Colorado Gold Rush – 1858

The Indiana Herald, Huntington, IN,
6 Apr 1859, p. 2.

Gold was found in streams in an isolated part of the West. The word spreads and soon thousands of men are pouring into the area to seek their fortune.  But this is not California in 1849. This is Colorado and the year was 1858. 

For years prospectors had suspected there was gold in the Rocky Mountains, but no significant find developed. Then in 1858, ten years after the California Gold Rush, gold was discovered near present day Denver and newspapers announced it to the world. 

‘Pike’s Peak or Bust’ was the cry of people who rushed to that area. They were people looking for a bonanza. The Panic of 1857 had been hard on the Midwest. Railroads and banks failed, grain prices had fallen over 60%, and farmers defaulted on their mortgages. For many there was little reason to stay on a bankrupt farm while the newspapers reported that miners were finding gold nuggets in Colorado. 

Chicago Tribune, 26 Mar 1859, p. 2

William J Holman of Hamilton County, Indiana, had recently lost his job promoting and managing railroads.  The gold fields of Colorado were probably attractive to a man facing financial problems and social rejection. So in 1859 he packed up his wife and three children and headed to Pike’s Peak. 

Holman and several others were prospecting for likely mining claims when some of their party became discouraged and began talking of turning back. Soon, though, ‘color’ or flecks of gold began to show up in their pans. It was agreed to stay and investigate this creek. Holman was said to respond “Yes, let us tarry, all,” thus, giving the name for the new town that grew up on their mining claim – Tarryall, 

The site did ‘pan’ out and a significant amount of gold was mined. When new prospectors came, though, they said the original group’s claims were greedily large. Custom dictated that a miner only claimed the amount that one person could work. They nicknamed the site ‘Grab-all’ and went down the creek and named their town ‘Fairplay.’ 

Tarryall, CO is a ghost town today.

Joseph Talbert moved his family to Tarryall, but he died of pneumonia within a month. Gold boom towns were not healthy places to be. Poor sanitation and poor housing meant that disease and exposure led to fatalities. William Holman lost his wife and two of his children to disease. In 1861 he married Kate White. 

Another Hamilton County group that caught the gold fever were the Talbert, White, and Stubbs families. All related through marriage or blood, eighteen family members made the trek across the plains over two years. Four siblings, Enoch, Asa, Elizabeth and Joseph Talbert, along with spouses and children came in 1859. Another sibling, Alvin, saw his sister-in-law, Kate White and two brothers-in-law, Isaac and Mordecai White, leave Indiana for Colorado in 1860. Their uncle, Robert Harvey Stubbs, and his family set out the same year. 

So how did these displaced Hoosiers fare? William and Kate Holman evidently made enough to get back to Indiana and set up in another railroad venture, but not enough to want to stay in Colorado. Isaac and Mordecai White returned to Indiana with empty pockets within a year. Robert Harvey Stubbs opened a hotel in a neighboring town. Joseph Talbert’s widow, Johanna, and their children went back east, but in 1868 when the boys were older and wanted to try their hands at mining, they returned to the gold fields.  Her son Job was killed by Indians in 1870. Her daughter, Amanda, married a saw-mill owner and businessman. Asa Talbert joined the Army. Enoch Talbert stayed in Colorado and became a carpenter. Seth and Elizabeth Talbert Beeson stayed and he worked as a cooper.  For most, Colorado became their home not because of the Gold Rush, but because of the opportunities offered in the new territory. 

Connection: John B. Page was my 1st cousin 5x removed. He married a sister of Joseph Talbert so all these Talberts, Whites, and Stubbs are his in-laws. 

Clara Ruth Darby – Philippines

Clara walked through the yard one spring day. The sun was warm and the tropical breeze ruffled her hair.  Pushing through the lush foliage, she found what she needed. She picked a bouquet of the bright hibiscus flowers, carefully including a lot of the tender green leaves. 

This is a darker story than first appears. Clara Ruth Darby was a Japanese prisoner of war. She was being held in the Philippines’ St. Tomas prison camp. The hibiscus leaves she carefully gathered contained fiber and vitamins that would relieve some of the digestive problems related to the poor diet the prisoners received. 

Clara’s specialized training was a boon to her fellow prisoners. She held a B.S. and M.S. in Home Economics and a PhD in Nutrition. 

Clara Darby, Purdue University Yearbook, 1928.

Born in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, Clara surely grew up hearing stories about the Philippines from her second cousin, Hawthorne Darby, a medical missionary. Hawthorne was twelve years older than Clara and had been woking as an obstetrics and pediatric doctor in Manilla since 1924. (See my blogpost – Hawthorne Darby – Medical Missionary and Martyr)

Lafayette [IN] Journal and Courier, 15 Sep 1939, p¹. 5

Clara graduated from Lafayette Jefferson High School and received her degrees from Purdue University, then worked and taught in Indiana University Hospitals until she joined Hawthorne in the Philippines in 1938. Clara accepted a position as assistant professor of foods and nutrition at the University of the Philippines. She collaborated with other Filipino nutritionists to develop dietary standards for Filipinos for the National Research Council.

Japanese forces invaded the Philippines on December 8, 1941. Classes were suspended at the University, but much of the country’s health care system was allowed to continue to operate.  Clara was assigned to the Emmanuel Cooperative Hospital as a dietitian and Hawthorne continued her obstetric duties. The Japanese kept close tabs on the hospital workers: armbands were issued, travel passes had to be renewed monthly and all talks given to groups, even morning devotions, had to be submitted to the Japanese officials.

That situation was not to last. On February 1, 1944 Japanese soldiers surrounded the hospital and took some of the staff to the Fort Santiago Prison. 

Clara said, “When the first dish of food, a saucer of rice, was shoved through the cell window, it smelled like the food my parents used to feed our chickens. I remembered that . . . one of the early prisoners in Fort Santiago had told his prisonmates that if they didn’t eat every grain of rice, they might not get out alive. So I ate everything I was given. . . . In all my stay in Fort Santiago, all the fruit I was given was a very small piece of watermelon, one-third of a banana, and two calamansi (Philippine limes). I ate the pulp and the skin of the latter.”

Clara’s weight fell to 87. She developed scurvy and suffered from exhaustion and mental fatigue. Then in May 1944 she was moved to Santo Tomas Internment Camp. The former 48-acre grounds of the University of Santo Tomas had been turned into a camp for enemy alien civilians. The camp held around 3,000 internees and the Japanese generally let them fend for themselves. They set up a government, a police force, a hospital and committees to oversee the running of the camp. Using her knowledge as a dietician, Clara was assigned to calculate the nutritive value of the children’s diet. She found it hard to concentrate as the effects of a starvation diet took its toll. 

Lafayette [IN]Journal Courier, 22 Feb 1945, p. 1

As the end of the war approached, the conditions in the camp worsened. All food donations by the outside world was terminated. Then in January the Japanese confiscated almost all stored food in the camp as they prepared for an last-ditch battle for the Philippines. The internees were faced with starvation. 

The camp was liberated by the the U.S. Army on February 5, 1945. Internees were encouraged to return to the U.S. or their country of origin for recuperation. Clara, however, chose to stay and search for her cousin Hawthorne who had disappeared from Ft. Santiago in 1944. Finally accepting that Hawthorne had been killed by the Japanese, Clara returned to America in May 1945.

Her love for the Filipino people didn’t allow her to stay away long. In 1946 Clara returned and resumed her teaching post at the University of the Philippines. She assisted her students in receiving advanced training at American colleges. She helped found PAN – the Philippines Association of Nutrition in 1947.  In 1953 she accepted a professorship at San Jose University and she taught there until she retired as professor emeritus in 1973. San Jose’s Dietetic Department was accredited under the chairmanship of Dr. Darby.

Dr. Darby from Clara Ruth Darby, Lovingly Remembered, p. 6.

Clara received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Purdue University in 1965. She died in 1996. In her honor the Nutritionist-Dietitians Association of the Philippines established the Dr. Clara Ruth Darby Memorial Lecture Series. 

Connection: Dr. Clara Ruth Darby was the 2nd cousin of Hawthorne Darby. Hawthorne’s mother was a Watt. My 2nd great-grand uncle married into the Watt family. Hawthorne was his wife’s first cousin 2x removed. 

Much of this information comes from a book published by her former Filipino students: Clara Ruth Darby: Lovingly Remembered by the Nutritionist-Dietitians’ Association of the Philippines Foundation, 1999.

California Gold Rush – 1849

California, 1848 – Gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. The news spread across the county and young men grew excited at the  promise of quick wealth. The opportunity to pick gold nuggets off the ground or out of a stream was enough to make farmers leave their fields and storekeepers board up their shops.

There were actually three major (and probably several minor) nineteenth-century American gold rushes. The one we most often think of was the California Rush in 1849. Then there was a Colorado Gold Rush in 1858-59, followed by the Klondike Gold rush in Alaska in 1897-98. We’ll look at the California Gold Rush now. My next blog will look at the Colorado Gold Rush.

New York Daily Herald, 27 Sep 1848

Several young Clinton County, Indiana farm boys caught the California gold fever and went west. They were all neighbors, single, in their early twenties and still living and working on their parents’ farms.  Townsend Thompson, his cousin Edward Thompson, Abraham Michaels, Samuel Douglass, Samuel Hopple, John Lee and another man named Painter all left for the gold fields in 1848 -1851.

There were two ways to get to California. Some went to the gold fields via water. Depending on your location, you could leave from either New York or New Orleans, then by ship to Panama, across the isthmus and again by boat to San Francisco. It was an easier way, but more expensive. Most midwesteners took the cheaper and closer option and went to St. Louis and then overland to California. There was not much understanding of the geography and ecology of the American plains. Some writings referred to the area as the American desert. But the route was considerably cheaper, so reluctantly it became the main way to California. The seven Clinton County boys went overland.

From Frankfort, Indiana to St. Joseph, Missouri they traveled by horse-drawn wagon and were rather comfortable. The long trip from St. Joe to the Rockies took them 6 months. The harder travel on the Plains was too much for the horses so they sold them and the party invested in four yoke of oxen. It was a dangerous and tedious trip. Though the danger was from the weather, lack of provisions or just bad luck, and generally not from the Indians. The Indian Wars were still a few decades in the future. 

A letter from Townsend Thompson stated, ”I take this opportunity to inform you that we are well at present and I hope you are well. We have sold the horses and got oxen. . . We expect to start across the plains the eighth of May. There are lots of men who are every day backing out. They started and went a hundred miles, when their oxen gave out. There was no grass for the oxen. Everything is very high in St. Joseph. Corn is one dollar a bushel . . The boys are in good spirits.”

Another letter dated December 28, 1850, “I am well at this present time and hope you and your family are enjoying good health. My health has been very good ever since I left home. I am working with John Lee, Abraham Michael and Henry Kowenhowen. We are making from five to ten dollars a day at the present time.  . . Mining is an uphill business. Some are making their hundreds and some are making their board and darned hard to make that. I am going to give California a fair trial before I leave. I can’t say come to this blessed place, for there are too many here now. I like California better than I expected to. The winter has been very pleasant so far. There has been very little rain and very little snow. I had some pleasure on the road and some hard times. I will not say anything about the hardships on the road, for if anybody comes by land they will find them too soon, anyhow.” 

“I think that the people in Indiana who want to get rich had better stay at home and work harder for there are great risks to run in coming to California, and then very likely not make anything. For you may find a place where you may make very good wages for a few days and then you may prospect fifteen or twenty days before you find a place where you can make anything. At least this has been my fix and it has been the same with hundreds of other men. It is just like a lottery. If you buy a ticket and draw the prize, you are the lucky one. And that is the way the thing works in mining in California.”

Eventually, six of the Hoosier boys returned to Clinton county and resumed the more quiet life of Indiana farmers. Both Thompson men invested their money in farmland. They each bought a quarter section (160 acres) and paid $1600 for it with gold dust. 

Connections:

Edward Elwood Thompson was the father-in-law of the sister-in-law of my 2nd cousin 2x removed. 

Townsend Thompson was his cousin and both Thompsons were related to me through their link to the Strain family. 

David S. Brelsford, my 3rd great granduncle, also went to the Gold Rush. He crossed the plains to California, being 110 days on the road and engaged in mining two years. He then returned via Isthmus of Panama, with money enough to purchase the old homestead, his mother having died during his absence. 

Elihu Coffin – one of his descendants married my great aunt. From 1850 to 1852 he lived in Iowa; “thence he wended his way across the plains to the gold regions of California, where, for two years, he had an experience brighter in imagination than in reality. From California Mr. C. returned to Iowa, by way of Panama, New York and Chicago.”

William Sallee, my 2nd cousin 6x removed. In 1849 William Sallee and thirteen others formed a party to participate in the California Gold Rush. They departed from Missouri and crossed the plains overland with oxen and wagons, going by way of Laramie, and once there to the mountains in the search of gold. After eleven months in the gold fields William Sallee returned home by way of Panama, New Orleans and St. Louis. He had acquired nearly $6000 as a result of his toils. Later he invested most of the money in additional farmland.

Robert Witham —“ . . . went west in 1853 with the gold seekers of that period and nothing has ever been heard of him since, although he is believed to be alive and still in the far west;”  – from his brother’s obituary, 1914. Witham was the  brother-in-law of the uncle of my 1st cousin 4x removed.

John M. Shively – He was living in Astoria, Oregon and serving as their postmaster when he was lured to California by the gold rush in 1849. He was more of an entrepreneur and salesman than miner, so he entered the shipping business and developed a scheme to establish steamship service between New York and the West Coast via Panama. He purchased a steam engine with his gold dust and brought it back to Oregon by schooner, but the ship was wrecked at the mouth of the Rogue River and the plan was abandoned. He returned to Astoria but soon another gold rush presented itself.  Gold was discovered in southern Oregon and in the early 1850s, and Shively left for the goldfields.It was reported that he made over $50,000 in eighteen months at Shively’s Gulch.  He eventually returned to Astoria to administer his extensive properties there. Shively was the great-uncle of my husband’s first cousin 2x removed.

The story of the Clinton County ’49ers was from Ed N. Thacker’s newspaper column “Stories of the Town and Country ‘Round” which ran in the Frankfort [IN] Morning Times. See April 4, 1933 and August 15, 1930 issues.

Thomas Austin on the Orphan Train

Young Thomas Austen’s life was a struggle. He was born in May 1852 on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean as his parents fled the starvation and sufferings of the Irish Potato Famine.  His mother died shortly after his birth. Sometime afterwards his father, too, disappeared from his life and he was adrift on the streets of New York.  

New York’s streets were teeming with orphaned and homeless children. It was a city bursting at the seams as immigration and rural flight brought people into crowded tenements where disease and poverty ran rampant. Orphans and children from families who could no longer care for them had almost no public welfare programs to help them. As a result, tens of thousands of destitute children ended up on the streets. Private charities and religious groups set up orphanages or training schools but these were overcrowded and could not meet the needs of all the children 

Thomas’ fortune began to turn when he came under the care of the New York Children’s Aid Society.  The Society was founded by Charles Loring Brace, a Congregational minister who worked with the poor on New York streets. Discouraged that the overburdened orphanages could not provide more than food and housing for the children, he considered the idea of removing orphans and destitute children from their street environment and placing them in rural ‘morally upright’ farm families in the Midwest and West. He believed that the children would be better served in homes than an institution. Brace became the father of the Orphan Train.  The Orphan Train movement would last for 75 years and over 200,000 children would be sent out to find new homes.

Randolph County Journal, Winchester, IN. 28 May 1858

Its hard to make blanket statements for a project that spanned 75 years, multiple agencies and spread across the entire country.  But, generally, newspapers, or civic groups announced the upcoming arrival of an orphan train.

One such announcement placed in the New Castle Courier on May 22, 1862 read: “We publish this week a notice that this society [Children’s Aid Society of New York] will bring to New Castle, within a few week a company of children, with the intention of providing them with homes. . .There are in the City of New York thousands of poor idle children, a large portion of them orphan or half orphans and nearly all of them neglected and abandoned by parents and friends. . .We, as Christians, cannot look upon such a state of things without feeling our responsibility to God for, at least, giving them the opportunity for improvement, and every person throughout the country partakes in a greater or less degree, in this responsibility.”

Applications were taken from interested parties and these were vetted by local ministers or civic leaders. There was usually a large crowd of people at the station awaiting the orphans. When the train arrived, the children were displayed before the families and the train chaperones would assist in making likely matches with the applicants. But sometimes the protocols were ignored or the selection process was hurried. 

Some children would be adopted but some, usually older children, were indentured meaning they were provided with food, clothes, housing, and schooling in exchange for their work. Some placements were not fomalized but resembled emplooyee-employer relationships.

We don’t know which train brought Thomas to Indiana, just that he arrived between 1855 and 1859. Here is a description of an 1859 Orphan Train written by train rider, young Andrew Burke.

“A company of 27 children from the New York Nurseries arrived on August 7, 1859, in Noblesville, Indiana. The boys and girls, all under the age of twelve, had received training and instruction, and were found worthy of good homes. A trial basis of four weeks was allowed. Girls could be placed with a family until the age of 18, the boys until the age of 21. At that time, they were to receive two sets of new clothes and payment to the girls of $50 and $150 to the boys. Mr. J. Macy was the accompanying agent representing the Children’s Aid Society.

Crawfordsville Review. Crawfordsville, IN. 8 Oct 1859

The trip west was quite an adventure! The children changed trains five times. The view of the countryside opened up like a book of dazzling photographs never seen before—cattle grazing on rolling hills, golden wheat leaning in the wind, farmers bent in the fields, abundant rivers, pristine streams, and everywhere green!

As the train arrived at the Noblesville station, a large throng of people with noisy horses and carts greeted the group of children. After a large meal, we were arranged by height on a stage in a church basement. Hands and faces scrubbed, dressed in our best clothes, we were ready to be reviewed by prospective parents. No one was left behind that day. Mr. Butler, a man whose gentle look allayed my innermost fears, selected me to join his family. I realized in later years that some orphans endured hardships, but the “placing out” experience served most of us very well. We became a part of our communities, productive citizens with good names. John Brady, who rode on the same train as I, went on to be the Alaska Governor. There was no greater blessing for me than the Children’s Aid Society and I am indebted to its founder, the Reverend Charles Loring Brace.”—https://orphantraindepot.org/governor-andrew-burke

Andrew Burke would go on to be the second governor of North Dakota. 

Thomas was taken in by Charles and Mary Sipe of Frankfort. The addition of Thomas made six children in the Sipe household.  The 1860 and 1870 census shows that Thomas was attending school. He married in 1878, had three daughters and continued to live in the community where the Orphan Train had taken him.  He died from an accident in 1902.

Connection: Thomas’s adopted sister Belle married William Rogers, my first cousin 4x removed. 

Billy Baird – Pearl Harbor

Billy Baird was looking forward to tomorrow. His friend from home, Ivan, was going to be 22 on Sunday and four friends from Delphi, Indiana had arranged to celebrate. Billy was a long way from home and the chance to meet with Lee, Ivan, and Ivan’s brother Walter might help dispel some of his homesickness.

All four men were in the Navy and stationed at the same port. Ivan and Walter were assigned to the same ship and just down the line Billy and Lee were on another. Yes, thought Billy, December 7, 1941 would be a big day. 

Ivan and Walter Popejoy were assigned to the U.S.S. West Virginia, Billy Baird and Lee Foreman to the Arizona. Both ships were docked in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

As we know, December 7 did not go as Billy and his friends had planned.  Shortly before 8:00 a.m. Japanese aircraft began their attack on Pearl Harbor. All four men were on their ships.  Billy was a radioman and Lee was a fireman for the Arizona. That ship was hit by four bombs that caused explosions that destroyed the ship. Both men were probably killed early in the battle. Ivan and Walter survived, though their ship, the West Virginia suffered heavy damage. 

Though the Arizona burned for two days and sank, some of its upper carriage remained above the water. Walter Popejoy was assigned to board the ship and salvage equipment. He wrote,

“The day I spent aboard the Arizona will never be forgotten. I said a prayer for Lee Foreman and William Baird, my friends from Delphi that were killed. Around the stack on the boat deck was a mound of ashes — no doubt it was the remains of a lot of men. Around one gun I saw the remains — just ashes — of the gun crew. A metal helmet was warped because of the intense heat and there were some ashes in it. I looked down some of the boat deck hatches and saw bodies. I had seen a lot, but this made me sick at my stomach, and I was not alone.”

Billy had graduated from Delphi High School in 1940. It was said he was popular with his schoolmates . Pictures show a sideways grin that has a mischievous look to it. ‘An affable young man’ says his obituary. He joined the Navy that September on the same day as his friend Lee Foreman. 

His mother was notified on December 20th that Billy had been on the Arizona, was missing and presumed dead.  His name is engraved on the Wall of Names aboard the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. 

Connections: Billy Baird was the grandnephew of the wife of Robert Fickle, my 2nd great granduncle.  

Sargent Tanyard – Martin County, Indiana

In the 19th century Indiana’s forests teemed with wild animals. Farmers raised hogs and cattle and horses.  These animals provided food, labor, and one more commodity – leather.  People needed shoes, of course, but also other leather clothing and saddles, harnesses, bridles and straps.  

Leather is transformed from animal skins in a process called tanning. A large tannery in southern Indiana in the second half of the 19th century was the Sargent Tannery in Martin County, Indiana.  

Established in 1847 by David Borland, it was sold to Elisha Sargent in 1857. It became a family business with a brother, sons and nephews working together in the long, hard job of turning a raw hide into leather. The Sargents enlarged the tannery to 48 vats making it one of the largest in Indiana.

Often referred to as an ‘odiferous’ occupation, tanneries were often at the edge of town and since they required a lot of water, they were close to streams.  Martin County folk took to calling the stream by the Sargent business the Tanyard Creek and complained about its odor. 

The first step in the tanning process was to soak hides in clear water to soften them. Then the hides would be placed on a breaking beam and any remaining flesh would be scraped off. 

Then the hides would be placed in limewater and then again placed on the breaking beam to scrape off the hair. One more soaking, this time in ‘rotten’ water made by adding chicken manure.  This would ‘bate’ or soften the hides. After a few weeks in the bate vats, the hides were scraped with a sandstone or soapstone tool. 

George Sargent with whitening tools. Indianapolis Star, 11 Aug 1940. p. 60

To add color the hides were placed in ‘handler’ vats. Ground bark from chestnut or oak trees was made into a ‘bark ooze’ and the hides would be soaked for six weeks to two months. Then they would be placed in a storage tank with more bark ooze for six more months. 

The next step involved pasting the hides with fish oil or tallow for a week. Then the tanner would use a ‘whitening’ knife to shave the leather to a uniform thickness. 

So after a year, the raw hides with the help of chicken manure, limewater, tree bark and lots of water have become leather, ready for whatever use the Sargent’s customers desired. 

The Sargent tan-yard operated until 1889 when the old-fashioned methods and tools gave way to more modern methods. 

Connection: Elisha Sargent was the father-in-law Elizabeth Sims, my husband’s 1st cousin 3x removed.

Marion Porter vs. US government, 1941

Marion Porter was born near Burns City, Martin County, Indiana in 1891. His was a farm family. When his widowed mother died in 1937, Marion bought out the other heirs and continued to work the 80-acre family farm. 

The Depression had hit rural residents hard and the federal government developed plans to deal with rural poverty. In 1938 FDR’s New Deal began a buyout program to turn much of Martin County’s submarginal, hilly cropland into parks and national forest.  (See 12 Oct 2019 blog, Forest to Farm to Forest) Porter resisted, not allowing surveyors and appraisers on his land. On June 3, 1938 the government filed a petition to acquire Marion Porter’s farm. 

Then as war tensions increased, the government’s plans for the land changed and the land was designated to become Burns City Naval Munitions.  The introduction of the Navy into the mix didn’t change Porter’s mind. He continued to plant and harvest crops and ignore the government’s plans. 

So the government condemned the land and mailed him a check for $1142 that he refused to cash. A new check was issued and, again, the check was not cashed. 

Indianapolis News, 17 Jun 1941

It was a difficult situation. Marion was the third generation of Porters to be farmers in Martin County. A 1941 editorial sympathized with him, but also acknowledged that the government’s power of eminent domain was a sensible one and resulted in necessary civic improvements. “Hopeless’ was the word the editorial used to describe Porter’s struggle against the federal government.  But Marion Porter wasn’t giving up. 

In May a crew attempted to survey the land. Porter fumed and ordered all officials off his land, using profane and violent language, displaying his shotgun, and threatening them with arrest. In June 1941 U.S. marshal Julius Wichser visited Porter. He had been warned of Porter’s recalcitrance and took along an armed deputy. He spotted Porter’s son acting as a lookout, but managed to find Porter before he was warned.  He tried to hand him the papers, but Porter dropped them to the ground. Wichser finally put them on the corn drill and left. He had delivered the restraining order forbidding Porter from interfering with survey parties. He was also ordered to appear in federal court in Indianapolis.  

Porter, to no one’s surprise, did not appear for his hearing. A Conservation Department employee testified that the Porter farm was an ‘integral part of the defense project.’ The judge ruled that the land now belonged to  the federal government through condemnation and barred Porter from trespassing on the land.

And so again Wichser was called on to deliver papers to Porter. He found him and two sons driving a team of horses toward his hay field. 

“This order means you can’t interfere with the workers here and that you have to keep off the land,” Wischer informed Porter, as he released his hold [on the horse’s halter.]. “You’re all nothing but a bunch of relievers and you can’t put me off my land,” the enraged farmer shouted, and then he added embellishments of a not very complimentary nature. From a safe distance ahead, he turned and gave his scorching views of almost everything in general, but particularly of the marshal. “That’s all right with me, Marion,” answered the marshal evenly, “but the next time I come down here, I’m taking you out with me, and don’t get the idea I’m not big enough to do it.”  — Indianapolis Star,  25 June 1941.

Linton [Indiana]Daily Citizen, 21 Nov 1941

Wischer’s words were prophetic. The struggle between farmer and government continued. Porter did not vacate the land, but continued to farm his 80-acres. He was arrested and when the judge asked him if he was ready to comply with the government order, he answered, “I’m not promising anything.” He remained in jail for six months until family members finally convinced him to cooperate. He was released on May 28, 1942. His wife picked him up and drove him to their new residence. The government’s bulldozers cleared the buildings on the Porter farm and prepared to turn it back into forest.

Evansville [Indiana]Courier and Press, 14 Oct 1941

Of the 340 tracts acquired for the original White River Project, only one farmstead, the Marion Porter farm, was condemned.

Connection: Marion Porter was the husband of Nellie Holt, my husband’s 1st cousin 1x removed. 

Sheridan Holt – WWII – Building the Ledo Road

It is called World War II’s Forgotten Theater. And though there are a few names and phrases that you may recognize – Merrill’s Marauders, the Burma Road, “flying the hump” – the fighting in China, Burma, and India attracted few headlines. But the soldiers and airmen that fought there played an essential part in winning the war. 

The Allies decided early in the war on a ‘Europe First strategy.’ For this to work the Allies needed China to keep fighting the almost one million Japanese soldiers in their country so these troops wouldn’t be redeployed elsewhere in the Pacific. The US would have to supply China with food and war materiel,.

Early in the war this resupply was done by trucks on the Burma Road, but in April 1942 Japan blocked the road. For a while the Allies looked to the sky and despite poor charts, no radio navigational beacons and little weather information, brave airmen delivered war supplies “over the Hump” of the eastern Himalayas. But that was not sustainable, so in late 1942 construction began on a land route from Ledo, India through Burma into China. 

Ledo Road (Photo: army/mil)

The road’s construction would be one of the toughest jobs given to the US Army Engineers. The Ledo Road would traverse 1,000 miles over mountains and through thick jungles and malaria-laden swamps. The Road would cross ten rivers and numerous smaller streams and require the construction of 700 bridges. The soldiers contended with jungle heat but also snow at higher elevations, snakes and tigers and Japanese attacks. 

Ledo Road

One of the soldiers helping to build the Ledo Road was Sheridan R. Holt, of the 209th Combat Engineers. He was a farm boy from southern Indiana, who would soon be required to do more than build a road.

Progress was slow but steady until halfway through the project an obstacle blocked them. The Burmese town of Myitkyina and its airfield were in the hands of the Japanese. Possession of the airfield was judged to be an essential next step in the progress of the Ledo Road. For months Chinese and US forces fought heat and disease as well as the Japanese but finally captured the airfield.The Japanese forces retreated into the town and a long, grinding siege began. 

The siege was costly for the Chinese and American forces. With their strength dwindling, in May 1944 the decision was made to take the town using two engineer battalions as reinforcements. The 209th and 236th were taken off construction duty and given the job of holding the airfield while the infantry attacked the town. The engineers received quick training in the use of field pieces, mortars and heavy caliber machine guns and sent to Myitkyina. They were a green group when it came to combat. One 209th soldier said that he remembered how to clean his M-1 rifle but he hadn’t ever shot at anything besides targets. 

The engineer reinforcements were flown into the airfield. A soldier said the bullets pinging off the plane as they landed sounded like hail on a tin roof. As soon as the plane landed and unloaded its men, it was reloaded with the wounded and took off again. For the next two weeks the units saw a lot of combat. 

Then on June 13th they were ordered to move closer to the town. Companies A and B of the 209th crossed a rice paddy, and began inspecting foxholes that retreating Japanese forces had left.  Then, as one soldier remembered, “all hell broke loose.” Japanese forces had surrounded them and “we were like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery.” The soldiers dove for the abandoned foxholes. Just then monsoon rains opened up and the foxholes turned into quagmires that began to cave in. For five days the soldiers were surrounded while efforts to rescue them were pushed back by the Japanese. There seemed to be no hope of reaching the trapped men. On the evening of the 15th a hole in the Japanese line was found and small groups of survivors quietly escaped. Eighty-five men eventually made it to the American lines. But for some it was too late. Private Holt had died on the 13th.

Ledo Road (Photo NARA, EUCMH Collection)

Myitkyina was eventually taken. By the end of July the airfield and town were both in Allied hands. But it had been costly, 128 men from the 209th and 236th were killed and 335 were wounded. 

The Ledo Road was finished. By war’s end, more than 5,000 vehicles had carried 34,000 tons of supplies to China. The engineers had completed the job and become veteran combat soldiers as well. The battalion was one of the most decorated in the China-Burma-India Theater. Their awards included one Distinguished Service Cross, four Silver Stars, 33 Bronze Stars and 181 Purple Hearts.

Indianapolis Star, 8 July 1944

Private Holt’s body was never recovered.  His name appears with 36,000 others etched on a wall of the missing on the Manilla American Cemetery, Manilla, Philippines.

Connection: Sheridan Holt was my husband’s 2nd cousin once removed. Sheridan’s grandmother, Malinda Sims, was a sister to my husband’s great grandfather. 

Asbury Holt – Indiana’s Tomato King

In 1929 the Indiana Canner’s Association awarded the “Hoosier Tomato King” title to Asbury Holt.  He had won the Indiana Ten-Ton Tomato Club contest by producing the highest yield in Indiana -a yield of 13.8 tons of tomatoes per acre.  Mr. Holt was presented with a gold watch valued at $110.

Where was this remarkable plot whose tomatoes won Mr. Holt the prize and title? In the fertile soils of Tipton County like the 1928 winner? Perhaps in the rich fields of Hancock or Hendricks Counties where the 1927 winner and runner-up had farmed? No, Mr. Holt’s farm was in the hills and hollers of Martin County, Indiana. 

In a previous blog, “Forest to Farm to Forest – Martin County, Indiana,” I described that in the 1930’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture labelled much of Martin County’s farmland as ‘sub-marginal.’ Rocky, eroded clay soil provided only a bare subsistence living for many of the farmers here. 

But Asbury Holt had a plan, a long-term plan to turn his underproducing soil into something special. 

“ Five years ago the four and one-half acre plot, which I used for tomatoes, was in corn, and the crop was so poor it was hardly worth harvesting. The following year the field was sown to alfalfa with oats as a nurse crop, and it has remained in alfalfa up until this spring. About two-thirds of it had an application of ten tons of manure per acres before the ground was plowed. Before planting we drilled in 350 pounds of 2-12-6 fertilizer per acre and then followed this heavy application with 350 pounds of acid phosphate per acre.” 

The heavy fertilizing was followed by a lot of careful cultivation.  His work paid off. When he began picking tomatoes in August he described the how thick the tomato vines were.

Indianapolis [IN] Star, 5 January 1929, p. 16

“It was a tedious task getting through the rank vines, and being unable to follow the rows, we had to set stakes so that we would be sure to cover all the ground.”

The 13.8 tons per acre were enough to win him a title, but it was still disappointing to Asbury. He complained that several hundred plants in lower ground had been drowned out, that some had been lost to sunburn or blight and then an early frost had nipped unripened fruit. 

Tomatoes continue to be an important crop in Indiana. The state ranks third in U.S. production of tomatoes for processing. About 80% of Indiana tomatoes are canned as whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, or salsa. 

Connection: Asbury Holt was the first cousin 2x removed of my husband. Asbury’s grandfather was Asbury Sims, my husband’s 2nd great grandfather.  

John T. Reese – Poet and Hymn Composer

John Reese knew early that he loved words and loved music. Born in Jamestown, Indiana, in 1852 he was raised in the Methodist Church and no doubt reveled in their music tradition. His grandfather, Samuel Reese, donated the land for the Old Salem Methodist church and helped build it. 

       “Now when I pass by the place of my childhood,
	There’s only one left of the scenes as of old -
	The Old Salem Church and the grove that stood nigh it,
	Are all that are left for my eyes to behold.
	My dear old Grandmother, and dear old Grandfather
	Have gone and their going’s no cause for alarm;
	But there is the meeting house, the old Salem Church house,
	Still standing for worship on Grandfather’s farm.”

As a young man he studied music at the Boston Conservatory of Music. After teaching in several Indiana schools, he and his wife moved to Cambridge City where he became music supervisor in their public schools.  He was lauded by a local author for “creating a knowledge and appreciation of music which lives on in the hearts of his many pupils who were privileged to share the advantages of his teaching.”  (Cambridge City [IN] Centennial Book of 1936)

He was also known as a composer of a number of church songs. The website hymnary.org  credits him with authoring the lyrics to eleven hymns and tunes to 21 hymns. His lyrics praise God and sing of love to his fellow man. 

       “Sing of the Saviour, re-echo his praise,
	Songs of rejoicing triumphantly raise.
	Tell the good news of a Savior and King,
	Peace and goodwill to all men we sing.”

The hymn “Nearer Home” became a sentimental favorite and was often sung at funerals, including the funeral of William Jennings Bryan.

       “One sweetly solemn thought
	Comes to me o’er and o’er,
	I’m nearer my home today.
	Than ever I’ve been before.” 

John also published a book of poetry, “Idle Rhymes for Idle Times.” The poems celebrate the simple life, recollect scenes of his childhood and urge readers to lives of service to their communities. 

         "Do something noble for your town, if only plant a tree,
	’Twill be a living monument and takes but energy.
	Each year your friends will say of you, “this one deserved renown,
	He planted this and other trees - did something for his town.”

These simple rhymes are more than musings after a quiet, fortunate life.  John’s life also had its tragedies. His mother died when he was only three. Two of his three children preceded him in death, dying at the ages of 25 and 39. 

John and his wife retired from teaching in 1912 and made their home in the west near his surviving son, Herbert. John T. Reese died in 1932 at the age of 78. 

       “I’m not a preacher nor a sage,
	Yet truth is found on every page.
	I’ve tried to tell what I’ve to say
	In quite a plain, old-fashioned way.
	I do not know a better plan
	For I am an old-fashioned man.
	And if this brings a smile, why then,
	Just read once more, then smile again.” 

Connections: John T. Reese was my 2nd cousin 3x removed. His great grandfather was Stephen Strange, my 4th great grandfather.