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1882 COUNTIES OF
LaGRANGE and NOBLE INDIANA HISTORICAL and BIOGRAPHICAL
Chicago F.A. Battey and Company Publishers 1882
VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP
Part 2
By: R. H. Rerick
Van Buren Township- Surface Features-Incidents of Early Settlement-
Catalogue of Pioneers-Village of Marion- Industrial Growth-Village
of Van Buren-
The Dwight and Barnes Tragedy- Learning and Religion
By 1837, the land was practically all taken
up by actual settlers and speculators, and was held at $5 per acre. The
most efficient aid in the development of the country has been the building
of the Michigan Southern Railway, through one of the early trading posts,
White Pigeon. At that time land at once rose from $10 to $20 per acre.
Since then the advance in prosperity has been steady and marked. The population
has gradually increased
and embraces, besides those already named, many men of wealth and social
importance. In politics the township has been steadily Republican. The
records show the following persons to have served as Justice of the Peace,
though the list may not be complete: Alfred Martin, 1841-46; Charles
Dwight, 1844-49; David Elmore, 1844-49; H. B. Ostrander,
1849-54; Josiah B. Cook, 1851-52; C. W. Wilson, 1852-68;
John
W. McIntyre, 1854-58; C. W. Chapin, 1867-77; James Galloway,
1869-73; James Haggerty, 1877; Edwin Owen 1878.
Schools were a matter to which the earliest
comers gave their attention. Until the sale of the school lands, the settlers
paid their teachers directly, which was not a severe tax, as the usual
rate was about $1 a week. Clarissa Munger was the first school-ma'am,
and gathered the young ideas at a log schoolhouse on the land of Nathaniel
Callahan in Section 17. Later, a school was started at the village,
in 1835, at Marion, and, in 1836 or 1837, another school south of the river
at Nicholas Sidener's, where a graveyard now is. In the west the
earliest were the Marshall Schoolhouse on the Vistula road, the
Bethel
on Section 17, and a log house on the shore of Stone Lake.
There are now in the township ten neat frame
houses, valued at $6,000, which are attended by 410 pupils. Eleven teachers
are employed at an average rate of $1.50 for men and $1.37 for women. In
1880, some $2,500 were expended for tuition.
The history of the churches is another matter
intimately connected with the lives of the people. A Methodist Episcopal
society yet exists at VanBuren, which was organized in 1834 by Charles
Best, an Ohio exhorter.
There were about five members, including Esther and John
Olney and Nancy Callahan. The first preacher in the township
was Christopher Cory, a Presbyterian minister, then of White Pigeon.
In 1848, the Methodist Church at Van Buren was erected, and has since been
used as a union meeting-house.
In the west, the earliest religious meetings
were held at the house of Jason and George Jones, north
of the old Bethel Schoolhouse, in 1841 or 1842, Prayer-meetings were held
there, and at the time of the Millerite excitement they were largely attended.
It was in "about 1843" that the world was to finish up its career, and
the year before, 1842, Elders Speers, Stalker and Burns,
of "somewhere about" Orland, commenced revival meetings in the old
Callahan
Schollhouse. A very exciting and memorable time followed. The meetings
lasted six weeks,and about forty persons were converted. The Baptist Church
in Van Buren was organized in 1858, with fifteen members. Since then they
have steadily maintained their meetings, and have since recieved some forty
members; but, owing to constant changes in residence, the society is hardly
more numerous now then at first. In
1864, a Methodist society was organized at the Marshall Schoolhouse
by George W. Newton.
The Protestant Methodist society in Van Buren
was organized by Fred Soy about 1851, with twenty-five or thirty
members, as the result of an extensive revival. About 1869, an "Abright"or
Evangelist Church was
organized and a church built on the Defiance road two miles east of
the village, at a cost of about $2,400. There were about fifty members
in 1881.
The only county officers the township has furnished
besides Coroner Belote have been Gabriel T.
McIntyre, who was a resident of the township a year or two before
his election as Sheriff, in 1853, and Seldon Martin, who was elected
a Commissioner in 1837.
The township has suffered very little from
crime. There is a rememberance of one case of horse stealing, in 1844 or
1845, from Henry Albert. The freedom of the people of late from
these marauders is no doubt due to the organization of a Protective Association,
September, 1866. This was re-organized for ten years in 1876, and had,
in 1881, sixty-five members, and $135 in the treasury, devoted to the capture
of criminals. The association
is so organized that a strong body of men can be collected, at any
point, in an exceedingly short time. An annual meeting of the members is
required each year, in September. In 1880-81, the officers were Frank
Galloway, President; John McDonald, Treasurer; and William
Bycroft, Secretary.
The saddest tragedy in the annals of the county
took place, singularly enough, on the quiet, charming beach of Stone Lake,
where one would expect nothing but the ripple of the waves, the songs of
the birds, and the laughter of children, which this mad crime so rudely
disturbed. Addie Dwight, a chrming young lady of eighteen years,
who was admired and respected by all who met her, the youngest daughter
of Charles Dwight, was teaching
at the Lake Schoolhouse and took her pupils down to the lake at noon,
on June 22, 1871, to give them a
promised frolic on the beach. While here, unconcious of any danger,
Chauncey
Barnes, a young man living near this place, in Elkhart County, drove
up, accompanied by a young woman of White Pigeon, and asked for an interview
with the school teacher. They walked away together for a short distance.
Barnes had, for some time, been paying marked attentions to Miss
Dwight, but she had declined to recieve his company, and his attempts
at a reconcilliation had been in vain. He took his disappoinment very much
to heart, and, suffering from jealousy, he went to see her this day for
a last attempt, and madly resolved to end her life and his, if he could
not win her. As the children came toward the two, seated together at some
distance, a pistol shot was heard, and Addie was
seen, with her hands raised, begging for her life. But a second bullet
was sent crashing through her head, and she fell dead at the feet of her
lover and murderer. Barnes then emptied the revolver into his own
head, and when the neighbors came to the scene, though bleeding horribly,
he was reloading his revolver, determined to take his own life. The murderer
was confined in the county jail, and for some time was at the point of
death, but finally recovered. At his trial, the defense was insanity, but
though ably defended, he was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to the
penitentiary for life. He is still confined there. This causeless crime,
which so cruelly blotted out
an innocent young life, aroused great feeling throughout the county,
and much sympathy was expressed for the victim, and indignation toward
the murderer. This latter, however, was softened by his attempted suicide,
and the sorrow of his family. It was one of those events which, though
having a tinge of romance in history and stories of love and sorrow, are
too terribly tragic in the real life of one's own generation.
Since that time, the history of the township
has afforded little of interest. In 1880, according to the census of that
year, there were ten residents of the township, each of whom was seventy-five
years of age, or over, their names being, with their respective ages: Ann
Brockway, seventy-eight; Robert Smith, seventy-six; Maria
Hoff, seventy-five; Elizabeth Smith, seventy-five; John
H. Hoofnagle, eighty-three; Elizabeth Dayton, seventy-five;
David
Seybert, eighty-one; Henry Young, seventy-five; Lydia Young,
seventy-five; Andrew Henkle, eighty-five.
Van Buren is the only village, and Scott is
the only post office in the township, and these are one and the same. The
original plat of the village was owned by the Martin brothers- Seldon,
Phylammen
and Alfred - who bought 280 acres in this section of the Goverment
in December, 1833. In 1837, the village was surveyed by
Delevan Martin.
The plat was in April, 1844, enlarged by an addition at the north by Nicholas
N. Sixby.
Before the plat was surveyed, the enterprises were established which
have since been the chief feature of the town- the lumber and flouring
mills. The Martins built a saw-mill upon the fine water-power which
the Pigeon affords at this point, in the summer of 1834, and, during the
next, erected a flouring-mill. The mosquitoes were formidable at that time,
and it is said that the Martins could not sleep until they constructed
a platform up in the
trees, where the troublesome insects would be less numerous. The old
mills have, of course, disappeared, and, since then, mills have been put
in, capable of turning out, in the palmy days of Van Buren, 15,000 barrels
of flour per year, and 350,000 feet of lumber. But at the present
time, little more then custom work is done.
James Haggerty, who was, in 1881, still
living in Van Buren, came to the place in 1835, having exchanged
his land in Michigan for mill property. Mr. Haggerty was originally
from New Jersey, where he lived in the town of New Brunswick, just
across the street from Commodore Vanderbilt, whom the old pioneer
remembers gratefully as a kind neighbor and generous patron. His brother,
Michael
Haggerty, was here in 1837, but
removed, and returned in 1855, since when he has been a resident of
the village, and for some time Justice of the Peace. In 1836, Pierce
built a blacksmith shop, and was rewarded for his enterprise by being elected,
in 1837,
the first Justice. Thus the village smithy became the hall of Justice.
Harvey
B. Ostrander, about the same time, established himself in the cooper
business, one Crary built a wagon-shop, and C. Z. Barnes,
carepenter, came
to town. L. D. Brooks built a house on Lot 5, in Sixby's Addition,
and kept a tavern. A physician, Dr. Sidney Cobb, lived in the village
about a year, then dying, he was succeeded by Dr. William Fox in
1838. His brothers, George and James Fox, were the shoemakers
of the town. John Rank and father, Joel H. Sanford, Kellogg
Munger and Miner were among the residents. Thus it will be seen
that Van Buren in its early days was a
flourishing and promising settlement, and would have fulfilled all
its early promise had it not been for the perverse running of the railway
too far to the north. A log house owned by Pierce, vacated in 1837,
and donated to the township, was the first schoolhouse in the village.
There is now a two-story frame building, 26x40, devoted to this purpose.
In 1836, the Martins started a distillery
in a large log building near the mill, and ran the establishment until
after 1840, when the removal of the Indians terminated the greater
demand for a distillery. Another one was run
for some time after, at the Hart place, below the mills. A post
office was established at Van Buren under the
name of Scott, in 1836, and was upon the line between White Pigeon
and Fort Wayne. Clark was the first postmaster. A frame church was
built about 1858, and is still in use by all the denomiations. In 1881,
there were two stores in the village, owned by Frank Galloway and
Dr.
W. B. Grubb, who has practiced medicine here since 1865. Dr. A.
Toms is another physician in this place. William Allison, a
resident of the village since 1867, and of the township since 1860, has
held the position of Trustee for ten years in succession, and, in 1881,
was commencing another series of years. He has proved one of the most efficient
officers in the county.
Volunteer transcription by Pati Blowers May. Material for transcription
gathered by Barbara Henderson.
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