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In the preceding fall the State Agent had offered the timber in the street to anyone who would cut it. Lismund Basye, justice of the peace, was tempted by the offer and undertook the clearing of Washington street; much timber was cut and the only thoroughfare in the settlement blocked with it.
Thereupon all the townspeople turned out and cleared a roadway by huge bonfires. Apropos of this blockade of traffic Mr. Blake perpetuated his celebrated joke: “The early settlers spent their evenings one winter cutting and rolling logs in Washington street. They employed two or three hundred negroes to cut the logs in two and keep the heaps burning.” A diagram must accompany this joke and explain it. The word “nigger” means to the backwoodsman a small log placed when blazing, across large logs to fire them; by tending the fire so made, large logs are divided more quickly than by an ax—consequently “a nigger in a woodpile” means something which destroys it and not, as I had supposed, our African brother.
Daniel Yandes, for whom the logs were cut up the river, was called the pioneer mill builder; he built a saw and grist mill, a tannery and in 1833 with Samuel Merrill, established the first cotton spinning factory in this region.
He brought $4,000 with him when he came to the settlement in the spring of ’21, which constituted him for many years the largest capitalist in the place. He was first treasurer of Marion County. Samuel Merrill’s part in the pageant of the State Centennial is still fresh in our minds; he was the first state treasurer and served in both capitals, coming from Corydon to Indianapolis in 1824, when William Hendricks was Governor.
Mr. Merrill was one of our foremost pioneers, a man of high attainments and ideals.
