Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Active Methodists in the same locality (Clark Township) were Thomas and Sarah (Stapelton) Wheeler, both natives of Kentucky, through whose seven children an extensive progeny is the result, the third generation having scattered into other localities, some of its members having attained special prominence in medical circles of Indianapolis.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Wheeler, as a Perry County name, is also particularly identified with Tobin Township, whither came at a very early day James and Sarah (Claycomb) Wheeler, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland, whose family lines met in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. Six sons and five daughters were born to this marriage, most of whom in turn married in their own neighborhood, so the connection is now a very wide one, represented far beyond the original county and state.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Van Winkle is the name of earliest conjunction with the settlement of Bristow, which has grown to be the principal town of Clark Township and northern Perry County. Alexander and Phoebe (Miller) Van Winkle, William T. and Emeline (______) Van Winkle, Elisha and Letitia (Jarboe) Weedman were owners of the site surveyed by Daniel R. McKim, Deputy County Surveyor, signed and acknowledged by them March 14, 1875, before Walter Hunter, County Surveyor.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Professor Joseph W. Snow, a graduate of Genesee College, took charge (of the Rome Academy) in the autumn of 1863, with Miss Flint as his assistant, but their year's work was less successful than their predecessors' had been, although an exceptional standard in French and music was maintained through the instruction given by Emile Longuemare. He belonged to an aristocratic old French family of St. Louis, Southern sympathizers, who had cast in their entire fortune with the Confederacy and were thus brought into reduced circumstances.

His uncle and aunt, Charles and Felicite (LeGuerrier) Longuemare, had come to Indiana after equipping at their private expense a full Missouri regiment of which their son, Charles Longuemare, Jr., was captain. A romantic incident of Winston Churchill's novel "The Crisis," where a young Southers officer breaks his sword rather than yield it to an enemy, was recognized in St. Louis as an actual occurrence in the career of Captain Charles Longuemare, Jr.

He took for his wife an Indiana girl, Anna, daughter of James and Ellen (Donnelly) Hardin, of "Hardin Grove" near Rome, where one of their daughters yet lives on her inherited portion of the old estate, the other marrying Major Harrison Jackson Price, of the Thirteenth Infantry, U.S.A. Emile Longuemare also married into a Perry County family, Josephine, daughter of Adam and Jane (Wheeler) Ackarman.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

The Reynolds family represented old Yankee stock of New England though their coming into Perry County was through Hardin and Grayson Counties in Kentucky. William Rhodes Reynolds, a son of Richard and Esther Reynolds, of Providence, Rhode Island, had there married Sarah Jane Tower, daughter of Mathew Tower, lineally descended from the John Tower, of Hingham, Massachusetts, who descendants are so widespread that a copious volume of family history has been written in the present generation by a member bearing the ancestral name with distinction, Charlemagne Tower, sometime ambassador to Germany.

William R. and Sarah (Tower) Reynolds removed to Indiana in 1825 with the eldest two - William Valentine and Alonzo Davis - of eight children that were born to them, living for twenty-five years in Leavenworth, but in 1851 locating at Rome, where the remainder of their lives was spent. William V. was twice married, first to Mary, a daughter of Samuel Frisbie, and second to Elizabeth Gardner, by whom he was the father of three children. Alonzo D. married Caroline Woodford, daughter of Julius and Sarah (Phelps) Woodford, (her mother belonging to that New Jersey family which Wiliam Walter Phelps represented in the diplomatic service,) and their children were several in number. One of the daughters, Sarah Phelps Reynolds, married John William Minor of Rome, himself of the third generation in Indiana of a family name long notable in the Old Dominion.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Nicholas Minor I was an extensive landholder in Loudoun County, Virginia, who gave to the town of Leesburg the ground composing the public square upon which the court-house and county buildings are situated. His wife was Mary Spence, and their son, Nicholas Minor II, married Mary Stark, coming with her in (or about) 1780 to Nelson County, Kentucky, where several children were born to them, so the name is found in adjacent counties of that state and came early into Breckinridge County, along with the allied families of Stephens and Holt from which Stephensport and Holt Station received their titles.

Nicholas III was the pioneer Minor crossing into Indiana for permanent residence, settling in Perry County not far from his Kentucky relatives, where he married Nancy Connor (or O'Connor) by whom he was the father of six sons - William Stark, Hadley Jefferson, George S., Robert, Spence, and Richard Connor - and two daughters - Martha Belle and Catherine. Three of these children died unmarried, although living to mature age, but the others have widely perpetuated the family stock.

William Stark Minor, who for many years carried on a water-mill on Anderson Creek, took as his wife Almerine Lamar, a member of that pioneer family from which Lamar Township, Spencer County, received its name, and their children have shown traits of heredity in entering the professions of finance, education and the law. William Guthrie Minor, now cashier of the Cannelton National Bank, was elected Clerk of Perry County in 1890, holding the office four years, and was chosen Treasurer in 1902. His brother, Oscar Curtis Minor, represented Perry and Spencer Counties as joint-Senator from 1898 to 1902, and has served several terms as prosecuting attorney.

Hadley Jefferson Minor married Eleanor, daughter of John Shoemaker, a native of Pennsylvania, by his first wife, Rachel Tabor. Adam Shoemaker, his father, was of German extraction and came through Ohio into Kentucky bringing his wife, Catherine, and the several children born to them, including John, Adam, Jacob and Stephen.

All these became pioneer settlers of Perry County, entering lands while Indiana was yet a territory and serving their fellow-citizens in various public capacities. Adam Shoemaker II was one of the commissioners appointed by Governor Ray under an act of the Thirteenth General Assembly, approved January 21, 1830, to re-locate the seat of justice in Dubois County, which resulted in removing the county seat from Portersville to Jasper. He had taught school at Troy during the ‘twenties for a time while Abraham Lincoln was a pupil, Lincoln himself relating this fact to a nephew, John C. Shoemaker, whom he met in Indianapolis when on the way from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration in 1861, Shoemaker being then in the state Senate. Stephen Shoemaker was elected Justice of the Peace in 1820; John Shoemaker in 1840, and Jacob Shoemaker in 1843, while John Shoemaker was Sheriff from 1826 to 1828.

John William Minor, son of Hadley J. and Eleanor (Shoemaker) Minor, was elected Auditor of Perry County in 1874, serving eight years, and removing later from Cannelton to Indianapolis where he became a prominent capitalist and a valuably influential member of the Democratic party, although never again consenting to run for office. His sister, Zerelda Minor, married Lawrence Brannon Huckeby, son of Elijah B. and Nancy (Groves) Huckeby, of Rome, afterward making their home in New Albany for many years.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

From the second marriage of John Shoemaker, with Sarah Chapman, by birth a New Yorker of English lineage, was born April 8, 1826, John Chapman Shoemaker, the first of Perry County's native sons elected to a state office (Auditor of State, 1870) and than whom none attained greater success at the price of self-reliance, tenacious purpose and indefatigable effort through all the affairs of life.

Increasing knowledge of sociology and scientific study of eugenics have completely verified what was formerly held as a mere theory - the potent influence of ancestry upon both physical and mental organisms; so that in seeking for the elements of success and tracing intellectual endowments to their ancestral sources, it must be admitted that no better mingling of nation blood could be found that the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races which were blended in John Chapman Shoemaker.

As a mere child his quiet persistance was remarkable, and an interesting anecdote is told of his winning a Sunday School prize once offerec in Rome to the pupil memorizing and reciting within a specified time the largest number of verses from the New Testament. This was a favourite spiritual exercise of an earlier generation, regarded as a stimulus to youthful piety, and one devout lad, considered a village prodigy, out-stripped all competitors at a bound by repeating four chapters. It was assumed that he had so completely distanced every rival that the contest was thought virtually over, but on the following Sunday young "John C." (as he was always called) quietly recited nine chapters in full. He had made up his mind to win, and the prize - a handsome Bible - was a lifelong cherished possesion.

Reared on his father's farm, agriculture claimed his attention and he was the first to realize - far ahead of his time - the latent possibilities of Perry County's hillsides, with their southern exposure toward the Ohio River, for the growing of high-grade fruit. In 1859 he purchased from various owners tracts of land in Tobin Township, aggregating several hundred acres, seven miles east of Cannelton, fronting the Ohio River between Millstone and Deer Creeks, where he planted what was then the largest fruit farm in the state.

On the highest eminence, 275 feet above high water mark, commanding a glorious view of river and fertile valley for many miles, be built the substantial wooden dwelling planned with striking originality in cruciform shape, all its first floor rooms having large fireplaces into an immense central chimney. Until his election in 1870 as Auditor of State necessitated removal with his family to Indianapolis, he made this his home, and "Shoemaker Farm" became a Mecca for pilgrims seeking wisdom in practical horticulture.

The profound research which he had done for several years, on a smaller scale as an amateur, while holding office at Rome, here found material expression in the quality of fruit he was able to grow. His apples won many first prizes at the Indiana State Fairs, and his willingness to share with others the results of his experiments soon distinguished him as a leading pomologist of the Middle West. Agricultural journals sought his contributions as authoritative, and articles from his pen published in the Cannelton Reporter during the ‘sixties are still quoted as standard on many points. A sight of rare beauty were the Shoemaker orchards when in full bloom or bearing, and old steamboatmen still relate how a glimpse of them was eagerly watched for by passengers when traveling past. On river charts the name "Shoemaker's Landing" is still used to designate the stopping place thus known during three-score years.

John C. Shumaker, when only twenty-one, was elected county treasurer, serving six years in an office demanding not only strict business habits, but unquestionable integrity. He was married October 13, 1850, to Mahala, daughter of John Stephenson, one of Perry County's pioneer Virginian immigrants, an early associate judge and justice of the peace. Several children were born to them, but only two daughters grew to maturity and married, so the present generation of Shoemakers carrying forward the name in Perry County are his collaterals, the direct descendants of John Shoemaker I, by his first wife, Rachel Tabor.

From the Treasurer's office John C. Shoemaker was chosen Auditor in 1853, as a Whig, but on the dismemberment of that party affiliated with the Democrats, who, in 1858, elected him senator for the district comprising Perry, Spencer and Warrick Counties. From that time up to his death, December, 1905, he was an active Democrat, high in the councils of his party.

While in the Senate he introduced the bill simplifying township management by placing the business in the hand of a single trustee instead of a board - three trustees, a secretary and a treasurer, - thus abolishing much cumbersome and complicated machinery, with its resultant friction and inefficiency. The work of county auditors, also, was materially condensed through measures of his suggestion, few legislators of Indiana having displayed greater resources of usefulness than John C. Shoemaker. In 1868 he was elected from Perry County as representative, and again brought forward in the lower house his eminently practical views of legislation.

During his years of service as Auditor of State - an office secondary only to the Governor's in actual importance - his administration elicited universal praise from the outside press, no less than from all Indiana, journals of such status as the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Cincinnati Enquirer terming him a "model officer for Auditor of State." After retiring, in 1873, he purchased a controlling interest in the Indianapolis Sentinel, becoming president of the company, and from the time he gave its affairs his personal attention, about 1876, its struggle against misfortune became a winning fight after years of continuous loss. Out of chaos he brought system, extravagance gave way to economy, and success took the place of disaster.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Through frequent changes in the subsequent ownership (of Shoemaker Farm), and the negligence of non-residents, the estate had fallen into almost complete disintegration by 1912, but its wonderful latent possibilities caught the eye of an enthusiastic young Evansville man - Frank Iglehart Odell. His college-trained mind logically reasoned from cause to effect, and he at once set to work practically carrying out in Southern Indiana the horticultural theories he had mastered among the apple-growers of the Pacific coast.

In conjunction with his father, Captian I. H. Odell and his brothers - Harry Nicholas Odell and Robert Levi Odell - he once more brought together by purchase the original estate, with some important additions required to round out its acreage and immediately commence a heroic rehabilitation of the entire five hundred acres. Vigourous treated was applied the remaining trees, thousands of new trees were set out, modern scientific methods everywhere introduced, and while the work is yet too new to have attained extensive results, it is full of promise. They mansion has been restored as a centre of hospitality by Captain and Mrs. Odell (Anna Iglehart) and the name of "Sunnycrest" has already made for itself a place among Indiana orchards of note.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Up to this time each county still had its school examiner, and the last but one in Perry County holding such a position, between 1868 and 1871, was Heber J. May, who had been a successful teacher and later won distinction for himself in the profession of the law.

Heber J. May was the son of David May, and was born November 28, 1846, in Pike County, whence his parents moved about 1852 to Perry County, making it a home thereafter. His education was in the common schools, supplemented by some years of advanced training in a select private school conducted in Cannelton by the Rev. William Louis Githens, rector of St. Luke's Church, a man of strong and admirable character, whose personal influence upon the young people showed itself in many marked instances.

While still teaching school himself, Heber J. May next studied law, reading in the office of Judge Charles J. Mason, and soon after attaining his majority passed with high credit the required examination admitting him as a qualified practitioner before the bar. For two years he practiced law in Evansville, but in 1873 he returned to Perry County where he purchased the first English newspaper in Tell City, the Commercial, an eight-column weekly journal.

It had been founded May 3, 1873, as an independent sheet, but was changed to Democratic on passing into May's hands six months later. He continued to own and edit it until January 1, 1876, when he sold the outfit to W. P. Knight, who shortly removed the plant to Union City, Indiana. Mr. May resuming his law practice in Cannelton. The death of his first wife (Margaret Mayhall, of Hancock County, Kentucky) left him a widower for several years, with one daughter, and in 1880 he was again married to Gertrude (Huntington) Bunce, daughter of the late Judge Huntington, of "Mistletoe Lodge."

In 1882 he was elected Joint Senator from Perry and Spencer Counties and in 1885 his services as an active Democrat were given due recognition by President Cleveland, who appointed him Assistant Attorney-General to Augustus H. Garland, of Arkansas, then in the cabinet. From the time of his removal to Washington he made the District of Columbia his home for the remainder of his life. When the Republicans came back into power in 1889, he formed a law partnership with Judge Garland, lasting until the latter's death, and was a trusted counsellor for several of the foreign legations.

Death came to him January 22, 1915, with distressing suddenness, and he passed away in the arms of his devoted wife, who still survives at the capital with their only surviving son, who is a journalist there.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Theodore Courcier, of Leopold, a son of John Courcier, who had fought in the War of 1812, became the last school examiner, in June, 1871, serving under that title until June, 1873, when, by a new law, the office was changed to County Superintendent of Schools. He assumed the added responsibilities and carried on its duties until 1879, when he was followed by Israel L. Whitehead, who successors have been Francis J. George, Logan Esarey, Harmon S. Moseby and Lee B. Mullen, the present incumbent.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

William N. Underwood, a native of Delaware County, New York, came in September, 1873, from Topeka, Kansas, to Cannelton, purchasing a one-third interest in the Enquirer and becoming its publisher. He was a graduate of New Berlin (New York) Academy, and had learned the printer's trade in the state of his birth, working three years in the Chenango Union office. For a year he lived in Wisconsin, as pressman for the Janesville Democrat, but at the age of twenty enlisted in October, 1861, in the Sixteenth New York Heavy Artillery, serving until mustered out, August, 1865. After the war, he located in Carlinville, Illinois, marrying Etta Wargensted there, but went to Topeka, where he was foreman of the State Record until coming to Cannelton.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Gabriel Schmuck was born June 13, 1833, in Sobernheim, Rhenish, Prussia, and was brought to America by his parents, Adam and Elisabetha (Klein) Schumuck, in the wave of emigration which left the Fatherland during 1848. Their first stop of two years, was in Pittsburg, but in June, 1850, they settled for permanent residence in Cannelton, where the fourth generation of the name in Indiana is now represented. The family was large and - like most of the immigrants - without fortune, so the discipline of early life served to fix habits of industry and usefulness upon the six sons, Adam Jr., Gabriel, Peter, Anton, Charles and Frederick, all of whom grew to maturity as men of strong characteristics.

Gabriel Schmuck's education was begun in the schools of his native town and his actual time in the school-room was not long, though he devoted many hours in his youth to outside study and by personal application attained versatile culture. When still in his ‘teens he yielded to that wanderlust which possesses many vigourous temperaments, and left Cannelton to seek new fields in the South and West. Having to earn his own money as he went, he worked temporarily in many states, thus adding to his experience and increasing the resources upon which the requirements of public station would later draw. No false pride prevented him from engaging in any legitimate kind of honest labour, and his active mentality soon lifted him into positions of responsibility.

Satisfied with a few years of this roving career, he returned home, finding Cannelton increased in population and Tell City installed as a new factor in Perry County's development. His accurate knowledge of the German language caused him to be much in demand as an interpreter for legal transactions of many kinds, and a step into politics was an easy transition.

In 1859 he was elected Recorder and near the close of his four years' term was chosen Clerk of the Circuit Court, holding this office for six years, or until March 10, 1872. Six months later he was elected Representative for the Legislature in 1873, an important session wherein was connected with measures of state-wide bearing and brought himself into notice all over Indiana. As a direct result he was nominated by the Democrats in 1876 for Clerk of the Supreme Court of Indiana, and was elected with the rest of a ticket which his name and popularity materially strengthened.

Following this election he removed to Indianapolis with is wife, Mary F. Sanders-Talbot (an adopted daughter of Dwo Talbot, of Cannelton), whom he had married December 24, 1861. With their children, they made the capital city their home thereafter, until they left Indiana for Kansas in the ‘nineties, settling in Galena, where extensive mining properties demanded supervision.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Cannelton's first mayor, Samuel T. Platt, Sr., was a native of England, born about 1822 near the city of Liverpool, and before coming to America was married to Hannah Britton, by whom he was the father of two sons and two daughters. They located in Cannelton abut 1851, and his earliest business venture was in association with James Lees and several others in a foundry and machine shop. Later, he became connected with the Indiana Cotton Mills and afterward postmaster for some time. For many years, however, he was mail agent on the old Louisville and Evansville packets, at a period when the trade was at its height, only losing this position in 1885 when the Democracy came back into power, as he had always been a prominent Republican.

His election as mayor was a personal recognition of his efficient citizenship and not a partisan issue, and he gave eminent satisfaction during his brief administration, brought to a premature end by his death, September 24, 1886, when Peter Clemens was selected to fill out the unexpired term.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916

Peter Clemens was of Prussian birth and parentage, born May 8, 1829, in Recklinghausen, Westphalia, near the River Lippe, a son of Henry and Anna Maria (Ochel) Clemens. The region was rich in iron ore, and his father was engaged in the smelting business until seventy-five years old, living to the advanced age of eighty-seven.

The son, who had learned the same business in his father's factory, came to America when twenty-three years old, landing June 21, 1852, at New York, but went on to Pittsburg as a center of the iron industry, where he worked for six months. As the extreme strain of labor began to tell on his health, he made a change in 1853, to the shoe and leather business. Mastering it by a two years' apprenticeship, he then located in Cannelton, where on May 19, 1856, he married Anna Maria Schneider, a native of Perry County. He died May 17, 1899, and by a singular coincidence his requiem mass was sung in St. Michael's Church on the forty-third anniversary of his marriage. Another coincidence, one without parallel in the county, was the circumstances that out of the nine children born to the marriage, two of the sons - Henry M. and Anthony P. - also held the same office of mayor of the city of Cannelton.

While always a stanch Democrat, Peter Clemens was never a machine politician or office-seeker. Thought several times elected a trustee under the old town corporation, he served as such from a sense of actual duty toward his fellow citizens and from a public spirit which the rising generation might profitably emulate.

Besides the fact that his term as mayor saw the first railroad built into Perry County (an enterprise toward which he had given much valuable assistance), a purely local Cannelton improvement also completed while he held the office was the stone culvert over Casselberry Creek, which replaced the dangerous and unsightly covered wooden bridge at the foot of Congress Street and endured until washed out by the cloud-burst of July 27, 1910.

In the county seat strife of 1891, Peter Clemens took an active part toward building the new sheriff's residence and jail at Cannelton, and was equally concerned in the erection of the present beautiful Court House in 1896, which was the city's free gift to the county. One of his latest public projects, about 1896-97, was the extension of Seventh Street into a road above high-water mark (now a turnpike) leading over Brier Hill into Tell City at Fourteenth and Washington Streets. He had personally staked out a route, months before the city authorized the survey which, when made, followed very closely the line he had suggested.

In religious circles he was among the foremost members in organizing St. Michael's Roman Catholic parish, and one of it's original trustees. He loved the church "from turret to foundation-stone," and its ornate high altar is a fitting memorial of his uniform liberality, although his singular modesty forbade any inscription being placed thereon in his name. A musician of cultivated taste, possessing a bass voice of unusual volume, it was as a choral director that he peculiarly excelled, and with Peter Clemens as kapell-meister the compositions of Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Lambillotte and other great masters were rendered on festal days by the choir of St. Michael's in a style rarely heard outside the larger cities.

Perry County
A History
by Thomas de la Hunt
The W.K. Stewart Company, Indianapolis
Published 1916