XXIV.
EARLY ROADS IN MARSHALL COUNTY.
When
the first pioneers came there was nothing here but a wilderness. Few evidences
of civilization were to be seen anywhere. Telegraphing had not then been
discovered, and there was not a railroad within a thousand miles in ally
direction, and at that time there was not even a stage line within forty miles.
With the coming of white people closely followed the "pony express” mail
carrier, once a month, then weekly and tri-weekly, and so on.
Those
who were here then will remember when an occasional New York, Philadelphia or
Baltimore paper strayed out this way, the picture of the pony express would be
looked for to see what time the mail was scheduled to leave the east for the
west, and what time it would be due at Pittsburg, Cincinnati and Indianapolis,
and the probable date of its arrival here. It will be remembered how fast that mail carrier
seemed to be going. The pony was running at full speed; the mail carrier was
bent forward at an angle of 45 degrees, and was heralding his approach by the
blasts from his tin horn. But he did not make half as rapid headway as he
appeared to be making. Most of the road he had to travel over was through the
wilderness, and before he reached the end of his journey he met with many a
mishap that delayed his arrival for hours and days.
The
letters he brought were written on blue letter paper with goose quill pens,
folded in the form of our present envelopes, envelopes not having .been
invented then, and sealed with a red wafer or sealing wax, mucilage being a
discovery of a later date. Letter postage at that time was rated according to
distance, 25 cents being the rate from the eastern cities, payable in coin on
HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY. 145
postage
stamps not having been invented at that time and for ears afterwards. It is
easy to be seen that the number of letters that failed to reach the parties to whom they were
addressed and consequently the dead
letter office without the postage having been collected was immense loss to the
United States.
There
were no roads or bridges in those days, and the neighbors in their way to the
cabins of each other followed the Indian trails, were the first roads in this
part of the country. There is more method in laying out an Indian trail than
may be imagined. As of all the Pottawattomie Indian trails in this county and
in Indiana the
writer avails himself of the following truthful and worded' description of the
Pottawattomie trail as given by Charles in his admirable "Tales of Kankakee Land."
The Indian trail, he says, was an Indian path with all the features that the
term might indicate. It never crossed over a hill which It might go around; It
crept through the hollows, avoiding, however, with greatest care, those
conditions in which a moccasin could not be kept dry and clean; it clung to the
shadows of the big timber belts, and when an arm of the prairie intervened
sought to traverse such a place of possible danger by the route which was
shortest and least exposed. At every step the ancient path tells the story of
wilderness fears. Yet the travelers of this venerable avenue of the old life
had also their own peculiar delights. A warm and sheltered path in the winter
time; its fragrant airs were cool and soft in summer days. All the woodland
flowers crowded to its margin; the blue violets and the water-cress; yellow
honey- suckles; the fringed gentian; the roses, the ox-eyed daisies and where
the shades were damp and dark, yellow ladies' slippers and purple ones. When
the heavy foliage above parted wide to let the sunshine fall on some gentle
slope, there was the strawberry bank all white with promise, or growing with
the ruby red of its luscious sweets, or throwing above the tender leaves of its
pink stolas to make sure the feasts of coming days. The birds loved the red
man's path, stationed their homes in the thickets that bordered its course,
sang their morning songs beneath those rifts where the blue sky looked down,
and there, while the twilight lingered, warbled their evening hymns.
And
then, to the Pottawattomie, this above all others was the ancient highway of
his people. All the pageant of his life was then in the springtime and in the
moon of falling leaves passing before them in living remembrance. When these
scenes were over the old men loved to wander along this path and rehearse the
stories of the past and tell the times when they with their people in
tumultuous throng hurried home from the chase. With trembling voice and solemn
gesture they pointed out the spot where a chief with warriors brave once fell
victims to the deadly ambush; or this was the tree where the children had been
lured to their death by the mocking wail of a panther; or, in that place the
Great Spirit with a countenance of light had spoken of his children in a voice
of thunder. Then on the old path they told off, as on a rosary, the sacred
traditions of their people.
It
was a long time after the first settlers came to the county before any roads
were regularly laid out and opened for travel. Indian trails were followed
wherever they led in the desired direction. Wherever it was thought that a road
should be opened the route would be selected by those
146
HISTORY
OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
interested
and a man sent over the route with an ax to blaze the way. The brush and logs
were cut out, and the man with the ax would cut the bark off of the trees along
the line a foot or two long and about five or six feet from the roots, on both
sides of the trees, that would be seen by those passing along the road going
and coming. One of the first of these roads was from the region of Maxinkuckee
lake by way of the Indian trail near Menominee village at Twin lakes, and so on
to Plymouth. Another branch was by way of Wolf Creek and from there by the
nearest route through the woods to the Michigan road, which had been cleared
out and blazed so that it could be used after a fashion, and thence on to
Plymouth, A road was also early cleared and blazed from Plymouth to Bourbon by
way of what is now Inwood, and on to the Benak Indian village in
Tippecanoe township. Short roads were opened in the same way in various parts
of the county where most needed, but without any system or legal authority. The
lines of these early roads were selected so as to avoid swamps and marshes, and
as much as possible to avoid the building of corduroy bridges. In this way they
were like the Indian trails they meandered around over the county without
regard to the distance to be traveled and without any regard as to whose lands
it was that the road was built upon.
The
Michigan road has an interesting history. Several years ago the writer of this
history made as thorough investigation of this subject as possible, procuring
the data for such investigation from the Interior Department at Washington. The
following is the result of that investigation :
Prior
to 1826 numerous treaties had been made with the Pottawattomie Indians, the
owners and inhabitants of the country embraced in Indiana, southern Michigan
and northern Illinois, by which they were to give up most of their lands and
hunting grounds to the United. States for the benefit of the white population.
After these treaties were proclaimed, gangs of government surveyors were sent
out to survey and plat the land, which was done, and the land opened to entry
at $1.25 an acre. Through these government surveyors, ax men and chainmen it
soon became noised about that a most delightful and productive country had been
found, with beautiful lakes and watercourses, and every kind. of fish and wild
game, wild fruits, etc., in abundance. Many of these surveyors, with Indian
traders, land speculators and government agents, entered into a scheme to
persuade the Pottawattomie Indians to make a treaty giving to the government a
strip of land 100 feet wide through the entire state from Lake Michigan to the
Ohio river , with a contiguous section of land through which the road should
run which should belong to the state of Indiana and by it be given to those who
should be awarded the contracts to build the road. It was to be a great
national thoroughfare, the northern terminus of which was the mouth of Trail
creek at Michigan City, and the southern at Madison, Ind. After the treaty .was
made the Indiana legislature took the matter up, and among other things named
it the "Michigan road." The treaty by which the Pottawattomies
granted the land for this road was article 3 of the treaty made October 16,
1826, concluded near the mouth of the Mississinewa, on the Wabash, Indiana,
between Lewis Cass of Michigan and James B. Ray and John Tipton of Indiana,
commissioners on the part of the United States, and the chiefs and warriors of
the Pottawattomie tribe of Indians. This article of the treaty is as follows :
HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY. 147
"
Article 3. As an evidence of the attachment, which the Pottawattomie tribe feel
towards the American people, and, particularly to the south of Indiana, and with a view to
demonstrate their liberality and benefit themselves by creating facilities; for
traveling and increasing the value of their remaining country, the said tribe
do, hereby cede to the United States a strip, of land commencing at Lake
Michigan and running thence to the Wabash River, 100 feet wide, for a road, and
also one section of good land contiguous to the said road for each mile of the
same, and also for each mile of a road from the termination thereof through
Indianapolis to the Ohio river for the purpose of making a road aforesaid from
Lake Michigan by way of Indianapolis to some convenient point on the Ohio river.
And the general assembly shall have a right to locate the said road and to
apply the said sections or the proceeds thereof to the making of the same, or
any part thereof, and the said grant shall be at their sole disposal,
As
I view it, the wording of the treaty was a cunningly devised arrange- ment to
swindle the Indians out of an immense amount of the best lands belonging to
them in the state, The words "good land" enabled the legislature to
zigzag the road so as to avoid all the bad land and run around through all the
"contiguous good land" through the entire state. By referring to the
map
of Marshall county it will be seen that from the time the road enters the
county on the south until it reaches the northern boundary, the Michigan road
sections are so disjointed on the map that they have the appearance of a great
big stairway, From Argos north the line of the road angles off to the west
before it reaches Plymouth, about two miles and a half, The object of this
"wobbling" was to avoid low or swamp lands and get over onto a better
quality. Near Benoni Jordan's old farm, now owned by D. E. Snyder, four miles
south of Plymouth, the angle is so abrupt that the sections are barely
"contiguous." From La Paz the road zigzags about until it reaches
South Bend, where it turns abruptly and runs directly west through some of the
best prairie lands in the state, or anywhere else for that matter , and then
turns north and finally finds its way into the mouth of Trail creek at Michigan
City.
The
disjointed manner in which these Michigan road sections appear on the map of
Indiana is a perpetual verdict against the conspirators who defrauded the
Indians out of their rights; and like the blood on the hands of Lady McBeth,
"the d------d spot will not out."
It
was in 1832-3 that this end of the road was ordered to be "cut" and
"opened" and these are the directions prescribed by the legislature
of 1832 (see
pages 124-5, acts of that session) :
"Cut
and clear off said part of said road all logs, timber and under-brush, leaving
no stump more than one foot above the level of the earth, and grub thirty feet
wide in the center of said road."
Polk,
Blair and Seering were the contractors through this part of the state, and the
late Robert Schroeder of North township was one of the bosses that
superintended the job. He told me many times before his death the manner in
which this great thoroughfare was opened up, and according to history, the
truth of which cannot be doubted, the work was the merest pretext toward
complying with the intent of the law. The road was practically impassable for
much of the way through this part of the state; the
148 HISTORY
OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
mud
holes, which were numerous, were bridged over with poles and logs placed on
cross logs without any particular system, the brush cut off and piled up by the
side of the road, and some of the knobs and high places cut down, and that was
about all that was done to make it the great thoroughfare that the Indians had
been made to believe was to be built for their especial benefit. Within five or
six years after this road was declared open, the various small reservations
still held by the Pottawattomies were secured from them by treaty, and those
who refused to leave the country were driven away, starting from Twin lakes
September 4, 1838, in charge of a company of soldiers under command of Gen.
John Tipton, one of the commissioners who secured the making of the treaty.
Thus was completed one of the darkest pages in the history of Indiana.
LaPorte
and Plymouth Mail Route. N ext in importance to the Michigan road was what was
called the LaPorte
road. In the beginning it was little more than an Indian trail and was
established more as a post road between Plymouth and LaPorte than for purposes of travel. At first
the mail was carried once a week between the two places; later it was increased
to three times a week, and finally to a two horse wagon daily, which also
carried passengers back and forth. In examining some ancient documents over in
La Porte county not long ago a student of local history came across a contract
written by J. H. Bradley with a quill pen on an old-fashioned unruled legal
folio sheet, which, though the paper is yellowed with age and stained by
exposure to the weather, is as clear and legible as on the day it was written.
Following is the wording of the contract, as nearly as it can be reproduced in
print:
Memorandum
of an agreement:
Made
this sixth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
thirty-seven, between John H. Bradley, Mail Contractor, for carrying the United
States Mail from LaPorte, by Plymouth to Chippewa, once a week and back, of the
one part, and Erastus Ingersol, of Marshall county, Indiana, of the other part,
as follows, to-wit, the said Ingersol, agrees and hereby binds himself to carry
or have carried, the said United States Mail on the said Route from LaPorte by
Plymouth to Chippewa, according to the terms, times and manner prescribed by
the post office department, and in all things to comply, with the directions,
and requisitions of the law, and the Post Office Department in carrying
guarding and delivery of the same, for and during the full terms and time of
said contract, to commence on the ninth day of May, A. D., 1837, and continue
until the said contract be ended, for the sum price and consideration of three
hundred and fifty dollars per annum and at and for that rate and proportion to
be paid by the said John H. Bradley in the manner herein after mentioned and
also the said Erastus Ingersol agrees and binds himself to pay and satisfy all
fines, forfeitures, penalties and amercements, imposed or exacted by the said
post office department, for or on account of any and all failures or
delinquencies, about the performance of the said contract, while in his hand,
or while he is carrying the same, and to allow the said John H. Bradley to
deduct the same from the amount to be paid to the said Ingersol, for his
services aforesaid.
In
consideration whereof, the said John H. Bradley agrees and binds himself to pay
to the said Erastus Ingersol the said sum of money aforesaid, or the rateable
proportion thereof, as soon as the money shall be received from the department,
and at no other times or manner whatever, deducting there from any and all fines
and exactions for delinquencies aforesaid and making from the money due July
1st, 1837, the further deduction of seventy-five dollars, the amount of a note
held by the said John H. Bradley on the said Ingersol the price of a mare sold
to him.
HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY. 149
To
the true performance of all which covenants and agreements the said parties
bind themselves the one to the other in the sum of three hundred dollars.
Witness our hands and seals May 6th, A. D., 1837.
JOHN H. BRADLEY, (Seal) .
ERASTUS INGERSOLL, (Seal) .
Sealed and delivered in the presence of J. C. HOWELL.
This
document is a reminder of the days when things at LaPorte were in their
beginnings. In May, 1837, the village was hardly more than four years old,
Plymouth and Rochester had not yet been laid out a year, the Yellow river road
from LaPorte to Plymouth was little better than a blazed trail through the
woods and marshes, and the Michigan road, though opened three and a half years
earlier, was very, very far from being usable as a race course. Notwithstanding
the fact that Daniel Webster broke dirt in LaPorte county July 4, 1837, for a
railroad, no such commercial artery was actually in operation in this section
until fifteen years passed by. LaPorte had a post office in 1833, Plymouth not
until 1837. Mail routes were just being opened up in northwestern Indiana.
John
H. Bradley was one of LaPorte's greatest lawyers, his admission to the bar
being dated October 12, 1835. He was aggressive in politics on the Whig side
and served repeatedly in the state legislature, besides being defeated nearly
as often. He was a great orator and a profound student, and in his early life
as a pioneer in this region he was glad to reach aside from the practice of his
profession and take a contract to haul the mail, not to perform that arduous
labor himself but to sublet it at a small profit.
Erastus
Ingersol, the subcontractor and actual post-rider, belongs to the history of
Marshall county, in which his appearance is very obscure. On horseback with his
sacks of mail, in all sorts of weather, he followed roads that would now be
thought impassable, covering the distance in two days, or four days for the
round trip. About that same time a regular stage line was operated from LaPorte
to Plymouth, connecting there with the Concord coaches plying up and down the
Michigan road between South Bend and Indianapolis, at which latter point
connection was made with the lines east and west on the National road. J. C.
Howell, the witness to the contract, was a LaPorte merchant. The Chippewa named
as one of the terminals of the route-called Chippe-wa-qua in some of the old
records would be difficult to find now save with help from some curious
antiquary, but then it was an important and a hopeful settlement, well known to
every traveler on the Michigan road. It was a formidable rival of Rochester for
selection as the county seat, and even now one can hardly see why it was not
chosen because of the beauty, healthfulness and availability of its site near
the intersection of the great northern highway and the Tippecanoe river (then
more important than now) unless it was too far from the county's center.
William
Polke, Michigan road commissioner, entered the land at that place built his log
cabin there in 1832, the first house on the road north of the Wabash, moved his
family to it from the southern end of the state and established there his
official headquarters. It was a home of great hospitality. The tourist for
pleasure, the traveler for business, the Catholic missionary priest, the
Protestant preacher, the state or government official, the teamster and road
laborer, the vagrant Indian for all these the door of that small cabin in the
woods was opened. Gen. John Tipton, Col. Abel C. Pepper and
150 HISTORY
OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
other
important functionaries were often there and under the trees close by several
Indian treaties were concluded. There in 1834 was celebrated the marriage of
Mary, daughter of William Polke, with John B. Niles, then a young lawyer whose
brilliant future was but faintly indicated. William Niles, born of that union
September 27, 1835, is now the oldest living white person who was born in La
Porte. He and Mrs. Emmet H. Scott are the present owners of the long-forgotten
Chippewa, the terminal point of La Porte's earliest southern mail routes and
designed to be one of the chief cities along the historic Michigan road. The
original cabin is still in existence and is occupied, as is also the frame
house on the adjoining farm, which was also built by William Polke and was the
first frame house north of the Wabash on the Michigan road.
The
Yellow River Road. This road was the same as the La Porte and Plymouth mail
route above referred to. The board of commissioners of Marshall county early
took steps to open the road and put it in condition for the increasing travel
over that line to La Porte, and especially to Michigan City, where shipments of
grain and other produce was made, and where all kinds of merchandise was
received by lake from New York and Chicago, and hauled overland to Plymouth and
farther south to Rochester .
At a
special session of the board held in the early part of July (no date is given
on the record) the following order appears on Order Book A, page 17, in
reference to this road :
The
board of commissioners for the county of Marshall, Jul¥ special session, 1836.
Ordered,
That Stephen Marsters, commissioner of the three per cent (3) fund for said
county, is ordered to layout five hundred dollars ( $500) on the road leading
from Plymouth, in the said county of Marshall, to La Porte, commonly called the
"Yellow River road," which sum shall be expended on that part of said
road which is within the bounds of the said county of Marshall, and the said
commissioner aforesaid shall proceed to layoff the said road in lots of quarter
sections as near as may be and expend the aforesaid appropriation in the places
mostly needing the same. The said commissioner shall cause the said road to be
cross [word indistinct] with good lasting timber, to be eighteen feet in
length, in those parts of said road wherein he may deem it necessary, and cause
the same to be covered with clay, sand or gravel five or six inches in depth;
and also cause culverts to be put in said road and said road to be ditched so
as to cause the water to drain from the same wherein his judgment may deem it
necessary; and said commissioner shall proceed to sell the same to the lowest
bidder at public auction in the town of Plymouth, in said county, after having
advertised the same ten days previous to the day of sale by posting up written
advertisements at several of the most public places in said county. Contractors
to give bond with security to be approved by the said commissioner in double
the sum of their contracts
for
their faithful performance of said work; said road to be completed by the
fifteenth (15th) day of November, 1836. Said commissioners to pay one-fourth of
the money when contractors have their contracts half completed and no more.
Ordered,
That said board adjourn until tomorrow morning, 9 o 'clock A. M. And said board
adjourned.
ROBERT BLAIR,
ABRAHAM JOHNSON,
CHABLES OSTERHAUTE,
Commissioners.
Test:
JEREMIAH MUNCY, Clerk. At the September term, 1837, Stephen Marsters, the
commissioner of the 3 per cent fund, reported that he had expended on the
Yellow River road
151 HISTORY
OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
A
total of $1,107.41, to the contractors – Sidney Williams, Williamson Owens,
Thomas Singleton and Gustavus A. Cone. For many years afterward much work was
done on the road before it became fairly passable.
PLANK
ROADS.
During
the year of 1851 the question of how to obtain good roads was the all-absorbing
topic of conversation and discussion among the people of Marshall County. At
that time there were very few regularly established wagon roads in the country.
The Michigan Road, extending through the county from south to north, had been
opened after a fashion, as had also the road between Plymouth and LaPorte.
Roads leading in other directions mostly followed the Indian trails, the brush
and logs being cleared out and the trees blazed so that those passing along
would not get lost. The ponds and sink holes, which were numerous, were bridged
over with logs and poles and covered with a light coating of loose dirt. Roads
ran whenever it was most convenient, without regard to section lines, as there
was little cleared land then to be interfered with. In the spring and fall of
the year, known as the “rainy seasons”, the roads became almost impassable. Ox
teams were mostly used then, and it was about all a single yoke of oxen could
do to haul even an empty wagon any considerable distance. The Michigan and
LaPorte roads were traveled more than any others in the county, but the more
they were traveled the worse they got. The sub-soil, sand and mud holes were
numerous, and teaming was the most difficulty thing the farmers and business
men had to do. Naturally enough this deplorable condition of the roads led to
an effort to improve them, resulting in the attempt to build plank roads over
the main lines of travel.
The
Plymouth Pilot, which was the only paper in the country at that time, took up
the discussion of the advisability of building plank roads and pursued it with
vigor for some time, although it does not appear that it resulted in
accomplishing much toward the final completion of the roads then being built in
this direction. Among other things the editor said:
“Here
we have a county containing a population of 8000. We have but one town in the
county, and no other town within twenty miles of us and no good market under
forty miles. In order to get to that market we have to pass over some most
execrable roads at all seasons of the year, which are easily bettered and which
we fail to make any effort in, while our neighbors around us are all awake to
their own welfare and offering every assistance to us that we can ask, and that
needs only the taking advantage of to bring a market to our own door.”
After
enumerating the advantages to be derived from plank roads, the editor went on
to say:
“The
interests of Michigan City and LaPorte are identical, and we should care
nothing for their bickering. South Bend, twenty-four miles north, is on the St.
Joseph River, with the Southern railroad through it and the Central ten miles
distant, and the warehouse of the Central at Mishawaka, twenty four miles from
here, prepared to receive produce at Niles without additional charge. Boats are
running on the river carrying produce to St. Joseph to be shipped on the lake.
Rochester is twenty miles south; Logansport forty-three miles south on the
canal and will probably soon
152
HISTORY
OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
have
a railroad and depot. Now here we have a diagram of our means of outlet, and
now comes the value of plank roads. Logansport is building to Rochester and has
completed about fifteen miles. South Bend has built about ten miles toward us.
La 'Forte has built about twelve miles toward us, and it remains with us
whether it comes here or goes through North Liberty to South Bend."
After
showing the great advantages to be derived from the building of the proposed
roads, the editor concluded as follows :
"Lay
down your plank one foot wide, nine feet long, and full two and one-half inches
thick, and it will stay there. With railroads all around us and thoroughfares opening in
every direction, we are 'stoning the squirrel while the dog is robbing our
dinner basket !' Wake up, then, and show us the man that says he won't take a
share in it and push it through, and we will show you the man that goes to mill
with the wheat in one end of the bag and a stone in the other, 'because his
father did.' "
The
road from LaPorte, if memory is not at fault, was only completed to the
Kankakee river, where it connected with a toll bridge across that stream known
as "Lemon's bridge." Until the completion of the LaPorte & Plymouth railroad in
1855, "Lemon's bridge" was a popular stopping place. Horses were
watered and fed there, meals served, and a little some- thing for the stomach's
sake could be had upon a pinch. Frequently teams loaded with wheat for the
"port at Michigan City" camped out there over night during the
summer, starting early the next morning and arriving at Michigan City by sundown.
The
plank road was completed most of the way to Plymouth during the year 1852. It
never paid the expense of construction, and after a few years was abandoned.
The boards soon began to warp at the ends and as no repairs were made the road
became almost impassable. The planks were finally taken up and piled at the
side of the road and finally rotted or were burned up. It was many years before
the Michigan road to South Bend was fairly passable, and even to this day it
might be a good deal better than it is. Before the war all the plank roads that
had been built were abandoned, and that great improvement scheme that promised
so much in the beginning came to an inglorious end.