Larsh - Toliver
Source: Crawfordsville Weekly Journal November 17, 1870
The simple announcement in the last issue of the Journal that Toliver Larsh was dead sent a pang of regret to hundreds of readers; and the news that he had died suddenly cast a gloom over the entire community in which he lived. Toliver Larsh was born in Mason county, Kentucky, October 11, 1799, and at his death, November 8, 1870, was 71 years and 28 days old. His grandfather,Paul Larsh, was a French trader among the Indians, and tradition has it, was of noble birth. His grandmother was an Irish lady, who married a man by the name of Kincade. She together with her husband and children and a married sister, Mrs. Bird, were taken captive by the Indians and carried to Scioto River. All were massacred except the two sisters. They were in captivity 19 months when the chief determined that Mrs. Kincaid should wed a Shawnee brave, and gave her the alternative of being burned at the stake. But Paul Larsh, the Indian trader, succeded in stealing away with the sisters, and effecting an escape down the Scioto River, whence they made their way to the French settlement at Kaskaskia in what is now the State of Illinois. Here the Indian trader, Paul Larsh, and Mrs. Kincaid were married, and the issue of this marriage was one child, Charles Larsh, the father of Toliver. Paul Larsh emigrated to Pennsylvania where he died, leaving a widow and one child, Charles. About the year 1780, Charles Larsh was married to Sarah Swearengen, a lady of German decent. The issue of this marriage was seven sons and four daughters. The youngest of them all was Toliver. Charles Larsh was a farmer by special occupation, but could turn his hand to anything that was honorable. During the war of 1812 he was a spy in the service of the United States. All his sons except Toliver, served in the United States army during that struggle. When Toliver was four years old, his father moved to Adams county, Ohio, and established a ferry on the Ohio River, where he remained until 1810, when he returned to Mason county, Kentucky, where he again established a ferry on the Ohio, three miles above Maysville. At this time, young Toliver was his father's chief ferryman, and it was his greatest delight to be on the water. At the age of 12 his skill as an oarsman and swimmer was unsurpassed. His brothers and sisters who survive him say that he was a kind and obedient son, performing all his duties with promptness and fidelity. These traits were the foundation of his beautiful character in after life. At the close of the war of 1812, Toliver removed with his father's family to Preble county, Ohio, where he resided till he was 24 years of age. His youth was spent in unceasing toil. Not only in Ohio, but after he came to this State, were his labors prolonged till late at night in burning logs and brush in the clearings. His start in life was obtained by working for others, and when he became an employee himself he knew how to feel for and sympathize with his hired hands. He came to this county in the year 1823, purchasing of the government the land now owned by Jesse Titus. At that time Montgomery county was a wilderness, and there were not more than half a dozen families living in what is now Ripley township. There were no roads, no mills, no towns, in fact none of the appliances of civilization. Provisions were brought in canoes from Terre Haute by way of Wabash River and Sugar Creek. Toliver Larsh himself made many of these arduous and perilous journeys. The Winter of 1823-24 he spent with the family of John Stonebraker, who lived in a camp, only three sides of which was inclosed, on land now owned by Issac Davis. At night they kept up a roaring log fire and slept sweetly with theirfeet to the same. Wolves, panthers and catamounts often made night hideous with their yells and cries. In the Spring he built a cabin on his own land, and began the arduous labors of hewing a farm from the wilderness. While thus engaged, he boarded with one of his neighbors, Old Uncle Johnny Stonebraker. He had but two neighbors, Mr. Stonebraker and John Swearengen. The nettles grew so large in those days that he was forced to mow paths through them to the cabins of these neighbors. In his old age he took pleasure in pointing out the location of these foot-paths. Having cleared most of the tillable land on his first location, he found at the end of six years, his farm, too small to occupy his almost boundless energies. He therefore sold it and took a long horseback journey through the wilderness of eastern Indiana and Kentucky, in search of the parties who owned the spendid half section of land on which he resided the rest of his days. He purchased this half action. (80 acres of which is now owned by Col. McMacken to whom he traded for the Krout farm) in 1830 for the sum of about $300. At the time of the purchase, there was not a stick missing on the half section. Again, he commenced battleing with the forest, and many pioneer readers of this, as well as some who are younger, know how much toil is necessary to make a farm in the unbroken woods. Still standing by his pleasant residence, is the little frame building in which in those days, he slept and made his home, through he boarded with a neighbor. His brother, Joseph Larsh, dying in 1832 of milk sickness, Toliver soon after took his widowed sister-in-law and her orphaned children to his home. One of these children, Frank Larsh, he reared and educated, and his marriage set him up in life on a farm in Benton county. In April, 1840, Toliver Larsh was married to Jane, daughter of Robert Gilkey. Both were of an age to look at life from a common sence point of view, and the result was that they founded one of the happiest of the many happy homes of Montgomery county. They had seven children, four sons and three daughters, all of them are still living, except one daughter which died twenty-eight years ago.