HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY  51

Samuel Tribble, who was pursued and taken into custody at Bowling
Green, and Bennett Norton, who were imprisoned one night in one of
the old canal boats occupied by the soldiery. The accused were tried
before Esquire John Robinson, of Perry township, and acquitted. The
state was represented by John P. Usher and William K. Edwards, of
Terre Haute, and the defense by James M. Hanna and John Osborn, of
Bowling Green. At the expiration of ten days, the army of occupation
evacuated and fell back to Terre Haute, where they were appropriately
banqueted and, under the influence of a basket of champagne, opened by
William Bement, they became patriotic, made speeches and recited all
their deeds of valor.
    Not all the damage sought to be inflicted upon the property of the
canal company was perpetrated at the Birch Creek reservoir. Corre-
sponding with the attempts made to render this Feeder useless, on the
night of September 9, 1854, the breastwork of the Feeder Dam was
burned to the water’s edge, and in the early part of 1855, Splunge Creek
reservoir was drained by letting the water out into the canal, and then
out through the water-way at Kossuth.
    But people of Clay county, whether right or wrong in their judg-
ment, held the feeders to be nuisances, which they had the right to abate
for self-protection. All these things, coupled with the construction and
operation of the Terre Haute and Indianapolis Railroad, the projection
and building of the Terre Haute & Alton and the Evansville & Craw-
fordsville railroads, led to the neglect and gradual decay of the canal
interests and, but a few years later, its abandonment by the canal com-
pany. To ask who cut the reservoir embankment is but to paraphrase
“Who struck Billy Patterson ?“ If any of them be yet living they are
known only to themselves.
    The contract for the cutting and the removal of the timber from the
Birch Creek feeder was let to William K. Houston, of Bowling Green,
and the work done in the fall of 1854, at the cost of about $10,000 to the
Canal Company. This work gave employment to many of the surround-
ing population, some of the laborers coming from the borders of adjoin-
ing counties. So far as now known, or remembered, but one serious
accident occurred during the prosecution and progress of the work, a
young man named James Shepherd, from Owen county, the son of a
poor widow, having been killed by a falling tree, on the 20th day of
November.
    When the last boat was towed out from Bellaire for the Junction
and Terre Haute, which was the finale of commercial traffic by naviga-
tion in the history of Clay county, can not be stated with assurance of
correctness. As personal recollection is the only available source of
information at this point, presumably George Goshorn, who was the last
to do business there, is the best authority, who has given it as his
recollection that it was in the spring of 1864, perhaps, in the month of
April, when he sent out a consignment of corn.
    As late as 1859-60, efforts were made by the resident population to
maintain that section of the canal between the Junction and Terre Haute,
by private means, in passable condition for local traffic, and repairs were
made at various times and places. But from lack of interest and concert
of action, later on, the matter was abandoned and the Wabash & Erie
canal as a commercial waterway in Clay county was a thing of the past.
    Succeeding the final abandoment of the Cross-Cut section it became,