Old William
Platt and the forefathers of the Bardlocks and Tibbses and Briscoes and
Schofields moved up here from North Carolina a good deal just to get away
from some bad neighbors, mostly Skilletts and Johnsons--one of the
Skilletts had killed old William Platt's two sons. But the Skilletts and
Johnsons followed all the way to Indiana to join in making the new
settlement, and they shot Platt at his cabin door one night, right where
the court-house stands to-day. Then the other settlers drove them out for
good, and they went seven miles west and set up a still. A band of
Indians, on the way to join the Shawnee Prophet at Tippecanoe, came down
on the Cross-Roads, and the Cross-Roaders bought them off with bad whiskey
and sent them over to Plattville. Nearly all the Plattville men were away,
fighting under Harrison, and when they came back there were only a few
half-crazy women and children left. They'd hid in the woods.
"The men stopped just long enough to hear how it was, and started for the
Cross-Roads; but the Cross-Roads people caught them in an ambush and not
many of our folks got back.
"We really never did get even with them, though all the early settlers
lived and died still expecting to see the day when Plattville would go
over and pay off the score. It's the same now as it was then, good stock
with us, bad stock over here; and all the country riff-raff in creation
come and live with 'em when other places get too hot to hold them.
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