{"id":2549,"date":"2020-11-10T19:43:28","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T19:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/?page_id=2549"},"modified":"2020-11-10T19:48:45","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T19:48:45","slug":"the-rowley-morehouse-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/?page_id=2549","title":{"rendered":"The Rowley Morehouse Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Rowley and Bertha Morehouse 50th anniversary<\/p><\/div>\n

Siftings<\/p>\n

The story of Rowley Morehouse<\/p>\n

October 24, 1934<\/p>\n

There’s a story of Rowley Morehouse, one of the most picturesque men of the river country, and a man who’s lived there for 52 years.\u00a0 Says Mr. Morehouse:<\/p>\n

I have lived in one place for 50 years. I am now living in the third house on the same farm.\u00a0 The old houses are now used for storage purposes.\u00a0 In other words my wife and I have worn out two houses.\u00a0 About 50 years ago, when I lived in northern Michigan, two men told me of having been down on the Kankakee, rafting logs along the banks of a place called \u201cThe Oxbow.\u201d I was a boy then, and afterwards, in 1884, I bought\u201d Oxbow later I bought Carson Bayou, and became the possessor of two of the most notable places on the river.\u00a0 They were the great duck homes for the reason that lots of oak grew there, and they came in to get the acorns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Morehouse on left<\/p><\/div>\n

The Kankakee River at times was 35 miles wide from the Oxbow to the Nickel Plate Railroad up near valparaiso and 15 miles on the other side.\u00a0 Then west of here 20 miles it gets even wider and so on until you get to the state line.\u00a0 Then it became just a river running between the two high banks.\u00a0 It starts as a brook, just a small stream up at Studebaker’s, near South Bend and I have traveled every mile of it.\u00a0 The biggest mistake ever made by the government was when they reclaimed the Kankakee, as it was known all over four states be one of the greatest duck haunts of those states. I was told by a millionaire who had hunted all over the world-even hunted the Buffalo on the prairies, where he sometimes got only one shot in a month, of how he liked the Kankakee, because when he went out in the river he never went with less than a hundred shells, and was able to burn them in a day\u2019s shoot.\u00a0 When my brother and I were young, the young men of the neighborhood used to come to our house in the evening to see what we caught that day.\u00a0 One incident I remember very well.\u00a0 At breakfast it was mentioned where we’re going.\u00a0 The man said he was going east, and I said I would go west.\u00a0 We had six hunting dogs, but we never used all of them at the same time, as they got so tired.\u00a0 The man took a good dog for Coon, and I took one for mink.\u00a0 When he came in that night he and nine coon and I had one mink and nine coon.\u00a0 I caught six coon and not another one day hunt.\u00a0 Another time I got two otter in one day, and if I didn’t get half a dozen mink or coon in one day I didn’t consider it a normal day at all.\u00a0 My brother and I caught 72 prairie wolves in my experience on the Kankakee River of about 35 years of hunting, and we have got 75 muskrat in one night, and three or four coon.\u00a0 We killed numberless ducks and geese here.\u00a0 My brother and I and two or three other hunters got 225 docs and 21 geese in three days.\u00a0 Mr. C. J. Kern was one of those hunters.\u00a0 He loaded those ducks and geese in his buggy, tieing them all over when he couldn\u2019t load any more in it and started home to Valparaiso.\u00a0 It froze that night pretty solid, and when he was gone about one half a mile and axel sprung down and the wheels came against the box of the buggy.\u00a0 He came back to my place, so I had to take those ducks and geese to Valpo with a wagon and team.\u00a0 He drove ahead in his buggy and the next day when I drove up to his story he came out in a shirtsleeves and threw those ducks and geese out of the wagon as if they were pumpkins, and there they lay on the sidewalks in a big pile.<\/p>\n

Of the old hunters of 52 years ago, only 10 or now alive to the best of my memory.\u00a0 Three live in Jasper County and are my neighbors, and seven are in Porter County.\u00a0 They are Link Arnold, Porter Childers, Johnny Benkie, George Runyan, Hank Haring and Joe Leiser.\u00a0 That’s all that’s left of over 200 that I used to meet frequently.\u00a0 Why I go on and indefinitely and tell you one incident after another of my hunting experiences-enough to fill a book and all true.\u00a0 There is no need to exaggerate any because it was a wonderful place for all sorts of game and God\u2019s plenty of it.\u00a0 Why I haven’t a hat out here in my place that is 43 years old.\u00a0 I bought it of J. Lowenstine in his store in Valparaiso, and it’s a purty good old hat yet.<\/p>\n

I want to take exceptions to the statement made by one of the speakers here tonight.\u00a0 He said that this region was made up of sand wastes, unfit for farming purposes.\u00a0 On the contrary, this land is very fertile, and capable of raising 80 bushels of corn, 80 bushels of oats, 42 bushels of wheat to the acre and other crops in proportion.\u00a0 The soil contains ample phosphates and phosphorus and nitrogen, lacking only potash.\u00a0 Fertilizers furnish the potash, and now that I can get it made in this country it will be cheaper than the German product.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Morehouse family timbering<\/p><\/div>\n

Fifty-two years ago I started to acquire land for a farm in this section.\u00a0 I bought all I could pay for, and since then have managed to get title to and now own 1000 acres of land in sections 1, 35 and 36 in Winfield Township, Jasper County.\u00a0 About 700 acres of this land is now under cultivation.\u00a0 The rest of it is marshlands and former hunting grounds.\u00a0 Part of it is Oxbow, and Cuson Bayou. \u00a0In 1895 Nelson Morris began buying up tracts of land in the river region, and with his coming prices jumped from $12 an acre to as high as $175 an acre.\u00a0 Morris once announced that he would buy the whole county of Jasper if they would abolish the courthouse.\u00a0 He used these lands for cattle grazing, and at one time head as high as 8000 cattle on his marshes in this county.\u00a0 He provided a good market for all the available wild hay that could be cut.\u00a0 I sold him in one year about 1000 tons of this a cut from my lands.\u00a0 Of course the annual rise in prices of agricultural products created by the world war sent land prices sky high and far beyond their real values, and many who rushed in and bought these lands of the land companies paid more than they could earn under normal conditions.\u00a0 Many of these people lost their farms through the changes in prices that follow.\u00a0 It was not the fault of country or the land.\u00a0 It was a case of basing values on abnormal earnings.<\/p>\n

Personally, I think it was a bad mistake to straighten the Kankakee River.\u00a0 Before this was done this region was the greatest hunting ground in the five states around us.\u00a0 Man can never bring back the river to its original state.\u00a0 Even the spending of three or five million dollars would not do it now.\u00a0 In order to get anywhere they would have to take a strip of land all the way from 25 to 35 miles wide. I believe it would be a great mistake to try to restore the river by buying an 8 mile strip.\u00a0 I will tell you why.\u00a0 I will take Porter Childers, George Runyan, Fred Rosenbaum, George Bancroft, William Morrehouse and myself, and in two days we would shoot all the ducks out and they would never return again.\u00a0 In the old days when the river and its marshes were from 25 to 35 miles wide, and when the shooting became too heavy for the ducks they had a chance to fly off 10 to 15 miles, and find a place where they would not be molested for a week.\u00a0 Wild fowl must have lots of room to range in, and no 8-mile strip will do.\u00a0 Shoot at a bird in one piece of water and he will never come back to that spot again.<\/p>\n

Going back to incidents that I remember, I recall my acquaintance with General Lew Wallace, one of the greatest men I ever knew.\u00a0 I could talk about him for days.\u00a0 He was a great lover of the Kankakee.\u00a0 I have talked with him on many occasions, and he has been my guest in my home many times.\u00a0 He seemed to take my stories and often urged me to tell them.\u00a0 At one point not more than 80 rods from Oxbow Bend he wrote 13 chapters of his famous story, \u201cBen Hur.\u201d\u00a0 General Wallace met my brother and what is called duck pond.\u00a0 He was eating dinner on an island.\u00a0 He saw my brother slaughtering the geese while out in the sink tub. My brother had then killed 31 geese.\u00a0 General Wallace took his pusher to go out and hire the tub for the afternoon, which he did.\u00a0 Mr. Wall’s one-out in that afternoon and killed geese.\u00a0 He paid $10 for the use of the tub, and said that money could not buy them.\u00a0 He had killed them himself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lew Wallace on the Kankakee<\/p><\/div>\n

General Wallace one day was on a piece of land four miles west of Baum\u2019s Bridge and 2 miles south.\u00a0 There he was so taken up with the game that was there that he said he was going to buy that section if it could be bought.\u00a0 Two weeks later he was the owner of that section of 640 acres.\u00a0 This track was the home of General Wallace for many years.\u00a0 After his death George Wilcox was its custodian, and after Wilcox died the heirs took its management over.\u00a0 General Wallace build a house on this land which he used while he spent his hunting vacation here, after that.<\/p>\n

Clem Kern, of Valparaiso also was a great lover of this region.\u00a0 After he was elected to the legislature and went to Indianapolis he fell in with another member, Mr. Jent, from Crawfordsville.\u00a0 The two became great cronies.\u00a0 Jant was a man of but few words, and never made a speech but once while he was a member, and that was when a bill came up affecting the privileges of sportsmen.\u00a0 But Kern was the opposite and loved to talk.<\/p>\n

Jent sat right behind Kern, and when he got up to make a speech, Jent would say: \u201cGive \u2018em hell, Clem.\u201d\u00a0 And then go off to sleep.\u00a0 Jent got to coming to the Kankakee River and made his headquarters at the home of Albert Featherlan.\u00a0 Jent was so pleased with his quarters and his host that one day he said: \u201cAlbert, I want you to go to Valparaiso, get an architect, a contractor, and material for a nice brick house, which I want you to build right here on this slope, where I can see the ducks and geese come in.\u00a0 And I want you to build that house two stories with basement, so I can sit in that basement and see the wild fowl show.\u00a0 Just charge the bill to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The house was built according to Jent\u2019s instruction and that game old sportsmen did foot the bill.\u00a0 In this home the old man came every hunting season until he passed away.\u00a0 That man had been a hunter of big game, and hunted not only in the best hunting grounds of his own land but also in the being key big game regions of the world.\u00a0 He said:\u201d I like this region best.\u00a0 Out west I may get a shot in a week, but here I can shoot to my hearts content and get something every time I take aim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clem Kern was a man who, if he was your friend, would go far to help you.\u00a0 One day I told him out like to buy a small track of timber that I thought I could make some money with.\u00a0 The price was $500, a sum I did not have at the time.\u00a0 It is not long afterward when Clem came to my house and threw a deed into my lamp, saying,\u00a0 \u201cThere is your timber title.\u00a0 I got the abstract examined and it is okay.\u201d\u00a0 I sold the timber for the cost of the land some time afterward, and one day a year or so afterward when Kern came down to shoot ducks I hand him thirty twenty-dollar gold pieces.\u00a0 He said: \u201cWhat am I going to do with that stuff?\u201d\u00a0 I got him a couple of shot bags and put the money in. And that was the end of that.\u00a0 That was the kind of pal Clem Kern was to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Siftings The story of Rowley Morehouse October 24, 1934 There’s a story of Rowley Morehouse, one of the most picturesque men of the river country, and a man who’s lived there for 52 years.\u00a0 Says Mr. Morehouse: I have lived in one place for 50 years. I am now living in the third house on… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":503,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"no-sidebar.php","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2549","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2556,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2549\/revisions\/2556"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}