| THE JASONVILLE STORY CONTINUED... |
| Chapter IX An early settler of the community was John B. Poe who entered land in Lewis Township on February 18, 1836 at which time Andrew Jackson was president. Included in this entry was the land on which Peavey Cemetery is now located and which was known in the early days as the Poe cemetery. There is no record as to how long ago this tract was used as a burial ground by the Indians. It is claimed that Mrs. David Inman was the first white person buried there, but I find no official record of this. Minervia Cooprider, who died August 8, 1847 is the first burial recorded on the monuments. This plot did not officially become public property until 1863, when John B. Poe deeded the plot to A.J. Baber, who was trustee of Lewis township at the time. Mr. Poe left Lewis Township and settled on the Poe hill southeast of Jasonville, but was returned to this cemetery to be buried in August 1891 at 99 years of age. He was a grandfather of our townsman Perry Poe and of the late John A (Jed) Poe. Bringing it nearer up to date, he was the great grandfather of the children of Jed and Perry and the great, great grandfather of the son of Agnes May (Griffith) Sloan. Here we have seven generations of the Poe family, John B., John B. Jr., John A. (Jed), Leon, Lavene, Agnes, May and Donnie Sloan, Jr., and all resided in this community. The Union Christian Church, which was important in the religious life of the Jasonville community, until its abandonment a few years ago, was first organized in the early 1840s. One source informs me it was actually organized in the home of Elihu Puckett on Puckett Prairie in 1842 and the first church built on the Jehu Colson place in 1845. The latest church was built on ground ~1onated by David Shepherd in 1874. These men and their families were some of the members of the early church. Elihu Puckett, Allan Brown, John Gary, Lewis Puckett, John Fye, John Tennis, John Neal, Mahlon Neal and Thomas Neal. Among the early preachers of the church we find again the name of Reverend Richard Wright after whom Wright Township was named and who met his death by accident at the north edge of Jasonville. Thomas Craig, one of the early members, could neither read or v rite when he joined the church. So great was his thirst for knowledge of the Word of God that he educated himself to the point that he later was minister of the church. Craig owned a mill, and here he read and studied his Bible, asking his patrons who came in, the proper pronunciation of difficult words. What a better time to study and learn the way to Eternal life than while grinding the ingredients for the staff of life. Jacob Littlejohn, father of our fellow townsmen, Ote, was long a member minister and an ardent worker in this church. John Gray is said to have been the first one buried in Union Cemetery. Another early preacher at Union was John Neal grandfather of our local businessman, �Mike� Neal. He came to the community about 1838 and settled some three miles North of town. He was reared in the Quaker faith, but it is said he was ex-communicated from the church after wedding a non-Quaker. During his ministry he claimed to have baptized approximately 150 people and to have performed some 300 marriages. His two Sons, Wilson and John A., lived out their lives on their farms East of Bogle corner and were well known to the writer. Ben Franklin pointed out how much the abundance of fish, game, wild fruit, nuts and cheap land contributed to the early American�s spirit of independence saying, �I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger.� Some other arrivals in Jasonville and Wright township before the civil war were: Rev. Richard Wright, North Carolina 1826, George Baughman, Ohio, 1854, John Bledsoe, Tenn. 1837, Martin Bonham, Ohio, 1832, James Gibson, Penn, (date unknown), Rev. Joseph I. Hanna, Penn. 1849, Dr. Ephraim Morgan, Ohio 1861, C. M. Parks, Ohio, 1856, Joel Philbert, Kentucky (date unknown), Sanders Pigg, Tenn. 1834, Lewis P. Letsinger (father of �Uncle� Lewis and �Uncle� Henry) Tenn. 1843, Isaac W. Warrick (Elmer�s grandfather) Penn. 1842. Lewis P. Letsinger, above mentioned, and his family moved from Tennessee to Owen County, Indiana and a little later to South of Jasonville and settled on the West Side of Meridian street road. Part of his original homestead is still in the hands of his descendants. He died there in 1878 at the age of sixty-eight years. His wife, Margaret (Thorlton) Letsinger, died in her ninety seventh year in 1906. They were the parents of thirteen children. I doubt if the war record of this family surpassed ~n Indiana and perhaps not in the United States. Six sons, including Uncle Lewis whom all our older people knew so well, were in the Union army, as were three husbands of their daughters, nine in all from this family. Three of the sons were buried in the Southland. The elder Letsinger, Lewis P., was one of the founders of the Oak Grove Methodist church on the North Meridian street road. The middle one of the Letsinger children, SIX younger and six older, was Phebe, who married James T. Warrick, Elmer�s father. James T�s father, Isaac Warrick came to Wright Township from Pennsylvania in 1842, settling south of town on land, much of which still belongs to the Warrick family. James T. Warrick was one of the men referred to in the foregoing paragraph that married into the family of Lewis P. Letsinger and later joined the Union Army. He was taken prisoner and confined in Libby Prison where he contracted rheumatism, which plagued him the rest of his days. Upon prisoners being exchanged he entreated his brother in law, Lewis E. Letsinger, who was also a prisoner, to carry him from the prison, stating he didn�t want to be left there to die. Lewis complied with his request and carried him to the railroad station and placed him on the train, which bore them, northward. Elmer�s grandmother was one of the early schoolteachers of the township. She taught in a log schoolhouse on the Poe Hill about a mile and one half south and a mile east of Jasonville. The settler�s thirst for religious worship planted a church in the forefront of every settlement. This need was fulfilled for the local area when John Edmonson brought his family from Tennessee in 1839 or 1840 and settled in Lewis township about a mile and one half north and a little east of the intersection of Main and Meridian streets. Rev. John Edmonson had been ordained a minister by the Methodist church of Tennessee in 1837. Upon his arrival he immediately set about the organizations of a Methodist class. Going from home to home he enrolled whole families in the class and baptized them. Early meeting were held in the homes of members of the class. Sometime later they took over as a meeting place a pole cabin, which had been built across the road from where Oak Grove Cemetery now stands. In 1850 Joseph Barnes, donated to the church one-half acre of ground where the cemetery is now located on North Meridian Street. The deed recited, �that a building be erected for the preaching and expounding of God�s Holy Word therein.� This building was erected of hewed logs in 1850 and used until 1861 when a frame church was built at what is now 19 East Main Street. Reverend Edmonson died in Lewis Township in 1867 and in compliance with his request was interred directly beneath the spot where the altar of the church had stood, the church he had organized and served as pastor throughout its existence. Trustees of the Oak Grove church were Rev. John Edmonson, David Puckett, Lewis P. Letsinger, John O�Donnell and Joel Buckallew. The present building on South Meridian was erected in 1902. Wright Township was one of the most famous in the country in the early years for its wild game. There was no species of wild game common to this latitude that could not be found here in proper season. This situation continued to prevail to an even later date, when some neighboring localities had their wild game almost depleted. So plentiful was the game that hunters from other sections often visited the area, remaining a week or more, killing large number of deer and a limited number of bears, wolves, panthers, foxes, and other small animals. These were commercial hunters making their living through the sale of the carcasses of those fit for human consumption and the hides of others. Rev. Alexander Poe, a resident of the township at an early day, was a noted deer hunter as well as a Christian minister, assisting in the founding of the first church of that denomination in the township. Even then, as now, they had individuals who were recognized as champion hunters and fishermen. Mr. Poe seemed to excel in both branches, it being said he could kill more deer and catch more fish than any man in Wright Township. During the winter of 1834 he and his boys caught several wagonloads of big fish through the ice at Muir�s Lake. He killed as high as six deer in one day and during an early winter killed eighty head. He was famed also as a bee hunter and always kept a large supply of wild honey in the home, claiming to have found one tree that contained more than three barrels of honey, some of it so old it had �candied�. Thomas Puckett, �Red Rough�, named a dense red oak thicket about two miles East of Jasonville. Puckett was a noted bear hunter of the early days. The story was often told of how he trailed a bear almost to Terre Haute before bringing it down with a shot from his muzzle-loading rifle. Red Rough the community still is today, though many erroneously think it to be Red Roof, so called from a red roof that at one time covered the school that was located there. It was, however, Red Rough, many, many years before the school came, and it was famed as a habitation for all kinds of game. In our adjoining township of Smith is the Scaffold Prairie school and church community. Here was perhaps, in the early days the greatest concentration of wild animals in this section of Indiana, if not within the whole state. There, in the central and lower parts of the prairie, were �licks� visited by wild animals, deer, buffalo and elk, probably from the commencement of wild animals on this continent until after the coming of white man. At the white man�s coming they found large basins had been licked out, through the centuries, by animals craving salt and perhaps other substances found in the wet soil. From these licks what were called �buffalo ditches� diverged in every direction made by the comings and goings of animals over the ages and the wash of water along the paths. Around this lick were scaffolds constructed on four poles set in the ground and rising about 15 feet above the level of the surface. The Indians, who constructed them, would sit upon these scaffolds and watch for animals approaching the place. The animals would cautiously approach spying for enemies on the ground, but never thinking of danger from above. In this manner the hunter could wait until the game was near enough for an almost certain kill from a flint tipped arrow or in later years a rifle ball. Evidences of the scaffolds were to be seen long after the coming of the settlers. In fact they were repaired and used some by the settlers. Here, we have the naming of another community, Scaffold Prairie, from the scaffolds, which stood on the prairie. Smaller �deer licks� were found throughout this section, where deer would come and drink the brackish water and lick the soft earth. More settlers who found their way to the Jasonville community in the early days were the Settys, Crabtree�s, Benjamin, Fry, McBride�s and the Baber's. Win. Baber settled in Wright Township a short distance South of the Muir�s lake bridge and on the West side of the road. Robert Baber came in 1822 and settled near the place where the grade school later stood and started one of the early mills about one fourth mile south of the school crossroads. Uncle Jack Baber was born in Richland Township, Greene County on February 10, 1821. When a small boy the family moved to the Coffee district of Lewis Township. He was the first postmaster at the Coffee Post office, which was the first to be established in that township. Coffins in the days, before the sawmill, seem to this writer the crudest of all the necessities improvised by the settlers. One method was to cut a section of a large log long enough to accommodate the body. A cap or side would then be carefully split off the section .of log. By using wedges this could be done in a remarkably smooth manner. The large part of the log would then be hollowed out by means of the adz and ax until there was room for the body. A small section at each end was left intact as ends for the coffin and the open side where the cap had been removed was the only opening, after the holes that had been bored with an augur. Poplar was the wood usually sought for this purpose as the cap could be split straight and the hollowing out process was easy in this soft wood. Another method was of using the bark of a hickory tree of sufficient size. The bark of the hickory is very thick and at certain seasons of the year would peel with little difficulty. The bark would be cut around the tree a foot or so from the ground and again six or seven feet up the tree, to suit the height of the corpse. The bark would then be cut in a straight perpendicular line between the two cuts around the tree. Then working with a common ax, with an art and accuracy unknown today, this whole section of bark would be taken off in one piece. The open edges would be spread and thus removed from the tree and by the same operation it would be opened to receive the body. When released the gap would securely close and after fastening a deer skin, or other material at hand, over the two ends, it was ready for burial. There was no cost whatsoever attached to such burials, the family and friends doing all the work. With the coming of the sawmill, sawed lumber coffins were made. Often lumber of such dimension could be had that the sides, bottom and lid each contained but one board made by the some local carpenter or cabinet maker the price ranged from fifty cents for a child�s up to two dollars for larger sizes. The corpse, where the family could afford to furnish the material, was always dressed in a white shroud or winding sheet made- by the women or girls of the neighborhood, who always donated this work, as did the neighbors in digging the grave. A coffin with a bed of soft shavings in the bottom, a piece of cheap muslin tacked over a small heap of shavings for a pillow and the wood stained with color from berries or bark sometimes sold for as much as five dollars. Payment in full by cash was seldom made to the coffin maker coming in part in corn, wheat or in labor. We wouldn�t want to go back to this custom, but shed no tear over your grandmother of a few generations ago. She is resting with all the bliss and peace that will be yours so far as the method of burial governs it. The above is such a far cry from burial, as we know it today, it will impress some of my listeners as existing in a dim and distant past. Actually, this is not true. Joseph Robinson, who bought out J.R. Payne�s undertaking business in Jasonville in 1892, was the first in Jasonville to use factory made caskets. Prior to that date they were all home made here. The first undertaker of Jasonville we learn of was Charles Stock. He was followed by J.R. Payne, George Edmonson, Joseph Robinson, Bonham and Worth, Lou Bonham, A M. Foreman, E.A. Wood, the Wood Smith Co., Aiken and Hockenberry, Ben McLaughlin, Aiken and McClanahan, Mathers and the present concern doing business under the firm name and style of McClanahan Funeral Home. The founder of this firm, Floyd McClanahan passed away on December 1, 1954. |
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