Jay County IN Archives History - Books .....Chapter II Whipple Family 1896
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Book Title: Reminiscences Of Adams, Jay And Randolph Counties

CHAPTER II.

    As time in its onward and never ceasing march shortens the path of life, we
are many times made to feel sad when our thoughts carry us back to the happy
days of childhood—mixed here and there by a dark page as the sands of life grow
less. I am almost the last and only survivor of the small village of Portland of
57 years ago. No doubt there are yet some left to call to mind the childish
thoughts of years long ago. The few links that have held together the great
chain of memory are well nigh severed by the ravages of time.

    On the 22nd day of August, 1838, my father, Jason Whipple, started from
Delaware County, Ohio, with his family, consisting of my mother and six
children. The time that it took to reach Jay County, Indiana, was six days. On
the night of the 24th of August we camped on the hill where the Prospect church
now stands, three miles east of Deerfield, Randolph County, Indiana. This was
Saturday night. In the morning, Sunday, the teams drove through Deerfield and
one of the teamsters bought of old Edward Edger two plugs of what is now called
"dog-leg" tobacco for 5 cents. The teams drove across the Massasinewa river
where now stands a store house which, until a few years ago, was occupied by one
of the young Collinses. It was a beautiful morning, and very dry. The entire
journey was made without a drop of rain, and many times it was hard to find
water for the horses or even for family use. The road from old Deerfield north
was just a single track that wound round stumps such as usually beset a mew cut
road. The teams reached Whipple Cook's, who lived in a log cabin 18x24, with a
fire place in the north end. His family consisted of himself, wife and five
children; and, when my father s family was added, as the reader may well
imagine, standing room was at a premium.

    Of course my father supposed that the man who lived on the land he had
entered in August, 1836, would vacate the premises as per agreement. But he did
not, and father, was compelled to set him out by a writ of ejectment; and then
he would not cut up the corn that grew on a small patch that had been cleared
around the house. The cabin stood on the high ground almost directly north of
the cemetery at Liber. After Phillip Brown was dispossessed of his pretended
home my father moved into the cabin —16x20—on the last day of September. There
still came no rain, and water became alarmingly scarce. The little Salamonia was
as dry as the slab road, with only a small pond here and there. However, later
on, the water seemed to get clear and pure. That fall, or in the fall of 1838,
father hired E. B. Kikendall, formerly of your city, Jackson Knapp and Edward
Kikendall, to make 4,000 rails, and they boarded with us, all stowed in that
little 16x20 cabin. Well, I confess I am unable to tell just how we did get
along. My father did little else but hunt. Deer were so plentiful that no day
did he fail to get one or more. They were in splendid condition and we did not
lack for meat of that kind.

    About the 1st of November, 1838, one Joshua Penock brought a barrel of flour
and sold it to my father and Ammon Cook, who landed in Jay County about the 1st
of October of that year. He came from Massachusetts by way of Toledo and Fort
Wayne. The flour was brought from Fountain City, then called Newport. There was
no way by which the flour could be divided equally, so father sawed the barrel
in two at the center,. first spreading a sheet on the ground and rolling the
barrel upon it to save any possible waste that might result from this novel rule
of division. This man Penock then lived directly west of the ho htouse, one and
one-half mile south of Portland. The old cabin was occupied in after years by
John Peterson, Robert Stranahan and others whose names I cannot now call to
mind. The first fried cake or doughnut was made from some of that flour and
fried in coon fat.

    Along in November, the fall of '38, father went hunting, as he did almost
every day, back in the woods. He was coming home, and it was almost dark, when
he saw a large coon coming towards him and he shot it, brought it home, took off
the hide and then took off a large flake of fat, mother rendered it out and the
cakes were fried in the fat. The soda that was used on that occasion was the
melted ashes by burning a beech stump that was hollow from ground to top. The
ashes were put in a crock and water poured on, and some of that was used. Of
course it did not take very much. Salaratus, soda and baking powder were things
that was not thought of at that date. All of this came to pass and a thousand
other things that I am unable to call to mind after so many long and varied years.

    No one can be made to realize the many privations that beset the man that
went from his home more than half a century ago to try and make a home for his
wife and family. Things without name that made many a dark page in the great
volume of a pioneers life. One great blessing was we were blessed with good
health and was always ready to eat more than we had to eat. Something' to keep
us from freezing was among the most essential things at that date. Shoes were
almost out of the question; when the ground was bare or the snow dry, rags
around the feet were all O. K. The winter of '38 was very cold and dry; stock
that lived in the woods at that date, with little or no feed, suffered much for
the want of water and some died with thirst.

    Early in the spring of '39 every old hunter of that date, as soon as the
frost was out of the ground and the frogs began to croak, started for the woods
to set coon traps along the branches and on old logs that lay in and across the
ponds. It was not a common thing for the ponds to go dry, but they did in the
fall of '38. The heavy snows that fell in the winter of '38 and '39 went off
with long continuous rains, which made high waters almost everywhere. Travelers
were compelled to lay at fording places until the waters subsided, which was a
slow thing as vast amount of water was held back by leaves and drift in the
ponds and branches. The price of coon pelts at that date made them an object.
The money that rewarded the hunter in those trying times made many a glad heart
and brought joy to the cabin home of the early pioneer of Jay County.

    Late in March, '39, which was well nigh the end of the trapping season, my
mother told me to get up and hurry to one of my traps, which was almost on the
old road leading through my father's land, coming down from the Bickle
settlement and leading out to Richmond and Fort Wayne state road, at the corner
of Jonas Votaw's land. C. H. Clark knows all about it, as it was the only path
by which the Hawkinses, Mays, Bickles, Ensmingers and Hardy come to the town of
Portland. Mother says I dreamed that there was a coon in the trap close to the
path which led to town. I jumped up and started in my bare feet. There was lots
of frost and the ground had frozen some, but I did not have any shoes or boots.
I tripped over the little rise of ground, and I could see that my trap was down.
   My heart leaped with anxious fear that the trap had been thrown by something
that had escaped; but no, Mr. Coon was there, as dead as a chelsy. It was as
black as coal and worth 25 cents more than coons of a lighter color. I sold the
hide to Jos. Nixon for one Mexican dollar and an old Spanish pillared 25-cent
piece. This was the first money that I had ever owned, except four cents that I
had earned riding horse to plow corn in the summer of 1834. I worked three days
and got four cents. The dollar I got for the coon hide was, by direction of my
mother, spent with old Sallie Conno for its value in meat. There was a man who
brought out a lot of meat from Richmond, Ind., and left it for old John Conno to
sell. She cut me off a square chunk about 8x8 inches thick, guessing at the
weight, and said that it was a dollar's worth, and I took it. Now my dollar was
gone! I gave the 25-cent piece to Nathan B. Hawkins for a jack-knife. I never
got another dollar until 1845, but I got smaller amounts that I sold gingerbread
for. My father was so poor, for several years after we landed in Jay County,
that it was out of the question to get enough to cover our backs, and many has
been the time that I have, watched my mothers anxious face when she was striving
to get food for her helpless children. When the meal sack was empty the
situation was not a pleasant one by any means. Many were the silent tears that
moistened that careworn cheek when the mind traveled back to the happy days of
childhood, when want and destitution were strangers. Words can never tell any
part of the many trying moments that came to those who settled in Jay County
fifty-seven years ago.

    My father sowed a small patch of wheat in the fall of '38, and of course
after harvest bread stuff was not so much of an object, as we had a bountiful
yield. We threshed some of it on the ground, and the balance was stacked. And in
the winter of '39 and ''40 we hauled the entire stack down in a field where
there was a pond that was frozen to the bottom. The snow had fallen in the water
and it froze and the ice was not smooth. It was all put down at one flooring and
the old oxen were driven up and down the pond until all was threshed. I went
down to where Green Crowell now lives, to Obadiah Winters', and hauled his
fanning mill up on the old sled and the wheat was cleaned, and I set quail traps
in the chaff. I made a trap that was four feet square, and I caught one dozen
the first haul. I sold them the next day to Nathan B. Hawkins for a stiff
round-crown white wool hat. I wore it a year or so and then sold it to Frederick
Wible, and he painted it red and wore it till after James K. Polk's election.

    The people did not know but little of what was going on in the world at that
date, as the mails did not bring but few letters from those we left back in the
land of plenty. The first letter that came to my father was in November, '39.
The post-office was kept by Daniel Farber in his own cabin just across the road
from the residence of Dr. Joseph Watson, at College Corners. It cost 25 cents
and was on the road thirteen days. It was mailed at Hyanis, Mass. The next
letter came to an office in Portland. William Haines was postmaster. The office
was kept in the office of Dr. Dixon Milligan. The building stood at what is the
south end of the old Trade Palace. That letter came from Ohio, mailed at
Delaware, and was six days on the road and cost 25 cents to pay the postage.

    William Haines came to Jay Conty [sic] in 1839 and built a place to live in
by putting some saplings in the ground on the lot that James Powell now lives
on, south of the Commercial House. He split out clapboards four feet long and
nailed them from post to post, and did not have any floor but mother earth. He
staid there until he built on the corner where the old Trade Palace now stands,
and with the many additions that he put to the main building, he run a hotel,
but just how many years I can not tell. but it was three or four,


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Reminiscences of Adams, Jay and Randolph Counties

Compiled by Martha C. M. Lynch

Ft. Wayne, IN: Lipes, Nelson & Singmaster

Circa 1896

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