A Marker on Huff Creek

By Joe E. Robertson and Peggy L. Robison

A Marker on Huff Creek is a fictional account based on historical facts. The focal point is a small stone marker that commemorates an unsolved murder which took place in Jackson County, Indiana in 1892. The murder is tied to many events related in the story. The authors characterize the marker as a symbol of the Huff Creek Valley, and the Valley as a microcosm of the grand phenomenon of Manifest Destiny. As an almost unimaginable migration swept into the region some to stay, and others to pass on through a wilderness was converted into civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468553093

Joe E. Robertson

JOE E. ROBERTSON is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the world and described as an “industrialist adventurer” familiar with many places on six continents and 170 plus countries. However, he will always return to his hometown and county. Joe’s family once owned the farm on Huff Creek in Jackson County, Indiana where much of the history-based fi ction in the book took place. Joe has called Jackson County and the Huff Creek Watershed home all of his life and has six generations of local genealogy to substantiate his knowledge of the people and events that contributed to the migration of millions and realization of Manifest Destiny. PEGGY ROBISON has previous writing experience with Robertson. She too calls the beautiful Huff Creek Valley “home.” Both she and her husband were born and raised in Jackson County. Appreciating life in a small town, they chose to raise their four children in Brownstown, and it remains the family’s home base. Robison has a deep regard for the history of Indiana and a devotion to keeping the stories of the past alive so that people can understand the events that have made us who we are today.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Disclaimer

Chapter 1

A Pioneer Territory

Chapter 2

Real and Present Danger

Chapter 3

A Changing of Nationalities – and of Politics – A String of Forts

Chapter 4

Hoosier Education and The McDonald School

Chapter 5

Colonel John Ketcham – A Leader in the Wilderness

Chapter 6

The Empire Builders

Chapter 7

The Capital Moves from Corydon to Indianapolis

Chapter 8

The Civil War in Southern Indiana and Especially Near Huff Creek

Chapter 9

Promising a Promised Land

Chapter 10

Four Generations of Grace

Chapter 11

The Iron Horse

Chapter 12

A Band of Thieves vs. the Scarlet Mask Society

Chapter 13

The Search for Reno Gold

Chapter 14

The Teachers

Acknowledgments

Many have helped so much in providing the unbelievable facts that have supported the features of this book. We hope those who have supported and assisted us recognize how important their contributions have been and know how much we appreciate their part in bringing to light the cast, characters and conquests associated with The Marker on Huff Creek.

Our families, in spirit and in action, have made contributions, well-based and not in small part, because they have grown up in and around the Indiana, Jackson County, Knob Country, and the people near Huff Creek. Their broad educational and travel experiences have confirmed and expanded their awareness that Huff Creek Country and its people have played feature roles on The Stage of The Nation.

Many of the people to whom we owe so much and whom we name and thank in our acknowledgments are locals who really know Huff Creek County and environment just as Damon Runyon’s characters knew New York. Who could doubt the authenticity of The Lemon Drop Kid? In like manner, if Joe Peters cites background, that’s Gospel.

The contributions of neighbors in our wonderful small towns cannot be over emphasized. The same is true for our friends from high school, college, the military, and former teammates. And, in more recent years, we connected with younger circles of friends through our children and their friends at Yale, Indiana University, Purdue, Ball State, Oregon Health Science University and other places.

Our associates and assistants are so deserving of Thanks. We have been deeply impressed by how much these folks know and have shared with us. These are the folks who really know that Jackson County, Indiana, valleys are the greenest and the hills the most beautiful of any in this great land.

The names of institutions and people identify the objects and subjects of our Thanks.The entire staff of the Jackson County History Center made everything available to us. We soon found we could ask Dick Rumph or Charlotte Sellers or any of that staff anything. They would know anything we didn’t. The Genealogical Library Staff in like manner made everything available to us. Dianne J. Cartmel was our personal guide who led us to the informational treasuries from these great institutions. The publications available were beyond value, but talking to knowledgeable individuals was an educational experience rivaling one might encounter in the recesses of an Ivy League Library.

For example, ask Joe Peters a name, any name, associated with pioneer Driftwood Country; ask Herschel Forgey where a Jackson County Veteran is buried; or any others of that sharp Library staff where to find the genealogical background records of John Ketcham, or anyone. Ask Mr. Hinnefeld about education in Southern Indiana since the Northwest Ordinance or the location of any township school in Jackson County since 1816. Linda Schwenn who taught in Jackson County Schools, was helpful in many areas particularly with questions regarding the great German influx of around 1840.

Joe Persinger, Editor of The Jackson County Banner, has always treated our newspaper stories well. Permission has been granted to reproduce and publish the Joe E. Robertson stories.

We, the authors of this book project, have required a great deal of management, glue and guidance in maintaining the flow to the goal and in keeping our characters as neighbors to greatness. The very talented, highly motivated and savvy Sherrell Perry has done whatever it takes. She has an unbelievable inherent knowledge of names of people and places. She has visited and searched for new facts or confirmation in schools, historic sites, and institutions, Jackson County Offices such as Clerk, Recorder, and even into the courthouse basement archives. The authors plotted the course and deeply appreciate Sherrell’s help in keeping them together on it.

So many helped so much. Thanks.

Preface

There were many early Hoosiers (A name for early Indiana settlers which was possibly a contraction of who’s there? response to a knock on the door of pioneer cabins) with plenty of ambition, energy, native intelligence and fortitude to stand beside and replace the gentry from Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and other sea shore Colonies who created the foundation of the United States.

Southern Indiana in 1800 was a territory ready to flourish and nourish such leaders of national prominence as President Abraham Lincoln, President William Henry Harrison, Colonel John Ketcham, Governor & Senator Jonathon Jennings, General George Rogers Clark, William Clark of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and Major John Tipton, an Indian fighter who led volunteers in clearing the Grouseland Treaty lands of Redskins at the Battle of Tipton’s Island near Seymour.

In the late 1700’s, one hundred years before The Marker of this book, the ancestors of the McDonalds, Hobbs, Daniels, Hammonds, Holmans, Rhymers, Robertsons, Doerrs and others came from West Virginia and North Carolina, across The Cumberland Gap, up The Wilderness Trail through the Kentucky Blue Grass and across The Falls of the Ohio to explore The Land of The Indians (Indiana). A few came from Fort Pitt, Detroit, and other more remote outposts.

There were a few cabins and permanent campsites on the Ohio River, but the newcomers pushed deeper and northward into the virgin forests covering the Knobs and through the valleys of the frequent creeks and rivers – some of which were named by Indians such as The Muscatatuck and some named by early explorers and settlers such as Daniel Boone. Even before Lewis & Clark started their epic expedition in 1803, General George Rogers Clark, the Conqueror of Vincennes, was given a land grant for the town of Clarksville. The beginnings of Jeffersonville, on The Falls of the Ohio (across from Louisville, Kentucky) were in evidence for fur traders and surveyors to see in establishing territories. On down the Ohio River was a landing which became Corydon.

Young Robertson boys were looking for farmland so they rode and led their horses over the Knobs, several days northward from the Falls of the Ohio, toward a place they had heard mentioned as having sweet water and fields of high bottom grass beyond a clear river at the base of the Knobs. Whether or not it was the place of the stories, they found such a place about 1796 and they put down oak posts with carved inscriptions of their names confirming their residence claim at a place named Honeytown. Undoubtedly, they were sure that in the near future this place would be flowing with milk and honey.

The boys returned to West Virginia by the Ohio Route but not without a running skirmish with roving Redskins whom they drove off with their long rifles. One of the boys did take an arrow in his upper arm and removed the arrowhead with difficulty.

Soon they had convinced their widowed mother that Indiana was a land of opportunity. They also convinced another widow, Maude Hammond, that she and her brood should come along. It is difficult to imagine the vision, the faith, the imagination and the determination required to embark on such a journey – but embark they did and moved their covered wagons, horses, and cows over the mountains and across the rivers to Honeytown – not yet officially the State (Indiana.) The White River was there, the unplowed fields were there, and beautiful forests were nearby. Soon two cabins were built in the wilderness and the stage was set for matrimony between the Hammonds and Robertsons with the offspring destined to become significant players in the building of The Northwest Territory, and particularly the Indiana Territory part of it.

The acquisition and settlement of lands in Indiana was not a perfect, nor an orderly process. It is difficult to identify the First to have almost any kind of a claim. Really early settlers filed papers in the Cincinnati Land Office. Before that, claims were often made other ways. However, for those really early, the old statement applied: Possession is nine points of the law. Since then, a thousand courts, magistrates, lawyers, and abstractors have struggled to establish who the land really came from and legally went to. With these truths in mind, we decided that The Earliest Indiana Settlers were given grants after the Vincennes Land Office was established in 1807 and the Jeffersonville Land Office in 1808 with most settlers going to Jeffersonville. And, many settlers did just settle. Many squatters and others who may have lived on lands twenty years or more probably established ownership.

This is the introductory story and details because we (the authors) are familiar with the authenticity at least of the background events and places. This story is concerned with settlers who planted roots on ground a little higher, about two miles south of Honeytown in another valley beneath the Knobs on the banks of a beautiful branch called Huff Creek, named after Abram Huff who had followed the ever-growing creek to its mouth at the White River. He told his story of an idyllic homesite near the headwaters of his Huff Creek near a pioneer trail called Venus (after the goddess of love and to suggest the loveliness of the area.) Little did they know that a century later ill-gotten treasure, as well as greed and sensual lust would combine to be the root causes of a famous, horrible, and unsolved murder on the steps of the McDonald School, now memorialized by a marker on the Venus Road near Huff Creek.

Not often credited sufficiently were the pioneer women who were persuaded to leave comfortable and civilized lives and surroundings and follow by marriage to an ambitious backwoodsman with a dream into an uncharted and untamed wilderness. Wild beasts and uncivilized Indians posed a real and threatened danger to the plans and even the life of those striking out on the Wilderness Road or other trails to Indiana. These women were the teachers – the advocates of civility, morality and worthwhile goals for the adventurers and builders during the birth of the nation. They were sometimes the reasons why men born in ignorance were turned into presidents in a brave new world.

Four beautiful, brave, intelligent, and determined women with the given name of Grace constituted a genealogical thread that weaves throughout the various accounts related in this compilation. The thread of the four Graces began in 1790 with Grace Hammond, and continued down through the decades with Eliza Grace Rhymer born in 1830, Sarah Grace Hobbs born in 1870, and Grace Ann Daniels born in 1890. These women witnessed the birth of the Nation and did much to create and shed the grace of America on the world stage, all with a humble pioneer beginning on a farmstead on Huff Creek.

Disclaimer

This is a novel. It is based on history but is fictional. It changes names and places to protect privacy and reflects the life and times of an era when the wilderness along Huff Creek changed to a forested area of pioneer life in Jackson County, Indiana. Any resemblance of characters to persons, living or dead is coincidental.

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Memorial Plaques

Chapter 1

A Pioneer Territory

The Marker on Huff Creek is just a small stone, plain, with hand-carved letters proclaiming its message. It can be viewed at eye level from Venus Road, the appropriately named pioneer trail that became a country thoroughfare. The words inscribed on the marker have stood through the years as a testament to an event that occurred on