Elmore - Matthias - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Matthias Elmore celebrated his 91st birthday Wednesday at his home in Ripley Township. Although so old, he is splendidly preserved and can see, hear, and work remarkably well for his years. He was a caller at The Journal office a few days ago and gave the following story of his early life here:

“I was born in Warren County, Ohio, September 26, 1809,” said he, “and I came to this county with my father, Jacob Elmore, in 1825, just four years after the first settlement by William Offield. We settled across the creek from Offield’s place, near where the Hibernian mill stands—in that same bottom—and you can bet we had a hard time getting along for the first few years. Life was no joke then. My father owned 160 acres of land entering it in old Ripley, and I still own 80 acres of this. We had a hard time at first, as I said, and I remember that for six weeks once we didn’t have a thing to eat except potatoes and an occasional half starved rabbit that we could knock over in the snow. We could have had corn meal, but the creeks were frozen up so that they couldn’t grind. I came clear to Crawfordsville to get a bag of corn ground, there being a mill then at the foot of the hill where the Monon Station stands now. The hill side was covered with sleet so that I had to slide the sack down, but even then I couldn’t get it ground.

I tell you Crawfordsville wasn’t very much of a town then—just a few log houses. I remember when it was all woods about here and all north of Main Street was a big deadening, with fallen timber all over it. I was here when they burned it off, and it surely made a grand sight. The first stores were pretty tolerably poor. They didn’t have anything in them hardly except a few poor tools, some ugly prints, and a few other things. The sugar was poor and mighty little was sold, because we could make better tree sugar. Whiskey was the best thing sold in the town by a long shot, and it was not only good but cheap. They don’t make such good whiskey now. There were some mighty good men here then and I can remember half a dozen old Revolutionary soldiers. I knew them well, and used to love to listen to their tales of George Washington with the feather in his cap and his prancing war stud horse. There were Sims, Warren, Miller, Weir, Fruits, and some others. Old man Fruits lived to be way over a hundred years and was a perfect giant of a man. He was the ancestor of all the Fruits in this county and was a powerful good man.

Do I remember the first election at which I voted? Well, I rather guess I do, young man, for I wasn’t old enough to vote but I did it anyhow. You see General Jackson—the great General Jackson—was running for president and I was a great big overgrown boy looking to be twenty one. I went over to George Fruits’ house where the Ripley township election was and I plunked her straight for Andrew Jackson. This was in 1828 and I voted for the general again in 1832. Elections were different then from now. At the first election the members of the board sat around in the house watching everything, but the ballot box and talking and playing. Old Jim Gilkey was there sitting on a box and he wrote out the ballots with a goose quill pen and pokeberry ink for everyone that came to vote. Jim was powerful handy with his pen and a mighty accommodating man. I wasn’t of age the first time I voted, but as it was for Andrew Jackson I thought it was all right. Later on I went back on the general because he knocked out the United States bank, and I turned to be a Whig, but then I got to be a Democrat again before war times and I’m one now. I’ll be one as long as I live unless the Democratic Party dies first and don’t you go to calculating on that.

I claim to have been the first banker in Montgomery County and my bank was a hollow beech stump. I was working for twenty five cents a day and I got my pay every week in silver half dollars. These I tied up in an old sock and hid in the stump until I got two hundred of them. Then I bought me a farm. Yes, farms were cheaper then than now because we bought them at the land office. I did my banking at night because some pesky fellow might have seen me if I had deposited in the day time and then the Crawfordsville stores would have sold a heap more whisky and tobacco but Matthias Elmore wouldn’t have had any farm so soon.

There were lots of snakes about here then and at the old rock meeting house on Sugar Creek (the ‘meeting house is a ledge of rock overhanging Sugar Creek on the Joseph McMaken farm) there were thousands of snakes of all kinds wintered. From there they crawled out over all the adjoining country in the spring. One spring the farmers all pitched in and hired dare devil Sam Havens to go down to the wintering place and kill them as they came out. The first warm day he was there with a long hickory pole and he just mowed them down.

I went down one day in a boat and saw piled up on the bank three piles of dead snakes, each pile as big as a large hay cock. The snakes were of all kinds, most copper heads and rattlers. Sam got a dollar a day for his work, high wages then, but he cleaned the snakes out and some people called him St. Patrick for driving the snakes out of Ripley.

There were many bears about then and I saw one good fight. J. Watson Ramsey and ‘Miah McKinsey went after a bear that had crawled in a hole in a big poplar and I went along to see the fun. ‘Miah cut the tree down and it burst open when it fell and the bear walked out. Ramsey fired but missed and then the dog rushed in. The bear hugged him tight and while it was doing so ‘Miah grabbed up his ax and rushed up. He hit the bear across the back and simply uncoupled him, the ax going clean into him severing the spine. The bear started to run but fell and then they killed him. These same fellows were out deer hunting in a boat one night and wounded a big buck that jumped into the dug out and upset it mighty near drowning both men.

There were Indians here then too, and when we first came there was a little Indian’s grave down at Indian Ford where they picnic now. It was an odd grave. A big poplar had been cut down and a section cut out. Below this the wood was hollowed and then the dead baby was put in and the section returned, closing the tree trunk up tight. We opened it once and there were lots of beads and trinkets in with the dead one. The Indians used to come in big crowds from up about Thorntown down to where Jim Hankins lives now to make sugar in the spring and one time they left a pet pig there. When they were gone Josh Bland found it and he got his start in pigs from it, the pig making a fine brood sow.

In 1826 I helped make the first road from where Yountsville now is to Crawfordsville. It is the road used now. I also subscribed to build the Yountsville Bridge and got mighty angry when the county gave the toll company privilege to use it.”  Mr. Elmore is the father of the poet of Ripley, James B. Elmore, and is quite an admirer of his son’s verse.