36                  HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

workmen and associates unnamed none survive to tell the tale. With
no disparagement to the life work and memory of any one, special
mention may be made of Henry Bemis, Nathan Williams, Jesse Yocum,
Morgan B. Ringo and Esau Presnell. Bemis acquired large possessions
in lands in both Clay and Vigo counties, and survived to round out more
than four score years and ten; Williams, in later years, played a very
prominent part in the development and output of our coal fields, affording
employment and livelihood to hundreds of laboring men, accumulating
and bequeathing a large estate; Yocum acquired a good farm and home
and was sheriff of the county from 1875 to 1877; Ringo, with the money
earned in this way, bought his first forty acres of land, laying the founda-
tion for future prosperity and wealth, becoming the heaviest tax-payer
in the county, and was honored with a seat in the state senate from 1872
to 1876; Presnell, in time, became a wealthy merchant and railroad stock-
holder, and was entrusted with the responsible position of president of the
board of county commissioners from 1862 to 1865. Such as they were
the true type of the yeomanry of their day and ever the salt of the earth.
Besides affording profitable employment, the building of this road made
Terre Haute accessible to the north part of the county.
    Of the contractors on construction of this road-way across the
territory of this county are remembered George G. McKinley, William
Yocum, John James and Thomas James. There may have been other
resident, local contractors, as there were, also, sub-contractors. Arnold
Cabbage, for many years a prominent farmer citizen of the northwest
part of the county, was heard to say, repeatedly, in relating the experiences
and recollections of his boyhood days, that the first money he ever earned
and had, as his own, was twenty-five cents paid to him by James
Townsend, Sr., for carrying water to the men at work on the National
Road when he was twelve years of age. The superintendent of construc-
tion on that section of the work including this county was Homer Johnson,
and the civil engineer a man named Devlin, whose first name is not
remembered.
    The materials used in making this improvement were dirt, timber and
stone of which there was no scarcity here in Clay county. On the
contrary, there was a superabundance of dirt and timber immediately
on the right-of-way, with stone within reasonable distance. Much of
the stone used was quarried from the knoll, or bluff, of that branch of
Birch creek flowing through Brazil, on which stood the woolen factory
forty years later. The extent of the National Road in Clay county is
twelve and a half miles, the point of crossing the Clay-Vigo county line,
half a mile west of Cloverland, being three miles further south than the
point near Eaglesfield’s; at which it crosses the Putnam-Clay county line.
    The projectors and promoters of the Cumberland road as a thor-
oughfare between the East and the West, did not misapprehend nor
exaggerate its importance. The stream of emigration flowed so persis-
tently and evenly that, to accommodate its necessities and contingencies,
houses of entertainment, at that day known as “taverns,” or “inns,” sprang
up all along the line. So numerous were they as to be within sight of
each other and, in some instances, within calling distance. The emigrant,
or mover, failing to get accommodations at any one of these inns, from
any cause, had but little distance to drive to another. Alongside the
twelve and a half miles of road in this county there were nine of these