Fountain County IN Archives Biographies.....Brier, Samuel A. 1822 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com September 26, 2007, 10:36 pm

Author: H. W. Beckwith (1881)

   Samuel A. Brier, farmer, Rob Roy, is descended from Scotch and Irish
ancestors, he being the fourth generation from those who came to this country.
His grandfather, David Brier, was a soldier under Washington, and his father,
Samuel, was one of the force called out in 1794 to suppress the whisky
insurrection in western Pennsylvania, and served also in the war of 1812, as a
captain under Gen. Harrison, by whom he was sent eighty-five miles west from
Dayton, Ohio, where he built Fort Brier, on the frontier, and commanded the
garrison during his term of about one year. Mr. Brier was born in Montgomery
county, Ohio, February 11, 1822, and was the youngest son of his father's
family. His mother's name before marriage was Elizabeth Campbell. On September
27, 1828, they arrived in Shawnee township, and settled where Mr. Brier resides.
A part of the land, the W. 1/2 of N.W. 1/4 Sec. 31, T. 21, R. 7, was bought from
Wilson and Abel Claypoole, and his father received the patent in his own name.
His parents died here; his mother in April, 1849, at the age of sixty-three, and
his father in 1858, aged eighty-four. By will of the latter, Mr. Brier was
permitted to receive the homestead and buy out the other heirs. He has increased
the estate to 300 acres, 240 of which are under cultivation. Besides this farm
he owns 240 acres of land in Ross township, Vermilion county, Illinois, and the
same quantity near Topeka, Kansas. Contrasting the early times with the present,
Mr. Brier says that when the Wabash and Erie canal was building he sold corn at
his place for fourteen cents per bushel, and was paid in canal scrip at sixty
per cent discount. At the same time he sold dressed hogs for $2.10 per hundred,
and received payment in the same paper. This year corn has been worth forty
cents in market, and he has sold live hogs the present season for $4.25 per
hundredweight in gold, and at one time they commanded even a higher figure. He
has known his father to pay $13 per barrel for Kanawha salt, a coarse, black
article. Good farm hands were hired for $9 per month, whereas now the most
ordinary help obtains $20. Mr. Brier used to wagon produce to Chicago, usually
selling flour delivered at $4 per barrel. At that time he turned his oxen loose
on the north side of the Chicago river to graze over night on the prairie. It
took two weeks to make the trip with horses, and nearly twice as long with oxen.
The roads were generally in wretched condition the greater part of the way, and
from Thorn creek to the city, some twenty miles, nearly impassable the year
round. This stretch could be traversed only by making short pulls, frequent
nnloadings and reloadings, and this not unusually in the water, and by doubling
teams. Mr. Brier is raising better wheat and more of it to the acre than his
father did on the same land broke up fifty-three years ago. The only fertilizing
it has received has been by clovering a few times, which could hardly more than
restore its former tilth and repair the waste of cropping. This experience is
abundantly supported throughout this region, and the conclusion is obvious that
prairie land now considered of little account for the production of wheat will
in time become valuable for that use. Mr. Brier celebrated his marriage with
Nancy Hatton, April 18, 1844. She was the daughter of William Hatton, who came
from Ohio to Logan township in 1826, and was born February 1, 1822. They have
had eight children, four of whom are living; Solon, Laura, wife of Joseph
Gilbert, of Kansas City, Missouri, Lizzie, and Burgess B. The Briers are an old
Presbyterian family. His father and mother, who were native Pennsylvanians, and
his grandfather were seceders. He and his wife; have been communicants
thirty-four years, and he has been an elder twenty-five. He has filled the
position of Sabbath-school superintendent, and been leader of the church choir
nearly forty years. All his children, as also his son-in-law and his
daughter-in-law, belong to the same church. He has been a temperate man his
whole life, and a member of several organizations whose objects were to remove
the temptation of strong drink from the paths of men, and to reclaim the fallen.
He sent a man to the army for whom he paid $1,100, though he was not drafted,
and therefore not obliged to furnish a substitute. He was raised a whig, and
from education and sentiment naturally found his way into the republican party
when that became an organization, and has since been an ardent supporter of its
principles.

Additional Comments:
Shawnee Township

HISTORY OF FOUNTAIN COUNTY,

TOGETHER WITH
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE WABASH VALLEY,

GLEANED FROM EARLY AUTHORS, OLD MAPS AND MANUSCRIPTS
PRIVATE AND OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE, AND OTHER AUTHENTIC, THOUGH, FOR THE MOST
PART, OUT-OF-THE-WAY SOURCES.

BY H. W. BECKWITH,
OF THE DANVILLE BAR; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETIES OF
WISCONSIN AND CHICAGO.

WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHICAGO: H. H. HILL AND N. IDDINGS, PUBLISHERS.
1881.


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