Joel Richardson
1795 -1871
"The Pioneer"
Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn beard, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which were made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work the fair one had done to do without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know off and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
the end
--James Andrew Richardson, May 1887
...Thanks to scottsheat, Aug 14, 2012
***********************************************************
∼Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday, 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. I will intimate a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday, 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees, the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn bread, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which was made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work was done by the fair ones, who did the work without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about the Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know of and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
The end….
--James Andrew Richardson
May 1887
Settlers, during the Jacksonian era, sought the comforts of religion –often a passionate gospel of hell-fire and salvation. Circuit preachers roamed every corner of the frontier. Their zeal and courage, their defiance of wind and rain inspired the pioneer proverb: "There is nothing out today but crows and Methodist preachers." During the 1830 and 1840s was known as the era of "the Second Great Awakening" which was an evangelical movement that took place in America and the Richardson Families exemplified part of that movement. The Richardsons were Methodist and their strong faith gave them their strength to endure a trying pioneer life out in the prairie. They attended tent meeting before the congregation built their first log church, as a result , this provided the religious community part of their social outlet and a diversion from daily toil of hard work that each family member had to do in order to provide a life and a livelihood for themselves in an agrarian society in which they lived. The Richardson families were one of the charter members of M.E. Methodist Church.
The small cabin that Joel and Mary built, served as a dining room, kitchen, bed room and work area, was 18' X 20' with a large fireplace at the far end and a loft for the children to sleep in. For windows, Joel used greased paper to let in light because glass was extremely pricy and hard to come by at that time.
Mary (Evans) Richardson was the mother and homemaker for her family of eleven children. She spent many long hours during the day and into the evening taking care of her home and family in a small cabin. Pioneer women would cook in a large fireplace using a dutch oven and griddle over her hot fire. Mary's meals that she made her family usually consisted of corn bread, pork, hominy, pumpkins, potatoes and wild game. In the evenings, she would often use her spinning wheel to spin wool, wove the jeans and spun the flax and tow and wove into linen which she made into clothing. Mary sat many evenings sewing by hand all of the clothing by the dim light from the fireplace.
Sometime before Joel and Mary's death, they moved in with their son Joel, Jr. in Joilet, Indiana neighborhood which is several miles away from Big Springs. Joel Richardson was registered as a Republican around 1860 in a registrar's book in Boone County Court House in Lebanon, IN which I saw in June of 2001.
Joel passed away on May 6, 1871 and Mary on May 22, 1871 and they are both buried in Big Springs Richardson Cemetery, Boone County, Indiana.
Joel and Mary (Evans) Richardson had eleven children:
1. William Andrew Richardson
2. Elizabeth Jane Richardson
3. Andrew Evans Richardson
4. Caleb Richardson
5. James Andrew Richardson
6. John Strange Richardson
7. Jane Evans (Richardson) Pittman
8. Daniel Anderson Richardson
9. Nancy Ann Richardson
10. Martha Rachael (Richardson) Johns
11. Joel Marion Richardson
The 1860 Census
July 19, 1860, Boone County, Indiana
Joel Richardson, born in Grayson (Carroll) County, Virginia in 1795 age 68, trade farmer. Mary Richardson, wife born in Kentucky age 60, trade housekeeper. Their valve of their real estate 2000.0 and personal property 370.00 (The valve of their estate was a little above as compared with others in the census). They lived in Union Township, Post Office Box was in Northfield. Two of their children were living at home at the time of the census: Martha age 23, housekeeper and Joel age 19, trade farmer. Both of them attended school at the time of the census.
The History of Big Springs Methodist Church
By your request, I will try to give you a brief history of the Big Springs Methodist Church and vicinity. I will give you the names of the first settlers who came here prior to October 1837: Isaac Srite, Rhesa Conely, Sampson Hartman, Jacob Johns, John Davis, Daniel Stevens, Joel Richardson, William Laws, Smith Castor, William Davis, J. F. Johnson, Jonathan Scott, John Hollenback, James Richardson, John Parr, Boler Humphrey, Caleb Richardson, Thomas Wooden, Moody Gillum, Wm. Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr, Henry Ross and Thomas Lindsey, Jr. and Sr..
My father Jonathan Richardson, bought Issac Srite out in April of 1837, and moved on the farm in October of that same year. This carries me back to early times when I was in my eleventh year. I was quite a small pioneer, if not an old one. I have nothing to go on but my memory, but I think that I can relate the history of the church tolerably correctly.
The first charter members were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr., William Parr, Joel Richardson Rhesa Conley, and their wives. The first preachers that came among them were J. Baloat, in 1837, J. Edwards in 1842, H. Wells in 1843, A. Koontz in 1844, G.W. Smith in 1845, J.W. Bradshaw in 1846, F.M. Richmond in1847 and J. Colclasier, Cozad White and Gillum one or two years each, which takes me up to 1852, besides several local preachers who came among them. Their names were G. Bowman, Sr., Dr Nelson Duzan's father, James D. Sims, James H. Ross and Dr. George W. Duzan. Among the elders were Woods, Smith, Daniels, Marsee Good and Hargraves. Class leaders were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Joel Richardson, and Thomas Lindsey, Sr.
In the early times the church was in the Frankfort Circuit. They held meetings at Caleb Richardson, John Parr and Joel Richardson's houses until the school was built which was done in 1838. There was preaching every two weeks. There would be a preacher in charge and a young preacher. They would take it turn about. The two names of the young preachers were Dorsey, DeMotte and Calvert. In early times, meeting was held on the week days, but that made no difference. They would quit their work and go on foot, sometimes two on the same horse. Class meeting would be held on Sundays. They continued holding meetings this way from 1837 to 1841 in which times there was a great revival and quite a number of younger class of people joined the church. Among them were Wm. Lane, Jesse Lane, Sylvester Turpen, Jacob Parr, Jr. Allen Pittman, Wm. Richardson, Jonathan Scott and some of the Lindsey family. As a general thing where the men had wives, they also joined.
In 1841 the church decided to build a meeting house. It was a hewed log house, 30 x 40. It was raised in April of 1841, and it was not completed until members donating their work until it was enclosed. The carpenter work was done by J.B Higgins and Joel Richardson. I never learned what the amount of money they got for their work.
In August of 1841 the church decided to hold a camp meeting and went to work accordingly. The spot of ground they selected was on my father's farm near the big springs. There were several tents built. The tent holders were John Parr, Jacob Parr, Lane and Walker, Dr. W.M. Duzan, Joel and Caleb Richardson, J. Mower, Burrow and Parr, S. Smith, Cox and Parr and several others. Camp meetings were held yearly for four to five years. Quite a number joined during these meetings. From that time on for several years they held protracted meetings, and at these meetings they increased in numbers till it became a very strong and popular church. The members, with a few exceptions, were in peace and fellowship. The old log house answered for a place of worship until 1866, when it was taken down and a frame was built on the same site. The cost of it was $ 1600.00 but since that time there has been a belfry and a bell put up which has added to the cost some two or three hundred dollars more. I do not know who were the trustees. The old log church
was built at the time the Rev. John Edwards was on the circuit and I think was dedicated by him. It can be said in truth that the first members of this society were the best citizens in the county. The above was written by William Richardson, living near Big Springs.
The End.
--William Richardon
March 23, 1887
1795 -1871
"The Pioneer"
Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn beard, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which were made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work the fair one had done to do without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know off and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
the end
--James Andrew Richardson, May 1887
...Thanks to scottsheat, Aug 14, 2012
***********************************************************
∼Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday, 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. I will intimate a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday, 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees, the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn bread, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which was made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work was done by the fair ones, who did the work without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about the Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know of and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
The end….
--James Andrew Richardson
May 1887
Settlers, during the Jacksonian era, sought the comforts of religion –often a passionate gospel of hell-fire and salvation. Circuit preachers roamed every corner of the frontier. Their zeal and courage, their defiance of wind and rain inspired the pioneer proverb: "There is nothing out today but crows and Methodist preachers." During the 1830 and 1840s was known as the era of "the Second Great Awakening" which was an evangelical movement that took place in America and the Richardson Families exemplified part of that movement. The Richardsons were Methodist and their strong faith gave them their strength to endure a trying pioneer life out in the prairie. They attended tent meeting before the congregation built their first log church, as a result , this provided the religious community part of their social outlet and a diversion from daily toil of hard work that each family member had to do in order to provide a life and a livelihood for themselves in an agrarian society in which they lived. The Richardson families were one of the charter members of M.E. Methodist Church.
The small cabin that Joel and Mary built, served as a dining room, kitchen, bed room and work area, was 18' X 20' with a large fireplace at the far end and a loft for the children to sleep in. For windows, Joel used greased paper to let in light because glass was extremely pricy and hard to come by at that time.
Mary (Evans) Richardson was the mother and homemaker for her family of eleven children. She spent many long hours during the day and into the evening taking care of her home and family in a small cabin. Pioneer women would cook in a large fireplace using a dutch oven and griddle over her hot fire. Mary's meals that she made her family usually consisted of corn bread, pork, hominy, pumpkins, potatoes and wild game. In the evenings, she would often use her spinning wheel to spin wool, wove the jeans and spun the flax and tow and wove into linen which she made into clothing. Mary sat many evenings sewing by hand all of the clothing by the dim light from the fireplace.
Sometime before Joel and Mary's death, they moved in with their son Joel, Jr. in Joilet, Indiana neighborhood which is several miles away from Big Springs. Joel Richardson was registered as a Republican around 1860 in a registrar's book in Boone County Court House in Lebanon, IN which I saw in June of 2001.
Joel passed away on May 6, 1871 and Mary on May 22, 1871 and they are both buried in Big Springs Richardson Cemetery, Boone County, Indiana.
Joel and Mary (Evans) Richardson had eleven children:
1. William Andrew Richardson
2. Elizabeth Jane Richardson
3. Andrew Evans Richardson
4. Caleb Richardson
5. James Andrew Richardson
6. John Strange Richardson
7. Jane Evans (Richardson) Pittman
8. Daniel Anderson Richardson
9. Nancy Ann Richardson
10. Martha Rachael (Richardson) Johns
11. Joel Marion Richardson
The 1860 Census
July 19, 1860, Boone County, Indiana
Joel Richardson, born in Grayson (Carroll) County, Virginia in 1795 age 68, trade farmer. Mary Richardson, wife born in Kentucky age 60, trade housekeeper. Their valve of their real estate 2000.0 and personal property 370.00 (The valve of their estate was a little above as compared with others in the census). They lived in Union Township, Post Office Box was in Northfield. Two of their children were living at home at the time of the census: Martha age 23, housekeeper and Joel age 19, trade farmer. Both of them attended school at the time of the census.
The History of Big Springs Methodist Church
By your request, I will try to give you a brief history of the Big Springs Methodist Church and vicinity. I will give you the names of the first settlers who came here prior to October 1837: Isaac Srite, Rhesa Conely, Sampson Hartman, Jacob Johns, John Davis, Daniel Stevens, Joel Richardson, William Laws, Smith Castor, William Davis, J. F. Johnson, Jonathan Scott, John Hollenback, James Richardson, John Parr, Boler Humphrey, Caleb Richardson, Thomas Wooden, Moody Gillum, Wm. Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr, Henry Ross and Thomas Lindsey, Jr. and Sr..
My father Jonathan Richardson, bought Issac Srite out in April of 1837, and moved on the farm in October of that same year. This carries me back to early times when I was in my eleventh year. I was quite a small pioneer, if not an old one. I have nothing to go on but my memory, but I think that I can relate the history of the church tolerably correctly.
The first charter members were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr., William Parr, Joel Richardson Rhesa Conley, and their wives. The first preachers that came among them were J. Baloat, in 1837, J. Edwards in 1842, H. Wells in 1843, A. Koontz in 1844, G.W. Smith in 1845, J.W. Bradshaw in 1846, F.M. Richmond in1847 and J. Colclasier, Cozad White and Gillum one or two years each, which takes me up to 1852, besides several local preachers who came among them. Their names were G. Bowman, Sr., Dr Nelson Duzan's father, James D. Sims, James H. Ross and Dr. George W. Duzan. Among the elders were Woods, Smith, Daniels, Marsee Good and Hargraves. Class leaders were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Joel Richardson, and Thomas Lindsey, Sr.
In the early times the church was in the Frankfort Circuit. They held meetings at Caleb Richardson, John Parr and Joel Richardson's houses until the school was built which was done in 1838. There was preaching every two weeks. There would be a preacher in charge and a young preacher. They would take it turn about. The two names of the young preachers were Dorsey, DeMotte and Calvert. In early times, meeting was held on the week days, but that made no difference. They would quit their work and go on foot, sometimes two on the same horse. Class meeting would be held on Sundays. They continued holding meetings this way from 1837 to 1841 in which times there was a great revival and quite a number of younger class of people joined the church. Among them were Wm. Lane, Jesse Lane, Sylvester Turpen, Jacob Parr, Jr. Allen Pittman, Wm. Richardson, Jonathan Scott and some of the Lindsey family. As a general thing where the men had wives, they also joined.
In 1841 the church decided to build a meeting house. It was a hewed log house, 30 x 40. It was raised in April of 1841, and it was not completed until members donating their work until it was enclosed. The carpenter work was done by J.B Higgins and Joel Richardson. I never learned what the amount of money they got for their work.
In August of 1841 the church decided to hold a camp meeting and went to work accordingly. The spot of ground they selected was on my father's farm near the big springs. There were several tents built. The tent holders were John Parr, Jacob Parr, Lane and Walker, Dr. W.M. Duzan, Joel and Caleb Richardson, J. Mower, Burrow and Parr, S. Smith, Cox and Parr and several others. Camp meetings were held yearly for four to five years. Quite a number joined during these meetings. From that time on for several years they held protracted meetings, and at these meetings they increased in numbers till it became a very strong and popular church. The members, with a few exceptions, were in peace and fellowship. The old log house answered for a place of worship until 1866, when it was taken down and a frame was built on the same site. The cost of it was $ 1600.00 but since that time there has been a belfry and a bell put up which has added to the cost some two or three hundred dollars more. I do not know who were the trustees. The old log church
was built at the time the Rev. John Edwards was on the circuit and I think was dedicated by him. It can be said in truth that the first members of this society were the best citizens in the county. The above was written by William Richardson, living near Big Springs.
The End.
--William Richardon
March 23, 1887
Joel Richardson
1795 -1871
"The Pioneer"
Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn beard, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which were made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work the fair one had done to do without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know off and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
the end
--James Andrew Richardson, May 1887
...Thanks to scottsheat, Aug 14, 2012
***********************************************************
∼Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday, 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. I will intimate a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday, 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees, the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn bread, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which was made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work was done by the fair ones, who did the work without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about the Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know of and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
The end….
--James Andrew Richardson
May 1887
Settlers, during the Jacksonian era, sought the comforts of religion –often a passionate gospel of hell-fire and salvation. Circuit preachers roamed every corner of the frontier. Their zeal and courage, their defiance of wind and rain inspired the pioneer proverb: "There is nothing out today but crows and Methodist preachers." During the 1830 and 1840s was known as the era of "the Second Great Awakening" which was an evangelical movement that took place in America and the Richardson Families exemplified part of that movement. The Richardsons were Methodist and their strong faith gave them their strength to endure a trying pioneer life out in the prairie. They attended tent meeting before the congregation built their first log church, as a result , this provided the religious community part of their social outlet and a diversion from daily toil of hard work that each family member had to do in order to provide a life and a livelihood for themselves in an agrarian society in which they lived. The Richardson families were one of the charter members of M.E. Methodist Church.
The small cabin that Joel and Mary built, served as a dining room, kitchen, bed room and work area, was 18' X 20' with a large fireplace at the far end and a loft for the children to sleep in. For windows, Joel used greased paper to let in light because glass was extremely pricy and hard to come by at that time.
Mary (Evans) Richardson was the mother and homemaker for her family of eleven children. She spent many long hours during the day and into the evening taking care of her home and family in a small cabin. Pioneer women would cook in a large fireplace using a dutch oven and griddle over her hot fire. Mary's meals that she made her family usually consisted of corn bread, pork, hominy, pumpkins, potatoes and wild game. In the evenings, she would often use her spinning wheel to spin wool, wove the jeans and spun the flax and tow and wove into linen which she made into clothing. Mary sat many evenings sewing by hand all of the clothing by the dim light from the fireplace.
Sometime before Joel and Mary's death, they moved in with their son Joel, Jr. in Joilet, Indiana neighborhood which is several miles away from Big Springs. Joel Richardson was registered as a Republican around 1860 in a registrar's book in Boone County Court House in Lebanon, IN which I saw in June of 2001.
Joel passed away on May 6, 1871 and Mary on May 22, 1871 and they are both buried in Big Springs Richardson Cemetery, Boone County, Indiana.
Joel and Mary (Evans) Richardson had eleven children:
1. William Andrew Richardson
2. Elizabeth Jane Richardson
3. Andrew Evans Richardson
4. Caleb Richardson
5. James Andrew Richardson
6. John Strange Richardson
7. Jane Evans (Richardson) Pittman
8. Daniel Anderson Richardson
9. Nancy Ann Richardson
10. Martha Rachael (Richardson) Johns
11. Joel Marion Richardson
The 1860 Census
July 19, 1860, Boone County, Indiana
Joel Richardson, born in Grayson (Carroll) County, Virginia in 1795 age 68, trade farmer. Mary Richardson, wife born in Kentucky age 60, trade housekeeper. Their valve of their real estate 2000.0 and personal property 370.00 (The valve of their estate was a little above as compared with others in the census). They lived in Union Township, Post Office Box was in Northfield. Two of their children were living at home at the time of the census: Martha age 23, housekeeper and Joel age 19, trade farmer. Both of them attended school at the time of the census.
The History of Big Springs Methodist Church
By your request, I will try to give you a brief history of the Big Springs Methodist Church and vicinity. I will give you the names of the first settlers who came here prior to October 1837: Isaac Srite, Rhesa Conely, Sampson Hartman, Jacob Johns, John Davis, Daniel Stevens, Joel Richardson, William Laws, Smith Castor, William Davis, J. F. Johnson, Jonathan Scott, John Hollenback, James Richardson, John Parr, Boler Humphrey, Caleb Richardson, Thomas Wooden, Moody Gillum, Wm. Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr, Henry Ross and Thomas Lindsey, Jr. and Sr..
My father Jonathan Richardson, bought Issac Srite out in April of 1837, and moved on the farm in October of that same year. This carries me back to early times when I was in my eleventh year. I was quite a small pioneer, if not an old one. I have nothing to go on but my memory, but I think that I can relate the history of the church tolerably correctly.
The first charter members were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr., William Parr, Joel Richardson Rhesa Conley, and their wives. The first preachers that came among them were J. Baloat, in 1837, J. Edwards in 1842, H. Wells in 1843, A. Koontz in 1844, G.W. Smith in 1845, J.W. Bradshaw in 1846, F.M. Richmond in1847 and J. Colclasier, Cozad White and Gillum one or two years each, which takes me up to 1852, besides several local preachers who came among them. Their names were G. Bowman, Sr., Dr Nelson Duzan's father, James D. Sims, James H. Ross and Dr. George W. Duzan. Among the elders were Woods, Smith, Daniels, Marsee Good and Hargraves. Class leaders were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Joel Richardson, and Thomas Lindsey, Sr.
In the early times the church was in the Frankfort Circuit. They held meetings at Caleb Richardson, John Parr and Joel Richardson's houses until the school was built which was done in 1838. There was preaching every two weeks. There would be a preacher in charge and a young preacher. They would take it turn about. The two names of the young preachers were Dorsey, DeMotte and Calvert. In early times, meeting was held on the week days, but that made no difference. They would quit their work and go on foot, sometimes two on the same horse. Class meeting would be held on Sundays. They continued holding meetings this way from 1837 to 1841 in which times there was a great revival and quite a number of younger class of people joined the church. Among them were Wm. Lane, Jesse Lane, Sylvester Turpen, Jacob Parr, Jr. Allen Pittman, Wm. Richardson, Jonathan Scott and some of the Lindsey family. As a general thing where the men had wives, they also joined.
In 1841 the church decided to build a meeting house. It was a hewed log house, 30 x 40. It was raised in April of 1841, and it was not completed until members donating their work until it was enclosed. The carpenter work was done by J.B Higgins and Joel Richardson. I never learned what the amount of money they got for their work.
In August of 1841 the church decided to hold a camp meeting and went to work accordingly. The spot of ground they selected was on my father's farm near the big springs. There were several tents built. The tent holders were John Parr, Jacob Parr, Lane and Walker, Dr. W.M. Duzan, Joel and Caleb Richardson, J. Mower, Burrow and Parr, S. Smith, Cox and Parr and several others. Camp meetings were held yearly for four to five years. Quite a number joined during these meetings. From that time on for several years they held protracted meetings, and at these meetings they increased in numbers till it became a very strong and popular church. The members, with a few exceptions, were in peace and fellowship. The old log house answered for a place of worship until 1866, when it was taken down and a frame was built on the same site. The cost of it was $ 1600.00 but since that time there has been a belfry and a bell put up which has added to the cost some two or three hundred dollars more. I do not know who were the trustees. The old log church
was built at the time the Rev. John Edwards was on the circuit and I think was dedicated by him. It can be said in truth that the first members of this society were the best citizens in the county. The above was written by William Richardson, living near Big Springs.
The End.
--William Richardon
March 23, 1887
1795 -1871
"The Pioneer"
Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn beard, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which were made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work the fair one had done to do without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know off and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
the end
--James Andrew Richardson, May 1887
...Thanks to scottsheat, Aug 14, 2012
***********************************************************
∼Joel, third child of William and Jane (Bobbitt Laws) Richardson, was born in the year of our Lord 1795 in Carroll/Grayson County, Virginia. He married Mary (Polly) Evans on February 12, 1818 in Pulaski County, Kentucky with Samuel Evans surety and presiding John Black. Mary , daughter of Andrew and Elizabeth (Fain) Evans, was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1799. On Tuesday, 28th of February 1837, Joel, Mary and their children a long with some of his siblings moved from Putman/Owen County, Indiana to Big Springs (near Lebanon), Boone County, Indiana.
The Richardsons were early pioneers in Big Springs, Boone County, Indiana; as a result , they endured many hardships of a rugged pioneer life. Below their son James Andrew Richardson wrote a historical biography about his childhood while growing up in Big Springs in a book titled "Early Life and Times in Boone County, Indiana" compiled by Harden and Spahn in May of 1887 and republished by Unigraphics, Inc., Evansville, Indiana in 1974. I will intimate a portion of that book below:
I (James Andrew Richardson) was born in Owen County, Indiana on March 17, 1827. My father (Joel Richardson) moved to Boone County on Tuesday, 28th of February 1837 and this county has been my home since that time. There has been a great many change in the county since that time. There were but only two roads laid out in the eastern part of the county, viz.: the Michigan and the Lebanon and Noblesville road. The few settlers that lived in this part neighborhood lived in log cabins, in the woods with small patch of ground partially cleared. The manor of clearing in those days was to grub the small bushes and chop the small trees and logs with an axes. Piling them up in large heaps they could be left to dry until they could be burned. After the deadening the remainder of the trees, the fields looked more like woods than it did a cornfields. This however, was the best that we could do, as the unditched and overshadowed land would have been impossibility.
We had no implements but a maul, wedge, Carey plow and an old fashioned single shovel plow. The Carey plow was very scarce then, not more than one to every a half a dozen of the settlers. Such a thing like as an carriage or a buggy was never heard of. We lived on corn bread, hog, hominy, potatoes, pumpkins and wild game. There was an abundance of small game, such as deer, wild turkey, pheasants, quails, raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels and rabbits. There was an old water mill on Eagle Creek that ground a little corn meal in the rainy part of the year, but it being so slow was never depended upon. A hungry hound could have eaten the meal as fast as it was ground. We carried our corn on horseback to Dyes and Sheets' mill. The distance was eight and eleven miles. In a few years we raised a little wheat which we had to take to Indianapolis to get it ground into flour.
As for market, what wheat and hogs we raised we took into Lafayette, on the Wabash or to Ohio Rivers. The price of wheat in those days was from forty to fifty cents per bushel. The hogs were sold to hog merchants, who bought as large droves as they could buy. The price the settlers received was from $ 1.50 to 2.50 per 100 pounds. We had to have some things as salt, leather, cotton for chain for jeans and linsey. Those articles were indispensable, and if it could not be had by any other way the deer and raccoon skins were resorted to supply the wants.
The women spun the wool, wove the jeans and made by hand all the clothing the men wore in the winter and spun flax and tow and wove into linen which was made into shirts and pants for the summer wear. There was but little dress goods bought in those days. All this work was done by the fair ones, who did the work without the aid of machines save the big and little wheels and hand looms. There was not a cook stove, sewing machine, nor washing machine for ten or fifteen years after the first settling of what is known about the Big Springs neighborhood. The women had to do there cooking by the fireplace and the one room parlor, sitting room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. I am of the opinion that if the women of today had to go back and endure the privations of that time there would be some bloody snouts and black shins.
We had to cut our wheat with the sickle and threshed it with the flail or tramped it off on the dirt floor with a horse in the field on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, we made wind with a sheet in the hands of men, one at each end of the riddle the downs to them. We cut our meadows with the poorest kind of scythes; I think they were all of iron with a crooked stick fastened to them. We had no steel pitch-forks in those days, but had to go to woods, hunt out forked bushes and peel them to handle our hay with. We did not raise a great amount of hay. Our stock cows lived most of the winter without hay. Cattle and sheep were very unhealthy at that time. The cattle died with what called bloody murrain or dry murrain; but it is now thought to have been leeches that were in the sloughs and ponds. The sheep died from eating wild parsnips which grew abundantly in the low wet land. Hogs did well, living almost all year round with out corn. Just enough was given to them from going wild. There were a great many wild hogs in the woods at that time.
We had no school houses and no churches. The first school house in this neighborhood was built on the land of Jonathan Scott, on the east bank of Eagle Creek, one quarter of a mile west of the little village of Big Springs. This house was built about the year 1838. The first church organization was a class of the M.E. Church about the year 1837. In the summer or fall of that year the class was organized at Caleb Richardson's home and a few years most of the meetings were held there and a few at John Parr's .Finally their society grew strong enough to build, which was about the year 1840. They gave it the name Big Springs. This name was given it because of its nearness to a very large spring of water. This church was a large and commodious hewed log building and served a good purpose as a church until the year 1866, when it was superseded by a neat frame building, which stands there today.
But where are all the old pioneers who broke the first sod, cleared the brush, felled the large oaks and built the first school houses and churches? They are all gone except two that I know of and those are old Uncle Johnny Parr and old Aunt Anna Richardson.
The end….
--James Andrew Richardson
May 1887
Settlers, during the Jacksonian era, sought the comforts of religion –often a passionate gospel of hell-fire and salvation. Circuit preachers roamed every corner of the frontier. Their zeal and courage, their defiance of wind and rain inspired the pioneer proverb: "There is nothing out today but crows and Methodist preachers." During the 1830 and 1840s was known as the era of "the Second Great Awakening" which was an evangelical movement that took place in America and the Richardson Families exemplified part of that movement. The Richardsons were Methodist and their strong faith gave them their strength to endure a trying pioneer life out in the prairie. They attended tent meeting before the congregation built their first log church, as a result , this provided the religious community part of their social outlet and a diversion from daily toil of hard work that each family member had to do in order to provide a life and a livelihood for themselves in an agrarian society in which they lived. The Richardson families were one of the charter members of M.E. Methodist Church.
The small cabin that Joel and Mary built, served as a dining room, kitchen, bed room and work area, was 18' X 20' with a large fireplace at the far end and a loft for the children to sleep in. For windows, Joel used greased paper to let in light because glass was extremely pricy and hard to come by at that time.
Mary (Evans) Richardson was the mother and homemaker for her family of eleven children. She spent many long hours during the day and into the evening taking care of her home and family in a small cabin. Pioneer women would cook in a large fireplace using a dutch oven and griddle over her hot fire. Mary's meals that she made her family usually consisted of corn bread, pork, hominy, pumpkins, potatoes and wild game. In the evenings, she would often use her spinning wheel to spin wool, wove the jeans and spun the flax and tow and wove into linen which she made into clothing. Mary sat many evenings sewing by hand all of the clothing by the dim light from the fireplace.
Sometime before Joel and Mary's death, they moved in with their son Joel, Jr. in Joilet, Indiana neighborhood which is several miles away from Big Springs. Joel Richardson was registered as a Republican around 1860 in a registrar's book in Boone County Court House in Lebanon, IN which I saw in June of 2001.
Joel passed away on May 6, 1871 and Mary on May 22, 1871 and they are both buried in Big Springs Richardson Cemetery, Boone County, Indiana.
Joel and Mary (Evans) Richardson had eleven children:
1. William Andrew Richardson
2. Elizabeth Jane Richardson
3. Andrew Evans Richardson
4. Caleb Richardson
5. James Andrew Richardson
6. John Strange Richardson
7. Jane Evans (Richardson) Pittman
8. Daniel Anderson Richardson
9. Nancy Ann Richardson
10. Martha Rachael (Richardson) Johns
11. Joel Marion Richardson
The 1860 Census
July 19, 1860, Boone County, Indiana
Joel Richardson, born in Grayson (Carroll) County, Virginia in 1795 age 68, trade farmer. Mary Richardson, wife born in Kentucky age 60, trade housekeeper. Their valve of their real estate 2000.0 and personal property 370.00 (The valve of their estate was a little above as compared with others in the census). They lived in Union Township, Post Office Box was in Northfield. Two of their children were living at home at the time of the census: Martha age 23, housekeeper and Joel age 19, trade farmer. Both of them attended school at the time of the census.
The History of Big Springs Methodist Church
By your request, I will try to give you a brief history of the Big Springs Methodist Church and vicinity. I will give you the names of the first settlers who came here prior to October 1837: Isaac Srite, Rhesa Conely, Sampson Hartman, Jacob Johns, John Davis, Daniel Stevens, Joel Richardson, William Laws, Smith Castor, William Davis, J. F. Johnson, Jonathan Scott, John Hollenback, James Richardson, John Parr, Boler Humphrey, Caleb Richardson, Thomas Wooden, Moody Gillum, Wm. Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr, Henry Ross and Thomas Lindsey, Jr. and Sr..
My father Jonathan Richardson, bought Issac Srite out in April of 1837, and moved on the farm in October of that same year. This carries me back to early times when I was in my eleventh year. I was quite a small pioneer, if not an old one. I have nothing to go on but my memory, but I think that I can relate the history of the church tolerably correctly.
The first charter members were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Jacob Parr, Sr., William Parr, Joel Richardson Rhesa Conley, and their wives. The first preachers that came among them were J. Baloat, in 1837, J. Edwards in 1842, H. Wells in 1843, A. Koontz in 1844, G.W. Smith in 1845, J.W. Bradshaw in 1846, F.M. Richmond in1847 and J. Colclasier, Cozad White and Gillum one or two years each, which takes me up to 1852, besides several local preachers who came among them. Their names were G. Bowman, Sr., Dr Nelson Duzan's father, James D. Sims, James H. Ross and Dr. George W. Duzan. Among the elders were Woods, Smith, Daniels, Marsee Good and Hargraves. Class leaders were Caleb Richardson, John Parr, Joel Richardson, and Thomas Lindsey, Sr.
In the early times the church was in the Frankfort Circuit. They held meetings at Caleb Richardson, John Parr and Joel Richardson's houses until the school was built which was done in 1838. There was preaching every two weeks. There would be a preacher in charge and a young preacher. They would take it turn about. The two names of the young preachers were Dorsey, DeMotte and Calvert. In early times, meeting was held on the week days, but that made no difference. They would quit their work and go on foot, sometimes two on the same horse. Class meeting would be held on Sundays. They continued holding meetings this way from 1837 to 1841 in which times there was a great revival and quite a number of younger class of people joined the church. Among them were Wm. Lane, Jesse Lane, Sylvester Turpen, Jacob Parr, Jr. Allen Pittman, Wm. Richardson, Jonathan Scott and some of the Lindsey family. As a general thing where the men had wives, they also joined.
In 1841 the church decided to build a meeting house. It was a hewed log house, 30 x 40. It was raised in April of 1841, and it was not completed until members donating their work until it was enclosed. The carpenter work was done by J.B Higgins and Joel Richardson. I never learned what the amount of money they got for their work.
In August of 1841 the church decided to hold a camp meeting and went to work accordingly. The spot of ground they selected was on my father's farm near the big springs. There were several tents built. The tent holders were John Parr, Jacob Parr, Lane and Walker, Dr. W.M. Duzan, Joel and Caleb Richardson, J. Mower, Burrow and Parr, S. Smith, Cox and Parr and several others. Camp meetings were held yearly for four to five years. Quite a number joined during these meetings. From that time on for several years they held protracted meetings, and at these meetings they increased in numbers till it became a very strong and popular church. The members, with a few exceptions, were in peace and fellowship. The old log house answered for a place of worship until 1866, when it was taken down and a frame was built on the same site. The cost of it was $ 1600.00 but since that time there has been a belfry and a bell put up which has added to the cost some two or three hundred dollars more. I do not know who were the trustees. The old log church
was built at the time the Rev. John Edwards was on the circuit and I think was dedicated by him. It can be said in truth that the first members of this society were the best citizens in the county. The above was written by William Richardson, living near Big Springs.
The End.
--William Richardon
March 23, 1887
Inscription
Joel Richardson
Died
May 6, 1871
In His 77th Yr.
Footstone: "J.R."
(leaning against monument)
Also on this monument:
Mary Richardson (d.1871)
Family Members
Siblings
Children
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Jane Evans Richardson Pittman
1818–1881
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William Andrew Richardson
1820–1899
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Andrew Evans Richardson
1824–1903
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Elizabeth Jane Richardson Parr
1825–1853
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John Strange Richardson
1827–1905
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James Andrew Richardson
1827–1906
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Daniel Anderson Richardson
1832–1901
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Nancy A. Thompson
1832–1928
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Martha Rachel Richardson Johns
1837–1927
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Joel Marion Richardson
1841–1923
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