July 6
Back to Work!
We hope you had a good Independence Day holiday. We here at Willow Leaves certainly did. With Monday being an official holiday, we took the day off for a family picnic and made our red, white, and blue issue on Tuesday instead of the normal Monday.
4th of July Parade
Willow Mills was the site of fantastic celebrations on Independence Day: A parade, fireworks, and the Cannonball Run marked the festivities. This was quickly followed by the beginning of the Holy Waters Summer Revival.
With Independence Day falling on Sunday this year, activities were sandwiched between and around church schedules with remarkable felicity on the part of all involved.
The early morning Cannonball Run barely avoided the stifling heat that has camped over Indiana this past week. Over 100 runners showed up for the 6:30 a.m. start for the three-mile race along a freshly mowed path next to the Penn Central tracks. On a radioed signal from North Manchester, runners began the race with a 3-mile head start on the early morning freight train. The train crossed the finish line at the Willow Mills elevator in 22 minutes and 37 seconds, beating all but 31 of the runners this year. Runners and train alike crossed the line to the cheers of some 300 spectators lining the track.
People began lining Main Street long before the church services let out; but there seemed to be plenty of room for over a thousand spectators for this year’s parade. Special highlights in the 36-unit parade this year included an exceptional kiddie-car parade with a couple dozen participants, and, of course, Angus Fergussons mad gallop down Main Street with a loaded Milk wagon. 4-H Club floats, churches, two bands, and 8 riders in the newly revived Willow Mills Horsemen’s Club helped round out the hour-long parade.
At 10:00 p.m., a delightful display of fireworks was set off from atop the elevator, bringing this 4th of July to a very satisfactory close. Many thanks to all those involved.
“Saved by Grace” is Revival Theme
Holy Waters Baptist Church began its annual revival meeting Sunday evening at 7:00, barely winding up the first service in time for the fireworks at 10:00. Pastor Aaron Hollowell of First Baptist in Washtukah is the speaker for the weeklong revival. His message Sunday night was titled “Baptized in the Water, Washed in the Blood, and Filled with the Spirit.” It began seven nights promoted as “filled with prayer, praise, and preaching.” There is a potluck dinner each evening at 6:00 and service begins at 7:30. All are welcome.
Ghost Rumors Abound
Rumors of a ghost haunting stretches of South River Road just west of town have had a resurgence since last week’s accident involving three teens on the stretch known as the “Devil’s Backbone.” The twisting quarter mile of road has been host to at least one rumored haunting in every generation since the road was built. Some say the old Indian trail on which the road was built in the mid-1800s was a favored route of the Indian Chief Tecumseh, and that he returns periodically to extract vengeance on the white settlers.
The latest version, however, dresses the spirit in a T-shirt and cut offs with a baseball cap. Those who remember a 1950s accident on the road will recall the image of Samuel Graves, a 22-year-old who was killed on the stretch after a baseball game victory celebration. Photos from the party showed him dressed in this way.
The mystery continues.
The Battle of Prophetstown
BY 1805, THE SHAWNEE had been driven west out of Ohio by the constant pressure of westward expansion of the United States. William Henry Harrison was the governor of the Indiana Territory on his rise to the presidency. Tecumseh was the war chief of the Shawnee. His brother, Tenskwatawa, was the spiritual leader of the Shawnee also called “The Prophet.” Their village of over 6,000 Shawnee was located down near Lafayette where the Eel River joins the Wabash.
Tecumseh had the notion that if he could band together all the Algonquin language tribes that remained in the Northwest Territories that he could put a barrier up against the white expansion and he traveled back and forth across Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee encouraging the banding together of the various tribes and prohibiting the sale of their tribal lands to the white invaders. Needless to say, there was tension between the settlers and their army and the Native Americans who claimed the land as their own.
It was while Tecumseh was traveling to promote his union that one of Harrison’s scouts was killed in an ambush. Harrison decided to put an end to the tensions once and for all. He led his army against the Shawnee at Prophetstown and, at the spot now known as Battle Ground in Tippecanoe County, he met and defeated them. The Natives lasted only about two hours before they broke and ran, but that was not enough for Harrison. The next day he led his army into Prophetstown and destroyed everything and everyone remaining there. This effectively ended the dream of a confederation of tribes.
Around here in Willow Mills, our legends have it that Tecumseh was returning to Prophetstown and was near here when he received the news that Prophetstown had fallen and his people were being hunted down. He led the small band that he could gather into the deep woods and headed north collecting more as he went. He joined the British to fight against the Americans in the War of 1812 and died in the Battle of the Thames in Ontario in 1813.
The old Indian trails weren’t straight clear-cut paths like most of today’s roads and highways. But many of the first roads in Indiana followed those trails, not bothering to cut and clear if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. That’s how it came to happen that South River Road has such a twisty little patch just east of Willow Mills that everyone around here calls the Devil’s Backbone.
Old-timers used to say that the ghost of Tecumseh still follows that trail and you can hear him wail each time he reaches the backbone and hears again the news of the slaughter of Prophetstown. People don’t see him so much these days, but there’s always been something that seemed a little haunted about that stretch. The woods are still thick right through there because the number of odd sinkholes make it unsuitable for farming or for building. If there’s a ghost to be found around Willow Mills, you can bet that you should start looking for it on The Devil’s Backbone.
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