Handbook N-P - Fulton County Public Library

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The first money I ever had of my own I earned hoeing corn for twenty cents a day, and I
very well remember selling eggs to Robert Aitken, at Fulton, for three cents per dozen.
In comrade Samuel Miller’s story, he alluded to experiences he had while employed with
J. W. Wright, and it brought to my mind an incident that occurred in Fulton. Mr. Wright had a
numb er of men in his employ, cutting logs and hauling them to the mill to be sawed into lumber
to plank Michigan road. Some of the hands imbibed a little too much corn juice to meet the
approval of Mr. Wright, who then took matters into his own hands, went into the place where it
was to be purchased, roled the barrels into the road and with his ax knocked in the heads, the fire
water running into the street. The place was kept by a man whose name was either Burnett or
Swarts, I forget which. Mr. Wright was summoned to go before the prosecuting attorney, at
Rochester. To show that his act had met with the approval of good citizens of his home town, W.
D. Martin, V. C. Conn and other representative men decorated a wagon, over which was a flag
flying to the breeze, bearing this inscription: “No Saloons Allowed in Fulton.” The prosecutor
lived in Winamac, and was then a candidate for re-election. K. G. Shryock was then a rising legal
light, and on the side of the defendant. Seeing where he could squelch the case before it came to
trial, he went to the prosecutor and said: “If you make a case out of this you might as well
withdraw from the ticket, as your greatest strength comes from Fulton.” After a few preliminaries,
the case was thrown out of court, and that is not the last time the “drys” have won out.
I will now go back to the year 1849 and relate a circumstance or two that created not a
little excitement and a food deal of pro and con gossip. Daniel Rush lived in our neighborhood.
He was very fond of hunting and would go to the forest, climb a tree and watch for deer, and this
trait was well known by his acquaintances.
One evening he jumped astride his old bald-faced sorrel mare, and started out on a
hunting trip. He stopped near where the Smalley grave yeard is now located. He hitched the
mare, shouldered his gun and went around on the opposite side of a swamp, which was covered
with a thick growth of underbrush. After his customary fashion, he climbed a tree and waited to
see a deer. By and by his patience was rewarded, as he thought, by seeing a deer flaunt its tail and
he raised “old trusty” and fired. Great was the astonishment of Rush to find that he had killed his
own mare. In his excitement, and to throw the blame on some one else, he hit on a very ingenious
plan. He took a stick, measured the trackes made in the soil, to show the people that as he had
taken his own shoes to Uncle Samuel VanBlaricom’s (father of Henry VanBlaricom, of Rochester)
to have them mended, and had borrowed a pair of VanBlaricom, and had the borrowed shoes on
his feet when the accident occurred. So you can imagine it raised something of a talk when Rush
went around measuring the feet of his neighbors. He accomplished nothing. But that is not the
worst that came from Rush’s disposition to shoot something, and about September 25, 1850, a
tragedy occurred of which Rush was the cause. In the same locality lived Berryman McCarty,
who resided on what is now a part of the Adam Kline farm. McCarty took his gun and started
through the woods to the home of Rush, to get him to bring his horse over the next day to help
tramp out wheat. Rush was again perched in a tree watching for deer, and catching sight of some
moving object, he shot. He then got down to get his suppsed game only to find he had mortally
wounded his neighbor McCarty, who feebley said: “Dan, you have shot me,”--then died.
No action was taken against Rush, as the general supposition was that the shooting was
accidental, as the two men were friends. The shootinjg occurred about eighty rods south of the
Olive Branch U. B. church. McCarty was the father of Mrs. Louisa Louderback, of Fulton, and
Mrs. J. W. Redd, of Metea, grandfather of John W. Louderback, of Fulton, and Francis
Louderback, of Rochester.
In those days there was not very much wheat sown. It was cut with a sickle, afterward
with the “muley cradle,” then the reaper and then the table rake, and later the binder. To do the
threshing, wheat was beat out with a flail, but sometimes tramped out with horses. Samuel Rouch
ran the first threshing machine in the neighborhood. It was called a “caver,” for the reason that it
threw the wheat, straw and chaff all together, men having to shake the straw to get the wheat out
and throw the straw to one side. Later, Rouch purchased another threshing machine, named the
Traveler. The machine was pulled in the field and a few dozen sheaves were thrown on, and the