Micah French (1792-1889)

FRENCH, PURDY

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 1/3/2016 at 13:14:59

From Nevada Representative July 3, 1889

The French Memorial Services.

The Micah French Memorial services were held as announced in the city park Sunday afternoon. The attendance, considering the oppressive heat was large and unusually attentive. Some ten to fifteen gentlemen and one lady whose ages ranged from 70 to 90 years, occupied the positions of honor on the platform. After an opening hymn by the choir, which rendered excellent music throughout the service, a scripture lesson was read by Rev. Mr. Cooper and prayer offered by Rev. John Doty of Maxwell. The addresses by Col. John Scott and Capt. T. C. McCall were in keeping with the occasion and worthy the speakers and the man in whose memory they were spoken. These tributes to the life and character of our late patriarchal friend merit a much better reproduction than the abridged ones we give below.

COL. SCOTT'S ADDRESS

Col. Scott spoke briefly of the modesty of the men who were reared under the oral and mental discipline common from seventy to one hundred years ago, (appealing to the experience of many aged men who had seats upon the platform,) and commented especially upon the modesty of him in whose memory these exercises were held.

He then spoke of the grandeur that attaches to the character of those who through a long life patiently and earnestly seek the path of duty, and when found walk therein without variableness or shadow of turning with steadfastness and patience to the end. In doing this it was necessary to consider the environment of Mr. French, from his birth near the coast of the Atlantic in 1792 when the Connecticut river was the frontier--through New York, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, finally landing in the heart of Iowa when he was past sixty years of age, and while Story county was yet in its frontier condition. This period embraced the administration of every president from that of Washington to the present time. It witnessed the admission of all the States except only his native State, Vermont. It saw the growth of America from a population of four millions to sixty millions. It embraced the period of the application of steam to navigation on the rivers and on the ocean, as well as at a later period our most marvelous railway construction. He was born and grew into the years of sturdy manhood while commerce and travel were confined to the "the trail" of the buffalo and the Indian, and long before the flint and tinder-box were superseded by friction matches, and while the lard lamp, the crane, the oaken bucket and the well-sweep held away, and the spinning wheels of our grandmothers made sweet music at the fireside. These were the days when individual effort was essential in the race of life, and before the corporations and trusts which now manage our affairs were ever dreamed of. A modest self-reliance was the natural outcome of such a life. The self-poised character of Micah French was the out growth of this environment, and made him the strong man which his family and the neighbors of the later years knew him to have been.

Mr. French's ancestry was traced to John and Grace French, Welsh Baptists, who fled from persecution at the hands of the established church of Great Britain, and landing in Massachusetts found the same sort of welcome at the hands of the Puritans, and were driven into the wilderness because of their religious faith and forms. Thomas French was born at Baintree, Massachusetts, in 1657. His descendant, Micah French, settled at East Bridgewater in 1747; and Micah French, the father of the subject of this sketch, was born April 7, 1765, married Sarah Howe and died January 6, 1821.

In passing a tribute was paid to the teachings of the Baptist church as a pure democracy, and the fact that to their abhorrence of intolerance we are indebted for the clause in the constitution of our government which secures to every citizen entire freedom from restraint in religious forms and belief.

After a residence of some years in Central New York, having left Windsor, Vermont, when young Micah was six years old, the family was settled at Springfield, Ohio, as early as 1811. In the fall of that year the father was in charge of trains engaged in transporting supplied from the settlements in Central Ohio to Ft. Meigs for the troops stationed there to ward off marauding and hostile excursions of the savages. Young Micah, then 19 years old, drove as did also a brother, a team of oxen in the train of his father, the route being mostly through what was then known as "the black swamp," and which now comprises several of the fairest counties in that great State.

On one occasion the troops when the train arrived, were firing guns in the fort in honor of the victory over the Shawnee Prophet at Tippecanoe which occurred November 7th of that year. The famous chief Tecumseh, slain at the battle of the Thames, the following year, was a brother of the Prophet.

The followed interesting details of the part taken by Mr. French in the battle of Queenstown, October 13, 1812, as a member of a company of volunteers where he received a wound to his arm, as described in this paper issue of June 19th, Mr. French being then in his twenty first year.

At the age of 27 the same year that John Pogue located on the site of the city of Indianapolis, Mr. French with others, settled on Strawtown prairie on White River, above Indianapolis. Here he remained in his bachelor cabin, twelve feet by fourteen, for two years. On the day that he completed his 29th year he was married to Azubah Purdy, at Springfield, Ohio. With his bride he returned to the cabin, traveling on horseback through the wilderness, and on pack horses carrying such necessaries of live as could not be produced on their little farms or obtained in traffic with the neighboring Indians. During the following years sickness prevailed, and there were many deaths from malarial diseases, especially among the children and it was not uncommon that there were not enough of well persons to give attention to the sick and to bury the dead.

To add to their trials the "land pirate" came among them and entered their lands, taking also the labor of years and the roofs that sheltered them.

Then followed the emmigraton to Vermillion county, Illinois, about the time that Chicago was first settled, and when the great prairie north and west of Danville for seventy-five miles was without inhabitant. At this time, when Mr. French was forty years old, occurred the Black Hawk war, resulting in the treaty at Davenport, by which a strip of Iowa fifty miles in width was opened for settlement.

Mr. French with his wife and young children, and some of his old neighbors, especially Mr. John Elliott, who accompanies him, and with whom for a number of years he "spliced teams" to secure the necessary power to cultivate his farm, were interested observers of and participants in the trial and dangers of these stirring times.

At the age of 49 he turned his face to the East and made his home, for twelve years in Boone county, Indiana. From thence in September 1803, he came to Toole's Point now Monroe--in Jasper county, Iowa, and in 1856, at the age of sixty four, he took possession of the acres from which he passed in death at the ripe age of 97 years. Familiarity is said to breed contempt and that no man is a hero to his own valet, --to the man who arranges his wig and prepares him for inspection and dress parade. But the 'modest' hero of many trials and dangers, he to whose memory we have here met to do honor, was never a mas who dressed for parade or inspection. He did quietly and without ostentation the duty of each hour in life. He saw the constellation on our flag increase from fourteen stars of small magnitude to thrice that number with multiplied brilliancy, and the country which it represents pass from obscurity and weakness to be the greatest power on the globe. And to him, and to such as he is this growth to be ascribed. The men who have tilled the rich acres of this country, and who as pioneers have made it possible for others to do the same, are men who have builded our cities and spanned our country in all directions with hands of steel; for without the tilling of the acres the sites of our cities and the lines of our railways would be grass covered still.

On the battle field of Queenstown when a youth, or rallying his neighbors to defend their homes from murderous savages in more mature years, Micah French was no common man. It was given to him to live in stirring times, and to do his duty to his country and his fellow men through a long and eventful life. He cheerfully offered his boys, the stay of his declining years, on the altar of his country in her later and more severe trial in heroic devotion which was fully shared by his aged wife. When wrongly informed after a severe battle that one son had fallen, both answered that it would be unreasonable to expect that all would return. In all things, and in all things else, in his steadfast faith in the God for whom his fathers suffered persecution, and his determination to do the right as it might be given him to see the right, Micah French, throughout his long life was much more than the average man. Let this be the verdict of all who knew him, and let us hope that his virtues may be emulated by those who follow him.

CAPT. McCALL'S ADDRESS

Fellow Citizens:

I first became acquainted with Micah French about 30 years ago. He came to me to assist him in relation to his pension, and I then learned somewhat of his history, and was favorably impressed with his firm manly bearing, and much interested by a similarity of a part of his history with that of my own father's. My father was born in the same year, 1792, immigrated to Ohio, then to Indiana, then back to Ohio, then to Illinois, and finally to Iowa. My father was also a soldier of the war of 1812 and was likewise wounded in the left arm by the bullet of an Indian employed by the British. They were of the same politics. These things drew me strongly to the then 67 year old veteran and ever after we were firm friends. Micah French was a giant in stature, was over six feet high, weighed 200 pounds, had an iron will and was firm in the right as the rock ribbed hills of his own native Vermont. He was one of the bold pioneers who left the impress of his good character on all with whom he associated and as an evidence, while not entirely in consequence of his influence, perhaps, yet it is a fact, you may draw a circle of three miles from the home where he spent the last 32 years of his life and in it you will find more, or at least as many, of the very best and most substantial men of to-day than can be found in any community of the same size and number and in my opinion it is good men that the world needs more than great; men who see justice and do it; men who know love and live it; and such was Micah French. The bulwark of his moral character was his strong faith in Almighty God, and one of his strongest characteristics was his patriotism, having offered his own life in defense of his country and sent three sons and one grand son to the war of the Rebellion, all brave, determined, true men, filling well the positions assigned them.

Not having visited my old friend as I ought to have done during his last sickness, when I heard of his death, I determined to attend his funeral and look once more on the face of the grand old christian gentleman; and I went, and when the opportunity was given I walked forward and took a long last look at my old friend, and then thought that I would rather be Micah French in that coffin than the Czar of Russia with all his wealth and power. For I firmly believe that the characteristics possessed by Micah French, such as integrity of heart, benevolence of disposition, love of country, and the equality of all men without regard in their social position and an abiding faith in Almighty God; I say that I firmly believe such characteristics will furnish a free passport to the soul through the straight path that leads to an immortality of eternal highness; and I as firmly believe that tyranny, oppression, sin and unbelief will as certainly force the naked soul through the wide path that leads to an immortality of eternal unhappiness. Micah French was a model specimen of the American citizen and we should all emulate his virtues.