Death's First Pioneer Advent

      Was the decease of Mrs. Carlock's sister^* and young daughter and were buried in the primitive grove on the Bald Hill of Stillwater's stream, for years a marked and sacred spot, but now perhaps unknown, as this interment was very near a century ago, and before the formation of any burial grounds.

Their bodies crumble in the dust

   The self to heaven ascends.

Our life still lives, and knows, and grows,

   When here on earth it ends.

Another Old Relict.

      The school house of sixty-five years ago, where is now the village of Webster. Our informant says there wasn't a nail in it, and it had the ground for a floor, while the other parts of it were after the most primitive cabin type. The teacher was a Mr. Skinner. He says, following the line of its succession, he has seen five builded, and are about ready for the sixth. A good illustration of German thrift, and love of learning and literature. May it follow the lineage onward.

      Mr. Seibts, the old Webster German Merchant is the pioneer merchant of Webster and of the Gcrman pioneers. Webster was upon and surrounded by lands primitively owned by CarIock and McDonald of whom mention has been herein before made, on the left bank of Stillwater, and hence had to be crossed in reaching Jacksonville. Its chief industry in these early days was the grist mill with saw mill attached, and of the time, was quite an enterprise. One or two sons of his family are remembered as merchants, and there is of this lineage in the community. These Germans were mainly Lutherans and were a part of the Congregation whose church was near Bloomers, Miami county, but in the onward years, built a church near the Klipstine homestead, where in the modern years they worshiped as does the lineage now. Adam Hile was adjoining Rhoades on the west. He was a German immigrant. Of the family there were Isaac and Elizabeth. John Hile, a brother, was adjoining on the the west. Of the family there was our well known citizen, Henry Hile, and sister, Lavina. Of this lineage there is a younger growing generation.
      Michael Metzcar was on the border of the German pioneers, nearing Jacksonville. He had a daughter who married Fred Frobe, who with Uriah Valentine was the modern successors of Grissom, the tailor. He was a sort of blustering, industrious old German, who acquired considerable wealth and is well remembered. We have so far found four National or blood elements in our pioneer families, viz: Scotch-lrish, a compound of Scotch and English, ancestry imigrating from Ireland, Holland or Pennsylvania Dutch, French and German, then with the coming of the railway came the Irish proper, or Celtic people, with old Billy Kelly as primal progenitor, whose relict as old Mrs. Kelly was resident of the town up to octogenarian years, and of the family there were Thomas, Mary, and Eliza and others. By marriage these primal blood elements have become well intermingled.

      Henry Boomershine of Dutch descent was on Indian creek adjacent to Hole and Craig owning a quarter section. His family consisting of a daughter and George and Henry, was well known and the homestead founded was a valuable one. After the wreckage of the famous flood of '47, it was said that the old gentlemen was up stream looking for rails. Some passer-by asked if rails would float up stream? To which he replied that in times of such a flood as that, it was no telling which way the rails would float. Doubtless in those days, there was about as much backing up streams as floating downward. Of the family, Henry is well remembered in later years, and of this descent there is here a small generation.
      The Markers -- these were later arrivals. However,"Old Mart," as he was familiary called, was among the pioneer boys, and Eli a few years later. Martin's first property was on old Swamp creek opposite William and James Hoel's. Here there was a curve in the creek suitable for a dam site, but there was no mill by the dam site, but a race was constructed, a dam built, and a mill erected. This mill and mill-dam was an old land-mark and in after years a sort of eye-sore. Ague was prevalent in those days, and the backed water was regarded as a generator of malaria or ague germ, and according to modern theory, mosquitoes were the distributors. No wonder then, that the whole populace including all the babies--none escaped--chilled, and fevered, and shook, with ague from Aug. 1st, to Nov. 1st, and a few went over till spring, for there was a million of mosquitoes to one inhabitant, though no one was ever known to count them, or the number of ague chills either. One Peter Hahn was the old Miller, and thither came the mill-boy and his bag of corn, or the old man with his "mill go'in" of wheat, returning with their sacks of meal, unbolted, and grist of flour, shorts, and bran, minus the toll the miller had taken out. The mill or milling enterprise not proving entirely satisfactorily to Martin, he disposed of the property, and of his homestead opposite--the latter to his brother Haymond, who died not many years after--and purchased the Adam Baker farm, thither, he moved,