Ebook The Pioneer

The object of this book is to recall to memory the pioneers of Madison and Hancock counties, Indiana. Among the shuffled cards of time they have been, to some extent, overlooked and forgotten. It will be the present aim to gather up the names and reminiscences of those who first settled in our now grand counties.

It is now about seventy-five years since the first white man settled here. During this period many names have been lost, but, as far as possible, they will be hunted up. We can not afford to lose sight of those who had the courage to come and pitch their tents in these woods, with no roads, no mills, no neighbors, no school-houses in fact, with nothing but the wild forests that surrounded them on ever hand.

The year 1818 witnessed the advent of this noble band on Fall Creek, near the Falls, and later at Anderson. At the latter place was an Indian village, where the natives had cultivated, in their rude way, some land along White River, and where they remained till about the year 1834, when, relinquishing their rights by purchase, they went further west toward the setting sun. About this time immigrants began to arrive quite numerously, and to settle at Perkinsville and on Pipe Creek and in other parts of the county.

What disadvantages and what hardships our pioneers endured will never be fully told. We shall never know by experience what they went through, for those times are past, never to return; but we know in part.