We just got back from a three-day outing in east-central Indiana. I’m starting to feel like an old hand on Randolph County’s roads, even though I have ridden on only a small sample of the county’s bicycleable ones. But my rides are starting to cross old paths, like yesterday when I crossed the Twelve Mile Treaty Line or today when I stopped at the Bear Creek Friends Church. I had stopped at this church three years ago on a ride along the treaty line.

Three years ago I hadn’t yet realized that Quakers had played large role in the settlement of this part of Indiana. A number of those in Randolph County had been conscientious objectors during the Black Hawk war. The story of the fines they paid for refusing to serve in the militia is told almost in joking fashion in a county history published in 1882; however I am also learning that it was no joke for many of those who refused to serve in the War of 1812 or the American Civil War.

That has got me to wondering if there are any places where Quakers have settled alongside Amish people. I am not aware of any Amish settlements in Randolph County or in any of the other nearby counties that have a large concentration of Friends churches. What would happen if two pacifist societies were neighbors? Would they support each other? Or would it be like the case of strongly opinionated individuals who are too much alike — and therefore always at each others’ throats? Or is it the case that a community can support only so many pacifists, and Amish + Friends would be too much?

I’m hoping that Eric Wesner at Amish America might know whether the two types of societies have ever had any interactions — perhaps in Pennsylvania. It’s also time for me to find some books to read about the history of Quakers in America.

I am also starting to wonder about my camera. I’ve noticed lately that the lens that came with my Nikon D60 has some noticeable “play” that wasn’t there when the camera was new. And some of the photos I took yesterday and today not only are not as sharp as I would like, but are just plain out of focus. The original of the one shown here isn’t all that great but is far from the worst example. Maybe it’s time for a new lens and a better way to cushion the camera in my handlebar bag.

Saturday’s mileage: 73.5 (Portland IN to New Corydon IN to the south part of Auglaize County OH to Fort Amanda)

Sunday’s mileage: 57 (Portland IN to Union City IN to Winchester IN to Union Port)

Today’s mileage: 18 (The first part of the day was spent out of the rain at the Winchester Historical Society museum; the afternoon was spent there, too, even though the rain had ended.)

YTD: 1247.0

(Aug 28, concluded.)

The Arba cemetery lies behind the Friends church. The 1882 county history suggests that an Indian burial place was descecrated in order to make this cemetery, though it doesn’t say so in those words.

The Randolph County Historical Society has a camcorder video that was taken through a windshield while driving into the cemetery on this road. There is also an aerial view of the cemetery on that site, probably taken from Google Maps.

I looked for Parker gravestones, but if I had read the county history more thoroughly before I came here, I would have known better than to expect Thomas W. Parker’s grave here, nor that of his son Jesse. Thomas’s wife, Anna, is said to be buried here, but I presume it’s an unmarked grave. This rootsweb page doesn’t list her.

Another Parker gravestone, but not one I was looking for.

This unusual gravestone and the one below got my curiosity up. Who were P.F. and J.F.? Maybe their family couldn’t afford a regular gravestone. If so, they might also be the sort of people who were invisible to the ones writing the county history, and the sort of people I’d definitely like to learn more about. But I’m going to have to give it up for now. The gravestone list at the rootsweb site doesn’t help.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/02/09/arba-cemetery/feed/ 0 http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/02/05/abolitionists-in-arba/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/02/05/abolitionists-in-arba/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:55:32 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/02/05/abolitionists-in-arba/

(Sep 28 2009, cont.) Arba, founded in 1815, was an important town in Randolph County during the settlement era, probably due to its location right next to Wayne County on the road leading north from Richmond. A lot of the settlers had made their homes in Wayne County for at least a short time before moving to Randolph County. Arba was on the route into the county.

The 1882 county history tells about Arba’s early role in the slavery abolition movement:

About the time that William Lloyd Garrison was imprisoned at Baltimore for publishing a condemnation of the cruelty of the slave trade, Dr. Henry H. Way, of Newport, Wayne Co., Ind., arranged a discussion between Rev. Mr. Randolph and himself upon the subject of abolition.
This discussion was the first of its kind west of the Alleghany Mountains, being held about 1830, at Arba, Randolph Co., Ind. Dr. Way, being unable to attend, engaged Moorman Way, at that time a mere youth, but active and enterprising, to take his place. The discussion lasted an entire day, and was largely attended.

This is a portrait of Moorman Way that was made many years later. It’s taken from the same county history.

A lot of the abolitionists were Quakers. Moorman Way was not a Quaker himself, but it seems that he had much in common with them.

The same county history tells about a large number of conscientious objectors who refused to take part when the militia was called up in 1832. Many of them were Quakers, but Moorman Way was also among them.

I suspect that this was a call-up due to the Black Hawk war, but don’t know that for sure. I’m hoping to find more information about it.

The Friends Church in Arba still exists, but unfortunately I didn’t take a photo. It’s just to the left of the road in this photo, in front of the town cemetery that was my final destination for the day. Myra was on her way to meet me there.

It wasn’t until the next day’s ride that I started to realize just how prominent a role the Quakers played in this part of Indiana. Not understanding it cost me an extra dozen miles of riding and kept us from getting back home to Battle Creek as early as we had planned. I’ll explain later.

(Sep 28, cont.) From the Thomas W. Parker place I rode a mile east along the Randolph-Wayne county line to Arba Road. This was one of the main destinations for the day. It’s a place where the modern road still follows the old “Quaker Trace.”

In Indiana the Quaker Trace connected Richmond with Fort Wayne, and was so-called because of all the Quakers who moved to this area and who helped build it. It seems also to have been a route on the Underground Railroad, thanks to those same Quakers.

There is also a Quaker Trace in Preble County, Ohio that still bears that name. I’m guessing this Indiana road was continuous with that one, but don’t know for sure.

googlemap

Note that the Arba Road departs here from the usual section-line roads that go straight north-south or east-west.

The following are the first four passages in the 1882 county history that mention it.

The first road opened through the county was the “Quaker Trace,” from Richmond to Fort Wayne, in 1817. –page 40

The “Quaker Trace” began to be worked in 1825-1828, and much of it is worked and traveled still. –page 62

[Note Mr Smith says the "Quaker Trace" was opened in 1818 or 1819. The Bowens say in 1817; which date is correct we do not know. The Bowens are more likely to be right, since they lived on the route, and one of them helped to make the "trace." --page 63

The “Quaker Trace” was begun in 1817. James Clark, with twenty-five or thirty men, started with three wagon loads of provisions, as also a surveyor and chain, etc., and they marked “mile trees,” and cut the road out enough for wagons to pass. They wound around ponds, however, and big logs and trees, and quagmires, fording the Mississinewa above Allenville, Randolph County, and the Wabash just west of Corydon, Jay County, and so on to Fort Wayne. –page 80, Squire Bowen’s reminiscences

As far as I can tell, no trace of the road remains further north where it crossed the Mississinewa and Wabash Rivers. The roads up there have been straightened out to follow the section lines. It seems to have been gone already by the time the county atlases of the 1870s and 1880s were published.

Here it goes north to the small village of Arba, where the day’s ride ended.

(Sep. 28, cont.) At the southwest corner of Thomas W. Parker’s old property, i.e. at the intersection of the Greenville Treaty Line and the Randolph-Wayne county line, I stopped to look for places that the first settler might have picked for his home site. (My bicycle is just barely inside Wayne County. The county line road leads off into the distance.)

The likely site is obvious to me now when I look at this photo, but it wasn’t obvious at the time until I rode down the county line road, across the little creek at the base of the hill (Nolan’s Fork) and then up that hill to the grove of trees.

Here I stopped to look back toward the west. And here it became obvious that this higher ground would have been an excellent farmstead site. There was a source of water not far away, down at the base of the hill. And the creek bottom probably made good cropland right from the start. So I picked this hillside as the place where the Parkers probably built their cabin.

This could have been a good place from which young Jesse could have seen those three wigwams he told about. Maybe they lay just on the other side of the treaty line, on land that had already been ceded to the United States but which seems not to have been ready for sale to settlers yet in 1814.

Jesse would have been about 7-8 years old when his family moved here. In his reminiscences in the 1882 history, just after mentioning his Indian playmates and the three wigwams, he told of how an Indian woman from those wigwams had once given him a scare:

A squaw once scared me nearly to death. I had gone to drive a calf home to its pen. The calf was near one of the wigwarms; I felt skittish (this was before I had become so familiar with them), but the calf had to be brought and I had to do it for children had to mind in those days. So how about the calf? This way–I got around it and started it for the pen, and away we went, calf and boy, when hallo! out popped a squaw full tilt after me! She had jumped behind a tree and stuck out what I took to be a gun, and as I came near she bounced after me. My legs flew, you may guess; I could keep up with the calf with the squaw after me. She chased me home, she was tickled well nigh to death, and I was scared nearly out of my wits. I thought I could feel the ball hit me; but she had no gun, it was only a stick, and she was in fun. But there was no going around nettles then; they flew like sticks in a whirlwind, and she came rushing after me, parting the brush as she came!

After telling this, Jesse went on to other memories of those days. But it must have been a significant event for him, because he later returned to the story:

The squaw who scared me so and chased me through the brush, was so “tickled” at my terrible “scare” that she could not tell mother what she had done, for laughing. She fell down on the cabin floor, and laughed and laughed, and kept on laughing; and to mother’s question, she only pointed her finger at me as she lay there, and burst out laughing again; and I stood there, as mad as a lad of my age could well be, at the squaw, for scaring me so terribly, and then laughing herself well-nigh to death over the fun she had got out of me.

A good place for the nettles he describes would have been in the moist, rich soil near the creek, where the soil would have been disturbed by the hooves of cattle who went there to drink.

I didn’t know until I looked it up that the stinging nettle, Urtica dioica, is an invasive species from Europe. It would be interesting to know if the nettles came here with the settlers, or if they had come ahead of settlers like honeybees had done in their invasion of the continent.

Jesse died just before the 1882 history in which his reminiscences appear was published. It’s too bad the Native peoples had been driven out of this country by then, instead of staying here and living as neighbors with the American settlers. They could have a lot of stories to share for that 1882 history. Though if they were Miami, maybe some of Jesse’s childhood playmates ended up living for a time not so very far from here, perhaps along the Salamonie River. But there were no get-togethers that I’ve ever heard of where the old men got together and swapped stories. It would be interesting to have heard Jesse’s story as told by one of the members of the Indian woman’s family.

(Sep 28, cont.) The 1882 history of Randolph County page 359) tells of the first settler in Greensfork Township, who was also the first settler in the entire county.

The first settler was Thomas W. Parker, April, 1814, on Fractional Section 32, Town 1, Range 1, just east of the old boundary, and just north of Wayne County line, not very far west of Arba.

I had now reached the “old boundary,” i.e. the Greenville Treaty boundary. The road here follows that boundary line. Parker’s farm was on the left side of the road. The road that forms the Wayne County line can be seen in the distance here. The clump of trees at the bottom of the hill is perhaps a third or half of the distance from where I was standing to the county line.

By the time of the 1882 history (from which the above map snippet is taken) was made, Parker no longer owned that land. He had sold it not long after arriving. But the family names of two of the three other settlers, Thomas and Bowen, who came at almost the same time are still on the map as late as 1882.

Jesse Parker, a son of Thomas Parker, described the setting:

North and northwest was an endless wilderness, except a few soldiers at Fort Wayne and Fort Dearborn and Green Bay and Mackinaw. At first it seemed lonely, but neighbors came gradually, and the blue smoke of the cabins could be seen curling up among the forest trees, as we followed the “blazes” from hut to hut.

The Indians were thick all around us, but they were civil and peaceable and friendly. They would help the settlers raise cabins, bring us turkeys and venison, etc. Three wigwams were in sight of our cabin. We children had great sport with the young Indians, and they were then almost or quite our only playmates.

It looks like a P.H. Wright owned Parker’s land in 1882. No farm residence is shown on Parker’s former property. But it would have been the bottom part of the green-colored section.

My next stop would be the corner where the treaty line intersected the county boundary, at the lower left of the green-colored piece. I was hoping to get a good enough idea of the terrain to pick a likely spot where the Parker’s cabin could have been located, from which they could have seen those three wigwams.

googlemap

Here’s the googlemap.

(Sep 28, cont) The road east comes to a T intersection here because it runs into the Greenville Treaty line. The surveys on the two sides of the line don’t match up, with the result that the east-west roads don’t go straight through.

googlemap

The above intersection is where my route, marked in a bluish color, meets the treaty line, marked in pink.

A snippet of a map in the 1882 county history is shown here. My route is marked in red. The blue circle is where the photo was taken. The first settlers came into Randolph County before the War of 1812 was quite over, and settled right next to the treaty line, in fractional section 32 (shaded in green). The earliest of the early settlers settled in the lower part of that area. I always like to see what kind of country appealed to the settlers who got to pick first, so spent some time along the treaty boundary looking at the east side of it.

(Sep 28, cont.) Less than a mile east of Carlos, there was another excuse to stop: fence posts. In this case they were concrete corner fence posts that had been painted red. At least I presume they once served as fence posts. Now they’re just monuments.

The farm at the end of the lane belonged to a Phillips family in the 19th century. A Thomas Phillips who had come from New Jersey was the patriarch, and was the first owner of this land under the English-American system of land ownership.

It seems I’ve run into several settlers in this part of Indiana who had come from New Jersey. The Cateys in the post about A Country Church and a Pile of Rubble also came from new Jersey, for example.

A mile further to the east I slowed down for the children of Bloomingport.

The 1882 county history makes mentions of “runs” in this area, such as Phillips Run, Poplar Run, and Big Run. Modern maps show Cherry Run, Thin Run, Cream Run, Vandyke Run, and many more. Some of these seem to be intermittent waterways — the upper reaches of small streams that are dry for much of the year.

I got to wondering where this term “Run” came from. There are some well known runs, such as the one that gave its name to the Battle of Bull Run. I don’t happen to know what kind of waterway that one is. There is the community of Birch Run in the Michigan thumb. But “Run” as applied to a waterway isn’t a comman usage anywhere I’ve ever lived, at least not that I’ve noticed.

To investigate, I fired up my old version of Adobe Illustrator/MapPublisher, and imported the shapefiles for streams and waterways for a non-random sample of counties. Then I selected the waterways that had the characters “Run” in the name, and highlighted them in red in the map shown above. The other waterways are shown by thin, brown lines.

Randolph County is outlined in a heavy line towards the bottom center. Carlos and Bloomingport are in the greyish circle at the bottom center of the county. The Ohio/Indiana border is shown by a heavy blue line.

My technique for selecting the runs out of all the other streams was imperfect. It may have resulted in places like Runnymede Creek being included on the map, if such a one exists. But I think most of them are runs.

It looks like the term does get used quite a bit in Randolph County and its neighboring Indiana counties, more so than in places further to the north. But it’s not much used in Darke County, Ohio, which lies just to the east, or in any of the other Ohio counties I looked at.

I wish I knew if the usage pattern reflects the origins of the settlers — if the first settlers to this part of Indiana came from parts of the United States where these small, intermittent streams were called runs. Or if the naming system is something that just developed locally. Or if it developed after the settlement era. Or if it reflects real differences in the topography. Or if it reflects different ways of compiling the data by Census bureau personnel, such that the Ohio people did it differently from Indiana people. (The data came from Tiger Census files.)

It would also be interesting to know what happens to the pattern as one goes west and south. But the above is as much as I felt like doing for now.

Carlos is only a mile west of the previous stop at the driveway to the Catey farm. I wrote about the Carlos grain elevator in the evening after returning from my September 28 ride. Here are a few more photos of the place, starting with the main intersection where I spied the grain elevator out of town, to the south. (Yes, it’s big enough to have more than one intersection.)

Here is another view of the grain elevator.

Back to the main intersection, where I continued my ride west. It had been a breezy day when I started. Now the wind was starting to move me along at a good clip, except for all of these stops.

(Sep 28, cont.) About 1.5 miles after stopping to take the photo of Martindale Creek, I stopped for another photo for documentation purposes.

I remember that stop. I was standing in a long, gravel driveway that led to a farmplace that was back from the road. I remember deciding not to point my camera in that direction, but I don’t remember why. Instead I took a photo of the church at the top of the small hill to the east.

Now that I’ve looked at the 1882 county history the place is more interesting to me.

My route is shown in light brown on the map above — a map of West River township from that same county history. The stop at Martindale Creek is marked with a red dot on the left, and the stop for this photo was at the red dot on the line between sections 10 and 11.

The father of the Jonah L. Catey who in 1882 owned the land on which I was standing was William Catey. His name is still shown on a county plat map from the 1870s. His farm was the one now owned (in 1882) by J.L. Catey — the one I didn’t take a photo of. On that older map it looks like he used a different driveway back then, one that left the road very near the church at the edge of his property and cut across to the southwest to his place. I suspect it’s because the higher ground was dry enough to make a more reliable road. One can still see traces of it on Googlemap satellite view.

I didn’t find any particularly interesting anecdotes about William Catey or his son, Jonah, but the family got interesting when I found this Rootsweb site that gives some of the genealogy. The interesting part was that one of William’s brothers and one of his sisters had married into a family that had names like Joseph Rippey and Matthew Rippey. Those were familiar names to me. And yes, further investigation shows that it’s the same Rippey family that had settled near Leesburg Indiana, the same Rippey family that produced a Matthew Rippey who lived near Goshen at the time of the Black Hawk war scare. He and a neighbor had made a walking trip down to Kosciousko County, to land not yet ceded by the Potawatomi to the United States, to check on the Indians and their reaction to the Black Hawk news.

Leesburg was the kind of place that got me started on the Black Hawk Slept Here project. It itself had made such a vivid and lasting impression on me (as had many things on that day) that the next year I rode down to visit it and check it out more closely. One of the things I looked for was a big brick house that had belonged to one of Rippeys who had moved there, perhaps (and here I’m guessing) on the advice of the Matthew Rippey who had scouted out the land while he was checking up the Indians. Alas, it had been torn down not so long before, and all that was left was a big pile of masonry and concrete rubble. A gravel and cement operation had begun to take over. I couldn’t remember whether a house had still been standing in 1996.

The last time I rode there was in October 2006. I see that I’ve done only one blog entry about it, here. It has a map showing my route past the Rippey place just south of town.

Ah, good. I see I took a photo of the rubble. The pile may have been pushed closer to the road since 1997, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

So in summary I could say that the church scene in the top photo is now a more interesting place to me because it has a connection to this pile of rubble south of Leesburg. Such excitement one can get from bike touring!