Montpelier Carnegie Library

John Blount was probably the pioneer or Harrison township, locating on the south bank of the Salamonie, in 1833. His first wife, Rachel, died in 1855 at the age of fifty-six, and he then married the Widow Jarrett, a daughter of John Twibcll. and ;ibout 1872 removed to Kansas. His brother, Andrew R., came in 1836 and lived southeast of Montpelier. Two other brothers, Joseph and Thomas, came near the same time and afterwards went to Wells county. John Twibell came from Virginia in the spring of 1836 with his wife Elizabeth, and his sons David and Josiah. He was born in Ireland March 14, 1760, and served in the British army in the Revolutionary war, but toward the close of the war deserted to the Ameri¬ cans and remained in this country. David and Josiah located on the north side of the Salamonie, north of Montpelier, their sister Martha McCulloch, locating farther down the river in Wells county. A younger brother, Thomas, married a daughter of John Blount, and lived many years two and one-half miles southeast of Montpelier. Rachel McGeath, another daughter of John, was the wife of Lewis II. McGeath. The}'' resided two miles west of Montpelier. John Twibell died July 21, 1853 ; he was blind for a few years prior to his death. His wife died four years earlier at the age of seventyeight years. David Twibell died August 13, 1855, being nearly sixty-three years of age, Margaret, his widow, died in 1864. Josiah Twibell was an active and enterprising man in public affairs. He was one of the early commissioners of the county, was a candi¬ date for the legislature in 1S52 and 1854, and was the first captain of Company I, Thirty-fourth Regiment Indiana Volun¬ teers. He died January 27, 1874, aged sixtyseven years and five months. In 1836 and 1837 a considerable number of emigrants came from Vermont and settled in and around the territory now included in the city of Montpelier. Abel Baldwin was the lead¬ ing spirit among them. He was born in the town of Cavendish, Windsor county, VermoiT in 1790. His father's name was Abel and his grandfather's name was Isaac. His maternal grandfather. Captain John Coffeen, was the first white settler in the town of Cav¬ endish. Mr. Bald , in acquired a good edu¬ cation and was a successful school teacher. He was in the army in the war of 1812. With his family he left Vermont in October, 1836, and came through the state of New York, and by water to Detroit and on to this county by way of White Pigeon and Goshen; his brother, Franklin G. Baldwin, and Josephus Streeter and David Pierce started from Vermont in September- and came through in wagons. With them came Newton and Kendall Putnam and their fa¬ ther, who settled across the line in Wells county. Nearly all these families were re¬ lated in some way to the Baldwins. The fol¬ lowing year the Spauldings came also from Vermont. Judge Isaac Spaulding was a fine scholar and an excellent citizen ; he was a half brother to Jesse Spaulding, the father of the other Spauldings who came, who were John C., Franklin B., Francis G., Salome, Ste¬ phen S,, and Freeman 11. and their widowed mother, Sarah Spaulding. Abel Baldwin laid out and platted the town of Montpelier, Sep¬ tember 5, 1837. It contained sixteen blocks and a total of one hundred and fifty- four lots. The lines of the original plat do not run north and south, east and west; the north and south lines run north eighteen degrees east, and the east and west lines run south seventy-two degrees east. Abel Baldwin died August 16, 1839. His widow, Rhoda S.. afterwards married Judge Spaulding, who lived but a vear or two after their marriage. Of the children the oldest child, Marthesfa, became the wife of John J. Cook, one of the early county officers; Rhoda S., married Amos Perry, who came from Vermont; John Baldwin was postmaster at Montpelier dur¬ ing the Whig administrations of Taylor and Fillmore and died recently in Nebraska; Charles P. went to Howard county; Edward P., one of the early county surveyors, died while a young man ; Henry C. received a fine education from his step-father. Judge Spaulding, and is now a resident of Kansas, and the only member of the family living. The younger children were Hortense R. and Zada L. John D. Waugh came from Ver¬ mont and located two miles west of Montpe¬ lier, in June, 1837, bringing with him his son, James, and daughter, Eliza Ann; in the summer of 1838 he was taken sick with in¬ termittent fever and died July 3. His fam¬ ily was then on their way here and arrived in August. He was a soldier in the war of 1812 and was born in New Hampshire in 1770. Plis father was a Revolutionary soldier and lost his life in the battle of Bun¬ ker Hill. Oscar B. Boon, with his mother and sister, came from Vermont in 1845; the mother was a native of Massachusetts and a sister of the Widow Spaulding previously mentioned. Thomas ITulett was also from

Passage source: Biographical Memoirs of Blackford County, Ind. : to Which Is Appended a Comprehensive Compendium of National Biography ... Embellished with Portraits of Many Well Known Residents of Blackford County, Indiana, published 1900.

Vermont, and was here before the county was formed; he was a Methodist class-leader, and an ardent Whig. Other Vermonters among the early settlers were Thomas H. Edson, Nathan C. Rice. Samuel Brown, a soldier of 1812, John S. Bliss, Thomas Eaton, Ira- Rice and Abel Byam. William Ellsworth, a New Yorker, and his wife, Betsy (Platt), came to Abel Baldwin's in Montpelier, in September, 1837, and built the second house in that village, in March or April, 1839, they moved to their land, three and one-half miles east of Montpelier, which was thenceforth their home. William died in February, 1893. lacking a month of being eighty years old. Mrs. Ellsworth is still living on the old homestead at the age of eighty years. Lyman Simpson, a Massa¬ chusetts man, was among the first in the vi¬ cinity of Montpelier. 1 1 is wife having died he married Clarissa Putnam, a sister of Abel Baldwin and widow of Kendall Putnam, who died in 1838. Simpson built the water power, grist. and saw-mill, a mile east of Montpelier,' one of the largest mills of the kind in this part of the state. He was after¬ wards a merchant and hotel keeper, and later a justice of the peace in Montpelier. In the spring of 1839 Michael Maddox settled on tlie tract of land north of the river about two miles east of Montpelier; his son Joseph C, then recently married, had preceded him a few years. Michael died September 10, 1845, seventy-two years of age; his son-inlaw, Charles Mays, came about the same time and his son Silas located in Hartford City soon after. Of his other sons, Wesley FI. is in Wells county; William McK. and Wilson went to Nebraska, and James J. died recently in Hartford City. Henry Householder and Daniel Wood were for a time near neigh¬ bors of Michael Maddox. Mr. Householder died in the fall of 1842. About a mile further east John Wells located in May, 1839, coming 'from Guernsey county, Ohio, but being a native of Pennsylvania, where he was born in 1800-. lie was a tanner and carried on that business extensively while clearingup and cultivating his farm. His. wi fe, Sarah, was a sister of Michael Teterich, who lived some four miles south of them. James MeF. Wells is the oldest child of the family, and, at the age of seventy-four years, is still liv¬ ing on a part of the land once owned by his father. The oldest daughter, Martha, marri 1 William Clevenger, another pioneer in that neighborhood. Just north of John Wells was Elihu Hillis, and a mile farther north, in the northeast corner of the county, Hyman and Darius Shinn located in the fall of 1841. Across the river south of the Maddox farm, William Crossan settled about the time that Maddox and Wells came. He was from Pennsylvania, and died in TS56 at the age of sixty years. Joshua B. Cass and John B. Gouldsberry were among the first in this township, as were also David Fox, Joseph Penrod, Thomas Simonton, John Ferrin, Emanuel Hirst, Robert Duffee, Samuel Wilson, James Bowman, Joseph C. David, David Daugherty, Elias Hawkins, William Wilson and John and Benjamin Lowrey. In the southwestern part of this township George FI. Houser must have been one of the first settlers. Soon after the county was formed he was elected a commissioner. Like the ancient Nimrod, he was a mighty hunter. He could take his gun and go out into the forest and bring in a deer of any age or de¬ scription that might be desired ; he was a zealous member of the Methodist church and was probably an exhorter. The writer remembers of seeing him once or twice at religious meetings at Montpelier or at the residence of Michael Maddox, and remem¬ bers how he sung with an enthusiastic aban¬ don that was inspiring, while he displayed conspicuously a single, very large front tooth. John Houser, another pioneer, was his son ; one of his daughters married Jona¬ than Havens, and another married Arthur Badley, a young Methodist itinerant, who in later years was a presiding elder in Iowa.

Passage source: Biographical Memoirs of Blackford County, Ind. : to Which Is Appended a Comprehensive Compendium of National Biography ... Embellished with Portraits of Many Well Known Residents of Blackford County, Indiana, published 1900.

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 Harrison Township - 2,712 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.