4 minute read
Delving Into Yester~Year
Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.
Advertisement
To the Editor:
I rather wish Lizton was still called New Elizabeth. No reason other than if the name had to be shortened, I would have preferred Lizzie. Lizzie, Indiana, is where I’d rather be. Perry Winkle, Crawfordsville Weekly Journal correspondent, described New Elizabeth in an 1859 account of a journey that passed through the Union Township village. It was “quaint and quiet, with low and dingy houses and muddy streets.” Jesse Vieley laid out the town in 1837, naming it for his wife. She was not called New
Elizabeth; of that I’m certain. Perry Winkle called New Elizabeth an old place, “once celebrated for its Twenty- Three-Mile House” midway between Crawfordsville and Indianapolis.
“The rich, black soil” surrounding New Elizabeth, Perry reported, “has been covered to a considerable extent with water,” but timber clearing was converting it to farmland. “What was once called the swamps of Boone and Hendricks will become the best farming land in the State.” The village anticipated a gravel road connecting it to Danville. Lizton never occupied “a forward place” in the county, saith the 1914 county historian, although it claimed “prosperous and public-spirited citizens.”
Could be. Between 1,200-1,500 attended a political gathering at a “beautiful grove” just east of town in August 1868. It was an election year, culminating with Ulysses Grant sworn in as president.
The crowd began with “hickory wagons loaded with young ladies, with the wagons decked with small flags, accompanied by a martial band of music and a large number on horses pass(ing) through town.”
The actual words three speakers uttered were not recorded, but from the report given by the Daily State Sentinel, I conclude they were racially tinged. I’ve not time to delve.
The following September, New Elizabeth hosted an agricultural exposition. Jacob Kennedy, sweet potato plant seller, offered a $10 lamb as premium for the best half bushel of sweet potatoes raised from his sprouts. William Davis took the prize.
Irish potatoes, corn, apples, peaches, pears, onions – “in short, specimens of everything raised in the garden, orchard and field” were displayed. Only sweet potatoes won a premium. It was, after all, Jacob’s exposition. New Elizabeth was growing. The “little village” had two new dry goods stores, with a second-floor Masonic Lodge ensconced in one of them, along the new railroad. “A spirit of enterprise has been awakened.” In keeping with journalistic tradition, one paper described the June 1870 agonizing 13-hour death of a New Elizabeth woman when a can of coal oil she was pouring into a stove exploded. “Her body was literally burned into a crisp.”
Dear Editor already knows of the fellow who in July 1870 pawned a stolen silver watch in New Elizabeth for whiskey, redeemed it, lost it gambling and was caught roughly five months later. A January 1871 headline, “Dead and Eaten by Swine,” caught my attention. Found in a wooded area near Southport in early 1871, Hickman Hall of New Elizabeth was consumed to his bones by hogs. He was identified by his boots, a ring, his teeth and the remnants of his clothing.
The 23-year-old Montgomery County schoolteacher disappeared in December 1870 while visiting his physician brother in Indianapolis. His case was never solved, although foul play was suspected.
His remains are at Vieley Cemetery, the boneyard that two years later accepted numerous New Elizabeth cholera victims, some buried in haste and little ceremony.
Many overcome by that “pernicious fever,” as some called it, died within four to seven hours. One September 1873 report claimed that out of 108 families there, only five remained. The rest had fled. An 80-year-old War of 1812 veteran succumbed, along with his two-year-old son.
New Elizabeth, on the “Crawfordsville Railroad,” had earlier died around May 1873, when “the old awkward post office name” was abbreviated to Lizton by none other than the Postmaster General. That’s what the Indianapolis Journal claimed. There were five other Elizabeths and Elizabeth towns. The village had familiarly been called Liztown. The new name “sounds well, and is convenient.” Then in late September 1874, three I.B.&W. rail cars loaded with ice went off the tracks near Lizton, and their entire contents were lost.
Since it happened near the “convenient” village and not New Elizabeth, my interest melted quickly.
Paul Miner
Lizton (formerly New Elizabeth) ______________________________________________________________________
It’s News To Us
Birthday parties, new babies, anniversaries, visits from long-lost cousins -- these items that make up the kind of news you only find in the pages of The Republican.
If you have a local news item you’d like to contribute, you can call us at 317-745-2777, send by fax to 317-647-4341, e-mail to therepublican@ sbcglobal.net or drop by the office at 6 East Main in Danville. Our deadline for submitting news items is noon on Monday for Thursday’s edition.
