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Goose Pond Resources
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Selected Histories of the Goose Pond
Fish and Wildlife Area and Greene County, Indiana
 HISTORY OF GREENE
AND SULLIVAN COUNTIES, STATE OF INDIANA, FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO
THE PRESENT; TOGETHER WITH INTERESTING BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES,
REMINISCENCES, NOTES, ETC., CHICAGO: GOODSPEED BROS. & CO.,
PUBLISHERS. 1884. pp. 11-12, 21, 288-295:
Greene County was home to Native
Americans and French fur trappers until the early 1800’s, when the
first white settlers began to appear. Goose Pond and Bee Hunter
Marsh are in what became Stafford, Stockton, Grant, and Washington
Townships in 1821. The first settler in Stafford Township was
Josiah Carrico from Kentucky, around 1817. The following year,
other settlers appeared and began clearing portions of the upland
areas for crops. The lowland areas were too wet to farm but were
home to an abundance of wildlife, including waterfowl, wild turkey,
deer, wolves, panthers, and bears, which provided good sport as well
as a key food source.
The lowlands were often flooded in
spring and fall, covering vast areas with water. These seasonal
lakes and ponds were home to thousands of waterfowl, and the area
became known for its outstanding hunting. Incredible numbers of
ducks and geese were killed. One example cited was that one hunter
killed in one season over 1000 geese, ducks, and brandt. Turkeys
were also abundant in the drier upland areas. Greene County quickly
became known as a sportsman’s paradise. In the rainy season
“millions of wild aquatic fowls took baths and gathered their food
…… as will be testified by scores of resident and non-resident
sportsmen who have waded the marshes many a day with wet limbs,
empty stomachs but happy hearts” (pp. 289)
As more settlers came,
agriculture began to play a bigger role in the economy of the area.
Cotton was the first major commercial crop. Corn was also an
important early crop. A mill for cracking corn was built on Black
Creek, the area’s main stream. A dam flooded the lowland, creating
a vast permanent lake and a source of energy to run the mill. After
a few years of operation, however, the lake caused problems with
malaria. When the owners refused to shut down the mill, local
residents took matters into their own hands and eventually destroyed
the dam and the mill. They were never rebuilt.
History of Greene
County, an Overview-1885-1989, Compiled by the History Book
Committee, Greene County, Indiana Historical Society, printed 1990:
Veterans of the Civil War received meager pensions
which began around $4 to $8 per month in the early 1880’s.
“Some veterans took advantage of the opportunity to purchase the
newly opened marsh lands, on the west side of White River, at $1 per
acre” (pp. 5).
“At the beginning of
the 1880’s the vast coal deposit at the north end of the marshes in
Stafford Township, and Stockton and Wright Townships, was to be
opened…” “But life for either those who moved to the rich soil
found in the former marsh areas or the mines was not easy.
….plowing sod ground with a team of horses and walking plow was hard
work, often interrupted by bouts of malaria from the mosquito
infested lowlands. …In 1897 the so-called McKinley flood would
occur, flooding lowlands, washing out culverts, and creating havoc
with the dirt and gravel or rock roads scattered over the country.”
The position of Ditch Commissioner was mentioned…apparently created
at the time of “the drainage of the marsh lands, which had such
names as Goose Pond, Four Mile, Bee Hunter, and what would later be
known as the Latta’s Creek Marsh and the Howesville Ditch Area”
(pp. 8).
In 1895, a real estate
firm…published a forty page catalogue touting Greene County as
having many advantages including the marshes that had been drained
for farm land. “All of the marsh lands had been drained by steam
dredges cutting ditches twenty to forty feet wide, from seven to
thirteen feet deep, and some ditches were thirteen miles long, which
would produce super crops of corn and other grains, vegetable and
hay. Land would sell for $45 to $75 per acre.” The first steam
dredge was brought to the county by E. B. Martindale, owner of the
Dennison Hotel in Indianapolis and former editor and proprietor of
the Indianapolis Journal (pp. 10-11).
 Real Estate
Catalogue, Ramsey Hendren & Slinkard, Real Estate Brokers,
Bloomfield, Ind. 1895, page 4:
Quoting text by E. B.
Martindale, April 1, 1895: “On my first visit to Greene county, in
the spring of 1882, the Four Mile ditch, being the first one make in
the county, was just started. The Four-Mile marsh, containing 5,000
acres; the Bee Hunter marsh, containing 6,000 acres; the Goose Pond,
containing 10,000 acres, and the Lattis Creek marsh, containing
4,000 acres, making in all about 25,000 acres, was covered with
water to a depth of from 3 to (?) feet. Much of the land was free
from any timber growth and the remainder was covered with a growth
of willows, so thick that it would be impossible for a Texas steer
to get through them. These large marshes have been the roosting and
feeding ground for wild geese and ducks in their flight from the
gulf to the lakes in the spring and return to the gulf in the fall,
for centuries, perhaps. Their dropping had enriched the lands
beyond description. I purchased 1,300 acres of the Four-Mile marsh
with the oldest inhabitants of the county did not believe it could
ever be drained and cultivated. I purchased and brought the first
dredge to the county and demonstrated that every acre of these
marshes could be drained and make into the finest farms in the
state. The dredge was (in?) almost daily use from the time I
introduced it until the whole of the 25,000 acres of marshes were
under cultivation. These marshes, which 15 years ago were a
nuisance and only produced chills and fever, are now producing from
60 to 90 bushels of corn per acre and producing in the aggregate
millions of bushels of corn each year; rendering the district one of
the best form farming that can be found in America. I believe I can
show by the actual production that the one hundred sections of land
embracing all of Washington and Stafford and the south half of
Stockton, Grant and Fairplay townships, in Greene county, is the
best one hundred sections of land in America. Such land being free
from overflow and much more productive than the river bottoms, which
do overflow, is hard to estimate their future value.”
EARLY HISTORY OF
Greene County, Indiana, AS TAKEN FROM THE OFFICIAL RECORDS, AND
COMPILED FORM AUTHENTIC RECOLLECTIONS, BY PIONEER SETTLERS, EMBRACING
ALL MATTERS OF INTEREST CONNECTED WITH THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS OF THE
COUNTY, FROM 1813 TO 1875, INCLUDING BRIEF SKETCHES OF PIONEER
FAMILIES, GIVING MARRIAGE, AGES, BIRTHS AND DEATHS, WITH NAMES OF
CREEKS, ROADS, FERRIES, ETC., ETC., By UNCLE JACK BABER,
WORTHINGTON: PRINTED BY N. B. MILLESON, AT THE WORTHINGTON TIMES
OFFICE, 1875.
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From Chapter XIV, General Recapitulation of the County, page
45: |
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“Greene county was named in honor of the memory of
one of our Revolutionary sires of notoriety, General
Nathanial Greene….It was organized in the year 1821….The west branch
of White River divides the county almost equally. Eel river,
Richland, Plummer, Indian, Beech, and Black creeks are all streams
of water of considerable notoriety. “The surface of the country
on the west side of the river is mostly level. Half-Moon,
None-Mile, Scaffold and Four-Mile prairies, make up a very
considerable portion of the territory. The timber on the ridges,
is, for the greater part, what is usually called barrens—consisting
mostly of small hickory, short and rough black oak, white oak and
some walnut. The soil is diversified. The barrens are somewhat
sandy, and the other portions are rich alluvial and stony clay soil,
varying greatly in quality.”
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“Some of the prairie
land is rather low and wet, and better adapted to meadow and
pasturage than to the cultivation of grain.”
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“In August, 1819, the
Indians, who reserved a hunting privilege when they ceded their
lands to the government, were here for the last time. They camped
on the river and creek to the number of six or seven hundred. In
September, 1819, they moved off in a body in their bark canoes, down
White River.”
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From Chapter XXVII. Stockton Township, page 78: |
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“”The Goose pond, near
Mr. Jordan’s, is a great place for wild-geese, raccoons, mink,
otters, wolves, and bears.”
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“Buck creek was the best
place for the old settlers to kill deer. Bee-Hunter creek was a
great place for milk and honey, plenty.”
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“Wagon Hollow, over near
the Jesse Walker farm, was named on account of the fire in the
prairies—burning up the old wagon, where a fellow left it stuck in
the mud.”
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“Many years ago, the
horse of Robert Hensley was found mired down in the Latta creek
marsh, near where Mr. Lewis Dowell now lives, and it took six men to
get him up to the tip of the ground.”
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“The first three log
school houses in Stockton township, were all burnt down, by fire set
out in the prairies by hunters.”
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From Chapter XXXI, Washington Township, Creeks and Branches, page
81: |
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“Black creek heads up in
the Goose pond and marsh, and was named for the dark color of its
clear water, being the color of dark glass. Buck creek was the
place for all the old hunters to kill deer, but is not the Buck
creek of Stockton township. Black marsh, Buck creek, Goose pond and
Dog island are common household works among old settlers. Morgan
prairie was first called the Hockett prairie…… The old settlers
raised good cotton crops for many years west of Paw-paw bend on
White River.
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Compiled 1-15-07 |
