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From: "Charles Ladd" <>
Subject: [LADD-L] Historical Sketch
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 22:54:24 -0500


HISTORICAL SKETCH OF JOHNSON COUNTY
CHAPTER II.
Pgs. 9-14

Sometime during the latter part of 1817, Jacob Whetzel, then living in Franklin County, in this State, bought a tract of land in "Harrison's Purchase," near the mouth of Eel River, in Greene County. The usually traveled route from the White Water country, where Whetzel lived, to the "Purchase" was by the way of the Ohio and Wabash Rivers, or from the Falls at Louisville, overland to that place. Jacob Whetzel was a born and trained woodsman. He had been hunting wild beast and fighting Indians all of his live. He had served as a spy and scout with the armies of St.Clair and Harrison, and, now that a pathless woods lay between him and his purchase, he was determined to cut through rather than go around.............
White River was struck at a place Jacob Whetzel and his party called the Bluffs, and we may well imagine that the scene which might the gaze of these pioneers was such as they little expected to behold. Jacob Whetzel had set out to reach, by a short cut, a prospective home at the mouth of the Eel; but, standing in the bluff, in those July days, he looked out over a wide, deep and rapidly-flowing river, through whose clear depths the eye could penetrate to the white pebbles that lay on the bottom far below, whose waters swarmed with fish, and whose level bottoms and rolling uplands were covered with great forest that grew from a soil of wonderful richness, and there, on the banks of the War-PE-Kim-I-ka of the Miami red men, he resolved should be his future home..............
The following March (1819) Jacob Whetzel, with his son Cyrus, returned to the Bluffs........and in the following fall the family moved in and took up their permanent residence.
About the time Whetzel's trace was being cut, pioneers had struck the White River toward its mouth, and settlements were gradually working up stream. Late in 1818, Ephraim Goss built a cabin where Gosport now is, and during the following year, Robert Stotts settled at the mouth of a fine mill stream, since known as Stotts' Creek. The same year, the Awfields, Doneghys, Laughlins, Dewas, Enslys, Agens and Stipps settled below Whetzel's, and Christopher Ladd, a North Carolinian, came by the way of the "trace," with his family and goods mounted upon a sled, and settled on the Bluffs, about one hundred yards west of where the county line has since been run..... Christopher Ladd invited the patronage of the travelers, and kept whisky for sale to them and to the Indians.
During the same summer of the same year Ladd came, a murder was committed in his neighborhood, which created a profound excitement among the few settlers on the river below. It seems that one William Agen and Ladd were out hunting in the bottom above the Bluffs, when they discovered in the distance a large number of buzzards hovering near the earth - a certain sign of the presence of carrion. Agen at once insisted on searching for the cause but Ladd said that he had wounded a deer in that vicinity a few days before, and that he had no doubt it had since died, and was now being devoured by these birds............
The cause was soon found in the body of a dead man who had evidently been murdered, for his skull had been cloven with two blows of a sharp instrument, apparently a "pipe-tomahawk," and the front of his vest, with its buttons, had been cut out and carried away..................Then Ladd was accused of the murder, and, not withstanding his emphatic denial, his gun was taken from him, and he was a prisoner in the hands of a self-constituted committee. For some reason, his captors went with him to the cabin of Jacob Whetzel. Some were for hanging him on the spot; others "for tying him up and lynching him;" but Jacob Whetzel counseled moderation. He argued the improbability of Ladd's guilt. Were he the murderer, he would have either buried the body or thrown it into the river. The argument prevailed. A vote was taken, and Ladd was set at liberty. But his wrath was up. He went at once to Brookville and employed lawyers to commence an action for false imprisonment. The acti!
on was brought, and, when the case came on for trial, it created quite a stir. Gen. James Noble and William W. Wick appeared for the defendants. Ladd recovered $94 damages, but was "ruined in paying his lawyers' fees." The cost amounted to $1,500, and the defendants were "all broken up on execution."
From the day when the murder was made public, Ladd was generally believed to be guilty of the deed. He was talked about, his cabin was made odious, and travelers were glad to shun it. He remained in the country for several years, however, and did what he could to remove the public distrust.
The Whetzels, father and son, believed in his innocence, and from all the facts now known, it would seem not without good grounds for their belief. The spring after the murder, Hiram Lewis, a worthless vagabond Indian, who had been absent from about the time when the murder was committed, returned to the neighborhood riding a valuable and well-caparisoned horse, wearing a good overcoat and carrying a red morocco pocket-book, containing some bills issued by the Vincennes Steam Mill Company. When asked how he came by all these, he explained that he had traded his blanket for them! Shortly after the murder, a papoose in its mother's arms was observed with a string of bullet buttons, such as might have been on that part of the murdered man's vest which had been cut away. The Whetzels believed that the worthless Indian was the murderer.

Charles

Charles


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