154                 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

stricken down with paralysis, from which he never recovered, dying in
the month of August following. Present population 700.

                        HARMONY.

    Harmony, the oldest surviving town in the Van Buren township.
on the National Road and on the Vandalia Railroad, nineteen miles east
of Terre Haute, and three miles east of Brazil, originally laid out by
John Graves, in 1839, but owing to the insolvency of his estate the land
was sold and the town plat vacated. Some time after the building of the
railroad a town site was again platted, by Isaac Marks, which was put
to record in 1864. This town was the eastern terminus of the Rapid
Transit Electric Railroad line built in 1893-4, afterward purchased by
the Terre Haute Electric Company, and still later becoming a part of
the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Line. There is no
reason to be assigned for the naming of this town and of the postoffice.
also, other than that of euphony and suggestiveness. The original Har-
mony, whatever there may have been of it, was on the National Road.
Owen Thorpe is said to have done business there before founding Brazil.
George G. McKinley operated a sawmill on the site of the town in the
fifties, perhaps as late as 1857, who was succeeded in this industry by
John and Isaac Marks. As a station on the Terre Haute & Indianapolis
Railroad, Harmony was preceded by Croy’s Creek, a mile or more
eastward, where there was a store and a postoffice, kept by Orville S.
McGinnis. In 1859, James Robinson bought this stock of general mer-
chandise and moved it, with the postoffice, to Harmony and was the
pioneer merchant of the town. During his first year of business, his
stock was kept in a very small box-like room on the south side of the
railroad track and east side of the roadway, where he built, the following
year, what was known as the “Red Store House,” in which he did busi-
ness until the latter part of 1864, when he was succeeded by David A.
Cox. On the removal of the store and postoffice, Croy’s Creek station
was discontinued, succeeded by Harmony. At the time of Robinson’s
doing business, there was on the opposite or northwest corner what was
known as Frazier’s drug store. Cox was succeeded by his son-in-law,
John L. Stephens, who conducted business on the same corner. Other
merchants and dealers in the progress and history of the place, including
those now in business, may he enumerated as follows: R. M. Wingate,
Zeller & Riddell, Zeller & Sigler, Charles G. Ferguson, John Killion.
Shaffer & Son, John D. Walker, The Ferguson Brothers, Smythe &
Terry, Joseph Crooks, Shanks & Hillier, Thomas Thomas, Baily O’Neil,
John M. Marks, John Thomas, Jacob Pell, Ristler & Finley, George
Rohrig.
    The postmasters have been James Robinson, David A. Cox, John L.
Stephens, Maggie Brown, Sidney Monk, James Boyd, James E. Smythe,
Owen Quigley, Robert Hill, William Shanks, Henry C. Dietrick, Sidney
Monk (present incumbent). Harmony was made a money order office
in July, 1883, under Sidney Monk, who has been postmaster three times.
    The physicians have been: John Potts, J. C. Chapman. James 0.
Siddons, W. S. Crafton, A. F. Tulley, William Orr, G. W. Finley, William
Palm, Mel Young.
    The pioneer “little red schoolhouse,” which stood on the south side
of the railroad, west side of the wagon road, was occupied until the year
1868, when Trustee John Steed built a new house of one room in the
northeast quarter of the town, succeeded by the two-story frame in the