Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1915 — Another Old Settler of Newton County. [ARTICLE]

Another Old Settler of Newton County.

Mrs. W. F. Corbin of Brook, who has resided in Newton county for 79 years, writes the following interesting letter to the Morocco Courier: I was born in Fountain county, November 15, 1835. In the spring of 1836 I moved with my parents to Newton county, Indiana. We settled just north of the Iroquois river in a one-room cabin which my father had built on a previous trip. This cabin was of rough logs and the one room did service as a kitchen. dining room and bedroom until later when a more elaborate addition of hewn logs was built. We children attended school about three months in the year across the river in what is now the White neighborhood. There were no roads and we followed what we called an old Indian trail crossing the river to and from school in a canoe when there was no ice to cross on.

Our school house, like all other buildings of the time, was built of logs with rough puncheon floors. Our desks were “benches made of slabs in a circle around the fire place which was in one end of the room. One higher bench answered the purpose of all pupils when they wished to write. ' There were no church buildings, but services were hejd around in the different homes. My father broke up some prairie raising principally corn and flax. We made our clothing from flax and wool from our sheep. In corn planting time, father harrowed out the fields, we girls dropped the corn and the boys covered it by the use of hoes. Later we moved some distance north from the timber but I lived within two miles of our first location until the fall of ’93, since which time I have lived in Brook.