Paul Minor

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:

I’d never spent time looking into how 19th Century county newspaper front pages drew in readers. I did expect the April 20, 1865, issue of the Hendricks County Union to carry massive war’s end headlines, and especially the latest on Lincoln’s assassination. Nope. Instead, I saw a pedantic article on the proper use of “got.” The insufferable writer clearly ignored rural colloquial speech.

There was a short piece about lovelorn, pale and consumptive Charles induced to sing “Annie Laurie” during a Maryland parlor party. His heartbreaking rendition brought some to tears, and his eyes closing with “inexpressible and tortured anguish,” Charles, “the love-betrayed, was dead.”

I found a short item about past civil wars dating to the Peloponnesian conflict, Rome’s fall and England’s 15th century struggle.

The entire left side of the page was devoted to advertising including a physician offering to correct fistulas, hemorrhoids, and eye and ear diseases; lawyers; clearly costly marble monuments and tombstones; and a fellow offering to repair and paint old chairs.

“Philosophical facts” disclosed that the earth’s hot interior reaches 80,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which I dismiss as a bit much. I learned our atmospheric pressure is 40,140 pounds on an average man of 15 square feet. That explains why it’s so hard for me to rise in the morning, even though I’m somewhat spare. An account of Lincoln’s assassination was relegated to Page 2. The Union’s front page of Sept. 11, 1873, reported watermelons were legal tender in Iola, Kansas, and London spent $1 million each year watering its streets. Top news coverage dealt with a Tipton County Grangers meeting.

Most of the front page of The Republican, published one day following July 4, 1883, was devoted to a ponderous patriotic poem a minister had written and read at Danville’s Methodist Episcopal church the Sunday before.

I was much more interested in Vawter’s notices selling harvest gloves, plow shoes, overalls and work shirts. I saw John F. Hogate, captain of the schooner Philip Ford – and an oysterman – was visiting his brother, Enoch.

County correspondents’ contributions commanded the bulk of the opening page from Aug. 19, 1897. Two men rolled into Brownsburg pushing wheelbarrows one night a week earlier on their way to San Francisco.

The pair had left New York June 8 on a $5,000 bet that they’d reach the west coast on foot by Jan. 8. They sold photographs to cover costs. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” played to a full house in Plainfield, “but it was a poor excuse of a show.” Two donkeys, part of the production, frightened a horse driven by two women and they plunged down an embankment near White Lick bridge. Suffering serious injuries, both were referenced twice only by their husbands’ names. Most interesting was a tribute to Henry H. Marvin. The former attorney, prosecutor, probate judge and Indiana state representative had died the week before, age 96, many years beyond the average lifespan of most men then. “His death removes perhaps the citizen who has lived longest in this vicinity, and perhaps in the county.”

Born in Pennsylvania in 1802, while an infant he arrived in Ohio with his parents. They cleared the forest and farmed. His schooling was beyond that of “most country boys.”

He read law in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Initially arriving in Danville in 1831, he settled there a year later, making him the town’s first attorney by the space of a few days. Mexican War Colonel Christian C. Nave was the close second.

However, before being admitted to the bar in October 1834, Marvin taught at what may have been Danville’s first grammar school, making Nave the first practicing attorney – and the oldest when he died in 1884.

Marvin hadn’t practiced law for more than 40 years. His memoriam could have noted something about his activities. County history reveals he engaged in lengthy astronomy discussions with a known drunkard and opium user who died in Libby Prison during the Civil War.

Marvin was remembered for “an unblemished reputation for all that relates to honor and integrity as a man. He was a harmless and inoffensive citizen, a good neighbor and parent.”

I suppose that’s more than what most receive.

Paul Miner Lizton ______________________________________________________________________