Closely identified with Monroe
township, and associated with its growth and development, is Indian
Creek township, home of the first Catholic colony to settle in Monroe
county and which yet preserves both its racial and religious solidarity.
Indian Creek is an inland township merely skirted by a railroad and
there has been little perceptible change in it for fifty years. There
history has unfolded evenly, without the too sudden exception, and in
most respects it remains today pretty much as it was when the historic
spire of St. Stephens, visible for miles across the rich prairie, was
first reared by the devout Celts who came to make the rich land their
own. The names of Yates, Parsons, Mudd, Buckman, Miles Lawrence and
McLeod are connected with its material development, as well as its
social and religious growth, and they are still associated with its life
and its activities. Swinkey, or Elizabethtown, once a village of 350 has
dwindled with the coming of rural routes, but at one time was an
important trading center, laid out by a man of the same name in 1835 and
subsequently changed to Elizabethtown, in honor of his first wife, whose
name was Elizabeth. The history of St. Stephens church is not
obtainable, but it is one of the oldest religious bodies in Monroe
county, dating back to 1833. and has exercised a profound influence over
the lives of the generations that have
grown up within its shadows. Indian Creek township, if the legend be
correct, has never had an inmate in the county infirmary, and for years
elected neither constable nor justice of the peace, two facts showing
the character and quality of the religion inculcated by the succession
of good fathers who have ministered to the people of this little Arcady.
All events in Indian Creek are reckoned from the destructive cyclone
which occurred there March 10, 1876. and which practically destroyed the
village of Elizabethtown, Historic St. Stephens church—the first house
to be built—was crumpled up like a straw and of the entire town there
remained, when its fury was spent, but four houses, among them the
parochial residence, In all fourteen people were killed, the storm
cutting a pathway of death and destruction practically through the
entire township, and the little community never fully recuperated. St.
Stephens was rebuilt, the new church being a beautiful building capable
of seating eight hundred people, but was burned in 1907, being rebuilt
in 1908-09 and dedicated by Archbishop John J. Glennon in one of the
most notable services of the kind ever held in. this section of the
state. Its present shepherd is Father Cooney.
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