SERVING HENDRICKS COUNTY SINCE 1847
Page A-2
The Republican
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.
To the Editor: During route exploration spanning 1827-1828 for the eventual National Road (Cumberland Road) through Indiana, a federal commissioner detoured to Danville, “the Seat of Justice” for Hendricks County. Danville was “an entirely new place, with a post office, but no court house.” Danville, along with Greencastle, was too far north of a direct route between Indianapolis and Terre Haute and Richmond, and so it was bypassed. Belleville was “handsomely situated” on the National Road, a prospectus put out by William H. Henton, Obadiah Harris and L.B. Wison declared in late 1829. It was “considered equal, if not superior, Melville McHaffie’s brick barn, on the Putnam County side of in point of beauty to any U.S. 40, west of Stilesville, is a relic of agricultural wealth that grew site in the country.” along the National Road. In 2012, the National Road Heritage It boasted “a wealthy Association placed an interpretive panel on the site as part of a and populous neighbor- project to highlight the history of the road. ____________________________________________________ hood.” The earliest county map I’ve seen, from 1833, shows only Danville and Belleville. I could not call Belleville wealthy today. The new railroad, Terre Haute & Indianapolis, passed too far away in 1852 to benefit the county’s former cultural and education center. Congressman Oliver Hampton Smith of Indiana in December 1828 called for the road to be 80 feet wide by “cutting off the timber, removing the obstructions and making temporary bridges” to allow traffic to begin until turnpikes could be established. This was 22 years after Congress authorized the project. The Cumberland would be “the grand thoroughfare through which a great portion of emigration, as well as the merchandise” from the east would reach Indiana and the states beyond, Smith declared. County history records the road across the county in 1830 “gave a great advantage to the southern part, this road being a highway for the tide of immigration to the far West.” Many travelers made their homes here. “. . . Practically every farmer kept open house; every home was a hotel, and many of the settlers became moderately wealthy by their hospitality.” One source claims 25 cents was charged for a bed and a meal. Intended to reach the Mississippi, the nation’s first highway ended at Vandalia, Illinois, when federal money ran out. A 1936 retrospective reported $7 million was spent during 25 years of construction. Numerous Acts sought to preserve and repair the road. However, photographs hailing from the advent of the auto show vehicles buried to their axles in implacable mud. Even before reaching Indiana, travelers encountered enormous rocks that “render(ed) the road almost impassable.” Ruts reportedly reached depths of 18-24 inches. Indiana contracts in late 1829 were awarded “upon terms truly favorable” at $120.21 per mile. Work began at Indianapolis in 1828, heading east and west to reach Richmond and Terre Haute. The state was spanned in 1834. U.S. 40 follows some of the original route. I’ve no idea how much traffic Indiana’s portion of the road totaled, but Kentucky reported 1829’s figures at 4,214 horses, 2,005 mules, 51,041 hogs, 1,015 “stall fed cattle,” and 303 sheep, at an estimated value of $896,708. The total was “far short of last year, especially in the hog list.” Imagine the mud and manure mix spanning that state. Contracts for grading 12 miles of the road were let in Belleville in late July 1831 at an average of $3.65 per rod, “a considerable portion of which is deep excavation and embankment.” I figure that to be $1,168 per mile. Bridges and culverts were let at the same time. Stone masonry contracts ranged from $6-$6.50, and brick masonry at $3.37-$4 “per perch.” A perch is 16-1/2 feet (a rod); that goes back to the 9th Century, I understand, a time when English was horribly misspelled and one referred to “our Lord the King” when measurements were described. I must ask county engineer John Ayers how he words his bid documents. A November 1834 call for 200 “good laboring hands” offered 70 cents per day, payable at month’s end, to build the Illinois section. Each had to provide their own axe, mattock and spade or shovel, and their own board. Tools could be purchased from the section. Although no stumps over 15 inches high were stipulated, with those in the center rounded or trimmed to avoid carriage mishaps, Congress ordered all stumps grubbed out. “The resulting holes and mounds made the road nearly impassable.” Old growth forest holes must have been immense. Trees came in handy when roads were planked in 1850 through Hendricks, Marion, Hancock and Putnam Counties. Paul Miner Lizton ______________________________________________________________________
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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.
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Yester~Year
The Republican has published local news weekly since 1847. We offer this column as a look back at events from our archives and to help connect today’s readers to the people and events in our past. ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Issue of May 14, 1896 Hazelwood: We would like to make inquiry whether or not there is a supervisor for that part of the Clayton and Hazelwood pike which lies between the mud creek bridge and the city of Hiko. If there really is a supervisor for the road, we would earnestly support some plan for inducing him to take pleasure trips over it. Maplewood: Jasper Fisher has three sheep that produced forty-eight pounds of wool, and the three fleeces weighing fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen pounds. Who can beat it? E.J. Wilcox rode from the Danville post office to the monument at Indianapolis, Monday morning in sixty-one minutes and twenty-four seconds. The R. and S. boys issued a very creditable number of their paper from this office last week. It is proposed to issue this paper quarterly. Eighteen years ago Sunday, the 10th of May, the Central Normal College was moved from Ladoga to Danville. That was a great day in Danville as the wagons containing the furniture and libraries of the school and effects of the students drove into town. If the school grows in the next eighteen years as it has in those that have gone, who can say what its proportions will then be? Union township has seven graduates. Pecksburg: Four of the Danville boys are playing in the band organized in east Clay. It now consists of ten instruments. New Winchester: Leonard Christie lost a valuable horse last week by the barbed wire route. Stilesville: Oat Hendren has his ice cream parlor running order now and is doing a good business. Come and see our line of bicycle sundries: lamps, lamp brackets, bells, oils, graphite, tire taps, cement, patching rubber, quick repair outfits, valves, trouser guards, locks, etc. Christie Bros. _____ ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO Issue of May 19, 1921 Saturday, the contract for the new school at Lizton was let at a total cost of $110,385. The building is planned on the “T” shape and when completed will be one of the most modern arrangement and equipment to be found in the central states. Edgar M. Blessing has accepted the position tendered him on the Public Utilities Commission by Governor McCray. Tonight at the chapel, the forty-first commencement exercises of the Danville high school will be held. The class is counted one of exceptional strength and consists of thirty members. A wedding party was staged for three o’clock last Saturday afternoon in the private room of the County Recorder’s office in Danville. The contracting parties were Mrs. Almedia Jones and John W. Pounds, of Clayton. In the window of the Christie grocery is a beautiful vase made from a French 75 casing. It is he handiwork of George R. Fleenor, a student, and was made while Mr. Fleenor was with the American army overseas. His tools were a hammer and two punches. Amo: On Sunday, May 15th, about thirty-five relatives with well filled baskets met at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Cosner to remind Mrs. Cosner that her birthday was near at hand. Avon: The Huron bridge is out and Enos Denney must travel four miles to go from the house to the barn if he goes around the road. Rev. William Wallace Curry, 97 years old, once a widely known resident of Danville, died at his home in Washington, Tuesday. As a campaign orator he had a national reputation and his services were in great demand. _____ SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Issue of May 16, 1946 Commencement exercises in the gymnasium, Wednesday evening at 8 o’clock will climax activities for the 1946 graduating class of Danville high school. Thirty-two are scheduled to receive diplomas. David Newby, of Danville, placed first in the Indianapolis sectional of the state Latin contest. The Danville Lions club will observe its twenty-first anniversary this evening at a dinner meeting with the ladies as guests, in the Danville Christian church. Ollie Holman has announced that dances at “Ollie’s Place,” east of Danville on Road 36, were discontinued Saturday night. The spacious room has been leased and negotiations are being made for the opening of a
chicken and steak dinner place. A request has been received from the New York Central system by the Hendricks county commissioners for another conference for the grade separation at the Gale crossing. The Stewart Air Field, located east of Danville at the Gulf Filling Station, will open Saturday. S.O. Stewart is the owner and Wendell Loy will be manager. A new 1946 Piper Cub will be available for rides and lessons. Orville Johnston, recently discharged from the Army, where he was a meat and dairy inspection officer, has been employed at the Edwards Grocery in the meat department to assist Walter Sandersen. Danville high school won its final game of the diamond season from Lawrence Central, 14-4, Tuesday afternoon at the Danville park, to claim the Mid-State championship for 1946. ______ FIFTY YEARS AGO Issue of May 13, 1971 A record-breaking 806 seniors will be graduating this month, from the seven high schools in Hendricks County as compared to 776 in 1970 and 756 in 1969. Miss Joan Kropp, daughter of the Ed Kropps, flew, Monday, from Shafter, Calif., to Atlantic City, N.J. with 14 other groomsmen and 29 horses from the Joe O’Brien Stables of California and will spend the next several weeks in the east as the horses race at different tracks. The three Dens and Cub Scouts and the Webeloes of Cub Scout Pack 301 had a Father-son “Pine Wood Derby Race” recently, in the Danville Christian Church. Sheriff Russell D. Carmichael said Tuesday afternoon that his office has been plagued with phone calls concerning a so-called “Christ Festival” scheduled for Memorial Day weekend at the Maplecroft Theater, U.S. 40, southwest of Clayton. Evelyn Miller, of Clayton, and her husband, Arthur, or Lloyd, as he is better known among his friends, are undergoing intensive training in the use of the artificial kidney at the Methodist Hospital, where Evelyn has been accepted on the home dialysis program. ______ TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Issue of May 9, 1996 Monday night, the Danville Town Council unanimously adopted a resolution that it was participating in Municipal Government Week, May 5-11, and all citizens are invited to visit all town facilities and departments this week in order to become more acquainted with the serves being provided them. Crystal Curran, a senior at Avon High School and a 12-year Girl Scout, recently achieved the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest honor a Girl Scout can earn. Purvis Market is now Coatesville Food Center & Video, open under new ownership by Jim and Nancy Blubaugh. A Chili Supper, Friday, May 10, 5 to 8 p.m., at the Hendricks County 4-H Fairgrounds, Danville, will benefit the Paul Cuzzart Heart Transplant Fund. Hendricks County Sheriff’s Deputies have completed a three-day course in sign language. Two Hendricks County 15-year-olds were still standing with just two rounds left in the Indiana Optimists’ statewide oratorical contest: Daniel brown, a homeschooler from North Salem, and Jaime Ade, a TriWest freshman. _______ TEN YEARS AGO Issue of May 12, 2011 The Hendricks County Community Foundation is pleased to announce the first Doris K. Parker Music Fund for Children grant to Andrea Eageny, daughter of Mark and Margo Eageny of Stilesville. Hendricks County’s newest park will host a two-day grand opening on Saturday, May 14 and Sunday, May 15. Sodalis Nature Park, located in the southeast corner of Guilford Township, was developed on land permanently set aside for the endangered Indiana bat (Myotis Sodalis) for whom the park is named. Avon resident Natalie Grimes, who, along with her sister Kathleen, appear as the Grimes Girls music duo, will soon be flying to Alaska to spend the summer working at the Diamond K Ranch. The Hendricks County Community Foundation awarded the 2011 Lilly Endowment Scholarships to two Hendricks County students at their Annual Dinner. Carolina Bennett of Avon and Daniel Segner of Danville will receive full tuition to the Indiana college of their choice. __________
