It is not generally known that Howard Township has a centenarian. Irving Dickens, a colored man living southeast of Sugar Grove Church, is said to be 103 years old. He was born in North Carolina in 1797, and has lived contemporary with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, in fact, all our Presidents and best statesmen except Washington. He had lived 66 years a slave, when the glad news of Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation struck off his chains. Although so aged he talks intelligently, and is quite active. He makes a hand nearly every day husking corn, and plowed corn last summer. Once a month he drives to Greencastle to attend the meeting of the Primitive Baptist Church, of which he is a member. Neighbor to him lives Lewis Lyons, who wears a silver plate in his skull, the result of a cruel blow from a slaveholder. These men and Mrs. Dickens have experienced many phases of slave described in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin. - Rockville Tribune, 05 December 1900

Another minister who has a large place in the history of the Association is the Rev. A. H. Dooley. He was born in Kentucky in 1829; when he was ten years of age his parents moved into Parke county, Indiana, near a place called The Narrows of Sugar Creek. Through all the years of his childhood he had deep convictions as to his sin fullness of heart and his great need of salvation; but, for one thing, the church of the neighborhood was a Predestinarian church, and he could not bring himself to accept its distinguishing doctrines, although it was the church to which his father and mother belonged. And when, after some years, he found reason to hope that he was a Christian, it was only after a long struggle that he found courage to confess Christ before men. Finally in 1850, while visiting relatives in Boone county, he found the opportunity and offered himself for membership in a missionary Baptist church; he was accepted and baptized forthwith. During nearly all the time of his conviction for sin and need of a Savior he also had the conviction that it was his duty to give himself to the work of the Christian ministry. He and Miss Mary T. Connelly were married in 1852, and his wife joined the church with him in 1853. While engaged in teaching and farming, ever and anon the duty of giving himself to the work of the ministry was with him. The Rev. P. T. Palmer, a prominent minister of that part of the state, soon interpreted his feelings, when the two met, and encouraged him strongly to make the start. In 1854 he moved to Boone county and was soon compelled to listen to the voice that was calling him into the ministry. He was ordained at the request of the Elizaville church in 1867, and has from that time till old age forbade it, given his time and strength to the work of the ministry, and has been successful far beyond the average. Most of his service was in Monticello Association; he was pastor, in turn, of many of the churches composing it and was often honored with the moderatorship of the Association. He has interested himself in collecting the data and writing the history of at least two of the churches he served—Elizaville and Burnett's Creek—and also the history of Monticello Association. He also often wrote most interesting historical sketches for the denominational papers. From these sources and an autobiography written in his later years most of the facts of this sketch were found. Early in life he took a positive stand against the use of alcoholic beverages and against the use of tobacco, and now in his old age he can with double effect warn young men against the use of both. He is still able to go about among the churches occasionally, and nothing gives him as much satisfaction as to see the churches prospering, and his own denomination reaching forward towards larger things.  - Indiana Baptist History, 1798-1908,  By William Taylor Stott, Page 271, 272