HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                  291

county. In 1811 he attended a crop of corn on Ft. Harrison prairie,
at what was known as the “big farm,” and sold part of his crop to
Gen. Harrison for food for his troops and horses, on his way to
Tippecanoe. Since that time he has been a resident of Vigo county,
and most of the time has lived in Pierson township.
    He leaves a legion of relatives and friends to mourn his loss.
This venerable man was born in Kentucky nine months prior to
the surrender of Yorktown. He has great-grandchildren married,
while his own children, those that are yet living, are wrestling with
the turmoils of age, and their gray hairs are bringing them to the
tomb.
    He moved to Indiana while young, and here in our beautiful
county of Vigo and on the ground which we almost hold as sacred,
where our pleasant city of Terre Haute now stands, he chased the
deer and wolf, and experienced the wild western scenes of frontier
life. Here the whippoor-will sang him to sleep at nightfall, and the
lark called him forth at day dawn. The Indian’s war whoop and
the howl of the wolf echoed to the measured beat of his ax as he
felled “the tall sycamores of the Wabash.”
    Let us stamp upon the pages of memory, veneration for the
father of Vigo county. May his name be chronicled on the pages
of Indiana’s history as the one who germinated the seed and
matured the plant from which Vigo county and the city of Terre
Haute sprang. We suggest that some one who is thoroughly
acquainted with his life, give us a complete biographical sketch of
the deceased.

    Robert A. McBeth, native of Ohio, born at Wellsville, Columbiana
county, January 3, 1842, learned the blacksmith trade in his native
state, at which he worked both before and after the Civil war. He
served his country as a member of Company D, One Hundred and
Seventy-sixth Ohio Regiment and was mustered out with an honorable
discharge at the close of the conflict of arms. On the 2d day of Sep-
tember, 1869, he married Miss Sarah Gilmore, of West Point, Ohio, and
came to Clay county, Indiana, the same year, locating at Brazil, starting
a foupdry and machine shop, now the Crawford-McCrimmon plant.
Later he engaged in the coal industry, then in the lumber trade, and for
more than a third of a century was closely identified with the industrial
and business interests of his adopted city. He died January 17, 1907,
aged sixty-five years, fourteen days, survived by his wife, three sons
and two daughters. After funeral services at the family residence, the
remains were accompanied by the family to Wellsville, Ohio, where
services were held at the old McBeth homestead, when the body was
laid to rest in the family lot at Spring Hill cemetery. The pall-bearers
were residents of his native town, army comrades, three of them mem-
bers of his company.

    Salem H. Lybyer, native of Indiana, born in Vigo county, September
9, 1845, son of Daniel and Rachel (Carpenter) Lybyer, the third of eight
children. In 1839, his parents, who were., respectively, of French and
German descent, came from Pennsylvania and settled at Terre Haute.
Twelve years thereafter the family moved to Putnam county, where the
father engaged in farming. Here, the subject of this sketch attended