This is part of my history and guide to my adopted home - Terre Haute, Indiana.
Introduction
I was at one of the excellent evening talks at the Vigo County Library and the speaker casually mentioned Tom Puckett who chased a bear down to Vincennes, a town 60 miles south of Terre Haute, where he killed and skinned it.
I had not heard this story before and decided to look up more about this man and his life.
Tom and the Bear
The incident with the bear seems to have occurred around 1826. One story of Tom and bear is that he was hunting at Hymera, Indiana, 25 miles south of Terre Haute, or at Eel River, about 25 miles to the southeast, when he came across a large bear. He didn't want to kill it as he had no means of transporting it back to Terre Haute, which was little more than a village at the time, so he drove it back towards the the place which took him two days.
Some stories give a little more detail. One says that while in search of strayed hogs in the woods, Tom startled a bear and lost him while going for a gun. He resolved that he would drive the next bear home with him. He soon found a much larger bear than the first, near Eel river, and on horseback, with the aid of a large stick, drove the animal to the Honey Creek road. After traveling eighteen miles the bear had become so foot-sore traveling over the rough and frozen ground that it lay down and would go no farther. Fortunately, Puckett met his brother, who had a gun, and then dispatched the bear.
A third story says Tom met a friend, Shallum Thomas, near Mt. Pleasant church, which is about 5 miles southeast of Terre Haute, and between them they drove a wild black bear from there into Terre Haute.
A fourth story says that:
Tom had been looking for lost cows one day and startled a bear, but having no gun he left it to wait until he could go home and get his rifle and return and kill it. When he returned to the spot with his gun, the bear had gone! This made him determined to get a bear and the next day came across a large one lying on the sunny side of a hill sleeping. It was so large Tom realized he couldn't even carry just the hide home.
Tom started shouting at the bear and poked it with his gun to try and get it to move towards Terre Haute, but instead it started heading in the direction of Vincennes to the south. Tom headed it off and forced it towards Terre Haute. The bear zig zagged and covered close to forty miles instad of the twenty it would have taken on a direct route. About seven or eight miles outside of town, the bear laid down and refused to budge. Tom killed and skinned the bear and headed towards Terre Haute with the hide. The story goes that almost every settler in Vigo County saw the hide and wondered at its size.
Who knows? Perhaps Tom Puckett really did drive a bear from somewhere around Hymera back to near Terre Haute, alone or with someone else. Maybe it's all just a tall tale?
If it is true, he was lucky not to end up like Hugh Glass, the trapper that got attacked by a bear in 1823. The films Man in the Wilderness and The Revenant are based on Glass's story.
Thomas Puckett
Whatever the truth behind the bear story, Thomas Puckett really did exist and quite a bit is known about him.
Richard Puckett and his wife, Hannah had seven sons and five daughters, David, Thomas, Isom, Moses, Joseph, Lewis, Richard, Elihu, Lavina, Phoebe, Mary and Nancy. Thomas was born July 25, 1792, in Surry County, North Carolina. He married widow Nancy Tarvin Early on January 20, 1817.
They had 10 children, all born in Terre Haute; Irene, born February 8, 1818; Thomas, born March 31, 1820; Hannah, born June 24, 1822; Lorenzo Dow, born April 25, 1825; Chauncy, born August 10, 1827; Demas Deming, born March 4, 1829; Cyrus, born January 3l, 1831; Miranda, born February 27, 1833; Uceba, born February 27, 1833; and Elijah, born October 27, 1835.
Tom's son-in-law, Caleb Garrett, described Tom as being:
a man of stem views and decided in manner. Strict obedience to his plans was law. He laid upon himself herculean tasks and undertakings. He left North Carolina and came to Ohio about the year 1812, in time to volunteer in the war with Great Britain. He went through immense hardships in the North until he was detailed to guard prisoners from near Detroit to where or near where Cincinnati now stands. Soon as he was discharged and could get ready, he took his little assets and wended his way to old Fort Harrison, Indiana, where the country was wild and overrun by hostile Indians, where men were shot down from ambush almost daily, by the savages. One man was shot dead from his horse while he and Mr. Puckett were riding together.
Mr. Puckett, as soon as the Indian trouble subsided, laid a claim to some land situated on the east side of Fort Harrison Prairie, went to work and improved the land, and the place was called Puckettsville. Soon after, the Government to reward the Canadian deserters, gave them many choice tracts of land and, among others, Mr. Puckett's land fell to them, and he had to seek a home and land elsewhere, which he found at the south end of the same prairie, where he bought a tract of very excellent land and made it his family home until early in the year 1837, when he made arrangements to move to Texas.
For all his oddities, Tom was remembered as a good man, and remarkable for his courage and endurance.
Tom was on the Fort Harrison prairie as early as 1814, and claimed to have built the first log cabin in Terre Haute near the Modesitt house on the river bank. He was also one of that party with Joseph Liston, who had the distinction of turning the first furrow in Terre Haute, indeed in the whole of Vigo county. One of Puckett's companions in hunting was Dr. Thomas Parsons, who was here as early as 1819.
Dr. Charles B. Modesitt was the first physician to settle in the town of Terre Haute. He came to Fort Harrison in 1816 and bought property at the first sale of town lots and built the first house, a log cabin, at Water and Ohio streets. Dr. Modesitt's second house, built on the site of the first cabin built in Terre Haute was put up by Tom Puckett and another man.
John Jenckes (1790- 1860) was a sailor to the East Indies and South America, making three voyages. In 1818, he took up his residence in a new log house built for him by Tom, three and a half miles south of Terre Haute.
Tom's son-in-law, Caleb Garrett wrote that:
On the 27 of April 1839, he (Tom) started with his family in flat boats to Texas and some two weeks thereafter he in company of his son, Lorenzo D. Puckett started to Texas with a drove of forty odd horses and mules, on the first day of July following he met his family on Bayou De Glaze, Louisiana, and there entered their wagons and on the 30th of the same month crossed the Sabine River at Thompsons Ferry, and after traveling ten weeks landed at Pecan Grove twelve miles east of Austin City, Travis County, Texas, where he has resided ever since.
Tom lost no time in acquiring land in the Republic of Texas after his arrival from Indiana. The first such purchase seems to have been on August 12, 1839, from Adolphus Sterne, who executed a warranty deed to him for five hundred dollars covering a tract of land in Nacogdoches County.
Tom acquired by warranty deed, dated October 29, 1840, from John Cartwright, for $2,400 cash, 1,107 acres on the East bank of the Colorado River.
After Texas became a State in 1845, Tom acquired many tracts and parcels of land in Texas, mainly in or near the City of Austin and particularly in the years 1848 and 1849.
In the late 1860s, Tom drove some cattle to Kansas, which was too much for the seventy-five year old pioneer, and he died at the home of his son-in-law, Caleb Garrett, at or near Tuscola at The Cedars, Douglas county, Illinois on November 14, 1868 at 4:00pm. He was buried at the Lester graveyard on the East bank of the Okaw River on Sunday November 15, 1868.
Tom had a brother, David, who was also born in Surry county, North Carolina. For fifty-two years he lived on his farm in Clay county, where he died on April 5, 1881, aged 81 years and 18 days. He was for sixteen years one of the Commissioners of Clay county, and was universally esteemed and respected. He also helped roll logs for the first house built in the city of Terre Haute.
Sources and Resources
An Old Settler Gone, Terre Haute Weekly Gazette, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 14 April 1881
Greater Terre Haute and Vigo County by C. C. Oakey, 1908, Lewis Publishing Company
Shallum Thomas - Find a Grave
The History of Early Terre Haute by Blackford Condit, 1900, A. S. Barnes & Co.
Thomas Harvey Puckett, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas by John Henry Brown, 1880, L. E. Daniell
Thomas Puckett by Sue Puckett Peyton, 1955