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Author: OPPSheryl
Surnames: Ream, Delvin, Kunce, Emerick, Freel, Smith, Houtz, France, Riggle, Drum, Flora,
Shultz, Hoke, Hurkins
Classification: biography
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February 27, 1928 Huntington Herald
Mrs. Helser Turns Back Years To Tell of Hardships and Joy in Early Life In This County
By F.S. Bash
Who can tell us the thrilling tale of Huntington's early morn? Where is one now left
who can unlock the secrets of time's closed journal of early incidents and people? We
do occasionally find some one of the second generation who walked and talked with the
original first settlers and can still give facts from personal knowledge. Such as one, my
readers, is Mrs. Julia A. Helser, widow of John Helser, who resides in her own home at 729
Warren street. She represents a link in the golden chain which unites the present with the
almost irretrievable past.
Mrs. Helser was Julia Delvin, daughter of Thomas Delvin and Julia Ream Delvin. According
to the narrative as told by Mrs. Helser, six covered wagons drawn by ox teams, left Perry
county, Ohio, and came here in 1834, bringing to Flint Springs colonists who found only
Indians and a handful of whites including Champ and Joseph Kelvie, the Toxtaters and maybe
a backer's dozen of other first settlers in what was to be the county seat of
Huntington.
In those six wagons were Thomas Delvin, James Delvin, William Delvin, Henry Kunce, John
Emerick, (Leyman's father), John Freel and Grandfather Delvin, with their wives and
children. James Delvin and family went no further, but stopped near where Market and
Cherry streets now cross. They lived in their wagon until a cabin could be put up, which
stood where the Clayton building is now located. Indians flocked around the wagons, stared
at the arrivals but could speak no English, all of which caused serious apprehension on
the part of the white mothers and little ones, who eyes soon filled with tears. One of
these children was William Delvin, Jr., who grew up in Huntington, did hard service in the
Civil war, returned and worked at the carpenter trade at the Erie shops almost to the time
of his death at an extremely old age.
Origin of Whitestine Farm
Others of the wagons had not yet reached their destination, but preceded northward, the
men chopping a course for the wagons through dense woods until reaching certain sections
of "canal land" which had already been filed on by the colonists. Thomas
Delvin's claim was on the hill beyond the creek for which he was to pay a dollar and a
quarter an acre, but others went further and paid seventy-five cents an acre. Thomas soon
donated ground and erected a log school house at his own expense, which turned out to be
the Whitestine school, on Goshen road, but facing the road leading west.
Mrs. Helser was born in 1845, eleven years after her folks homesteaded, but she never saw
her father, as he died a short time before she was born. "Our farm finally came to be
known as the Whitestine place," she said. "The school went by that name and does
yet. It came to be named that way because my mother's second husband was David
Whitestine and lived there for many years. Part of the farm is now owned by Marion Flora
and wife. My mother had ten children, seven by my father and three by my stepdaddy.
I'm now the only one in the family living, and I am nearly eighty-three. But it was my
father who founded that school and was the teacher several years until some of my brothers
commenced teaching. I had four brothers, Jacob, William, James and John, who were in the
war. William enlisted at Roanoke and died in the south, but was not killed in battle. His
daughter was Della Delvin, who is living on the Pacific coast. William belonged to the
Masons and they assisted us in maki!
ng arrangements for the body to be sent here for burial. The grave was already staked off
in the Masonic graveyard, on Guilford street, but that was in '62, right in the
hottest of the war, and there was some fear that William died of yellow fever, so he was
buried down south."
The Old Masonic Cemetery
Mrs. Helser stated that her uncle. William Delvin, her father's brother, owned
considerable land in and around Huntington, and it was he who donated ground for the
Masonic graveyard which was vacated years ago. "You know there were several William
Delvins," explained Mrs. Helser. "There was my uncle, William, who followed
school teaching a long time and did a great deal of surveying of town lots and streets. He
ran the lines for many of the early roads. At due time he held title to considerable land.
All of that real estate east of town, where the Thompson mill was built, once belonged to
him. He lived on Jefferson street, was twice married but had no children. Then, there was
my brother William, also my cousin William, the old carpenter who only died a few years
ago. My brother James was the father of Lin Delvin, who lives at Mt. Clemens, Michigan. He
taught school, and then learned the tailor trade at Zahn's shop."
Here Mrs. Helser regaled me with interesting reminiscences of her girlhood days, stating
that one of the disheartening things was that her guardian was so close with their money
that he wouldn't buy her school books, but made her use the same old McGuffey reader
over and over until she knew everything in it by heart. "And one thing my mother
always compelled us children to do was to scrape out pates good with a fine tooth comb
about twice a day to guard for lice, for a few kids in school had hair fairly matted with
them. We could see them crawling. But we never seemed to get any of them. Then, I'll
never forget a licking that a boy had to take who afterwards became my husband. My brother
James was then teaching the school he happened to catch John Helser, Sarah France and Mary
Riggle playing button on the sly. They were waltzed out on the floor and told that each
would have to take a sound licking for such awful conduct. John told the teacher he hated
to see the girls suffer!
, for it was really his fault, so he asked that he might take the whipping severe enough
for all three, if that was satisfactory to the teacher. And my brother did lam it to him
good and plenty, and that's no lie. At least it seemed awful to us pupils, but John
said afterwards that it didn't hurt very bad and was more noise than pain. It made
Sarah and Mary so bloomin' mad that they grabbed their books and left school."
Julia Drove Ox Teams
Here Mrs. Helser spoke of the spinning her mother and older sister did, but they had
Henry Kunce do the weaving of the cloth, for he kept two looms going. Then she added:
"I always enjoyed being out in the open, riding colts and breaking young cattle to
work. My brothers nick-named me 'Charley' because I was such a tomboy. It's a
fact that when I wasn't much over ten. I yoked up young steers and broke them to work.
I'd drive around with a sled wand when the span got to working well I enjoyed hauling
up wood from the clearings. I never had much trouble except one day I remember mother told
me to hitch up a young yoke of cattle and drive to the school house after a stove she
wanted to use in a dry house to dry apples.
"It happened a young fellow named Bill Drum, who worked on a saw-mill down at the
creek, was at the house and he went along to help load the stove. We got it loaded and
when on the way back the steers heard the cow bell down in the woods and away they went,
galloping with their heads down and their tails up, never stopping until they reached the
cows. The stove went rolling. I considered it a terrible runaway. One span I broke to work
well mother sold for fifty dollars. I don't know how many I broke altogether. I broke
our colts to ride, and never was seriously hurt. I'd put on the bridle and get on
straddle, then away we'd go down to the creek to water. I generally wore a white
muslin dress that came down to my shoes.
"One thing I was always afraid of, and that was a snake of any kind. After my father
built our hewed long house some of us children went upstairs for something, and there
right before our eyes was a monster spotted snake lying on a cross-log with its head
hanging down a foot or two and looking right at us. My sakes alive! We gave a yell and
fairly went rolling downstairs.
Walked From Liberty Mills
"For a while during the war I worked out for a dollar a week. While I was employed
at Bill Hurkins's, at Liberty Mills, word came that my brothers would be home on a
brief furlough and I should come home. I told Ben about it, saying I just had to see him
and wondered if it would be all right to go home providing I secured a neighbor, Mrs.
Houtz, to work while I was away. Furthermore I asked if he wouldn't take me. The plank
road had only been completed a few years and was in fine shape for driving. But do you
know, he was stubborn and refused to do anything, so I engaged Mrs. Houtz just the same
and then lit out a foot for home, walking all the way except the last four miles. Mike
Smith and wife, she was my sister, took me the rest of the way. But Bill was a scoundrel.
He had a nice wife and two children, but one day a women and several children came to the
house and the woman said Bill was her lawful husband, but deserted her and was never
divorced. As soon as he got wind !
of her arrival in Liberty Mills he absconded and we heard later that a train killed him
down near Indianapolis."
Mrs. Helser then mentioned some of the old neighbors, among them the Henry Bolinger
family. There was a houseful of children and all were boys but two, "One of the
girls," said the aged lady, "was Mary. She became the wife of Capt. James
Wilhelm, of Huntington. The man I finally married had been going with Mary but cap cut him
out. Right at that time I was engaged to Phil Parrett, but he went to the war and somehow
our letters got further and further apart until in three years we quit writing altogether.
John Helser began showing me attention. We were school children together and I always
liked him, so we got married. The other girl of Bolinger's was Anne, who married a man
named Miller. She is now in an old folks' home at Flora, Ind. About once a year she
comes here to visit the Wilhelm girls and me."
Owned Old Brick Near Creek
Mrs. Helser's husband died on Decoration day in 1918 at the home where the wife and
daughter Della are living. Before coming to town to live, Mr. and Mrs. Helser lived in the
brick house just north of the creek on the Goshen road. They built that house and resided
there fifty years. Jim Delvin, brother of Mrs. Helser, was owner of the farm before the
Helsers located there. Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Helser, but the ravages of
typhoid fever made a severe vacancy in the family circle, removing the son Oro and wife,
also th son Roscoe. Daughters are Mrs. Marlon Flora, Della Helser and Fairy Shultz. Ora
Helser and wife left a daughter, Mabel, eight years old, who was raised by Mrs. Helser and
remained in the home until her marriage to Homer Hoke. While speaking of typhoid fever
Mrs. Helser said:
"It's a terrible disease. And there used to be so much of it in the country. I
passed through a siege myself when I was a girl. For six weeks, I lay asleep and all of
that time did not know anything that was going on. Dr. Goshorn was the doctor. These
Goshorns here in the city are descendants of the old doctor. He kept coming to see me
right along for three weeks, then he said to my mother: 'Mrs. Whitestine, I hate to
keep coming here running up a big bill on you. It's big enough right now and the facts
are I can't do Julia any good. I've got her to the place now where the fever is
subsiding, and if she had enough constitution left to go through the struggle, she'll
recover, but it will be a long time before she's well.' So my mother relied on
what he said, followed his instructions and it was three weeks more that I remained weak
and unconscious. Then I woke up the previous six weeks were all a blank to me. My appetite
began coming back and oh, how did plead with my mother !
for food I dared not have. It was her hardest trail of all, she said, to refuse my
longings for certain dishes I craved. I pulled through, but it was two years before I was
perfectly strong again."
So far as I am aware, Mrs. Helser and Emanuel Kunce are about the last of the second
generation that sprang from those daring colonists who came in the six wagons in 1834.
Mrs. Helser stated that her Grandfather and Grandmother Delvin, who were oldest of the
original colony, lived n Clear Creek township and reached a great age, ending their days
with the family on the Whitestine farm, the old gentleman reaching the astonishing age of
104 years.
The day I called, the aged lady who told me this gripping story, was reclining on the
davenport, seemed somewhat frail and complained of dizziness when she attempted to be up.
But I found her hearing very good for one of her years and he mind was as clear as a bell.
When relating some of her recollections her face was covered with smiles. As we reflect on
the personnel of that old time set, bearing in the mind their honesty, industry,
neighborliness, good fellowship and educational efforts in starting schools and teaching
them, as was true of the Delvins, they surely set a pace at the Whitestine school house
that led the onward march to great things for Clear Creek township as well as the entire
county. May the kindly spirit of those old pioneers her a sweet message from her forebears
who faced westward in'34 and planted a civilization that blesses the generations who
follow.
Helser, Julia Ann Delvin
Sunday, October 2, 1932 Huntington, Indiana, Herald-Press
Mrs. Julia Ann Helser, eighty-seven, a pioneer resident of Huntington county, died at
3:15 o'clock Saturday afternoon at her home, 729 Warren street.
She was born May 11, 1845, in Clear Creek township to Thomas and Julia Delvin. She was
married August 2, 1863, to John Helser, who died in 1918.
Mr. Helser's parents were pioneer settlers of Huntington county having come to this
county in covered wagons I 1834. Mrs. Helser was born eleven years after her parents came
to Huntington, but she never saw her father, as he died a short time before she was born.
Mr. and Mrs. Helser were residents of Clear Creek township for fifty years, moving to
Huntington in 1913. Five children were born to them, two sons are dead.
She survived by three daughters, Mrs. Addie Flora, of Huntington; Mrs. Della Helser at
home; and Fairy Shultz, at home. Mr. and Mrs. Helser also reared Mrs. Homer Hoke, a
niece.
Six grandchildren, sixteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, survive.
She was a member of the Clear Creek Methodist church.
Funeral services will be held Monday afternoon at 2:30 o'clock at the residence with
the Rev. B. F. Cato, pastor of the Central Christian church in charge. Burial will be at
Clear Creek.
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