us in sackcloth and ashes. The penalty for every violated natural law must be paid, every en-or must be atoned for, every pain has a cause. Wrong teaching and wrong tendencies and a loosening of respect tor the institutions of our wise and good forebearers can alone be the cause of the downfall of our noble civil structures. It is not, therefore a venturesome or vagrant opinion, when it is said the millennium is detained by injustice, aud false economical conditions, and by that uneradicated element of barbarism, selfishness - apotheosized selfishness. If the handwriting ever appears on the wall to this nation, as it did to Belshazzar at Babylon, it will be written with its own hands and without an excuse. The old ship of state, about which Horace wrote so entertainingly, sometimes gets near dangerous roaring reefs, but we have faith in the supreme and superior altruistic elements at the very foundation of the republic that she will out-weather every storm aud out-ride every rough sea, and at Aast enter safe iuto the harbor of her dostiuv - whatever that niav be.

Reforms have almost always come up out of the masses - have been brought out by plain men, as for instance the simple fishermen of Galilee. When God selected Lincoln, a woodchopper, railsplitter, and flatboatman, it was another illustration of this fact. When Grant was taken from the currying room of the tannery and selected to lead the Union armies against the pro-slavery sentiment of the land, and thus became an instrument to assist Lincoln in setting the bondmen at libei'ty, he was also a teacher of men, through examjile, of the beauty of generosity and the grandeur of liberty and peace. The reader's own mind will supply multiplied similar instances.

And still one more thought, commonplace as it may seem. It is this: Every one is the arbiter of his own destiny, in no small degree, notwithstanding the fact that Robert Owen spent a fortune to demonstrate the proposition that circumstances make the man, notwithstanding Shakespeare's well-worn, oft-quoted sentiment that

It is within every one's range to gather knowledge, to accumulate ideas, ideas of some kind; and these control him. Hence he is the arbiter, as stated before, of his own destiny, in so far as he follows out his own inclinations. The future no man may know, for "it is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put into his own hands."

Early in life, indeed at the age of seven years, the author became a believer in the teachings of Holy Writ. In all the many conflicts of life since then nothing has transpired to shake his belief in the all-wise providence of God, who never requires impossibilities of His creatures or non-understandable mysteries to be imposed on them.

In His own good time all things will be made plain. All of life is summed up in this : Believe and trust in God. Those who presume to be wiser than the Deity may find what consolation they can in the statement that there is no relief from punishment of a violated physical law, and by analogy none from a mental or moral law - no exceptions, not even for a Tom Paine or a Pagan Bob.

If we shall have lightened one burden, strengthened one hand, lifted one pain from the heart, buoyed up one despondent soul, we shall bo rewarded for our labors and researches.

Author'S Arrival In 1837

I arrived here on Sunday morning, ''February 15, 1837. My brother, Wm. M. Elliott, had come to Evansville about one month previous on a prospecting trip, and rented a store for our business, to-wit : Saddlery and harness and saddlery supplies. Our store was situated on the west side of Main street, near the middle of the block between Second and Third streets. I came here on the little steamer " Rover," from Louisville, Ky., having been three days en route, because of an accident.

On my arrival at the wharf I was met by hotel drummers, one of whom was Thomas Johnson, who kept a hotel on the corner of First and Vine streets ; but I had a letter to the proprietor of the Mansion House on the corner of First and Locust-, Messrs. Linck and Thorne, being at that time the owners and proprietors of that house.

It was a very cold morning, and as I entered the barroom or sittingroom I remember well the scene. There were about half a dozen of the old citizens present who were in the habit of congregating there, as in all small country towns, to get news, take their toddies and enjoy themselves generally.

When 1 went in, being a stranger, all eyes seemed fixed upon me and I knew that after I registered there would be numerous inquiries as to where I came from and what I was doing there. I had three letters of introduction ; one to the proprietor of the house, one to Gen. Robert M. Evans, and one to Wm..M. Walker, all of whom happened to be present.

After I had presented my introductory letter to Messrs. Thorne and Linck, I inquired if they could tell me where I could find Gen. Evans. They said, " There is the old gentleman sitting in his arm chair by the fire," a place where he generally spent his morning hours. He lived near by, about one square away. He was a very feeble man and showed .signs of great exposure, which he informed me he had contracted in camp-life during the Indian war of 1811, having been a colonel and general in the army and on the staff of General Harrison at the battle of Tippecanoe. The other gentlemen composing the group were AVm. M. AValker, ex-sheriff, Wm. AVhittlesey, county surveyor ; Wm. Newman, sheriff of the county ; Daniel Miller, his deputy, and F. E. Goodsell, postmaster.

logs in a six-foot fire-place, and we had a very pleasant morning's chat over the past of Evansville and its prospective future. We were all detained there on account ot a severe storm of snow and hail that was raging on the outside.

When we heard the ringing of the old dinner bell, that was hung on a post beside the house, we were all ready for our meal, and I was surprised to fiud such a splendid rejjast as was set before us. About twenty-five of the business men and officials of that day boarded there. The following are the names of a few of them that I remember well:

The old Catholic priest, Father Didier; John Douglas, at that time cashier of the State Bank of Indiana, which had commenced its existence a year before; Mr. Pine, then connected with the Evansville Journal; A. B. Coleman; Fielding Stockwell, afterwards sheriff of A-^anderburgh county; Charles D. Boren, the clerk of the circuit court; James Cawson, a retired merchant who has relatives still living iiere; 'Squire Nathan Eowley and John M. Stockwell, who afterwards acquired a large fortune here and died in early. life, leaving a wife and four children, all of whom have passed away.

The snow storm continued to rage all the afternoon, but toward evening there came a lull, and as I was tired of stayingabout the house, I concluded that I would try to find some church or place of worship.

I inquired if there would be any preaching in town that night. Some one spoke up and said: "This is not the day the circuit rider comes around, but his wife (Mrs. Knowles) is in town and will preach in the little brick schoolhouse on the public square this evening."

That was a bright idea to me, as I had never had the pleasure of hearing a lady preach, having come from the Blue Grass District of Kentucky, where such things were not tolerated.

It seemed to me that the whole town met at this little church that night to hear this noted lady-preacher. It was an unexpected treat to me to hear so fine a sermon and everybody seemed to be greatly pleased and entertained. I was then a member of the Methodist church, having joined when ten years of age.

Next day I launched into business and hung out my big tin sign that represented the business of W. M. and J. P. Elliott for many years afterward.

List Of Business -Mex

The following is a list of the business men and their places of business in Evansville in 1837, the year the author first allied his interests with the young city

Alanson Warner - Hotel, afterwards known as the Mansion House, run by Francis Linck, who became the owner; situated on the corner of First and Locust streets, where the Peoples Theatre now stands.

Stewart tt Goodsell - Wholesale dealers in groceries, commission merchants; afterwards sold out to Asa Bement and Charles Viele, who carried on the business for years afterward; situated on Main street, uear where the Old National Bank stands.

John W. Lilliston - Dealer in drugs, paints and oils, on the corner of Main and First streets; afterward .sold to Wm. and Crawford Bell, who sold to other dealers, and after that the building was occupied by John Healey as a book and .stationery store.

PHYSICIANS. William Trafton - First street, between Locust and Water. Daniel Lane - Second street, between Main and Locust. Dr. Phillips - Second street, near Main. A. P. Hutchinson, Main street, between First and Second. Daniel Morgan - First .street, between Main and Locust. M. J. Bray, with Dr. Trafton - First street, between Locust and Walnut. George B. Walker - Main street, between First and Second.

It is impossible for the author to pass by so interesting a letter, pertaining to early Evansville, as that furnished by his old friend, D. M. Schnee, a former citizen of Evansville, now a resident of New Harmony, Ind. Here are his recollections of those times which are now almost gone out of memory :

" My first knowledge or sight of Evansville was sometime in 1834 or 1835. My father, Jacob Schnee, lived at thattime on a farm about two miles east of New Harmony, where he owned and was carrying on a steam grist mill, a saw mill and a distillery combined.

" At one time he had occasion to go either to Louisville or Cincinnati for some machinery for the mill, which then could be gotten nowhere nearer. So I had to accompany him. We went on horseback

"We started out on what at that time was called the New Harmony and Boonville road. The Blairsville road was not then laid off. We struck the old Vincennes road near what was called Stringtown, about five or six miles from Evansville, where we stopped about an hour talking with one of father's old friends by the name of Stacer, tlie father of Clint and Conrad. We then went on to town, where we arrived toward evening and put up at a tavern on the corner of First and Locust streets, where the People's Theater now stands. I believe it was the only tavern in the town at that time. The first man father met on arrival whom he knew was General Evans, who was on the tavern porch with a pipe in his mouth, talking politics with half a dozen or more loungers. The subjects were Henry Clay, his favorite, the Whig leader, and Andrew Jackson, the popular president of the Democratic party - these were the ones mostly talked about. Father and the General appeared to be well acquainted. Uncle John Schnee, father's oldest brother, had married the General's sister, Miss Nancy Evans, about the year 1828. Hedied I think in 1829. My father died in the year 1838.

"I did not see very much of a city on that trip, as there was not much of a town to see. A block of one-story frame store rooms on Locust, between First and Water streets, appeared to be the principal business part of the town. They Were painted a brown red.

"A few years after this - in the years 1836-7-8 - the town had quite a boom, when the terminus of the Wabash and Erie canal was located there and a branch of tlie State Bank was established in its limits.

"In the fall of 1839, at the age of nineteen, after my father had died and I had become a permanent cripple, I, with my brother Luther, (who was my guardian) visited Evansville for the purpose of getting me into some saddlery shop to learn that business, for I had taken a liking to it. That was the time which brought you, Mr. Joseph P. Elliott, and me, David M. Schnee, into more intimate relations. We then and there made a contract, which was that I was to serve or work for you in the saddlery shop for three years and you were to teach me the trade and furnish me with board and clothing during the time - all of which was carried out fully and satisfactorily on the part of both of us. This, of course, gave me a residence in Elvansville in the years 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 and part of 1843. This also puts me in mind that the other day I was looking over some of my old papers, and I came across mv identure, which was the contract between us. It wa^^ written by John lu^e, Jr., master of chancery, and signed by Luther Schnee, David M. Schneo and Joseph P. Elliott. This was endorsed on the back.

" 'Received for record Jan. 6, 1840; recorded in Book H, page 203, of the Record ot Deeds in Vanderburgh County, Indiana. C D. Bounne. Rec. by J. Davis, Dept.'

"In reading this old paper over, it amu.«ed me very much - how I bound myselt. That I should not play at cards, dice or any other unlawful game; that I should uot contract matrimony during the time without your consent ; that I should not haunt or fretjuent taverns, tippling houses or places of gaming and the like.

"The bill amounted to §56.15. A cash payment of §25 was made on this bill. Among the items were skirting, pad skins, h yard plush, side and other trees, &c.; etc.; piece .^hark skin, straining iron, skeins, of silk, &c.; etc. How different now.

"During those three years that I lived witii you, much trau.spired that has become pleasantly reminiscent to me now in my old days. The campaign of 1S40, when it was

I well remember. When having a jollifieation on the river bank one night in that campaign, old Joe Kerney, the negro who used to ring the auction bell across the street from our place, dressed up iu woman's clothes and pas.sed through the crowd in imitation of Harri.ion's waving a petticoat. For this thing old Joe was seized and taken up stairs and outrageously whipped with a blacksnake whip from your shop to make him tell who put him up to it, but they didn't get it out of him. At another time duriug the same campaigu, when the Whigs were having a parade up Main street, our next-door neighbor stretched a Van Buren flag across Main street to the auction hou.se. Some of the procession had passed under it, when a delegation of horsemen from Posey county came along. They refused to pass under it. The crowd attempted to pull it down, but could not get hold of it - until old S(|uire Rowley came along with half a brick tied to the end of a long line. They threw it over the rope and soon had tlic flag torn down. With great excitement the procession passed on.

" There was auother iucident which happened about this time. - either iu 1841 or 1842 - the death aud burial of a Dr. Isaac Hutchinson, who roomed or lived u]) stairs ou Main street opposite your shop. Some of the boys reported that the Odd Fellows were coming up Main street. We all went to the front door to see the parade. They were dressed in their gorgeous regalia, collars and aprons. They marched up in front of the Doctor's place, where they opened ranks and tenderly bore his remains through the ranks to the hearse and thence to their final resting place. This looked to me at that time very beautiful that the members of a society should thus take care of their brother. It made such an impression on my mind that I resolved then and there that I would join that society some time - which I did, now forty-six years ago and have not regretted it since."