COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY
Of Henry County Indiana
B.F. Bowen
1920
Page 362, 363,364, 365
Surnames in this biography are: Elliott, Hardee, Watkins,Swain, Cooper,
Wilhoit, Terhune, Hazard, Corwin, Cooper, Van Matre, Wisehart,Hendricks,
Voorhees, Turpie, Morton, Thurston, Theme,
NIMROD RICHARD ELLIOTT
Thishighly respected and eminent resident of Mechanicsburg and
president ofthe Farmers Bank at Middletown,Henry County, Indiana, was
born in Perquimans County, North Carolina, May 4,1827, and is a son of
Ephraim B. and Eliza (Hardee) Elliott, the former also anative of Perquimans
county, born in 1782, and the latter a native of Georgia.Both were of
Scotch-Irish descent, of the Quaker faith and were married inNorth Carolina
in 1820. Of five brothers of the Elliott family who had residedin England and
who came to America from that country in the Colonial days onesettled in
North Carolina; one in Virginia and one in Kentucky; the others inall
probability returned to England. Ephraim B. Elliott was a true
Americanpatriot and a lover of liberty and enlisted for the war of 1812 in
defense ofthe rights of the Union against the encroachments of the British
king andparliament, but as he had met with an accident in which one of his
legs wasbroken, he was not placed upon active service. His financial
circumstances werenot very satisfactory in their character and to remedy the
paucity of his pursehe resorted to school teaching and at the same time read
law. In 1829 he cameto Indiana and first located in Wayne County in the fall
of 1833, a yearremarkable for a meteoric showerof unusual
brilliancy. Later he came toHenry County and settled in FallCreek
Township, his son, Giles C., having preceded him in 1831. Nimrod R.
Had also preceded his father earlierin the fall of 1833 and made his home
with the wife of his elder brother, Giles C., while the latter
wasmaking the necessary trips to bring the family and their household
goods, farm implements, etc.
Giles C. Elliott erected a log cabin three miles southeastof Mechanicsburg on
heavily wooded land, east of which Ephraim B. had already cleared up
three orfour acres. Some little time afterward,after having cleared
up about twenty acres and made a small farm, he bought anew place in the
woods and began all over again. On this place he passed theremainder of his
life and died in 1859 when seventy-seven years old; his widowsurvived him
until 1862 and died at about the same age. Ephraim B. Elliott kept up his
interest in schoolwork, his earliestemployment, until the last hours
of his life. There was but one schoolhouse within five miles ofhis
farm, and that was at Middletown. He therefore donated from his
forty-acretract a quarter-acre lot, upon which a log building was erected,
and this isstill known as the Elliott School house. It had a puncheon floor,
slabs set onpegs served for desks and seats, one log removed from the wall
formed anaperture which was denominated a window and this was covered with
greased paperin lieu of glass. The first pedagogue was a Mr. Watkins, an old
man fromVirginia, who chewed an immense quantity of tobacco and constantly
expectoratedon the hot stove. He could barely add and subtract and would dash
his whip onthe floor and tell the pupils with in difference to get their own
lessons.Ephraim B. Elliott was compelled to cipher out the more difficult
problems,and, being a splendid penman, devoted much time to teaching his son,
Nimrod R.,this elegant accomplishment. He was very anxious that Dick, as
Nimrod R wasusually called, should be well educated and was willing to spend
his lastdollar to attain this end. Dick was accordingly sent to school at
Greensboro,where in due time he secured alicense to teach for two
terms, one of these being for the school held in the Huff meeting
house in thewinter of 1850, the largest in the township and having an
average attendance of forty pupils. In 1851 Nimrod R. Elliott began to
sell goods in Mechanicsburg, a business hefollowed for over
forty-three years, and also had interests in stores at Cadiz and
Middletown. Mr.Elliott started with a capital amountingto about three
hundred and twenty-five dollars, borrowed one hundred and fifty
dollars and of this totalinvested four hundred dollars in stock. During his
long career as a merchant in Mechanicsburghe occupied only one site,
but at different times used three buildings, one, a frame, being
destroyed byfire in 1863; this was replaced by a frame and later by a
brick in 1866, which is still standing. Mr.Elliott carried a stock of
fromfive thousand dollars to fifteen thousand dollars and his annual
sales averaged fifteen thousand dollars toforty thousand dollars. Mr.
Elliott had several partners at different times, but started trade
alone. Hisfirst associate was Ezra Swain, for ten years; his second, Elihu
Swain, fortwelve years, and next with Imla W. Cooper for twenty years as
salesman andpartner. Finally the firm consisted of himself alone. Whenever he
made moneyMr. Elliott would invest all his profit in real estate, and
whenever he saw anythingat all that promised to net him a dollar he would buy
it. He carried on a longcredit trade, but he could also buy on four and six
month’s time. Mr. Elliottdid all the buying and four times a year-visited
Cincinnati on horseback.Cambridge City was his nearest trading point by canal
and his first stoppingplace on the railroad was Chesterfield, on what is now
known as theBellefontaine railroad, and goods were brought to the village
with four-horseteams. As he held the confidence of the people in a very large
degree, hefrequently had during the Civil war as much as twenty-five thousand
dollars ata time in his safe in keeping for his neighbors. He did by far the
largestmercantile business in the township and retired there from February
16, 1895. Henext began to invest in farmlands, although he had already much
of that classof property in his possession.In partnership with
another person, he purchased one hundred and sixty acres adjoining
the town ofMechanicsburg at thirty-five dollars per acre, but soon
afterward offered this partner five hundred dollarsto take it off his hands,
but this the latter declined to do. So Mr. Elliott put it under
cultivation andhas converted it into one of the most profitable places of its
size in thetownship. He also owns the homestead of his late father, his
possessions beingin tracts of one hundred and ninety, four hundred, one
hundred and ninetyacres, or a grand total of nearly seven hundred and eighty
acres. He paid ashigh as seventy dollars per acre for a
one-hundred-and-sixty-acre tract justafter the close of the Civil War part of
which he sold for one hundred andsixteen dollars per acre; but while he has
bought as low thirty-five dollarsper acre, the average cost has been fifty or
fifty five dollars per acre. Hegenerally keeps from sixty to seventy-five
head of cattle, mostly thoroughbred,and although he has been president of the
Middletown Fair Association forsixteen years, had never made an exhibit. He
and Thomas Wilhoit were thefounders of the association and respectively hold
the offices of president andvice-president at the present time. Mr. Elliott
has also done something in theway of pork-packing at Middletown, but the
result has not been altogethersatisfactory to a man of his business
acumen. Mr. Elliott has always been an advocate of good roads, as being
ofincalculable value to farmers and other citizens. He was president of the
firstpike road company at Middletown and of others at Mechanicsburg, until
all thepikes were turned over to the county; he is now aiding in the
promotion of theinterurban electric line. In Companywith John Terhune and
George Hazard, in 1874 Mr. Elliott started the FarmersBank at Middletown,
with a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars. This bankcarried on business
for ten months, when it was sold to a company atAnderson and was
organized asthe Farmers Bank of Anderson, with Mr. Terhune as cashier, John
E. Corwin aspresident and Mr. Elliott as vice-president, with the capital
stock fixed atone hundred thousand dollars. It was run for four years and
then converted intoa national bank with a capital of fifty thousand dollars.
At the end of thefour years Mr. Elliott sold his stock in this bank and
organized the presentFarmers Bank of Middletown in May, 1882, with a capital
of thirty thousanddollars, and officered as follows: N. R. Elliott,
president: Thomas Wilhoit,vice-president; E. L Elliott, cashier; B. H. Davis
assistant cashier, with I.W.Cooper, William Wisehart and Thomas Wilhoit as
additional stockholders. Thecapital stock still remains the same; the
deposits average one hundred andninety-three thousand dollars and the
earnings or surplus is disposed of, asthe laws require. The present officers
of the bank are N. R. Elliott,president: Adolph Cooper, vice-president, E. L.
Elliott, cashier, and JosephVan Matre, assistant cashier, and the bank stands
as one of the mostresponsible moneyed institutions in the state of Indiana.
Mr. Elliott was alsofor a time a stockholder in the Hagerstown Bank, but
concluded to concentratehis financial interests in Middletown, where he has
been an earnest and liberalpromoter of all its industries. Inpolitics Mr.
Elliott has always been a stanch Democrat, having been even when aboy
inimical to the Whig doctrine of protection or high tariff imposts. In 1884he
was a presidential elector from the sixth congressional district and
wasalternate at the national convention. He attended all the national
conventions,both Democratic and Republican, for twenty years with the
exception of the lastfew. Always in the councils of his party’s leaders, Mr.
Elliott was an intimatefriend of Thomas A. Hendricks and. was a delegate to
the state convention whenthat distinguished Democratic states man refused to
accept a nomination for theoffice of governor and was likewise a member of
the committee appointed to callon Hendricks and urge him to accept which the
latter did finally and waselected. Mr. Elliott was also quite intimate with
Senators Voorhees and Turpieand a close friend of Governor Morton. In his
prime he was selected by theDemocratic managers as a leading speaker, and his
extraordinary eloquence neverfailed to draw about him immense audiences and
to strengthen the weak-kneed and convince the doubting. In religion
Mr. Elliott is a Universalist,but freely contributes to the support of all
religious societies. Of secretorders he is not a member of any except the
Masonic. He was made a Mason in 1852 at Middletown and is a charter memberof
the local lodge, which was organized in 1858 and of which he was the
firstworshipful master, holding this exalted position sixteen years.
He has sat in the grand lodge and hasdone some committee work therein, but
has refused to take grand lodge workproper. He is a member of New
CastleChapter, Royal Arch. and Knightstown Commandery, Knights Templar. He
attendedthe national conclaves at Cleveland, Chicago. St. Louis, Washington,
Denver,Pittsburgh, and Louisville, and at the latter city in 1901was in the
march fromstart to finish. Mr. Elliott is amember of the Eastern Star branch
of the order at Middletown, as is also hiswife. During the war of the
RebellionMr. Elliott was a loyal and devoted friend of the Union and aided in
raisingall die military companies in Henry County. He was constant and
untiring in hiscare of the families of many of the soldiers who went to the
front and expendedmore money in this and other ways than will ever be known.
In temperance workMr. Elliott has been active andardent all his life
and was identified with it as far back as the earlyWashington movement; in
public educational matters he favors compulsion whennecessary.
Nimrod R. Elliotthas a family of two children. Ida Florence and Erasmus
Leonidas. Of these IdaFlorence is the wife of J. M. Thurston,M. D., of
Richmond, Indiana and a professor in the Physio-Medical College
atIndianapolis: she finished her education in the New Castle Academy, was
marriedyoung and has one daughter, Eva, who is the wife of Hugo Theme,
professor oflanguages at the University of Michigan. Erasmus Leonidas
Elliott, now the cashier of the Farmers Bank atMiddletown, was graduated from
the law department of the University of Michigan,is a Republican in politics
and has served two terms in the state legislatureof Indiana.