PIONEER LIFE ON DEER
CREEK
from
North Vernon Plain Dealer---November 15, 1923
From the records of Bonita Welch, Jenning County Researcher &
descendant of the William Vawter Family.
In response to
the request of the Jennings County Historical Society I shall try to relate some
incidents of pioneer life in that part of Jennings County which is now known as
the the Deer Creek neighborhood. I shall not try to give you history but just to
tell you something of the habits, customs and mode of living of the early
settlers of this neighberhood and to describe the country at that time as I
remember it and I hope that you may find something in it that may interest you.
I shall begin by telling you that I was born in the year 1844, in a log house
one and one-half miles east of what is new North Vernon. The house stood just
where the B. & O. fill is now located. In fact the house was moved several
years later, when the railroad fill was made. All the houses of that time were
log houses of one big roon 20 or 22 or 24 feet square. There was only one
chimney to each house and this chimney was for the big fire place which was
always either aix or ten feet wide. There were square holes cut in the walls for
windows and these were covered with greased paper to admit the light. Some few
houses had glass in the windows but more of them had greased paper. A few houses
were made double with an entrance between the two large
rooms.
My grandfather, William Vawter, entered 640 acres
of land from the Government in 1818 and this became what is now known as Deer
Creek neighborhood. My father was Armand F. Feagler, a Baptist preacher. The
families of the neighborhood in my boyhood days were the Fairgoulds, Pettses,
Abercrombes, Wagners, Clarkstons, McCaulous, Levetts, Fitzgivenses, Bears,
Richardsons, Midcapps, Kings and others whose names I cannot recall. The cabins
and clearings were all on the hills as the flats--in what is now the Oakdale
neighborhood--were covered with water all during the summer months and if one
attempted to ride a horse through this flat land the animal would sink to its
knees. These swampy flats caused chills and fever, the principal ailments of the
time, so for this reason the people cleared the hillsides and built their cabins
of the hilltops. My uncle, Miles McCaulou, who lived about one half mile from
Deer Creek on Stribbling's Branch, had the largest clearing. He had ten acres
cleared while most all of his neighbors had a clearing of only one and one half
or two acres. The uncleared land was covered with heavy timber, there was no
underbrush and when going through the woods one could see for a mile if the
ground were level.
There was plenty of wild game and for
our meat we had chiefly wild turkeys and deer. I have seen as many as five
hundred wild turkeys in a flock and the deer ran wild all over the country. I
remember seeing twelve deer in a herd when I was about ten years old. We
could have turkey and venison for the table whenever we wanted to go out and get
them. Hogs ran wild in the woods. They were no wild hogs but they ran wild and
belonged to anyone who wished to go out and shoot them. Hogs were not used much
for food, however, as the people did not like pork. The meat from the hogs in
the wild state was very fat and when dressed and cut up for food it melted away
into grease if it were left standing very long. I presume it was because the
hogs were forced to feed entirely upon beech mast. It seems strange to me now
when I remember that we raised only a few chickens.
Vernon
was the town in my boyhood but we went there only for a few things such as salt,
hoes, shovels and rakes. Everything we needed was raised or made in the
neighborhood. We planted corn by using an iron prod or a hoe to dig the hole for
the seed and then we cultivated it with a hoe. It would have been impossible to
cultivate it in any other way on account of the stumps. We took the corn to
Andrew's mill, the ruins of which can still be seen near the railroad bridge,
east of North Vernon on the banks of the Muscatatuck. We would put a peck or a
half bushel in each end of a sack, threw the sack across a horse and sit on it
as we journeyed to the mill. Some people grit the corn with a tin with holes
punched in it, then sieved it out and baked it that way. It was a great deal
better bread than the bread now-a-days.
When we went to the mill, each fellow
had to take turn in getting his corn ground and the miller kept out part of the
meal as his pay. I remember when I was about seven years old my father sent me
to the mill and when I returned I had such a small amount of meal that he asked
me if I had spilled any of it on the way. When I told him that was all the
miller gave me he took hold of the bridle and led the horse back to the mill
over the road that I had traveled. When we reached the mill the miller told my
father that I must have spilled the meal, so the miller filled up my sack.
Besides bread the rest of our food we picked up in the country. We raised
potatoes, corn and cabbage in the clearing. We made maple sugar in a big sugar
camp and we melted the sugar when we wanted molasses.
The
women made everything that was needed in the house. They spun the flax and wool
for clothing and bedding. They cooked the grease from the wild hogs and worked
it up with wood ashes into soap. Some of it we called soft soap; some of it they
made hard and could cut it in slices. Candles were used for lighting and these
also were made by the women. They would make heavy woolen strings and would dip
twelve of them at a time into tallow. They would dip them and let them harden
until this process had been repeated about thirty times when they were ready for
use. They usually made enough at one time to do for a year. It took about two
days to make a batch of candles and then they were put away in boxes until they
were needed for use.
My uncle, John Stott who lived where
the Zoar School now stands, had a tan yard. All the people of the neighborhood
brought their hides to him to be tanned. He had large vats dug in the ground,
each vat being four feet deep. He would put a layer of hides in the vat, cover
them with a layer of ground up oak bark, then another layer of hides and another
layer of bark and so on until the vat was filled. He would then fill the vat
with water and let the hides stand for six months. At the end of this time the
hides were taken from the vats and the hair scraped off. Then he would put the
hides back in the vats in the same manner as before, a layer of hides and a
layer of oak bark and cover with water. They were left in the vats for another
six months and then were taken out and dressed. The dressing process consisted
in stretching the hide over a log and rubbing with an iron rubbing
utensil. When the hides were dressed each man took home the hides that belonged
to him and the leather was made into shoes. My father made all our shoes but
sometimes a cobbler would visit the neighborhood and make shoes for other
families. The soles were made out of the heavy leather and the uppers out of the
lighter skins. The shoes would not leak water. It was a common thing in those
days to cut down a big oak tree that today would be worth fifty dollars just to
get the bark for tanning. The tree was left lying as it fell until it decayed.
There was plenty of dead wood for fuel and as the main object was to get the
land cleared, every big tree that was cut down was a step in the right
direction.
The school houses of my day were log houses the
same as the cabin homes. My schooling consisted of three months at the Zoar
School when I was nine years old. The school house that I attended had glass
windows but there were some of an earlier date that had tanned fawn skins, which
were thin and transparent, atretched over the openings for windows. I studied,
reading, writing and spelling. This completed my education for the time but I
attended one term at Deer Creek School when a young man after the war to study
mathematics.
I was always told that there were lots of
Indians on the Muscatatuck north of us and over on Sand Creek, near what is now
Butlerville, but I never saw them. There was one tepee, however, at the mouth of
Stribbling's Branch and I went over there once to see them. The tepee was made
of hickory bark, curled from the sun, and fitted together so as to turn the
rain. I remember that the day that I visited this tepee the Indians were eating
black snakes.
When the building of the O. & M.
Railroad was started in 1857, a town had sprung up where Simmons brick yard
now stands. The town was called Clifty. There were nine dwelling houses, a ten
room frame hotel, a store and a blacksmith shop. The men who were employed on
the consturction of the railroad were boarded at the houses and the hotel in
Clifty. While this railroad was in process of construction, I was employed
hauling dirt for the fill. J. B. Millan was walking boss, dump boss and
paymaster. I hauled dirt for the fill between the two bridges and above the
bridges. I got fifty cents per week and boarded myself. Norton and Black were
the contractors.
In my young days we had not much reading
matter but what we had was treasured highly. Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress, Miss
Shipton's Prophecies and a few other books the name of which I cannot remember
were volumes of the day and they were loaned around the neighborhood so that
everyone had a chance to read them. They were handled with the greatest care and
were never allowed to reach the hands of children who might mutilate or destroy
them. I remember distinctly how thrilling was the book of Miss Shipman's
prophecies for she told that at some future time vehicles would run with horses
and machines would be flying through the air. A few of us have lived to see her
prophecies come true.
We had our fun in the old days, too,
when we would gather for dances on the puncheon floors and make merry with the
square dance and quadrille with the fiddle for our
orchestra.
The present fish and game laws and the Fish and
Game Protective Society of today remind me of the time when fish were plentiful
in the streams. I am afraid no one will believe me when I say I have seen fish
so thick on the riffles in the Muscatatuck that one could walk across the stream
on them. We used to set traps and catch them and they furnished part of our
food. I remember, when I was nearly grown, of seeing fishing parties from what
we then called Germany and what is now the St. Ann neighborhood. Every fall
thses people would come to the creek in crowds with wagons loaded with empty
tubs and barrels and seine for fish. One little dip and they would get all the
fish that three or four men could pull out with the seine. There were women in
the party, always, and they would scale and clean the fish and throw them into
the barrels in the wagons.The fish were salted and kept for winter food. These
fishing parties were always joyous affairs.
When father
made trips to Vernon he always took me with him. I would ride behind him on the
horse and whenever we stopped I would hold the horse while father did the
talking. We always came across from Deer Creek and traveled up along the branch
that runs back of what is now known as the Verbarg place; we went on through the
woods until we struck the State Road near what is now the Fair Ground. The
northern part of what is now the City of North Vernon was wooded area composed
mostly of poplar, walnut and beech trees; a little to the west the woods was
composed mostly of white oak. The biggest poplar tree I ever saw was standing on
the spot now occupied by the Philbarg Theatre. It was six or seven feet in
diameter. There was another road that led from the Deer Creek neighborhood and
came in over what is now Irish Hill, then down through what was later the Babb
and Tate farms, crossed the railroad and struck the State Road north of what is
now the Overmyer place.
My first memory of North Vernon is
when there was but one house, where the North Vernon Lumber Mills now stand. The
house was occupied by a family named Padgett. What is now the center of town was
a low swamp almost a pond. The first real settlement of the town was made by
families named Houppert and Schubert, who built some houses and started a
coopershop on the State Road, in the place that we now call near the Red Bridge.
As North Vernon was building, the houses of the little village of Clifty
disappeared one by one; most of them being destroyed by fire casued probably by
sparks from the engines on the new road.
When the Civil
War started, we young men of Deer Creek volunteered and I was gone four years
fighting for the Union. When I returned I found things had changed a great deal
and some frame stores and other buildings had been erected in North
Vernon.
by James W. Feagler
Picture contributed by John & Bonnie McFarland,
John is a descentant of Vawter John Feagler who is a
brother of James Feagler.
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