HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                      159

Court, 1906, the railroad company agreeing to pay $60,000 in liquidation
of all claims from this source. But the town has not yet recovered from
this disaster and reverse, neither in property nor population. By the
census report of 1900 Carbon enumerated 951, but its present population
is not thought to exceed 800 at most. All the town records up to that
date were lost in the fire of 1905.
    This town stands, in part, on the farm owned and occupied by
William White, prior to the building of the Indianapolis & St. Louis
Railroad.

                        SALINE CITY.

    Saline City, a town in Sugar Ridge township, at the junction of the
main line of the Evansville & Indianapolis Railroad with the Brazil
Branch, founded by Henry Jamison in 1870. When first laid out this
town was named only Saline, but at the September term of Commis-
sioners' Court, 1872, on petition of the proprietor, the record was
changed so as to make it read “Saline City.” To the uninitiated the
name of this place is misleading. On the train from Terre Haute out to
Clay City, a good many years ago, were two strangers, seated side by
side, one of whom, when the name of this station was called, looking
out of the window, inquired of the outsiders, “Where are the salt works ?“
Though disappointed in not seeing the “works,” the stranger was right
in his deduction from the call he had heard. On the hillside just south
of the town site was a salt-lick in pioneer times, so much frequented by
deer that their constant licking lapped out and undermined a large oak
tree, so that the winds blew it down. From this circumstance the town
was given a name suggestive of salt. The site of this town is historic
ground, standing on the east side border of the Birch Creek Reservoir,
or canal feeder, which the people in that part of the country were just
as much determined to abate as the canal trustees were determined to
maintain it. Here, within a few rods of the site of the E. & I. Railroad
station, were encamped in the summer of 1855, the two companies of
Indiana Militia, under command of Colonel Dodd, sent out by Governor
Wright to protect the canal property.
    A postoffice was established here when the railroad from Terre
Haute out to Clay City (known as “The Y” at that time) went into
operation in the fall of 1872. The postmasters have been: James Long,
Jonathan Beeson, Mrs. Martha Chord, John Overton (R. Gantz having
declined), Jacob Baumunk, A. L. Witty, E. G. O’Brien, James Lash,
Adam Baumunk. Adam Baumunk succeeded Jacob Baumunk, also, in
1889. Saline City was made a money order office in 1892. The practicing
physicians have been: T. H. McCorkle, R. Gantz, L. C. Griffith, D.
Brown, George W. McMillan, Dr. Harris, Eugene Hawkins, B. F.
Spelbring, J. B. Shepperd, M. D. Stephenson, W. T. Selfridge, Dr.
Muncie.
    Dr. F. M. Pickins, of Bowling Green, built the first business house,
and W. B. Holmes, the second, perhaps both intended for the drug trade.
Other individuals and firms who engaged in mercantile pursuits may be
enumerated as follows: Pickett & Jenks, E. Nutting & Co., Patton, For-
sythe & Co., Wilson Brothers, Z. T. Barnett, J. & J. Wardlaw, Jonathan
Beeson, Edward Coffey, Baumunk & Evans, The Richardsons, George
Lane, R. H. Moore, Waters & Baumunk, T. H. Johnson, James Watson,
R. Gantz, Edward Myers, W. W. Risher, D. S. Lindsey.
    The first schoolhouse was a frame of one room in the north part of