Thomas Harrison -- Planning Ahead!

I promised a few days ago that I would post this story -- so here it is!  You'll notice that it refers to this man as "Carter" or "pap".  Thanks to genealogy research by Donna Kuhlman of Bartholmew County, Indiana the mystery has been solved and the man's name was really Thomas Harrison.  The sons listed are correct.  He most likely died before 1840.  His son, William, died in 1834.  He most likely was an uncle of our Vincent (g4 grandfather).

It's pretty clear where our Harrison "planner" tendencies come from!!!

YE OLDEN TYME, "Pap Harrison," by Laura Fawcett Arnold, Dec. 1896
On the old George Cummings farm a few rods north of the public road which runs from "Carter's Chapel" westward to the river, about half way between Joe Anthony's woods and the bend of the road on the hill, stood an old log cabin.  It was less than half a mile east of the once famous "Arnold's Mills" after Lowell, and within its rude walls "old Pap Harrison" spent the last ten or twelve years of his life.  A single large oak or elm tree stood near the house and in pleasant weather the old man always sat in its shade.  He appeared in "the Forks" as that part of the country was called, in 1825 or 1826.  He came from South Carolina with his wife and three sons, Carter, Jr., William, and Caleb.  He claimed to be a preacher, and his Christian name was Carter, and it is said that he was a distant relative of President William Henry Harrison, and of Chicago's mayor, Carter Harrison.

He appears to have been a very queer, eccentric man, hard to live with and difficult to please.  One who knew him well says, "He was about medium size and always wore a broad brimmed hat above his grisly hair, and his eyelids were always red."  After their mother's death, his sons refused to live with him.  One returned to South Carolina, one went west, and the other lived near Columbus, Ind.  This left the old man alone and thence forward he lived entirely by himself doing his cooking and all his housework.  The neighbors said that he never washed a dish or cooking vessel, as long as he could remember what he used it for last.  Sometimes he forgot what had been cooked in some pots or kettles and then he washed them, but he never washed his churn.  He also made and mended his own clothes, and usually presented a very respectable appearance.  Another very remarkable and gruesome eccentricity as perpetuated by local tradition was his habit of always sleeping in his coffin.  This coffin was sufficiently roomy to answer his purpose and was constructed by himself.  Though history is silent on that point, he was probably buried therein according to his often expressed wish.

He was not good natured and quarreled with almost everybody.  For some reason he had a spite at the little town of Columbus and cursed it with his bitterest curses, predicting for it a worse fate than fell Sodom and Gomorrah.  He claimed to have seen the Devil several times and when asked what his satanic majesty resembled, said, "He was a nice looking old gentleman and wore a broad brimmed hat, he walked right past me."  He also said, "The Devil generally looks like the person seeing him."

Pap Harrison was a good carpenter and worked for those who needed his services, and being a good workman, gave satisfaction to his employers.  He always owned and rode a good horse, which was stabled in a shed against his cabin, where he had a log cut out, so that he could feed the animal without going out of doors.  One day a passer-by heard a strange neighing of some horse, but paid little attention.  This went on for several days, when fearing that something was wrong, a neighbor went over to the cabin and found the old man dead in his coffin.  From all appearances, people thought he had been dead about a week, for the poor horse had gnawed all the bark off of the logs of his stable.  The old man was buried under his favorite tree, on the very spot where he had sat so often.  This was probably early in the forties, for when the writer first saw the place in the fall of 1853, no trace of the cabin remained.  Only a lonely grave protected by a rail pen, under a noble old tree, in the midst of a pasture; the place always seemed forlorn and forsaken.  Later, the pasture was turned into a cornfield, and a storm blew down the old tree, but still the rail pen protected the lonely grave.  At last, during the early years of the war, in 1862 or 1863, the rail pen was taken away, the whole field plowed over and the grave of "old Pap Harrison" was lost forever.