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PERRY COUNTY

A HISTORY

BY THOMAS JAMES DE LA HUNT

The W. K. Stewart Company

Indianapolis

1916

Copyright 1916

BY

Thomas James de la Hunt

1'-

APR 26 1916

IG1.A428715

To A Native of Perry County

To Whose Inspiration This Book Owes Its

Existence

MY MOTHER

Isabelle Huckeby de la Hunt

It Is Dedicated as a Loving Memorial

"To make the past present, to bring the present near'

— Macaulay

FOREWORD

As an author's privilege is conceded him the right to speak of difficulties met with, of obstacles overcome, in the preparation of his completed work.

Yet is it not more agreeable to recall the pleasures encountered along the roadside, the cordial assistance so cheerfully given, the spirit of ready helpfulness which ever brightened the most toilsome research ?

While individual acknowledgment of such favours cannot possibly be made, it is hoped that none among those whose aid has contributed toward the material of this volume will, on such score, deem its writer un- appreciative.

So marked has been the kindness shown, so encour- aging the words of loyal confidence expressed, that the twelvemonth of its actual writing has taught its writer in many unexpected ways the genuine quality of Perry County friendship, which reaches across all boundary lines to lend a helping hand.

It is believed that this same warmheartedness will make every allowance due for unavoidable shortcomings or omissions in the story now offered each one who may care to read.

Virginia Place

December, Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Exploration and Organization 1

CHAPTER II Pioneer Settlers of Each Township 8

CHAPTER III First Circuit Court and Officers at Troy 28

CHAPTER IV Removal of County Seat to Rome 35

CHAPTER V Revolutionary Veterans and Soldiers of 1812 42

CHAPTER VI Brick Court House and Early Residents at Rome. 53

CHAPTER VII Lafayette's Steamboat Wreck at Rock Island 61

CHAPTER VIII Lincoln Family in Perry County 68

CHAPTER IX Early Residents, Schools and Churches — Derby __ 74

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER X

Mining Developments at Coal Haven and Can- * nelton 85

CHAPTER XI Original School Laws and System 94

CHAPTER XII Founding of Leopold by Father Bessonies 104

CHAPTER XIII Rono and Northeastern Portion of County 113

CHAPTER XIV Lawyers, Judges and First Newspapers 121

CHAPTER XV Manufacturing Enterprises at Cannelton 130

CHAPTER XVI

Churches and Schools at Cannelton 145

CHAPTER XVII Second Relocation of County Seat 156

CHAPTER XVIII County Banks, Newspaper Changes, Etc 165

CHAPTER XIX River Traffic and Famous Steamboats 173

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XX Swiss Colonization Society at Tell City 184

CHAPTER XXI Pioneer Men and Industries at Tell City 193

CHAPTER XXII Immediately Before the War Between the States. 203

CHAPTER XXIII Beginning of Hostilities 212

CHAPTER XXIV Benevolent and Patriotic Work of Women 221

CHAPTER XXV Progress of War 226

CHAPTER XXVI Hines' Invasion — Morgan's Raid 237

CHAPTER XXVII

Bombardment of Hawesville 245

CHAPTER XXVIII Close of War 250

CHAPTER XXIX Industrial Development 258

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXX Adyeville, Branch ville, Bristow, Siberia 268

CHAPTER XXXI Rome Academy 276

CHAPTER XXXII First Teachers* Institute 285

CHAPTER XXXIII First County Fairs 294

CHAPTER XXXIV From Plank Road to Railway 303

CHAPTER XXXV Newspapers and Fraternal Orders 317

CHAPTER XXXVI New Court House— First High School 330

CHAPTER XXXVII Present Century Events 341

CHAPTER XXXVIII Indiana Centennial 352

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

CHAPTER I

EXPLORATION AND ORGANIZATION.

Perry County, Indiana, is one of the first memorials to the fame of the gallant American commodore, Oli- ver Hazard Perry, of Rhode Island, whose brilliant naval victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie, Sep- tember 10, 1813, was recognized and commemorated less than one year later by the Legislature of Indiana Territory through the bestowal of his name upon one of two new counties (Posey being the other) organ- ized out of Warrick and a part of Gibson, by an act approved September 7, 1814.

Since, however, all history must have its beginnings with the earliest inhabitants of any country or local- ity, let it not be forgotten that within the metes and bounds as thus established, some material evidence then existed to give testimony that Perry County was once in possession of the Mound Builders, that singu- lar race of nomads, or semi-nomads, who left traces of their occupancy throughout the entire Mississippi Valley. These Mound Builders being placed by reliable historians as contemporaneous with the early Assyri- ans, Babylonians and Egyptians, a speculative dis- cussion of their origin, sojourn and ultimate disap- pearance would far outreach the plan of this volume, nothing being perhaps more completely shrouded in oblivion than this strange race. Their works form their monuments, and tradition is even more silent than their tombs.

2 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

They are called Mound Builders from their custom of building vast accumulations of earth and stone in a variety of forms which indicate that some colossal force with intelligent direction was at work in the far- gone and forgotten centuries. Investigators have classified these earthworks by their apparently prob* able diverse uses — military, sacerdotal, ceremonial, memorial, sacrificial or sepulchral, and under the last two heads would come certain remains described by an elder generation as once existing in Perry County. Five mounds formerly stood in the north- eastern part of the county, on the old Stephen Deen farm in Union Township, but all were opened long ago by unskilled relic-hunters, and in the lapse of subsequent years have become indistinguishable through washing, plowing and cutting down.

Some of these mounds are said to have contained only deep beds of charcoal resting upon rude altars; one, nothing beyond concentric layers of superimposed soil ; while in another were a few implements of stone or bone, besides some crumbling human bones, mingled with ashes and charcoal. Had these human remains been immediately submitted to expert anatomical analysis, it might have been satisfactorily established whether they were the skeletons of Mound Builders or of Indians, who had to some extent emulated their pre- decessors in customs of burial, although they knew nothing of them, even by tribal tradition.

If the Mound Builders were the lineal ancestors of the Indians, the ancestry was so remote that not only was all relationship lost, but their respective osseous structure was distinctively modified in the lapse of immeasurable time. Ethnologists have found such structural similarity to the Aryan families of Central Asia that prevalent opinion now holds the Mound Builders to have descended from Asiatics who crossed to the continent of another hemisphere by way of Ber- ing's Straits and overspread all America. This hypo- thesis gives base to the further argument of some

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 3

authorities identifying them with "The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel," but practical conditions alone can be dealt with herein, however fascinating the theories neces- sarily excluded.

Undoubtedly the first white explorers of Indiana were the French voyageurs — missionaries or traders — who chanted pious hymns or caroled love-ballads while paddling their shallow canoes along the mid-western streams; so, by the establishment from time to time during the Seventeenth Century, of widely scattered 'posts,' of which Vincennes was one, all the vast region lying between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Moun- tains came under the dominion of France ; although it now seems more a dream than a historic fact that per- mission to traverse the bounds of Indiana once had to be humbly solicited in Paris, before that supreme voluptuary, Louis Fourteenth, whose lifelong philos- ophy was epitomized in his phrase, "L 'Etat, c'est Moi," ('I am the State,') or that the right of commerce with naked redskins along the Wabash ever lay in the hand which signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Louis Fifteenth, his successor.

British supremacy along the Atlantic coast was un- questioned, and England rested content with vaguely claiming the "South Sea" (Pacific Ocean) as the west- ern boundary of Virginia, the Carolinas, Massachu- setts and her other colonies. But when her traders began to push beyond the mountains they found them- selves everywhere forestalled by the French; so, at length, toward the meridian of the Eighteenth Century, the English government roused to the situation.

Thus was inaugurated the struggle known in Ameri- can history as The French and Indian War, called in Europe The Seven Years War, of which Thackeray wrote: "It was strange that in a savage forest of Pennsylvania a young Virginian officer should fire a shot and waken up a v/ar which was to last for sixty years, which was to cover his own country and pass into Europe, to cost France her American colonies, to

4 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

sever ours from us and create the great Western republic, to rage over the Old World when extinguished in the New, and of all the myriads engaged in the vast contest to leave the prize of the greatest fame with him who struck the first blow."

With masterly fidelity and vivid picturesqueness is the stupendous story narrated in Francis Parkman's monumental series of volumes: "France and England in North America," also touched in thrilling verse by the magic pen of Oliver Wendell Holmes :

"Long raged the conflict, on the crimson sod Native and alien joined their hosts in vain; The Lilies withered where The Lion trod. Till Peace lay panting on the ravaged plain."

Under the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763, France gave up all the territory east of the Mississippi River, except the town of New Orleans, a political and geographical status which remained until the Revolu- tionary War, when the Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, necessitated a new map of the American continent.

Richmond on the James then became the seat of government, after eighteen years of its administration from London, since the wide region now styled the Middle West was already part of Virginia. The emin- ent historian, John Esten Cooke, has said : "Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the right of any other commonwealth to its own domain, and if there was any question to the Virginia title by charter, she could assert her right by conquest. The region had been wrested from the British by a Virginian com- manding Virginia troops: the people had taken the oath of allegiance to 'The Commonwealth of Virginia,' and her title to the entire territory was indisputable."

Richest and most powerful among the Colonies, Vir- ginia v/as the foremost advocate for equalitv and union, to secure whicii she made a willing saciiiice by

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 5

yielding to the Federal government the noble princi- pality won for her, February 25, 1778, at Vincennes, by General George Rogers Clark, the hero of Foert Sackville. As "The Territory Northwest of the Ohio," it was first organized July 13, 1787, and on July 4, 1800. a new division was created by Congress under the name "Indiana," an appellation coined from the Indians who were its inhabitants.

Notv/ithstanding English control, the heart and con- fidence of the red men had always remained with the French, and the haughty, domineering policy of the British^government retarded commerce by causing the Indians to despise the English. Beyond a doubt, the foundation of Indian hostility to later pioneers throughout the West was laid in their early antipathy to the Anglo-Saxon people, which when once conceived was skilfully nourished by the proud, unrelenting na- tives under such crafty leaders as Pontiac, Tecumseh, Black Hawk and others, down to Sitting Bull and Geronimo.

Most of Indiana's area was originally the hunting and camping ground of three different though asso- ciated tribes, the Miami, the Wea, (or Ouiatenon) and the Piankeshaw, the last-named occupying nearly all the lov/er Wabash Valley and ranging along the Ohio River also, their extensive possessions making them a powerful factor in the celebrated Miami Confederacy. The boundaries v/hich these people claimed were arro- gantly defined at the Treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795, by Chief Little Turtle in the words : "It is well known to all the brothers present that my forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit, from thence he extended his lines to the headwaters of the Scioto ; from thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash ; and from thence to Chicago on Lake Michigan."

But as the early tide of immigration poured its flood of European settlers along the Atlantic coast, civiliza- ttion took up its westward march across the Apalah- chians. Disdainfully rejecting the enlightment thus

6 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

brought, the sullen, treacherous savage retired con- tinually farther into the gloom and solitude of his virgin forests. In time, therefore, several different tribes came to dwell in the same territory, the newer arrivals being called 'permitted,' so throughout the whole of early Indiana these wandering strangers were found. Among them may be named Delawares, Pot- tawatomies, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Wyandottes and Senecas.

The duration or scope of such varied tenure is prac- tically indeterminable, but the period of its close is fixed through the Treaty of Fort Wayne, June 7, 1803, and the Treaty of Vincennes, August 18 and 27, 1804, with all the leading tribes who could by any remote possibility claim the lands.

All the soil of Perry County became under these agreements the property of the United States govern- ment, subject to entry for settlement, and within twelve months afterward a sectional survey was made. The extreme northern portion was surveyed by Levi Barber in September, 1804; Range 3, West, by Elias Rector, in June, 1805, Range 2, West, by Stephen Benton, dur- ing the same month ; and Range 1, West, by Ebenezer Buckingham, in August, 1805.

Shortly following these surveys the Indians migrated to trans-Mississippi grants, except a few straggling remnants of tribes, isolated families who haunted the woodland countryside, occasionally harassing the earl- iest pioneers. When the newly surveyed sections were thrown upon the market, settlers appeared, though an interval of some two or three years went by before the first entries of lands taken up in Perry County were officially recorded at Vincennes, as the newcomers were reluctant to undertake at once a further hazardous journey across the trackless wilderness in order to file their papers in the Territorial Land Office, a frame building yet (1915) standing.

Many of these pioneers had come — as the Lincoln family did, earlier, into Kentucky — by 'broad-horn' flat-

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 7

boats, or by keelboats from the Old Dominion, and to this early influx of Virginians was largely due that lingering affiliation with Southern political principles which asserted itself sixty years afterward. Along that marvellous "Course of Empire," the Ohio River, they took their westward way, travelling the only com- mercial thoroughfare then available, a majestic stream with a history of imperishable significance.

Although two Moravian missionaries, Heckewelder and Zeisberger, toward the close of the Eighteenth Century, declared the name to be a contracttion of 'Ohiopeekhanna,' meaning 'the white-foaming river,' the strongest consensus of opinion has always favoured a derivation from the Wyandotte '0-he-yan-de-wa,' abbreviated on early French maps as *Oyo,' and for the French translated by the Indians as meaning La Belle Riviere, the Beautiful River.

Such is the name yet handed down to the descendants of those who traversed its long shining aisle through a fair green world, beneath the sun and stars of a century and a half ago. Reaching high into the foot- hills of the Alleghenies and the Cumberlands, beckon- ing to the colonists of Virginia and the Carolinas ; with outspread arms stretching as far as the sources of the Allegheny at the north and those of the Tennessee to the south ; the Beautiful River called through the for- est stillness with musical voice, then heard by the pioneers of Perry County and today still faintly echo- ing its appeal of home in the hearts of all their exiled sons and daughters.

CHAPTER II.

PIONEER SETTLERS OF EACH TOWNSHIP.

Just as the vast domain first organized under the title "Territory Northwest of the Ohio River," and later Indiana Territory, was reduced by successive divisions to the final limits of the commonwealth as it stands today, a similar process of elimination was fol- lowed in practically all the earliest counties of Indiana, so the extensive and unwieldy area of Perry County as created in the original enactment was gradually dimin- ished by the respective organization of Dubois County, December 20, 1817, Spencer County, January 10, 1818, and Crawford County, January 29, 1818. Such, there- fore, shall be the geographical boundary circumscrib- ing the region whose historic events it is the purpose of this chronicle to consider.

Section 5 of the Act approved September 14, 1814, reads: "And be it fm'ther enacted, That William Barker, Jesse Emmerson and James Stewart, of Gib- son County, Joseph Paddox and Ignatius Abell, of Harrison County, be and are hereby appointed Com- missioners to fix the seat of justice in Perry County, who shall meet at James McDaniel's in said Perry County on the third Monday of November next and proceed to fix the seat of justice for the said county of Perry agreeably to the provisions of an act entitled 'An act for fixing the seat of justice in all new counties hereafter to be laid off,* " These commissioners, there- fore, or a majority of them, met at the appointed time and place, pursuant to the Act quoted, to begin their labours.

The Greek classics describe Neptune, God of the Waters, as the builder of ancient Troy, a poetic para-

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 9

phrase interpreted as meaning that it was a maritime city whose site was determined upon as convenient abode for sea-faring men. Similar considerations, be- yond doubt, had strong influence with the earliest pio- neers who came down the Ohio River, and among these voyagers James McDaniel, Joseph Wright, John Bowie and perhaps some few others had found a haven just above the mouth of a stream which later became known as Anderson River. Here they located, with their families, negro slaves and household goods brought from Virginia, and while the exact date, claimed by some of their descendants as 1793, is undoubtedly too early, and now quite impossible to verify, it is certain that they entered land in Perry (then Knox) County during the first few years of the Nineteenth Century.

Thus sprang into existence a tiny hamlet, one of the first-born below the falls of the Ohio, sheltered under the wing of a protecting hill, a part of the lofty sand- stone elevation in Southern Indiana which physical geographers classify as the extreme foothills of the Cumberland Range. Even as Mount Ida (Tennyson's "many-fountained Ida") overlooked the walls of storied Ilium, this majestic ridge dominated the landscape and watched the feeble beginnings of Hoosier Troy. It is unknown to whom the name owes its being, or just when it came into use, since it does not appear in the act quoted, and its sponsorship has never been claimed.

With constantly increasing frequency south-bound vessels passed by, among them the brig St. Clair, the first ocean-rigged craft in the West; the sea-going schooner Amity and the ship Pittsburg built at Pitts- burg in 1801, which made the long river voyage to New Orleans, thence to Philadelphia and across the Atlantic to Bordeaux. Of these the Tarascon Brothers, whose name still lives on western waters, were the owners and builders.

Others constructed later at Marietta, Ohio, were the Muskingum, Indiana, Eliza Greene and Marietta, also the Dorcas-and-Sally, built at Wheeling, ra^'iing in

10 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

tonnage from 70 to 250. But after some few successes and numerous failures it was realized that river con- ditions were unfavourable for the operation of such deep-bellied ships, so shallower bottomed boats super- seded them as better able to negotiate an upstream voyage against floods, rapids and snags.

As all floating craft formed the habit of stopping at McDaniel's the spot became gradually recognized as a convenient landing place and its selection as a meeting point for the commissioners was a natural choice. The same arguments, added to the persuasiveness of ma- terial donations, no doubt carried weight in affecting the commissioners' decision, and after viewing several places along the river they finally fixed upon a tract of one hundred and twenty acres offered as a gift by James McDaniel, Sr., and James McDaniel, Jr. Solo- mon Lamb, who had come from New York state to these parts, also gave ten acres of land, and his brother, Israel Lamb, a cash donation, while among the other citizens of the vicinity sufficient money was subscribed for erection of the necessary court house and jail.

The county was next divided into the townships of Troy, Tobin, Anderson, Clark, Oil and Hurricane. This last-named appears for a time as Lamar Town- ship, extending on the west of Anderson River from the Ohio as far north as Dubois County. As a division of Perry County, however, its existence was brief, only until the organization of Spencer County, (1818) when it became the present townships of Hammond, Huff, Carter and, lastly, Harrison in that county. Subse- quent township changes in Perry County were the crea- tion of Union, Smith, Athens and Deer Creek, all but the first having been re-absorbed into the original dis- tricts, while Leopold, the latest civil division set apart, was not created until 1847, ten years after Deer Creek had been formed.

With no intention of awarding any precedence in antiquity to one portion of the county over any other, in here enumerating some few of the earliest settlers in

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 11

each township, the townships will be taken just as previously listed, leaving claims of priority for others to determine.

Troy Township's name was derived from the same source as that of the village itself, and a very early entry at the Vincennes Land Office appears as that of Elias Rector, in 1809, taking up Section 31, Fractional Sections 32 and 5, all in Township 6, South; Range 3, West, This lay about midway between Troy and the present city of Cannelton and became the later site of Tell City.

Elias Rector was the third of nine sons born in Fau- quier County, Virginia, to Frederick Rector and his wife, Elizabeth Connor, a daughter of Lewis and Ann (Wharton) Connor, of Norfolk, and probably a sister or cousin to Terence Connor, the pioneer of that name in Perry County. All these nine sons were educated as civil engineers, and in 1808 came in a body to Indiana Territory, whose area then extended from the Missis- sippi River to Lake Superior.

They established themselves at Kaskaskia, and formed a clan of remarkable brothers, who surveyed for the Government all the district known as Illinois after 1809, when set apart from Indiana. Besides this work, performed under appointment from Jared Mans- field, surveyor general of the Northwest Territory, whose headquarters from 1803 to 1812 were at Cin- cinnati, they were required to survey the lands of private individuals, many of which were old French grants difficult to outline, and for such intricate labour Congress, in December, 1809, allowed additional com- pensation to William and Elias Rector, upon the report of Senator Richard M. Johnson.

The nine brothers were strikingly clannish, each six feet in height, straight as an arrow, fearless yet quiet, with a chivalrous sense of honour and manners of courtly dignity. However interesting their personality, it is, notwithstanding, scarcely correct to designate Elias Rector as an actual pioneer resident of Perry

12 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

County. His entry was transferred within a few years to Nicholas J. Roosevelt, of New York City, a great- uncle of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, 1902-1908.

Roosevelt's purchase of the land may be accounted for by the circumstance that he commanded the first craft propelled by steam upon Western waters, the New Orleans, built after Robert Fulton's model, which made one successful trip from Pittsburg to New Orleans in the late autumn of 1811. That this boat landed at Troy is a longstanding tradition of creditable probability, and may be readily accepted ,as true, though equal credence can not be given to the parallel story that Robert Fulton, the inventor, was himself in Troy at the same time. The most reliable contempor- ary records accessible give no indication whatever that he was on board the New Orleans, even as a passenger, when the steamer left the upper Ohio.

Nicholas Roosevelt's idea was, most likely, the estab- lishment of a wood-yard as a depot of fuel supply for future passing steamboats; such as the Tarascon family early maintained at Shippingport (Louisville), but his sojourn in the Middle West was of short dura- tion and his lands were soon transferred into the name of Robert Fulton.

Abraham Smythe Fulton, a brother of Robert, is said to have come to Troy, making plans for a residence upon the highest eminence near by, and a famous 'log- rolling' was arranged for. With the boundless hos- pitality of the age, people were invited from many miles around, even as far as the scattered pioneers in Pike (later Dubois) County, along the "Buffalo Trace'^ whose existence had a singular influence in the settle- ment of Southern Indiana.

Only the seal of the commonwealth is today a re- minder that buffaloes once ranged in countless num- bers all over the state, and so many thousands of the animals made their annual pilgrimage between the licks of Kentucky and the prairie savannas of Illinois,

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 13

crossing into Indiana at the falls of the Ohio, that a well defined trail eventually marked the entire distance.

A winter of extraordinary severity near the close of the Eighteenth Century froze so completely all vege- table growth that hundreds of wild animals perished from starvation and the buffalo herds never regained their loss, the last ever seen coming or going being within the first years of the Nineteenth Century.

But along the pathway beaten by their hoofs, fol- lowed by the swift coureurs des hois, missionaries, salt- traders and other French pioneers, the eager feet of ambitious Virginians had already begun to press, and its eastern end was surveyed in 1805 by William Rector, while Buckingham's "Base Line" was run prac- tically parallel with the original Buffalo Trace across Pike County some miles north of what was once Perry County.

A swiftly tragic end came, however, to the merri- ment on Fulton Hill. A mighty forest monarch, hewn through by sturdy hands, caught in its fall Abraham Smythe Fulton himself, crushing out his life beneath its ponderous weight. The material already prepared was left to decay upon the ground and Fulton's was the first body interred in the Troy cemetery. No stone ever marked the spot, but old inhabitants of Troy long pointed out the grave. His mercantile interests in the village were transferred to Vivian Daniel and John Daniel (the later a son-in-law of Joseph Wright,) but the woodland acreage stood in Robert Fulton's name for another generation, known as the 'Fulton Tract' event through several interesting changes of owner- ship.

Aaron Fontaine, of Jefferson County, Kentucky, en- tered land near by about 1813, but was also a non-resi- dent owner, always making his home some miles west of Louisville, where he kept a ferry which still gives its name to Fontaine Ferry Park, an attractive pleas- ure resort in the now immediate suburbs of that city.

Wait Vaughan was among the earliest to locate near

14 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

Cannelton's present site, entering on Section 15, Town- ship 6, South; Range 3, West; where his grave, with some others of his family, is still marked by inscribed stones standing on a hill-slope of "Wilber Farm," long the property of the late Ebenezer Wilber and now the home of his eldest son, Henry H. Wilber.

Cavender, Cummings, Hoskinson and Thrasher were other pioneer landholders, besides Dosier and Cassel- berry whose names are preserved by two small creeks, respectively north and south of the original plat of Cannelton.

Tobin Township, unquestionably, can boast the greatest number of very early settlers, as well as some of the most prominent if not actually the first in point of time, while no other portion of the county has re- tained perhaps so many of its pioneer families to the present day, lineal descendants in the same name occupying the identical lands entered over a century ago by their ancestors.

This is due to the inducements for permanent resi- dence offered by the fertile soil of the rich 'bottom,' almost surrounded by an immense horseshoe bend of the Ohio River, scant two-and-a-half miles across at its narrowest point although washed by some fifteen miles of the stream's devious course. A hundred years of continuous abode, with the resulting intermarri- ages, have brought about a mingling of relationship in every degree among the old families, involved almost beyond the most expert genealogist and requiring a Herald's College to disentangle.

At the extreme southern end of the bottom, land was entered in November, 1807, by the Rev. Charles Polk (then spelled Polke), the pioneer member in Perry County of a prominent and widespread American stock tracing their direct descent from Robert Polk and Magdalene Tasker, his v/ife, of Somxerset County, Maryland, a stronghold of Irish Presbyterianism whither they had fled with other families of high posi- tion, leaving behind them valuable estates in the

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 15

mother-country and taking refuge in the province from internal dissension at home.

In 1689, the names of Robert Polk and some of his sons appear among the list of loyal subjects in Somer- set County who addressed a letter to King William and Queen Mary. "Whitehall," the handsome estate, de- scended to William Polk I, the second son among nine children, himself the father of six. From his eldest son, William Polk II, who married M. Margaret Taylor, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, sprang eight children, of whom Thomas I became a general in the American Revolution and father of William IV, a Revolutionary colonel, whose son, in turn, Leonidas, Bishop of Louis- iana, was a general under the Confederacy.

Of the same generation (sixth) as the Bishop, James Knox Polk, of Tennessee, (grandson of Ezekiel, brother to Thomas I, of North Carolina, who signed the Meck- lenburg Declaration of Independence,) became eleventh President of the United States.

The second son of William Polk I was Charles I, known in family chronicles as 'the Indian trader of the

Potomac,' the father by his wife, Christiana , of

five children, William V. Edmond I, Thomas II, Charles II and Sarah. The spelling Polke appears first in this generation.

Nine children were the fruit of Edmond's marriage, the second being Charles III (the Reverend) whose wife, Willey Dever, bore him ten children. Several died in infancy, and the most conspicuous survivor was perhaps Greenville Polk, who became a colonel in the Indiana Militia.

Jacob Weatherholt, who was a Revolutionary vet- eran of the Virginia Department, took up land in October, 1808, near the Rev. Charles Polke, and during the same year a tract two miles farther up the river was purchased by Alexander Miller. The Polk and Miller lines were early united through the marriage of his grandson, Henry J., son of Robert and Mary

16 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

Elizabeth (Evans) Miller, to Nancy, daughter of Greenville and Matilda (Simms) Polk.

John Winchel was born, 1760, on the estate of the "Great Nine Partners," Dutchess County, Nev/ York, and at the age of nineteen v^as married there to Rachel, daughter of Alpheus Avery. They came in 1809 to Indiana, and although John Winchel lived but two years in the new home, dying September 14, 1811, — perhaps from som.e of the strange ailments which mys- teriously swept away so many sturdy pioneers in their prime — nine out of his ten children grew to maturity and married, rearing families of their own.

These Winchels of the second generation may be here named, with their marriages, although considerations of space forbid carrying the line further. 1. John, Jr. 2. Smith, m. Annie Mallory, 1805. 3. Catherine, m. Arad Simons. 4. Phoebe, m. Daniel Ryan. 5. Charity, m. Benjamin Wilson. 6. Margaret, ("Peggy") m. Israel Lamb. 7. Uriah, m. Sarah Weatherholt. 8. Roxana, m. Robert Graham. 9. Mary, m. Edmond Polk. 10. Cassandra, m. Matthew Ferguson.

Perry County, as such, was unthought of when John Winchel's family settled in one of its choicest spots, as may be noted in the entry of the land which he bought in 1809, and for which a final grant was issued by the Government in 1818. In faded yet still legible ink, on parchment yellowed by ninety-seven years, one may read:

"James Monroe, President of the United States of America :

To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting: Know ye, that John Winchel, of Knox County, Indiana, having deposited in the General Land Office a Cer- tificate of the Register of the Land Office at Vincennes, whereby it appears that full payment has been made for the west half of section thirty-three, of township seven (south,) in range two (west,) of the Lands directed to be sold at Vincennes, by the Act of Con- gress, 'An Act Providing for the Sale of the Lands of

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 17

the United States in the Territory northwest of the Ohio and above the mouth of Kentucky River/ or the Acts amendatory of the same ; There is granted by the United States unto the said John Winchel the half lot or section of Land above described, To have and to hold, the said half lot or section of Land, with the appurtenances, unto the said John Winchel, his heirs and assigns forever.

"In testimony whereof, I have caused these Letters to be made patent, and the seal of the General Land Office to be hereunto affixed.

"Given under my hand at the city of Washington, the twentieth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the forty-second.

'By the President, James Monroe. (Signed.)

"Recorded in Volume 2, Page 77, Josiah Meigs, Com- missioner General Land Of!ice."

This interesting document, one of very few — if not the only original — of its kind preserved in this vicinity, is now owned by a direct descendant of John Winchel (Doctor Arad A. Simons, of Cloverport, Kentucky,) through the marriage of Catherine Winchel to Arad Simons II, who came in 1816 to Perry County. He was born February 18, 1783, in Mansfield, Connecticut, a son of Arad Simons I (who had been in the Connecti- cut Marine Service, later a civil engineer) and his v/ife, Bridget Arnold. The Simons relationship in Tobin Township is extensive through the female line, though the name itself, as a consequence, is not so frequently met in the present generation as that of many other pioneer families.

In this same region lands were taken up during 1814 by Thomas and Henry Drinkwater; in 1815 by Nath- aniel Ewing; in 1816 by Smith Winchel, George Tobin and Thomas Tobin (the latter of whom married Sarah, a sister to the Rev. Charles Polke,) George Ewing and

(2)

18 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

Lemuel Mallory, Revolutionary soldiers from New Jer- sey and Connecticut respectively, entered lands in 1817; Abraham Finch, 1817; Martin Cockrell, 1819. Farther from the river settled Alexander Van Winkle, 1815 ; Samuel and Daniel Hinton, 1817 ; Charity Sand- age, 1818 ; John Crist, 1818.

Near the present site of Rome, in Section 3, Town- ship 7, south ; Range 3, west; on August 21, 1807, 182.3 acres were bought by Samuel Connor, who was a con- spicuous figure in his generation. The son of a Revolu- tionary veteran, Terence Connor (or O'Connor) he was himself a captain during the War of 1812, and later a brigadier-general of militia. Terence Connor entered land in 1812, and two other Revolutionary soldiers, Richard Avitt and Abraham Hiley took up claims in 1816 and 1817 respectively.

John Lamb, 1809 ; Benjamin Huff, 1811 ; John Riggs, 1813; William Frymire, 1813; (both near the "Big Hill" west of Rome;) John Crist, 1814, (the ground afterward a donation toward the county seat;) and John Claycomb, 1816; were all in the same general locality. Just south of where Derby now stands, along the river, John Faith bought 255.62 acres in Section 4, August 21, 1807; Thomas Cummings, 208,03 acres, in Section 9, September 26, 1807; Abraham Barger and David Groves, 1810; Dade Connor, 1815, Adam Shoe- maker, 1815; John Shoemaker, 1817; Ansel Hyde, 1817, and Adam Glenn, 1818.

Anderson Township took its name from the river, or creek, whose meanderings water its entire extent, and owing to the consequent irregularities of surface- high rocky hills intersected by deep valleys — but few entries of land were made prior to 1820 in a region now thickly dotted with comfortable homes of prosperous farmers.

The earliest pioneers recorded were William Horner, Section 25, Township 5, South; Range 3, West; Eph- raim Cummings, Section 6, Township 5, South ; Range 3, West ; John Donnelly, Section 8, Township 6, South ;

HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY 19

Range 3, West. These, however, do not strictly coin- cide with the present boundary lines of Anderson Township, which then probably extended farther east than now.

At an election held August 7, 1820, at the house of Daniel Purcell in Anderson Township, twenty-nine votes were polled, but it must be remembered that voters in that day were permitted to cast their ballots at any convenient polling-place, wherever they might be. Precincts, registration, Australian Systems, or voting machines were then undreamt of. Only a few names, therefore, are recognizable in this list today as still of Anderson Township: Jesse Barber, John Beardsley, John Cassidy, John Davis, Richard Davis, Theodorus Davis, Gideon Draper, Samuel Eslick, John Farris, Thomas Fitzgerald, David Gregory, Daniel Hendricks, James Hendricks, Caleb Hicks, William Hicks, Smiting Irish, ( ! sic Goodspeed's History, 1885.) John Jarboe, Richard Kennedy, John Lanman, Samuel Morgan, Stephen Owens, Daniel Purcell, Wil- liam Royal, John Stuck, William Taylor, John Terry, Thomas B. Van Pelt, John Wheatley and William Woodall.

John Terry, with his wife Esther (Brown) and their family, came on packhorses about 1815 from Botetourt County, Virginia, into Perry County, and during their journey of several weeks met many wild animals and Indians. The twelfth of their fourteen children, Elias Terry, whom his mother carried all the way in front of her saddle, married four times, becoming himself the father of eighteen children. He was *a mighty hunter before the Lord,' having in early times killed as many as six deer in one day.

Two of his wives were of the Sandage family, daugh- ters of Thomas and Nancy (Simonson) Sandage, who came on horseback from South Carolina to Indiana, settling in Perry County about 1812. They had seven children, of whom the eldest, Nathan, married twice and had twelve children. Powell and Royal were other

20 HISTORY OF PERRY COUNTY

American families coming early into Anderson Town- ship, but its later settlement and development has been more marked through the thrift and industry of many Belgians, French, Swiss and Germans.

Clark Township is said to have been thus designated to honour a prominent early settler, Robert Clark, who on November 27, 1819, was chosen a justice of the peace at an election polling fifteen ballots. Robert McKim also v/as elected to a similar position, and be- sides the two candidates the other votes were cast by John Asbell, Solomon Byrne, Ephraim Cummings, Alexander Cunningham, John Faith, Thomas Faith, William Goble, George Hensley, Wilson Hifel, Henry Hill, Robert Hills, James Lanman and William Rov/e.

Ephraim Cummings' was the earliest entry of land, Section 31, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1816; John Faith, Section 17, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1817; James Ingram, Section 30, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1818 ; Robert Ev/ing, Section 3, Township 4, South, Range 3, West, 1819; Allen D. Thorn, Section 25, Township 3, South, Range 3, West, 1819.

Bradshaw, Chewning, Dyer, Goble, Hobbs, Lasher, Miles, Mosby, Van Winkle and Sumner all are names of constant recurrence in Clark Township, from its organization down to the present, as substantial citi- zens, landholders and politicians, no less than linked together by a network of intermarriages bringing about a perplexing entanglement of kinship back and forth unto the third and fourth generations.

As an example it may be mentioned that James Lasher, a native of Pennsylvania, who had served under General Harrison in the War of 1812, </