No bike rides for me last weekend. On Saturday Myra had an all-day church meeting near Howe, Indiana. She had had surgery earlier in the week and wasn’t up driving there herself. But she knows how much I like riding in that part of Indiana. She suggested I drive her down and spend the day riding. I liked the way she was thinking but the weather forecast didn’t cooperate. Strong winds, occasional rain, and temperatures in the mid-high 30s didn’t sound too inviting — especially the windy part. I suggested that I instead drop her off and spend the day at the Noble County library in Albion — doing research for future ride destinations.

Unlike in LaGrange County (where Howe is located) I know of no Black Hawk war anecdotes in Noble County. Noble County was mostly settled after the choice lands of LaGrange County had been gobbled up. There were a few settlers here in 1832, but there are no war scare anecdotes.

But I’ve often looked for excuses to do rides in Noble County anyway. The historical markers I’ve seen here and here got me started. The photo above is one from last year. I like these markers in part because they are not quite like the standardized metal markers that are sponsored by state historical societies. A little diversity in markers is good, and it’s also good to see something that’s so definitely the product of local people and interests.

I had learned that the Noble County Historical Society has published a book in which these markers, so that was one reason to go to the library. And of course there would be other local resources.

I forgot my computer at home, but had a productive day anyway. While working in the genealogy room, I got to meet Judy, the treasurer of the historical society, her husband, Bob, and their young granddaughter, who was photocopying documents for Judy. (She was being remarkably patient and persistent at it for someone of her age. And as with me, the effects of going without lunch to work on history got to be a little too much by the time the library closed.) Judy and her granddaughter took time out in the middle of the day to open up the Jailhouse Museum and give me a personal tour. I bought a copy of the historical marker book, and also a copy of an 1861 wall map of the county.

Several counties in our part of the world produced these maps around that time. Where they exist, they are usually the earliest plat maps available. They predate the county atlases that often came to be published in book form beginning in the 1870s. I had not known there was such a map for Noble County. It’s a color photocopy suitable for framing, in somewhat reduced form, but still mostly legible.

Judy has also produced some indexes to county histories. I wish I had had my computer with me, because then I would have looked up the Adam Engle whose name appears on the sign in the photo.

Last year I had sought out that road south southwest of Logonier, precisely because it was a piece of the old Fort Wayne to Goshen road that still follows the old path. But now I can’t quite see why the sign is located exactly where it is. Adam Engle entered several parcels of land from the government, but it seems none of them included this exact location. An Andrew Engle’s name is on the 1861 map, but not quite at this location. And there is an A. Engle on the 1884 atlas, but not precisely here.

So how did the local history people of Noble County know that the sign should go here? They may have had access to information I haven’t yet found. Maybe Judy’s indexes would have led me to the information they used.

The fact that Adam Engle seems not to have lived at the location of one of his early land entries is not particularly surprising. I often use those earliest land entries as a good first guess as to where someone lived — thinking that even if he bought several parcels of land over the years, he probably made their first choice at the land office very carefully because it would be his home and the location of his main farm operation. But land was bought and sold, and farmers did move around. One of the things that the rectangular survey system did was turn land into a commodity that could be easily identified, bought, and sold. Perhaps Adam Engle was someone who did a lot of trading in that commodity market.

YTD mileage: 213

I’ve already written about the surprise of my first-ever ride to Topeka in LaGrange County, Indiana. This was the road by which I rode on that day in 1997. The above sign about “Life in the Past Lane” wasn’t there back then.

This is downtown Topeka, facing west (again). Just down the street and on the right is a gas station/convenience store where I usually fuel up with a Subway BLT. I had timed my arrival in Topeka for a noon lunchtime break.

Topeka has a town marshall. (I also see that I took a photo of myself in the window.) I wondered if most Indiana towns have a “marshall” as opposed to police officers. It’s a term that seemed it would better fit Topeka, Kansas. But you never know. A great-grandfather of mine was a town marshall in Olivia, MN, back in the 1890s. So it isn’t just a term used out west.

Topeka had been called HawPatch until the railroad builders came through. The place reminded them of Topeka, Kansas, and the name got changed.

This was one of my destinations. Unlike Topeka (Hawpatch), it’s a place I had never been to before. It’s on State Hwy 5, just three miles southwest from Topeka, just across the line in Noble County.

Last year I had noticed the wooden historical markers like the above one elsewhere in the county. I learned that a lot of these markers have been erected, and that there is a book that lists them. The book isn’t available online, either for reading or purchase. I didn’t want to order one not knowing whether or not it contained much other information about the signs. I figured that someday I’d get to the historical museum in Noble County, and could take a look to see if it’s something I want. In the meantime, I can ride around the county and find them by the serendipity method.

I was looking for a marker at this particular site, though. The map below, from 1874, shows a place called Hawville in Section 3 of Perry Township. I figured something liked that would deserve a marker, and there was one. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking for it, though.

(The map image is provided by www.historicmapworks.com. You can click on the map to go to the page containing the original image.)

Although the book about the markers (written by a Martha Bushong) is not available online, it so happens that a sample of it is — in a rootsweb page about Hawville.

I wondered why the sign says 1891 when the 1874 map clearly shows it in existence long before that. The article from the book contains interesting information, but it doesn’t explain that. It refers to a 1891 newspaper clipping saying the town had recently been platted. But it doesn’t say anything about its existence back in 1874.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/10/hawville/feed/ 0 http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/09/mistaken-memory/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/09/mistaken-memory/#comments Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:16:24 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2008/06/09/mistaken-memory/

Last week, in telling about the previous Sunday’s ride, I explained how after taking a mile of gravel road, I came to a place where I decided to continue on gravel instead of taking the paved road. Here’s the intersection where I made that decision. Except I remembered it wrong. I didn’t take the gravel road; I took the paved one instead.

A few days after I wrote about it, I was tracing my route on a map and just couldn’t find a place where I would have gone an extra mile on gravel. Then I played back the audio recordings I made on some of my photos, and found that I stated quite clearly that I turned onto the pavement here. That I could have been so sure I did otherwise, after only two days, ought to be a caution when dealing with reminiscences of old settlers that were recorded 40 years after the event.

I had to have taken the paved road, or I wouldn’t have come across this old school. It was built in 1897, according to the words on the front. That’s 13 years newer than the two-room school I attended in rural Nebraska. The building is in much better shape, too.

I’ve ridden between Mongo and LaGrange a few times, but never came across this school before. I see from the maps that there are other roads between Mongo and LaGrange that I haven’t yet ridden, either. All the more reason to take another ride there, hopefully some time this summer. One of the great things about riding in this part of the world is that there usually are many good routes to choose from in getting from point A to point B.

But speculators also were a positive influence on the development of the new lands for agriculture in that they could offer credit to those who didn’t have the cash to buy, in a way that the national government could not. The national government had tried selling land on credit, but for a variety of reasons it proved not to be practical.

Yesterday I posted photos from the David Rogers memorial park. Rogers was a physician of sorts, not a farmer. The land he bought was for speculation. It included a lot more than just the place where the park is located.

The map above is a quick draft I made this afternoon showing Clearspring Township. The inverted triangle is where the park is located. The brown rectangles are land that Rogers bought at the land office at Fort Wayne. Last Sunday’s bike route through the township is marked in an orangish color.

I counted up 1280 acres, or two square miles, but the David Rogers Days Festival says he bought 1500 acres. I have not tried to reconcile my findings with what’s reported there; I assume the researchers in LaGrange County have access to a lot more information about it than I do. Here is additional explanation from that site:

[Rogers] came to LaGrange County from Wayne County, New York in 1833, just after land opened up for sale. He hand-picked various part-sections throughout the great hawpatch. His land purchases added up to 1500 acres. Settlers were arriving so fast, Rogers sold most of his land in 2 years. Sometimes he would even buy back and resell land after the residents decided to move further west.

It’s curious that Rogers bought so much of his land in the hilly country where two branches of the Elkhart River have their origin. That would not have been the easiest country to farm. I wonder if he also thought that was good land for finding the herbs he used to sell. The Festival article describes his activities:

Local folklore talks about Dr. Rogers traveling with his ox team and harvesting wild herbs. The herbs were then dried, packed in barrels and shipped back to doctors in the east who used them for medicines.

Rogers was said to have lived alone, and to have made periodic, long trips back east. In a quick look at census records on-line, it seems that he is listed on the 1830 census in Lyons (Wayne County) New York, and on the 1870 census for LaGrange County, Indiana. I didn’t find him listed on any of the censuses in between. Maybe he was not around either location when the census-takers came calling.

I’m glad the LaGrange County Parks and Recreation has put explanatory markers on the site. Until last Sunday’s ride, I hadn’t known about the Children’s Home to the north of the park. It was funded by Rogers’ estate. The brick building is at the farmstead in the distance, to the north of the cabin. That, too, is on land that Rogers had bought on speculation.

Oh, about those taxes that keep the land from getting developed. Nowadays most property tends to be taxed on its income-generating potential, sort of. It’s actually taxed on assessed value, but the value is affected by its income-generating potential. Early Ohio settlers would have seen that as a good thing in that it would have forced speculators to sell to smaller landowners who would actually put the land to use. Nowadays it’s often seen as a bad thing because it means there is pressure on farmers to sell it to developers so it can be turned into shopping malls and subdivisions. Organizations like the American Farmland Trust try to do something about it. Some organizations try to get property tax abatements for farmers who don’t sell to developers. A quick look at the AFT web site doesn’t tell me whether that is one of their strategies.

The David Rogers Park is near the south end of HawPatch road, at the head of a branch of the Elkhart River. I nominate it for the world’s most tranquil, refreshing rural park. Maybe it’s different when a lot of people are here, but I’ve hardly ever found other people here. One time it was the site of girl scouts campout, or something of that sort, but that still didn’t make me think differently of it.

I wish it had more of a connection to the Black Hawk story, but unfortunately, David Rogers, though one of the very first land buyers in the township, did not come here until after the Black Hawk war.

David Rogers is described in the LaGrange County history as somewhat of a nature boy. A sign by his grave says:

Dr. David Rogers was a land speculator, herb doctor, naturalist and philanthropist that earned a reputation as a generous healer. His estate was bequeathed to the Commissioners of LaGrange County to build a home for “the orphaned poor and other destitute persons.”

The red brick Children’s Home can be seen past the row of pine trees on the north side of the park. David Rogers Memorial Park is part of the original Rogers Children’s Home property and was the first LaGrange County Park.

Though the Rogers Children’s Home ceased operations in the 1960’s, the Rogers Children’s Fund still serves LaGrange County youth to this day.

This is a favorite place of mine, even though on this trip I was disappointed to learn about the origin of the log cabins on the site. They really are authentic cabins from settlement days and have been moved to this site.

I wish they could have stayed on their original sites so people could view them in context, even at a distance, and get an idea how the history related to the terrain.

But still, the park is a great place. Up on the hill, away from the road, one can still hear an occasional horse’s hooves on the road, pulling an Amish buggy.

Even though I lingered here longer than I needed just for a break, I should have spent more time trying to get better photos. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll be back for more.

This road, from the beginning of last Sunday’s ride, is now added to my list of favorites. It’s not quite in the same league as the Hawpatch Road, but it’s a pleasant 5-mile stretch where the motorized traffic has been very sparse every time I’ve ridden there.

Map of the road

This map shows the approximate location of the Nasby Dam, I hope. (When editing google maps I can’t see the rivers, but when they display they tend to show up.)

The route is mostly through the Pigeon River State Fish and Wildlife Area.

I learned about the Nasby Dam back on my very first self-contained bicycle tour, a three-day outing in 1997. I had an appointment to talk with a man in his 90s who said that when he was a boy, he had seen some of the remains of the fort the settlers had built at Cedar Lake at the time of the Black Hawk war. The remains consisted of logs that had been underwater ever since a dam had raised the level of the lake.

While at his house, I also talked with this gentleman’s friend, a woman, not quite as old as he was, who owned a neighboring farm. She showed me old photos of Mongo and the dams along the Pigeon River, I believe from the 1920s or 1930s, when they were still used to generate electric power. Her father had been in charge of managing the water level. She explained that she had been a tomboy when she was young, and used to go out with him on the icy walkway to raise or lower the boards that controlled the water level. It was somewhat dangerous work. That walkway no longer exists, and in fact it looks like there is a different sort of spillway than what I remember seeing on those photos.

There was one other person at the dam — a young man who had been fishing below the dam without success, so decided to try his luck above, in the reservoir.

I had come through Ontario Saturday evening. I decided to take a different route to LaGrange, starting with one of the gravel roads heading south. Here I stopped to listen to the green frogs and bullfrogs. I liked the road so much that at the next intersection with a paved road, I decided to keep going on gravel for another mile. Then I took paved roads to LaGrange and the HawPatch Road.

This is supposed to be a blog about settlement-era history, so I’ll mention that the Pigeon River is named for White Pigeon, a Potawatomi leader who happened to serve as a scout for the U.S. Army during the Black Hawk war. His name is the only Potawatomi name on the roster that anyone has been able to connect with anything else in the historical record.

Most of the buildings along Hawpatch Road are neat and Amish white. But there are a couple of derelict buildings. One is a church. The other is this old school. At least I presume it was a school.

There is also a newer-looking Amish school down the road. This derelict looks like it never was an Amish building.

According to “An Amish Patchwork : Indiana’s Old Orders in the Modern World,” by Meyers and Nolt (2005), the Amish settlement in LaGrange county dates to 1841, 9 years after the Black Hawk war. But I presume this building goes back to a time when this part of the county did not have the Amish as a majority population.

Over at Amish America, Erik was commenting on how the part of the LaGrange-Elkhart settlement that lies east of Emma (in LaGrange county) is one of his favorites to visit. Well, there’s a road through it that rates high on my list of favorite roads to ride. It’s the Hawpatch Road — part of a road I presume once led all the way from LaGrange to Topeka. Topeka is a place that was called Hawpatch before railroad workers decided it should be called Topeka.

The part I especially like is less than four miles long. It doesn’t follow section lines, and it’s not a straight angling road, either. It takes gentle twists and turns among Amish farmsteads. These photos are from Sunday’s bike ride from Mongo to Ligonier.

There is now an Amish bike shop.

My favorite scene on this road is one I didn’t catch with my camera. It was on a Saturday ride with a bunch of Boy Scouts ten years ago. We came around one of the bends, and there was a young father teaching a son how to handle a team of work horses on the road. I suppose the boy was 10 years old, give or take. The team was in harness, but not pulling any equipment. The boy was walking behind, holding the reins, and behind him was the father, carrying a baby in his arms and giving quiet instructions.

To see scenes like that, it’s best to ride during weekdays. This time it was Sunday, when those big horses were getting a day of rest. The largest of the horses wanted to come close to see what I had, and the others soon followed. But although they were willing to pose, they wouldn’t stand back so I could get a photo of them up close with the farm in the background. So here I have to settle with one I took before they all came up close to me.

I had a nice overnight bike ride this weekend. Yesterday afternoon I rode 65 miles to Mongo, Indiana. Today I did a leisurely 39 miles to Ligonier. Yearly mileage to date: 837.7.

I took several gravel roads today, which is one of the things that made it leisurely. I’m glad I took the one on which this photo was taken, a few miles from Topeka. If I ever rode it before, it was a long time ago. perhaps in 1997. It was one of two places where I saw a big crowd of buggies (and horses) gathered for Sunday services.