Monroe Township (part 2 of 5)

" About my schooling : It was not much, picked up in the woods. The neighbors joined and put up a cabin for church and school, the first of the kind in the county. The first school was taught by Eli Overman, and I attended it and was there the first day. My first book was a primer, and my next (and my last) was Noah Webster (spelling book).

" The house had a puncheon floor and door, a puncheon to write on, scalped off" smooth with the ' pitching ax. ' The benches were split poles with legs. Not a plank, nor a shingle, nor a brick, nor a nail, nor a pane of glass was in the whole house. The nails were pegs, the bricks were dirt, the planks were puncheons, the shingles were clapboards, the glass was greased paper over a crack for light, and the bigger boys got the wood for fuel. They had not far to go ; the mighty giants stood huge, grim and frowning, stretching far and wide their monstrous arms as if to reach down and devour us. I tell you, the way the men and women (and the boys and girls, too) made the work hop around was a wonder - a sight to beliold. Log-rolling would begin and keep on twenty or twenty-five days, people helping one another all around, liaising cabins, chopping trees, rolling logs, clearing land, splitting rails, making fences, plowing, planting and what not, kept folks busy enough for weeks and weeks the whole year through. People would go miles to help their neighbors; one could hear the ax ring or the maul go crack, crack, or the trees come crashing down, from morning till night, all over the woods. The loom and the wheel were heard in every cabin ; the giant oaks, and the kingly sugar maples and the mighty beeches could be seen bowing their proud and stately heads, and coming heavily, helplessly down on every hand. The girls spun and the women wove and made the clothing, and took care of the family. Now, the first thing when a couple get married, is a hired girl, and the next thing a

" We had hard times, indeed, in those grand old days amid the majestic, overshadowing forest. And now, how changed ! And what shall sixty-six years more of time, stretching forward into the dim and wondrous future, accomplish for those who shall look on those coming days ? We wh(5 have borne the brunt of the hardy past - how few we stand, how swift our passage to the opening tomb! The rising race - what do they know? They complain of hard times, forsooth ! Then, it was the ax, the maul, the iron sledge-hammer, the flail, the brake, the swingling-board, the hatchet, the "cards," the wheel, the reel, the winding blades, the loom. If we went anywhere, it was on foot, or on horseback, or even on oxback, or on rough, homemade sleds. And now these things are fled, and the faithless ones of the present day will scarcely believe that such things are any more than idle tales made up to beguile the weary hours in the telling ; yet they are true, as the few old pioneers know full well.

"The Indians helped father raise his cabin. There was no one else to help. He covered his " camp " with bedclothes and brush the first night. We crept into our cabin under the end logs the first night after it was built because no door hole had been cut. Father and mother went to Friends' meeting at New Garden (probably) the next " First Day " after they moved into the forest, seven miles through the woods. John Peale and Francis Thomas, at New Garden pole-cabin meeting-house, one day, swapped pants, and Pealo kept the ones he got, and was buried in them, April 21, 1879. The swap took place about 1813, so that he must have kept those " pants " about sixtysix years.

" The Pucketts were eight brothers. Four settled near Dunkirk. Daniel settled near Newport, Benjamin lived a few years in Randolph, but moved to Morgan Countv, Ind., in 1826.

" There were just three pole-cabins in Richmond with families living in them, and one with goods for sale. The families were John Smith, Jere Cox and Robert Hill.

" Francis Thomas lived near the toll-gate below Newport, perhaps. My father and John W. Thomas went up to Nolan's Fork and picked out their " places." Parker moved to his land first ; Thomas next, and afterward Clarkson Willcutts.

not tell mother what she had done, for laughing. She fell down on the cabin floor, and laughed and laughed, and kept on laughing; and to mother's'question, she only pointed her finger at me as she lay there, and burst out laughing again ; and I stood there, as mad as a lad of my age could well be, at the squaw, forscaring me so terribly, and then laughing herself well-nigh to death over the fun she had got out of me.

Mrs. Celia Arnold, daughter of Thomas W. Parker, first settler of Randolph (who is now living at Arba, Ind.), and sister of Jesse Parker, being one of the three children who belonged to the family of the first emigrant to the Randolph woods. She say,<i, " I was born in 1811, married Benjamin Arnold in 1830, and have had five children, three of whom are living. My husband died 12th month, 11th day, 1878, aged seventy-two years. He was born 3d month, 11th day, 1807. lie came to Randolph County in 1823, being the son of William Arnold.

" As we were coming to Indiana, our wagon upset and scraped my wrist. Two families, John Thomas and Thomas Parker, came all the way in the same wagon, nine in all, and some of the way Thomas Willcuts and his wife and five children. [Note. - David Willcutts, later of Newport, Ind., Thomas Willcutts' youngest son came with us]. All these did all the riding they did on the one wagon. We brought beds and cooking utensils, and one chair (for mother). She died in 1823. I used, when a girl in my teens, to go on foot to New Garden, six and a half miles, to meeting. I have done it many a time, and did not consider myself as having done anything worthy of special mention."

" The " Quaker Trace " was begun in 1817. Jamea Clark, with twenty-five or thirty men, started with three wagon loads of provisions, as also a surveyor and chain, etc., and they marked " mile trees," and cut the road out enough for wagons to pass. They wound around ponds, however, and big logs and trees, and quagmires, fording the Mississinewa above AUensville, Randolph County, and the Wabash just west of Corydon, Jay County, and so on to Fort Wayne. My brother James and myself first went to Fort Wayne (with a four-horse team) in 1820. James himself had been the trip a year or so before that. We took our feed along for the whole trip, as there was but one house from one mile north of Spartansburg to Fort Wayne, viz., at Thomson's Prairie, eight miles north of Wabash River. At Black Swamp we had to wade half-leg to knee deep, walking to drive (we always had to do that). After that first trip, we always took oxen, generally three yoke for a team. No feed was needed for the oxen, for they could be turned out to pick their living. Our load was commonly about 2,500 pounds of bacon, flour, etc. Bacon would be 10 to 12 cents a pound, and flour |7 to fS a barrel. The trip would take about two weeks, and we expected to make about $40 a trip. It would take eight days to go, three days in Fort Wayne and four days to return. Once an ox team came through in three days, which was the quickest trip ever made. We would unyoke the oxen, "hopple" them, put a bell upon one of them and turn them out. For ourselves, we would build a fire by a log, cook supper, throw down an old bed on the leaves under a tent stretched before the fire, and lie down and sleep as sound as a nut. We would start early, drive till 9 o'clock and get breakfast, and let the oxen eat again. From two to six teams would go in company. Sometimes the teams would get "stuck," but not often. If so, we would unhitch the " lead " yoke from another team, hitch on in front, and pull the load through. Once only I had to unload. I got fast in the quicksands in crossing the Mississinewa. We got a horse from a settler (Philip Storms), cariied the flour to the bank of the river on his back, hitched the oxen to the hind end and pulled the wagon out backward.

preached there also (in 1815), by Rev. Holman, of Louisville> Ky.; text, Isaiah, "Is there no balm in Gilead ? Is there no physician there? Why then is the hurt of the daughter of my people not recovered?'' It was a good Gospel sermon, and was food to the hungry souls longing to be fed in the wilderness. We used to go to meeting to Dwiggins' (near Newport), and they would come up to our house. The Methodist meeting house near Dwiggins' was warmed thus : They had a box, nearly filled with dirt, standing in the middle of the floor, and would make a fire with charcoal in the box. That house never had a stove in it, but was warmed in that way as long as it stood, fifteen or twenty years. They would have a rail-pen near the church to hold the coal, and carry it in as it might be needed. Mrs. Bowen says she has carried many a basket of coal to replenish the fire. The first meeting house was at Arba, built by the Friends in 1815, and used for church and schoolhouse both ; I went to school there four or five years. Afterward they built ahewed-log church, and had a stove in it.

" We would catch wolves in a wolf-pen. We could pay our taxes with the "scalps." A wolf-pen was made, say six feet long and four feet wide and two feet high, of poles for bottom, sides and top, the size of your arm. The top was made like a "lid," withed down to the pen at one end, and so as to lift up at the other. The "lid" would be "set" with a trap so as to fall and catch the wolf and fasten him into the pen. The bait would be deer meat. To kill the wolf, take a hickorj switch and make it limber by " witheing " it, i.e., twisting it limber. Make a noose and slip it through the pen and around the wolfs neck, and lift him against the top of the pen and choke him to death. If the wolf were shot and bled in the pen, no more wolves would come into it. One big wolf father undertook to choke, but the dogs wished so much to get in at him, that we let them in, but the wolf fought them terribly, and whipped the dogs out, till father put an end to the battle by choking him in dead earnest. We moved into the thick, green woods. We would cut out the trees a foot and under, grub the undergrowth, pile and burn the logs, girdle the big trees, and kill them by burning brush piles around them.

" The last time I went to Fort Wayne was in 1829. Several tribes drew their payments there for years after Fort Wayne was laid out as a town. The Indiana around here were Shawnees. They would trap in April and May, and then go back to their towns. The squaws would plant and raise the corn, and dress the skins. The men did the hunting and the women did the work. At one time at Fort Wayne, thirteen Indians were killed during one payment in drunken fights."

" Plenty of wild plums and grapes (and some blackberries) were to be found. The plums and grapes grew on the banks of the creeks, and along the edges of the (wet) prairies. There were different sorts, red and purple, small and round, but very sweet and good, better than most tame plums. Some grapes were fall grapes and some winter grapes.- The blackberries grew on the " windfalls." There was one near Spartansburg. There were crab-apples, but too sour to use, and papaws, but no one would eat them. The woods were full of weeds of many kinds, and of peavines, and horses and cattle lived well on them. Some places had been burned over, and the woods, in those spots, were open like a big orchard.

" I knew Johnny Cornstalk, the Shawnee chief. My motherin law once made him an overcoat. He was a large, portly, fine looking, genteel Indian, straight as an arrow.

He once came fwith his wife) to my father's, on horseback, to tell him that they had found a bee-tree in his woods. They rode up. Cornstalk dismounted, but his wife sat still upon her horse, tall, straight and lady-like, genteel, dressed richly in Indian fashion, with a beautiful side-saddle and bridle, and a fine pony. Mother said, " Won't you light ?" Spry as a cat, she sprang off, and they went into the house. She was waiting for an invitation. They were a stately, elegant-looking couple. Cornstalk told father of the bee-tree, and father went and cut the tree down and gathered the honey, and gave Cornstalk half. They were then "camping" near James Jackson's place. I knew Chief Richardville five miles above Fort Wayne, on St. Mary's River. He was a Miami Chief, had a large, brick house and was rich. His daughters dressed Indian fashion, but very grand and stylish. He was a good, honest, genteel, friendly man. and much respected, both by the Indians and white men. We made bricks one season at Fort Wayne, and saw him often. "In plowing, when father first moved, we used a bar-share plow and a wooden mold -board. I could tell tales by the hour of those old times, but it is not worth the while to print so much of

" We used to go to mill to Newport, to George Sugart's mill, but oftener to White Water, to Jere Cox's mill. Sugart had a little "corn-cracker" run by water-power. The buhr went around no oftener than the wheel did. Sugart would throw in a bushel of corn, and go out and swingle flax, etc., for an hour or two, and then go in and attend to his grist again. Awful slow ! One day a hound came in and began licking up the meal as it came in spurts from the spout. It did not come fast enough for him and he would look up with a pitiful howl, and then lick for more meal ! We boys would go fourteen miles to liiWl on horseback. Sometimes we would go with a wagon and take a load, and then it would take two days. Often the settlers had to go over to the Big Miami for provisions. Sometimes two men would join teams and go with four horses, and bring a big load. Once I went with Clark Willcutts' son (we were boys) on horseback to a mill four miles east of Richmond, to get a grist of corn. We each got a sack of corn, took it to Cox's mill, got it ground, and took the meal home. It was twenty miles and took us two days.

" Pork was $1.50 a hundred net, and sometimes $1, or even less than that. As late as 1835, when I was Justice, I rendered judgment on a debt, and the defendant said he had wheat at Jeremiah Cox's mill, and he could not get HI cents a bushel, in money, to pay the debt. At Newport, Jonathan Unthank sued David Bowles for $5, balance on a store debt. Bowles was angry and declared he would never trade with Unthank any more. " To think, " he said, " that I have traded there so much, and he must go and sue me for $5 I" Benjamin Thomas (Wayne County) said he had as good wheat as ever grew, and he could not get 12J cents a bushel, in money, to pay his taxes !

" In making " Quaker Trace," in 1817, twenty-five or thirty men started with three wagon-loads of provisions. I went about twenty-five miles (beyond the Misaissinewa River) until one wagonload was gone, and then returned with that team."

[Mr. Bowen thinks that Sample's mill, on White River, was the first mill of any importance in the country. He says, also, that Cox's mill liad at first a hand bolt, and that flour had to be bolted by hand, which was a slow and tedious process].

[Ephram Bowen came from Ohio in a big Shaker wagon, with a load of " plunder," and then went back after his falnily. The patent for his quarter-section was signed by James Madison. E. B. was an intelligent, devoted Methodist, and did much to help plant the foundations of religion in this western wilderness. His dwelling was the " preacher's home," and a preaching station for more than thirty years. The first meeting was held at his house, and the first sermon was preached there also. All the Methodists in the region were there, and others, perhaps thirty persons. The descendants of E. B. are numerous and widespread. There were at his death seventy grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. E. B. and his family are a fine specimen of the hardy pioneers who subdued these Western wilds. Courageous, honest, industrious, devout, intelligent, energetic, upright.

Iii8T0Iiy Of Randolph County

enterprising, successful ; their labors and achievements have helped thehowling wilderness to become the" garden of the Lord," and to cause the " desert to bud and blossom as the rose."]

Silas Johnson, 1817

" I was fifteen years old when father came here. Paul Beard and John Moorman and Francis Frazier and John Barnes were here when we came. Paul Beard came the same spring. The others had come perhaps the year before. Curtis Cleny came, I think, the same fall. Daniel Shoemaker, James Frazier, David Kenworthy were early settlers. The settlers before us had not been here more than a year, perhaps not so long. John Barnes was very old and he died last spring (1880 ).

"James Frazier (bell-maker) had a large family, and lived in a " camp." The roof-poles of his camp were put in the forks of a cherry tree. There came a heavy snow May 4, after the leaves were out, and broke down his forks, roof - snow and all right on their heads.

" Francis Frazier lived west of the pike, a mile south of Lynn. Daniel Kenworthy lived east of Jesse Johnson. Curtis Cleny lived a mile south. Daniel Shoemaker lived a half mile east of Lynn. James Frazier lived one mile east of Lynn.

Cholera, 1849

" In the morning about breakfast, a black cloud came up from the east, dark and threatening ; there was some thunder and a little rain, suddenly a sharp stroke of lightning seemed to strike the earth between Mr. Palmer's and the four corners, a mile east of Lynn. The sky was filled with smoke, and a fearful sickening smell as of burning sulphur filled the air, which lasted some time. A little while afterward, that same morning, John Lister and two sons (one a lad ) passed those corners. They were all taken sick that evening, John died next morning, and his oldest son during the day. The lad lingered a month, but recovered. William llodgin passed next, and then Henry Benson and three others ; they were all taken sick and died tlie next day or very shortly. On Chamness' place, a mile ofl^, five or six were taken sick, but they did not die.

Isaac Moody and Jonathan Clevinger nursed the sick all the time, but were not sick themselves. Most of the persons east and south of those corners were taken sick. Twenty-seven died, and a few got well. It lasted two or three weeks. There seemed to be an uncommonly sharp smell after dark. [See W. Pickett's, Francis Frazier's and W. D. Stone's accounts].

When Jesse Johnson came in the fall of 1817 (perhaps), Paul Beard had cleared a field and burned the standing trees black by piling the brush of the undergrowth around the roots of the trees and then burning the brush piles.

Settlers at that time were Pajil Beard, Sr., Francis Frazier, John Moorman, John Barnes (Wayne County), Travis Adcock, Isaac Hockett (Cherry Grove), Gideon Frazier.

James Frazier and John Baxter came the next spring. Edward Hunt came when Jesse Johnson did, fcnd settled west of, and near to Lynn, 1817. James Abshire was an early settler, northwest of Lynn. He was a famous hunter. His son Isaac Abshire is still residing in thatregion."

Ira Swain, 1815

Island, moved from there to Guilford County, N. C, in 1776 ; to Jefferson County, East Tennessee, in 1785 ; to Wayne County, Ind. (near Randolph County line) in 1815, and died in 1848, aged nearly ninety. He married Sarah Mills in North Carolina in 1782. They had ten children, six boys and four girls - John, Nathaniel, Hannah, Samuel, Joseph, Lydia, Elihu, Rachel, Job and Ira. The family lived in a tent made of a wagon sheet for three weeks or more, lying in beds on the ground. Tliey built a pole cabin, which for some time had a Yankee blanket for a door.

" For two or three years the children used to play with the Indians, who were plenty. A dozen Indians lived noar, with their families, in "camps," made of poles set up in a circle, with ash bark peeled off the tree for a roof, the fire being built in the middle and a hole at the top in the peak to let off the smoke.

" In two or three years the Indians left their wigwams and came back no more, but their little pole tents stood tenantleas and desolate for years.

" Ore little Indian by the name of " Jim," who lived not 200 yards away, and with whom I played many a day when we were boys there together, was adopted by Judge Reeves, and grew up civilized. I met him years afterward at La Porte, Ind. He knew me, though I did not know him. He had traveled a great deal, but he came back, and lived on Judge Reeves' old place a few years ago, remaining there until he died. When our family were coming from Tennessee, I saw a sight of cruelty which will stick by me to my dying day, and the memory of which has done much to fasten in ray mind an eternal hatred of human slavery. As we came through Richmond, Ky., a man was being flogged near the road where we passed. I was but a child, but I remember it well. The man's hands were drawn down over his knees, and a stick was thrust through between his arms and his legs, thug fastening him forward. His body was naked, and they were whipping him terribly. He was screaming with all his might, and his back and hips were all cut into a jelly. It was a fearful eight.

" Father entered Congress land. The twelve-mile purchase was in market, but the land west of it was not, being surveyed in 1821-22. Father had to go or send to mill to Connersville (thirty miles). They would buy corn near the mill and get it ground and bring the meal home.

" The first school was near David Moore's (in 1816 or 1817), with, perhaps, twenty scholars. The house was a pole cabin, 14x18 feet. One end of it was cut out (much of it) for a fireplace. We used to pile up logs in the fire-place (i. e., the larger scholars did) for a rousing big fire. The fire-place was built up to the mantel, with puncheons filled in with clay inside, and the chimney was made above with sticks and clay around. The fl6or was puncheons, and the benches were split poles with legs. The older pupils used to get wood at noon to last till the next day noon. That was not much trouble, though the chief care was not to fell the trees on the schoolhouse, and it took "lots " of wood to keep the house warm.

"For several winters we had no shoes. Then father dug out a large log and made a big trough and tanned some hides, and made some leather, and so wo got some shoes. One man who had a trough and some hides tanning, intending to move and wishing to take his hides along (I suppose they were not tanned enough, and he thought there was no bark on the prairie where he was going), made a big truck wagon with wooden wheels, sawed from a large oak tree. He loaded his tan trough, bark, hides and all, upon his huge truck-wagon, and away he started for Illinois. After traveling two or three days, he bethought himself that he had left; some tobacco in a crack of his cabin, and, leaving his folks and team (of oxen) in the woods, he "footed" it back after the tobacco, found it, got it, and tramped back again, spending two or three days in the operation. What the folks did meanwhile I do not know ; I suppose they just waited there in the woods, cooking and eating, and taking it easy.

'- The people in those days maile 'hand-mills' with stones 'a foot over ' to grind com with. To turn them was hard work. My wife's father once took a peck of corn to grind on one of them ; a boy came with a tin cup to toll the grist. The man ground and ground, till he got so tired that he called out to the boy, " Come here, sonny, with your tin, and get some more toll, or I sh.all never get done." People went on horseback, or rather walked and led the horse, with a sack of corn or meal on his back, thirty miles to mill. A man or a boy would go with a horse and three bushels of corn in a four-bushel sack all that distance. Johnny Banks made a great improvement ; he loaded one horse and attached a rein, leading one and riding another, thus not exactly killing two birds with one stone, but what was still better, getting two grists of corn to mill with one boy. Great labor-saving invention, to make on - boy to accomplish the work of two, and more than that, for the led horse, having no boy to " tote," could take a full load of corn. We were often two weeks without bread. However, mother could make plenty of lye hominy, and we had potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and sweet pumpkins and squashes, and plenty of bacon and chickens and eggs, venison, wild turkey, etc., so tli't people need not starve even on such fare."

Griffith Davis lived south of Mount Pleasant Church. William Smith settled a mile north. .He came in 1817. I remember the " falling timber." I saw a tree fall between the house and the corn-crib, and remember playing under the tree top, as it lay there, with Cahoon's children, an Irish family, who lived near by. I recollect father's trying to get some colts that were in the woods among the fallen timber. We could see them and hear them " whinny," but he could not get them. They worked round home in three or four days. Tlie cattle also took several days to come home. We could hear them bawl, but they could not be got at. One heifer did not come, but we got her a year afterward. A man saw the mark on her and came and told us, and father went and got her. My sister was keeping house for Isaac Branson, with his children ; father clambered over the trees after the storm and got there ; half of the house roof was blown off, and the stable roof also, and the logs were blown down round the horse, so that he could not move, yet he was not hurt ; their cow was killed, and that was the only animal we knew to have been hurt. Tree.s were blown crosswise in every direction ; east of our house it blew down but little ; the storm seemed to rise for a space, but it came down again near Albert Macy's and took his house roof off; by-and-by it rose, and did net come down any more. The crops were injured, but not so badly as one might think ; there was no hail ; the worst of the storm was north of us. The house we lived in at the time of the storm is standing yet, and in good repair."

"My father was a tanner ; his tan troughs are here yet, though out of use for many years. A large cherry tree is growing in the end of one of them, as it lies buried in the ground. General muster used to be held on father's farm. A colored man named Jack ran away from Kentucky in early times and came to ray father's, stopping awhile to work. One night a spelling-school was held in father's cabin. While they were spelling, a knock was heard at the door ; father went to the door and asked who was there. Jack heard the reply, and knew his master's voice. Peter Botkin opened the window and let Jack jump out and escape. The master offered father ^50 to help him get the slave, but we helped hira off instead.

I have cut many a cord of wood at 20 cents a cord and board, and have split rails at 9J cents a hundred. I have worked many a day for 25 cents, and 37-| cents in harvest, from sunrise tifl sundown at that. Wheat was 87-i- cents a bushel, and pork $1.25 a hundred net. I used to slide on the ice barefooted ; the skin on the bottom of my feet was hard, almost like a stick.

Methodist meetings were held in fither's cabin, and quarterly meeting at Jesse Cox's. Father's cabin burned down, and then meetings were held elsewhere; William Hunt and Nathan Gibson were preachers ; father was very poor when we came to Randolph.

There is now on my place a tan trough, made by my father more than sixty years ago, hollowed from the body of a large tree, the top of the tree, some thirty feet long, being still in connection with the trough. There are also rails, made of white oak, of blue ash and of walnut, still sound and in use on the farm, made by father before 1820, and put up into fences by him on his original farm in that early day. It is only two or three years since I changed the location of some of the rails which had lain all that long time unmolested in a fence, and the "crossing" of the rails were firm and sulid."

[Mr. Botkin, poor though he v/as when a boy, as his story shows, is poor no longer. He owns several hundred acres of excellent land ; has a splendid brick mansion in a beautiful situation ; is a thrifty and prosperous farmer, and a prominent and influential citizen, foremost in every good work. It is really a wonder how many of the rich men of the day are sons of men who were very poor, and some of them widows' sons and even orphans.

John Fisher, 1817

" Father was forty-five and mother was forty-two years of age when they died and left me alone orphan in the world. I knew of no settlers in Randolph when I came but those on Nolan's Fork. What I understood to be the first wagon that went to White River was that of William Wright, from Clinton County, Ohio, in the fall of 1817."

[Mr. Fisher is mistaken. Settlers hail come upon Nolan's Fork, Greensfork, Martindale Creek and West River in 1815, and on White River in the summer of 1816. Mr. Wright's wagon may have been the first that passed through that neighborhood two miles north of Newport { Fountain City). The company from Carolina in the spring of 1817, bound for White River, most likely went along a route farther west, past Economy, Joseph Gass', etc.]

" I owned a little mare and a saddle and bridle, and nothing else. I was an orphan boy and had no more than that ponv and its accouterments. I had heard of the free and glorious Northwest, the grand and fertile plains beyond the mountains and the river, where no slave might tread; and set my heart to find that wondrous country, and I found it and thanked God for the consolation. I crossed the Blue Ridge at ' Ward's Gap,' thence to Grayson C. II., Wythe C. H., Abingdon, Va., head of Holston River, Tennessee, a large spring, from which flows a wonderful stream as big as the White Water at Richmond. I traveled down Ilolston to French Broad, turning north into Kentucky, crossing Clinch Mountain, and Cumberland Mountains to Cumberland River, and so on to Kentucky River, Cincinnati,

Newport was founded in 1822. It was a solid wilderness for years after I came. I have voted at every Presidential election, beginning with Madison's second term, 1816. I voted for rdadison, Monroe and Adams, against Jackson, Van Buren ; for Harrison and Taylor, against Polk, Pierce, Buchanan ; for Lincoln, Grant and Hayes. I hope to give yet one more vote, and to help elect one more Republican President, and then I must leave national politics for younger hands [Friend Fisher had his wish. He went to the polls and helpeil elect another Republican President ; and nov/ he is gone to the land " where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest." He lacked thirty hours of living long enough to hear the candidate of his choice declared President by the presiding officer of the Senate in the joint convention of the whole Congress assembled to witness the counting of the electoral votes and the proclamation of the grand result. The second Wednesday of February was on the 9th, and he died on the morning of the 8th, at 6 o'clock. Father Fisher's era of life was truly an eventful one].

Mr. Fisher says : " I had no wagon for seven or eight years ; my hauling was all done on a sled, winter and summer. In 1826, a neighbor and I bought a wagon ' to the halves ' and we used it in company. In 1829, I bought his half and owned it alone. That was an event in my life, to be the'sole owner of a two horse wagon. Wagons were like 'angels' visits, few and far between.

-' Of course there were some wagons in the country, but great numbers had none, and I belonged to that numerous class until the eventful hour when the bargain was struck, the trade was complete, and the wagon was mine, all mine. "

Jane Fisher, 1817

" Father, Edward Starbuck, Sr., came to Wayne County, in 1817. The family who came were father and mother and nine children. One daughter had been married in Carolina, and did not come till afterward. Father had, in all, eighteen children ; ten by his first wife and eight by the second, nine boys and nine girls, the first set five and five, and the second set four and four. The first that died was Phcbe (Leverton), sixty years old, and that was when the youngest was twenty -three years old. The father and eighteen children were alive till the youngest was twenty-three years old. The whole eighteen were married. The next that died was James, sixty-five; Edward, sixty-one; Betsey, eiglitv. Thirteen are still living. (1880).

" I have a large platter (pewter) which was my father's in Carolina, which he got from his mother. Its age is probably not less, perhaps more, than 120 years. The platter is fifteen inches across, is heavy and thick, and has never been remolded."

Mrs. F. has an iron candlestick, more than fifty years old, and as good as new, made by her uncle, Zachariah Coffin, a famous blacksmith of those early days. It is " the old candlestick " - the family candlestick - that used to hang, by a hook at the top, from a chair back, to study by, when people were thankful for "tallow dips;" and the splendors of gaslight and kerosene were a thing unknown and unimagined-

She can show several wooden trays forty years old, in good condition, though dusty for lack of use. She can show also the greatest curiosity and oddity of all, in the identical "first coat and pants," made for and worn by her oldest son Daniel, now in his fifty-ninth year. The ancient' relic must bo about fifty-five years old. They arc truly quaint and odd ; the coat is not " shad-belly," but more like " sWallow-tail ; " the pants are " single fall, " as was the fashion sixty years ago ; the buttons arc good, bright, brass buttons, good for fifty years more; the cloth is striped, home-made, strong and smooth, and just a trifle coarse.

Mrs. F. says: " When we ' kept house,' at first, we had a tabic, four cups and saucers, half a dozen plates, four knives and f)rks, one iron pot, one skillet, one rolling pin, four chairs, one light featherbed, two sheets, one flaxand-cotton, and one tow, one quilt, one coverlet. I have the coverlet yet. Mother wove it herself, in old Guilford County, N. C, and she gave it to rae. I have had it more than sixty years, and how much older it is I cannot tell I borrowed a straw tick of Aunt Rebecca for three or four weeks, till I could make some for myself out of tow, which I did, all but the weaving - I hired that done. For a bedstead, I borrowed an auger and made two benches out of puncheons, and lugged in nine clapboards and put across on the benches, and on this new, grand bedstead I made up our bed ; and, let me tell you, I was "set up ' greatly, and felt as proud of my bed, all nice and neat, as of anything I ever had. My brother Edward and myself went back to North Carolina ten or twelve years ago. I was surprised, and pleased, also, to find how well I remembered the country ; I could go anywhere, and knew every hill and stream, every road and farm, although I had been absent fifty years. I found in that ancient region four aunts and one sister, whom I had not seen since my father moved away. They were, of course, greatly rejoiced that we should be spared to meet, face to face, this side of glory land. " [Note. - Mrs. Jane Fisher, relict of John Fisher, deceased, departed this life at the dwelling of her son in-law, Capt. J. R. Jackson, Union City, Ind., Thursday, February 4, 1882, aged about seventy-eight years. She had become much enfeebled, having, some months before her death, suffered a paralytic stroke, from the effects of which she never recovered.]

Temple And Priscilla Smith, 1817

"Jo.seph Hockett came to Randolph County, Washington Township, in 1816. The Quaker meeting was set up at Cherry Grove in 1816 or 1817 ; they built a double log cabin for a meeting-house.

" Dr. Paul Beard, Sr., was the first physician in the region ; there was none in Bloominsgport for a long time. Dr. Gideon Frazier resided there in somewhat early years.

" Other physicians were Drs. Gore, Strattan, Kemper, etc. Messrs. Beeson, Comfort, Bullard, Budd, Wyatt, Wright, Coggshall, Hockett, etc., have been merchants.

"There are two churches, Methodist and United Brethren. At Ridgeville, fifty-four years ago, Meshach Lewallyn's daughter Polly married David Hammer. At the wedding supper, the bride's brothers were present, and one of them, dressed in buckskin hunting-shirt and leather belt, and with a butcher knife at his waist, undertook to carve the turkey, and did it with his hunting knife.

" At another wedding, the people tad gathered, but the supper was not yet done ; and as the women were trying to bake pones or slapjacks or something, the crowd of half-drunken fellows would snatch and eat as fast as the women would bake, till at last, one chap, not quite so drunk as the rest, took a club, and stood and watched, and guarded the women till they got enough baked-for supper. This was at the house where the boys were chopping as related below. The family was immense, a dozen children or so ; the cabin was small. They had a loom in the house but took it down and out, to make room for the ' weddingers.' "

Mrs. Smith says: " When I was twelve years old, my sister and myself went to help one of the neighbors pick wool. They baked a great " pone," and turned it out on the floor. The ducks came in, waddling and quacking, and fell to pecking away at the pone " till they had broken it badly. The woman had her milk set under the bed, and in scaring the ducks away from the "pone," they scattered and ran under the bed, and went floundering and plunging and paddling " slapdab " through the milk. As the ducks went out, the sheep came in, 'baa-baaing ' all over the room. We went home without eating, and said to motlicr, If those folks wish us to pick wool, they must bring the wool here ; we can't stand such living;' and our picking wool there :iraong the sheep and ducks was at an end.

" The boys would come in and stamp the mud oft' their feet upon the floor until the dirt was so thick that they had to scrape it from the floor with a hoe to let the door shut. One of our neighbors told us to be sure to call on a family of " new-comers," who, he said, were "upper crust," neat, stylish people, and that we must fix up our best. So one day sister and I fixed up in our " nicest," and went over there, a little afraid that we were not slick enough. When we got there, lo, and behold, a sight indeed ! Four boys, brothers, from eight years and upward, were at the wood-pile chopping wood, with their shirts on and - nothing else ! We were taken aback, and thought we must have got to the wrong place. But no, this was the very house. We went in ; they set us some stools, black and greasy from having had meat chopped on thera. Hardly knowing what to do, we spread some handkerchiefs on the stools and sat down. It was winter, and the creeks were frozen. The boys went out to the ice to slide barefooted, and when they came back their feet were as red as lobsters. "Are not your feet cold ?" " No, they burn," was the reply. And such times the folks had, and such things were done by young and old in days of ' auld lang syne.' "

Paul Beard, Jr., 1817

" Settlers, about the same time with my father, were James Frazier, east of Lynn ; Francis Frazier; John Pegg, three miles southwest of Beard's; Obadiah Harris, Cherry Grove ;- Stephen Hockett, Cherry Grove ; Edward Thornburg, Cherry Grove ; Travis Adcock, Curtis Cleny, Jesse Johnson shortly after, and perhaps others."

Mrs. Paul Beard, Daughter Of Benjamin Co.K, 1817

" Mother was greatly afraid of tlie Indians ; father was not afraid of them at all. They would come at night ; father would get UD and make a fire, and let them sit and smoke and stay all night if they wished. Sometimes they would come late in the night and wish to warm, and when they were warm they would go away. Father had to go to Richmond for grain and for milling; this was too much trouble, and they used to pound corn for bread.

" Father made a sweep with a maul at the end, and a pin through the maul ; two men would take hold of the pin, one on each side, and thus work the maul to pound the corn into meal in a trough or mortar below. We took the finest for bread, and the coarse for mush. We raised a kind of squash that was excellent for baking; many a meal has been made on baked squash and milk and butter.

Benjamin Cox was a great hunter, and killed abundance of deer. He has shot as many as five and six deer in a day. A prairie was near and also a spring; he would sprinkle salt around the spring, and the deer would come to lick the salt. He made a scaifold, ten or twelve feet high, in the forks of two elm trees, and from that he watched the deer, and shot them as they came. He has killed scores of deer from that scaffold. Mrs. Beard thinks her father was the first settler on White River, east of Winchester.

"White River meeting-house was built of logs in 1820 or 1821. It was warmed by a box filled with dirt, with coals or bark on the top for a fire."

"The floor of the barn on my father's farm near Arba was made of lumber sawed by hand with a whip-saw, done in this way : The log was put on a high frame, and one man stood above on the log and the other below, and they sawed somewhat as with a cross-cut saw. The work was slow and very tedious, but there was no other way then and there. That barn was covered with shingles, and was reckoned the best barn in all that region.

" The meeting-house was warmed by a dirt box. They would have a great log heap fire out of doors, and take the box out to the fire and shovel in coals enough, and then take it buck into the house, and set it in the middle of the room, and people would get round it and warm themselves as well as they could.

" The cabin in which I was born sixty-three years ago is still standing and in good repair. The roof has been renewed, but the logs are sound, and a family occupies it now. The cabin was " scutched down," i. e., scored and hewed down after the build-

" I have hauled to Cincinnati many winters ; the price for hauling was 50 cents per hundred; the trip took a week. A. man would make from $6 to $9 a trip. Teamsters on the " pikes" would have big Conestoga wagons, and four to six horses, and take tremendous loads - equal to a small ship. Dealers would pack meat in " bulk," and teamsters would haul it " loose," and sometimes, when they would get "stalled," they would throw the load of meat out on the ground, like a pile of wood, and come back afterwards and pick it up again. The first wagon I ever owned myself, about 1841, I bought the iron for in Cincinnati, and got the money to pay for it with by selling (hauling) bacon, smoked, 'hog-round,' good, sweet and nice, to Cincinnati from near Arba, at $2.12 per hundred. The iron was P.50 per hundred. I have hauled wheat to Eaton, selling at 37J cents a bushel. I have fattened hogs and sold the pork, net, at Spartanburg for $1.2o under two hundred, and $1.37, two hundred full. This was done about 1842-43. Henry Peacock, of Jericho, now dead, has told me that since he settled in Jericho, he has paid $18 a barrel for salt, and paid for it in pork at $2 a hundred.

" I must give you a story told me on himself by Judge W. A. Peele, at Indianapolis, when he was Secretary of State. When he was a boy just old enough to turn the grindstone, his father and himself went to my grandfather's to grind an ax. They went into the house ; grandmother had lately made a rag carpet, perhaps the first in the county. His father walked in, and stepped on the carpet. William thought the carpet was some nice cloth spread upon the floor, and that his father had done very wrong, so he tried to better the matter by undertaking to jump across it. lie failed, and stumbled upon it, and got dirt on the carpet, and was scolded and laughed at besides for all the pains he took to keep off the wonderful and mysterious thing."

" I was born in Anson County, N. C, December 17, 1798. In the year of 1816, I came to Indiana to seek a home for myself. Paul, Henry H., William and Robert Way and "I came across the country from North Carolina in a road wagon, crossed the Ohio River at Louisville, Ky.; came to Blue River, -but not being pleased with the country, we came to Wayne County, made our temporary abode at Charlotte Way's (afterward my mother-in-law), and looked around for suitable places. We finally selected our lands and built our camps about two miles west of Winchester. I remained there till the latter part of August, when the Indians became so numerous that our friends advised us to abandon our claims and seek safety in the settlements.

" I was married to Charlotte Way October 6, 1816, and returned to my claim in February, 1817. At that time there was only one white settler nearer than twelve miles.

" We moved into a camp and lived in it till I could cut the logs and build a small log house, which seemed a palace to us then. Vie saw no white man's face for eight weeks after settling there. ]5ut Indians were plenty, yet peaceable.

" The first year, I cleared four acres of ground, and planted it in corn, but it did not ripen, and we had to go to Richmond, where settlers had been living for twelve or fifteen years, for all oiir breadstuffs. Wheat was then 75 cents a bushel, and corn ?1.

" When we were getting out of bread, I would start on horseback for the White Water, buy a sack of corn, get it ground, and take it home. In this way we lived till more settlers came. Not long after, small hand-mills were introduced into the county, and as soon as the corn became too hard for roasting, we would take a small jack-plane, shave the corn off the cob and dry it. We would take this corn to a hand-mill and grind it into meal. The nearest mill to my house was three miks.

" Often I have worked hard all day, and then taken a sack of corn on ray back to the mill, and gone home with it to furnish bread for my family next day.

" In this manner we lived till the country settled up so as to afford better accommodations. We brought up nine children ; all but one are living vet, and they were all born in Randolph County, and on White River. The eldest, Fannie, now Mrs. Matthew Hill, lives at Jericho, Randolph Co., Ind. ; Anna, now Mrs. Jesse Reynard, lives east of Buena Vista, Randolph Co., Ind.; Eunice, now Mrs. Thomas Sloorman, of Winchester, Ind.; Pleasant W., married Anna Peacock, and now resides at Earlliam, Madison Co., Iowa; Agnes, not living; Henry H., married Sarah Wright (now deceased), and afterward Lois Ann Carpenter. Their home is at Nora, Jo Daviess Co., 111. Anthony Diggs, married Elvira C. Thomas, daughter of George and Asenath Thomas, and they reside at Earlham, Madison Co., Iowa ; Ruth, married Matthew W. Diggs, and they live at Farmland, Randolph Co., Ind. After our children left us, we sold the farm which had been our home so many years, and moved to Poplar Run, to be near some of our children. We remained there some years when my wife's health became poor, and the children had all left that neighborhood. We sold that farm also and moved to Winchester. In about sixteen months my beloved companion died. Since then I have made my home with my children, and am now residing at Earlham, Iowa. My age is now eighty-nine years."

Paul W. Way. Henry H. Way, William Way, and Robert Way and myself, came in the summer of 1816 ; Henry H. Way and myself were both single, and we married during the winter of 1816-17, he taking for his wife Rachel Manlove, of Wayne County, Ind.; Robert Way stayed, as did all the group but"paul Way, who returned to Carolina and brought back a large company in the spring of 1817. During the spring or summer of 1817, William Way went to the South and brought his father and mother to White River.

" Henry, William and Robert Way built cabins for themselves and the rest. Persons from Williamsburg, fifteen miles away, came and helped raise the cabins.

Fanny (Diggs) Hill is the first white child born in White River, her birthday being September 11, 1817 ; she is living still. My wife died January 31, 1877. I went to Jo Daviess County, III, in May, 1877, to visit my children, stayed there three months, went on to Iowa, and am in Iowa still.

I have voted at every Presidential election since I was old enough to vote, casting my first Presidentiar ballot for James Monroe in 1816, and having voted for President in all seventeen

" I went to school first at Williamsburg, in Wayne County, Ind., when eight or nine years old. I attended school also under Henry D. Huffman in a log schoolhouse three miles west of Winchester. For a wonder, that house had window sash and glass !

When my mother was getting me to .sleep one day, she heard a noise outside the cabin door. Hurrying to the door, she looked out, and lo! there stood a bear!

Mother used to tell me that we were the first family on White River, and that our cabin was fifteen miles away from any other dwelling, and that for six weeks she saw no white person's face but that of her own husband. She used to tell me that the Indians told her when they were at her cabin how easily they could have killed her and sister while the girls were milking, as the Indians lay hid in the brush.''

Francis Frazier, Lynn

" I ustd to kill many deer. Really, I was too fond of it. My friends tried to get me to quit. George Sugart, with a committee of Friends, undertook to visit me to give me advice. I managed to shun them three times, but the fourth time they caught me at home, and I could not dodge them. They talked kindly and urged me to lay aside my gun. I tried to do so for awhile, but ' what is bred in the bone, will break out in the flesh.'

" One day a boy told me that some swine needed attention out in the woods. I went, taking my gun. Tying two pigs together with my suspenders, I slung them across my shoulder, and started for the house. Along flew the hound, chasing some deer; pell mell they went and I after them. I tossed the pigs between some logs and laid off my shot pouch ; had my coat on my shoulder and lost it. I shot one deer, and chased the other a mile and a half, but could not get it. I came back and found the dead deer, a splendid buck, throe snagged, three years old. I-hung it up, hide on, entrails out, and went to hunt for my pigs- They were gone, so were my " gallowses," and I have never seen them to this day, though that was fifty years ago, or more than that.

" One damp, drizzly day I was out hunting, and heard a hog squealing terribly. I ran toward the noise, perhaps half a mile ; came to a thickety pond and started into it. I saw nothing, but still heard the squealing, and also the bones ' craunching,' and knew a bear was killing the hog. As I pushed through the thicket, the thought struck me, " What if I shoot and she takes after me? There is nothing for me to climb, and I shall be a ' goner.' "

" I turned and went home, and got my two brothers on horseback to come. The dog ran in, the bear bit him, and he bounded out yelling for dear life. The bear bounced out too, and we after him, jumping logs, and tearing through the bush screeching like a thousand Indians. The dogs treed the bear, I shot him, and down he came tearing through the branches, and James rode up just as the bear fell. We skinned it and took the meat home, but it was too fat to eat. Once William Kiff came to our house, and wanted some venison ; so we went out to hunt. The day Wft8 cloudy and misty, and I was not in humor to stay long. I said to myself, " I will go home ; Kiff may hunt venison for ^fflfself." All at once a red deer stood near me ; I shot and down' It;?^^ Came. It was a grand, four snagged buck, right " in the TeT^et'';'^:hprns drop off in winter. In the spring they begin to grow, and the horns will come with " points " or snags on, one (on each horn) for every year of the deer's age. I have spen a deer with thirteen snags, seven on one horn and six on the other. I dressed the deer and carried it in, and "jerked "the meat, i. c., cooked it in strips over a slow fire. Kiff filled his pockets witii the venison and went home satisfied.

" We nsed to wear shoes and leggings to keep the snakes from biting us. I have killed nine rattlesnakes in one day, The woods had plenty of plums and grapes.

" One morning I started toward White River Prairie. Seeing something run into a hollow log. I stuck my rifle into the log and let fly, but the recoil of the rifle came near knocking me down. As 1 went home, I came to a " maple flat," and saw a great gray wolf coming. I whistled and she stopped, and I shot at her. I went to the house and got father and Samuel to go back with me. The old sinner had tried to run, but she had made five or six beds as she went, and vomited mutton at each place. After awhile we found her nearly dead. We used wolfskins, instead of saddles, like blankets on a horse.

" On ' Fifth Day,' as we were going to meeting, I said to James, Let us kill a deer as we go home." '' All right," said he. James' wife spoke up, " If any deer is killed, James will have it to do." We went after the deer, and the women went home. We went to a pond and saw deer tracks. There was a sloping tree with the roots turned up, and James sat there watching for deer. The bushes crackled, and out sprang two bucks. One threw his head up, and I shot it between the eyes and the nose, and down he dropped. "Hallo," cried James, " is the deer down ?" " Yes." - We tied the feet and carried it home on a pole. "Well," said James' wife, "who killed the deer'f "Francis," said James. She hated it that I had shot the deer instead of her precious husband.

Bell-Making

"My father was a bell maker, and so was I. Bells were in great demand then. Cattle and horses and sheep ran in the woods, and there had to be a bell in the flock to keep them together. I tended a little farm, and would plow till the flies would vex my beast, and then go and work in the shop, making bells. In that w«y I would make §17 to $22 worth in a single week. They sold from 25 cents to $.3.50 a piece. Those heavy ox bells w.Me large ; they could be heard easily four miles. I have heard one of thero seven miles. [I questioned the accuracy of his memory, but the old gentleman rallied gallantly to the defense of his bell.s, declaring that his statement was simply the sober, actual fact. - Author.]

" I would take my saddle bags and stuff' them with ' nests ' of bells, i. e., little bells in bigger ones, perhaps two dozen bells, and set out for Winchester. The bells were ready sale, cash down. I would trade for shoes, hats, anything needed, and tie them on my horse, and go home loaded some times to the very tail of the horse. People would joke me, " Hi\llo, there, got ahorseback grocery?" "Yes; can't you see for yourself,'' I would say. 1 made the bells of the best Juniata iron. When father died, the doctor's bill was $60. He wanted his pay in bells, but I would not do it, and he took a wagon. Sometimes I used boiler iron, and sometimes sheet iron, but Juniata (or Sligo) iron was the best. People would send far for my bells. I sent $16 worth to Fort Wayne, and they said, " They are the best bells we ever saw." They sent another order for $100 worth, but I could not fill it. The demand at home and from Illinois and Iowa movers was more than 1 could supply. I made bells for over twenty years.

"I was quite wild at one time of my life, and inclined to skepticism. I had two nice horses, perfect idols to me. I would walk to Newport any day rather than ride either of them. One day as I was plowing I thought, " If there is a God, I wish he would reveal Himself to me in some way that I may know Him !"

Shortly afterward, as I was in the house, and the horses were in the stable, suddenly there came a sharp flash of lightning and a crashing thunder peal. I went to the stable and there were my beauties with their heads lying on a long trough. I spoke to them, but they made no sign. The lightning had killed them both dead. It impressed me greatly, " Turn, or the next will be thine," rang in my soul. I did turn, and since that time I have tried in my poor, weak way to serve the Lord, and I humbly trust my Maker looks upon my feeble service with gracious

" The rise of the cholera near Lynn (1849) was very strange and striking. A cloud rose in the morning from the east, with some lightning and thunder. The lightning struck the ground at the cross roads near Isaac Palmer's, east of Lynn, and there came a terrible smell. The cholera began the same day, and ran along those roads west and south. The next day, in the morning, when I was at Newport, a neighbor came for a coffin, and said, "James Lister is dead with the cholera, sick only a few hours." I went home instantly. Henry Benson was taken also and died that night. Ilodgen died also. Jesse Williams came to shave the corpse, and some one said, "Jesse, what is the matter?" He quit shaving, went out of the door, sat down, and in a few minutes he was dead. Hodgen and Williams lay dead together. Hodgen's wife stayed all night alone with the two corpses. Hodgen's body was taken away the next morning for burial, and Williams' corpse lay there alone till the next day. Twentysevendied in all. Ur. Cook came down from Winchester, saying that he could cure it easily enough. He went into the field and picked and ate blackberries, and in two or three hours he was dead himself!"

NoTK. - The writer of these sketches then lived at the Union Literary Institute, near Spartansburg, and some eight miles from Lynn ; and it was stated at the time that six lay dead before the one that died first had been buried. And also that two halfgrown lads had to bury their father alone. It was said also that at Boston, six miles south of Richmond, Ind., the first person was taken sick at sunrise, and that before sundown six persons lay dead in that village. Whether these statements were true is not now known, but it is certain that they were made at the time as being matters of current news, and that they were supposed to be correct. The writer well recollects what fear pervaded the school at the institute lest the dread scourge should break out amongst them in its terrible power as at Lynn and elsewhere. The boarding house of the institution was filled with students, and the cholera among them would have been an awful visitation, but by God's mercy the fearful plague came no nearer, and they were spared. [See also statements of Silas Johnson and William Pickett, and of Elder W. D. Stone.]

" I came to Indiana, in 1817, with my father, William Smith, being twelve years old. He stopped that spring near Garrett's mill, on Green's Fork, two miles above Williamsburg, Ind. The settlers there were mostly from the same neighborhood in South Carolina with my father. David Young had come out in the fall of 1816, rented some ground for father, and a little cabin in a new town called Salem, in Wayne County, extinct long ago. Father put in a crop on that land, and stayed there till August, and then went up into Randolph County. The country all seemed low and like a river bottom in the jungles. The uncleared land was full of ramps, a rank, ill-smelling weed, eagerly eaten by the cows, and utterly ruining their milk. They grew early, however, and were soon gone. Buckeyes, nettles, gnats and mosquitoes were very plenty. In May, I saw the first Indians. An Indian family camped on the bank of the branch near Salem. I xras terribly afraid, for all I had ever read or heard of cruel, bloody savages came thronging up to my mind. However, I ventured up after awhile, and got over my scare. After that, an old Indian, called Johnny Green, from whom Green's Fork was named, used to come and talk with us. He would get half drunk, and then the way he would talk was a wonder. He would tell of Wayne's fight with the Indians on the Maumee. He said, acting it out as he talked, ' Injun hide in timber, heap Injun. White man come, heap white man. Injun shoot, heap shoot. White man get in a row. Injun heap shoot, heap shoot. Bimeby old Anthony get mad, heap mad ! Gallop horse along row, heap halloo, hooee, hoo-ee, hoo-ee.'

"White man come, heap come, keep come, Antony heap holloo, hoo-ee, hooee, hoo-ee, Injun shoot, heap shoot, white man keep come, then Injun run, run, run, heap run. Me run, run, heap run. Bimeby me come to a swamp, me jump in - yoo ook, sink down, hide, night come, me slip away.' It excited me grefitly to hear the old Indian savage act out this scene, and tell the tale of this battle, and the picture remains in my mind vivid to this day. In Julv, 1817, father entered fractional Sections 5 and 6, Town 18, Range 13 east, near the head of West Fork of White Water, now in Randolph, but then in Wayne, just east of the new boundary, and two or three miles farther up than any other settler, like the Nolan's Fork settlers three years before, on the utmost verge of civilization. We laid our corn by, helped Uncle George Smith through harvest ^and haying, and then August 18, 1817, father took his team and'wagon, my two older brothers, David and Carey, and myself, and went nut to his land, several miles through the woods, to build a cabin. We stayed all night at old William Blount's (the Zimmerman Farm), and the next morning went on, cutting a road as we went. A little after noon we got to the spot, the top of the hill where my father built, and where he spent the rest of his days. We cleared the bushes away, turned the horses to the feed trough on the tongue, and - went to work. In a week we had a cabin up ami covered, and had made a fire-place and chimney up to the funnel with dirt back and jambs, but the house had no floor. Father and one brother went back to bring the family and things, but my other brother and myself stayed there and cleared a patch for turnips. The next week the Aimily came, and we sowed our turnips. We hud a fe« small late ones that fall. We hewed logs and built a house in October, and had it floored and ready in December. In the winter we cleared two acres in the creek bottom, smooth for meadow, and sowed it in timothy ; also six acres, - eighteen inches and under, ' for corn, and built a smith shop for father to work at his trade in. He was a blacksmith.

" William Blount lived highest up the creek, but one of his sons-in-law built a cabin about one-fourth mile above him, and another son-in-law lived on the same section.

"John Jordan (and his son, William) lived on Section 19, in Wayne County. Thomas Brower and John Gwynn lived below on the same section. James Malcom was on the northeast (juiirter of Section 17, and Henry Shoemaker lived with hira. Samuel Sales, Amy Ilall, and David Jones, lived on the southeast quarter of Section 17. Isaac Barnes and John C. Hodge (brother.sin-law), from Beaver County, Penn , had entered land and built cabins. They went back for their families, and returned in the spring of 1818, by boat, down the Ohio to Cincinnati, and thence by land. Mr. Barnes' cabin stood on Section 7, across the creek from where Blount lived, and where Barrett Barnett lived a few years ago. Mr. Hodge's dwelling stood on Section 8, near and south of where my father built, and where Emerson Street lived ten years ago. So Mr. Hodge was our nearest neighbor.

" The country was thickly covered with a tall, heavy forest, having a dense undergrowth of shrubs, wild grass and weeds. I will name the trees most abundant: first, beech, sugar tree, ash.

three varieties, gray, blue and swamp; oak, five varieties, white, red, burr, pin and river; poplar; walnut - white and black ; elm - red or slippery, and white or hickory; hickory - white or shell-bark, and black or pignut ; buckeye, linn, wild-maple, hackberry, coffee-nut, honey-locust, cottonwood. The undergrowth was spice-bush, iron-wood, water-beech, horn-beam, prickly ash, dog-wood, kunnekanic (Indian name - tree now extinct), red-bud, pr.paw, wild-plum, red and black haw, sassafias. In swamps there were black-alder, willow, thorn, crab-apple, young cottonwood. Weeds and. grasses were nettles, pea-vines, may-apple, ginseng, ferns, black snake-root, seneca-root, silk-weed, ramps (soon extinct), bear-grass, file-grass, skunk's cabbage, pond lily, cats-tail.

" The game were deer, squirrels - gray, red and black ; turkeys, pheasants and bears. Other wild animals - wolves, raccoons, ground hogs, opossums, porcupines, wild cats, foxes, panthers, mink, otters and polecats. Wild bees were abundant.

" People helped each other roll logs, raise buildings and husk corn, often going several miles for that purpose. For milling, people had to go to Milton, or even to Connersville. My father got a pair of hand mill-stones, and we ground meal upon them, rather than go so far to mill. We also beat hominy in a mortar, and used that and potatoes and squashes and pumpkins instead of bread. My father finally had his mill-stones geared, and much of the corn of the neighborhood was ground upon them. Two turning would grind pretty well, but four would rattle it out finely.

" Our clothing was made of flax, wool and deer-skin, all home made. There was no money to buy " store clothes," and very few to be bought. Trade was mostly by barter. Peltry, honey, beeswax (for there were bees, both wild and tame), etc., were traded for salt, iron (which always had to be bought), and sometimes for leather, though many tanned their own leather, and many wore only moccasins. Hides were tanned in great troughs made from trunks of large trees chopped out hollow.

" Winter clothing was coon-skin caps, dressed deer-skin hunting shirts, pants and moccasins. Summer wear was linen, straw hats, bare-feet or moccasins. We often got moccasins from the Indians for corn, butter, hominy, salt, etc. The people, thougli now they would be called rough and uncouth, were yet neighborly, kind, sociable and affectionate, and intelligent and moral withal.

" The wild range was good for many years, and we soon had plenty of cattle, which furnished abundance of milk, butter and meat, with hides and tallow to buy salt, iron and leather. From 1821 to 1828, a common way to trade was, so many young cattle for a thing, for (say) a horse, yoke of oxen, piece of land, etc., and anything from six months to three years old was "counted in." If the parties could not agree, the price was settled by referees. Sometimes so many bushels of wheat or corn would be the price. In 1826-27, money began to appear somewhat, and barter became less frequent. However, in the spring of 1838, I traded a large, rather ugly four-year-old horse, and a half-jvorn dragon-bitted bridle, for a forty-acre lot a mile west of Winchester, no price being named in the trade.

"Clearing land was done thus : " One foot and under," or " eighteen inches and under," i. e., all below twelve or eighteen inches, were cut, and they and the " grubs " and old logs were all burned up. The rest were deadened by "girdling" [i. c, cutting through the bark, or the sap), or by burning brush heaps around the trees. If girdled to the " red," the tree would die immediately ; if only through the bark, it would take two or three or four years, soonest if deadened in August. The deadened trees would fall more or less, and the land wihi>4 kw to be recleared each season for several years. Many, about tbe fourth year, would cut down everything standing, and clear the land fully. The trees would be made into proper lengths for rolling by "niggering," i. e., burning the trunks into pieces by piling large limbs and cbunks across, and keeping fires across the tree-trunks. Attending to these fires was called " watching the niggers." I have done it many a time, attending sometimes a hundred fires in one job. Sometimes, at first, land was cleared in the green, but as soon as they could, it would be done by deadening, and mostly in August, by cutting the undergrowth, with stubs a foot or so long ; nearly all would rot or die out the third year. The whole might be cleared by cutting and cross-piling and firing, with but little labor.

" When the land was cleared " in the green," the birds, etc., for three or four years would nearly take the crop. The trees left standing would afford them ample refuge, and they would . take heavy toll. In 1821 or 1822, a general inroad of turkeys, birds, squirrels, raccoons, and even bears, passed the West River settlement toward the South. Much of the crops were destroyed. The creatures crossed over the Ohio into Kentucky ; vast numbers were slaughtered as they passed ; I once killed three turkeys from one flock, and my father and brothers, five more, making eight in all. The little boys used to »be kept going round the fields, " hallooing " and screaming, to keep the birds away ; sometimes yelling themselves hoarse.

" In the fall and winter of 1821-22, a pigeon roost was made between father's h^i Huntsville, on the southwest quarter of Section 33, Township 18, Range 13, and northwest quarter of Section 4, Township 18, Range 13. They began in October or November, and stayed to lay and hatch the next spring. They would begin to come about sun-down, and keep coming till 8 or 9 o'clock at night ; some flocks would be more than a mile long. There must have been millions of the birdi ; on still nights, we could hear their noise to our house, a mile and a half. People would go there by night and kill them by hundreds, coming from Martindale Creek, and even from Green's Fork. The birds would lay their eggs in March, two in a nest, hatch and fly away, such as were left. I have seen but few for many years.

" In 1824, a terrible hurricane passed over my father's house. It was the second Sunday in July - the regular monthly meeting of the Baptist Church at Salem, of which my father and mother were members. My brother David and myself had been there and were going home ; hence it took place July 11, 1824, at 5 P. M. As we were going along the Jacksonburg road, near the county line, we saw a black cloud rising in the west and we stopped in an empty cabin, hitching our colts near by. The cloud roared terribly, and the sky became suddenly dark; in five minutes it grew as dark as a starlight nigiit ; no sound was heard for twenty or thirty minutes but a deep, dead, tremendous roar ; I heard no rain, no thunder, no trees falling, nothing but that awful roar, deep, dead and loud ; it stopped quite suddenly, and the sky grew bright again ; on going out. we saw there had been a heavy rain, and many trees, both dead and green, had been blown down around us. We started again for home, two miles north ; some trees had fallen across the road, but we got to old John Zimmerman's (Blount's) place, with little trouble. He and his boys were out fixing the fence to save the crops ; forty or fifty rods of fence were flat, and many trees also. John Zimmerman said (he was Dutch), " You can't kit home, te trees is all blown town acrost te rote." We said, "We will try." David said, "Our colts can go through the brush where a wild cat can't." The farther we went the worse it got. The thick timber began one quarter of a mile above, and for a half mile to the creek crossing there had. been no clearing, but it had been dense, unbroken forest. As we entered the mass of crushed and fallen timber, we tried to follow the track till we got to where Elijah Arnold built, and his widow Rhoda still lives (1864). We could get no farther; it was nearly dark, and stripping the bridles and old riding quilts from the heads and backs of the colts, we shouldered the things and put for home. The poor fillies neighed most pitifully as wo left them ; we got home before long, they came three days afterward. They never told us how they got through, neither can I imagine, but they made it somehow; we found the family unhurt, frightened at tbe terrible storm, but thankful for safety. Most of the roof was blown off, weight poles and all ; some of the clap-boards were carried 200 yards or more ; the body of the house was hewed logs, and they stood firm. Early the next morning, the whole neighborhood set to work, righting up houses, buildings, fences, etc., and on Thursday, we got the road opened again. Half a mile south of father's, a sound, thrifty-growing beech tree was twisted like a hickory withe, from two to eight feet above the ground, and was lying down all whole except that twist. It would seem that the tree had been bent over, and that while falling, it had been ' whirled ' by the tornado, and the tree was so tough and green that it would not break, but just twisted like a withe. I helped cut the tree out of the road ; it had stood west of the track and lay a little north of east. Another fact, at John E. Hodge's house, 300 yards south of father's, a twelve or fifteen gallon iron sugar kettle had been leaning against the southeast corner of the cabin, a low, one-story building. The wind moved the kettle three or four feet, and turned it bottomupward. Mr. Hodge's cabin was wholly unroofed, and some of the ribs and logs were thrown out of place ; the wind was stronger there than at father's, being 300 yards nearer the center of the storm. How far west or how high up in the air the storm was formed I never knew; it seems to have struck the timber at the Randolph and Henry line ; its course was about due east, and nearly in a straight line, verging slightly south. The extent of the storm was about six miles from west to cast ; it seems to have come down to the timber about the county line, and to have come nearer and widened for two and a half miles, then to have ground and crushed everything in its reach, for about one and a half miles in length, and a mile in width ; then it seemed to rise or . grow weaker, till at length it appeared to pass entirely above the timber. My father's house and the road we traveled were nearly a mile west of where its effect ceased, and its crashing track was about half a mile wide there, its whole track being at that point about three miles from north to south ; not quite a mile west, the crashing power was a mile wide, and for two miles farther west, the crashing force was a mile from one to one and a quarter miles. That whole region was a dense virgin forest, and the storm threw down all the timber in one immense mass. Some- four miles west, a road had been opened north and south ; that road was utterly blocked, and for years was wholly impassable for man or beast. This space, four miles east and west, and a mile or so north and south, was called the " fallen timber." Some ten years later the settlers began to enter and clear the lands and the tract is now occupied by fine farms."

" When father first came west (1817), not being satisfied with Warren County, Ohio, he took a flat-boat and floated down the Ohio and the Mississippi, stopping first in Tennessee, near Chickasaw Bluffs; he bought out an improvement there and located, but sickness soon drove us away from that region, and he went across the river to Little Prairie, Mo. Before long he turned his face northward again, coming back through Kentucky to

Warren County, Ohio. The first Indian I ever saw was near Chickasaw Bluffs, Tenn. I was afraid of him, and tried to liide behind father ; but the Indian (all painted and feathered) would ' peek ' around father at me, to scare me, I suppose.

" The great earthquake had occurred a few years before (1811- 12), and at Little Prairie we would often come to great " cracks" in the ground several feet wide. Sometimes trees Would be standing split partly open, and " iistraddle " of the crack. Two miles from Little Prairie, there had been before the edrthquake a lake of considerable size. The earthquake so raised the land fts to " spill all the water out," and the bottom was at that lime two feet higher than the surrounding land. Outside the lake Wete trees and canebrakes, but in the lake ground were only great weeds like sun-Hower weeds, called by the French " wample-pihs."

" The earth had not done shaking yet, for as I lay on the cabin floor sick with the ague, the house and the doors, and the dishes would rattle with the shaking of the earth ; and as we were on the Mississippi, the water would "ripple" As though there were a heavy shower, while yet the sky was clear and the air still.

" In New Madrid the houses had been cracked and twi.'jted by the earthquake, and stood so yet when we were there (although some years after the earthquake had occurred).

" I sat on the west bank of the Mississippi and looked across the river with a spy-glass at the deer and the bears as they would come down to the river to drink, standing upon the eastern shore.

" Benjamin Beverly's wife was Paul Way's sister, as also was Armsbee Diggs' wife. Thus there were six men with their wivf- and eighteen children, making thirty in all. We had four wagons, to wit: One two-horse wagon, two five-horse wagons, one four-horse wagon. John Moorman (with his son-in-law, George Wilson), had a two-horse wagon and a five horse wagon ; Paul W. Way (with Benjamin Beverly, his brother-in-law), had one five-horse wagon ; John Way (with Armsbee Diggs, his sonin-law), had one four-horse wagon, making sixteen horses in all.

" We overtook families of emigrants in every variety of locomotion ; some had only pack horses, and sometimes there would be a whole family with a single horse. I remember one such in particular. They had a little knot of a horse piled up with goods, with two or three children on top and the woman and baby besides. The whole cry was " to get to Indiana," no matter how, so as only to reach that paradise beyond the Ohio.

-' Our route lay across Blue Ridge, over the Holston, along French Broad and Crooked Rivers, through Sawanna gap, over Cumberland Mountains, an<l so througli Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio River at Cincinnati. We camped on New Year's night on a very high bluff on French Broad, with steps cut down to the river. We saw a live alligator, which to us childien was an unusual sight. There was a severe snow-storm as we were on top of the Cumberland Mountains, and we had snow and cold weather from there all the way through. The Ohio River was frozen over, and we crossed on the ice ; boys were skating, and ladies and gentlemen were riding in sleighs on the river. Our folks were afraid to cross with their heavy wagons and big teams ; and the men went over to Cincinnati and got men to come with long rojies and haul the wagons across the ice in that way. The hind wheels of Paul Way's wagon (which was the last one to cross), broke through the ice, and it was hard work to get the wagon out and across, but they succeeded. George Wilson (my father), was likely to have been drowned. He fell into an air hole up to his neck, and came near being sucked under the ice ; but he held to the ice and the men pulled him out.

" We mot a tribe of Indians (I think somewhere in Kentucky), going home with their ponies and their squaws. They had been to make peace, and to get their pay and their presents. There were 500 or more of them, men and women on ponies with the chief. Our company were greatly alarmed, but the Indians did us no harm. They isked for tobacco and bread, and they got what they asked for, so f;ir as our folks had them. We were very glad to get along with them so easily aa that. They went on their way, and our people passed on toward the Ohio, thankful to escape so cheaply.

"That winter journey was a severe one, and to look back it is not easy to see how we were able to gdt safely through. But by God's mercy we were spared to come safe to our looked-for haven. and to reach the friends who had already made the trip, and to meet them in joy and thankfulness of heart."

Paul W. Way, Henry II. Way, William Way, Robert Way and William Diggs had gone up White River from its mouth through the woods to Randolph County. Paul Way had gone back to Carolina to pilot the company through, and the others had stayed in Indiana. Henry Way and William Diggs went down to Wayne County during the fall and winter, and were married, and William Diggs and his wife are understood to have been the first family who settled on White River in Randolph County. Fannie Hill, of Jericho, oldest daughter of William Diggs, says her mother lived there for six weeks without seeing a white face (except probably her husband).

Such moving and such settlement as this would not very well suit modern notions of pride and comfort. But such was the way of the pioneers, and thus this goodly heritage gained its brave and hardy settlers.

The Ways, the Wrights, the Moorraans, the Diggses, the Pucketts, the Hills, and many others were numerous and noted in early times among the primitive settlers, and many of their descendants still remain.

[Note. - Truth compels us to state that the romantic travel up White River from near its mouth to the neighborhooil of Winchester, is declared by William Diggs, Jr., one of the party who is supposed to have made the wonderful trip, to be wholly a "myth;" that their journey was simply from Henry County over into Rnndolph, far enough indeed, but by no means su&h a journey as a trip the whole length of White River would have been.]'

[Note 2. - Jesse Way, who says he, too, was a lad in the same company of emigrants, though younger than Judith Wilson, insists that the party saw no company of Indians like that of which she speaks. It is difficult to sec how she could imagine the fact, more so than to consider that Jesse may have forgotten the circumstance].

[NoTK 3. - Another and perhaps a more serious objection to the correctness of her memory, is the question what Indians they could have been, and whither they were going. However,' Aunt Judith insists that they met the Indians, let them be who they might be, and no matter where they had been or where they might be going].

William Peacock

When I was a little boy, say six" years old, I used to go with some older boy to carry dinner to the men who were building Cox's Mill, on White River.

For a long time there were no ministers belonging to Jericho meeting. John Jones came about 1835. Benjamin Cox belonged to White River, and he used often to exercise at Jericho. Mr. Robinson has been a minister about fifteen years.

The early settlers were Henry Hill, Benoni Hill, Amos Peacock, Abram Peacock, Stanton Bailey, Jeremiah Cox, William Pickett, Joshua Buckingham.

Qeokge And Asenath Thomas, 1818

Asenath (Hill) Thomas was born in North Carolina, in 1815, and was brought to Jericho, Randolph Co., Ind., in 1818. Jeremiah Cox entered land in the neighborhood before Henry Hill came. Abram and Amos Peacock were the first settlers there. They came, also, in 1818, but before Henry Hill did. A Mr. Kennedy lived up White River, three miles away, near Mount Zion. Mrs. Thomas says, " We used to ' neighbor' with them, they lived so near us. We went by a ' blazed path' through the woods. An ' Indian trail' passed from the north and west^ through Jericho, and past old Benjamin Thomas', east of Newport. The Indians would go 'n companies, fifteen or twenty pack-horses at one time. They would call at father's (Henry Hill's) for bread and milk. They thought milk was a wonderful treat. They would bring hickory kernels, moccasins, baskets, etc., to exchange for corn, meal, salt, etc. One of their chiefs was named Johnny Cornstalk. He often passed, and was always friendly. He was a stout, heavy man, with large limbs and high cheek bones. He would come in and stay and talk and laugh and enjoy himself for hours with us. The Indians mostly talked very broken English, but he spoke our language quite well.

" There was one bad Indian ; the tribe had driven him off. He skulked round among the whites. Finally he shot a white man, and another white man shot him and wounded him, and still another man killed him. The Indians would not take him after he was wounded. The poor fellow got Mr. Lewallyn, of Ridgeville, to take him in. Mr. L. sent to the Indians to come and get him. They said " No ; bad Indian ; don't want him." The man whom the Indian had shot, found out that he was at Lewallyn's, and came there and shot him as he lay wounded in bed." [This was Fleming. See other accounts elsewhere].

"Friends' Meeting at Jericho was established about 1821. They built a log-cabin church, no windows, but merely holes, with shutters. The seats were poles, with legs. The women's side had a big fire-place ; the men's side had a hearth in the middle, with a hole above to let the smoke out. They would use coals from the fire-place, with bark, etc., that would not smoke much.