These photos are from the time in September 2006 when I made a stop at Granville. We had camped at Prophetstown State Park. It was while trying to find the campground the day before, riding back and forth to figure out where to turn, that I rode across the above railroad crossing (wet with rain) and went down. My helmet made a loud cracking sound as it hit the rail or whatever it was that it hit, but it didn’t seem that I hit it hard. I picked myself up, checked my bike, put the chain back on the chainring, and rode off, quite pleased with myself that the fall hadn’t bothered me any more than it would have when I was a kid. Later, after setting up camp, I decided my ribs were stiff and sore after all. Six weeks later I quit complaining about it — whatever went wrong had healed.

This photo is from the morning after, just after leaving the park.

I headed to the Tippecanoe battlefield, which is very close by, to get some photos. This was my 3rd or 4th visit to the place.

The battleground was donated to the state of Indiana in 1836 by John Tipton, one of the militia soldiers who had been in the battle. Tipton was later a well-known Indiana politician. The editor of his published papers points out that this battlefield site seemed to have some sentimental value to him throughout his life. This was in contrast to the matter-of-fact, unsentimental approach he had to just about everything else in his life. In 1908, long after Tipton was dead, the monument shown in the photo was erected.

In 1821, just ten years after the Tippecanoe Battle, Tipton had been a member of the commission that surveyed the Indiana-Illinois boundary. On the way back home, he came to the site where the battle had taken place ten years earlier. Here is part of his journal in which he described it (from the Tipton Papers, volume 1, pages 274-275):

took Breckfast & at 11 set out to view the ground where the Battle of Tippecannoe was fought the place wher the Town stood is on the NW side of wabash the River Run from N to S 2 mile below the mouth of Tippicannoe River on a second Bank or high ground Between the emminance on which the Town stood an the River is a Bottom of 50 yds Bredth the site high & Beautifull extending Back half mile near one mile NW of this is the Battle ground in a small grove of Timber surround by a narrow prairie through which on the N runs a small creek called Little Tippicannoe. on arriveing at the B[attle] ground my feeling is easier concieved than described the graves (8 in no) seem to have been opened. one quarter of a mile before we arrive here we began to find humon Bones on the B ground the Bones of men and horses lie Bleching together whither our men or Indians it is unknown no marble monument make the spot where the heroes lie who fell for thier country but they will live in memmory of the frends of Liberty.

The spelling and capitalization in the transcription are as in the original. Given how he struggled with it, it was interesting to read the following in one of Tipton’s letters to his son, Spear. (From the Tipton Papers, volume 2, page 619, dated 4-Jun-1832):

I have others to provide for as well as you and a wildly extended corrispondence will divert you from your studies and take money from me without a corrisponding benifit. I want you to write once or twice a month to me take pains to write your lines straight and arrange the letters in suitable form with capitals in proper places writeing is mechanical and can be acquired with care.

I once had the idea of following that 1821 survey route, taking with me Tipton’s journal and the surveyor’s field notes, and comparing the country now to how it looked then. I kept putting that tour off and had forgotten that it was even on my someday-to-do list until I was reminded of it while looking up the above information.