Peppermint: Elom Eller's claim, the muck it grew in, and the claim's rival

BY 1906 · THE SPECIALTY SOIL AT ITS DOCUMENTED SIZE

The township's one named specialty crop enters the record as a newspaper claim quoted by a county history: Howard's peppermint passage quotes the Indianapolis News of 13 October 1906 to the effect that "probably the first Indiana grower being Elam Eller, of St. Joseph county" (Howard, as carried in People). The man is Chapman's Elom Eller of section 29 — born in Miami County, Ohio, 14 September 1826, brought by his parents to this township in 1831, farming 250 acres (Chapman, p. 810) — one of the township's first-generation farmers, on ground in the township's southern tier where the marsh muck ran. The spelling stands as the two books print it: Elom in Chapman, Elam in Howard's quotation; People flags the pair and this section does not merge them. The claim itself is printed at exactly its strength: a state newspaper's "probably," quoted in 1907, for a grower whose mint acreage, still, and years no source gives. Peppermint is a muck crop — the federal Farmers' Bulletin on the mints (No. 694, 1915, revised 1922) places the culture's center in the Michigan–Indiana district's "large areas of fertile muck land susceptible of thorough drainage," with community stills serving about ten growers each in the settled districts — and Penn's great marsh, drained piecemeal, is the ground of that description; the bulletin is printed as the industry frame, not as evidence about Eller's fields.

The claim has a rival, and the rivalry prints: LaGrange County's 1882 history states of Hawley Peck of Clearspring Township that his peppermint was "the first raised in the State of Indiana," begun in 1846 — a flat first, against the News's "probably" for Eller, whose own start no source dates. The mint course after Eller is likewise ungotten: no Penn mint grower, still, or acreage of the twentieth century stands in the record reached, although the county's muck belt kept mint into living memory elsewhere in the valley. The article therefore closes where the record does: one named grower, one quoted claim, one rival claim, and the muck ground that made the crop possible — specialty soils at their true size in this township's file.

Sources:

1. Howard (1907), the peppermint passage quoting the Indianapolis News, 13 October 1906, as carried in this build's People leg; Chapman (1880), p. 810 (Eller).
2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin No. 694, The Cultivation of Peppermint and Spearmint (1915, rev. 1922) — the industry frame only.
3. History of LaGrange County, Indiana (1882), Clearspring Township chapter and the Peck biography, as reported in the LaGrange County Gazette's reading of the county histories — the rival claim at that strength.