Isaac Hoover Julian by MRS

Isaac Hoover Julian By MRS. GRACEJULIAN CLARKE Isaac Hoover Julian, youngest child of Issac and Rebecca (Hoover) Julian, was born June 19, 1823, about one mile and a half southwest of Centreville, Wayne County, Indiana, in a two-story log house surrounded by forest. He was fifth in the line of descent from Ren6 St. Julien. This French ancestor, both of whose parents died during his infancy or early childhood, was a native of Paris. Little is known as to the early life of Red, but he became a soldier by profession and served for a time in the armies of James I1 of England. Later, having embraced the Protestant faith, he migrated to Holland where he enlisted under the banner of William of Orange. He was in the Battle of the.Boyne (July 1, 1690) which determined that William 111 should remain on the English throne. For his services, the soldier received from the King a grant of land “on the Mississippi River”. Returning to France and finding that country an unsafe abiding plwe by reason of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, St. Julien set out for America with the intention of finding his land-grant. He was upwards of forty at that time and tired of soldiering. En route, he stopped at the Bermuda IslFnds, why or for how long is not known, but while there he married Margaret Bullock (or Bulloch) , daughter of a Scotch father and a Spanish mother. This was Red’s first and only matrimonial venture. Proceeding to the mainland, an estate was purchased in Cecil County, Maryland, on Chesapeake Bay, where two sons were born whose early deaths were attributed to the climate. The family then removed to Virginia, settling on a plantation near Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley which estate is said to be still in the possession of descendants. Ren6 and Margaret never saw the Mississippi land-grant, nor did any of their family, but it is said that the survivor of the Boyne used to tell his children that they were not to consider themselves perma- nently established until they should reach that “Promised Land”. Ren6 St. Julien is reputed to have been a man of giant frame, with red hair, strong will, and an irascible temper. He was a slave-holder. Six sons grew to manhood-Stephen, George, John, Peter, Isaac and Ren6, Jr. These American born sons shortened the name St. Julien to Julien or Julkn. 10 Indiana Magazine of History The fifth son, Isaac, the great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, is mentioned in Irving’s Life of Washington as residing near Winchester in September, 1755.l Isaac Julian married Barbara White, daughter of Dr. Robert White, a surgeon in the British navy, and Margaret (Hoge) White. The fear of Indians became so great that Isaac and Barbara left their well-stocked farm\ and all their household goods, except the few articles that they could carry with them on horse-back, and with their seven children fled from the Valley of Virginia. They passed the Blue Ridge and made their way southward as far as Randolph County in the North Carolina Piedmont, where another farm, comprising a thousand acres, was purchased. The original deed to this land is still in the possession of descendants. Four of the brothers of Isaac, who left Virginia at about the same time and for the same cause, also settled in the same part of North Carolina.2 The children of Isaac and Barbara were Isaac, RenB, Mary, Catherine, Rebecca, Margaret, and Abigail, Mary the oldest being about fifteen at the time of the migration, while the youngest, Isaac, was a baby. It is said that the first Isaac had a very dark complexion, which led his father, Red, to call him his Spaniard, referring to Margaret Bulloch’s maternal line- age, and that, in each succeeding generation, there has been at least one “Spaniard”. The second Isaac married Sarah Long, daughter of Tobias Long of Pennsylvania and grand-daughter of Edward Long (or Lange) who came to America with William Penn’s fleet. Twelve children were born to this Isaac Julian and Sarah- Bohan, Tobias, Isaac, Zeruah, Jacob, Elizabeth, RenB, Shubael, Sarah, Elinor, and Martha and Barbara (twins). The third Isaac, father of the Isaac Hoover Julian of this sketch, came to Wayne County, Indiana, in 1808, and was soon followed by three of his brothers, Jacob, Red, and Shubael. In 1816, these hardy sons were followed by the parents and their six daugh- ters. The year after his arrival in Indiana Territory, the third Isaac Julian married Rebecca Hoover, daughter of Andrew

1 Washington Irving, Life of Washington, I, Chap. 18. This item of information relative to Isaac Julien, eon of Ren6 St. Julieh, is given in connection with an account of the Indian panic which followed the defeat of Braddock in July, 1766. ‘For more than a generation, pioneers of the Shenandoah Valley together with a vast number of colonists from the interior of Pennsylvania who migrated by way of the Valley, had been moving to the Carolina Piedmont by the same general route as that now followed by the Julian families. Clarke: Isaac Hoover Julian 11

Hoover, one of the earliest pioneers of Wayne County and a leading member of the Society of Friends. The Hoovers were likewise from Randolph County, North Car~lina.~It is interesting to note that members of both the Hoover and Julian families had united with the Society of Friends during the evangelizing tour of Job Scott, a well-known English Quaker who visited Randolph County, North Carolina, in the year 1788. There have been various conjectures as to just when the Hoovers became Friends and it is therefore gratifying to have the question settled by Isaac Hoover Julian’s explicit state- ment contained in a sketch of his life sent to the writer by his grand-daughter. Andreas Huber, grandfather of Rebecca Hoover Julian, must have removed from his home on Pipe Creek, Maryland to Randolph County, North Carolina, about the same time that the sons of Ren&St. Julien fled from the Valley of Virginia to the same section. It seems probable that the two families were acquainted in North Car~lina.~At the time of Isaac Hoover Julian’s birth in 1823, his father (the third Isaac Julian) had lately completed a term of service in the state Legislature. He had been a school teacher, a Justice of the Peace, and a holder of other local offices. But having signed some notes for a friend on the eve of a financial panic (1819) he now (1823) sold his farm, paid off the notes, and purchased from the Government a tract of land on the Wabash, near the site of the present city of Lafayette in a newer section than Wayne County. There he and his twelve-year-old son John erected a cabin, to which, in December, 1823, he con- ducted his family. At this time, the fourth Isaac in direct line was six months old. The recurrence of a fever from which it was thought the father had recovered laid him low and he died a few days after their arrival at the new frontier home. His widow immedi- ately returned to Wayne County with her six children and by means of tireless industry and dauntless determination man- aged to give them such educational advantages as the time and place afforded. It meant hard work and self-denial on the part of all. Never physically robust, the fourth Isaac Julian, the young- * See Grace Julian Clarke, “Andrew Hoover Comes to Indiana”, in Zndiana Magazine of History (1928), XXIV, 223-241. *See ibid., 223-226, for an account of the migrations of Andreas Huber. The writer haa found no actual evidence to prove that the Hoovers and Julians were acquainted in North Carolina. Rebecca Hoover Julian’s mother was Elizabeth Waymire, daughter of Rudolph Wehmeyer (a native of Hanover) who came to America in 1760. The writer hopes to deal more at length with the Waymire family in a later article. 12 Indiana Magazine of History est child of the widow, was spared much of the drudgery that fell to the lot of his older brothers. Having an insatible appetite for reading and the family library being exceedingly limited, he used to walk miles at all seasons to borrow books about which he had heard. His brother George W. Julian, six years older, was a sort of mentor to him and the tie between them was always close. Work on the farm in summer, daily reading, chiefly history and poetry, a few contributions to local newspapers, some of them in verse, teaching district schools, and a prospecting tour of Iowa occupied the time of the young man until his twenty-third year. In 1846 he and his mother removed to Linn County, Iowa, a few months before the ad- mission of that State to the Union. There he entered a quarter- section of prairie land, to which he added forty acres of wood- land by purchase, expecting to build a home and remain in that western area. He obtained a school and continued to write axtides for newspapers. He became also a contributor to The Ludies’ Repository, a monthly magazine of scholarly tone published at Cincinnati under the supervision of the Methodist Church. In addition he became interested in the politicql and social upheavals of the time, especially in relation to the antislavery movement, sending articles and letters to the National Era, an able antislavery journal published in Washington City by Dr. Gamaliel Bailey. John G. Whittier, Harriet Beecher Stowe and others who were then laying the foundations of literary fame were on the list of contributors to the National Era,Ghence it was naturally gratifying to the youthful Hoosier who had gone West to find himself in such company. Although a firm believer in the principles of the Declara- tion of Independence, Isaac Hoover Julian was a Whig by family tradition and an ardent follower of Henry Clay until the Free Soil movement of 1848 led him to support Martin Van Buren for President. Two years later he was a candidate for the Iowa Legislature from Linn County on the Free Soil ticket. It is interesting to note in passing that, in the fa11 of 1847, Mr. Julian had assisted in erecting the first house in the now considerable town of Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and that two years later he purchased for a home site the beautiful elevated ground which is now the campus of Cornell College, a promi- nent institution of learning. As Mt. Vernon was on the govern-

61t waa in the National Eva that Uncle Tom’s Cabin first appeared. The story ran UI a serial through many weekly issues before it was brougbt out in book form in 1862. Clarke: Isaac Hoover Julian 13 ment military road from Dubuque to Iowa City, Julian was an interested spectator of the vast and hetereogenous migration of gold-seekers who streamed along that thomughfare on their way to California, among them some of his old Wayne County friends and neighbors. During the decade from 1840 to 1850, the development of Iowa was extremely slow. There was not a railroad in the state and farmers had to haul their produce to some Missis- sippi port or landing in order to reach the markets. Materially, socially and politically, an air of stagnation prevailed. The long and severe winters probably tended to increase the homesick- ness that was gradually taking possession both of Isaac Julian and his mother and so in October, 1960, after four years and a half of exile, they set out to return to Indiana. Their route lay through northern Illinois where they heard much talk about Chicago already a city of 20,000 inhabitants, destined to steady growth. Stopping in Lafayette, a headstone was placed at the grave of the father and husband on the bluff of the ‘Wabash where he had died twenty-seven years earlier. In Indianapolis, these returning pioneers saw their first railroad train, on the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad, then the only one in the state. The Constitutional Convention being then in session, they stopped over for a few days, guests of friends in the capital city. In a brief account of the trip, which was by stage coach all the way, Mr. Julian mentions “an execrable night ride [from Indianapolis to Centreville] over the muddy expanses and abysses of the old National Road.” Resuming the study of law which he had begun in Iowa, Mr. Julian was admitted to the bar of the Wayne County courts in 1851, but, finding the practice utterly uncongenial, he soon abandoned it and turned to newspaper work, assisting Rawson Vaile on The True Democrat, a Centreville paper de- voted at that time to forwarding the political fortunes of George W. Julian, a brother of Isaac Hoover Julian, who had been elected to Congress as a “Free Soil-Democrat” in 1849 and who was a candidate for Vice-president in 1862 on the ticket with John P. Hale. But newspaper work did not consume all of Isaac Julian’s time. In 1853 he prepared for the Yearly Meeting of Anti- slavery Friends an exposition of the legislation of Indiana re- specting colored people and especially of that clause of the new Constitution excluding free Negroes from the state. This ar- 14 Indiana Magazine of History ticle was widely copied, appearing in The Liberator where Mr. Garrison called attention to its historical importance. Writing made a special appeal to Mr. Julian and three years later he edited and published an autobiographical memoir of his uncle, David Hoover, in connection with which he prepared an in- troduction and appendix containing valuable sketches of early times in the Whitewater Valley. He was a frequent contributor during these years to The Genius of the West, a literary magazine published at Cincinnati. A little .later he was represented by poems and a biographical sketch in a volume entitled Poets and Poetry of the West, published at Columbus, Ohio. A number of these poems were afterwards reprinted in magazines and newspapers. The following titles indicate the bent of his mind : “On Inadvertently Deadening an Old Elm ;” “Lines Suggested by an Election;” “Labor: Its Rank and Rights;” “To Thomas H. Benton;” “Indian Summer in the West ;” “Free Soil Ratification Song;” “Our True Pacific Line ;” “The Laureate of the Press”. Among notable prose articles of the same period mybe mentioned: “New Consider- ations of the Rights of Man;” “Moral Relations of the War Against Mexico ;” and “Diagnosis of Conservatism”. In the fall of 1858, Mr. Julian purchased The Indiana True Republican, published in Centreville which throughout the War, that came soon, advocated the mbst active and aggressive efforts to suppress the rebellion. He removed the paper to Richmond in 1865, changing its name to The Indiana Radical. His last journalistic and political service in Indiana was when he gave ardent support to Horace Greeley for, President in 1872. He was postmaster at Centreville during Lincoln’s first term and at Richmond during the first term of Grant. Isaac Hoover Julian in 1859, at the age of thirty-six, was married to Virginia M. Spillard of College Hill, Ohio. Of the five children born to them only one, Isaac Victor, the oldest, survives. He is now a resident of San Diego, California. It is interesting to note that Virginia Spillard’s father and mother became acquainted and were married in New Harmony, the families of both being at the time members of Robert Owen’s historic community. Because of Mrs. Julian’s failing health the Isaac Julian family removed in 1873 to San Marcos, Texas, where the wife and mother died six months later of tuber- culosis. The care of his children, the oldest being a boy of twelve, together with an exacting and not remunerative news- Clarke: Isaac Hoover Julian 15 paper business, so completelyabsorbed Mr. Julian’s time as to leave no opportunity for outside literary pursuits. His paper, the San Marcos Free Press, was a pronounced Jeffersonian Democratic sheet, and as such did not commend itself strongly to the active members of the Texas Democracy. Furthermore, it fairly exemplified its title, voicing Julian’s views to such a degree that an attempt was made to suppress it by shooting the editor in his office. The shots however failed of their deadly purpose and the assailant was indicted by a grand jury for assault with intent to kill. Through the delays and appeals common in such cases, the would-be assassin finally escaped with a fine, whereupon he returned to Mississippi, his former abode, and was himself soon afterwards murdered by an_other journalist. To what degree such ruffianly manifestations must have jarred upon the exiled Hoosier, with his Quaker background and love of scholarly pursuits, may be imagined. In 1890 Mr. Julian sold the Free PTess, after seventeen years of continuous publication, but was compelled to resume possession because of non-payment. He now changed the name to the People’s Era which he issued as an independent journal till his retirement ten years later. In 1896 Julian, after an absence of twenty-three years, made a visit to his native state, attending the annual Old Settlers’ Meeting in Centreville in company with his brothers, Jacob B. and George W. Julian. He especially desired to meet the Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, whose world- wide fame had not yet dawned when Mr. Julian left Indiana in 1873. Mr. Riley was noti at home, but he afterwards sent Julian his latest volume of verse together with a characteris- tically friendly letter, from which I quote the following para- graph : I have been impressed by all your verse as of a sterling and unusual product, based, as I believe it, upon poetic endowment the most genuine+ only failing of perfect growth and flower wherein it has been withheld by lack of constant cultivation and by discordant business interruptions that make the true poet’s life a din and havoc almost unbearable. Most cer- tainly I find occasion to congratulate you for your song’s sincerity and human heart and righteous message. Four years later, after fifty years of service, Mr. Julian retired from the field of journalism in so far as active duties were concerned, but continued until his death to contribute to local papers and occasionally to the distant Palladium and Item 16 Indiana Magazine of History

of Richmond, Indiana. For a full decade longer he lingered, busy with books, magazines, a large correspondence, and keenly interested in every helpful enterprise whether local, state or national. A walk through town, stopping for brief greetings with acquaintances, then back to his book-lined study and his easy chair-this was his daily routine. A man of the simplest tastes and always poor, he probably spent more for books than all the other inhabitants of San Marcos combined. A trip to San Antonio or Austin always meant a visit to the book-shops, including the second-hand dealers, and a return laden with spoils to be enjoyed in solitude and perhaps dis- cussed with two or three congenial friends. A recluse by nature, Mr. Julian’s long residence among a people of different tastes and traditions tended to emphasize this trait. He was a genuine lover of poetry and possessed some rare editions of Burns, who had been one of his early idols. He handled books as few persons do nowadays, with that tender care and sense of privilege that characterized their use when they were few and precious. Always a loyal Hoosier (the very word Indiana was music to his ears), he was nevertheless much attached to his adopted state in whose romantic history he took great delight. He was eagerly interested in every effort to improve the tone of society in San Marcos and took an active part in establishing the first public school there, for which he afterwards received much praise, but little encouragement at the time. Several years before hisi death he offered his valuable library as a gift to the town on condition that the authorities would agree to house it properly and keep it open to the public at stated hours, but no action was taken in the matter. A characteristic act was the placing of a stone at the grave of an old soldier of San Jacinto. This patriot had died, poor and alone, in San Marcos, and was buried in its beautiful cemetery. But there was no relative to look after the marking of his last resting-place, and after vainly seeking through the press to arouse public interest in the matter, Mr. Julian himself purchased a neat and substantial granite stone on which are in- scribed simply the man’s name and the words, eloquent to all who are familiar with Teixas history-“A Soldier of San Jacinto”. When Mr. Julian, himself in his eighty-seventh year, led us to that spot in the spring of 1909, tears were in his eyes as he dwelt on the glory of that title. Clarke: Isaac Hoover Julian 17

Utterly without dogmatism, and not a member of any church, although he had been reared a Quaker, he was a deeply religious man. Surrounded by churches and church-going neighbors of the vehement Southern type, he must have seemed an oddity. When called on in his hill-side home one Sunday forenoon, he was found reading “Unity, Jenkin Lloyd Jones’ weekly evangel. He talked of Keats, showing several unusual editions of the works of this poet and reciting from Thomson’s “Seasons”. Finally the conversation drifted to the subject of a future life, when he expressed a hope that amounted almost to a conviction, of the soul’s immortality and of knowing one another in the Great Beyond. Never robust physically, this last survivor of his father’s family yet lived to be an old man, and died without an illness, simply falling asleep between a Saturday and Sunday. As one contemplates this long, unobtrusive and uneventful life one is impressed with the fact that it perhaps held more of bereave- ment, struggle and disappointment than falls to the average lot. And yet his soul, which was the real man, dwelt on a lofty plane and knew much of serene joy. On the afternoon of his funeral, the shops of San Marcos were closed and the schools were dismissed that the pupils might attend the services in a body, all carrying flowers with which they covered the grave of their old friend. The life-long efforts in behalf of temper- ance, peace, freedom of thought, and education of Isaac Hoover Julian were dwelt upon by those who spoke and it was mani- fest that he had the respect and affection of a wide circle.6

THE HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN It stands beside the dusty way, All aged and weather worn, Nor tree nor vine nor clustering flowers Its naked walls adorn; Moss-grown its hoary, time-stained roof- No sweet charm lingers there; The scene by nature once so blest Is desolate and bare. “hen let the heartless worldling laugh, Or curl the lip in scorn, I cannot view unmoved the spot- The house where I was born.

‘It geema appropriate to append three of the characteristic poaof Isaac ‘Roover Julisn. “The House Where I waa Born” was written at Centreville in 1868. But three of the five stanzaa are reproduced here. 18 Indianu Maguzine of History

For here my father in his prime, With manhood’s arm of might Clove down the giant forest trees That dimmed the noonday light, And reared those walls and that old roof To shelter those he loved; The perils of our border life Its harsh privations proved. Then let the heartless worldling laugh, etc.

And here my mother tended well The nurselings of her breast- Alone amid the wilderness- Their waking and their rest, Ofttimes when night hung o’er the woods And snow lay on the ground The gaunt wolf howling on the hill, The savage prowling ’round. Then let the heartless worldling laugh, etc.

MAPLE SUGAR MEMORIES’ Thanks for your gift!-Broad earth owns not A dearer or a sweeter! To life’s bright morn-home’s natal spot, A talisman completer! The weary years roll back, and bring Again my happy childhood, Its pleasant home, its cherished haunts, Lapped in the fragrant wildwood. A venerated form I see- The dearest-’tis my mother’s, Her loving glance and smile on me, My sisters and my brothers. And ever from her hand to mine, When but a little shaver, A lump of sugar was the sign And seal of good behavior I Again, while chill the March winds blow, And snow the earth is wrapping, Forth with the larger boys I go, The sugar orchard tapping.

‘“Maple Sugar Memories” was written in San Yarcos, Tau, in 1881. It WM addressed to a lady who had sent the editor some maple mgar which she had just received from the north. Clarke: Isaac Hoove~Julh 19

The holes are bored, the spiles are driven, The troughs adjusted squarely; Then, when a copious thaw is given, The “sweety sap” flows rarely.

Then busily from tree to tree The water-hauler passes, And gathers in the sap to be Made sugar or molasses.

In barrels to the sugar-camp He bears the crystal treasure And pours in giant popular troughs In floods of larger measure.

There o’er the furnace in a row Are ranged the cauldrons boiling, And growing sweets mature below- Reward of all the toiling.

All day the work goes bravely on, Nor yet at nightfall passes, With “stirrings off” and mirth and fun Of rosy lads and lasses.

At night, the dim woods, half concealed, Majestic, calm and solemn, In the bright firelight stand revealed In many a stately column.

So pass the hours, till spring, apace, Comes on, no more a rover, Bringing the brighter, warmer days, And sugar-making’s over!

I mark the lamb-tongue’s spotted leaf; The crow-foot follows early; The tomtit flits with pauses brief, The bluebird whistles clearly.

Such are the visions which attend Upon this grateful token, While thoughts and sympathies they lend Too deep to be e’er spoken.

My years of exile fade away; My youth comes back before me; My native land in bright array,- Again her skies bend o’er me1 20 Indiana Magazine of History

Thanks for your gift! Could aught on earth An added value give it? Yes, there remains its crowning worth,- From your hand to receive it!

TO G. W. J.8 Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the right Alone may do securely.-Lowell.

Brother beloved and true!-nor mine alone- Brother of all true spirits everywhere! Long thy co-laborer in my humbler sphere, To me how well thy steadfast soul is known! Lo, “Truth is mighty”, and all yet must own- Save owl-like Prejudice and Ignorance, Or else discomfited Malevolence- The brave and martyr spirit thou hast shown. Thou livest to see the dawning of that day; After the struggle of thy early life, Thy manhood’s sorrows, conflicts, toils and strife- In service of thy fellow men grown gray- Thou sharest the rest and peace so nobly won, Serenely gazing on thy westering sun.

8In 1891, Mr. Julian sent from San Marcos this sonnet to hia brother George W. Julian. The occssion was the seventy-fourth birthday of the latter.