Northwestern Indiana from 1800 to 1900A regional history written by Timothy H. Ball . . . .
Source Citation:
Ball, Timothy H. 1900.
Northwestern
Indiana from 1800 to 1900 or A View of Our Region Through the Nineteenth Century.
Chicago, Illinois: Donohue and Henneberry. 570 p.
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA FROM 1800 TO 1900
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CHAPTER X.
MODERN OR RAILROAD LIFE -- 1850 to 1900.
With the opening of the last half
of the Nineteenth Century there came from the
eastward railroad builders, pushing their roads onward to the young city of
Chicago; and before these roads could reach that city they must cross the
counties of La Porte, Porter, and Lake. When the children and the deer and the
water fowls heard the whistle of the engines that drew the freight trains,
pioneer life came to an end.
A short review of that variety of life has, in a former chapter, been given; and
in this, by means of contrast and of historic records, an attempt will be made
to give some true impression of the railroad life or modern life of the last
fifty years.
So soon as these earliest roads, the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern,
passed through, Michigan City and Chicago, where the schooners could take away
grain, were no longer the only markets, for La Porte, and Old Porter or
Chesterton, and Lake Station, and Dyer, were railroad stations where goods could
be landed and from which grain could be shipped.
Miss Florence Pratt, in a paper on the Presbyterian history, in "Lake County
1884," assigning a reason why the church building, commenced in 1845, was not
completed till 1847, says:
"But money was very scarce, the country wild with very few roads
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or horses. Lumber was hard to get, and must be brought
on ox-carts from
Chicago or Porter County." And so for twelve years the people of Crown Point
held their religious meetings in their homes and in their log court house; yet,
before they heard the first railroad whistle, they did "arise and build" two
frame meeting houses. But now, when the railroad stations became shipping
points, lumber was brought in and the true era of frame buildings, for dwellings
and for churches, commenced. The log cabins, comfortable as they had been made,
became out-houses, stables and cribs and granaries, and the family homes were
clean, new, sightly, frame dwellings with ceiled or plastered walls, with good
brick chimneys an outside that could be painted and inside walls that were not
daubed with clay. Carpets soon were on some of the floors, large mirrors leaned
out from the white
walls, furniture such as the log cabins had not sufficient room to contain now
graced the more spacious apartments, instruments of music began to be seen and
heard in many a home, and comforts and even luxuries found their way wherever
the freight cars could unload goods and take on grain and hay, and cattle and
sheep and hogs, and butter and eggs and poultry. Soon there was much to be sent
off, and much, for all the farming community, was brought back in return.
Changes in modes of living, in dress, in furniture, and then in farming
implements, were not, of course, instantaneous, but they came very rapidly
along. Instead of beating out the wheat and oats with flails, or treading it out
on smooth ground floors with oxen or horses according to the old Oriental
method, as was needful to be done at first, threshing machines came to the
farms, even before the
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railroads were built. And then, instead of cleaning out the chaff by means of
the wind, fanning mills came into use, and one was needed on every farm; and
next the separator machine came, and so one improvement followed another as the
harvest times came round. For a few years in each July many would go
from distant neighborhoods to the large grain
fields on Door Prairie, a good cradler receiving sometimes two dollars for a
day's work, and one who could rake and bind and keep up with the cradler
receiving the same. From three to four acres a day
was a good day's work. But the mowers came, the reapers came, unloaded
from the cars they were taken out to the farms,
and men no longer swung the cradles hour after hour and day after day. And, at
length, the last triumph of human skill in this line seemed to be reached when
the great harvesting machines came, the self-binders, cutting the grain, raking
it into bundles, binding those bundles, all done by a machine drawn by horses,
driven by one man.
In the earliest years of settlement, and through all the pioneer period, oxen
were quite generally used as draft animals. They were on almost every farm; they
drew the plows, the wagons, the harrows, the sleds. They were on the roads
drawing the heavy loads to the market towns. They were strong, patient, hardy,
quite safe, not taking fright and running away, could live on rough food with
not much shelter; but generally they were slow. A few could walk, and draw a
plow, along with ordinary horses, but only a few. On the road an ox team did
well to make three miles an hour. A more true average would probably be two and
a half miles per hour. It took but a few moments to yoke them. The yoke was put
on the neck of
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the ox on the right, called the "off ox," first, the bow put in its place and
keyed; then the other end of the yoke was held up, and it was instructive to see
how the other ox, when well trained, would walk up and put his neck under the
yoke, in the proper place for the bow to come up under his throat to the yoke,
and there to be fastened with a wooden, possibly with an iron, key. When well
treated, they were gentle, patient, faithful animals, as for many generations,
along a line of thousands of years, their predecessors had given their strength
and endurance, in many lands, to the service of man.
But now, as here the modern railroad era opened, and changes in modes of
agriculture and living took place, horses for farm work and road work began
largely to take the place of oxen. Mowers and then reapers came to the farms as
early as 1855 and then onward, and for these and all the modern improvements
that followed horses were found to be more serviceable. So in some neighborhoods
in Lake County, the yoke was removed from the
necks of the oxen as early as 1855; in other neighborhoods not until 1862 and
1863, when large quantities of beef began to be wanted in the country; and when
the year 1870 was reached oxen as working animals had almost disappeared north
of the Kankakee River. One farmer sold his last yoke for $150. In Jasper and
Newton and Starke, as newer counties and not feeling so soon the influence of
the railroads, the use of oxen continued into later years.
There are many children and young people now who never saw a yoke of oxen; many
young farmers who would not know how to yoke them, to unyoke them, or to drive
them; to whom the ox-chains, and
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the tongue bolts, and the ox-whips for directing the
movements of three or four yoke of oxen in one team, would be quite strange farm
furniture. To them, many allusions to oxen in sacred and classic story have
little significance and beauty. Muzzling the mouth of the ox that treadeth out
the corn, they do not understand; of how much land a yoke of oxen would plow in
a day, they have not much idea. Some things we have lost, while many things we
have gained. Well and faithfully through all the pioneer time, these truly noble
domestic animals served well in their day. Each one, as a rule, had a name, and
old is the teaching, the ox knoweth his owner, but horses and steam and
electricity have quite fully taken the place now of these once trusty servants
of man. Their necks are free from
the yoke and their shoulders
from the bow. An ox-yoke
is itself a curiosity now.
Our yokes were generally shorter, heavier, with more work put upon them, and not
so straight as those used in the Pine Belt of the South, where oxen still do
much heavy work.
Returning once more to the pioneer period, people travelled then on horseback,
or in ox-wagons, and in large, two horse wagons which were used for any farm
purposes. Buggies and carriages had not, to much extent, been brought in. But
soon, when the railroad period opened, the young men purchased buggies and
trained their horses for the harness instead of the saddle, and soon the farmers
had buggies, and in these later years, good covered carriages, so that even the
stylish carriage and fine horses of Joseph Leiter, then the millionaire, the
brother of "the first lady of India," who in the summer of 1897 was accustomed
to drive every week from Crown Point to the
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Red Cedar Lake, were but little in advance of the carriages and horses of our
own citizens who count no higher up than into the ten thousands.
And where once, not so long ago, at our public gatherings were the ox teams and
heavy farm wagons, now, when the hundreds and the thousands gather, covered
buggies and close carriages are the general rule. As La Porte County is the
oldest, the most populous, the wealthiest of these counties, there, as might be
expected, costly carriages made their appearance first.
It was quite a struggle for a few years for the farmers to make headway and
secure the conveniences which the railroads supplied, for many were in debt for
their land, and prices for farm products were rather low, and money not very
abundant, until the changes came from 1860 and
onward, as the nation was entering into the scenes of the great conflict. Those
who are only about forty-five years of age cannot realize how financial matters
were managed before any "greenbacks" were issued. But since that change took
place in the currency of the nation, changes in prices being connected with it,
great improvements have taken place in the homes of the farmers. Little remains
now on the farms of the earlier farming implements. The entire mode of planting
and sowing, of cultivating crops and of gathering, has changed. It is singular
how so many once familiar objects have disappeared.
In the more costly and elegant mansions now, beautiful and costly and massive,
like those in the large cities of the land, may be seen elegant furniture,
costly engravings and beautiful pictures upon the walls, on the center tables,
papers of various kinds,
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choice magazines, the best published in the world, and near at hand, accessible
readily to the family, and to visitors, the standard dictionaries and
encyclopedias and large libraries of the noted and standard English and American
books. There is as yet no private dwelling that has cost half a million, but
there are, even in this corner of Indiana,
some few who may be called millionaires, although as yet
no city is here having of inhabitants twenty thousand. About fifteen thousand is
now the limit.
In the counties south of the Kankakee River, railroad life commenced in 1860,
and not fully until 1865, when the road now called the Pan Handle passed through
Monticello and North Judson direct to Chicago; and but a small part of Newton
County felt the direct influence of the age of steam until the Chicago & Eastern
Illinois road passed through Morocco in 1889. Lake Village is yet, as the
capital of Florida used to be called, "inland."
Along these years, from 1850 to 1900, when one
railroad after another was built across our borders, and stations were
established nearer to the homes of many of the farmers, and villages and towns
were growing, changes and quite rapid improvements were constantly going on
among all the farming communities. Not only were new farming implements
introduced, not only were much more showy and commodious dwelling houses and
barns and granaries constructed, not only were stylish vehicles often seen in
the carriage houses of the farmers, but the social life, the school life, the
church life, all were materially changed, and the farmers were, many of them,
accumulating much property. The domestic animals were largely on the increase,
except in the exclusively
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grain producing neighborhoods, and such large additions had been made to the
fixed capital and also to the circulating or loose capital in all this region of
Indiana, that a stranger, a visitor, might well
say, this is a largely prosperous, a contented and happy community.
Yet it may after all be questioned whether real happiness or satisfaction, as
connected with the activities of life, is any greater now, than in the early
pioneer days. The men and the women and the very children were founders and
builders then, looking eagerly often, surely hopefully forward, to the times of
greater abundance and enlarged comforts, which they felt sure would come; but
the very activity and effort were large elements in the enjoyments of that life.
When one has reached the position of assured competence possessed by one of the
grand pioneer men, a member of one of our old settler associations, who
expressed himself in this figurative language, that he had come to the condition
in which he did not care "whether school kept or not," it soon becomes evident
that after all he is not perfectly contented. Well said that learned and wise
philosopher, Sir William Hamilton, "It is ever the contest that pleases us and
not the victory." And he quotes the "great Pascal" as saying: "In life we always
believe that we are seeking repose, while in reality, all that we ever seek is
agitation." And he quotes Jean Paul Richter as saying: "It is not the goal, but
the course, which makes us happy." And he quotes, in the same line of sentiment,
Malebranche, one of "the profoundest thinkers of modern times," as saying: "If I
held truth captive in my hand, I should open my hand and let it fly, in
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order that I might again pursue and capture it." And on this same principle, the
enjoyment to be found in well directed human activity, if a young man in this,
our modern railroad life, could choose for himself an inherited abundance or a
reasonably sure inherited or acquired ability to gain for himself that
abundance, he would do well to let the inherited abundance go. Like the
philosopher, let truth fly in order to have the opportunity to pursue and
capture. So here it may be repeated, it is quite questionable whether, with all
the present abundance, the comforts, the luxuries of the present, there has come
any greater happiness than was enjoyed in the old pioneer days. The fact,
however, is, the prosperous farmers as well as the business men in towns and
cities are not "sleeping in their carriages," to quote a figure
from the once noted
Chesterfield, but are eager and active to still gain more and more. The pioneer
activity was a very healthful activity. Perhaps there is a little fever-heat
connected with the rush of railroad life now.
To one interested in studying human nature and in observing the workings of
character, the effects of the change of surroundings which the railroad era
brought were sometimes surprising and sometimes amusing. Those who in their log
buildings had been hospitable and courteous, refined and polished in manners,
continued the same kindly attentions to the needs or wishes of others. But some
who in their log cabins had been hospitable, although unrefined, when occupying
their well built mansions with plastered walls and painted surfaces and gilded
furniture, seemed to forget that ever they were inside of logs and mud, and were
warmed by the fire connected with stick chimneys. But good, common sense
character-
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ized the majority of those who had known pioneer life,
and only some of their young people could be charged with "putting on airs."
Bringing comforts, conveniences, luxuries, railroads also brought some
undesirable new features into both country and town life. They tended to
increase the number of saloons, to enlarge the bounds of Sabbath desecration, to
encourage the escape of criminals; and they opened the way for "tramps," a class
of men unknown in the early days; and connected with them, if not of them, came
"strikes." Some actual history of the years 1893 and 1894 will show their great
convenience in facilitating transportation, in aiding travel; and also show them
in connection with the conduct of a great strike.
In the year 1893, while the Columbian Exposition was open, the citizens of Lake,
Porter and La Porte counties, enjoyed great facilities for attending that
remarkable World's Pair, at Jackson Park, and witnessing the wealth of beauty
and magnificence that could be seen that summer in the White City. It was
estimated that fully two thousand school children of Lake County spent some
little time in that great exposition. A part only of the public schools reported
an attendance of nine hundred and seventy-three. Probably never again will so
many people pass over Lake County in one month on the railroad lines which enter
Chicago, as passed in September of 1893. The opportunities of that year, the
enjoyment of the rich life of that summer, can never by thousands in
northwestern Indiana be forgotten, as for six
months, so near to their own borders, the great interest was concentrated of the
civilized world.
The year of 1894 was vastly different. The fol-
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lowing quoted paragraph is
from the Historical
Secretary's report at the Old Settlers' Association of Lake County, read in
August, 1894:
This year has been no ordinary year although vastly unlike the last. Over all
our land it has been a year of uncertainty, of unrest, of some conflict; and, to
some extent, in all these we of Lake County have shared. There have been the
remarkable inactivity of the American Congress, the great stagnation in mining
and manufactures, the Pullman boycott, the Debs' strikes, the miners' strikes,
the assassination of the French president, and a war commenced between the two
great powers of Eastern Asia, China and Japan. In our narrow limits we have felt
but little change from these events which have
made this year memorable; but in the north part of the county for a time the
civil officers were unable to maintain law and order, and United States troops
and some eight hundred state militia upheld the law and secured railroad
transportation and the passage of the mails in the city of Hammond, quelling
disturbances also in East Chicago and Whiting. For a time in Crown Point, on
both roads, no trains could go through to Chicago, and passenger trains lay by
here for many hours, reminding us of the scenes during our great snow blockade.
The tents of the soldiers, the soldiers themselves on guard duty, the presence
of the soldiers with their arms in various places, the guard around the Erie
station, the gatling gun on the platform, caused Hammond to appear for a number
of days as a city under martial law. It was in our county a new experience to
have almost a regiment of soldiers under arms to preserve order, and to be able
to reach the Erie station passenger room only as one passed the sentry and the
corporal of the guard. We may well hope that such times will not often come. No
mail, no travel, no daily papers, no intercourse with Chicago. Some of the Crown
Point grocerymen had supplies brought out from
Chicago by teams as was customary before railroads were built. Happily this
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condition of things did not last long. The President of
the United States exercised his authority, the governors of
Indiana and Illinois
asserted theirs, troops poured into Chicago, and the gathering of mobs, the
lawlessness, the destruction of property, the impossibility of moving trains in
or out of the city ceased.
Historical truth and justice to a part of the citizens of Hammond seem to
require some further record here. In one of the city papers, the heading of the
article, "To maintain Law," a notice appeared of a meeting of citizens of
Hammond, in the hall of the Sons of Veterans, from
which notice some extracts and statements are taken. "The first speaker was
ex-Secretary of State, Charles F. Griffin, who, in a speech that was full of
patriotism and loyalty, paid a graceful compliment to President Cleveland and
Governor Matthews."
He spoke for half an hour, and said, when closing:
"The law-abiding citizens of this city have been outraged and their rights
trampled upon. The fair name of Hammond and Lake County has been blackened by
the work of rioters." "The methods employed by the mob that had possession of
Hammond last week forcibly remind one of the days of bushwhacking. It is high
time the citizens take action."
He then read some resolutions, which after discussion were adopted, which
strongly condemned the action of the rioters, their upholders, and of some local
officials, and which approved heartily the action of the President and of the
Governor "in furnishing military protection to life and property."
The names of others given as taking an active part in this meeting of citizens
who pledged themselves to the enforcement of law, are the following: Professor
W. C. Belman, Rev. F. W. Herzberger, G. P.
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C. Newman, J. B. Woods, Rev. August Peter, Colonel Le Grand T. Meyer, one of the
Governor's staff, W. G. Friendly, and E. E. Beck, who was chairman of the
meeting.
It was a time of no little excitement; the results in Chicago were then
uncertain; Hammond was the same as a part of Chicago in its locality; and some
who were called Hammond citizens had held a meeting not long before, heartily
endorsing "the conduct" of the officials whose action the citizens at this
meeting condemned, and denouncing the sending of troops by the President to
quell the disturbances. One of the resolutions, therefore, as read by Hon. C. F.
Griffin, contained this strong language: "Resolved, That the business men and
law abiding citizens of Hammond repudiate with disgust and alarm the disloyal
sentiments expressed by the resolutions of the so-called citizens meeting of
last Tuesday, and assert that they are not indorsed by the masses of Hammond
citizens."
Quiet was at length restored, the soldiers were removed
from Hammond, and trains could pass and re-pass without molestation.
In this record of an experience as a part of modern railroad life, that life
which in its different aspects and different stages it is the design of this
chapter to depict, it is not strange that in Hammond at this time there should
have been two very different positions taken; for, unlike Michigan City and La
Porte, which were early settled localities, unlike Winamac, Rennselaer,
Monticello, and Valparaiso, early settled localities all, Hammond, a city so
recently having become populous, separated from a
part of Chicago and so from Illinois only by an
air line, partakes very little in the characteristics of Lake County and of
Indiana.
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Geographically in Lake County and in
Indiana, few of its
thousands of inhabitants have a share in the traditions and associations, as
they had no share in the trials and privations and successes, of the earlier
inhabitants of Northern Indiana,
and so, in what is called the nature of things, they
cannot be expected to be identified, to much extent, with the interests of Lake
County. They form a community of their own, and must be expected to have the
characteristics of the manufacturing portions of Chicago, a part of which,
locally, Hammond is. But a few descendants of quite early settlers, as Charles
F. Griffin, A. Murray Turner, and others from
Crown Point and
from old settled parts of the county, have homes
now in that rapidly growing and enterprising city, while the thousands are, for
Lake County and for Indiana,
"new comers." And this same fact has its bearings in
making not only Hammond, but East Chicago and Whiting with their gathered
thousands, quite different from
the other towns in North-Western
Indiana. It should receive
due consideration from
those living in those three contiguous cities as well as
from those outside,
especially as more than one half of the population of Lake County, as claimed,
will no doubt this year be found inside of those three corporations and all
living within about three miles of the city limits of Chicago.
It is sufficiently easy to see how natural it was, at the time of the great
Chicago strike, that two very different positions should be taken in Hammond.
Leaving that not pleasant picture of the railroad troubles of 1894, other
features of this modern life claim attention, especially first, the change in
social life manifested in our various organizations, of which mention will be
made in another chapter.
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Year by year we have been adding to our organizations until the contrast has
become very great between what some would call the delightful pioneer times and
this advanced, progressive present. To take as an illustration the medium sized
town of Crown Point. In the earlier days, when it was the only town in Lake
County, there was at first a resident Baptist minister, and then, as he soon
left, a resident Methodist and Presbyterian minister. And the Methodist and
Presbyterian preachers and Sunday schools seemed quite sufficient for the needs
of the people. The same congregation for a time listened to the different
ministers, for their services were not held at the same hour. There was one
temperance organization the meetings of which all attended. To a great extent
all attended the same social gatherings. The people were not divided into
classes then as they are now. There were some dances which all did not attend,
but there was a freedom of intercourse among all the families and the young
people then, which would seem strange to the exclusive sets of this modern
period. And the same free mingling of families and of young people extended over
the entire region of all these counties.
Now, besides nine religious gatherings in Crown Point at the same hour, and
eight Sunday schools, and two Protestant missionary societies and two or three
Roman Catholic church societies, and a Christian Endeavor Society and an Epworth
League Chapter, and a fire company, there are some twenty other social or secret
orders and clubs and societies; some for men alone, some only for women, some
for young people, some exclusively for girls of one set, some for girls of
another set, some for boys or children; and so
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into about forty-five different groups or clusters, the children, the young
people, the middle-aged men and women of the two thousand or more in Crown Point
are divided up. And many of these meet every week. Calls, fashionable, afternoon
calls are made, but for the style of family visiting once known in the village
life there can be no time. The social life of the present, where the clubs and
societies demand so much time, where some have wealth and leisure, and others
poverty and toil, where into many circles some can never enter, must be a life
for the whole community of some dissatisfaction and unrest. But this is modern
life; for some almost ceaseless toil, for others select parties and club
meetings and attention to dress and manners and the requirements of what is
called "society." Some are, and many are not, "society people."
To produce in the large cities millionaires is one of the attendants if not a
direct result of railroad life, and in connection with millionaires select
society, inclusive and exclusive; and the same "society" classification goes
into the smaller railroad cities and towns where wealth is accumulating and
organizations for pleasure abound. On a smaller scale than New York they also
have their "400." Perhaps some should not be blamed for thinking "the pioneer
life was better than this!"
Leaving social life in the form of society so-called, it will be pleasant to
look now upon the modern assemblies called the institutes, as they enter into
the social life of these later years in a form quite different
from the clubs and orders and circles.
1. Teachers' Institutes.
The first Teachers' Institute, as
connected with the
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public schools in Lake County, was held in 1866 by
School Examiner W. W. Cheshire. But fourteen years before that time, in
November, 1852, the real first teachers' institute in Lake County was held by
Rev. W. Townley, and Superintendent Jewel, and Mr. Hawkins, of La Porte,
assisted by Dr. Boynton, who gave lectures illustrated by a manikin. This
institute was in connection with a private school under the management of Rev.
W. Townley, was held for a week in the Presbyterian church building, and the
subject of Normal schools as they then existed in the East was presented; and
besides the other branches of study to which attention was given, instruction
was imparted in vocal music and how to teach it in schools. Of course the
morning exercises were opened by prayer.
In other counties, indeed in all the counties now, as one of the requirements of
the Indiana school laws, during one week of each
year, these institutes are held.
2. Farmers' Institutes.
About 1890, probably in 1889, the
first farmers' institute was held in Indiana. They
have been commenced in county after county until now they have spread over the
State.
In North-Western Indiana the first was held about
1894, and February "15, 16, and 17," 1900, was held at Valparaiso what was
called on the programme "the closing Farmers' Institute of the State of
Indiana for the Season of 1899-1900." On the
programme for the morning of each day is given the name of some minister of the
town for an "Invocation." Each day is thus opened with prayer. It seems to be
quite a prevailing custom for farmers' institutes and for
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teachers' institutes, as for old settlers' associations, and for many other
organizations, to recognize in their public exercises the Creator and Preserver
of all, whom we call God. Sometimes an assembly, without designing to be
atheistic, forgets this quite well-established custom.
In regard to the large good accomplished by this institute work for the farming
communities those who have attended these schools of instruction, much of that
instruction conveyed in the details of personal experience, could readily
testify. The growing interest manifested in these gatherings, and the class of
men attending as lecturers, such as Professor Latta, of Purdue, Mr. Billingsley,
of Indianapolis, in the tile department, and Mr. C. Husselman, general lecturer,
show that applications of science to dairying, agriculture, and stock raising,
are becoming well appreciated.
3. Sunday-School Institutes.
A Sunday-school convention is
quite different from a Sunday-school institute,
although some Sunday-school workers do not seem to recognize the difference. The
institutes proper, like those for teachers and for farmers, are gatherings
designed especially for imparting and receiving instruction, instruction, of
course, in regard to Sunday-school work. Between the years 1865 and 1890
institutes were held in many parts of Lake County, besides the annual and
sometimes quarterly conventions. These institutes were conducted to a large
extent by the county Sunday-school secretary who was aided by teachers and
others in the county; but a few were denominational and were conducted by some
workers from other counties. In Porter and La
Porte counties, the Sunday-
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school centers being mainly Valparaiso and Hebron, and
Michigan City and La Porte, institutes and also conventions have been held; but
not so frequently and regularly as in Lake County. In Starke County much good
Sunday-school work has been thus done, the popular and efficient public school
superintendent for several years, W. B. Sinclair, being also an active
Sunday-school worker. And in the counties of Pulaski and White, of Newton and
Jasper, a good amount of Sunday-school work, and surely of good, has been
accomplished. Sunday-schools were commenced in pioneer times, but these
conventions and institutes belong to our modern life.
4. Temperance Institutes.
Of the four
classes of institutes held in our counties, this one may well be called moral,
the object of these institutes being to promote the cause of temperance and the
cause of purity. They help to encourage the great need of watchfulness in
providing for the young a pure literature and pure displays in art. It is
recognized that impurity and intemperance go together. As a good authority has
said, "As a common curse they are one and inseparable." So while the
Sunday-school institutes are held in the cause of religion, the teachers, in the
cause of education, and the farmers, for the material good and prosperity of the
country on the welfare of which cities and towns depend, the temperance
institutes and conventions are held in the interests of private and public
virtue. In every clime the motto of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is,
for God and Home and Native Land. These unions are not so numerous as might be
desirable, but each one is a power for
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good. They are now, in Lake County, at Crown Point,
Hammond, Hobart, and Lowell; in Porter, at Valparaiso, Hebron, perhaps
Chesterton; in La Porte County, at La Porte, Michigan City, Westville; in
Starke, not any; in Pulaski, at Star City; in White, at Monon, Chalmers,
probably Reynolds; in Jasper, not any; in Newton, at Kentland, Morocco,
Goodland.
The members of these unions, who conduct the institutes and conventions, are
quite largely, perhaps entirely, the more active, devoted, and earnest members
of the churches; and so, in some towns, they take higher ground than do the
churches themselves, as organized bodies, on Sabbath observance, and on the
great moral questions of the day. They have no interests of politics or of
policy to keep them silent. They are a kind of advance guard of the great
Christian army in the conflict against immoral practices and habits and
tendencies.
Institutes this year have been held in La Porte County at Michigan City, a
silver medal contest having been held, the first ever held at Michigan City.
There were eight contestants and "Miss Maud Staiger won the medal." In March one
was held at Goodland in Newton County. "Six girls contested for a silver medal,
which was awarded to Bessie Perkins." In White County, at Reynolds, an institute
was held March 8, 1900.
In other counties where previously held, they have accomplished good.
The three northern counties began temperance work quite early, as they began
improving in other lines, even in their early pioneer days, and when the
"Crusade" movement started in Ohio, in Valparaiso
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were found some noble and brave women who took up the same line of work. It was
then February, 1874, when in Valparaiso there were eight saloons. The following
proclamation issued by the city mayor, February 23, 1874, will show the course,
in part, pursued by the women:
"Whereas, for several days last' past, large numbers of persons have been
engaged in assembling on and about the premises of citizens pursuing a lawful
business, and remaining on said premises against the will of the owners thereof,
and for the avowed purpose of interfering with their business; * * * now,
therefore, all such persons so assembling and remaining, are hereby notified
that such conduct is unlawful * * * and they are admonished as good citizens to
desist from the same," and they were warned that
it was a duty of the authorities to "disperse such assemblages." Singing and
prayer in the saloons was not to be tolerated in Valparaiso.
The women in a few hours had their reply published and distributed over the
city.
It commenced with a quotation from the Scriptures,
"Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?" with all of Psalm
2:1-4, adding a quotation from Acts 4:18, 19, and
5:29; and then it declared that the women had no purpose to violate the laws of
the State but that they believed they had the right to do what they were then
trying to do, and that it was their solemn purpose to go forward in the work
they had undertaken; and they close by saying, "if the hand of violence be laid
upon us, we make our humble and confident appeal to the God whom we serve, and
to the laws of the State whose faithful citizens we are." This reply was signed
by
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Mrs. A. V. Bartholomew, Mrs. L. C. Buckles, Mrs. E. Skinner, Mrs. A. Gurney,
Mrs. E. Ball,
executive committee, in behalf of the ladies engaged in the temperance
movement."
It was a grand uprising of the temperance women of Valparaiso, and meekly and
nobly did they pass unharmed through the excitement of the time.
Out of the Crusade movement of 1873 and 1874 grew the unions, and for twenty-six
years these have been living, growing, spreading over the world, and doing for
suffering humanity a large work.* The World's W. C. T. U. was founded in 1883.
The grand convention in Lake County was held in the Commissioner's room of the
Court House, April 27, 1880, as the published records say, "the first convention
in the county held under the auspices of women." Men and women were present as
representatives from West Creek, Cedar Creek,
Eagle Creek townships, also from Winfield, Center,
and Ross, and letters from Hanover and Hobart
expressing hearty sympathy in the work. The records say, "Mrs. M. C. C.
Ball, president of the W. C. T. U., presided. Miss
Annie McWilliams was secretary. The morning session was opened by the reading of
part of the Sermon on the Mount and prayer by Rev. T. H.
Ball. 'Only an Armor Bearer' was then sung." The record is added: "These
are supposed to have been the first religious exercises publicly held in the new
Court House."
The first address was given by Mrs. Susan G. Wood, twenty years younger then
than she is now, in
__________
*Fredonia, N. Y., Dec. 19, 1873, Washington Court House, Ohio, presents second
claim, and Hillsboro, though called the "cradle," is said to be the third.
146
the course of which she said, "Steadily and slowly we have been gaining ground.
Twenty, fifteen, nay five years ago we could not have rallied such a force as
presents itself before us today." Among those taking part in the exercises are
the names of J. Q. Benjamin, O. G. Taylor, Dr. J. A. Wood, F. Dickerson, H. Ward
(then a county commissioner), J. Harrison, C. Baugh; and Mrs. J. Skinner, Mrs.
Farfield, and Mrs. Young, visiting sisters from
Valparaiso. Before the convention closed devotional exercises were conducted by
Rev. O. C. Haskell and Rev. E. H. Brooks.
Since that day, along the twenty years that have passed, conventions and
temperance institutes have been held in the different counties, and some good
has surely been done, although the two amendments which were that year proposed
to be added to our State Constitution, the one in favor of prohibition and the
other in favor of woman suffrage, never were permitted by the General Assembly
of Indiana to come for adoption or rejection
before the voters of the State. And the number of saloons, since the Porter
County Crusade, has largely increased. But the thousand saloons of North-Western
Indiana, kept as some of them are by well-meaning
men, and by fine-appearing young men, must some day yield to the moral power
along the line of the temperance unions. "Lawful" as the strong drink traffic
is, as the mayor of Valparaiso well and truly said, made lawful, by our county
commissioners, our State Legislature, and our Congress, all the legislation in
the world can never make it noble, can never make it good; and when that
promised time comes, when nations shall learn war no more, when the knowledge of
the glory of the Lord covers the earth as do the waters the sea,
147
when there shall be none to hurt or destroy the peace and welfare of others, the
time for the hastening on of which millions of Christian women are working and
praying and longing, there will be then no more saloons.
Good and praiseworthy as are the other three varieties of institutes, no good
citizen should fail to encourage those that seek to promote in all home life
temperance and purity, purity in literature, purity in art, that seek to build
up in boys and girls alike true and equal virtue. One large page of progress in
our modern or railroad life, notwithstanding the demoralizing influences
supposed to go with the railroad, that great attendant and promoter of
civilization, is that on which we read the history of woman's work in the last
two decades of the Nineteenth Century.
NAVIGATION OF
NORTHWESTERN INDIANA FROM 1800 TO 1900
FRONT MATTER AND DEDICATION
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
- GENERAL OUTLINES
CHAPTER 2
- THE INDIANS
CHAPTER 3
- THE EARLY SETTLERS
CHAPTER 4
- WHAT THE EARLY SETTLERS FOUND
CHAPTER 5
- PIONEER LIFE
CHAPTER 6
- COUNTY ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER 7
- OUR LAKES AND STREAMS
CHAPTER 8
- LAKE MICHIGAN WATER SHED
CHAPTER 9
- TOWNSHIP AND STATISTICS
CHAPTER
10 - RAILROAD LIFE
CHAPTER
11 - POLITICAL HISTORY
CHAPTER
12 - THE WAR RECORD
CHAPTER
13 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
14 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
15 - RELIGIOUS HISTORY
CHAPTER
16 - SUNDAY SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
17 - TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF NEWTON AND JASPER
CHAPTER
18 - TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF WHITE, PULASKI AND STARKE
CHAPTER
19 - VILLAGES, TOWNS AND CITIES OF LAKE
CHAPTER
20 - VILLAGES AND TOWNS OF PORTER
CHAPTER
21 - VILLAGES, TOWNS AND CITIES OF LA PORTE
CHAPTER
22 - EARLY TRAVELS
CHAPTER
23 - PUBLIC SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
24 - PRIVATE AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
CHAPTER
25 - LIBRARIES
CHAPTER
26 - OTHER INDUSTRIES
CHAPTER
27 - SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER
28 - THE KANKAKEE REGION
CHAPTER
29 - DRAINING MARSHES
CHAPTER
30 - ANIMALS AND PLANTS
CHAPTER
31 - MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS
CHAPTER
32 - COURT HOUSES
CHAPTER
33 - ARCHAEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS
CHAPTER
34 - BIRTH PLACES OF PIONEERS
CHAPTER
35 - McCARTY
CHAPTER
36 - ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE
CHAPTER
37 - ALTITUDES
CHAPTER
38 - MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS
CHAPTER
39 - SOME STATISTICS
CHAPTER
40 - WEATHER RECORD
CONCLUSION
Transcribed by Steven R. Shook, April 2012