Ellettsville, Indiana

I hesa section of the county possesses many interesting features, not only from its natural attractions, but from the fact that it was settled at a very early day and grew to worth and prominence while other portions were yet comparatively uninhabited. Of course the township has the usual characteristics of exterior and interior that belong to Monroe County as a whole. 'There are the argillaceous bluffs, with their soil of semi- sterility; there are the lower lands, where the agriculturist usually reaps his best, if not only, valuable return; there are the timber tracts, which have been largely denuded of their best woods; and there is that broken, cut-up appearance so common to the southern part of the Hoosier State. The lower lands are usually of a rich combined soil of sand, lime, clay and alluvium, the latter often predominating and affording a mellow, fertile tract of the greatest value, and one greatly sought after by those who understand the requirements of good crops. An abundance of excellent limestone is found near the surface, and is being worked by numerous companies. The section at the quarry, one and a half miles north of Ellettsville, is as follows:

Passage source: 1884 History of Monroe County Indiana, published 1884.

It is difficult to state who was the first permanent settler in this township. Several tracts were purchased in 1816, as will be seen from the above, but so far as can be learned only one family came out that fall to reside in the township during the winter. In about October, 1816, William Edmundson, without owning the land, located within a short distance of Ellettsville, erecting there a small, round-log cabin, in which he domiciled his family. He did not enter his land - the northwest quarter of

Passage source: 1884 History of Monroe County Indiana, published 1884.

George Sharp, the father of Jonathan Sharp, was probably the most experienced bear hunter ever a resident of Monroe County. He had lived before coming to the county in a wild section of the South, and during a surveying expedition of considerable magnitude, had been one of four or five scouts and hunters who supplied all the wild meat required by the members of the expedition. He averaged a bear a day for months, besides scores of buffaloes, deer, turkeys, etc. He killed hundreds of bears' in his time, and had many narrow escapes from death, but his incredible strength, coolness, skill, and knowledge of the animals, always brought him through without serious injury. He went armed with a huge butcher knife, the blade of which was one foot in length, and carried a rifle, with ball heavy enough to bring down the largest game. His son, Johnston Sharp, yet has his knife, which is truly a formidable weapon, and is greatly prized as a keepsake. It was used in killing one of the few bears taken in Richland Township. In about 1819, during the early winter, and just after a light fall of snow, some man in the settlement, in going through the woods, saw a large and curiously shaped track, and could not account for the same. Old man Sharp was called on to decide, and pronounced it the track of a large bear. The trail was immediately followed and led to a large hollow sycamore which stood a short distance north of Ellettsville. All the men of the settlement gathered around to participate in the killing, but were prohibited from using guns for fear, in the excitement, of shooting some person. The tree was cut down. While this was heing done, Mr. Sharp, the only one experienced in the habits of bears, was plied with all manner of questions, such as " Which way will it run?'' ** Where shall I stand?" etc., and answered all in a manner to keep his neighbors on the " ragged edge," and make them feel their decided inferiority on questions of bear-hunting. The huge tree came down with a crash, split open, and, to the astonishment of all, revealed three bears - one large one and two cubs three-fourths grown. The dogs to the number of about a dozen immediately set upon the bears, which, severely stunned by the fall, could at first offer only partial resistance, and were readily dispatched with clubs and cautious rifle shots before they had recovered their usual strength. One of the cubs caught a dog owned by Mr. Sharp, and was crushing the life out of it, when the irate owner, armed with the big butcher knife above mentioned, ran up and reaching over the bear, struck it to the heart from the opposite side. The yelping canine was instantly released and in a few moments the bear was dead. Several present could not understand.why Mr. Sharp had reached over the bear and struck it from the opposite side from which he was standing. He explained that bears when struck with a knife always snapped at and struck with their paws at the immediate object hurting - in this case the knife - regardless of who or what was on the other side, and he cited them to the fact that the bear when struck had bitten savagely at the knife, striking also with its paws, and had he been on that side would, no doubt, have suffered injury. He had 'been in too many hand-to-hand (so to speak) conflicts with these animals not to know how to use the knife. The three bears were taken and dressed, and parceled out among the settlers, all of whom enjoyed eating a large piece of juicy bearsteak, which, it is said, tastes much like pork, and can be fried in its own fat. Several other bears were killed in the township very early, an account of which cannot be given. Wolves were very troublesome, and were caught with steel traps. Panthers were occasionally found. A small dog, belonging to Mr. Milligan, treed a large one early one evening and kept it there all night, strange as it may seem. arly the next morning, Mr. Milligan, who had heard the continued barking, went out with his rifle and shot the panther dead from its perch in the tree. It was a very large specimen of its species, measuring, it is said, nearly twelve feet 'from tip to tip.

Passage source: 1884 History of Monroe County Indiana, published 1884.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Richland Township - it names this place 24 more 24 times.