Churches, Cholera, A Barrel of Money
Before the
church was erected religious services were held in the school
house. Previous to the building of the school house they used to
hold services in the hotel, the famous old Junction House, owned
by Allison & Allison. The dining room was used for the meetings
and when the crowd was large, the door leading to the barroom
was opened. Rev. Farmer, an uncle of J. M. H. Allison, often
preached there.
The old brick church at Point Commerce
was called Wesley Chapel. It was erected in 1849. It was 40x80
feet in size and was two stories high. It stood almost directly
opposite the one-story brick residence which still stands and is
occupied by Clarence Cressy. This cottage was built by Dr.
Shepherd, a brother-in-law of J. M. H. Allison, as a residence.
It was occupied later by 'Squire William S. Bays, who had
married the doctor's widow after his death.
The brick for the old church at Point
Commerce were burned across the road from where the residence of
B. F. Hays now stands.
George F. Allison remembers when the
first church society was organized at Point Commerce, in the
little old brick school house, with the following members:
George Helm, Jesse Brazier, James Denton, John Yarnell, Robert
Stricklin, George Griffith, Thomas Messick and Cavin Spooner.
Mr. Helm and Mr. Griffith were class-leaders.
The first quarterly meeting at Point
Commerce was in 1840. It was conducted by Rev. McGinnis,
Presiding Elder. A big revival followed.
Camp meetings had been held in the old
Point Commerce community even before the town was started, and
were always well attended.
The first preacher was Rev. Hugh Barnes,
an old Revolutionary soldier. Other old pioneer preachers of
that settlement were Rev. James Armstrong, Rev. Obediah Winters
and Rev. Eli P. Farmer.
Old Wesley Chapel, at Point Commerce,
was a stately and substantial edifice and was the best known
church in Greene County for many years. Some great revivals were
held there and the leading ministers of those early days, who
visited this region, preached in the old church. The people for
miles around met and worshipped there for a half century.
The old church outlasted the pioneer
town which it had blessed by its divine and powerful influence,
by many years. Long after Worthington had grown up into a good
town and Point Commerce had fallen into decay, the ancient
church on the hill was still the meeting place for the
Methodists of this locality. Commercially Point Commerce came to
Worthington, but spiritually the conditions were reversed.
Finally a Methodist church was built in
Worthington, and gradually the old pioneer church at Point
Commerce was abandoned. Its parishioners had died or moved away;
the ministers who had preached there in years agone had been
called away, some to other fields of labor and others to their
eternal rest. And, with all its hallowed memories, the dear old
''meeting house" on the hill top stood silent and deserted until
the ancient edifice was razed in 1882, by Marcus Hays, Sr.
(father of Ben F., Sam F. and Marcus Hays), who bought the
building, tore it down and built a residence with the brick.
This house, a substantial two-story building, was erected in
1883, and is now the residence of Marcus Hays, son of the
builder.
In the front gable of the old church,
over the door, was a heavy slab of stone, in which was chiseled
these words: "Wesley Chapel M. E. Church, 1849." This fixes the
date of its erection. The old stone now forms a top for Mark
Hays' cistern.
The pulpit and pews in old Wesley Chapel
were of the finest black walnut. They are now doing service in
Mount Vernon Methodist Church, three miles northwest of old
Point Commerce, and are still in splendid condition.
Mrs. Josephine Andrews, mother of
William C. Andrews, the well known hardware dealer, who went to
school at Point Commerce and was well acquainted there,
remembers many interesting events and personages of that place.
She recalls the name of the first Methodist minister who
preached at old Wesley Chapel. He was Reverend Gunsaulus.
Scourged by
Cholera
In 1851 the
entire country was scourged with an epidemic of cholera, and the
four doctors fell victims of the disease within three days of
each other, leaving Point Commerce without a physician. This is
the way some old residents remember the event. Others say that
only two of the doctors died; another says three of the doctors
died of cholera. However, one-fourth of the people died and
others fled from the dreaded pestilence.
Not only did
the ancient village on the hill at the rivers' junction suffer,
but other towns and cities, all over the land were visited by
the awful scourge. In many a city there were scarcely enough
well people to bury the dead. The scourge became so fatal and so
prevalent that in some large cities, the dead bodies of its
victims were carted to their graves and buried without coffins.
Burying squads went from house to house, with wagons. Pausing at
the door of the house of mourning the men shouted: "Bring on
your dead!" and corpse after corpse was loaded into waiting
wagons, to be hauled away to the "silent city of the dead" and
interred without the usual funeral formalities.
The feeble
words of men fail to express the fullness of sorrow when every
heart is burdened with grief and every home is a house of
mourning.
In its
nation-wide devastation the scourge stalked with sorrow-leaving
strides, from sea to sea in a season, and no protecting angel
had "passed over" in advance, for nowhere had the saving spray
of hyssop struck the lintel of any door in the land: nor was the
monster satisfied with the first-born, but demanded a deadlier
toll, and, pitied not its prey. Neither tears, nor prayers, nor
doctors, could stay its ravages.
A
Barrel of Money
One of the
leading citizens of Point Commerce was William C. Andrews, who
conducted a dry goods store there and was post-master for many
years. The post office was kept in his store. In those days the
postage on a letter was two-bits. Often Postmaster Andrews was
asked by the receiver for a loan of twenty-five cents, in order
that the interesting missive might be taken home to the family.
Some of these loans were never paid; yet, to the good name of
those sturdy pioneers, let it be said that Mr. Andrews lost but
a few times through accommodating his neighbors in this way.
Mr. Andrews
was also associated with C. J. Barekman in the pork and grain
business. They bought such produce from the farmers, built
flatboats and shipped it to New Orleans. Mr. Andrews made
frequent trips to that city, then the commercial emporium for
this and all the intervening territory.
In those days
flat boating was an important industry. Boats were built at
Point Commerce, loaded and sent to New Orleans. Often
twenty-five flatboat loads of pork, grain and other products
were shipped to the great southern metropolis in a single
season.
Mrs.
Josephine Andrews tells us of an interesting event. Mr. Andrews
went to New Orleans with an unusually heavy cargo of pork and
grain, which he sold and received his pay, several thou-sand
dollars in silver and gold. He put his money into a barrel and,
accompanied by a trusted assistant, shipped it by boat to
Louisville, Kentucky, with as little display as possible, not
caring to make known the contents of the barrel. But one of them
always stood guard, and both slept by the precious collection of
coin. On reaching Louisville, the barrel of money was rolled
into a wagon and hauled overland to Point Commerce.
In later
years Messrs. Andrews and Barekman located at Worthington, which
fact will be given in a subsequent chapter.
Though
Allison & Allison, merchants, pork-packers and shippers,
hotelkeepers and speculators, were the pioneers, other large
stores and rival merchants were soon located and all did a good
business.
Hogs and
cattle were raised in great number then. They ran at large and
it cost little to feed them or to care for them. The cattle
fattened on the range and hogs upon the mast. Just before
slaughtering them they were taken up and fed a few weeks to make
them "corn fed" by which their market value was enhanced.
Mr. W. G.
Sanders' father, who had done a large business in raising hogs,
packed his own pork in later years and shipped it to market.
Subsequently
the hogs were driven to market on foot in big droves. Mr. W. G.
Sanders remembers when he went with his father who drove 600 to
700 fat hogs to Terre Haute. They were eight days on the way.
The drovers were accompanied by teams, ready to haul any fat
swine which gave out on the way. When a wagon got a load it went
on ahead to Terre Haute, left its hogs and then returned to meet
the drove.
Cattle were
driven to Cincinnati or other markets in those early days.
Drovers were
usually men of considerable means and on returning from the
cities (where their cattle had been sold), with their money in
saddle bags, they were often waylaid and robbed by highwaymen,
on the lonely roads in the forests. Sometimes they put up for
the night at some wayside inn whose landlord was the head of a
band of robbers and murderers. The returning drover who fell
into such hands never reached home and was never heard from
again. No Point Commerce drover ever met such a fate.
However, in
those days, before there were any daily or even weekly market
reports, many an unfortunate drover lost heavily and was driven
into bankruptcy by an unfortunate deal in swine, or through the
dishonesty of some swindling speculator in the large cities.
Occasionally a local speculator lost heavily upon hogs which he
bought here and drove to some large city.
Jack Newsom,
who owned the land known as the "Peters' Farm," now the property
of Z. P. East, was among the pioneer speculators who lost all he
possessed through the dishonesty of Louisville packers to whom
he sold hogs. Mr. Newsom had raised some of the hogs, but the
rest he bought from his neighbors. He paid them but received
nothing from the dishonest men to whom he sold. They told him
that the "market was down" and that they had suffered heavy
losses. If they bought from others on the same terms they did
from Jack Newsom it is difficult to see how they suffered any
loss. It cost Jack Newsom 1,300 acres of good land, now worth
$125 per acre.
The drovers
forded the rivers and creeks enroute. The older residents of
Point Commerce remember when big droves of cattle forded, or
swam, White river on their long and tiresome journey to
Cincinnati, Ohio, or to Louisville, Kentucky.
Everything
was cheap in those days. David S. Fulk remembers when his
father, Charles Fulk, raised corn, shelled it by hand and sold
it for 16 cents, delivered. Pork sold for 2½ cents net. Mr.
Fulk's father sold a cow for $8 and a good heifer for $3. With
the money he bought a steel plow and a pair of leather check
lines. Land was worth $1.25 per acre. A man who wanted to
"enter" land rode to Vincennes, paid $L25 per acre and got a
deed.
John Stanley,
a pioneer citizen of the Point Commerce community, used to raise
corn and hogs and ship his products to New Orleans by flatboat.
He built his own boat, loaded it with his own com and pork and
acted as his own pilot and business manager.
He cooked and
lived on the boat as he floated down stream to the great
southern mart. On reaching New Orleans he would sell the cargo,
retaining his cooking utensils, ropes, block and tackle, which
he brought back for the next trip.
Once he sold
a load of produce for $1,500 and received his money in silver.
This he put into a barrel, piled the ropes, pans and skillets in
on top of it and shipped it by boat to Louisville. There the
barrel, with its valuable contents, was stored in a wareroom and
left. There the barrel stood, with no one to guard it; no one
knew what the barrel contained.
Mr. Stanley
walked to Point Commerce, took his four-horse team and drove to
Louisville, loaded his barrel into the wagon with a quantity of
merchandise he had bought and returned. On reaching home Mr.
Stanley unloaded his barrel, dumped its contents upon the barn
floor, and lo! his bags of money were there, safe and untouched.
He hid his money in some "gums" of seed wheat, where it lay for
several months, until Mr. Stanley invested it in land. There
were no banks near and as no one but the owner knew that the
money was there it was safe.
Index

Source: Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. XII March, 1916 No. 1,
Settlement of Worthington and Old Point Commerce, by Robert
Weems, 1916

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