Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1895 — EARLY HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY. [ARTICLE]

EARLY HISTORY OF JASPER COUNTY.

Address of S. P, Thompson, At Fountain Park - Assembly, Aug. 22, 1895. My Friends; —In the names of our County and its Townships, the brave soldiers who made and saved our country are remembered. The no less heroic pioneer settlers prior to 1840 are also thus honored. While but three of our precincts are named from natural phenomena. On June 28, 1776, in a little Palmetto fort stood the fearless and faultless Major Fran r cis Marion and four hundred champions of freedom, including Sergeant William Jasper and his comrade and friend Corporal Newton. The British army and navy, numbering ten times that little band of defenders, commenced an attack on the little fort. By and by a cannon ball cut the staff of the Fort's Crescent Blue Flag with the word “Liberty” ’emblazoned upon it, and the banner fell without the walls. Jasper said “Colonel Moultrie we cannot fight without a flag,” and at once sprang through the embrasure, seized and nailed the white and blue liberty flag to the battlements. The enemy was defeated.

In order of rank stood Marion, Jasper and Newton; and our State legislature called three important Hoosier Counties by these sacred names, taking rank in the same Order as these true brave men. Q In naming our Townships we still preserve the names of Marion and Newton side by side, according to the rank and standing of those heroes of 1776. of 1832r*fr Logansport opened the north west portion of the State for civilized settlement The brave pioneers at once commenced blazing their way, traveUing with oxen, enduring hunger, wet and cold; and six of our Townships are named in memory of these early, hardy, sturdy, honest first settlers, among the Indians still on the Pottawatamie reservation and duriug the Black Hawk trouble when most o; the tribes had on their war paint. John Gillam was a pioneer Methodist, and in Gillam Township most of the citizens are stil “Methodist bred and Methodist born.” Henry Barkley came into the forks settlement and erected his cabin on what is now “Wal S treet,’ ~ and- -Rarkley Township long stood second in J asper’s family of local Governments. Landie B Walker chose the country of the “Rand Lappers” as an advance post, and that Township is at least the not the best in the county. Jacob Keener on the road to lowa was side-tracked by Lemuel W. Hiukle and he perched on a sand hill in the county where he still lives, but in slater changes of times he no longer resides in his own, Keener, Township. John Jordan was the pioneer who shared with his forerunner Carpenter, the honor of naming two Townships. Carpenter’s grave is near this beautiful Fountain 'Park, the first white man’s grave in the county. In the late war for the preservation of the country, the subject and the actor are remember in Union and Milroy. Morris, the Surveyor, noticed Indian coffins hanging in the trees and that the trees, themselves, where John Phillips afterward settled, leaned or hung down toward the wa*er on the north and east, and the name of Hanging Grove thus originated.

The river forming thte northern boundary, with the wild rice on the level swamps south of the same, appearing at a distance like a grain field gave rise to the other two names Wheatfield and Kankakee.

Owning to the burning of our Court House Jan’y 18,' 1865, the early recorded facts connected with the history of this county are not to be found: of record. Talking with some of my old friends remaining as land marks of early days, and reading the Fourth of July oration of Benjamin Hinkle, delivered in 1851, who was a member of the legislature of 1834 and 1835 when the county was christened, and was on the committee to divide the cession of the Pottawotamies at the Logansport Conference of 1832, and assisted to set off all of what is now Benton, and the south part of what is now Newtoajand Jasper as. the original legislative State of Jasper.

I am able to recollect pretty clearly the events prior to 1840 for a Buckeye transplanted ia 1862. The Territory extending north of Township Twenty Bight and west of Range Four, thirty miles, was then enacted as Newton but was attached in a sense to Jasper, as the subaltern Newton was to

his Superior Jasper in the war for independence. In 1886 Porter County captured all north of the River in Ranges Five and Six; and in 1837, to Lake was attached ail the residue north of the Kankakee . In 1838 Jasper, shorn of so much territory attempted to organize, and the Legislature in 1839 consolidated the two counties blotting Newton from the list of counties, but directed the County Seat to be called by the name Newton.—-—-———-- .

The first Court of the County as thus constituted was held in ! Parish Grove at the house of ilobert Alexander, afterward the property Parnham Boswell, in the 'ad of 1838. In January, 1839, ;he County Commissioners, Amos White, Joseph Smith and Fred Kenover adopted the house of George W- Spitler, the Clerk, as Court House conditioned that the citizens of Pine Township would agree to the order, which they did iy a vote of 16 to 8. And thus George Spitler’s house became the regular capital of a territory as arge as Rhode Island, for about a year. It stood near what is now mown as Brook. In March 1840, Wesley Hewett, the son of an old settler, was admitted as the first student to attend Bloomington College. Our County Seat was removed to the town of Newton, now Rensselaer, provided for in the consolidation. Thus the County of Newton was for twenty years blotted from the map, and was asleep in Jasper until resurrected in 1854. Soon after the south portion of Jasper seceded, and took the Democratic name of “Benton,” and in the Whig convention of 1840, to nominate Henry S. Lane for Congress, for the first and Jast of all political ■conventions, Benton had no delegate present to respond. For nearly fifty-five years if Benton has been at all backward in coming to the front in politics, history has failed to note the fact. The total number of persons assessed in the territory of what is now Jasper, Newton and Benton in 1840 was 138, and the total of taxable property $20,340. More than twice that number of persons are each one assessed more than the three counties were then. The first Judge of the Circuit Court Isaac N. Taylor, the prosecuting attorney was Joseph A. Wright, afterwards Congressman, Governor and German Minister. The chief member of the bar was the eloquent Rufus A. Lockwood. The court room was sixteen feet square, where at night slept Court, Lawyers and Jurors. The first case on the docket was Hepsy Montgomery vs Ed Born. When Benton left us, South America was added from White as Jasper’s only annexation. After this the Jasper Circuit Court first tried to assemble in an old deserted cabin in Rensselaer, but the bed bugs having full possession compelled the court to beat a hasty retreat to a blacksmith shop. The court found no writ of ejection could be served so the big bugs had to give way to the little bugs. The first dower set off was to the widow of Benjamin Lewis. The first letters of administration were issued on the estate of John Wolf. The first marriage license was to James Lacy and Matilda Blue. The first death after 1840 was Mrs. Sly, of Iroquois Township. Our first Physician at Rensselaer was Joshua Clark in 1837. The first sermon was by Rev. Enoch Wood at Dr. Clark’s house just north of Weston’s Cemetery, in Rensselaer. The first divorce was Louisa Barr vs Andrew Barr. The first school in what is now Jasper was taught by Mr. Webster in a cabin near the

now residence of Granville Moody, in Barkley Township. The first in the Blue Grass by Elizabeth Price and at Rensselaer by George W. Spitler. The town of Newton was changed to Rensselaer in 1841 on a petition circulated by James Vanßenaselaer and Henry Weston, who had a preferred entry and floated Joseph Yeoman off his farm at the falls of the Iroquois to a neighboring site some five miles away.

These preferred entries enabled the holders to jump improved claims and take the crops of the earlier possessors, but the equities were strongly in favor ©f the bone fide pioneer settler. That reliable and truthful gentleman, Simon Phillips, says that even the c.Stile for miles aronnd would take the equity side and eat up all the corn for those whe tried to harvest without planting. I reluctantly pass! by Jasper’s children, the early pioneers of Benton and Newton before and after the formers secession in 1840 and the latters, in 1850, and keep within the confines of the modern state of Jasper

The first regular Fourth of July celebration at Rensselaer was in 1843, and was managed fry mother of M. L, Spitler. It consisted of a two story “Quilting,” the old women down stairs, the young women up stairs while the men were engaged in out door activities. The reading of the Declaration of Independence and a sermon from that staunch and eloquent disciple preacher, Milton B. Hopkins, afterwards State Superintendent of Public Instruction, were the literary exercises. This sermon was preached under an oak tree near what tvas afterwards called the Bank Corner, in Rensselaer, Indiana. - ~ rconeinded next wettk-l -——j