PAGE 6 ■ DUBOIS COUNTY HERITAGE
THE HERALD ■ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2016
Legend of hunting led Geiger to town By SAM STITES sstites@dcherald.com When Col. Jacob Geiger was a boy, his father, Capt. Fredrick Geiger, told him stories of a lush hunting ground he frequented
THE EARLY DAYS
HUNTINGBURG along the Buffalo Trace during marches between Louisville and Vincennes. Col. Geiger, Huntingburg’ founder, first visited the heavily forested Huntingburg in search for bears to hunt. An avid woodsman, Geiger’s experience was so pleasurable he decided to make the area a permanent home, and in 1837 he purchased a 1,900-acre tract and built a frame house at what is today Sixth and Geiger streets. But Geiger wasn’t the first settler to plant roots in Patoka Township. In fact, there were settlers taking up residence in Huntingburg as early as 1816, the year Indiana gained its statehood. The location of present day Huntingburg intersected with several heavily trafficked paths including the Buffalo Trace and Yellow Banks Trace, which ran from Rockport through Huntinburg and Jasper before linking with the Buffalo Trace. Eli Thomas, a settler from North Carolina by way of Kentucky, was one of the first to stake a claim to land which is now home to Southridge High School. Thomas moved from Kentucky to Huntingburg with his family and one slave named Harry whom he had inherited from his father. Shortly after reaching Indiana, Thomas freed Harry. Around the same time, Henry and Sarah Kemp were establishing their settlement with the help of 11 children just to the south of present-day Huntingburg. Several families soon followed the Kemps
— Cox, Bolin, Hendricks, Lemmon, Walker — and Col. Simon Morgan, Dubois County’s first clerk, recalled the men of these families being particularly tall and broad. Upon the construction of the area’s first steam mill by Col. Geiger, Huntingburg became a destination for more than just good hunting, and worsening conditions in 19thcentury Germany as a result of the Napoleonic wars led to an influx of German settlers coming to the lush hunting grounds seeking their own land and fortune. The wave of German settlers created friction between the Americans and Germans. This animosity was short lived, for the American settlers found the Germans to be honest, hard-working and able to adapt to changing conditions in the pioneer landscape. By 1860, about half of the 1,400 residents of Patoka Township were of German descent, and at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Huntingburg men, American and German alike, stood to fight for President Abraham Lincoln’s Union Army. Among those men was Capt. Morman Fisher, who brought together a band of about 30 Dubois County men forming a section of the Tenth Cavalry unit, which saw action in the battles of Nashville, Reynolds Hill and Sugar Creek. When the war was over, Fisher returned to Dubois County, where he married the granddaughter of Col. Geiger, Wilhemina Heflrich. Fisher became an attorney and eventually served as mayor of Huntingburg before his death in 1898. In March of 1866, 38 people signed a petition to the county to incorporate the community of Huntingburg as a town. A total of 65 votes were cast in favor of the idea, and nine against. Fisher, Herman Rother, E.J. Blemker and E. Brundick and E. Pickhardt were among the town’s first trustees. This article was compiled with reference to “The History of Huntingburg,” by Judge Hugo C. Songer.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE HUNTINGBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY
The Old Town Hall on Geiger Street in Huntingburg in 1890. The building is now restored and houses the city’s chamber of commerce. According to Judge Hugo C. Songer, in his book “The History of Huntingburg,” the town hall was designed by Henry Mursinna, an Italian architect who worked for an Evansville firm. The hall, completed on June 10, 1886, cost $13,600. Songer goes on to note that part of the new building was used as an opera house and was rented to traveling theatre companies for $7.50 a night and to local companies for the lesser fee of $5. The town’s fire company, founded a year after the hall was built, was on the first floor. (Photograph from “Images of America: Jasper and Huntingburg,” edited by Ron Flick and Jane Ammeson.)
Dairy a link to progress By BILL POWELL bpowell@dcherald.com When the Town of Holland celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2009, the grand marshal of that sesquicentennial parade was a Guernsey cow. There THE EARLY DAYS was historical symbolism there, according to Holland resident Lee Bilderback, an educator, town historian and Holland Events Committee representative. He, local historian Eloise Henke and Holland native and published author William Bartelt compiled “Holland History, Noteworthy Happenings in a Dubois County Town: Holland, Indiana, 1859-2009” especially for that celebration seven years ago. “We decided to go with the Guernsey cow because it was the initial cow of the Holland Creamery Association,” Bilderback says. “That was a (farmer cooperative) before the Holland Dairy.” First things first: Holland’s founding residents were not Dutch. They were as German as they come. But, before they came to America, they experienced a regional economy that was in a prolonged recession. The people from northern Germany who founded Holland were Germans who earned money for their passage working seasonal jobs in the Netherlands. Bilderback says Holland’s early German
HOLLAND
PHOTO COURTESY OF LEE BILDERBACK
Participants of the Holland Guernsey Cow Club pose with their newly selected calves behind Holland Public School on April 19, 1926. Emil Caldemeyer, founder of what became the Holland Dairy, attributed the success of the cow club as an important factor in establishing his company in 1931. settlers came primarily from three German communities: Ladbergen and Lengerich in Kreis Tecklenburg and Venne in Hanover. In America, merchant, trustee and postmaster Henry Kunz platted the Town of Holland in 1859. While it was being surveyed, boys from outlying areas who came to see what was going on said they were interested in learning if there was an opportunity for them to earn any extra money, sort of like their parents did when they temporarily worked in Holland. When everyone heard that, so the story goes, the name Holland just hung on the ears and the rest was history. Cut to 1926, when a group of Holland businessmen and farmers start a Guernsey Cow Club at Holland Public School. “A group of farmers from Holland went to Wisconsin and hand-selected Guernsey cows,” Bilderback says. “They were brought back by train and they actually had a parade through town with the cows.” Area dignitaries, including the mayors of Huntingburg and Jasper, were present
for the event, which was perhaps the biggest happening in Holland up until the 1959 centennial, according to Bilderback. During a ceremony behind the school, names were drawn and students were allowed to select a Guernsey calf to take home to their farms and raise. “The idea was that they would eventually build these highly successful dairy herds,” Bilderback says. Seeing the success of the cooperative’s farmers, E.F. Caldemeyer organized the Holland Custard & Ice Cream Co., which later became Holland Dairy. Before there was a Holland, there were three churches — German Lutheran, German Methodist and Evangelical (United Church of Christ today) — and three distinct church communities, according to Bilderback. Town founder Kunz came from Germany and realized the thing to do was to put a store in the middle of the three communities. “That’s where he organized his town,” Bilderback says.
Like the Dutch, the founders of Holland wore wooden shoes while living in northern Germany. Wooden shoes proved the perfect footwear for settlers who came to the United States and tackled the rugged job of clearing the land, Bilderback says. “Sticks and briars didn’t go through them,” according to Bilderback. Wood from a stand of sycamore trees at the site of today’s Holland Park were used to make the local wooden shoes. The dairy industry continues to play a major role in Holland. It is the town’s largest employer. Prairie Farms acquired Holland Dairies and is selling milk products throughout the region. The 150th celebration jump-started town revitalization. Just in time for that historical bash, the Holland Town Council accepted ownership of the Hank and Eloise Henke Stadium & Field. The wrap-around stadium with 80 chairback seats and a roofed pavilion for 20 picnic tables was built behind home plate at the town park’s ballfield and was the centerpiece of the sesquicentennial and every community fest since. Holland residents are continuing to link history and progress with an ambitious downtown project called Holland Commons. More than 100 people attended its official groundbreaking June 5. They shared in a shot of milk to toast the town’s Indiana Bicentennial Legacy Project. The $110,000 Holland Commons will bring a 24-foot gazebo and a commemorative flagpole honoring men and women of the community for military service to a lot west of the post office. There will also be an Indiana limestone sign with Holland’s history, a green space with native trees to shade visitors and bicycle racks to enhance wellness. The completion date — Dec. 11 — is Indiana’s bicentennial date. Bilderback said Herbert Quelle, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, learned of Holland Commons and wrote a letter of acknowledgement to the people of Holland. “We appreciate very much your pledge to honor the German heritage,” Quelle wrote.