Follow the River.......

Historical Recollections by Lula Mae Stewart

Contributed by the Greenwood Public Library, Transcribed by Janet Schwarze

As a small child I loved to listen to the stories, that my grandfather would tell me about what life was like in the northern part of Clark County when he first brought his family here to live. I wrote most of these stories down on paper and saved old newspaper clippings. Now that I have time I will attempt to put this information into book form, so when the younger generation read this they will have some idea of the hardships the early pioneers endured.

One of the stories he told me was about how the first grist mill came into being. One of the early settlers of the Hum- bird area, his name was WM. Schmidt decided to operate a grist mill. For power he made his own lake. He and his helpers cut down large pine trees to clear land for the lake. The grist mill was a huge success, as people came from far and near to have their grain and wheat ground, driving over rough corduroy roads a trip which sometimes took them several days. The corduroy roads were made by laying large logs across swamps and low places and covering them with sods. These roads were very rough, but the settlers could drive across these places with their horses and wagons that otherwise would have been impassable.

Clark County was named after a revolutionary war hero named George Rodgers Clark.

Lumbering was the big business in these days. The first efforts in lumbering was to cut logs locally and float them down the river on rafts, these rafts often met with accidents breaking up on the rocks leaving the logs free to float where ever they would. Now some of the lumbermen started bringing in small mills of their own, since the river was used for transportation at this time. They brought their equipment upstream in what they called Keel boats. These boats had platforms on both sides upon these platforms walked men with poles, they plunged the poles to the bottom of the river and walked from the prow of the boat to the stern pushing the boat along as they walked.

My father told me about one of these boats owned by a Jacob Spaulding. This boat was said to be sixty feet long. Imagine how many men it took to push this boat along the river.

In the early days of lumbering some bitter disputes arose over who owned different piles of logs, but these disputes were soon settled when the lumbermen started branding their logs. About one fourth of the timber in Clark County was white pine and the other three fourths was hardwood. Around 1893 John S. Owen came to Clark County, for whom Owen was named. About this time people began farming in a small way. After the timber was cut some land sold cheap, some sold for as little as six dollars an acre. But the stumps had to be pulled and the brush had to be cut, there was lots of hard work to be done before this land could be cultivated. Some of the stumps were pulled with horses and the rest were blown out with dynamite. This was a dangerous procedure, as many men had their arms blown off and some even lost their lives.

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