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BELGIANS IN PERRY COUNTY, INDIANA :    Biographies of Belgian families 

Perry County: Albert, Allard, Bel(l), Belva, Bigonville, Bodart, Boly, Claise/clesse, Collignon, Collin, Damin, Dauby, Delaisse, Deom, Devillez, Ducat, Duparque, Dupont, Etienne, Evrard, Fanard, Fays, Flamion, Foury, Francois, Genet, Genlain, Georges, Gillardin, Goffinet, Grave, Gringoire, Guillaume, Hanouille, Harbaville, Houlmont, Hubert, Jacob, Jacques, Kergen, Lagrange, Lambert, Lamquin(lampkin), Lanotte, Laurent, Leclere, Lemaire, Marchal, Masson, Marciliat, Massut, Meunier, Morse, Naviaux, Nicolay, Pierrard, Pierre, Ponsard, Remy, Richard, Rogier, Spirlet, Tassin, Thi(e)ry, Tibessart

TIBESSART

 
Tibessart Jean B born Belgium 1815, went to USA about 1844 but went back in Europe in 1852 as he was married at Villers-la-Loue in february 1852. It seems he newer went back in America.
 

TIBESSART Jacques        DIN 1856/10/02
Leopold, Perry County, Indiana, 1860 census						Moser Taylor        Le Havre to New Orleans, May 25, 1854
James	Tipsaw	57	M	miller	Belgium		Zippeshar	Jacques	52	M	Belgium
Elizabeth	Tipsaw	10	M		Belgium		Zippeshar	Marie Jeanne	37	F
Rosena	Tipsaw	2	F		Belgium		a note: "been in Louisville 5 years"
James Jacques (Jacob) Tibessart born July 5, 1801 (16 Messidor An IX) Villers-la-Loue; married Marie Jeanne Hurt on Septembetr 7, 1849, Villers-la-Loue; married M. Therese Robe (widow Spirlet) July 16, 1874; death 1895 Marie Jeanne Hurt born November 16, 1817; death 1860 Marie Therese Robe (widow Jean Louis Spirlet and Gerard Joseph Collignon) born July 22, 1809, Florenville; death 1899 Children: Pierre born June 26, 1849, Villers-la-Loue; death January 27, 1850 Elizabeth born January 10, 1851, Villers-la-Loue;  married Nicholas Richard, August 10, 1868 Marie Philomene born 1854 (not found in Villers-la-Loue)?? Mary Roseline (Rosa) born November 1, 1857, Apalona, Perry Co; married John August Lampkin on February 4, 1879; death August 15, 1910, Tell City, Perry Co

Alvin Harbaville remembers his grandfather, John Joe Harbaville, and recalled how the buried stones, close to four feet in diameter, came from France and were hauled one at a time down to Tipsaw mill by him. They are still there in the weeds, if they could be found. It was quite a chore to clean the corn and wheat from the stones. Tipsaw Mill was operated in the late 1800s by Mike Jacobs.
Harbaville said that, when Mr Tipsaw built his mill, "all the people got together and got slips and the horses and stuff, and from the creek they run a kind of a lake down to the mill. Well, that like, it had a big wheel and it run in there and they's shut the gate off to shut the water off.
"It was a wooden wheel and it had buckets tied to it, and when the water would go, them buckets would fill and get that wheel to rollin', and directly it would go a little faster and a little faster and they'd run the whole mill.
"The wheel was outside of the building, and then there had to be a shaft in there to run it. "It was only a one-story building, he said. The grain was funneled into the center hole of the top grinding stone by buckets or shovels.
 
The following is the history of Tipsaw Mill, now known as Tipsaw Lake, as written by Mrs Mae Doughty in 1968.
Mrs Doughty, was the eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs Constine Richard, who celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary April 17, 1968.
The name Tipsaw, when properly spelled is Thibsard, a German name pronounced Tipsaw.
The Tipsaw came to this country in about 1854 and chose this vicinity to put up their little mill. They grew mostly corn for meal to make bread. Their mill was a water mill and the meal was ground with stone burs, picked by the Richard and Tipsaw men.
The Tipsaw had two girls, Rosa, who married Gus Lampkin and Elizabeth, Mae's grandmother, who married a Richard, (Some of the related Richards added an "S" to their name.)
Mae's grandmother Richard, with the help of two friends and her two sons, Eugene and Constine, ran the watermill until the boys grew older and married, then she had to give it up.
Andrew Jacobs owned the farm and mill after her grandmother gave it up. The place was also known as the Gus Naviaux and Clara Thiery place.
 

Hoosier Locates Log Cabin School Near Site of "Tipsaw's" Water Mill

Top: James Thibsard, known as "Tipsaw" the merry miller. Bellow: Rhodes schoolhouse built before 1860

by customers who couldn't pronounce the name of its master miller, James Thibsard, who began grinding for toll in 1854. Until changed by Indiana law in the eighties, "toll" was one-fifth of the grist. An older brother, John Thibsard, began erection of the mill in 1852, but returning to Europe for its simple equipment, sent his brother James back with the mill's two French burrs, To dig the mill race, dam Sulphur creek and gouge out a water wheel pit, Thibsard enlisted the help of Joseph Laurent, John Lampkin, Andrew Jacobs and Abraham Lanman, all recent arrivals from Europe.Their descendants still reside in the vicinity, the stone burrs cast aside on the old Lenman farm. Constine Richard, a grandson of the genial Thibsard, who lives near Saffaras, says "Grandpa learned his trade in the old country, and became so familiar with the mill's good order that in the dark, when grinding 24 hours a day, he would listen to its sound and then declare, 'Everything is going well.' Then he would step outside to judge the power of the water that was falling on the wheel and remark, 'The water is happy in its strength.'" So long as there was water above the dam to turn the 24 buckets of the 10-foot wheel, Thibsard never minded that customers miscalled his name: "He liked best of all the big days when Father Augustus Bessonies, who founded Leopold in 1842 for the French people in southern Indiana, would come up to mingle among the customers awaiting their turn;" says the grandson, whose mother was Elizabeth Thibsard, the miller's oldest daughter, born in Europe. "She developed the knack of, testing the quality of flour between her thumb and fore-finger, true-miller fashion," her son Constine remarks in relating how she helped out to become an expert in grinding flour and meal. "Mother left the mill in 1868, when she married Nicholas Richard, my father. Then her first sister that was born in America was killed when she attempted to wade the mill-race and fell against the water wheel. My father died in 1875, and in 1887 when 'Tipsaw,' my grandpa, passed away, mother resumed operation of the mill, more manager than miller." Merry little Jimmy Thibsard lived to the age of 94. Made Mill Pay. For the next eight years, with Andrew Jacobs as miller, Thibsard's daughter made the mill pay, her son Constine recalling that in the eighties; "farmers still drove to the mill behind teams of cattle. Others came on sleds, the knee deep mud making horse-back the only quick method of getting to and from the mill;'_he recals. It was an era when "To mill or meetin"' afforded the Hoosier his chief opportunity to swap talk. And "Tipsaw's" mill-yards were jam-packed whether the people of the neighborhood went to St. John's Church, nearby, or waited their turn for the products of the buhrs. John Martin,' a son-inlaw of miller Andrew Jacobs, resides near Magnet, Ind.

Began Grinding in 1854. "The schoolhouse was as built before 1860, for in that year Victoria Thompson, the teacher, met my father. Andrew Jacobs. On busy days he was grist miller for James Thibsard, the mill owner. Later he became its second merry miller," sav s `fichael F. Jacobs of Indianapolis, the mill's fourth owner, 1895-98. The romance and marriage of his mother and father are intertwined with the beauty and song that lingers along the leaf-cohered paths that once led to "Tipsaw's Mill." It burned in 1924. But the one-room log-cabin school still stands, to serve William Dupont, farmer, as a storehouse for gain. The mill was located between the Perry county settlements of Leopold and Bristow and called "Tipsaw's"

In gathering old-mill lore for the records of the Indiana Historical Society concerning an old log-cabin water mill which his father knew in his boyhood. Dr. Claude Lomax of 1228 Central avenue, Indianapolis, but formerly of Bristow and Dale, ind., not only, established the site of one of Perry county's historic water mills, but found a further rarity-a single room log cabin school house which is still in an excellent state of preservation: Rhodes School, located one mile east of the crumbling stone dam of the custom mill whose overshot water wheel once turned against the flow of Sulphur creek.

by Monte M. Katter-John