Ebook A History of Evansville and Vanderburgh County, Indiana

This history is a recital of prominent local events of our people from the earliest clay to the present. Their habits and customs and growth will be told in the simple, plain manner of those pioneers. I had almost said in the open, frank style of that heroic age - when bravery was exercised and deeds of valor performed, when the protection of life and the guarding of property were the incentives to action, when the home and the family were jealously watched against the wiles of the skulking Indians, when the vain ambitions of conventional society of this swift day were entirely wanting.

In those days, let us not forget, a man's word of honor was his bond, as inviolable as his sacred rights, and his simple "yes" or "no" were never repudiated nor impeached by himself, nor discredited by neighbors. They were given without qualification or reservation and accepted in the spirit and force that the conventionalisms or customs of that day attached to them. Sham and pretension were no parts of the Hoosier pioneer's nature, nor would he suffer anything to smirch his good name or compromise his family honor. He scrupulously separated bis politics and his religion, and personal differences were sometimes settled at the rifle's muzzle. Instances are not wanting where the bravado and the thief have been summarily dealt with. The code of honor among those primitive people was of such a high standard and inflexibility that a villian and a sncak could not adapt themselves to it, and therefore they found more congenial quarters elsewhere, as a rule. Dishonor and bad faith in anyone were never forgiven, and a promise was held sacred. Their high standard of equity and probity developed a race of honorable men and women, and their application of strict morals to daily life restrained the evilly inclined and gave them honest public officials and professional men of superior character and sterling qualities. Reputation was not then a mere bond of dollars and cents, as it is m our rushing, forgetting, exciting, nerve-exhausting, peace-destroying day. This brief portraiture of the majestic character of those early heroes may convey a glimpse at the threshold of those of whom we write.

No labors are required at our bands, we are delighted to say, to frame defenses or invent apologies for these friends and neighbors, who are set down in this volume with loving care and jealous love.