HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                          27

as nearly as remembered. In Van Buren township there was a “still”
on the Mosteller place, about two miles south of the site of the town of
Lena. Some years after the war, in the time of the early seventies, a plant
of limited capacity was operated by Latham & Yow in the wilds of Eel
river and Birch creek, said to have been located at different points of sup-
posed security from detection and exposure, as its operations at that
time were in violation of the laws of the general government. At the time
of the confiscation of the plant, in 1871, when the revenue officers came
out from Terre Haute, loaded it up and hauled it away, it was located
near the site of the later Knickerbocker mine, a little distance southeast
of the town plant of Saline City. This is thought to have been the last
"worm of the still” in Clay county. That all of the pioneer liquid man-
ufactories in the history of the county have been here enumerated is
hardly to be supposed. The writer has been told by early settlers that
when Joe Crise was running his corn-cracker on Birch creek, near the
Kintzley crossing, now the Vandalia station on the Brazil branch rail-
road, customers would put an empty gallon jug into a sack of corn and
take it back with them, filled with home-made whiskey, the exchange hav-
ing been made at the mill. However, this report is discredited by others
who were his neighbors at the time.
    The first brewery, it is said by early residents, was located and
operated on the north side of the town of Bowling Green, on the site on
which was afterward erected the first steam flouring-mill. At a later
day, the Stucki brewery was established on the river bank, on the west
side, just below the bridge, which was in operation during the Civil
war and for a period of many years thereafter. At some time in the
sixties, Joe Lenhart bought the tract of land on Birch creek on which
the Gibbons mill had been located and operated at a much earlier day,
and started a brewery on the same ground, which he continued to run
for several years after the war. This rural plant afforded the farmers of
the Birch creek agricultural community and its borders the opportunity
to lay in a supply of lubricant for energizing the operations of the harvest
field, of which some of them, at least, took advantage. There was also
a brewery on the National road, west of Williamstown, operated by John
Bauer, who moved it to Harmony, about the year 1870, where it was
planted and operated for several years on the south side of the town.
    A prime necessity with the first and early settlers was the bell for
tracing and finding their cattle in the forest pastures. Not only their
cows were belled, but their oxen, horses, sheep and hogs. This was the
only practical and available precaution against the loss of their stock. To
supply this demand the making of bells was a very necessary industry.
But very few of the pioneer workers in metal ever mastered the bell-
making art, which was a specialty. The only bell-makers in the south
end of the county were John and Peter Cooprider, father and grandfather
of Rev. Elias Cooprider, who were the first blacksmiths within the ter-
ritory of Harrison township. They manufactured to order the bells for a
large area of the country round about. Every owner of stock knew the
sound of his own bell as far as it could be heard. As no two voices are
the counterparts of each other, neither are the jingles of any two bells.
In fact, no two bells were ever made to emit indistinguishable sounds.
Whatever may be the philosophy underlying this phenomenon in acoustics,
practically, it proved a source of good fortune to the primitive inhabi-
tants of the wilderness.