114 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

1845 and opened shops for general blacksmithing and the manufacture of
wagons and farm implements, transporting by wagon all the iron used,
from Madison, on the Ohio river. Hendrix had been previously engaged
in the same industry in Wayne county, near Centerville. In the same
year (1845) the promoters of the town joined in the building of a small
hewn-log house for church, school and general assembly purposes, on a
lot appropriated by the proprietor, which was on or near what is now
North Franklin street, close to the ground on which stands the present
M.  E. church edifice.
    The number of buildings in the town of Brazil, in the fall of 1845,
additional to the Hendrix residence and the temporary shops on the
northwest corner of National Road and Meridian street, were but few
and may he here enumerated. On the southeast corner of the crossing of
these streets, or roads, was a hewn-log house, which Philip Hedges, the
original owner, had sold to Orlando Thorpe, brother of the founder of
the town. On what is known as the Brattin corner was a frame house,
which John Hendrix afterward bought and moved onto the lot on which
Hezekiah Wheeler lived during the time of his residence at Brazil. On
the present George A. Knight corner was a cabin occupied by a basket
maker named Chase. On the Bryson (former Wagner) corner was a
little frame front with kitchen in the rear, built by “Yankee Bill” Stewart,
in which lived a man named Henry Katterman. On the northeast corner
of Main and Meridian was a hewn-log house owned and occupied by a
man named De Mott, which he sold to Kyle Kirtley, who tore it away
and built a frame, the first hotel of the town, known at a time as “The
Delmonico,” recently cleared away to make room for a modern business
block to be built by Daniel H. Davis.
    Just at this time Ezra Olds was building a hewn-log house on the
ground on which now stands the Thomas Block. This was, substantially,
the Brazil of 1845. On the hill, a mile west of the town, on the north
side of the National Road, was the Usher homestead, better known for
more than fifty years past, as the Stough place. This house was built
in 1838, by John Scott, of Terre Haute, on which Harvey D. Scott (later
a member of Congress) and William Y. Stewart did the carpenter work.
It was thought at that time to be the best dwelling-house in all that part
of the country. Between this house and the Hendrix residence, in 1845,
there was but one cabin, which stood on the bluff, west side of the water-
works plant. Immediately across the road from the Usher place was
Cunningham’s, a hewn-log tavern bought from Benjamin Hedges, which
Cunningham enlarged and improved, who continued to conduct the tavern
and also maintained a race-track on the premises, where Terre Haute
sportsmen trained their horses. The original house here was built before
the Usher house. When Cunningham died his widow continued to con-
duct the place until the marriage of her last daughter, in 1848 or 1849,
when she sold the property to Nelson Markle, who, later, sold to Charles
Whippo, then, Whippo, to John Smith, and he to John Robinson.
Between this place and the Thorpe property, on the south-east corner of
Main and Meridian streets, in 1845, were two primitive hewn-log houses
—the Solomon Myers’ farm house, which stood a little distance west of
the crossing of the C. & E. I. Railroad, at about the point of the present
William Moore residence, and the George Short tavern, which stood on
the site of the later Montgomery-McGuire-Weaver residence, in the
locality of the later Scantelberry property.