Mound Builders and Charles Cox

This was supposed to be a reader column, but it’s really part reader and part “this and that.”

After I wrote about Strawtown’s mounds, Ed Snyder emailed that he’d heard rumors other mounds had existed in this county at one time, but that they’d been lost to agriculture or used as levees along the river.

I’ve seen a number of articles that reported the discovery of Native American remains and artifacts, and some mentioned mounds, but I never tried to determine if any of those mounds were made by mound builders until now.

My research turned up a speech Noblesville City Attorney Justin Roberts delivered to the local Kiwanis Club in 1944 in which he claimed evidence of mound builders had been found near Eller’s Bridge and in Fall Creek Township.

I believe the Eller’s Bridge location was probably the “mound” on the Talge Farm at 126th Street and Gray Road. In 1924, workmen discovered bones there, which led to the erection of a memorial dedicated to the “Stalwart Red Men.” (I wrote about this in a column several years ago.)

I’m not sure where Roberts’ Fall Creek Township site was, but I did find a 1919 story about Native American remains being discovered on top of a hill on the Dr. Harrell farm southeast of Noblesville.

In the 1930s, Native American skeletons were uncovered a couple of miles south of Noblesville during roadwork on what is now Allisonville Road. It was speculated that those bones could have belonged to mound builders.

More skeletons were found in that area in 1954 and may have been from that same site.

I couldn’t find an official statement that any of these sites were judged to be prehistoric, though. It appears the only mounds unquestionably left here by mound builders are those at Strawtown. 

While researching Charles. E. Cox, the Hamilton County native who helped prosecute D. C. Stephenson,  I ran across an interesting anecdote in “Public Men of Indiana” by Francis M. Trissal. It didn’t quite fit the earlier columns, but it’s kind of neat, so I saved it for a reader  column.

It seems the reason Charles Cox’s father, Aaron, only served as Noblesville’s postmaster for a year (1868) was that he was a Democrat, appointed by Andrew Johnson. He lost his job the following year when the Republican Ulysses S. Grant became President.

According to Trissal, “political intolerance prevailed to an unreasonable degree during that period.” (Remember, this was just after the Civil War. The country was still pretty divided.) Johnson appointees were automatically looked on with suspicion in areas controlled by Republicans.

That being the case, Aaron was already on shaky ground when, during the 1868 Presidential election, nine year-old Charles was spotted waving a flag bearing the names of Seymour and Blair (the Democratic nominees for President and Vice President) outside Noblesville’s post office.

One “home patriot,”  who’d never set foot on a battlefield and had no idea what a Rebel flag looked like, wanted to run for Sheriff at the next election, so he decided to make a name for himself by “courageously” wrestling what he assumed was a Rebel flag away from young Charles.

The scuffle “created a riot for a few minutes.”

Trissal ends by observing that no one remembered if the flag’s captor managed to get his coveted nomination for Sheriff, but Charles Cox went on to become “an able judge of the Supreme Court of the State.”

Finally, just an FYI — remember that herb dip recipe from last week’s column? I grabbed a jar of what I thought was some homemade salad dressing and discovered too late that it was actually my test batch of dip.

I can now recommend the dip as a salad dressing, as well as a crudité dip. It was pretty darn good on my salad!

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com