Excerpt from The Pioneers of Morgan County: Memoirs of Noah J. Major

These Memoirs were written during the decade preced ing 1908. The writer was a man of wide acquaintance and keen discernment. The breadth of his sympathies and in terests is abundantly shown throughout the sketches. He was, above all, a pioneer, but not one of that class that soured on the world when it realized the good old times were gone forever. For this reason his comments on pio neer conditions are all the more valuable. Few men have had better opportunities for observation than the writer. In 1823, the year of his birth, the New Purchase, of which Morgan county is a part, was on the very frontier. Whet zel's Trace was cut in 1818, but wild Indians roamed over the whole wilderness of what is now Morgan till after 1820. In 1832, at the age of nine, young Major came with his father to the neighborhood of Martinsville and there on a farm he continued to live till 1911, a period of eighty years. He saw the county grow, helped in its development, walking shoulder to shoulder with the four generations of men and women who transformed it from a wilderness to one of the most beautiful valleys of the State. The writer occasionally refreshed his memory by a reference to the records, but in the main he relied on his memory, which was marvelously clear. His wife did the writing, or, as she modestly puts it, the copying. She occasionally visited the State Library to verify certain facts or dates. It would be interesting to know how much of the fine literary style that runs evenly through the sketches is due to Mrs. Major's copying. The work furnished employment through many a long winter evening, and there is ample honor for two. So far as the editor knows, it is the finest tribute in existence to the Hoosier pioneers. No other county has so good an account of its settlers. When after the.centuries every material vestige of their existence shall have disappeared, their descendants will be grateful-for this, their most enduring monument. L. E.

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