Pitchfork Justice: it's where you got your mean streak, son

Lewis Swihart

Another story that Gramps used to tell was about his grandfather, Lewis Swihart, who purportedly ran his pitchfork through a fellow during a dispute about a creek that ran through his property.  The fellow consequently died from the injuries sustained.  Knowing Gramps' proclivity for telling tall tales, I had my doubts on this one as well.  But, knowing Gramps and my great grandmother, descended from Grandpa Swihart himself....made me think, well, yeah, I could see that.

Gramps "Jack" (the younger one) and his brother, Merritt sitting on the stone porch Grandpa Swihart built

Grandpa Swihart was a tall, strong man.  Both farmer and stonemason, I imagine he was a force to be reckoned with.  He descended from two generations of Dunkard preachers and took a wife with deep Quaker roots.  Somewhere along the line, that pacifist gene was lost to the generations.  The story that Gramps told was set southeast of Argos, where Lewis Swihart had a large farm and fishing ponds.  Evidently his neighbor upstream dammed a creek that fed the ponds and watered Swihart's cattle.  Breaking open the dam, Swihart was angry enough that when confronted, he took the pitchfork in-hand and ran it through his farmer-neighbor.

Argos Reflector 1910

So I went looking for evidence to this story.  And there is more than just a kernel of truth to it.  I found no follow-up about a pitchfork or anyone dying, but indeed, there was an altercation and Grandpa Swihart was threatened with a gun by this farmer-neighbor, named John Eckert, in 1910.  Gramps left out the part about his grandfather threatening to kill Eckert's livestock.  Of course.  I wish there were more details than this.  I also found an article about Lewis's brother, Milo, who was shot by chicken thieves in 1933.  He managed to crawl to Lewis's house a few hundred feet away.  Those Swiharts were a hardy stock.

Logansport Pharos-Tribune 1933

The Swihart Family held reunions of a few hundred relatives at Grandpa Swihart's farm a little northeast of the Walnut Church of the Brethren, where he and his parents attended and are laid to rest.  We discontinued the Swihart Reunion in 1998, the 100th anniversary of the first one held at the farm.  Grandpa Swihart constructed a new home for himself at the ponds in 1911.  Being a stonemason, he built the rubble-stone porch himself.  The concrete fence posts at the farm were capped with large rubble-stone caps, a few which remain today.  My great grandmother, Ocie "Granner", took two of these to her house in Argos and when she moved onto Gramps' farm, she brought them with her.  They then landed at the truck stop for about 30 years before being taken to my parents' house.  A few years ago a buddy of mine with arms the size of my legs loaded them into the back of my truck for transport to my farm.  They flank the lower walk to the front door.

A rolling stone gathers no moss they say.  Stories though, pick up more moss the more they roll.