John B.
New was born in Guilford County, North Carolina on November 7th, 1793. His
father, Jethro New, was a native of Kent County, Delaware and was born there
September 20th, 1751. Jethro New served under General Washington during the War
of Independence and was one of the guards of Major Andre and witnessed the
execution of Major Andre as a result of the betrayal of General Benedict Arnold.
John's mother was Sarah Bowman who was also born in Kent County, Delaware on May
25th of 1764. Both of John's parents were Calvinistic Baptists, thoroughly
orthodox on the subject of Predestination.
In the fall of 1794, when John
was one year old, the family migrated by horseback from North Carolina to
Franklin County, Kentucky in an area know as Dry Run about 5 miles from the
current capitol of Kentucky, Frankfort. After living in Franklin County,
Kentucky for five years, the family moved onto the frontier of Owen County,
Kentucky and settled on 300 acres of land, three and one half miles from where
the city of New Liberty now stands (approximately 15 miles from the Ohio River).
Johnny New (as he was called then) began schooling after living there several
years. When there became a population large enough in the area to support a
school, John was able to attend formal schooling. That small one story cabin was
the only school John ever attended.
John was Baptized by Minister John
Scott, a Baptist, who came to Owen County when John was 14 (1807). In May of
1812 John was drafted as a soldier for six months to defend the Indiana
Territory from the Native Americans who had joined the British. It was not until
August 17th that he was called into active service where he joined Colonel
Wilcox regiment at Louisville. There he was inspected by General Harrison when
the General was on his way to Cincinnati to take command of the Army of the
Northwest. Having been armed and equipped in Jeffersonville, Indiana his
regiment marched first to the defense of Fort Harrison, which was commanded by
Captain Zachary Taylor, subsiquent President of the United States. From Fort
Harrison, the regiment moved up the Wabash River to a point near Lafayette,
Indiana before returning home.
In the spring of 1813 he entered the
establishment of Mr. Matthew Craigmiles to learn the trade of a cabinet maker.
After serving out his apprenticeship John opened a cabinet shop in Cynthiana,
Kentucky. Also in 1813 he began to preach in the Baptist Church. When he turned
20 in February of 1814, John contracted what was then called the Cold Plague,
similar in respect to Asiatic cholera.
Nearly dying, John was
re-energized with religious ferver and after a long recovery period moved to
Madison, Indiana on February 2nd of 1815 at the age of 22. One of the major
reasons for his move from Kentucky to the Indiana Territory was his stated
desire to keep Indiana from becoming a slave state. An ardent abolitionist, John
has stated "The possession of a few poor, ignorant, debased slaves was a
standard of respectability that I was unwilling for myself and my posterity to
be measured by."
It was from there that he became known as a
respected minister and eventually became known as one of the most prominent
pioneer preachers in the West. In April of 1815 John cast his first vote as a
citizen of Indiana for delegates to form the first Free State constitution. It
was also in that same month he was witness to the arrival of the first steamboat
to ascend the Ohio River, the Robert Fulton when it arrived to meet the forty
families then living in Madison, Indiana. Soon after his arrival in Madison,
John entered the cabinet shop of Mr. Henry Gritz, where he worked as a
journeyman for two, possibly three years. At the same time he served as clerk of
the church located at Mount Pleasant, near Madison. The pastor at Mount Pleasant
was Mr. Jesse Vawter, father of John Vawter who founded the town of Vernon in
1815. Thus began a long association with the Vawter Family.
A few years
before John Vawter came to this part of the Northwest Territory the land
belonged to the Native American tribes of Shawnee, Pottawatomie, Miami, Kickapoo
and the Delaware. The southhern part of Jennings County was purchased from the
Native Americans in what was called the "Grouseland Purchase" in 1811 by the
United States Government. The northern part of the county was not brought from
the Native Americans until 1819 and was known as the "New Purchase." White men
existed with the Native Americans in a reluctant truce. They would trade with
each other and sometimes raid each other. The worst incident was the Pigeon
Roost Massacre on September 3, 1812 a few miles south of Vernon where 22 were
killed in a possible retaliation to the death of a brother of Killbuck chief of
the Shawnee tribe. The Native Americans are told to have invaded the home of
Colonel John Vawter in Vernon when he was on a surveying trip. The local Native
Americans generally encamped on the South Fork of the Muscatatuck extending
several miles up creek and in 1817 left their camp by the hundreds moving
further west into the frontier. By 1852 the Native American threat was seen to
be over in Jennings County. An October 1852 Vernon Wig banner proclaimed in
part.
"Alas for them!
Their day is o'ver, their fires are out from shore to shore, No more for them
their wild deer bound-The plough is on their hunting grounds..."
Mr. John Vawter was the one of the earliest permanent white
settlers in what is now called Jennings County. He first came to Jennings
County, then known as the Northwest Territory, in his capacity as United Statees
Surveryor for the Northwest Territory. He left Madison, Indiana and founded the
town of Vernon in 1815 thereupon he built a log cabin in Vernon for his wife and
children. John had bought one square mile from the United States government,
plotted the town Vernon in 1806 and sold some lots as early as October 1815. In
1816 the State of Indiana was formed and Jennings County was orgainzed as a
county under an act of the State Legislature at the state capitol in Corydon,
Indiana with Vernon as the county seat. John Vawter was appointed County Agent
in 1817 and the sale of lots in the town of Vernon began in earnest.
The
first minister in Jennings County was Jesse Vawter, father of John Vawter. The
first church that was established was the The Vernon Baptist Church on April
27th, 1816 and meeting were held in the home of Alexander Lewis and in other
cabins around the area until 1820 when an acre of space was secured for open air
meetings. This was called the Silver Creek Association, then in 1824 another
committee was selected and a site was chosen where the church now stands. John
Vawter was then minister, and it was he and other church membership that went on
records as being against slavery. Other preachers were Jesse Vawter (father of
John), Joel Butler, Isaiah Blankenship, James B. Potter, William Stott, James
Stott, Peleg Baker and John B. New.
On February 19th 1818 John New (of
Madison) married Miss Maria Chalfant, the third daughter of Thomas and Mary
Chalfant, who resided in Kentucky, seven miles from Madison on the Frankfort
Road. Her parents were from Pennsylvania and both they and their daughter, Marie
were Baptists and were much opposed to slavery.
From Madison John New
moved to Vernon, Indiana where he eventually became a minister in the Vernon
Baptist Church in 1820. His former minister at the Pleasant Baptist church of
Madison was Jesse Vawter, who was now preaching at the Vernon Baptist Church
along with his son John Vawter. John New assisted Jesse Vawter and worked
diligently throughout the area to spread the gospel. In April of 1830 there was
strife and disorder in the Vernon congregation of the Baptist Church over the
issue of Campbellism. Campbellism was the reform movement sweeping the frontier
as espoused in the preaching of Joseph Campbell. Members of the Baptist church
were disturbed that Elder New would lead the church into Campbellism. Indeed,
Elder New was leaning in this direction though he had never met Mr. Campbell nor
heard any of his electrifying sermons in those early years. Alexander Campbell
did eventually preach at the Vernon Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) on
September 6th, 1850 but it is not known if Elder New attended the
sermon.
In April of 1830, as the schism within the church intensified,
Elder New, along with eleven others (including his wife, John Vawter's wife,
Beverly and John's brother, Hickman New) asked for and obtained from the church
letters of dissmission of full fellowship with the Vernon Baptist Church. They
were intent upon starting their own separate church that would be governed by a
council comprised of a delegation from each of the surrounding six Baptist
church congregations.
The council met and decided to postpone the
acceptance of the new congregation for one year hoping that Providence would
intercede and bring peace back to the church Elder New waited until the
following year and in July of 1831 he baptized his brother Hickman's wife on the
Saturday evening before the regular September meeting of the church. It seems
that it was then that he began to preach in his own house. In November of 1831
Elder New formally organized the "Church of Christ in Vernon" with 13 members.
Credit for the founding of the church can also be given to Beverly Vawter, and
the reverend John O. Kane who was in Vernon in the late 1820's preaching
the faith of The Disciples of Christ (who became known as Campbellites after the
founder of the denomination, Alexander Campbell.)
Meetings were held at
Elder New's home and rotated among the other members of the congregation. When
the membership of the congregation became too large to be accommedated by the
home, the comgregation met at his brother, Hickman New's cabinet shop next to
Elder New's home. Thus, the home of Elder New became the location of the first
Church of Christ (Disciples of Christ) in Indiana. Mr. P. M. Blankenship who
promoted the church in Morgan and Monroe counties was one of Elder New's first
converts.
The cablinet shop where the congregation met was demolished with
the construction of the Madison-Vernon Railroad in 1837 and the church
congregation decided to build a brick structure nearby. This brick church
structure still stands today and is currently in use as the Vernon Town Hall.
The church was located about one half block away from Hickman New's home. The
church grew rapidly for a quarter of a century, with with the deaths of several
of its members and others moving away, the church voted in 1876 to merge with
the Christian Church in nearby North Vernon.
The Slave Free State of Indiana, and southern Indiana, in general, so near the
border of the Slave State (Commonwealth) of Kentucky was a haven for furgitive
slaves. In fact a large settlement of refuge slaves had already established
itself just east of Vernon in what became known as "Africa". The
Underground Railroad was already established in Indiana as early as 1826 and
Vernon was known as a major stop on the railway north. Three principle fugitive
routes leading northward were Madison, Jeffersonville and Cincinnati. As the
fugitives traveled northward, many families and individuals would keep many
fugitive slaves apart and in small groups, making it difficult for pursuers to
keep up with their movements. Under the old "Fugitive Slave Law," the citizens
of Indiana who aided the fugitives did so at their own choosing without much
danger from authorities.
However, with the enactment of the Fuitive slave
law of 1850, any citizen, if requested, had to join in the recapture of any
fugitive slave. It was about this time that an association of eastern
abolitionists sent agents to strategic points along the Ohio River border to
assist in freeing slaves. They had a regular ferryman near Madison, Indiana
who would ferry fugitive slaves traveling north into Jennings County. Jennings
County, being on the main route north, was the nost frequest stop on the
northwesterly route to Columbus, Indianapolis, Westfield, Logansport, South
Bend, Indiana then on to Michigan and Canada.
The land for Elder New's
house in Vernon was purchased from John Vawter on July 3rd 1820. The
house was probably completed by March of 1821 as records indicated that this is
the date that he moved to Vernon. The house is a two story brick structure built
in the Federal-Adamesque architectural style. The main entrance of the
home when it was built looked over a sloping hillside that rolled into the
Muscatatuck River.
The front of the house was then facing North, or where
the rail road tunnel underpass now stands. This stone railroad underpass,
made of native Indiana limestone, believed to be from the Vinegar Mill limestone
quarry outside of Vernon, was constructed in 1837 when the railroad arrived.
This is the first elevated track laid west of the Alleghenies, the first
railroad in Indiana, and only the fourth railfoad in the nation. It was the
first to utilize steel rails. The railroad coming so close to the house almost
destroyed the value of the home as it was built within a few feet of the house
and completely obstructed the beautiful view of the Muscatatuck River down the
hill. The railroad from Madison to Vernon was completed in 1841. In 1842 it
became the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad Company, but was not extended
beyond Vernon until 1847.
Vernon known for its pivotal role in the
Underground Railroad, is a town noted for several tunnels throughout the
community that were utilized to protect fugitive slaves and prepare them
for their journey to freedom further north. The town of Vernon was a notorious
hotbed of abolitionist activity and the town is laced with tunnels that
were used to hide and transfer fugitive slaves to safe areas. However, that
being said, not all of the residents were abolutionists. There once existed what
was commonly known as the "Slave Hunter's Hotel" by several local residents of
the time. This hotel was a notorious location for drawing in the fugitives with
liquer and after they were intoxicated, they were shanghaied to a slave state
and resell them back into slavery. Although it has collapsed over time, one such
tunnel does exist in the John B. New home.
The picture below is taken from the end of Pike street where the railroad
underpass stands looking south, it was before the tornado that destroyed some of
the old buildings in Vernon, the John B. New home is in the right hand corner of
this picture and only a section of it is visible.
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