HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                  305

    John W. White, native of Clay county, born in Harrison township,
March 23, 1845, son of Benjamin and Margaret (Cooprider) White, the
eighth of a family of nine children. The subject of this sketch worked on
the farm with his parents until eighteen years of age, when he began
working for himself, earning enough at grubbing and splitting, rails to
buy forty acres of land. He introduced the first circular saw-mill into
Harrison township, which he operated for several years, then sold and
engaged in merchandising at Middlebury, in company with William H.
Long, in dry-goods and groceries, but later in the drug business. On the
6th of December, 1868, he married Miss Mary A. Siegly, to whom were
born one son and four daughters. Having disposed of his drug business,
he purchased a planing-mill outfit, which he planted at Middlebury and
operated it there until 1879, when he removed it to Clay City, where he
did a general business in lumber, contracting and building for the period
of five years, giving employment to a number of men, some of whom
worked continuously for him, but none of whom were ever heard to say
that they had ever received at his hands anything but fair treatment. Dur-
ing this time he did more for the building up and improvement of Clay
City than any other citizen of the place. In 1880 he was elected trustee
of Harrison township, and re-elected in 1882. In the fall of the latter
year he was nominated by the Democratic party for county treasurer and
elected. Within the second term of the trusteeship he resigned this trust,
in the latter part of the year 1883, to take charge of the county treasurer's
office. In 1884 he was re-elected, serving two full terms. In 1887 he
moved his family back to Clay City, where, for a short time, he again oper-
ated a lumber mill. When Clay City was incorporated, in 1888, he was
elected a member of the first board of town trustees, with James M. Travis
and N. B. Markle. Eleven years before this, when the town of
Martz was incorporated, he was elected to the same position there. In
1894 he was elected marshal of the town of Clay City, serving the term
of one year. His wife having died in 1889 and his children having subse-
quently married and left him, he is now at home with his brother and
nephew, near Clay City.

    Louis Steuernagel died at his home, five miles northeast of Clay
City, October 9, 1890, aged eighty-eight years. In 1850, when he came
from Holmes county, Ohio, emigration from that part of the country to
Indiana was directed, largely, to Owen county, where the subject of
this sketch intended to locate, but on coming upon the ground he ven-
tured to step across the line and buy a border farm in Clay county. In
Ohio he was a cooper by occupation. He was three times married,
having four children by each wife. He was generally known through-
out Clay and Owen counties, and elsewhere by reputation, as “the faith
doctor,” who was visited at his home by patients from near and far,
to take his “pow-wow” treatments. There were instances of patients'
coming from distant states to be treated. One lady came from Oregon,
to be relieved of a bad case of goitre. In some cases the charm was
accompanied with a preparation of his own prescribing and compound-
ing. Dr. Steuernagel was an unique character. On going to Bowling
Green or any other town where liquors were sold, it was his invariable
practice to drink to excess and become intoxicated. For many years
he rode a horse that knew his weakness and habits, that would always
take him home in safety, provided he could stay in the saddle, whether

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