‘A Man of Strong Convictions of Right’
From Time to Thyme
By Paula Dunn
When I wrote about the Neal family a few weeks ago, I deliberately included a mention of Reverend Jabez Neal, the first Neal to settle here, because even though he had nothing to do with the newspaper business, he left his own mark on this county.
According to his obituary in the Indianapolis Journal, Jabez Neal was born in West Virginia (it was Virginia then) in 1815. While he was very young, the family moved first to Ohio, then to Texas.
After the death of his father, Daniel, in 1827, Jabez and his siblings returned to Ohio. They may have been orphans at that point. (Their mother’s history isn’t very clear. More on this later.)
According to his descendant, John R. Neal, Reverend Neal arrived in Hamilton County in 1848. Two years later, he married his third wife, Mary, a local girl. They lived in Henry County for a short time before moving back here to live in Deming.
A fiery abolitionist, Reverend Neal was originally a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but he felt it wasn’t taking a strong enough stand against slavery, so he left it for the more outspoken Wesleyan Methodist Church when that denomination was organized in 1843.
As a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he was constantly on horseback, riding a circuit that, according to one source, extended from the Lafayette area to the Ohio River.
In later years, Nan Roberts, the first African American baby born in Noblesville, recalled hearing Reverend Neal preach when she was a child. She said that he sometimes came to Noblesville by horseback to hold services for the African Americans. Afterward, he’d stop to preach in Roberts Settlement before heading home to Deming.
In 1855, Reverend Neal left the Wesleyans to organize a Congregational Church in Westfield. He oversaw the construction of their meeting house, which we know today as the Westfield City Hall on Penn Street. The new church thrived for a while, but a scattered membership and financial difficulties caused it to disband during the Civil War.
The Methodist Church took over the building in 1865 and Reverend Neal, who was once again a Methodist, became a member of that church’s first official board.
Reverend Neal was also a charter member of Deming’s Masonic Lodge, founded in 1863. He was said to have done most of the construction of the lodge building himself, using timber cut in the neighborhood.
In 1878, Reverend Neal and his family moved from Deming to Westfield and in 1883, they moved again, this time to Noblesville.
Reverend Neal is at the center of one of the stranger tales I’ve run across.
In 1892 and 1893, several newspapers reported that Reverend Neal was preparing to file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court to lay claim to 5,760 acres of land in central Texas. He maintained that the land rightfully belonged to his father’s estate and that Daniel’s heirs had been defrauded out of it.
According to the story, after his father’s death, his mother married Martin Parmer, a well known figure in Texas history. Parmer, the administrator of Daniel’s estate, promised to see that Daniel’s children received land equal in value to Daniel’s estate when he died.
It was alleged that Parmer’s son, Isom, “mutilated the records,” by registering the land under “Daniel McNeal” instead of “Daniel Neal,” which prevented Daniel’s children from claiming their inheritance.
By 1892, half that land had become densely populated and was worth thousands of dollars.
Although the land office holding the records had been destroyed by fire, Reverend Neal’s lawyers felt he had a case. However, I’ve been unable to find anything more about this, so it would appear they were wrong.
Reverend Neal, whom the Noblesville Independent described as “A man of strong convictions of right. Radical in his opinions and faith” died in 1895.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com