Indianapolis- a historical and statistical sketch, 1870,WR Holloway

4
HOLLOWATS IVDIAVAPOLU.
Before entering upon this history, however, it will be well to present a general
view of the growth of the city, which may be traced through four stages.
First. That from the first settlement in 1820, to the removal of the Capital from
Corydou in 1825. This was a period of isolation, and, for a time, of struggle for ex-
istence. During this five years, no other village of the State had so much to resist,
and so little to assist it. It was far from all navigable streams and all passable roads,
and, for the first two years, was without clearing or adequate cultivation, without mills or
means of subsistence, except what was brought on horseback through sixty miles of
forest. Sickness in the second year, which prostrated nearly everybody, made its
isolation more dangerous, and sickness having prevented labor, an unpleasant ap-
proach to starvation followed the ague. But the sickly settlement grew a little larger
and a little healthier. It built a jail, two or three churches, patronized a few shops,
and two or three of the inevitable newspapers, had a few taverns and a Sunday school,
and showed evident signs that it meant to live, whether fed by State pap or not.
it was
Then, though not free from fears of the scattered Shawnees of Fall Creek,
deemed ready for the Capital.
Second. The period from 1825, when the Capital came, to 1847, when the first
railroad came. This may be said to have been a period of Legislative dependence, as
the possession of the Capital was the only influence that raised Indianapolis above the
position of an ordinary county town. Its central situation was nothing then, or rather
it was a drawback. In the first years of this period, the recent acquisition of the
Capital gave an impulse to the increase both of population and .the price of town lots,
but the stimulus was lost by 1827, and thenceforward growth was steady but slow,
dependent on the settlement of the surrounding country, strengthened, as before re~
marked, by the possession of the Capital. Towards the close, the expectation of railroad
communication excited a spirit of enterprise, or at least a feverish feeling of un-
rest, and with the impulse which the locomotive thus sent ahead of it, began a
new era. During this period, business was entirely of a local character. Some little
jobbing was done to country dealers, but nothing more, because, with all the enterprise
in the world, nothing more was possible. Manufacturing was merely for home con-
sumption. All trade was circumscribed by the limits of local demand. Little was
expected to go farther than a farmer could drive his load of corn and get home the
same day. Importations were made in heavy road wagons. Exportation in return
buggies and farm wagona. An occasional flatboat, loaded with hay or chickens,
went down with the spring freshets to New Orleans, if it didn't break its back on the
dam at the Bluffs. An annual drove of horses went South for some years. Hogs
were driven to Cincinnati or Madison, or the nearest town on a navigable stream.
Woolen mills spun yarn for old women, or made jeans for country wear. Wheat was
ground for the owner, or bought only to grind for home use. Corn was distilled or
fed to hogs; none was shipped. Iron founding had been tried twice and failed. No
business was expected to exceed a few hundred dollars per week. In this condition
of things the city would have remained to the end, if the railroad had not reached it.
The first stirring of this stagnation was made by the slow but steady approaches of the
Madison railroad from Vernon, where it had been lying up helpless since the great
crash.
Third. The period from 1847 to 1861. This was a period of new life. The
railroad, like "one fool,'' according to the proverb, "made many." The great profits
of the Madison road, the obvious benefit to the country, the fully restored financial
health prostrated in 1837, with a score of lesser influences, combined to give an im-