30                  HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

ing of age. Louis Steuernagel was also a cooper, and maintained a
shop on his homestead in the northeast part of Harrison township, near
the Owen county line. James Bowman also conducted a coopery at
Middlebury, after the time of the Civil War, as did Robert Jordan, near
the Danville, or Shidler, crossing, who subsequently moved to Howesville
and opened a shop there. At the time that the stave factory was being
operated at Saline City, the seventies, John W. Baggett maintained a
shop at that place, producing and shipping a great many barrels.
    Another industry of the same period was the cutting and marketing
of hoop-poles, which were wagoned to Terre Haute, and in the days of
flat-boating, shipped to southern markets. In the purchase of the native
timber lands of that time, the extent of the acreage yielding hoop-poles
was not the last nor least inducement by way of prospective returns on
the investment, in the Terre Haute market poles were worth $1 a
hundred, at New Orleans $1.20, and at New Brunswick 75 cents, delivered
at the Eel river landings. In some instances a boat’s load consisted
wholly of hoop-poles at other times, of poles and staves. Thousands
of staves were rived and shipped in the rough to New Orleans. Timber
for the production of staves could he found in abundance at
point in the county, but the hickory hoop-pole producing area was con-
fined, in the main, to the sandy knolls and elevations on the higher
bottom lands.
    In 1856, Etna Lawrence emigrated from Ohio to Clay county,
Indiana, locating in Posey township, where he engaged in the manu-
facture of hand-made measures, mostly half-bushels, some of lesser
capacity. As population increased and the country improved, there was
a corresponding demand for his products, which were distributed over
the country and sold to dealers and consumers. From this source he
realized, largely, the means which enabled him to buy a farm of ninety
acres m 1878.
    In the year 1859 or 1860, Warren H. Ashley located a work-shop on
the H. L. Ashley place, then a mile east of the town of Brazil, now the
Ross S. Hill homestead, and engaged in the manufacture of fanning-
mills, which were wagoned out over the country for sale. In 1863 he
moved this industry to Crawfordsville and operated it there, where he
still resides.
    Of the various phases of the timber industry for converting forest
trees into marketable products that of cutting shingles was probably the
most widely diffused over the territory of the county accessible to the
railroad. The primitive shingle factory of fifty or more years ago, though
but a miniature manufacturing, plant, comparatively, was popular in its
time, hailed as just the thing needed to conserve the wants of both the
producer and the consumer. These factories, or machines, which were
operated by hand-power, sprang up at many crossroads and other places
convenient for carrying on the business. Only soft timber was used,
and as there was then a superabundance of fine poplar no one was at any
loss in being supplied with the raw material to work upon. The timber
was sawed into blocks of shingle length, which were divided into sec-
tions, the bark taken off, then cast into a water-tight vat under which
was a furnace and softened by the process of steaming, when they were
ready for the knife as soon as cooled enough to be handled. Two men
were required to operate the plant—one to supply the power by handling
the lever, to which the knife was attached, the other to feed the blocks