Getting to know the Mississinewa

(Sun Sept 27, cont.) Now came a chance to get to know the Mississinewa River a little better. I was going to cross it on my way to Boundary City and Portland.

It would be easy to miss it this far upstream, so I had to pay attention. In the photo above, it’s marked by the line of trees in the background. There is not much of a valley for it at this place. The little rise in the ground in the distance is for the bridge that goes over it.

The Mississinewa has been a part of some memorable bike rides.

A few miles downstream at Ridgeville, to the west, there are stories of murder and mayhem that took place along the river, involving interactions with the Native people. I didn’t even know about those stories when I crossed the bridge in July 2007. Earlier this year I came across the stories in a county history, but didn’t quite know what to make of them. Now I’m learning a little more about the characters, including Joab Ward, the source and a participant in some of these stories. This bridge crossing is in Ward Township, which is named after Joab. Here is a genealogy page that has information about him.

In 2001 I had a couple of memorable rides that took me to the Mississinewa. The first had started at Champaign, Illinois. On Memorial Day weekend I rode to several sites along the river, near its mouth at Peru. I saw the large brick house that had belonged to the Miami leader, Jean Baptiste Richardville.

That Saturday was a day that soon became a metaphor for the entire year. I rode to the Cliffs of the Seven Double Pillars and got caught in a big rainstorm, not realizing that tornados had been seen in the area until I was told about by some people in a vehicle who saw me at a historic Miami cemetery. Oh, so that’s what all the siren sounds had been about in Peru, over on the other side of the Wabash!

It had been rainy all week. I decided now to call it quits. I called Myra, asking for a rescue mission. It was too late for her to drive down that day, but she would come the next. But then I had a flat tire in the rain on the way back to the campground. That made me disgusted enough that I decided to finish the tour by bicycle and ride home — about two days away yet. In the campground that evening I was told the campers had been sent to the rec room for shelter that day because tornados had been seen. From the description it sounded like I had been where they were. I later learned that they did touch down and do some damage at the Lutheran seminary in Fort Wayne.

It was a good ride home because on Memorial Day I happened to meet a descendent of settlers during the Black Hawk days, which led to a family story about the war scare that hasn’t been published anywhere that I know of. I guess I should tell about it some time.

A couple of weeks later I rode back to the Mississinewa, going to a War of 1812 battle site northwest of Marion. I told about it here, on the phred touring list, where I started jumped into a discussion of how to pack a suit and ended by explaining my visit at that battle site, where I met a man who was descended from Eel River Miami, who was there, with his wife of Swedish heritage, trying to learn more about the Indian side of his ancestry.

BTW, I’m not planning to explain why the year was a turbulent one. I’ve explained somewhere how 9/11 was a part of it, in a personal way. But the year was a mess in many other ways, too. I’m glad it also contained some extra good bike rides.

But back to my September 27 ride. The story I was skipping this day, on account of not enough daylight to go that far, involved that War of 1812 battle, which had taken place in mid-December of 1812.

This clip from Tucker’s 1882 History of Randolph County (page 26) tells about it. The place I was saving for another day was the one on “Army Branch, Jackson Township.” But I wasn’t completely skipping the story, because the main remaining destination of the day was to a place connected to other persons of the same Hawkins family as the man who had gone to the relief of the soldiers.

View larger map

Here’s the google map for the photo stops (shown by green pushpins).

When I got to the bridge I stopped for another photo, still looking north. Traffic was so light here that there was no reason not to park my bike in the middle of the road.

When I got to the county line I was a bit disoriented, maybe because of too much Mississinewa on my mind. Did this odd intersection with a jog in the road mean I was already at Boundary City? I stopped to study my maps. No, I still had 2.5 miles to go for that.