The first settlers of the township

1830–1837 · the settlement generation

Chapman's chapter opens with the living ancients of 1880, and their names are the township's founding roll. Oldest of them in the town itself was Barvilla Druliner of New Carlisle — the county's commissioners' record of November 1831 spells the name Barzilla Druliner, and both spellings print — born 7 July 1807, the informant whose memory anchors the chapter. Joseph Adams and his wife Nancy, on Section 31, were "the oldest couple now living in the township": Adams had begun his working life splitting rails at fifty cents the hundred and had made five hundred in a day. Jacob Rush — the canvass's typesetting mangles his surname in places, but the family is the township's Rush family — born in Ohio in 1806 and living on Section 36 in 1880, "held the plow for the first furrow ever turned in this township, and helped to raise the first cabin here, which belonged to his brother Israel Rush, who was afterward the first Justice of the Peace, and died in 1837." Asher White came at sixteen in 1830; his full course stands in the long-tail register below.

The chapter also names the founding dead: Samuel and Jesse Garwood, Jeremiah Williamson, John Baker, James Shingleton, Nathan Haines, Isaac Phillips and Jacob Egbert. The Garwoods carry the township's first death: Jonathan Garwood, whose stone in the Hamilton churchyard — died 19 July 1830, aged 63 — the DAR copyists marked as the oldest grave in that cemetery. And the settlement's first tragedy is a woman's: Mary Garoutte, wife of James S. Garoutte and mother of the future state representative, a midwife, was sent for on a day in the winter of 1831 "so cold that even men were afraid to travel alone." She went, stayed two days until the weather moderated, refused an escort for the ride home, warmed herself at the only house on Rolling Prairie — the last time she was seen alive — and was found next day by the mail carrier, where the snow showed three attempts to climb the hill on foot after she dismounted. Her stone at Hamilton gives the date: died 16 February 1831, aged 34. Chapman writes that the event "cast a gloom over all the young and scattering community of that early day." It has not lifted from the record since.

Sources

1. Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, pp. 764–766 and the T. J. Garoutte sketch, p. 777.
2. Chapman (1880), organization chapter: constables appointed November 1831, incl. "Barzilla Druliner."
3. DAR cemetery inscriptions, Hamilton Cemetery: Jonathan Garwood (d. 19 July 1830, "oldest grave in cemetery"); Mary Garoutte (d. 16 Feb. 1831, aged 34).