Luke Allbern and Caroline Homer had twelve well-behaved children, Ruth, Martha, Leah, Edith, Michael, Henry, Sarah Beth, Ezekiel, Mary Louise, Evelyn, Sally Beth, and Daniel, in that order, over the span of forty-six years between 1782 and 1828.
Adam Dunn was the third of twenty children born to Henry Dunn from the first of two wives, Alice Drummond and Helena Andrews, over the course of forty-five years at roughly one child every two years like clockwork, between 1801 and 1846. Adam’s multitude of brothers and sisters needn’t be named because this story isn’t about them, or the Allbern children, for that matter. It is the children of the tenth born to Luke and Caroline and the third son of Henry and Alice—specifically Adam and Evelyn’s third and tenth children, and their children, and their children’s children, and so forth, with whom this story is primarily concerned.
Together, Adam and Evelyn homesteaded about two thousand acres just southwest of Milford, Illinois, and eventually divided the homestead among their nine surviving children. The male heirs were given one hundred sixty acres each and the daughters were given eighty acres each.
Adam and Evelyn’s third child, Daniel, born on the fourteenth day of July 1827, in Guernsey County, Ohio, was a strong-willed yet affable problem solver with an inventive mind. Flashes of genius always seemed to come to Daniel in moments of rebelliousness as a child, which most often led to him getting away with whatever mischief to which he aspired. His companions often marveled at how innovative his plans could be.
One day, he and several others conspired to steal Mrs. Schumacher’s Sunday pie from her windowsill as it cooled, and the only reason they were caught was because, having sat in a circle scooping the pie with their hands, it was impossible to remove the blackberry stains both from their hands and their clothing. They were each severely lashed that day, but when they pulled the trick on Mrs. Johnson two months later, they remembered to bring utensils, and therefore had plausible deniability. As he grew older, he began to take notice of the opposite sex and wanted to seem more mature and so outgrew his pranks.
Daniel wasn’t much of a reader but enjoyed philosophy and never philosophized in public, except on political matters, in which case, he possessed the capability to sustain a conversation for over an hour—especially if the topic was worrisome. When he was worried about something, he would become skeptical and uncommunicative, wanting to make decisions on his own, but being so indecisive he simply couldn’t.
In 1845 when Daniel was eighteen years old, the Dunn family relocated to Battle Ground, Indiana, which was founded in 1825 outside Lafayette, in the heart of Tippecanoe County. Daniel farmed with his father and worked at the Dunn Mill southwest of the sacred battle ground, and Penelope Bennett was but a child of the community when they met.
Penelope was born on November twenty-eighth of 1833 in Battle Ground. The town was named as such because it really was the battleground of the Battle of Tippecanoe, which took place on November seventh of 1811, twenty-two years and twenty-one days prior to Penelope’s birth.
Governor William Henry Harrison was tasked with evacuating what was referred to as Prophetstown, a Native American encampment village that formed when the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa and Wyandot came together under the leadership of Chief Tecumseh, of the Shawnee, and his younger brother, Tenskatawa, or, the Prophet, to discuss what should be done about the white colonizers. The colonizers called the gathering The Tecumseh Confederacy, but its leaders did not consider themselves to be one singular group; it was more akin to a great war counsel or a meeting of the International Criminal Court (which wouldn’t be founded until the year 2002). Chief Tecumseh visited the leader of each tribe himself to call them to action.
While Tecumseh was away on such a visit to the south, Harrison led a company of one thousand men to Prophetstown, hoping to catch them unprepared, and requested an audience with the Prophet on the following day. The Prophet, feeling threatened by the military display, instead gave the order for a predawn attack. The Tecumseh Confederacy killed thirty-seven soldiers that day; another one hundred twenty-five were injured, and an additional twenty-five later succumbed to their wounds. The native warriors sustained far fewer casualties, but were forced to retreat as the overwhelming numbers of the United States Troops and their superior firepower won what many settlers felt was a pyrrhic victory that morning.
Growing up in Battle Ground, Penelope had only heard the Battle of Tippecanoe spoken of in hushed reverent tones. The honored sacrifice of the sixty-two men who gave their lives to defeat the natives that day was credited for the security the citizens of Battle Ground had come to enjoy. Not a day went by in the mercantile without a pause in conversation for a moment of solemn remembrance after a happenchance mention of the battle, or one of the prominent citizens of Battle Ground that carried the last name of one of the sixty-two fallen soldiers, or various other topics.
Penelope knew just as much about the battle as any other in the town, but there was a question persistently lingering in the back of her mind, and she could never figure out how to articulate it. A parallel that she could see, however, it seemed, no one else in the whole town ever could.
One day in the mercantile, Penelope was assisting her mother, Charlotte, with choosing a bolt of cloth when she overheard the gossip of the day lead directly to the moment of remembrance for the day, as it so often happened. A gentleman farmer at the counter purchasing tobacco told the shop keeper, Mr. Onsdorff, “Ah heard thur’uz a Indjian raid las’ week o’er in Illinoistown.”
A lady who had come to sell her fresh eggs to Mr. Onsdorff gasped and laid a hand over her heart. “Oh, how awful!”
“Yeas, indeed,” the gentleman turned to speak to the lady, “havin’t heard anythang ‘bout how minny’ur killed, but I know it’uz purtty bad. They mayde off wi’ two childurn,” he said, shaking his head.
Penelope’s mother and the woman selling eggs both gasped at this, for it immediately elicited the thought of losing their own children. They exchanged a look of shock and sorrow, and Charlotte instinctively placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder—and squeezed.
“Nohw, nohw, yoor skay-ring the veeh-mun.” said Mr. Onsdorff.
“Sorry, ladies,” said the gentleman, tipping his hat.
“I jus’ praise the Lord that we kin rest easy, here,” said the lady, raising her eyes to the ceiling for a moment as Mr. Onsdorff’s cash register rang, “Thank the sixty-two and praise the Lord.” She bowed her head.
“Aymen t’ that. Mr. Onsdorff. Ladies.” said the gentleman as he took his tobacco and left the store with a nod to Mr. Onsdorff and another tip of the hat to both ladies.
“See yoo nekst veek!” said Mr. Onsdorff.
Then suddenly, 8-year-old Penelope finally figured out how to articulate what she was thinking. “What if it was us, though?”
Charlotte, thinking Penelope was asking a different question, turned to her daughter, took both of her hands, and looked into her eyes. “Don’chu think about that. We’ve got a safe town, here. Your daddy, and the rest of the men here, will protect us, just like they always have, alright?”
“No, Mama…I mean…” she glanced at Mr. Onsdorff and his egg provider, then met eyes with her mother, “What if we’d been here for a long time…and some people jus’ came and said we had to move? Wouldn’t we fight back jus’ like them? …Aren’t they jus’ like us?”
Mr. Onsdorff and the woman who had already sold her eggs stood in stunned silence, waiting to hear what her mother would tell her.
Charlotte glanced at the onlookers, then turned to her daughter, “Well, Penelope, you’re right,” she said, much to further the surprise of their audience. “But we only came here for a better life, didn’t we?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’ve seen how much big empty space there is here. There’s plenty of room for everyone, right?” Penelope nodded. “So, we really just need to learn how to live peacefully together, and I’m afraid not a lot of people want to do that.” Charlotte did not dare look back at the spectators and continued to browse through bolts of cloth. “What do you think of this one, dear?”
“It’s…dull,” said Penelope, eliciting a chortle from her mother, and Penelope laughed too.
“Well, I better be going, now. Good day, Mr. Onsdorff, Mrs. Bennett.” The lady didn’t bid Penelope goodbye but paused to look at her on the way out the door, as if she were a great curiosity, glanced at Charlotte once more, then hurried out as if she suddenly had a very important appointment to keep.
“Good day, Mrs. Pettiford,” sighed Charlotte as the door swung closed and she rolled her eyes.
Perhaps a trait she learned from her mother, Penelope never did stop speaking her mind, and that was one of the many reasons that Daniel Dunn fell in love with her one unexpected day in 1850.
She made beautiful drawings and paintings, wrote poetry and short stories, played the piano, and dreamed of travelling the world. When he was courting her, she’d play the piano in the parlor of the Bennett home and he would sit and discuss politics with Mr. Bennett. Daniel asked her father for her hand in marriage after one year, and Mr. Bennett was happy to give his blessing.
Adam and Evelyn’s tenth child, Adeline, was three months shy of three years old at Daniel and Penelope’s wedding on the twenty-seventh day of March in 1851.