By Judge Lemuel W. Royse
My earliest recollection takes me back to a one-roomed log cabin
where I was born and where I then lived. This cabin was near the
old Fort Wayne road, which was then and still is one of the main
thoroughfares through Kosciusko county. Conditions in this county
were still rather primitive. Most of the homes were much the same
type as the one in which I lived. The trees had been cut down
and removed from the roads, but many of the stumps of these trees
remained. Practically nothing had been done in the way of cutting
down hills, or grading and building a firm roadbed. Mud-holes
and chuck-holes abounded. Swampy places were made passable by
corduroy causeways, always rough and bumpy. Streams were spanned
by rude, wooden bridges, which were not infrequently swept away
by high water. When this occurred sometimes a good fording place
was found. and the stream crossed in that way. If the stream could
not be forded, then travel over it must be delayed until the bridge
was restored. Nothing but heavy, strongly built vehicles could
travel over roads like these. These vehicles were drawn by horses
or by oxen. Ox teams were as common as horse teams. Oxen were
slower on the road, but if the road was in bad condition, you
had better take the ox team. At the very best, travel over these
roads was slow and tedious---not more than four or five miles
per hour. Frequently forest trees grew close to the road, and
in heavy windstorms trees were blown down and across the road.
The wise traveler carried an ax with him in order that he might
cut and remove this fallen tree.
Travel by horseback was very common. The U.S. mails were carried
by a man on horseback. The one that passed our house generally
rode a white horse, and in my memory I hold a picture of him as
he appeared to me in my early years. Both men and women rode horses.
It was the pride of some of the women to be an expert rider. In
many of the homes you would find men's saddles and also women's
saddles. In the absence of a saddle, a blanket or a sheepskin
was used. When these could not be had, bareback riding was resorted
to.
These pioneers were strong and speedy walkers, and a large amount
of travel was done on foot. It was over ten miles from our home
to Warsaw, but our neighbors did not look upon it as a serious
task to walk to Warsaw and back.
Roads gradually grew better, so that light wagons, buggies and
coaches could be used on them. Travel in this way was regarded
as luxurious and which only the rich could afford, to the envy
of all his neighbors. A stage coach line was run from Warsaw to
Columbia City, passing our house in the forenoon and returning
toward evening. This coach was usually drawn by two horses, but
now and then by four. As a boy, how I envied that stagecoach driver,
perched upon a high seat, and cracking his long whiplash over
his horses. This man was my hero, and I often resolved that when
I became a man I would be a stage coach driver. But the railroads
came, and the stage driver's occupation was gone. Before I became
a man, the stage coach and the stage driver were things of the
past. In those days all the merchandise which supplied the stores
of this county was brought in wagons from Fort Wayne.
From my boyhood days until now just in the space of a lifetime,
what a wondrous advancement has been made in our means of transportation.
Every day many trains of freight cars passed through our city,
at the rate of from thirty to forty miles per hour, carrying hundreds
and hundreds of loads of freight.
We can now travel by steam cars by electric railways by the automobile,
or fly through the air-ways our fathers never dreamed of. At every
heart beat news from the most distant parts of our country come
to us by telegraph, or telephone or the radio.
God placed all these instrumentalities right here without our
reach, but we were a long time in finding them and putting them
into service. "What God Hath Wrought" was the first
message sent by telephone. But now in the presence of still greater
achievement, we can more truly say: "What God Hath Wrought."
Warsaw Daily Times August 23, 1932
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