James Malcom (or Malcolm,or Malcomb) was the first settler in Perry County, Miami County, Indiana. His farm was on this road a little north of the Eel River, on the place whose driveway is shown going off the road to the right. The 1887 county history almost apologizes for him, explaining how he ended his days:

He lived to see all these changes take place, but, contrary to his expectations, instead of accumulating a competency and living to enjoy the same, was compelled to pass his declining years in the county poor house where he died a common pauper.

Those settlers who ended up in a poor farm are not usually given much coverage in the county histories, but maybe there wasn’t much choice in saying something about it this case, given the man was the first settler and could hardly be ignored.

The above photo is one of the last I took on June 1 on the last day of our Kokoko-based outing. The first day of the next bicycling weekend was last Friday, and it so happened that my first stop was at the Jay County poor farm.

It was not an intentional destination, but it was a good place to stop. And it’s no longer called a poor farm. It’s now the “Jay County Retirement Center.”

There are still barns and farm buildings. Whether the residents get to make use of them, I don’t know, but there is reason to believe the residents appreciate the place. I found this item in the minutes of a recent meeting of the Jay County commissioners:

Were informed by Jay County retirement home director Rob Smith that a resident who recently received more than $20,000 in inheritance has spent the money in order to remain on the Assistance to Residents in County Homes (ARCH) program.

Smith mentioned the situation earlier in the month and said the resident will attempt to spend the money to remain on assistance in the county home.

The resident purchased a van for $16,000 which he will lease to the county for retirement center use after ownership for one year and will take the remainder of the money and donate it to the county home.

There’s not enough information in those sentences for an outsider like me to pass judgment on whether that’s a proper and welcome use of the county facility. But from the appearance, I could see that the place has its attractions.

BTW, now that I think about it, I believe that on that June 1 ride I passed by the location of the former Miami County poor farm where James Malcom ended his days, and even have photos of it. So maybe I’m not finished posting about poor farms.

YTD mileage: 1255.5

(Sep 27 concluded, finally). I never did find Caroline Hawkins Clark’s grave, even though I visited two other cemeteries after leaving the Hawkins Cemetery at the site of her childhood home. One of the two was near her adult home, which I take to have been on the site of the farm shown in the photo above. I base this conclusion on the 1881 plat map, which shows a C.H. Clark living there.

An examination of the 1870 census record for Pike Township provides corroboration. Benjamin H. Clark, Elizabeth Clark, and their four children are listed on the same page with other names that also appear in the near vicinity on the same plat map.

It was near sundown but I stopped for a quick photo here. I didn’t invest a lot of time here, because at the time I had been confused by all the Clarks and Hawkins on the plat map. I was especially confused by the name Caroline Hawkins. I now know that she was a sister-in-law — her brother Benjamin’s wife.

I stopped for a few minutes at the cemetery behind the Little Salamonie church, less than a mile from the C.H. Clark residence. I didn’t find a tombstone for Caroline Clark, but I didn’t stay long. While I was looking Myra called me to let me know she had got to Portland and was waiting. A woman with two young boys were also in the cemetery, the boys telling me their grandpa was buried in the cemetery. But they didn’t know anything about a Caroline Clark or Hawkins. So I took off.

I had to take a slightly longer route to town because the “Boundry Pike” was closed at this point. This was the last photo of the day.

I still haven’t found out where Elizabeth Caroline Hawkins was buried, if she was indeed buried. I don’t even know her death date. But if her own death is elusive, she had vivid memories of her father’s. In her 1887 reminiscences she wrote:

My father took sick in two years after we came to the country. He lived a year and died, and left us for a better world. You may imagine how we felt but can never know how it was. Only two neighbors, one six miles off and the other three, and our father lying dead in the house. My brothers, Sam and Ben, went to the woods and cut down a tree and split a puncheon out of it and laid father out on it and dug his grave, and mother made his burying clothes; they were Irish linen pants and hunting shirt. Tom Shaler went to Winchester and got some lyn boards and him and Billy Odel made the coffin. It was a great bereavement. Like all such things we had to bear it. We did the best we could. It has been sixty-five years since he died, but it is still fresh in my mind. I was eleven years old when he died.

This is her father’s tombstone, back at the Hawkins Cemetery.

YTD mileage: 2173

(Sept 27, cont.) I took this photo just before taking my leave of the Hawkins Cemetery. The cemetery itself is in the upper right, overlooking Buckeye Creek below it. (Did the Hawkins family give it that name in honor of the state they had come from?)

The bridge and overhanging vegetation make a sort of portal through which one passes from one world to another, almost.

This view is looking back toward the Hawkins homestead and cemetery. It’s not far away, but it can’t be seen here because of that portal effect. One has to go down into the Buckeye Creek valley, then across the bridge-portal into the yard.

I rode on and visited two more cemeteries, but didn’t find Caroline Hawkins Clark’s grave.

However, this past weekend I was surprised to learn that she may have left some unpublished reminiscences in addition to those published in the 1897 collection of reminiscences. In a 1992 publication by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, of all places, she is quoted as having witnessed a mass baptism in the Mississinewa River not too many miles from this homestead. A small, little-known group of Mormons had settled there in the early 1830s. Caroline Hawkins’ name came up in this passage:

The Prophet Joseph headed north toward Winchester to visit the Saints and assure them that he was alive. The Bowen family lived on Arba Pike near Winchester at that time, and family tradition says that Joseph Smith visited the Bowen house. The only other written record of the Prophet’s visit in 1834 is found in the memoirs of E. Caroline Hawkins Clark, written when Caroline was eighty-eight years old. She wrote:

“When I was thirteen years old, I went to work away from home to get calico to make me a dress and a sun-bonnet. I worked for Burkett Pierce on the Mississinewa river near where Deerfield now is.

“While I was working there, Joe Smith, the first Mormon, came to Randolph county and raised a colony of converts in Wayne and Randolph counties. … And he baptized them in the Mississinewa, near Deerfield. I was there and saw the whole performance. He baptized them in the night by torch-light. They marched to the river with torches. Some carried horns to blow. They had torches on both banks of the river and some up in the trees.” (Excerpt from unpublished memoirs of E. Caroline Hawkins, quoted in “Mormons Led by Joseph Smith through City in May of 1834,” Winchester News-Gazette, 22 Sept. 1984.)

So now I need to find out which repository or family member has those reminiscences. If they were available to the Winchester newspaper in 1984, I presume they’re still around somewhere. Maybe there are some more bicycle destinations in them.

YTD mileage: 2070.5

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/11/09/leaving-hawkins-cemetery/feed/ 0 http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/11/04/benjamin-w-hawkins/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/11/04/benjamin-w-hawkins/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:47:56 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/11/04/benjamin-w-hawkins/

(Sept 27, cont.) Here is a view of the Hawkins cemetery, facing north-northwest. I didn’t find the grave of Caroline Hawkins Clark here, but was surprised and pleased to find the grave of her father, John J. Hawkins, who I’ve already written about. His grave marker is the one closest to the camera.

Caroline’s brother, Benjamin W., is also buried here. The marker for him and his wife is the one closest to my bicycle, by the gate. The 1887 biography that I’ve already quoted from tells about the Hawkins ancestry (pages 487-488):

The first settlement in America of the Hawkins family was during the first half of the eighteenth century, when four brothers, John, Samuel, Benjamin and James, emigrated from England and settled in the Shenandoah Valley in the Virginia Coloney. These brothers were slaveholders, and were direct descendants of Sir John Hawkins, who was the first Englishman to establish the slave trade between Africa and the American colonies.

Wikipedia has some corroboration for this claim about Sir John Hawkins. It appears that he got the “Sir” for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588. He had begun his slave-trading a couple of decades earlier.

But three centuries later, a great civil war having been fought not so long previously, the family was pleased to report a different type of role with respect to slavery. I’ve already quoted a passage saying that Benjamin W’s grandfather on his mother’s side had left Kentucky on account of disapproval of slavery. Benjamin W.’s family didn’t claim for him any role in the abolition movement or in operating the underground railroad, but noted that he didn’t cooperate with slave hunters:

In his earlier life [Benjamin W.] had many interesting experiences while in the fur trade, carrying the mail and in other pioneer features of life. While fugitive slaves were passing through the country he refused to betray them to their pursuers even when offered $1,000 as a bribe.

YTD mileage: 2045.0

googlemap

(Sep 27, cont.) Even though it’s a tiny family cemetery, the Hawkins Cemetery rates a place name on Google Maps.

Two dogs came out to meet me as I walked my bike across the steel bridge into the yard. One of the disadvantages of riding on rural gravel roads is that most of the dogs haven’t been socialized to interact well with bicycles. They just haven’t had much opportunity. But these two dogs were the silent, friendly type. Maybe they had gotten used to cemetery visitors. Or maybe they were the type who don’t bother to bark at strangers unless their owners are around to be impressed by their watchfulness. But there was no sign of anyone being home.

Only the larger of the two dogs posed for this photo of a historic marker in front of the house — a marker I had not expected to find. The smaller dog wanted to climb up on me and help me operate the camera.

The marker reads:

On this spot
where once stood
the Nancy Hawkins cabin
ROBERT BURNS
pioneer Methodist Circuit Rider
conducted the first religious
service in Jay County
in the Fall of 1832

I had never before heard of Robert Burns, though he seems to have been a contemporary of another Methodist Circuit Rider, James Armstrong, who is associated with one of my Black Hawk war sites in Indiana. It looks like the De Pauw University archives have a set of Burns’ saddle bags in its collections. Maybe they have information about James Armstrong, too.

But I had come here because of Caroline Hawkins, not Methodist circuit riders.

It seems I had come to the right place, because the Nancy Hawkins who lived here was her mother. In an 1887 collection of county biographies, which includes that of a son who also lived here, I learned that she had taught her husband to read and write. (Her husband was one of those who was said to have taken provisions to the soldiers of John B Campbell’s starving, frostbitten force after they had destroyed Miami villages along the Mississinewa.) She lived here for 36 years after her husband died:

…John J. … was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, the date of his birth being September 25, 1789, and in his boyhood went with his father to Ohio, being reared without education. He was married to Miss Nancy Sellers, who taught him to read and write. He was a Lieutenant in the war of 1812, and later became a popular and very efficient sheriff of Preble County, Ohio. Losing his property in Preble County, he concluded in 1829 to move West, and the spot near the Little Salamonie which he had selected proved to be section 11 of Pike Township, Jay County, Indiana, and he was the first settle in the county. The family, consisting of the parents and six children, cut their way through the woods and arrived at their new home March 8, 1829, with but $3 in cash. All in the family who were old enough aided in clearing their land, and in the spring of their arrival had cleared and planted about seven acres, raising a fine crop of corn and garden vegetables. The first season they lived in a ‘half-faced camp,’ which was a rude shelter against a large log, entirely open on one side, the open side serving as door, window and fireplace. The following September they erected a log cabin. In those days their corn was taken to Greenville, Ohio, or Richmond, Indiana, to be ground. Game of all kinds was in abundance, and the father was an excellent shot.

The sale of skins and furs kept the family supplied with a little money, and by strict economy they managed to accumulate a little property. The father died March 15, 1832, from an injury he had received caused by the carcass of a deer falling upon him while he was endeavoring to suspend it. His widow survived until 1868. She was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, June 4, 1789, of Irish descent. Her father, Nathan Sellers, was a Revolutionary soldier, and distinguished himself at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown. While in Kentucky he was made a magistrate, and was finally appointed sheriff, which office he resigned because of the inhumanity of the laws he had to execute. A common mode of punishing negroes in that State was to nail their ears to posts and then whip them. He was strongly opposed to slavery, and seeing no prospect of its abolition in Kentucky he left that State of Ohio in 1809. He died as he had lived, a consistent Christian, in 1826. Several ancestors of Mrs. Nancy Hawkins served with Daniel Boone in the war with the Indians, and were victims to the tomahawk and scalping knife.

But the first order of business was to find that cemetery. It took some looking around before I spotted it behind me, up on the bank overlooking the bridge which I had crossed to enter the yard. If I had already read that 1887 biography from which the above quote is taken, I may have spotted it a little quicker. And I would have been absolutely sure that this was a good destination for the day’s ride.

The old home is picturesquely situated on the banks of the Salamonie River, retired from the highway, and its surroundings and associations so interwoven with the pioneer history of the county, the family burying ground immediately in front of the residence containing representative members of the family, even one buried almost a hundred years ago, all help to make the homestead of great interest, even to the most careless visitor.

The next stop was the cemetery itself. (I don’t recall seeing a marker for any family member buried a hundred years earlier than 1887, though.)

(Sep 27, cont.) Usually I ask permission before going into a cemetery that’s on private property. Nobody has ever objected, but it doesn’t hurt to ask when there is someone around to ask. But this time I figured the sign saying “Hawkins Cemetery – Sign donated by the Jay Hawkins King Family” was an invitation.

While riding to this place, the following passage from Caroline Hawkins Clark’s reminiscences is one that I had in mind.

Daddy killed three deers and Brother Nathen killed two turkeys. From that time on we had plenty of wild meat. Well, the next thing to be done was to clear a corn field in the green woods. It was bottom land and covered all over with spice brush. Brother Sam grubed five acres and the rest choped the trees down and picked the brush and planted it in corn and pumpkins, the 25th of May. We had a good crop of corn and such fine pumpkins the sheep had to be watched. Brother Ben was the shepard. We then cleaned a turnip patch and raised about five hundred bushels of the finest turnips I ever saw.

It’s the part about farming the bottom land. I can understand how settlers would have looked for good bottomland in the country along the Ohio River, where the only good places to farm are in the bottoms. But this country is not cut up like that.

There is a stream here, though. The driveway drops down into a little valley toward the horizon in the distance. It’s where a small stream flows into the Little Salamonie River.

To get to the farm place at the end of the drive, one has to go across this steel-floored gridge. I did look around at the bottom land, but didn’t take any photos of it. Other than the fact that settlers needed to live near water, it still isn’t clear to me why those bottom lands were the first to be planted into crops.

YTD mileage: 2036.5

(Sep 27, cont.) One of my maps had led me to believe there would be a cemetery by this church in Boundary City. I was looking for the grave of Caroline (Hawkins) Clark, thinking it might be in any cemetery between here and Portland. Caroline Hawkins was about nine years old when her family came to Jay County. She described it this way on the first page of her published reminiscences:

My father was John J. Hawkins. He was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, September 25th, 1789, and was a soldier in the war of 1812, and served three years. My mother was also born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, June 4th, 1789. Her name ‘was Nancy Sellers Hawkins. I am their youngest child and was born in Eaton, Preble County, Ohio, October 10th, 1820. My father moved to Jay County in 1829. We started to move the 1st day of March and arrived in Jay County the 8th. It took us eight days to travel fifty miles from Eaton, Ohio, to Jay County. We got to Greenville, Ohio, the 4th of March, the day that General Jackson was inaugurated president, 1829. The men were marching around a hickory pole with fife and drums. I asked my father if it was the 4th of July, and he said it was in honor of General Jackson. I have since learned that it takes the hickory poles to reach the public crib. Our nearest neighbor was ten miles away. The Indians were plenty for three years after we came, then the government moved them west of the Mississippi. My playmates were little Indian girls. We shot with bows and arrows, ran races and rode the ponies. We had no house to live in when we came to Jay County. We built a half-faced camp by a big oak log and lived in it six months before we built our cabin. The first thing we done after we got here was to make a brush fence back of the big log to pen our sheep in at night. Well, the very first night the wolves came and killed four of the sheep, and don’t you think we only had fourteen dogs. I will tell you there names. There was Cay, he was dady’s deer dog; there was Cuff and Ring and Rover,…

The above is an image from archive.org of the first two of her 5 pages of reminiscences that were published in “Reminiscences of Adams, Jay, and Randolph counties,” a collection that was compiled by a Mrs. T.A. Lynch in 1897 as part of a project to raise money for a cemetery. For some reason I especially enjoy these reminiscences of oldsters telling of their childhoods. This is one of several instances where arrival in a new country at age 10 (give or take) seems to have made a vivid and lasting impression. So far I know of no way to connect this story to the Black Hawk war, but it’s a settlement-era story from that time, so that was a good-enough excuse. Besides, I had ridden to Boundary City a couple of times previously (2000, 2007) and had liked the country well enough to want to come back just to see it again. I wasn’t off to a good start on the cemetery search, though. I couldn’t find a cemetery behind the church. Some people were out behind the house next door, though, enjoying a Sunday evening beer. They didn’t know of any cemetery behind that church, but they told me of the locations of other local cemeteries, most of which I had already marked on my maps. I asked about the name Hawkins. Were there any Hawkins still living around here? They didn’t know of any, but one of the cemeteries was the Hawkins Cemetery. It was one of those they had been trying to tell me about — the one to the north. Ah! I hadn’t known that was the name of it, but for some reason I had long ago marked it on my maps as the most likely location of Caroline’s grave. I told them that from the maps it looked like it was on private property, way back from the road. They told me that was right — it was on a farm place off the road — but I could get to it.

So I decided to skip the other cemeteries close to Boundary City and go straight to the Hawkins Cemetery. Before leaving, I stopped to take a photo of the street sign that says Treaty Line Road, as I’ve done each of the other times I’ve been to Boundary City.

googlemap

Oops.  Almost forgot the googlemap.

After Salamonie, there were more gravel roads to mark the treaty line.

It was probably this sign, at the crossroads known as Boundary City, that got me started seven years on looking for the marks left on the landscape by the Indian treaties. For this particular boundary of this particular treaty (the Fort Wayne Treaty of 1809) they are pretty obvious.

This was the end of the road as far as following the northern boundary of the treaty. The boundary crosses US-27 here.

But here is a puzzle that I didn’t notice until I got back and started looking at my photos. What possessed the local Daughters of the American Revolution to say that this treaty line was established by the Treaty of 1818? The line I had been following was established by the Treaty of Fort Wayne of 1809.

Here is a map showing the Indian cessions in Indiana. Royce Area 72 was part of what was given up at the Treaty of 1809. The modern highway between Portland and Winchester is US-27, and that’s where this marker is located. The Treaty of 1818 was the instrument by which the land to the north and west was ceded, identified as Royce Area 99. But the boundary had already been established before 1818. The 1818 treaty made it into something that was no longer important. So why did the good Daughters put those words on the marker? There has got to be a story behind it — maybe something to explain their perceptions of the process by which the U.S. took this land from the Indians.

Next: Following the western side of the treaty boundary through Randolph County.