Hansford: Mental Defectives in County H., Indiana 11 
the creek beds and over the gullied hills to the next valley, 
and it is not to be wondered at that the people with ambition 
and intelligence move to the more fertile parts of the county. 
For many years this has been known as a pauper township. 
Chestnut Ridge is the settlement nearest a railroad point, 
being 6 miles east of Hilton. This settlement consists of a 
store, church, and less than half a dozen houses scattered 
along the road. To reach the village from any direction it 
is necessary to climb along a steep, slippery, gullied hill. The 
surrounding hills are covered with forests, but this one is 
barren. The people try to farm it, but nothing seems to 
flourish. The whole place gives the impression of dilapidation, 
sordidness, and miserableness; yet the inhabitants are not 
really miserable, but are stolidly indifferent to their lack of 
comfort and beauty. 
Most of the houses are log cabins or board shacks ; some of 
them have partly fallen down, and in others only one room is 
floored. They are all miserably cold in winter and afford no 
protection from the heat of summer. In 5 or 6 homes in 
this district the field worker found chickens in the house with 
the family. One woman in particular is remembered as being 
seemingly unaware that it was unusual for her hen to lay an 
egg in the family bed. The only comment made was that 
the hen laid in the same place every day. In this same house 
another hen was busy gathering her breakfast off the table, 
while a third preened her feathers on the old-fashioned bureau. 
Dirty, listless children were everywhere ; they did not seem 
to play much either at school or at home. This unusual trait 
was especially noticeable on the school grounds. The women 
moved about in the same ''don’t care” fashion as did the 
children. They spent a good part of their time in going from 
house to house to talk over the other neighbors and the school- 
teacher, the latter being a topic of unfailing interest. 
North and west the hill gradually becomes less steep, and 
there is fairly good farming land in both Townships 9 and 11, 
especially on the sides nearest the center of the county. Along 
the extreme eastern part of the county, however, the country 
is rough. 
It was in the southeastern part of the county that the 
White-Cappers were organized to mete out justice in the out- 
of-the-way places where the courts slowly if ever found and 
