Tuesday, March 9, 2021
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Serving Elkhart County and parts of Noble, LaGrange & Marshalll Counties Know Your Neighbor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2➤ Speak Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Good Neighbors . . . . . . . . 4
Goshen (574) 534-2591
Vol. 48 No. 48
134 S. Main, Goshen, Indiana 46526
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Local historian Wright %\ 7,0 $6+/(< 6WDII :ULWHU When Brad Wright was a young boy, one day he found an arrowhead along the Baugo Creek. “That always fascinated me and I wanted to find out more about the Indians I had heard lived in the area.” An interest in history developed and eventually Wright in 1982 started writing by hand on canary yellow paper the history of Baugo Township in the days before the internet became available. The first edition of that history was printed in 2006 and last year Wright released the fifth edition with 59 new pages of “The History of Baugo Township and the Village called Jamestown.” But it almost didn’t happen. “I had decided to let the website (baugohistory. org) die down,” he said, noting he had been keeping it open since 2006 but with not much new information coming in. Then in August 2020, he received a phone call from a man in California who was researching his family history on Ancestry.com. This man said he had located James Davies, the founder of Jamestown, and had information in his research no one else knew anything about. Wright’s name also came up in the man’s research.
A few friends also encouraged Wright to keep the website open, and he changed his mind. That led to Wright researching more history of families on Ancestry.com, “and it exploded with about 60 more pages for a book,” he said. Technically, he said, the fifth edition of his book is a whole new book with a new front cover and has a better timetable, as well as being thoroughly proofed. “It needed better descriptions of properties,” he said, “and there are several (more) plat maps in the new book.” There is also new information about Davies, more and larger photos, more family photos and genealogy, a detailed history of Hubbard Hill, an in-depth history of the township fire department and information on businesses he didn’t have before. And there is also information about brick making in Baugo Township, which was a thriving early business but of which there are no remnants remaining. Wright is clearly a local historian. Especially for the 2006 edition of his book, he went door to door gathering information from local families. As for one example, he found the location of a one-room schoolhouse that had been unclear. Using old photos of the school, he was able to match the photos with what is now a house. “I know where all of the one-room schools (in the township) were located,”
he noted. In 1982, he was the founding member of the Elkhart City Historical Researchers. They had research days at the Elkhart Public Library and later the Pierre Moran Mall. He was also a founding member of the Jamestown Historical Museum and in 1991 was vice president of the board of directors of the Elkhart County Historical Society. “I’m a historian and I want to show proof and not make stuff up,” he said. Wright’s books about the history of Baugo Township may be the only books focusing solely on the history of a township in Elkhart County. There is a book about the history of Olive Township, but it also has history of Wakarusa in it. The early Elkhart County history books published in the late 1800s and early 1900s found in libraries and the Elkhart County Historical Museum have township histories, but much information was left out of those books. The latest book and previous editions have been sold to people living all across the United States, including Georgia, Florida, Oregon and other states, as well as overseas in Europe. To find out how to order the fifth and newest edition of the book, go online to baugohistory.org, email wribar1958@ gmail.com or call (574) 202-6421.