Sinclair, Aunt Sally Dickerson - Putnam

When "Aunt Sally" Dickerson Sinclair, comes over from Terre Haute on one of her rather rare visits with her sister Mrs. W. F. Gwinn, on East Seminary street, in Greencastle, and with other relatives, the visit is made rather an event, inasmuch as Mrs. Dickerson is ninety years of age this  month and does not travel much. Yet she is "spry," both mentally and physically. At the home of Mrs. Gwinn Saturday evening a Times-News writer; was one of a group of listeners which included Mrs. Gwinn. who is ten years county home, younger than Mrs. Dickerson, Mrs. Hurst, a daughter of Mrs. Gwinn, Judge James P. Hughes, Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, and Curtis Hughes, president of the Bainbridge bank, sons of Mrs. Gwinn. Mrs. Dickerson is unusually favorable to recall two Revolutionary War veterans, both of them great-grandfathers of hers. One of these two old soldiers was William Isaac Sinclair, of Putnam county, and the other was Walter Dickerson, of Vigo county. She had but a vague recollection of Mr. Dickerson. but Mr. Sinclair she remembers as a “small, bright man. who often used two canes in walking.” She attended his funeral and interment which was in the cemetery at Cloverdale.  

The Sinclair family home at that time was on a farm of several hundred acres on the old road between Cloverdale and Cataract part of the land being in Owen and part in Putnam.  The house, which was in Putnam was constructed by Mrs. Dickerson’s grandfather from brick burned close to the site.  The land was homesteaded early in the last century by John P. Sinclair, grandfather of Mrs. Dickerson and son of Isaac Sinclair, the Revolutionary War soldier. Another son of this soldier was Isaac Sinclair, who was the father of Lee Sinclair of West Baden and of Sim Sinclair who has descendants in Putnam County.

It is an unusual coincidence that Judge James P. Hughes, a direct descendant of the old Revolutionary War soldier, Isaac Sinclair some years ago acquired land on the west side of State Road 43 and south of the National Road which was homesteaded Dec 2, 1882 by the same old soldier and on it is the original log cabin in which the Sinclairs first lived, back in the Hughes peach orchard. The Judge has worked it over considerably, but the original structure is practically all embodied in the present. And also on the east side of that same road on what was once the Allee farm back to the east and near the old-time Deer Creek Church yet in use is a log cabin which was erected by old Thomas Martin on land he homesteaded in 1824.  These two men, Sinclair and Martin were brothers-in-law.  In that Maartin cabin was born Nancy Sinclair, grandmother of Judge Hughes.  Nancy Sinclair married James Ferrell and these two were the parents of Mrs. Dickerson, Mrs. Gwinn and Mrs. Sereldah Hunt, late of Terre Haute.  

Snakes in the Woods – Mrs. Dickerson has a very vivid recollection of the very numerous snakes that infested the woods which she had to travel through and she remembers seeing a wolf crossing the road not far from her Putnam County home.  Some of the most colorful reminiscences of her girlhood were connected with her residence for some years in Terre Haute and at Lockport now known as Riley south of Terre Haute where she lived when the canal was built through there from Lafayette to Evansville with a feeder canal from the Feeder Dam on Eel River in Clay County south of Brazil. She remembers also the canal at Sibleytown in the present boundaries of Terre Haute near 5th and 6th streets.  The National Road through Terre Haute was corduroy in the early days and she can hear so she says the clattering of the hooves of great droves of hogs being driven over it.  One of the family homes was located on land now comprised withing the Indiana State Farm.  The brick house yet stands south of the cattle barn.  It is used as a tool house.  While living there she attended school at the old Williams building, half a mile south of her home, and at Putnamville.  Among her teachers were Bernard Chenoweth, Mr. Staley and Leonidas Welker.

“I remember Bob Cowgill bringing in a wild turkey which he had shot near Cataract Falls and which must have weighed nearly 30#.  Father killed lots of squirrels and we tanned the skins, dyed them with black walnut and then mother cut them up into shoe strings.  We lived for a time at Lockport in a new one-room log cabin, moving in before father finished the roof.  I remember waking up one night and hearing father say to mother.  “Ma, it’s snowing in here but I’ve got Sissy covered up all right.  I was the Sissy he referred to.  The wild strawberries were so thick around there that our cows which had long tails, would come in with the strawberries sticking thick on their tails. Mother was only 16 and father only 20 when they were married. Mother was very active up to the time of her death. She used to have the phthisic (tizik) and Dr. Layment down at Putnamville told her to take a gallon of cider vinegar and put eight, 10-penny nails in it and let it rest until the nails were all dissolved then take a tablespoonful three times a day.  It cured her phthisic.”  - thanks to Mary Lou