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