Solomon Wright

As printed in 1882

SOLOMON WRIGHT.

" My grandfather, James Wright, was a Carolinian Quaker, who fled to the wilds of the Holston, in Tennessee, to escape conscription into the army, in the war of 1776. My father, John Wright, was puny at first, and was rocked in an old trunk-cover lined with the skin of a sea animal, the hair on which is said to rise and fall with the times. As he grew up, he gained strength and vigor. He married Margaret Reece, in Carolina. About 1804, the Wrights emigrated to Ohio, to military lands. In 1814, or thereabouts, the twelve-mile strip came into market, and some fourteen or fifteen families, who lost their lands on the military tract through a flaw in the title, came, soon afterward, to Randolph County. They had fine improvements in Ohio, but they lost the whole. James and Abram Wright moved first of this company. My father came out and selected some land, but did not move then. James and Abram Wright settled on Eight-mile creek. William Haworth came with them. William Diggs and

Armsbee Diggs came from Carolina about the same time. William Way, Sr., and his sons, William, Paul and Henry, all grown and married, came also. I think these came in the fall of 1815. James and Abram Wright moved soon afterward from Clinton County, Ohio.

" March 10, 1816, my brother Isaac (one of the triplets), and myself started, with one horse for us both, from Clinton County, Ohio, to go to the woods of Randolph. With a few things in a sack slung across the horse (among them, seven or eight apples, the last of the season), we set off in high glee, I being fourteen years old, taking turns in riding, or, as it is called, " riding an(l thing, " a very common practice then. Our route was Waynesville, Springboro, Eaton, New Paris, Williamsburg, Ind., and so on to Randolph. We got to brother James' glad enough. Isaac said, " I had to walk nearly all the way. Solomon was so chicklegged he could hardly go at all." We went to work on father's place to clear and build. One day I had laid off" my coat and vest on the leaves, when the fire ran and caught them, and burnt leaves, coat, vest and all. As I held up the smoking shreds. Uncle Haworth cried, "Save the buttons!" "There are no buttons to save," was the curt reply. There was I, a poor lad fourteen years old, one hundred and twenty miles from home, with no clothes but shirt and pants. I had to wear an old overcoat of brother James', a world too large and long, which made me the laughingstock at all the log-rolling. In warm weather, I gladly shed the old coat and took to shirt and pants.

" I stayed through the summer, and were turned home: and in about a year father and I came through with a load of provisions. A year after that, father moved to his land. Cabin Creek was so named on a trip we made to David Connor's, below Wheeling. Seeing a group of Indian cabins on the bank of the creek, some one cried, " Let us call the stream ' Cabin Creek,' and Cabin Creek it is to this day. Muncie was so named from Muncie [Montzie], an old Indian. The Indians complained of Connor's whisky. " Too much ' Sinewa,' " they said. I saw the first lot sold in Winchester.

"Once in school, near Dunkirk, on the last day, the girls got behind the chimney and pushed the fire-place and back wall over into the house, and scattered the clay all over the floor, grand fun. they thought.

" My oldest boy, George Washington, killed a bear. He was quite young, and people would ask, " Is that the boy who killed the bear ?" He skinned the bear and brought it [the skin] home.

" One day some white men and Indians were jumping near the mill pond. One white man jumped with stones in his hands. The Indians were angry. One of them threw the stones into the pond, exclaiming, " No fair !"

"Nathan Thornburg came one day and said, " We are starving for meat." We went hunting, but found nothing. Just as we were going home, a deer started up. I shot the deer and cried to Thornburg, " There is your meat; go get it," which he did.

"One evening a man came and said, " There is a bear over the hill yonder." We went, and, sure enough, the dogs had tried a bear. Thornburg snapped and I snapped. He stuck in a new flint and shot the bear outright. One man said, not very long ago, " The telegraph cannot come here; there is no watercourse." Once, as we were traveling near Smitbfield, we came upon a gang of Indians, lying on the ground under the oak trees. The dog marked, and they jumped up and hastily wrapped themselves up in some way. One Indian asked me for " big ax, to cut bee tree." I told him, "No; got none." He brought me some denison, as black as black cloth, and gave me a piece. I took it. The young man with me took none. The Indian was displeased, and said, " No good white man.".

" In 1833, my wife noticed the "stars falling." She went to the door and cried, " 0, come and look, quick, or the stars will all be down !" While we were moving from Ohio, aa we stopped one evening, a young man sat on a stone and sang:

" 0, when shall I see Jesus, and reign with Him hove?"

The occasion was affecting. We felt lonely and sad, and wept freely.

"Between Williamsburg and White River, an old ewe " gave out," and we laid her on a tree-root " in the wilderness." Seven weeks afterward we found her there, feeding about, and took her home. A great many Indians were here then. I used to hop with them and shoot at a mark. We lived in harmony till two young white men went down below Stony Creek and stole two Indian ponies and escaped to Ohio. Shortly, the Indians went after them. They said, " No good white man; steal Indian ponies." I always noticed that, in the Indian difficulties, the whites were mostly to blame, and that the trouble generally arose from stealing their horses or from selling them liquor.

" A while after we came to Randolph, father sent me to mill, on the Stillwater below Greenville. I followed the Indian trail through the forest, seeing not a living soul, except that I met me carry some Indians, who, upon my asking them " how far to Greenville ?" held up six fingers, to mean, as I supposed, six miles. When I got to Greenville, the old fort was there in decay and partial ruin, and not much of a town. Passing on, I found the mill on Stillwater, some miles below, got my " grinding," and returned safely home. This was probably before 1820.

Solomon Wright is probably mistaken, by at least one year, in his idea of the time when he came to Randolph. It seems well settled that William Diggs and the Ways came in the fall of 1816, and that the Wrights, etc., none of them till at least the spring, or, more probably, the fall, of 1817. They did, some of them, certainly arrive that fall, and that was probably the time, December, 1817, when William Wright went to White River, as told by John Fisher, he thinking that wagon the first to White River.

The following reminiscences of Solomon Wright were written and furnished by Miss Lillie A. Garrett:

" About the time grandpa settled on this farm, he saw a young fawn floating down White River, rescued it from the water and put it into a hollow sycamore; and when he came back from hunting, took it home. He kept it several years. Grandpa says, ' I put a bell on it, and it would go off into the woods, and wild deer would follow it; and when I would hear the bell I would look out for the deer and kill them.'

" He became awful cross, and when anybody came, he would turn his hair back, bow up his neck, meet them at the gate, and they had to stand back or be " floored." One day, two boys were going to meeting, and " Buck" made them "climb" to get out of his way; and he kept them up their saplings till it was too late for meeting. At last he " bunted" over one of the children, and grandpa shot him.

" Jacob Wright and Sarah Wright ( were the names on the first marriage license issued at Winchester.

" Abram Wright and Isom Garrett were pioneer teachers. One taught at Dunkirk and one on Green's Fork, and the schools used to meet to " spell" against each other. Those " spelling matches" were gay times, and were useful, to boot.

" To persons inquiring the way to Winchester, Charles Conway used to reply, " Just go on as far as you can get among the logs and brush, and you are in Winchester." Paul W. Way surveyed the town plat, and Abram Wright carried the chain for him. David Wright " cried" the lots at the first sale. He said to David Wysong, "That young man is good-looking, and he would look still better it he would bid just a little higher." Hiram Mendenhall and others, between 1830 and 1840, joined their possessions and formed a " Community" at Unionsport. The town still stands, but the " Community" was dissolved long, long ago.

"In time of the " Millerism" excitement, a deep snow fell, which the frightened devotees predicted would turn to brimstone.

The first teacher at Cabin Creek was Mary Ann Ring. Grandpa sent the tv.o oldest children. The little '' hits" hid their f'r 'er, tied up in a rag, under the floor before they entered the schoolroom on the first day.

The Diggs', Littleberry, Marshall and Franklin taught the school in after times, and the " Wright children" grew fond of learning, eight attending at one time. And future years found them at Winchester, Williamsburg, Liber, etc., and then as teachers through the region. Great interest was taken by them in temperance, anti-slavery, etc. Fanny, the youngest, now the wife of Judge R. S. Taylor, of Fort Wayne, used to stand on a chair and recite:

In the " Separation," most of the Cabin Creek Friends left the "Body." Amos Bond, J. H. Bond, Solomon Wright, etc., were noted Anti-slavery Friends. Gre; enthusiasm prevailed, and lectures, papers, pamphlets, etc., were the order of the day. The underground railroad track passed this way, and " Cabin Creek" was one of the chief stations.

When " Birney's vote" was found to be about 7,000, Hiram Mendenhall, who presented the " petition" to Henry Clay, at Richmond, Ind., said, " Thank God, there are left yet 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal, nor kissed his image " — referring to the rumor that so many kissed Henry Clay. Grandpa kept an inn for many years, as this road was a great Western thoroughfare.

The Van Amburg show passed here once, and the men, some of them, stayed overnight, and the elephant stood in the yard, tied to a young walnut tree.

Some Mormon converts once camped at the creek ford, and their preacher declared they were going to Nauvoo, protected by the same power that guarded Daniel in the "lions' den." They seemed sincere and hearty in their faith. Abram Wright attended a meeting of Mormons, at which the people wept profusely under the words of a speaker who said he had prayed all night to be delivered from the devil, whose chains he could hear rattling down the stairs.

" Samuel Peters, a highly respected young colored man, used to board with us. He went South, after the war, was cashier of the Freedmen's Bank, at Shreveport, La., and had been elected to Congress there, when he died in the fall of 1873 by yellow fever, which struck that city so fatally at that time. First burial in Friends' Burying-Ground at Cabin Creek was a child of Mordecai Bond's, and the next was Jethro Hiatt's wife.

First mill in Stony Creek Township was built at Windsor, by John Thornburg, 1827. The first cooking-stove was owuti by Solomon Wright, bought at Newport.

A criminal with his legs fastened round the horse, once stopped for dinner. Two men held the clanking chains upon his ankles as he walked into the house. " Look at that and be honest, boys," said grandpa to his sons, who were standing by and gazing at the poor fellow.

"Eminent Quaker preachers of the older time, in Randolph County, were Isora Puckett, Benjamin Cox and others. In later years. Martha Wooton, Daniel Puckett, Charles Osborn, etc., labored here to some extent, though not residents within the limits of the county.

As printed in History of Randolph County, Indiana with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers : to which are appended maps of its several townships (1882). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.