HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                      29

supply the demand for pork and flour-barrels at the centers of population
and commerce, rural coopers found a ready sale for their product. Many
wagon loads of barrels made in Clay county were hauled to the Terre
Haute market, for which service a special, spacious rack was made and
used, and as many as fifty or sixty flour barrels, or twenty-five pork bar-
rels, hauled at a load, of which the standard market price was twenty-five
cents a piece for flour barrels in quantities, and one dollar a piece for
pork barrels.
    Industrially, the cooper was then as much in demand as were other
tradesmen and shops comparatively numerous. The principal and only
industry of this kind at Brazil was conducted by John Behan, an expert,
industrious workman, whose shop was near Jackson street, on the
south end of the lot now occupied by the city buildings. Behan is
remembered as a native of the Emerald Isle, a close and critical reader
of current news, an uncompromising Democrat, who could discuss the
political issues pending and involved in the prosecution of the Civil War
with all ease without a moment’s relinquishment of work in the building
of a barrel. He it was, who, in the spring of 1861, made the prediction
that the population and territory of the United States would become so
completely alienated and disrupted by the war that from diversity of
industrial and commercial interests there would result as many as five
or six separate republics within the same territory before the close of
the century.
    William Debruler manufactured barrels at Center Point for the
flouring-mill there, first in a cabin which stood on the border of the
Moss lands adjoining the town site on the southwest, then in a small
shop by the roadside, a little west of the mill, and still later, at his place
of residence, near the old United Brethren church.
    William Albright maintained a shop for some years in the south
part of Jackson township, two miles northwest of Center Point, where
he made barrels for the Kennedy mill, which he delivered by wagon-loads.
Later he changed his residence, locating in Perry township, near Art
postoffice, where he continued the industry, still marketing his product
at the Center Point mill. Solomon Market also plied the cooper’s art,
on the farm south of Hoosierville, now owned and occupied by Lewis
McNutt, and known poetically as “Idylwilde.”
    In Perry township, John Foulke carried on this industry between
the years 1850 and 1860, on the farm now occupied by Silas D. Foulke.
Charles Lynd also manufactured barrels at Cory for Moorhart & Ferrell,
proprietors of the Elkhorn flouring-mill, from 1879 to 1881.
    Philip Boor, a well known citizen of Posey township, conducted this
industry for a number of years at Staunton, and there was also a cooper
shop on the Upper Bloomington road, in Posey township, between the
point at which stands the Old School Baptist church and the Vigo county
line, carried on by Ebenezer Roberts & Sons.
    Fifty years ago Abraham Friedley was actively engaged in this
industry in the then almost unbroken forest of Eel river bottom, west
of Middlebury, on what has ever since ‘been known as “The Friedley
Knoll,” so named from his having settled it. Here he was immediately
surrounded by the timber supply for carrying on his work, which could
be had for the cutting, and plied himself daily, working early and late,
in producing barrels for the Terre Haute market, much of his prodnct
having been wagoned by Silas G. Cooprider, about the time of his becom-