Early residents faced fear if felines

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Though the ghosts and ghoulies have gone to sleep for another year, what do you think terrified our early pioneer ancestors so much that incidents were recorded in John H. Binford’s History of Hancock County in 1882?

Imagine you are an early pioneer in your log cabin at night. The world is pitch black outside your cabin door, without city lights to cast a glow in the sky.

You have only a single candle lit and maybe a small fire in the fireplace, when you hear scratch, scratch, scratch on the exterior of the back wall of the cabin.

A rustling comes from the side of the cabin and moves to the front wall.

Sniffing can be heard at the base of the bolted cabin door, followed by another scratch, scratch, scratch.

BOOM! BANG! BANG!

The creature outside hurls its body at the door, trying to burst through, wildly bent on its sole purpose of devouring you and anything it can sink its fangs into.

You grab the rifle by the bed, poised, ready to shoot the beast if the door does not hold.

The minutes turn into hours as you hear the thing circling outside the cabin in the darkness. Your nerves are on edge, yet you never loosen your grip on the rifle.

It will be a long night waiting for the hungry, desperate creature to slink off and find another form of prey.

This beast is none other than the dreaded panther.

Just such an incident, though somewhat embellished, happened to a Martha Roberts and a Mrs. Rambo in 1824.

The ladies lived near what we would call the northern part of Brandywine Township. In the 1820s, Hancock County did not exist; it was an extension of Madison County with its county seat at Pendleton.

That infamous year was the Fall Creek Massacre. Mr. Isaac Roberts and Mr. Rambo were called upon to attend the trial and act as guards to keep the peace.

The ladies were home alone when Martha Roberts heard a noise outside and opened the door to investigate. Mrs. Rambo pulled her back in just before a panther lunged at the doorway. The two women listened to the animal prowl around and over the top of the cabin until daybreak.

This was not the only incident for poor Martha Roberts. When her son John was 10 years old, she and he were tending the rye patch when John noticed something in the weeds.

Martha Roberts snatched up her son just in time to escape the jaws of a panther in mid-spring.

Mother and son fled to the house for cover.

The panther cut them off and lunged for John.

Being a nimble 10-year-old, John evaded the attack and dashed to the house. His mother was close behind, though she had been frozen in terror for a few moments from watching her son nearly mauled by the big cat.

Martha Roberts went on to live a long enough life to earn the title of oldest citizen of Brandywine Township in 1882 from John H. Binford along with her own biographical sketch in his book.

According to Mark Marimen, James Willis and Troy Taylor’s book “Weird Indiana” — which also sports a lovely picture of Fortville’s Pink Elephant — officials said the last big cats of Indiana were killed in 1851.

However, reports of panther sightings have been documented in 1877, 1908 (Gibson and Pike counties), and 1947 to 1948 (Fountain City, Centerville and Richmond).

More recent sightings have occurred in 2003 and 2005.

The 2005 sightings were in Monroe and Elkhart counties.

A patron of Fortville-Vernon Township Public Library said she witnessed a panther crossing the road in Monroe County when she lived there in the 1990s.

Even this little librarian thought that she saw a dead cougar on Interstate 69 at the Anderson exit a few weeks ago.

Though we have more light, more technology and more fortified homes, those terrifying cats of yore that made our pioneer ancestors tremble in fright might still be out there.

We might think ourselves invincible in our motorcars and homes, but as mother nature shows us time and again, if we found ourselves face to face with a hungry panther, we, too, would feel that age-old terror creep over us and make us ask, “Will I survive?”

Crowe is president of Hancock County Historical Society.

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