Other surnames mentioned: Haynes, Haines, Lanterman
Elwood HAYNES, who universally is recognized as a pioneer of the great automobile industry, is one of the native sons of Jay county who has written his name high on the walls of the hall of fame and who has done much to promote the cause of human progress. Though his industrial activities long ago called him away from the scenes of his youth here, the place wherein he had his "day of small things," Mr. HAYNES never has ceased to hold in most affectionate regard the scenes and the associations of those earlier days and it is but fitting and proper that in this definite history of his old home county thre should be carried, for the information of future generations, some brief account of his active and useful career. Elwood HAYNES was born at Portland, the county seat of Jay county, October 14, 1857, and is a son; of the Hon. Jacob M. and Hilinda S. (HAINES) HAYNES, concerning whom further and fitting mention is made elsewhere in this volume, together with
interesting details regarding Judge HAYNES's long life of valuable public service in this community. Reared in the city of his birth, Mr. HAYNES left the Portland high school at the end of the second year of his attendance there and in 1878 entered Worcester Technical Institute at Worcester, Mass., from which institution he was graduated in 1881. Upon his return home he entered the ranks of Jay county's teaching force and in the following winter taught a term of district school in this county. In the next year he was called to accept the principalship of the Portland high school and in this important capacity served for two years, or until in 1884, when he returned East and entered Johns Hopkins University, at Baltimore for a thorough post-graduate course in chemistry and biology. This was during the period of greatest activity of the old Eastern Indiana Normal School at Portland and upon his return from Johns Hopkins Mr. HAYNES was given charge of the
chemistry department of the normal, school and he was serving thus when the opening of the natural gas field in eastern Indiana marked the beginning of a new era in the development of the industrial activities of this section. Mr. HAYNES technical training gave great value to his services in connection with the development of the natural gas field and in 1886 he was made the manager of the Portland Natural Gas and Oil Company. This may be said to have been the beginning of Mr. HAYNES extraordinary business career, although, of course, the opportunity to enter the door thus opened would not have been afforded him had it not been for the exact and painstaking and studious care with which he had laid the groundwork for his later technical and scientific attainments, of which this was but the beginning. He continued as the manager of the local gas plant at Portland until 1890, when he was made the field superintendent of the Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company,
with headquarters at Greentown, and in 1892 he moved to Kokomo Howard Co. which since has been his home. It was during his service as superintendent of the great field operations of the Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company that Mr. HAYNES conceived the idea of a "horseless" means of conveyance, this idea being born of the long and irksome trips along the pipe lines, and upon his removal to Kokomo he began to formulate in that connection the plans that had for two or three years been running in his mind. The story of Elwood HAYNES' development of the first practical automobile and of his manner of patiently overcoming the difficulties that confronted him at nearly every step of his progress in that direction has often been told and is so familiar that it need not be repeated here, only to say that on July 4, 1894, his first "horseless carriage," a machine of about 800 pounds weight, successfully responded to the test he imposed upon it on a highway three miles
out of Kokomo, the machine then developing a speed of about eight miles an hour. That pioneer machine is now preserved in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, one of the Government's most cherished treasures. In the next year, 1895, an improved machine worked out under the direction of Mr. HAYNES was awarded the Chicago Times-Herald prize for the best balanced engine, and in 1899 Mr. HAYNES made the first 1,000 mile journey, from Kokomo to New York, in a "horseless carriage." In 1898 when the HAYNES Automobile Company was organized at Kokomo he was made president of the same and has so continued. In the meantime Mr. HAYNES had been pursuing his scientific experiments and in 1910 announced the practical application of the first of that remarkable series of demonstrations in metal alloys which culminated in the eventual development of his wonderful "stellite" and "stainless steel," and the establishment at Kokomo in 1912 of the HAYNES Stellite Works,
which was incorporated in 1915, Mr. HAYNES becoming president. Mr. HAYNES continued as the field superintendent of the Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company until 1901, and since then has devoted himself to his extensive manufacturing interests and to a continuation of his laboratory work. He is a member of the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, the American Chemical Society, the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Institute of Metals and various other technical and scientific societies, and has just been awarded the Scott Prize and Medal for metallurgical discoveries. His certainly has been a life of service to mankind, the initiator of a new system in general social development. And it all came about so naturally. Others also had conceived the idea of a "horseless carriage." He had the: vision to see the practical way out and his dream came true. But of the amazing development of the automobile
industry that was to follow even he apparently had no adequate conception. As he wrote along this line, some years ago: "Frankly, I did not realize on that Fourth of July, when I took the first ride in America's first car, that a score of years' later every street and highway in America would echo the sound of the horn and the report of the exhaust. I am gratified, too, that it has been my good fortune to witness the automobile's entrenchment in the world's business life. Just as my first horseless carriage was designed with a view to facilitating my duties, so is the automobile today contributing, beyond all power to realize, to our every-day business life." Under the auspices of the Kokomo Chamber of Commerce the Hoosier State Automobile Association has erected on the highway near the city of Kokomo a "marker" commemorating the spot where Mr. HAYNES' little "horseless carriage," America's first automobile, was given its successful trial trip on that Fourth
of July day back in 1894. This marker carries an inscription, "On this road America's first automobile, designed and invented by Elwood HAYNES, of Kokomo, made its initial trip in 1894," and is designed simply as a temporary marker to designate this historic spot against the consummation of the plan now being worked out ultimately to mark the spot with a granite shaft. Mr. HAYNES is a Presbyterian. He has ever consistently and earnestly advocated the cause of the Prohibition party and has for years been one of the chief supporters of that party in Indiana. On October 21, 1887, at Portland, Elwood HAYNES was united in marriage to Bertha Beatrice LANTERMAN, of that city, and to this union two children have been born, a son, March HAYNES, and (note - end of bio cut off)
Submitted by: Eloine Chesnut
Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indpls. 1922, Vol. II
Other surnames mentioned: Aker, Gleason, Heston, Hoppes, Phillips, Pyle, Smith, Stackhouse, Steed
Elias H. STEED, a member of the township advisory board for Jefferson township and one of the best known agriculturists of that township, proprietor of an excellent farm on rural mail rout No. I out of Redkey, is a native son of Jay county, a member of one of the real pioneer families of this county, and has resided here all his life. Mr. STEED was born on a farm in Jefferson township on February 6, 1853, and is a son of William W. and Phoebe (PYLE) STEED, both of whom were pioneers in Jay county, having been but children when they came with their respective parents to Indiana in the days of the settlement of this county. The late William W. STEED, a former member of the board of county commissioners for Jay county, was born in Shenandoah county, Virginia, March 9, 1825. and was but four years of age when in 1829 his parents, John and Frances (AKER) STEED, also native Virginians, moved to Warren county, Ohio. John STEED, who was a soldier of the War of 1812,
was born on May 1, 1791, and was reared in Virginia, becoming a farmer. Upon his removal to Ohio he established his home on a farm in Warren county and remained there until the spring of 1837 when he came over into Indiana with his family and settled on an "eighty" he had entered from the Government in section 13 of Jefferson township, this county, thus becoming one of the real pioneers of the New Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. He created a good farm there and on that place spent the remainder of his life, one of the strong and influential members of that community, his death occurring on August 15, 1872. He and his wife had four children, three sons, Robert, Thomas and William W., and a daughter, Matilda, who became the wife of Cheney PYLE, of Jefferson township. William W. STEED was twelve years of age when he came to Jay county with his parents in 1837, the year after this county was formally organized, and he grew to manhood on the pioneer farm in Jefferson
township. As a young man he went over into Ohio and there spent a year, but returned to the home farm and presently acquired a quarter section in section 20 of Jefferson township. He married at the age of twenty-three and established his home in a log cabin he had erected in a clearing he had made on his place. As his affairs prospered Mr. STEED erected more commodious buildings and in time came to have one of the best improved farm plants in the county. He also increased his land holdings until he became the owner of 540 acres, and for many years also was largely engaged in the buying and selling of live stock. In the panic of 1893 much of his property was lost and he thereafter led a somewhat retired life. He died on December 28, 1899. During the period of his activity Mr. STEED was regarded as one of the leaders of the Democratic party in this county and for two years (1872-74) served as a member of the board of county commissioners from his district. He
was a member of the Masonic fraternity. William W. STEED was twice married. In 1848 he was united in marriage to Phoebe PYLE, who was born in Washington county, Pennsylvania, May 6, 1828, and who was but six years of age when her parents, George P. and Ann (SMITH) PYLE, the latter a native of Virginia and the former of Chester county, Pennsylvania, moved with their family into Ohio, in 1832, and settled in Clinton county, where they remained until the spring of 1838 when they came over into Indiana and settled on a farm in section 36 of Greene township, this county. In the middle '40s George P. PYLE moved from Greene township to Jefferson township and in this latter township spent the remainder of his life, his death occurring on May 29, 1859, he then being sixty years of age. His widow survived until July 2, 1863, she then being sixty-four years of age. They were the parents of nine children and the PYLE connection in the present generation is a considerable
one. To William W. and Phoebe (PYLE) STEED four sons were born, John, Calvin ,deceased, Oliver H. P. and Elias H. The mother of these sons died on November 16, 1855, and in the following April William W. STEED married Eliza Jane HESTON, who was born in Ohio, a daughter of Zebulon and Elizabeth (STACKHOUSE) HESTON, who became pioneers of Jay county, settling in Jefferson township in 1838. To this union seven children were born, Louvernia G., Homer, Lewis N., Matilda M., William E., Chester, deceased, and Maud. Reared on the home farm in Jefferson township, Elias H. STEED received his schooling in the neighborhood schools and remained at home, assisting in the labors of the farm, until he was twenty-one after which he took over the management of the place, renting the same from his father, and so continued for three years, at the end of which time he made his home with his elder brother, remaining with the latter until his marriage at the age of twenty-nine,
after which he again rented the old home farm and there made his home for ten years. He then bought the "eighty" on which he is now living and has since resided there, in the meantime having made numerous substantial improvements on the place and now has a well equipped farm plant. Mr. STEED is a Democrat and has long taken an active part in local political affairs. In 19'18 he was elected a member of the Jefferson township' advisory board and is still serving in that capacity. He is a member of the Christian church and his wife is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church. It was on April 25, 1882, that Ellas H. STEED was united in marriage to Sarah J. HOPPES, who also was born in Jay county, a daughter of Elijah and Elizabeth ( PHILLIPS ) HOPPES, and to this union two children were born, Esther, who was born on January II, 1883, and who died on September 14, 1884, and Palmer L., born on August 19, 1885, who died on July 8, 1896. Mr. and Mrs. STEED have an
adopted daughter, Freda Dorris, whom they welcomed into their home when she was three years of age, who became a teacher in the New Mt. Pleasant schools and who on December 29, 1921, married Percy L. GLEASON, a. veteran of the World war. Mrs. STEED also is a member of one of the real pioneer families of Jay county, her parents having been but children when they came here with their respective parents from Ohio, the Hoppes coming from Fayette county and the PHILLIPS from Highland county. Elijah HOPPES, who became one of the most substantial farmers of Jay county, was born in 1840 and was but three years of age when his parents, John and Sarah HOPPES, came to Jay ! county and settled in Richland township. In 1859 he married Elizabeth PHILLIPS, daughter of Asa F. and Mary PHILLIPS, who was about twelve years of age when she came to this county with her parents, the family locating in Richland township, and to that union nine children were born, those besides Mrs.
STEED having been Mary S., Cyrus E., Tellitha G., Osta V., Rosa A., Wilber C., Bertha J. and Hattie L. Elijah HOPPES was the owner of about 500 acres of land in section 18 of Jefferson township and was for years one of the leaders in that community.
Submitted by: Eloine Chesnut
Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indpls. 1922, Vol. II
Other surnames mentioned: Gardner, Beardsley, Biddle, Bronson, Gray, Hunt, Lewis, Miller, Pedrick, Rigby, Williams
Jesse E. GARDNER, a well-known and substantial farmer and land owner of Jay county, proprietor of the "Twin Hills" farm and gravel pit in Penn township and for years actively engaged in highway construction work as a. contractor, the builder of many miles of gravel roads hereabout, was born on the place on which he is now living, on rural mail route No. 2 out of Pennville, and has lived there all his life. Mr. GARDNER was born on June 10, 1861, and is a son of William and Mahalia ( HUNT ) GARDNER, the latter of whom was born in Wayne county, this state, daughter of Jesse and Catherine ( PEDRICK ) HUNT, North Carolinians, who had located in Wayne county in pioneer days. William GARDNER also was born in Wayne county, September 21, 1828, and was a son of Jesse and Rhoda ( BUNKER ) GARDNER, both of whom were born in Guilford county, North Carolina, who had become early settlers in Wayne county, among the considerable number of Carolmians who had located in that
section of Indiana when the land was being opened to settlement. William GARDNER's father was a blacksmith and he followed in his father's footsteps along vocational lines, and from boyhood was well trained as a worker in iron, from the time he was fifteen years of age being competent to do a man's work at the forge. When he was but a lad lie had come up here into Jay county on a visit to an elder sister who was living here and at that time became so deeply impressed with the possibilities of this region that he made up his mind to locate here when the time should come to establish a home of his own. He married in the spring of 1849 and in the next year, 1850, came up into Jay county and traded for eighty acres of the "Twin Hill" farm in section 24 of Penn township and established his home there. This famous "Twin Hill" farm, the gravel alone on which has been worth a fortune, cost William GARDNER the price of a scraggy pony, or rather, an old flint-lock rifle,
and this is the way of it. When he was sixteen years of age he started out on his pony to make a trip up from Wayne county through this region and on over as far west as Howard county. He enjoyed hunting and when he reached Howard county he traded his pony for a flint-lock rifle and after a season of hunting there traded the rifle for a tract of eighty acres of Howard county land. Upon his return to Wayne county he traded to one of the settlers there who wanted to go over into Howard county his newly acquired "eighty" in Howard county for an "eighty" in Wayne county and it was this latter "eighty" he traded for the "twin hills" tract when he came up into Jay county in 1850. Upon his arrival here he set up a blacksmith shop on the place and proceeding to make of himself a very useful member of the community. The plows turned out at the GARDNER smithy immediately attained a wide local reputation for their superiority over other plows which had come into the
community and there was much demand for the products of that forge. At the first county fair held in Jay county William GARDNER exhibited a plow of his manufacture which won first prize. He also manufactured axes and other implements for use in the community, at the same time giving attention to the development of his farm and presently came to be the owner of a fine farm of 270 acres, and there he continued to live until his death in 1880. He and his wife were the parents of ten children, namely: Rhoda A., deceased, who was the wife of J. W. WILLIAMS; Winfield S.; Catherine C. ,deceased, who was the wife of Emry RIGBY; Eleanor N., who married Oscar LEWIS; Matilda J., who married Jerome BRONSON; Jesse E., the subject of this review; Maud L., who married George MILLER; William M., of whom further mention is made elsewhere in this work; Leila M., wife of Irvin V. GRAY, and Norla, who died in infancy. Reared on the "Twin Hills" farm, Jesse E. GARDNER received
his schooling in the neighborhood schools and from the days of his boyhood was actively engaged in the work of developing the farm. After his marriage when twenty-two years of age he continued to make his home there, renting the place, and seven years later bought from the other heirs their respective interests in the farm and continues to make his home there, the owner of a well improved place of 181 acres on which is situated the famous "twin hills" of Penn township, which have proved an inexhaustible source of gravel supply for both railway and highway construction. For the past ten years or more Mr. GARDNER has been engaged as a highway contractor and has built about forty miles of gravel road, taking his gravel from his two great gravel pits. In addition to this and his general farming he also has given considerable attention to the raising of live stock and has done well. It was on January 26, 1884, that Jesse E. GARDNER was united in marriage to Phoebe
Miller, daughter of David and Abigail ( BEARDSLEY ) MILLER, and to this union one child has been born, a son, Warner E. GARDNER, who is now living in Oklahoma. Mrs. GARDNER was born on a farm in the vicinity of Ft. Recovery, over in Mercer county, Ohio, where her mother died in 1878. Two years later her father, David MILLER, who was a veteran of the Civil war, came over into Jay county and located on a farm in Penn township, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was born in Mercer county in 1827 and was a son of John and Mary ( BIDDLE ) MILLER, the former of whom also was born in Ohio and the latter in Maryland. David MILLER enlisted for service in the Union army in November, 1861, and served throughout the war, being mustered out at Nashville, Tenn., in December, 1866, a member of Company K, 40th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In 1886 he was elected justice of the peace in and for Penn township. He and his wife were the parents of six children.
Submitted by: Eloine Chesnut
Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indpls. 1922, Vol. II
Other surnames mentioned: Haines, Headington, March, Watson
Jacob March HAYNES, judge, jurist, publicist, banker and philanthropist, who died at his home in Portland in 1903 after a residence in that city of nearly sixty years, has ever been recognized as one of the most potent factors for good in the common life of this community, a strong personal influence ever operative in behalf of all things of good report, and it is but fitting that in this work commemorative of the centennial of white settlement in Jay county there should be presented some modest tribute to the good memory he left at his passing. Of English ancestry and of old colonial New England stock, Judge HAYNES was reared amid an environment that was stimulative of an intense interest in all that is best and noblest in the traditions of the Republic and when he settled here in the days of his vigorous young manhood, back in the days of the formative period of this now well established and progressive community, he brought with him a quality of equipment
and a vigor of lofty intent that quickly placed him in the forefront of those who then were making history here. No wonder, then, that "the Yankee lawyer," as he came to be known in the growing community, was early recognized as a helpful force in that community and that his new neighbors placed reliance upon his judgment in matters affecting the civic development and welfare, his personality commanding even as his calmly expressed judgments inspired, respect for the opinions he was able vigorously to defend. And it was thus, even to the end of his' long and useful life, that Judge HAYNES was ever a trustworthy friend, counsellor and guide, a man whose memory is still a continuing influence for good in the community of which he so long was a vital part. Jacob M. HAYNES was born. in the town of Monson, in Hampden county, Massachusetts, April 12, 1817, and was a son of Henry and Achsah ( MARCH ) HAYNES, the latter of whom also of Massachusetts birth was a
kinswoman of Bishop Chase, the first Episcopal bishop west of the Alleghenies and an uncle of Chief Justice Chase of the United States Supreme Court. Two of her brothers were distinguished physicians and surgeons, one of them, Alden MARCH, president of a medical college at Albany, N. Y. Henry HAYNES was born in Massachusetts in 1786 and was a son of David HAYNES, a soldier of the Revolution, who was a descendant of Walter HAYNES, the founder of the family in America, who came from England in 1636, fifteen years after the landing of the "Mayflower" pilgrims, and established his home in the Massachusetts colony. During the War of 1812 Henry HAYNES was a manufacturer of firearms at Monson, where he later operated a carriage factory and was a landowner. Reared at Monson, Jacob M. HAYNES completed his local schooling in the academy at that place and supplemented this by a course in Phillips Academy at Andover, preparatory to the study of law. Under the preceptorship
of the Hon. Linus Child, of Southbridge, he became well grounded in law and in 1843 came to Indiana, locating at Muncie [ Delaware Co.] where he continued his law studies under the preceptorship of Judge Walter MARCH, a kinsman, and in MARCH, 1844, was admitted to the bar. In the following December he came over into Jay county and opened an office for the practice of his profession at Portland, the county seat town which had been established on the banks of the Salamonie eight years before. In 1856 he was elected judge of the common pleas court and by successive re-elections was continued in that judicial office until the abandonment of the common pleas court in 1871, after which he was elected judge of the circuit court, this judicial circuit then embracing the counties of Wayne, Randolph, Jay and Blackford. He was re-elected to the bench and thus served until 1877, his service on the bench thus having covered a period of twenty-one years, the best years of
the formative period of this section of the state. In the meantime, in 1875, Judge HAYNES was elected president of the Peoples Bank, which had been organized at Portland two years before, the first bank in that city, and he was retained in this position the remainder of his life. From the beginning of his residence in Portland Judge HAYNES took an active interest in the development of the interests of the schools and in 1846 was appointed school commissioner. He afterward for four years, 1848-52, served as school examiner and in this latter capacity corresponding to the present office of county superintendent, rendered an invaluable service in behalf of the local schools, a service which is commemorated by the naming of one of Portland's chief public schools in his honor. During the period of the Civil war Judge HAYNES was one of the most tireless and useful factors in promoting the local activities incident to the vigorous prosecution .of the cause of the
Union forces. Upon leaving the bench he resumed the practice of law and was so engaged until failing health in 1886 compelled his retirement for a time and he spent a year or two in recreative travel in this country and in Europe. In addition to his banking and property interests in Portland Judge HAYNES was a large landowner, a keen judge of real estate values, and his judgment on business questions was always given respectful consideration. He was devoted to his home and its best interests and his eight children, six sons and two daughters, Walter M., Sumner W., Frank, Elwood, Calvin H., Edward M., Eleanor Josephine and Susan I. (Mrs. Charles F. HEADINGTON) were given the benefits of college training as a means further to fit them for the useful service afterward rendered in their various and respective walks of life. Judge HAYNES was twice married. On August 27, 1846, less than two years after he had located at Portland, he was united in marriage to Hilinda
S. HAINES, who was born in Clarksville, Clinton county, Ohio, in 1828, and who died at her home in Portland on May II, 1885, the mother of the eight children above enumerated. In June, 1887, the Judge married Sarah WATSON. With firm devotion to the city whose development he had watched from the days when it was a straggling village he continued to make his home at Portland after his retirement from the more strenuous activities of his earlier years and it was there he died in 1903, being then in the eighty-seventh year of his age. Elsewhere in this work will be found other references to the helpful local activities of Judge HAYNES and to the lives and services of the sons who have continued to bring honor to the name of this useful pioneer
Submitted by: Eloine Chesnut
Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indpls. 1922, Vol. II