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 XVIII.

TOWNS AND VILLAGES.

In White County the large towns are not many. Eleven villages and towns will be named here. In the northeastern part of the county are three country villages having schools, some business, and mail facilities, but on no railroad. These are Buffalo, Sitka, and New Bedford. West of these, on two railroads is Monon, formerly called Bradford.

It is on section 21, township 28, range s, laId out originally on the northeast quarter of the section by James Brooks, James K. Wilson and Benjamin Ball in 1854 laid out additions. The first house was built in 1853. Joseph Chamberlain built a storeroom in connection with his dwelling house. Two other houses were built in the same year.

In 1879 tHe town was incorporated with the name Monon. It is quite a shipping point for grain. Three hundred thousand bushels shipped in a year.

In Monon are now streets paved with stone, the macadam pavement it is called, some well built business houses, a good-sized school house, and three churches.

These are: Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, and Presbyterian.

A small stream runs near the town. The two railroads make considerable business. The town has

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improved quite a little in the last few years. Population probably six hundred.

Wolcott, in White County, is the next town east of Remington, five miles, on the same railroad. Its population is about eight hundred. The churches are three, Methodist Episcopal, "Christian," and Baptist. There are three physicians and two lawyers. This is a great grain shipping point. There are two elevators, and it is said that as many as 10,000 bushels of oats and corn have been taken in on one day. One of the best, if not the very best, road in all Northern Indiana extends for four miles north of Wolcott, up near to the "Blue Sea." It is hard, smooth, and surely will be durable, made of crushed bowlders. Travelling on this road is delightful. In fact, this county is in advance of the other seven counties, unless it may be Lake, in improved roads. In White County, the construction of gravel roads commenced in 1885. Some have been made by private enterprise, but mostly they are (built by the township or county. But see "Improved Roads."

Near Wolcott is a large sand bed covering an area of ten or fifteen acres from which sand excellent glass tumblers are made. No doubt much nice glass ware could be made from this sand. It lies about four feet from the surface and has been examined to a depth of one hundred and forty feet without reaching the bottom. Probably some day at Wolcott will be a large manufactory for glass ware.

The town now has three dry goods stores, five grocery stores, one furniture store, two banks, and a good, frame school house, with five teachers. It is thirteen and a half miles from the south line of White County. In 1859 it was all open prairie, a part of

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the Grand Prairie which extended over all the south parts of Newton and Jasper counties, and across the western part of White up into Pulaski. As might be expected
from a prairie region, much hay is shipped as well as corn and oats. As a railroad station Wolcott dates from 1860 as do the other towns on this line. It is a neat looking town, evidently improving. Forty years it has had of growth.

Reynolds, west from Logansport twenty-seven miles on the crossing of the New Albany and Logansport and Peoria roads, while an old station, has not advanced rapidly. The estimated population is five hundred.

The churches are: Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist Episcopal, "Christian," and, counting one out a little way in the country, Advent. In all five.

Seafield is a station six miles west of Reynolds. One church; M. E.

Chalmers. Population 800. -- This place, which bears the name of one of the great and good men of Scotland, is south of Reynolds about seven miles, on the same road. There are three churches, one Presbyterian, one Methodist, one Baptist, and business houses such as would be needful in such a town. The people are enterprising.

This was first called Mudge's Station, a house having been built by a man named Mudge, probably in 1853,

The Methodist church here, erected in 1881, cost $1,500, and will seat five hundred people.

Six miles east of Monticello is a station called Idaville. It is in the center of section 28, township 27, range 2, twelve miles east from Reynolds.

There is here quite a large Presbyterian congrega-

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tion and a Sunday school with about one hundred members. It is a place of some business.

Burnettsville, three miles further east on the same road, is on the northwest quarter of section 25, township 27, range 2. This is quite a town. It is very near the southeast corner of the county. The Baptist church here numbers 184 members.

There was an early town, which like many others, failed to live on into these latter years, situated on the Tippecanoe River, section 21, township 27, range 3, where, in 1845, William Sill had in operation "a merchant grist-mill," also a carding mill. In 1845 the town was laid out and called Mount Walleston, but the name was soon changed to Norway. In 1850 this was quite a village, competing with Monticello in enterprise and population. But it did not live.

As the name indicates, this was an early Norwegian settlement, and one of these pioneers from Northern Europe bought a thousand acres of the choicest of this land near Norway. A saw-mill was started here about 1833. The name of this then large land holder was Hans Erasmus Hiorth. Another of these Norwegians was Peter B. Smith.

Monticello. Population 2,000. -- This locality, on the west bank of the Tippecanoe River, section 33, township 27, range 3, was selected for a county seat, named, town lots laid out and a sale ordered, in 1834, soon after the organization of the county. William Sill is called the first settler, who opened a store in 1834 and became the first merchant in White county. It is said that Peter Price built a cabin just west of Monticello in 1831 and became the first settler of Union Township.

In the new town Malachi Gray was the first hotel

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keeper. Early lawyers were: T. M. Thompson, R. W. Sill, and Judge David Turpice, who at length became United States Senator. Early physicians were: Dr. Samuel Rifenberrick, Dr. Rudolph Brearley, and Dr. Alson Potut.

In 1853 the town was incorporated. A large brick school building was completed in 1870, costing forty thousand dollars. It has a massive looking court house which is elsewhere mentioned. In front of the court house, in the public square, is a well of cool water, said to be in depth one hundred feet, and on two sides are plain seats for about twenty-five men and boys. These boys of Monticello have a delightful bathing place about three-quarters of a mile up the river, where the bank is low, sufficiently well shaded, the place secluded so that no bathing dresses are needed and no intrusions feared; the river bottom sandy, the cool, clear, flowing water of the Tippecanoe deep enough for swimming and diving,—all the circumstances combining for pleasant bathing. And well the boys seem to enjoy it. Exposure in the sunshine in the water has fitted them to be what one has called "boys in their sunny-brown beauty." And their stranger friend who visited them while they were diving and swimming in the morning hours of Thursday, July 27, 1899, and saw them in the afternoon of that day around the well and on the ground of the public square, reclining on the grass, calls these Monticello boys well-mannered. They showed no rudeness to a stranger.

Monticello has some streets paved with crushed stone; it has electric lights, telephones, and "water works." The water supply is from a spring some twenty feet in depth. The steel stand pipe is one

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hundred feet in height, or entire height one hundred and sixteen feet. The fire company have hose but no engine. The force of the water in the pipes is sufficient for their needs.


There are some neat residences in the town and some good business houses. There are three hotels and a boarding house.

There are three church buildings: the Presbyterian, a large brick structure, date 1873; the Methodist, also of brick, large, no date; and the "Christian." an older looking frame building.

Population about two thousand.

In Pulaski County as in White the large towns are few, and the first one to be noticed is the county seat.

Winamac. Population 1,800. -- Note. Much of the history of this town was taken from a paper read by Mrs. M. H. Ingrim, before the Woman's Culture Club of Winamac, April 29, 1899. I have added to the statements the results of my own observations and researches made in 1899.    T.H.B.

In the year 1837 a trapper named Kelly built a "pole-hut" on the Tippecanoe River and resided there until his death, in September of that year. He was one of the first inhabitants. Two log cabins were in 1838 "Winamac's next buildings." The names of builders unknown.

George P. Terry and Hampton W. Hornbeck are the next residents recognized after the trapper Kelly and they occupied one of these log cabins, keeping house for themselves, obtaining some supplies from Logansport, depending on their guns and fish hooks for meat. Deer, raccoons, and squirrels were abundant, and their flesh, with a little salt pork, flour, meal, sugar and coffee, from Logansport, made good, hearty

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living. These men were preparing land for tillage and not then directly building up a town. John Pearson, who seems to have had a family, before the year 1838 closed, occupied the other of those two log cabins, but soon built something more commodious, and then started a store with "two hundred dollars worth of goods and notions," selling to a few settlers who had founded the Hackett and Wasson neighborhoods, and to the Pottawatomies who brought in exchange cranberries and maple sugar and venison. When commerce commences town life soon follows, and more inhabitants came, and in 1839 the county seat was located. Twenty-two blocks were laid out in town lots and twelve streets located and named.

Twenty of these blocks contained eight lots each. Soon a government land office was located at Winamac, the one at La Porte, probably, having been removed to that place. The office was opened in a log building and entries of land were soon made. But the growth of the town was for some time quite slow. In 1846 there were about thirty families. In 1868 the town was incorporated, one hundred and seven votes then being cast. Churches, schools, banks and business houses came along, as the needs of the inhabitants of the now growing town required, and at length substantial, fine looking brick blocks were erected, the Keller block in 1880, the Frain block in 1883. The church buildings of the present are: a Roman Catholic, large brick building, quite massive amid the buildings around it, the most costly church building in the county; a Presbyterian brick structure, fine looking, the second in cost in the county; the third in the town is Methodist Episcopal, a frame building, painted white, standing over the burial place, so tra-

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dition says, of chief Winamac; the fourth is the "Christian" church, a frame building; the fifth is an old frame building occupied by the United Brethren and Free Methodists; and the sixth is the Lutheran.

Winamac has a brick school house, two stories and basement, built in 1895, costing twenty thousand dollars. A. F. Reid, Superintendent. Number of teachers, ten. School children in the town, five hundred and fifty.

Mr. Thomas Hackett is called the oldest resident of Winamac. Another old resident of the county is Mr. James Rover, living a mile and a half out of town, over the river, who was born in October, 1816. He is a good Christian man, a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, an active man, with his faculties still in good condition.

Being a county seat there are in the town many resident lawyers, among whom, in years, experience, and strong principles, Judge Spangler would surely rank high.

There is quite an industry in the edge of the town, a steam canning factory and hominy factory; buildings of brick.

The Tippecanoe River, a very pretty stream of water, is, at the town, one hundred and forty feet in width. The first island in the river below the town was the scene, according to tradition, of a sad tragedy in the Indian times. Their name for the island was Wasatch-a-hoo-la, the meaning said to be ghost or spirit island. Young Mi-neek-e-sunk-ta, "a dark-eyed Indian belle," was here one day with a young warrior who sought her love and wished to make her his wife. But already "to another tribal lover" "she had plighted her troth," and of course rejected his suit.

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Then fully equal in savage conduct to the young civilized white men of our day who shoot the white maidens that reject their horrid kind of love, this young savage, in his disappointment and rage, tomahawked the beautiful belle upon the spot, buried her body in the sand of the island, and disappeared in his canoe. He was not quite refined enough, like some of our "high-toned" young men, to kill himself also, but lived, possibly, to regret, and it may be hoped, to repent. "Mi-meek-e-sunk-ta's spirit is said to appear there and chant its wailing song frequently at the midnight hour."


A fitting legend is this for the town of Win-a-mac, where the Pottawatomies lingered till 1844.

Next to Winamac in size are the following eight towns, villages, and stations: Medaryville, Francesville, Monterey, Star City, Oak or Parisville, Pulaski, Denham and Thornhope.

The comparative size of these will appear from the number of teachers, taken from an annual report of the Public Schools of Pulaski.

Winamac nine and the Superintendent. Francesville, Medaryville, and Star City four each. Thornhope, Pulaski and Monterey, two each. Denham, one.

Star City is on section 8, township 29, range 1, about six miles southeast of Winamac. It was laid out as a town in August, 1859, by John Nickles and Andrew Wirick. Village growth commenced in 1860. The population is about four hundred. Although not yet a large place it has become a great shipping point for horses and for sheep. It has a large brick school house erected at a cost of about five thousand dollars, a Methodist church, a "Christian" church, and some Seventh Day Adventists. It is a thriving town.

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Thornhope, is a small village between Star City and Royal Center, a station without a station house, but a church, a school house, and a few families, a neat looking, pleasant, prosperous village. This is in Van Buren township, not far from the Pulaski county line. It is about one hundred miles from Chicago, as the Pan Handle Railroad counts the miles.

Nine miles northwest from Winamac is a station and a small village called Denham. It is six miles only from North Judson. It has a large Lutheran congregation.

Pulaski. Population 150 -- A dam was placed across the Tippecanoe River at a favorable location and a saw-mill was put in operation there in 1854. In 1855 a grist-mill was added, and there a village started taking the name of the county. Across the river was a quite noted mound about twelve feet high and one hundred feet in diameter. It would appear, therefore, that this had been a chosen location many long years ago.

The present village' is not large. It has a Presbyterian church with a good Sabbath school, institutions which the mound builders could not have known. Also a Roman Catholic church. The school house is of brick.

Monterey. Population 425, is on the Chicago & Erie road, eighty-four miles from Chicago. It has two school houses, one a frame building, the other a brick building. The churches are two: Roman Catholic, the building of brick, and Methodist Episcopal, the building of wood.

It is the only station in Tippecanoe Township and is near the river.

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Oak, is the postoffice name and Parisville is the town name of this little place, population 75, in Van Buren Township, on the Pan Handle road. It has one church, Methodist Episcopal. In the school are 75 pupils.

Francesville. Population 900, is nine miles north of Monon, on the Michigan City Division of the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway. It became a railroad station, and then a village and town, like other places on this line when the road went through in 1853. Its growth has not been rapid. It has three churches: Methodist Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and "Christian." It has a two story frame school building, with two hundred and ten pupils. The usual business houses and professional men, for a town of a thousand inhabitants, are to be found here.

Medaryville, population 700, is six miles north of Francesville, on the same railroad. About the same kind of soil extends through this portion of Pulaski County. The public school building at Medaryville is of brick. The pupils number one hundred and seventy and the teachers are in number, five.

The churches are four: Roman Catholic, Lutheran, "Christian," and Methodist Episcopal.

The business interests similar to those at Francesville.

Knox was the name given to the locality chosen in April for the county seat of Starke County. It is on section 25 and 26, east half of one and west half of the other, township 33, range 2. At that time it was land, soon laid out in town lots, but without a house. But building commenced, families moved in, village life commenced, and then a town was formed. Civil as well as social life began. Its growth for sev-

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eral years was slow. Within the last few years it has improved rapidly. Brick buildings have gone up, large business houses have been opened, cement sidewalks have been laid down, and one of the best arranged court houses in Northern Indiana has been erected, completed on the inside with very modern improvements, at a cost of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. The population is estimated at eighteen hundred.

The Yellow River passes a little east and north of the town.

In Knox there are a Methodist Episcopal church, a Free Methodist church, a "Christian" church, and a church or congregation of Adventists, these having no house of worship, also a congregation of "Latter Day Saints" more commonly called Mormons. These have a building of their own. The churches are frame or wooden buildings.

Knox has a good, two story school house, but not modern, like the court house.

Half-way between Knox and North Judson is a station called Toto. It is on the northeast corner of section 1, township 32, range 3; has a school house, two stores, a Free Methodist church, about a dozen families, and a postoffice. This postoffice is one of the oldest in the county, and its peculiar name, Toto, said to be Indian and said to mean Frogpond, was adopted by the railroad officials as the name for their station. For the original location of the office, a short distance away, the name is said to have been perfectly appropriate. Before the great and the smaller ditches went through the county, a frog pond, one of the oldest residents there says, the location was.

Drainage, good drainage, changes the condition of

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land remarkably. The Indians would not recognize their "toto" now.

North Judson. Population 1,000.—This now enterprising town, seventy-seven miles out from Chicago, on the Pan Handle road, commenced village and business life about 1863. In 1867 "Keller Brothers," L. and J. Keller, commenced business. They had a store and a mill. The first year the amount of business transacted was about $7,000. It increased year by year until it reached $133,000. Their place of business is now occupied by "Craig & Kurtz," the house being called "Hardware, Furniture & Merchandise Co." Amount of business in 1899, $50,000. Expecting to reach $100,000 in 1900. Have shipped in one season two thousand bushels of huckleberries. The industries here are: 1. A curl grass factory, said to be the only one in the State. The native grass is twisted and curled into a form to be used in making mattresses. 2. A pickle factory, J. Nichols, Manager, started about 1890. Some 25,000 bushels of cucumbers used in a season. 3. A broom factory, to be changed into a different factory. 4. A sugar beet factory in near prospect. Seven thousand acres desired in an area with a radius of forty-five miles. 5. North Judson Brewery.

North Judson has four physicians: J. F. Noland, W. A. Noland, P. C. Enllerth, C. Waddell; and one lawyer, S. Bybee. It has three drug stores, seven business houses, two hotels. The brick school house, two stories and basement, built in 1896, cost $12,000. The churches are four: Catholic, Lutheran, M. E. and United Brethren. Population one thousand; some estimate at twelve hundred.

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Besides the Pan Handle railroad, the Chicago & Erie passes through North Judson, and also the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa, giving good railroad facilities in different directions. Incorporated some ten or twelve years ago.

It is located on sections 17 and 16, township 32, range 3.

San Pierre. Population 300. -- The station and town bearing the above name has had an existence about forty-five years. It contains three stores and a few other business houses. It has four churches: a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, a Methodist Episcopal, and an "Evangelical Association" church.

A brick and stone school house for 1899. Contracted to be built for $4,224.

The town is not specially growing. Location, northeast quarter of section 29, township 32, range 4.

Next in size to North Judson among the towns of Starke, and next in enterprise and growth, is Hamlet. For some time it was only a quiet little hamlet and a station on the Fort Wayne railroad, but the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa road lately went through it to South Bend, and this seems to give it new life. The population is now estimated at four hundred. It is at the center of section 24, township 34, range 2, six miles from Knox.

Grover Town, on the Fort Wayne road, has not made as much advance in the last five years as has Hamlet. It is on the northeast quarter of section 27, township 34, range 1. Number of inhabitants about two hundred. It has a United Brethren church, a school house, and business houses.

Ora, in section 32, township 32, range 1, on the Chicago & Erie road, and close to the south line of the

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county, is a young and growing village, with, perhaps two hundred inhabitants.


Between Ora and North Judson are two stations, Aldine and Alida, making nine stations in Starke. 

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

 

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