Years after the Civil War -- Part 2

What they wrote about the leaders of the 19th century:

I've snapped a few tidbits from an 1882 Franklin County Atlas of the biographies of some of the men who were considered prominent in the county in the period just after the Civil War.

These tidbits are of no particular value other than simply being representative of how the more affluent people either described themselves or were described by somebody who did the essay for them. There is some evidence that part of this process was either contrived or embellished beyond believable. No matter, it's in the book.

"Robert Stoops was born in Brookville Township, Mary 12, 1842, the son of Robert and Catharine Stoops (nee Carter). He was accorded the usual educational facilities granted to the young men of the day and took care to utilize them as much as possible. He has a very fine farm, about one mile from the town of Brookville and is considered as one of the progressive farmers of Franklin County."

Stoops also had a distinguished record of service in the Civil War.

John Shafer of Springfield Township is more revealing. "Among the pioneers who are living witnesses of the rapid growth and prosperity of Franklin County, who have spent the most part of a century in contributing their work and energy in connection with the early settlement of the county, and who have the satisfaction of living to see the grand results of their labor, ranks Mr. John Shafer." (Short sentences just don't work for this man!)

Shafer was a cooper in the 1830s and was siring children all through the 1850s. "He is a well-known and highly respected pioneer of Franklin County, and has, through a long and successful life, always conducted himself as behooves a Christian and a gentleman."

Amen.

Joseph Schmidt's clothing business in Brookville impressed somebody. "Mr. Schmidt's long experience in the clothing trade, and his extensive facilities for buying, enables him to offer for inspection to the people of Franklin County a stock of clothing that cannot be excelled in the county."

Schmidt was born in Germany and came to America in 1867 and learned the clothing business while in the employment of a man named L.P. Strauss and Brother in Cincinnati. A year later he came to Brookville and bought a store that the Strauss brothers owned but wanted managed better.

Strauss?

Old John Goff was deceased by the time the Atlas got around to applauding his life.  "He lived with his parents (in Hamilton, Ohio) until his 20th year and then undertook what would be to the young men of our day (1880s) an almost impossible feat."

He visited his birthplace in New Jersey. On foot. Walked the entire distance there and back. That was in about 1816, so it was probably hard to hitch a ride to Little Egg Harbor.

Goff was a Democrat, father of 12 and a distiller. He made booze for a living. It appears Goff saw the light about the liquor and gave it up sometime around 1822. He was living in Bath Township. "He was one of those old pioneers who have passed away after a life of toil and hardship, incumbent upon all who undertake to settle and clear up a new country."

Chilon Gordon of Metamora was described as having "sterling integrity, good business qualifications achieved in ample competence, and is esteemed and respected by everyone with whom his business brings him in contact."

Gordon raised and sold hogs, cattle and sheep. He was described as a Methodist, unabashed in spending his wealth in support of that denomination.

Zachary Hutchinson was lauded for having "risen entirely from his own effort to the present gratifying position he now holds among the citizens of Brookville."

Hutchinson was named in 1880 as the Unted States Storekeeper. That job was later given to Sam Walton.

The late great John Wright (deceased at the time his biography was published) came to Franklin County in 1825 by way of the Dayton, Ohio, originally from England.

Wright was married to Cecelia Glidewell, a name prominent in the Fairfield area along where S.R. 101 now goes. Cecelia's dad was Thomas Glidewell.

Wright was evidently crippled but still strong enough to accumulate some real estate in Grant County as well as the Brookville area. "He was well known and highly respected for his honest, upright life and noble traits of character which it was his fortune to possess.

I will pull out some biographies of some more influential people with Fairfield roots. Those will come later.

Meanwhile ...

Well done, sirs. Your stories are refreshing, even if slightly full of Chilon Gordon's most famous product.

Years after the Civil War -- Part 1

Railroads changed Indiana in the 1870s.

The fun of finding anecdotes about the history of the Whitewater valley is sometimes more in the way it's written than what it actually reveals.

Fairfield and thousands of little towns like it, became less and less relevant as Indiana began to mature following the Civil War.

By 1873, all 92 counties had been established, which effectively ended most power grabs for local control. The smart people had all begun to cluster around the major cities where industry and economics promised the greater future.

With a couple of exceptions, not much is written in the histories of Fairfield that is readily available. Prominent names from the earlier part of the century remained prominent in the 1860s and 1870s.

We have already discussed at length the antics of George Loper and his family, who fought overwhelming odds in an effort to build a carriage industry that would have been doomed in another four decades anyway.

Other names, we will get too later on. Those include the Cory family.

Unlike today's team, this 1869 outfit was undefeated.

Oddly some names that show up throughout the history of the valley, even into today, were stalwart families who simply didn't generate enough political or economic impact to be prominent. I found that process somewhat amusing, looking at Reifel and a few other documents, including a couple of old county atlas books.

Those atlases were profit-makers. They thrived on paid subscribers and advertising. Glorious books as they were, they are as historical as the publishers cared for them to be, within reason. (They are quite valuable, however.) In some cases, the biographical sketches of some of the more "outstanding" people of the valley were almost succulent in their praise. One presumes these "biographies" were ghost-written to make the subjects more appealing.  No skeletons in old Dad's closet!

Reifel's history is less so, but it contains some of the same material, though written 30-some years later.

A lot of what passed for history in the 1870s and 1880s is glorified government. Another term for that is "bureaucracy."

But to be fair, Indiana and most of the nation had been at peace. Foreign threats were all but eliminated for the time. Only the Franco-Prussian War in Europe was anything of a menace. (That would prove to be a real menace, but it's hardly connected to Fairfield, at least for the moment.)

The federal government had gone West with Horace Greeley, shoving the native Indians farther and farther away from their origins. The last great confrontations were on the hills at Little Big Horn.

Ma got a box in the mail!

The country actually had become more "sane" inasmuch as the political system had finally gone national. The two-party snake's tongue was firmly entrenched and fairly easy to identify. The highways would begin to take shape and the Railroad was Almost God.

Meanwhile, in Franklin County, the farmers who could build big houses built big houses. The folks who worked in the sawmills and the slaughter houses and on the roads ... all did so for less than a dollar a day.

It is likely that a farm worker actually did better than a non-farm laborer, though the work was more seasonal.

Child labor was common and cruel in urban areas.

Families began to grow and spread out.

Fairfield didn't change much in the later years of the 19th century, moving forward to the end. Photographs of the time tend to prove that, though several rather robust fires in prior years would have removed some of the original structure.

I will take a swing at patching a few people and their lives together in the next few weeks.

The militia

I had intended to do a blog item about some of the men and women who have served in the military over the years.

Having taken a look through a Julie Schlesselman book at the library, I realized that's probably far more daunting than practical. But if you do want to see who served in the various branches of the military, the book is for sale and naturally is available in the reference department (genealogy) at your library.

Julie's work was produced for the 2011 bicentennial celebration of Franklin County. It is a hardcover book and loaded with pictures, information and anecdotes about the county's veterans.

Ranging as far back as there was an Indiana, Hoosiers were called to serve in militia regiments, primarily as a defense against the native tribes who were not particularly happy that the white people had come to build roads, courthouses and whiskey saloons.

Mistreatment of the native Indians also contributed to the friction.

Some of that came during the War of 1812, when the British had allied themselves with the Shawnee and other tribes to fight the Americans in Indiana. In those days, "mustering" for service was not only common, but necessary.

Reifel's history of Franklin County describes one person's viewpoint.

"No recollections of early Franklin would be worth a cent which did not recollect general muster day. The period was near the close of the war, and patriotism was at a premium, and to hate the British was the bounden duty of everybody, and the statesmen of those days were sure we would have to fight them again at a very remote period; hence the laws required everybody between the ages of 18 and 45 to muster at least once a year."

It is worth mentioning that militia in those days recognized their leadership protocol. Soldiers were not managed by a bureaucracy in the Pentagon. Their commanding officers were their neighbors.

As a result, the functional militias were generally pretty well trained and knew their geography and overall notions about how to fight.

Reifel's report continues: "... and as there were men enough of military aspirations in every neighborhood to complain on the delinquents, it is easy to see that the crowd on muster day was immense, because everybody brought the whole family."

The muster was a big deal, but the picnic was even more fun.

It is also worth noting that not EVERY-one who mustered was of muster quality.

"The infantry and the other uniformed companies led in the march; then followed the great unwashed, the flat-foots, which constituted the finest possible burlesque on military movements."

Most everyone else just brought canes or cornstalks and pretended to march, "occasionally with fence rails ten feet long, sometimes four abreast and sometimes ten, some sober, but already many drunk before noon -- and thus they marched."

But it was a muster and it met the letter of the territorial law, designed to run the Indians away and keep the British on their side of the pond.

Most of these rag-tag volunteers were "dismissed soon after reaching the parade grounds, much to the relief of the uniformed companies which spent an hour or so drilling."

After that, talk turned to gingerbread, a favorite staple for the must-muster crowd.

After Indiana was granted statehood, the militia organization was improved, divided into divisions and brigades. Robert Hanna of Fairfield was one of the earliest leaders.

Reifel continues.

"From 1816 to 1830, the old militia system was very popular throughout the state. In 1828, there were 65 regiments organized into 18 brigades and seven divisions."

About 40,000 men were affected.

After the 1830s, the promise of peace across the valley had evidently taken root and it was not until the American war against Mexico in 1846 did the troops get called again.

After that, Congressional attempts to organize volunteer militias were largely a farce. "These laws provided nothing and required nothing. Many commissions were issued as complimentary to those who received them, but with the exception of a few companies of half-organized militiamen, scattered here and there throughout the state, the system was worse than useless."

That would be the standing matter until April, 1861.

Indiana got ready for war in a hurry.


A WHIMSICAL LOOK AT THE AMERICAN MILITIA EXPERIENCE

Politics as we might remember it

I can't recall who said, "All politics is local," since so many people have taken credit for having said it.

The fascinating part of looking into the history of Fairfield and how it related to the Whitewater valley and to Indiana is many of the state's more notable politicians are from the Brookville area.

Several of them were governors, and being governor has always been a big deal. In the 1800s, being the governor meant making decisions that were far-reaching and often permanent. The legacy of Indiana's governors is literally endless history.

The original settlers in the Whitewater valley were quite likely to dabble in the politics of the day, primarily because they came to Indiana for that reason in the first place. They were landowners, and landowners made the rules.

Elections were held among free white males, over the age of 21. The poor tenants who qualified were entitled to vote but since they were typically tenants, illiterate and beholden to the landowners, they voted as they were told. People knew who voted for whom. They ... just ... did.

Early Fairfielders who cast a large shadow in the political arena were Robert Hanna and Robert Templeton, though Templeton's impact is a bit less, he being more inclined to pursue philosophical matters.

Hanna appears to have been an opportunist, and since he had come from a family of politically connected people in South Carolina, his interest in civic affairs is understandable. His father, Robin, was a personal associate of one of the great politicians of all time ... Thomas Jefferson, the man on the 2-dollar bill. And the nickel. And on a hill in South Dakota.

Hanna had a steamship named after him.

In looking back at the names of the original settlers in the valley, some appear to be less inclined to pursue public life. I found a few references to George Leviston, but the Logans, Swans, Johnstons and Abernathys seemed more dispensed with building homesteads than manufacturing an agenda for running it. Logan evidently had a keen interest in developing a spiritual community, so that would "politics" of a sort.

The original founders of Fairfield -- Abernathy, Johnston, Wilson and Osborn -- did so for a couple of reasons, and one can assume they had basic political motives in mind. The town itself was seen as necessary because of the growth of population. An additional trading post was practical, the four men surmised, and stuck a post in the ground where their lands met.

Presto, instant town.

The long-lived narrative about how the four were conspiring to have the county seat moved from Brookville has made for great story fodder. One can assume that they perhaps boasted of such an aim when they all gathered at the annual Grange meeting in Brookville. The fact was: Brookville was not going to lose its courthouse, since it had geography and influential people on its side, and a federal land office.

But politics did play in Corydon when the state was being founded. We know of Johnathan McCarty's efforts to create Fayette County, which lured a courthouse and a legal system in that direction. That was by no means unimportant. But Connersville was well established by the time that happened in 1819. As an incidental note, the county seat of Union County was originally planned for Brownsville. Politics begets its own realities, since the county seat is in Liberty.

Fairfield itself would be affected by the actions of various governors, some of whom were powerful political people in Brookville.

The first Brookville governor was James Brown Ray (1825-1831). Ray was a Jacksonian Democrat but not a very good one, according to the Indiana Magazine of History. In fact, Ray's antics during his governorship were hardly that of a grizzled politician when it came to leading an organization in support of the Jackson ticket in the 1828 governor's race.

In those years, the governor was elected every three years. Ray had served one term and was widely expected to seek another. But he had little taste for partisan politics and made little effort to coordinate the Jackson party's aims. He didn't even fully attack the presidency of John Q. Adams.

"Mere chance had made it possible for him to be governor. He had never been forced to risk a stand on an issue and he did not care to do so now. Moreover he could not see that the personality of political personages was being merged into party spirit. This induced him to stand alone and play a game of duplicity in bidding for the votes of both factions. In doing so he lost the support of partisans on both sides."

Ray was elected again. He served as Indiana began to spread north and west. It appears had had little or no control over it.

Evidently, Ray was somewhat of a jerk and suffered as a result of it when he left the Statehouse. He had promised to codify Indiana law and essentially tried to do that without asking for much advice. In effect, he pissed off the lawyers. Bad idea.

Squabbling between Ray and his successor, Noah Noble, had its origins in a spat Ray had with Noah's brother James, who was in the U.S. Senate. (Noah was living in Marion at the time. James and he are from Brookville, however.)

Ray also served during the years when the ill-fated canal system was begun. He had proposed it in 1822 while in the state Senate. However, by the end of that decade, he began to see that the project was facing trouble -- from the railroads that were just starting up.

Nobody much paid attention to Ray. The canal lobby was too strong. Congress even went along with it. What impact Ray had on any of that is clear ... Indiana would pay the price for the long drainage ditch it was to become.

Canaling became profitable throughout the 1830s and was generally lucrative at times into the 1840s.

Noble (1831-37) can be described as having political leanings that were essentially conservative-neutral. In other words, gridlock. He was responsible for the construction of the Michigan Road, which helped settle the state after the so-called New Purchase of native lands in north-central Indiana. Construction of that road was muddled, confused and controversial. Ray served as something of an impediment. Again, it seems he was a jerk.

The history essay describes Noble:

"He began his political career as county sheriff at Brookville; he served as representative in the state assembly; he was appointed to the government land office at Brookville and Indianapolis by President Adams, from which office he was removed by President Jackson in 1829. In 1830 he was appointed contract commissioner on the Michigan Road in which capacity he was serving when elected governor on the Whig ticket in 1831. Like Ray, he was an internal improvements enthusiast. His record of efficiency as commissioner undoubtedly aided in his election as governor."

Noble, for what it's worth, had succeeded Robert Hanna as county sheriff.

As an aside, the history of the creation of the Michigan Road is complex. If it weren't for fraud, political ineptitude and special interest whining, the project was a great success. You could actually travel the entire length of Indiana. Or, that was the plan. By 1834, most funding for the road was appropriated elsewhere. By 1837, most travelers found the road to be something resembling "impassible."

Effectively, the project inevitably became somewhat of a farce. County governments were forced to finish the work when the state went broke.

Wallace, another Brookviller and father of Gen. Lew Wallace, came next (1837-40). He was a Whig, or a conservative. Wallace had served as lieutenant governor under Noble. He has been explored in another blog item. (Those are in the listings at the right.)

Wallace was governor just after what became known as the "Panic of 1837" that crippled Indiana's economy. His attempts to rectify the problem were considered failures and the ongoing internal improvements program suffered, putting many out of work. He lasted one term before somehow being elected to Congress as a Whig.

Sam Bigger, who succeeded Wallace, endured the inevitable bankruptcy that had come partially from poorly managed funding of public works projects, mainly the canal debacle.

Wallace was also governor when the Pottawatomie tribe was expelled from Indiana during the infamous "trail of death" march.

Most of the very early governors were not born in Indiana and many were influenced by their studies and upbringing in the South, namely Virginia. To some, the issue of slavery was less a problem than a nuisance. I found no evidence that any of Brookville's governors took a strong stand on that issue.

Others who were closely associated with Fairfield in those early years were William Eads, a Brookville merchant who had once bought land in the town with his younger brother Thomas, evidently on speculation that the original town founders were right about the courthouse. Eads was part of the original state constitutional convention, as were Robert Hanna and Johnathan McCarty.

McCarty's father Benjamin was also a respected judge in Franklin County. He is buried in the New Fairfield cemeteries at Sims-Brier.

Brookville's other governor was Abram Hammond, who served for three months in 1860 after Ashbel Willard died in office.  He was a Democrat who had a fairly successful law practice in Indianapolis. He advocated no policies during his "placeholder" term.


PANIC OF 1837

A BIT ON THE MICHIGAN ROAD

TRAIL OF DEATH ON THE MICHIGAN ROAD

Haymond on Homsher

In digging through the dusty files for details about the esteemed Dr. George W. Homsher, I came across some other interesting characters.

And as history would have it, these people are propped up as quite valuable to the growth of Hoosier intellect. It's difficult to argue with that, if the biographies are accurate.

Why would anybody lie about that?

One such person is Rufus Haymond, mentioned in the same breath with Amos Butler in the establishment of a working, practical state scientific research/study organization.

Such an organization was founded in Brookville in 1881 by Butler and Haymond, who is described in the Indiana Magazine of History as "the first productive zoologist in Indiana after Thomas Say, 'Father of American Zoology,' who died at New Harmony in 1834."

Haymond is important to Homsher's work in a number of ways, mainly because he explains it in detail in letters published in the 1880s as Homsher began to unravel the  mysteries of the ancient Mounds people who inhabited most of the Ohio Valley in the first or second century BEFORE Christ.

Haymond (born 1805) was a Virginian, moved to Brookville in 1826 after visiting a relative and liking the place too much to leave. He was in his 70s when Homsher began to promote his work.

The biography on Haymond says "his motive for staying is not easily understood since the settlement of Brookville was suffering a severe economic depression at that time. The most probable explanation is that he had a keen interest in nature and found the region an ideal locality for the exercise of this interest."

Works for me.

While he was studying in the Whitewater Valley, which would have included many junkets to Fairfield, he published extensive works about bird life in SE Indiana, some of which was published in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1856.

When you're published in Philly, you're no longer just Fairfield. You are important. Or so sayeth Ben Franklin, founder of the Metamora canal boat.

Haymond's prestige spread amid his leadership in creating the Brookville Society of Natural Science. He was also considered a cultural and educational inspiration in the Brookville area and was a role model for the aforementioned Butler, born in 1860 and the recognized founder of the society.

Butler offers an interesting history in its own right. Evidently his interest in birds and science so absorbed him that he failed his other college courses.

Digressing from George Homsher.

Haymond, quoted in letters in August Reifel's 1915 Franklin County history, explained what Homsher found when he started digging into the past. In truth, the whole history was quite complex. The mounds were quite common across the valley and their origins difficult to establish.

"Since the organization of the local society, much attention has been given to this interesting subject by (Dr.) Homsher, of Fairfield, who is the curator of this department.

"A survey of the entire county, with a careful study of all details and materials, is included in the plan of operations. This labor has so far been extended over the townships of Springfield, Brookville, Bath and Fairfield only, but with results highly satisfactory for the observers.

"On this small area no less than 42 distinct works have been noted, and, in many cases, explored. Many interesting and some rare specimens of the relics and handiwork of the ancient builders have been reclaimed."

Naturally today, such explorations would be handled much differently. In Homsher's time, they just dug up the stuff and stashed it.

Much of Homsher's work was still in the research stage at the time because of its complexity. Scientists were reluctant to publish conflicting data, and there was plenty of that.

Haymond described the mounds, which were found south of Fairfield in some cases, as being about 10 to 12 feet high and "so situated with reference to each other that a person standing on a mound in the most northern part of the county, overlooking the valley of the river, could see the next mound below him, and from the second,the third was in view, and so with all the others, thus forming a chain of observatories, from which the approach of an enemy could be telegraphed with great celerity from one to the other, either by smoke or some other intelligible signal."

He also writes in Reifel's book that "the Mound-builders were a people possessing rare good taste, which is evidenced by the situation of their mounds. These were always built in picturesque positions, either on the highest grounds, or if in the valleys, upon the edges of the highest river terraces, overlooking the water and the lower portions of the valley."

Haymond is buried in Old Brookville cemetery, across from the old high school.

IN SHORT, WHO WERE THE MOUND BUILDERS?

The varying cultures collectively called Mound Builders were prehistoric inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious and ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes. These included the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period; Woodland period; and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3,400 BC to the 16th century AD, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. 


A MOUND BUILDER SITE IN WISCONSIN LINK

A HOPEWELL HISTORY

Dr. Homsher

Dr. Homsher

Among the more fascinating characters to have called Fairfield home was Dr. George Homsher, who practiced medicine in the town in the 1880s. He was born in Preble County, Ohio, and spent a lot of years in Fairfield before returning to the Ohio town of Camden, in Preble County.

One can assume that Homsher was a qualified doctor but it seems his claim to fame is in another arena -- natural history.

In fact, much of what we know about the ancient burial mounds of the Whitewater Valley can be attributed to Homsher's research.

The hiking trails along Brookville Lake are marked and preserved because of Homsher's research more than 130 years ago.

In a 2012 Whitewater Valley Guide, Gary Schluter describes the hiking process, which piggybacks onto the Homsher story here:

"As long as there have been humans and for millions of years before any form of upstanding creature upstood, there have been trails. Where there is life, there are trails and vice versa. That’s why it’s kind of odd that we have trail advocacy groups like Whitewater Canal Trail, Inc. and the Hoosier Hikers Council struggling to create and maintain them."

Schlueter describes what's known as the Adena Loop.

"The Adena Loop is a linking of separately named trails each negotiable in their own right forming a 21-mile loop around the lower part of Brookville Lake. The loop is named out of respect for the people whose 2,000-year-old mounds highlighted the area before man, the destroyer, arrived. Dr. George W. Homsher whose home in 1882 was located nearby, reported on 24 mounds in the area we now call Brookville Lake. By 1929, 20 of those had been destroyed by cultivation and erosion after being ‘archeologized’ by our present culture."

Thanks to "Laura," who posted this on the web.

Only four of those original mounds have been located -- the Weber Mound, the Klipple Mound, the Johnston Mound and the Glidewell Mound. It's all lumped into the Mounds State Recreation Area.

Homsher's work was known nationwide, and in addition to practicing medicine, he was also an acknowledged expert for his time in the use of herbal cures, which were more common than practical, probably. In any event, his name pops up in some searches for such elixirs. His advertised practice said he specialized in women's and children's health issues.

Homsher was also a driving force in the formation of the state's premier science association, founded in Brookville in 1881.

In a 1946 historical essay in the Indiana Magazine of History, author Nadine Fichter explores the founding of the Brookville Society of Natural History.

"Following the decline of Robert Owen’s experimental society at New Harmony, the state of Indiana was void of organizations devoted to scientific study and research. Several associations were attempted throughout the state, but their influence was entirely local. None of them attained reputation,, prominence, or accomplishment comparable to that of the Brookville Society of Natural History, organized in 1881 by Amos W. Butler.

"The Brookville Society performed (an) important function of being the direct causative agent for the founding of the Indiana Academy of Science, which has become the largest organization of its sort in the country."

Dr. Homsher was a charter member and key contributor to the society's agenda and aims.

Fichter, in her analysis of the society, says the chief cause of its eventual demise was that its constitution allowed anyone who lived in Franklin County to join. So lots of people joined who had no interest in science. Science and other ideas. Not a always good fit.

Homsher, meanwhile, had important work published in major scientific journals, including the Smithsonian, where he described his findings about the Mounds tribes, who roamed the Whitewater Valley in prehistoric times. (In fact, the definition of these people is clearly NOT "Indian" but rather simply "prehistoric people.")

His 1882 paper to the Smithsonian was called "Ancient Remains on Whitewater River" and described what he termed "open-air workshops" in the valleys. He studied their tools, weapons and trinkets.

"These workshops, as a general rule, are located on the second terrace formation along the river or the larger streams flowing into the river, and in close proximity with each shop is an excellent spring of water."

Homsher wrote that one of the most elaborate mounds "workshops" was located just northwest of Quakertown, covering just over 2 acres. The site yielded an immense trove of ancient implements and other treasures.

As well, there were ancient "signal mounds" that served a variety of purposes, including as burial sites. In such places, fossilized remains were often discovered.

Truly fascinating work.

More about the good doctor is in Fairfield: Town Under the Lake. 

 

Sims cemetery

There are probably enough stories about Sims cemetery to fill a couple of novels, so these blog items are extremely cursory in their approach.

Where was it? North of Fairfield, about a mile, just inside the Union County line. It was easily the largest cemetery in the valley and contained the graves of settlers from as far back as 1823. One can assume there are older graves than that, some of them unmarked.

Some of those buried in Sims include (date of birth, and death):

• Hugh Abernathy 1738-1826
• Robert Hanna 1744-1821
• Mary Hanna 1748-1834
• William Sims 1760-1843
• Thonas Osborn 1766-1824
• Aberella Osborn 1767-1856
• Zachariah Ferguson  1777-1843

And there's this one:

Emeline Kelley, who was born in 1851 and died in 1959. At 108, it's likely she was the oldest person to ever live in Fairfield Township.

As well, Benjamin McCarty, considered the first person to enter land in Franklin County, near New Trenton, is buried in Sims-Brier. He was born in 1759 and came to the Whitewater Valley in 1803. He's also father to Johnathan (Jonathan) McCarty ... who is the subject of THIS blog item. I have no real good idea why Benjamin McCarty is buried at Fairfield. I guess if ya gotta be somewhere, well ... why not?

I think the McCarty stones are in the Community Section.

Prominent family names you will see on stones in Sims-Brier:

Abernathy, Brown, Buckley, Cory, Curry, Davis
Hanna, Harrell, Hayward, Husted, Irwin, Johnston
Kelley, Loper, Logan, Luker, Miller, Naylor
Morgan, Ogden, Sims, Snider, Templeton, Younts

At least 72 graves are designated as veteran's graves, ranging from the American Revolution through Vietnam. It's likely more are included on that list in the past several years as World War II and Korean War veterans are added.

The late Blanche Stelle compiled a list of war veterans for me a number of years ago. I will INCLUDE IT HERE. It's not complete since names have been added since Blanche died.

The old graveyard is also dotted with names of infants, illuminating the reality of how difficult life was in those early days.

Much insight on the migration of Sims cemetery is contained in Fairfield: Town Under the Lake, which is available at the Brookville public library. (Other libraries may also have it, so don't be afraid to ask.) In it, Jim Senefeld's pictures and recollections are invaluable.

Sims itself was uniquely peaceful. It was located at the top of a hill and was in fact not threatened by the encroachment of the Brookville Lake. The cemetery was moved because there would have been no ready access to it.

Along with Brier and about a dozen known family plots in the flood plain, the cemetery is on, appropriately, Cemetery Road just east of New Fairfield on Causeway Road. From S.R. 101, it also can be accessed off Bath Road that turns west.

A lot of information on Sims and other cemeteries is available through Findagrave.com. You can join the site and add information.

Some more interesting links on Findagrave:

EMELINE KELLY

CHARLES NOBLE SIMS

ROBERT HANNA

BENJAMIN MCCARTY

DO YOUR OWN SEARCH