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Gc 977.201 M35 v. 2 1794134
M. E.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00805 4188
1
4
20th A TWENTIETH CENTURY HISTORY
OF
MARSHALL COUNTY INDIANA
ILLUSTRATED
HON. DANIEL MCDONALD AUTHOR AND EDITOR
V. 2
VOLUME II
CHICAGO THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1908
1794134
HH Culver
HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY
LXVI. HENRY HARRISON CULVER.
Henry Harrison Culver, the youngest child of John Milton Culver and Lydia E. Howard, was born near London, Madison county, Ohio, August 9, 1840. The other children of the family were Lutellus, killed in the civil war; Wallace W., Lucius L., Ruth, and Lucetta.
The father was evidently a whig in politics; and what was more natural than that he should name his son after the whig candidate for the presidency, William Henry Harrison, then in the heat of the wonderful "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign, which swept the country like wild- fire, and at the November elections landed, by an overwhelming majority, the famous old Indian fighter in the White House at Washington ?
John Milton Culver was of Scotch descent and a native of Ohio. He was a farmer and later became a railroad contractor in the rapidly devel- oping new country in which he lived. But in the early '50s he met with financial reverses, then so common in the west, and with his large family to support he doubtless encouraged his sons to strike out early for them- selves and begin their lives on their own responsibility. It is not surprising therefore, that we find Henry, at the age of fifteen, with only a meager common school education of less than twelve months, accompanied by his older brother Wallace, in St. Louis, Missouri.
After varied experiences of a few months in St. Louis and western Illinois, working at anything that came to hand, they met in Springfield, Illinois, John McCreary, who, with his brother Joseph, was engaged in a general hardware business. The two Culvers were at once engaged by the McCreary brothers, and were put to work at selling cast-iron stoves to the farmers throughout the country.
In the course of his travels in northern Indiana Henry met at the home of her father Miss Emily Jane, the daughter of William J. Hand, a well- known and unusually intelligent farmer of Marshall county, and Sabrina Chapman, his wife, and in September of 1864 they were married at her home near Wolf creek, a hamlet some eight miles east of Lake Maxinkuckee.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
This was a most important event in the life of H. H. Culver, for by the marriage he gained a wife of remarkable judgment and sound sense, to whom he always turned for counsel in every important step he took in life, and one who was ever ready to cooperate with him in all plans of philan- thropy and benevolence; and it was naturally through this connection with Marshall county that the idea first originated of doing something to help the county in which his wife had been reared and where her people were still living. Of the children born to this marriage there are now living five sons-Walter L., Henry Harrison, Jr., Edwin R., Bertram B., Knight K ... and one daughter, Ida Lucille, now Mrs. Dr. George P. Wintermute, of San Francisco.
Soon after his marriage Mr. H. H. Culver joined his two brothers, W. W. and L. L., in business, and from Shawneetown, Illinois, as their base, they engaged extensively in the business of selling direct to the farmers at their homes a line of cast-iron stoves, which they purchased from Ball & Co., of Cincinnati. This plan made it necessary to move frequently from place to place, and during the five years in which they were thus engaged their operations covered quite thoroughly some ten or twelve of the central and southern states. But finding a large expense accruing, and much dis- satisfaction from their customers on account of the frequent breakage of the cast-iron stoves, the three brothers decided to give up their stove business and get into another line. They therefore, in 1869, shipped all their property to Kansas City, Missouri, then in the beginning of a great boom, and disposing of their stock, they invested their total working capital of about $100,000, and opened a general house furnishing store. This venture, however, did not prove a success, and by it their capital was considerably depleted.
Disposing of their goods in Kansas City, the brothers went south in 1870 and began arrangements to engage again in the stove business. But the old question of the breakage of the cast-iron stoves and the consequent dissatisfaction among their customers, together with the unsettled financial condition of the country, culminating in the panic of 1873, compelled them temporarily to drop business again. They returned to Kansas City, where H. H. Culver owned a farm, and began as they had done in their early days in Ohio, expecting doubtless simply to make a living at farming until business should begin to improve. But a severe drought during the summer and an invasion of grasshoppers from Kansas following it, practically ruined the prospects of a crop in that section of the country, so that in complete disgust at the condition they disposed of their property there and shipped their household goods to St. Louis, January, 1874.
They had hardly reached St. Louis before they were approached by many of their old stove employes, asking for employment with them in some sort of business.
Finding a field for a new line of business, they organized, with head- quarters at St. Louis, in 1875, "The Southern Calendar Clock Company." The country was recovering, and the business prospered. During the year
Emily of Culver
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
1875 each of the brothers built homes in St. Louis and became permanently located there.
But the longing for their old business was strong, and their men were all insistent in urging them to handle stoves again. Their past experience had demonstrated to them the disadvantage of trying to sell the old style cast-iron stoves. So in 1881 they organized a company for the manufacture of a family range, to be built of wrought, not of cast iron, the first of its kind ever made, and named the new organization the "Wrought Iron Range Company." The range became at once very popular, and the business was on a paying basis from the start. But the new range was not yet entirely satisfactory, and there came in numerous letters from customers still com- plaining of breakage in the cast-iron parts. After many tedious and costly experiments the company adopted in 1883 malleable iron for the parts exposed to rough usage .*
The range thus perfected found a ready sale, and the business increased to such proportions that greater manufacturing space was required. The capital was increased, and a new factory, four stories high and covering an entire block, was erected.
Mr. H. H. Culver had been for many years an active officer and a tire- less worker. But he had worked too hard, and in 1881 there were indica- tions of heart trouble, followed by a slight stroke of paralysis. He retired from active business, and with Mrs. Culver he traveled for two years, visiting California and Mexico. His health, however, had not materially improved, and in 1883, induced doubtless by the advice of his wife, his steps were led to her old home near the shores of Maxinkuckee. "I spent the whole summer," to use Mr. Culver's own language in an interview held ten years later, "by the side of the lake. I fished nearly all the day, and lived in a tent. When fall came I was a different man. It had such a glorious effect on my health that I determined to acquire property here. I bought ninety-eight acres on the northeast corner of the lake. The fol- lowing year I bought 208 acres at the north end of the lake. A good deal of this land was low and damp. I employed a number of men to ditch and drain it, and before I was done I had put twenty-two miles of drain pipe in the 300 acres. It reclaimed the land and I started to have it farmed. On a part I raised corn, and part of it I devoted to meadow for hay. In 1889 I built a tabernacle, a hotel, and some cottages, and arranged for a big: series of religious meetings. I secured T. DeWitt Talmage, of New York; Rev. Sam Jones, of Georgia, and Dr. John Matthews, of St. Louis, and had great crowds to hear them. I had revival meetings and lectures for
* Malleable iron is intermediate between cast and wrought iron in those qualities and properties most generally useful. It is soft, elastic and ductile; is most difficult to melt, and, compared with cast iron, is very slow to enter into chemical combinations. Its tenacity is enormous.
Cast iron is hard, brittle, melts with comparative ease, and combines with oxygen, sulphur, etc., with much more ease than does malleable iron.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
the whole of that summer, but since that time there have been no public meetings of any consequence."
In the fall of 1896, after he had entered upon the work of building up the military academy, he added this reminiscence, as indicating a single incident which had attached him to the lake:
"While fishing one day near the Indiana boathouse, I caught a fine seven-pound bass, and, sir, that bass has cost me $250,000!"
Soon after he acquired this property, Mr. Culver offered to the citi- zens of Marshall county, now become his neighbors and many of them his personal friends, an indefinite leasehold on thirty or forty acres of land to be used for the purpose of holding an annual fair. He graded and laid off a half-mile track, planted trees, and largely assisted in erecting a grand stand and necessary buildings, and for several years a fair was successfully held on the grounds ; but, doubtless because of the location so far from the center of the county, this enterprise was gradually abandoned, and finally the land reverted to the estate, after the failure to hold a meeting for three years. In October, 1895, the citizens of Marmont, by a unanimous vote, approved the proposition to change the name of the town to Culver City, in recognition of what had been accomplished for them by Mr. Culver, and to signify thereby their appreciation of that fact. After some difficulties and delays, on April 1, 1897, the postmaster general at Washington changed the name of the postoffice to Culver, dropping the "City," as the double name had been forbidden by the department. And later still the Vandalia railroad changed the name of its station to Culver on all its official maps and pub- lications, and thus it will doubtless remain for all time, a tribute to Mr. Culver's memory.
In 1886 Mr. Culver built upon a beautiful location on the east side of the lake, what was at that time by far the handsomest and most finished summer home in this part of the state. Indeed, it is still the largest and most beautiful of the many fine cottages that have since been built upon the shores of Maxinkuckee, and with its extensive and tastefully laid off grounds, shaded by handsome trees, it is an ideal summer home for Mrs. Culver, and there she spends the time from early spring till late in the autumn. It commands a beautiful view of the academy buildings and grounds, and it was of this view across the sunlit waters of the lake that Mr. Culver said further :
"In all these thirty years since I have known the lake a hobby of mine has been to start a school. It has been one of my 'castles in the air.' The hobby first took definite shape in 1888. I saw in my mind's eye where the school would have to be, and I began to prepare ground for its location. For a number of years I was in correspondence with teachers everywhere, trying to get a suitable person to take charge of the school. I could find no one who saw promise in my plan. I then went to California, and upon my return, in March, 1894, I found a letter awaiting me from an Indianapolis friend, who suggested that a summer school be located on my grounds, and that Dr. J. H. Mckenzie, of the Ohio military academy, near Cincinnati,
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
be selected as the head of the school. I agreed to this, and in April, 1894, set aside the forty acres on the north shore of the lake for school purposes, and put up some additional buildings. The success of the summer school I consider assured, and I propose now to have the academy a permanent institution. The buildings are of a temporary character. I propose to have buildings of brick and stone, that will be as fine as the buildings belonging to any educational institution in the state."
And thus was opened, with sixteen boys under Dr. Mckenzie, in July, 1894, the first summer session of the Culver academy, Mr. Culver's prophetic eye seeing at that early date the advantages afforded by Maxinkuckee for a successful summer school eventually to exceed in numbers and popularity the great winter school which it had taken ten years to build up.
The regular nine months' session opened on September 25th, under Dr. Mckenzie and two assistants, with thirty-two boys, Mr. Culver and Dr. Mckenzie acting as the regents or governing body.
All went quietly until February 24, 1895, when at noon the frame hotel which had been used as temporary barracks, suddenly took fire and was burned to the ground.
Mr. Culver was a man of dauntless courage, and often said that he had never failed in anything he had undertaken, and even before the embers from this building had ceased to glow, he was on the spot with archi- tects, measuring the ground and planning for an elaborate fireproof bar- racks. The material to be used was to be brick, steel, stone, and iron, with 10 wood work except the floors, window frames and doors, and the floors were to be laid on a bed of concrete nine inches thick, so that it would be impossible for the building to be injured by fire.
The cornerstone of the new building was laid on the sixteenth of May, 1895, and it was completed and ready for the fall term. Dr. Mckenzie had resigned during the summer and was succeeded by Maj. C. H. Tebbetts, who opened the academy September 24, 1895, with thirty-two cadets, and continued till June II, 1896, without special note.
The school re-opened September 16, 1896, with twenty-nine boys, under Maj. Tebbetts and three assistants, and was progressing quietly when an event occurred which at once changed the current of affairs at the academy, and caused them to flow in a channel quite different from the course of the two previous years.
The Missouri military academy at Mexico, Missouri, had been founded in 1890 by Col. A. F. Fleet, who had resigned from the chair of Greek, which he had held in the University of Missouri for eleven years, and it at once sprung to the front as the leading secondary school in the state. For six years it had moved forward with unparalleled success, when on the night of September 24, 1896, the splendid building which had held over 100 boys was burned to the ground. It was Mrs. Culver who first heard of the calamity and suggested to her husband to telegraph the superintendent to visit him in St. Louis and discuss the plan of uniting the two schools at Culver.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
Mr. Culver's proposition was generous and was promptly accepted, and on October 5, 1896, seventy-two Missouri military academy boys, with their teachers, were collected from Denver to Pittsburg, and were brought to Culver, where they were warmly welcomed, and in a short time the two schools, with their respective faculties, were perfectly united. Maj. Tebbetts resigned, and Col. Fleet was put in command, at the head of 100 cadets.
And now Mr. Culver began to realize the dream of thirty years before, and really saw the beginning of a great school, the fame of which was to extend from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
The new cadets filled the fireproof barracks and overflowed into a frame building near by, and Mr. Culver without delay began an additional barracks to hold forty more cadets.
The catalogue of 1896-97, published in June, 1897, the first catalogue with roster of cadets theretofore published, showed 122 cadets, and a graduating class of seven.
But we must go back again for a few years before continuing our history of the school.
In 1888 Mr. Culver again took up the reins in the Wrought Iron Range Company, and upon the retirement of his brother, L. L., there were thrust upon him greater responsibilities and duties. His reappearance at the office with health much improved and full of energy, gave a great impetus to the business, and a few years later, in 1894, the capital invested in the manu- facture of ranges was over $1,000,000.
It was about this period of prosperity that the republican party of his district offered to Mr. Culver the nomination to congress, and for a short time he considered the matter rather favorably, but later concluded that he could not accept the nomination without seriously neglecting his engrossing business engagements, and he declined the honor. It was in keeping with Mr. Culver's character that he made no mention of this incident except to his closest friends.
His sons were now engaged with him in business, and, entrusting many of the details to them, it was possible for Mr. Culver to spend much of his time at Maxinkuckee in the years 1895 and 1896.
But in the latter part of 1896 his health began again to fail, and with some fluctuations it soon became apparent that it was steadily growing worse, until during the summer of 1897 his condition caused his friends the gravest anxiety.
Mr. Culver had lived at such a high pressure and with such extraordi- nary calls on his mental and physical activity that he seemed at the age of fifty-seven to have drained the powers of an exceptionally vigorous consti- tution, and, despite the efforts of physicians, to have possessed no capacity for recuperation. But his life, though by comparison not a long one, had in virtue of its achievements, a rounded completeness such as the lives of few men present.
Most of this summer was spent in his cottage on the lake, and when-
CULVER MILITARY ACADEMY. PARTIAL VIEW OF BARRACKS, SHOWING CADETS MARCHING TO MESS.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
ever he was well enough, he would pass many hours each day on the porch, looking across at the beautiful buildings and grounds of the academy, and was always delighted to hear reports of the progress of the work in filling the now enlarged barracks with new and enthusiastic cadets. He lived to see the school opened in September with every room filled and with ample promise of the rapid and substantial growth which has since been attained.
About the middle of September he was removed to his home in St. Louis, where he died Sunday, September 26, 1897.
It is difficult to give an adequate picture of so many-sided a man as H. H. Culver. It has been said of him that with his wide range of mental powers it would be hard to name a sphere of action in which he could not have attained success. He was first of all a wonderfully acute and suc- cessful man of affairs. He left property which placed him high in the millionaire class of his city, and all accumulated by his own efforts ; but he was much more than a mere business man; he was an idealist and a philan- thropist. This is illustrated most strikingly in his relations with his employes. At the time of Mr. Culver's death the Wrought Iron Range Company had in its employment about 400 salesmen, and the same number of workmen in its factories, and at the malleable and grey iron foundries, engaged in preparing material for their ranges, about 300 more, or 1,100 men employed in their various industries in St. Louis, Denver and Toronto, Canada. Mr. Culver was not content with merely winning success for him- self; he aimed at encouraging and assisting others to do the same. Few heads of large business enterprises have done as much for their employes in the way of pushing them forward and urging them to win success for themselves by strenuous effort. His relation with his employes was marked by the greatest kindliness on his part, and by hearty respect and genuine affection on theirs. and when he gave his confidence he gave it without reserve. One instance of his dealings with his men will suffice to show the spirit which always animated him :
During the panic of 1893 the employes of the Wrought Iron Range Company agreed to a reduction of wages in order to enable the company to run continuously through this period of depression without laying off any of their men. After the crisis was passed, on the pay-day before Christmas, there was placed in the envelope of each employe a note of friendly greeting and an amount of gold equal to the entire reduction of their pay during the panic through which they had passed. It was such generous acts as these that bound to Mr. Culver as by hooks of steel the loyal employes of the company.
Mr. Culver's benevolences were varied and extensive. It was his pleasure to forward every worthy object; but to help young men struggling to rise under difficulties and to gain an education, always appealed to him most strongly, and it will never be known how many of these received assist- ance from him. It may easily be imagined that his first conception of a school for the education of boys came to him when he realized how great was the demand for such help by worthy young men.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
Mr. Culver was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church of St. Louis, and was always a liberal and generous contributor to its support. He was also a Knight Templar and a Thirty-second Degree Scottish Rite Mason .*
In coming in contact with Mr. Culver personally, one realized most clearly what is meant by the often used phrase "personal magnetism"; nor in his case was it hard to discover the sources of that power of attracting and holding the attention. There was in him a natural flow of eloquent speech, a vivid imagination, and a generous heartiness of manner of which everyone felt the fascination. No one who met him could forget the sin- cerity and noble simplicity that characterized all his words and actions, the quick response to every emotion, the spontaneous humor and ready wit. Striking as were his powers of intellect, it was above all his large-hearted- ness and sympathetic kindliness that one most admired and was attracted by.
He was a most impressive talker ; brimful of eloquence, by turns fiery and impassioned, again humorous or pathetic. He seemed unconsciously to follow the poet's advice: "If you would move me, first be moved your- self." His words came straight from his heart, and he talked to convince and persuade. Nothing could be more picturesque and vivid than the language he employed, entirely free from conventional or artificial phrases, simple, direct, original.
Mr. Culver had at his command an inexhaustible stock of reminiscences, which he would apply with admirable skill to the subject in hand. Nor less admirable were those pithy sentences, full of practical wisdom, with which he would "point a moral or adorn a tale." Among his favorite thoughts, to which he would return again and again, were two which were most char- acteristic of the man, and furnished the keynote of his success. These were : growth as the test of health in business and character, and the heart as being a more important factor of success in life than the intellect. "Keep on growing, expanding," he would say, with that emphatic sweep of the arms. "growth, no matter how little, that's the main thing." And again, "I believe that though a man were as eloquent as Webster, and as great a general as Grant, he will come to nothing if his heart is not right."
The Wrought Iron Range Company, after the retirement of Mr. W. W. Culver passed entirely into the hands of Mr. H. H. Culver's family. It has continued to grow and prosper under their management, as they have con- tinued to build wisely upon the foundation laid for them in the past. The five sons, W. L. Culver, H. H. Culver, Jr., E. R. Culver, B. B. Culver, and K. K. Culver, with their mother, are also the trustees of the Culver Military Academy, and most liberally and loyally have they followed their mother's inspiration to build in the school which he loved, the greatest and most enduring monument to his memory.
In twelve years, from a corps of thirty cadets, quartered in a frame
* Mr. Culver was also a charter member of the Masonie lodge at Culver, whose name was changed to the Henry H. Culver Lodge after his death, in compliment to him.
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HISTORY OF MARSHALL COUNTY.
building, and scarcely known within its own state, to an enrollment within the year 1907-08 (winter and summer ) of 677 cadets, over double the num- ber receiving military instruction in any other private school in the United States, with four splendid fireproof barracks, a superb riding hall, gym- nasium, and hospital, all built and equipped at a cost of half a million, and officially designated by the war department as one of the six distinguished institutions of the country, and recognized the world over as the highest type of private military school-such in brief is the truly remarkable his- tory of the growth of the Culver Military Academy. In all the annals of school history there is no other record such as this.
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