One Township's Yesterdays Chapter XXVI
"FIRST FAMILIES"
"Still be ours the diet "hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! n Pioneers!"
... Walt Whitman |
COURAGEOUS SETTLERS WERE THEY, those first' comers. They, the pioneers of Union
Township, in their faith and works, left an indelible mark on the pages of our history, and a pattern to guide succeeding generations.
Today, we little realize how great is our debt to those who so carefully paved the way, covering the rough spots, smoothing out the
harshness of the wilderness, so that we of this day and age may go our ways in comfort and in peace.
If we look to the records that remain, scant though they be, and find what we may concerning those first comers, we may profit by
learning about the lives they lived, the struggles they made, the vast efforts they put forth, the joys they experienced and the
sorrows and disappointments they suffered.
We may ask: Who were they? Whence came they? What beginnings did they make? How did they live and progress? And "what did they do to
be saved," In the midst of perils, that their works should so live after them, an endowment in perpetuity for the welfare of the
generations to come?
What indeed did they do to he saved? First and foremost, they were not theorists; they were doers. They were doers in a raw country
that demanded doing. It was a case of do or die. Had they not been doers, they would not have survived. With hands and hearts they
labored. Great was their endurance, strong their faith, without which they could not have been saved, without which they could not
have been spared to complete the tasks so heroicly undertaken.
That we may know them better, the pioneers of Union Township, let us turn the pages, Yellowed in the passage, of time, and obtain
from the records a few glimpses of those "first families."
MORRIS
HOUGHTON
THOMPSON
MC DONALD
LAWSON
NORRIS
LOGAN
BROWNLEE
DICKSON
HULTS
VOREIS
LEWIS
Among the pioneers was WILLIAM F. LEWIS, who was officially a resident of Union Township prior to 1840. In speaking of the
ancestry of the first comers, it has been said that, Welsh blood was added to the mixture when JOHN LEWIS joined the group of
pioneers on their way to the Maxinkuckee region.
HENDERSON
NATHAN and ELEANOR (JACOBS) HENDERSON were natives respectively of Maryland and Kentucky. They were married in the
southern part of Indiana, where they lived until 1835, when they came to Marshall County and located above Wolf Creek, Green
Township, moving later to Union Township, where they lived until the time of their deaths. ABRAHAM VOREIS, son of John H., married
their daughter Rebecca.
LOUDEN