Presbyterianism on the Frontiers [pp. 445-469]

Presbytcriainism on tze Frontiers.
although ten years a State in I826, was a vast wilderness that
was only just beginning to tremble before the axe of the pioneer. In 1822 that truly able man, the late Mr. John Beard,
found only one cabin between Indianapolis and the cabin or
two built at Crawfordsville. And that very year Mr. Charles
Beatty, now our venerable patriarch at Steubenville, riding
from Terre Haute to Crawfordsville, to preach the first sermon
there, and to perform the first marriage in the county, encountered several wolves near where the village of Warrland now
is, and performed both tie religious services referred to in an
unfloored cabin which had not even a door. The bridegroom
of that Sabbath, hearing that a minister was to be there, had
gone the week before to Indianapolis to get his license-the
eleventh issued in Marion county —and the journey required
nearly four days' hard riding, although the distance was only
a little more than forty miles.
As late as I829, Dr. Thomson, our missionary in Syria, took
three hard days' riding to make that same journey one way.
And even as late as I834, a member of one of the Wabash College families was two days in the stage-coach going from Crawfordsville to Lafayette, and thence made the journey by
steamers down the Wabash and up the Ohio, and thence by
stage-coach to New Hampshire. Chicago was a trading post,
to which farmers in Central Indiana hauled their wheat, exchanging a load of it for a barrel or two of salt. The hogs of
Indiana were driven to Louisville and Cincinnati for market at
ruinously small prices; and the cattle and horses were driven
over the mountains to Eastern markets by journeys so long and
expensive that the producers had but little left them when the
expenses were paid.
As an illustration of the times, it may be added that Maj.
Ambrose Whitelock, for several years land receiver at Crawfordsville, was accustomed to put in kegs the specie he received
for lands, and to send large sums of money in this shape by a
teamster without guard to Louisville, a distance of nearly two
hundred miles. In one case the wagon was upset and one or
more of the kegs burst. The man gathered up the shining
treasures and delivered the whole safely to the Government
office at Louisville.
While the local history of Indiana has received no very
463,
I 877.1