PRE-01-Chapter One

Chapter One

Birth and Parentage-Removal to Indiana-State of Society-A Disaster-Death of His Father-His Legacy-A Famous Fiddler-Jack of all Trades-Sowing Wild Oats.

Knowles Shaw was born in Butler County, Ohio, on the 13th of October, 1834. His father, Albin Shaw, and mother, whose maiden name was Huldah Griffin, were of Scotch descent. A few weeks after the birth of Knowles, their first child, they removed to Rush County, Indiana. That portion of the State was at that time a new settlement; indeed the whole State was then regarded as being "out West." The population was a poor but hardy class of people, but, as the sequel has proved, possessing the elements necessary for growth and prosperity. The extent of this growth since the time of which we write is indeed marvelous; from a forest it has become a fruitful field; from a new country, destitute of nearly all the comforts and blessings of civilized life, it has become, within the memory of those yet living, dotted over with large towns and cities, alive with busy trade and the hum of manufactories, while its railways, like the arms of a giant, gather the products of all the lands between the oceans. Its advancement in mental and moral culture has kept pace with its material prosperity; the change from the almost unbroken forest to the cultivated farm has not been greater than that from the scanty, as well as rude facilities for instruction to those of every grade now so abundant, from the everywhere present common school to the university, rich in all the appliances of scientific and classic learning. The parents of the subject of our story belonged to the humble hard-working class, which form the chief element of all new settlements, and his early days were spent amid the hardships and privations inseparable from a pioneer life. What he was in after life was not on account of any favorable surroundings in his earlier years, for the early-settlers in this then new country had too hard a struggle in subduing the forest and gaining a scanty subsistence to pay much attention to either moral or intellectual culture. The means and helps to such improvements, as in all new localities, were either wanting or of the rudest description, nor were the schoolmasters and preachers of the time wholly unsuited to the somewhat unsightly buildings in which the elements of learning and religion were taught. During the summer and fall, religious meetings were often held under the shade of the beeches, or in a grove of tall shapely sugar-trees, the hearers finding natural seats on fallen trees, or on the green sward—usually, however, the rude log building; with its puncheon floor, clapboard roof, openings for windows, admitting at the same time light and air, and benches with unsteady legs and without backs; which during the portions of the year that could not be profitably employed in out-door labor was used as a school-house, served as a church as often as some John the Baptist of a brighter dispensation not far distant was found to call the people to repentance or point them to a land, which to all seemed a better land because it was a land of rest. In bad weather the leaky roof and open crannies, which permitted the cold blast to enter too freely, was a great cause of discomfort, and as stoves had not come into general use their place was sometimes supplied by huge iron sugar-kettles, in which charcoal fires were kept burning, making it more than warm enough for those who sat near them, while those more remote were often pinched with cold. Both heat and cold, however, were endured without complaint, for preaching was uncommon enough to be a luxury, no matter how cold or hot the house might be; and there are those yet who go back in fond memory to those days, and think that heaven seemed nearer then, with only a roof that could not keep out the rain, than now, with frescoed ceilings, cushioned seats, light softened by stained glass, spire pointing heavenward, and the bell calling all to the house of prayer.

It was in this very region that Edward Eggleston laid the scene and found much of his material for the ’’Hoosier Schoolmaster," and "The End of the World "-novels and romances we call them-but many of the scenes are drawn from real life in Southeastern Indiana, less than forty years ago. The writer of these pages spent several days at a Millerite camp-meeting in that region in the summer of 1843, when the " End of the World," the second coming of Christ, was looked for daily, nay hourly, and heard from the lips of those who were waiting and wishing for the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, the wonderful dreams they had, and the strange portents written on the face of the midnight sky, which assured them beyond all doubt that the day of the Lord was at hand. The stirring exhortations and the sweet songs, which woke the forest echoes ever and anon during the night-watches, and which welcomed each dawn which might be the dawn of the last day of time, are still fresh in my memory, and the glad hopes of those who had given up all earthly interests in full assurance that the time was at hand, and the fears of those not fully convinced and wholly unprepared for suck an event, made an impression on my mind of which none but those who mingled in those scenes can form the slightest conception.

It was not far from this locality that young Shaw, then a boy of some nine or ten years of age, was then living. His lot in life, as already intimated, was a lowly one: toil and privation came as soon as he was able to endure the one and feel the other. Nothing in his horizon seemed hopeful, nothing to indicate that he would be known beyond the very narrow circle in which he moved. A heart here and there among companions as humble as himself he might bind to his own in friendship or love, but beyond this nothing but a toiler and plodder, who would soon leave as little trace of himself in the great world around as the traveler whose footprints on the sea-shore are effaced by the first returning tide. In the meantime two other children, a boy and girl, had been added to the family, making greater the demands upon the labors of the father, which were freely given-for children are even more welcome in the cottage of the poor than the abode of wealth and luxury-in the former case being the greatest and almost only joy.

Albin Shaw loved his children, and made every effort in an honorable way to secure for them such advantages as would fit them for usefulness in after life, or to leave them and their mother a competency in the event of his being early called away. To this end he labored with his hands, as farmer and tanner, traded in cattle at one time, and finally engaged in selling goods in a small village in Rush County. He would sometimes collect the three children around him and prognosticate their future by examining their heads. That of his oldest son was a puzzle to him: his conclusion was that he would make a terrible bad man or a very good one; that whatever he did he would do with all his might.

Knowles, though but a child, was always busy, and one of his early inventions came near proving a serious disaster. Like most boys he was fond of fire-arms; he made a wooden gun and loaded it, but all his efforts to make it go off were in vain. As a last resort he dropped a coal of fire into the muzzle, which produced the desired effect sooner than he expected, and his face was severely burned. Smarting with pain he got a coarse towel and rubbed off the blistered skin, to escape, as he afterward explained, being powder-marked. It is needless to say that this was an end to experiments in that direction. But a sad and unlooked for calamity was at hand. The father, the bread-winner of the family, was taken sick, soon became worse, and one day feeling that the end was near, had Knowles called to his bedside to give him his parting words. They were few and brief--little more than, "My son, be good to your mother," and, "Prepare to meet your God." His last gift was a violin, which had often been a solace to him in his life of toil, and soon after the weary toiler closed his eyes on what had been a world of toil and care to open them on earth no more. This event to the family was a great calamity, making their hard lot harder still, and brought upon young Shaw, then about twelve years of age, cares and responsibilities unknown before. Boy as he was, he strove to make his mother’s burden lighter, and labored to the full extent of his ability to aid her in raising her dependent family. He grew to be a stout, hearty youth, able when but a boy in years to do a man’s work; and this he did not only without complaint, but cheerfully, showing that the dying father’s words, "Be good to your mother," had not been forgotten. Nor did he forget his father’s legacy, the old violin. From infancy music had been a passion; and now all his spare moments, when the toils of the day were over, were devoted to his father’s gift, and he soon was able to play upon it with the ease and skill known only to a born musician. A talent like this could not be kept secret. The neighbors would often drop in to see the widow Shaw, but never left until Knowles had been called on for a tune—one only paved the way for another, and the evening would wear into night before the listeners were aware how the hours had sped by. It soon came to pass that he was invited to play at other places than at home; and in a short time no social gathering or merry-making of any kind was complete unless enlivened by the merry strains of his violin. But under all this there lurked a great danger; and when the circumstances are known there is little cause for wonder that he fell into the snare. One of the greatest evils of the times of which we write was intemperance. At all gatherings in a new settlement, no matter what the object might be, whisky seemed a necessity. A political gathering without this stimulant to patriotism was unknown; the candidate for office who was not willing to treat those whose votes he sought was very likely to obtain but few on election day, while he who furnished a good supply of the ardent did not lack a goodly number of ardent supporters. The harvest could not be gathered without liquor; a house or barn-raising, or corn-husking, generally ended in a drunken revel. At weddings and all merry-makings liquor was used without stint, and it was not even banished from funerals, for it seemed to possess the power of exciting mirth and assuaging the bitterness of grief. Large religious meetings were not entirely free from its presence, and if a preacher indulged in a little, he was thought none the less devout on that account. Whisky was indispensable at the meeting of friends, and a little was also deemed necessary at parting, and to refuse the proffered glass was a species of rudeness almost unheard of.

Brought up amid such surroundings it is not to be wondered at that young Shaw, who was of a social, lively and excitable temperament, should soon acquire a taste for strong drink. He was the life of every social gathering, a favorite especially with the young, his musical skill the admiration of the whole settlement, and it is not to be wondered at that he was often the soul of the revel and the gayest of the gay. Hundreds of young people in those days danced to his music; every year witnessed an increase of his skill, and with it was an increased demand for his presence and services. He sang a good song, had quite a vein of mimicry, and, though rude and unpolished, he seemed less so from his constant mingling in society than many of his rude companions, and, it must be added, came near being drawn into the vortex of dissipation beyond the power of successful resistance. In addition to what we have said above, there was another feature in the course he was pursuing that had a great tendency to keep and confirm him in it. His musical talent had become a source of profit. At every gathering where his services were in demand a sum of money, sometimes quite a handsome one, was the reward of his skill. This money he never wasted. He remembered well the injunction of his dying father: "Be good to your mother;" and into her hands went nearly all his gains. Even up to this period, when he was changing from boyhood to manhood, he seems to have thought of no higher career than that into which he had insensibly drifted. No one dreamed of him being very much different from what he was, and he had no higher ambition than that of being a good fellow and the best fiddler in the settlement.

Though content with this he had abilities in other directions; none, however, so marked, or in such demand as his talent for music. In other respects many of his companions were his equals, but in music he bore away the palm. His father, as we have seen, was merchant, stock-dealer, tanner, farmer, and also possessed of some musical taste and skill. In this ability to turn his hand to almost anything his son not only resembled, but greatly excelled him. He learned to make shoes in a single week, made grain-cradles for the neighbors, was a carpenter, plasterer, and on one occasion greatly astonished a watchmaker from whom he obtained permission to use his tools, by taking his watch to pieces, cleaning it, and putting it together again in good order, as if cleaning a watch were an every-day affair with him. He knew so many things from the habit of close observation that he had cultivated, that one of the neighbors quaintly expressed the general sentiment in regard to him by saying that "Knowles Shaw’s head was like a tar-bucket, for everything that touched it stuck to it."

After he grew older he spent a short time as a clerk in a store, taught school several terms, and having at one time fallen in with a teacher who professed to be able to give instructions in Greek and Latin, he became a pupil, and in one month learned all his teacher knew. Whether this was due to the aptness of the pupil, or to the meager attainments of the teacher, tradition does not inform us. But we are anticipating the order of events, and must resume the thread of our narrative.

He was now nearly eighteen years of age, a man in size, tall, angular, somewhat awkward, but kind-hearted, good-tempered, and industrious, which rendered him a general favorite. As far as book-learning was concerned, he was extremely deficient. The few facilities for improvement that might have been used he was obliged to neglect, in order to meet the demands made upon him by the family, which regarded him as their chief dependence. To labor for them seemed a pleasure, as well as a duty, and the self-denial he had to practice in order to provide for them was cheerfully endured.

It will not surprise the reader, in view of what has been said in regard to the company he kept and the habits he had learned, that he did not seem to be religiously inclined. His position to Christianity, however, was rather that of neglect and indifference than of dislike and opposition. The gay and thoughtless were his companions. Like himself, many of them were "sowing their wild oats," without stopping to ask the question, What shall the harvest be? And nothing doubtless, at this period, would have seemed more improbable to him and all who knew him than that he should become a Christian, and also a preacher of that faith to others.

Previous to this time the movement called the Reformation, but more generally known as "Campbellism," had made considerable progress in Rush County, being advocated with great zeal and ability by several preachers whose names have long been household words, not only in that locality but all over the State and throughout the West—such as B. Franklin, H. K. Pritchard, R. K. Smith, and George Campbell. Several churches had been organized, and, among others, one known as the Flat Rock congregation, in the neighborhood where young Shaw was living. The views of the new religious party of course had given rise to much discussion, and the controversial discourses of the ministers of other bodies, who disputed its claims, and those of that body, in turn in defense, gave more than usual interest to the preaching of that period, especially when a man of more than ordinary ability from either party was to hold forth. On such occasions large crowds were wont to assemble, and among them the young fiddler, not from any special interest, perhaps, in the subject under discussion, but because everybody was there.