Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes, Part 10

Author: Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924. cn
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 972

USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes > Part 10

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The Indiana State Board of Commerce is composed of the commercial organizations of the various cities of Indiana, brought together for united action in advancing the public and commercial interests of the state. Mr. Fortune proposed and brought about this organization in 1894. He was elected its president in 1897 and again in 1898 and 1899. The State Board of Commerce, under the leadership of Mr. For- tune, inaugurated the movement for the reforms in county and township government which re- sulted in the changes in county administration made by the legislature about 1900. It is es- timated that these changes, in the first year of their operation, saved the people over three million dollars.

Mr. Fortune was one of the original members of the Commercial Club Elevated Railroad Commission, appointed in 1894. He and Colo- nel Lilly spent many years in agitating the abolition of grade crossings by means of track elevation. Mr. Fortune was appointed chair- man of the commission in June. 1898, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Colonel Lilly. In 1898 the ordinance was passed re- quiring track elevation. The railroads resisted, and it was only after the courts. the legislature

and local political campaigns had given their approval to the measure that the public triumphed over the corporations. The city charter was so amended as to provide for con- tinued progress in the elevation of tracks.

From the time of its organization Mr. For- tune was until 1905 a member of the executive committee of the Citizens' League, being asso- ciated in this work with Thomas C. Day, T. E. Griffith, Father F. H. Gavisk, Lucius B. Swift, A. L. Mason and G. E. Hunt. Though he has long been identified with the important pub- lic undertakings which have created the mod- ern character of Indianapolis, Mr. Fortune is only a man in the prime of life and. naturally looks forward to many years of continued use- fulness to city and state.

William Fortune was born in Boonville, War- rick County, Indiana, May 27, 1863. He is of French and Scotch descent on his mother's side-the St. Clairs of Kentucky and Virginia. His great-grandfather was Raymond St. Clair and his grandfather was Isaac St. Clair. On his father's side the family (Fortune-Shoe- maker) is of French and German origin. Al- though the St. Clairs were large slave owners, the Kentucky branch of the family took the Union side, and five of the six uncles of Will- iam Fortune served through the war on the Federal side. William H. Fortune, father of William, was one of the first to enlist in Com- pany A of the First Indiana Cavalry, and served till mustered out at the close of the war. After the war he located at Murfreesboro, Ten- nessee, in the summer of 1865, but met re- verses which caused him to return north after eighteen months. For the next few years the family lived at Paxton (Ill.), Seymour, Shoals, Mitchell and Evansville in Indiana, finally re- turning to Boonville.

At these various places William Fortune spent his youth, passing. his ninth to eighteenth year at Boonville. In 1876 he became appren- tice in the printing office of the Boonville Stan- dard. M. B. Crawford, the editor, took much interest in training the boy as a writer, and he- fore he was sixteen years old he was doing much of the editorial work of the paper. At the age of seventeen he wrote and published a history of his native county, from the profits of which he was enabled to provide for the family, which had become dependent upon him, while he sought a new field of work.

In January. 1882, he became a reporter on the Indianapolis Journal. His reports of the sessions of the Indiana general assembly in 1883-4 were the cause of several rather dramatic incidents, resulting finally in an attempt by the Democratic majority to expel him on the last dav of the session. Enough of the Democratic

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senators voted on his side to make a tie, and the deciding vote of Lieutenant-Governor Man- son was cast in his favor. A little later he suc- ceeded Harry S. New as city editor of the Journal, but resigned in the spring of 1888 ou account of ill health. Then he founded the Sunday Press, with Mrs. Emma Carleton as associate editor. It had high literary quality, with some of the best known people of the state among its contributors, but its publication was discontinued at the end of three months, with -. out financial loss to any of the stockholders ex- cept Mr. Fortune, who assumed the losses.

The nomination of Harrison for president made Indiana the battle center in the cam- paign of 1888, and, as the special representa- tive of several leading newspapers, including the New York Tribune, Philadelphia Press and Chicago Tribune, Mr. Fortune did some notable work as political correspondent. A lit- tle later he declined an offer of the position of Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.

Soon afterward his efforts were turned into the new channel afforded by his connection with the Commercial Club and its campaign for city improvement. In this field he showed the abil- ity to "do things" and the energy and enthusi- asm and indomitable spirit needed in under- taking untried plans and spurring others into activity in the same work. His ambition "to make Indianapolis a model city" has since af- forded him a range of effort such that he had to abandon newspaper work, and his principal work has since been in connection with the en- terprises already described.

His management of the National Paving Ex- position in 1890 suggested to him the need of a publication devoted especially to municipal improvements, and, with William C. Bobbs as business manager, soon afterward issued Pav- ing and Municipal Engineering as a 16-page journal. This has since become the Municipal Engineering Magazine, which is the pioneer and the recognized authority in that field in Amer- ica. It is a prosperous publication devoted to the practical affairs of American municipalities. He is president of the company which owns the publication and for a number of years was its editor. He is president of the New Telephone Company of Indianapolis and in January, 1908, was elected president of the Inter-State Life Assurance Company; is also president of the Indianapolis Telephone Company, vice-presi- dent in active charge of the New Long Dis- tance Telephone Company, to which he largely devotes his time; these being his principal busi- ncss activities at this time.

In February. 1898, a loving cup was pre- sented to Mr. Fortune bearing the inscription

"To William Fortune, from citizens of Indian- apolis in recognition of his services in promot- ing the general welfare of the city." The presentation of the loving cup was accompanied by an engrossed testimonial signed by one hun- dred leading citizens headed by the name of Benjamin Harrison.

It was largely through personal relations with Mr. Fortune that Wong Kai Kah, the Chinese diplomat, was influenced to establish his home in Indianapolis while in America, and through him Prince Pu Lun was invited to become the guest of Indiana and Indianapolis for a week in 1904. In 1905 the Emperor of China, by letter patent, conferred upon Mr. Fortune the mandarin rank and also gave him the decora- tion of the Order of the Double Dragon.

Through the Commercial Club in 1902 Mr. Fortune offered a gold medal to the pupil of the public schools writing the best essay on the topic "Why we take pride in Indianapolis", the object being to stimulate home pride and public spirit in the young people. This prize was afterwards offered annually by the Commer- cial Club, and the design for the medal has been used for various public purposes.

Mr. Fortune was the first president of the Indianapolis Press Club, organized in 1891. He was one of the organizers of the Century Club and was its president in 1892. He was presi- dent of the Automobile Club of Indiana for two years. He is a member of a number of clubs, including, besides those mentioned, the Country Club, the Columbia Club, the Univer- sity Club, and the Woodruff. Club, all of In- dianapolis.

Mr. Fortune married, November 25, 1884, Miss May Knubbe, daughter of Frederick and Jerusha A. Knubbe. She died September 28, 1898, leaving. three children: Russell, Evelyn and Madeline. Evelyn is the wife of Mr. Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, a grandson of Col. Eli Lilly.

SALEM D. CLARK. A young Indianapolis at- torney of present prominence and greater prom- ise. state senator of Indiana, Hon. Salem D. Clark is a native of Hoosierdom, born on a farm in Hendricks County, May 13, 1872. His parents are Daniel M. and Clarinda (Dicker- son) Clark, natives of Butler County, Ohio, of English descent, the father being a farmer and a carpenter.

S. D. Clark was the thirteenth of fourteen children and, up to date, has very successfully defied the fact. After completing the education to be obtained in the township school, he en- tered Central Indiana Normal School at Dan- ville and later became a student at Valparaiso (Ind.) College, where he pursued both com- mercial and scientific courses. · As he had de-

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HISTORY OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS.

cided upon law as his profession, but was sadly deficient in educational funds, he became an employe of the Central Indiana State Asylum for some time, assisted his brother in his farm- ing, and assumed anything which offered hon- est financial returns. He finally entered the Indiana Law School of the University of lu- dianapolis, from which he graduated in May, 1898, when he was also admitted to the bar.

Mr. Clark has been in active and expanding practice since 1899. His stanch work for the Democracy was placed in public evidence in 1908, as in the fall of that year he was honored with election to the state senatorship. His wife, whom he married November 1, 1899, was for- merly Miss Emma Pence, of Wayne Township, Marion County, Indiana, and for several years before her marriage a teacher in the public schools.

JAMES S. CRUSE. The interposition of the reliable and enterprising real estate dealer and agent has a potent influence in connection with the development and upbuilding of any city, and among the able and representative ex- ponents of this important line of business in Indiana's capital city is Mr. Cruse, one of the loyal and progressive citizens of "Greater In- dianapolis".

Mr. Cruse was born in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana. on the 16th of July, 1858, and is a son of John P. and Annie M. (Dudley) Cruse. the former of whom was born in the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the lat- ter in Virginia. Their marriage was solemnized at New Albany, Indiana, where they continued to reside until 1862, when they removed to In- dianapolis, where they passed the residue of their lives. In his earlier business career the father was a contractor and builder, but he eventually became an extensive manufacturer of and dealer in brick, with which line of en- terprise he continued to be identified until his death. Of the two children the subject of this review is the elder, and his sister, Mary B., is the wife of Henry J. Wiethe, of Indianapolis.

James S. Cruse was about four years of age at the time of the family removal to Indian- apolis, where he was reared to maturity and where he duly availed himself of the advan- tages of the public schools. As a boy he began to assist in the work of his father's brick yard. and eventually he was given charge of the books, accounts and orders. Later he assumed a clerical position in the abstract office of John H. Batty, with the management of whose busi- ness he continued to be identified until the death of Mr. Batty. after which he was em- ployed by the latter's successor for some time. Within these years he gained an accurate and intimate knowledge of real estate values in

Marion County, as well as the state in gen- eral. After retiring from the abstract office he was employed for a short time in the real estate rental agency of Giles S. Bradley. He next engaged with the firm of Dain & McCul- lough, who conducted a general real estate and ental agency, continuing in the employ of this firm for some time and later having being sim- ilarly engaged with the agency conducted in- dividually by Mr. Dain. Upon the death of 'Mr. Dain, Mr. Cruse purchased the business, and during the intervening period of about a quar- ter of a century he has held prestige as one of the leading real estate dealers of the cap- ital city, where his business is conducted under the title of the J. S. Cruse Realty Company. This company was incorporated under the laws of the state on the 19th of December, 1908, and since that time Mr. Cruse has held the office of president. The business of the concern is of wide scope and importance, involving the handling of all kinds of city, suburban and farm property, the agency for many rental properties, rent collections, etc. The books of the company show at all times most desirable investments, and the high reputation of the interested principals gives to the business a con- stantly cumulative tendency. Mr. Cruse is also president of the Marion Title Guaranty Com- pany, one of the important financial and fidu- ciary organizations of the state. His success, and it has been of no equivocal order, repre- sents direct result of his own well directed ef- forts, and he is one of the honored citizens and representative business men of the city which has been his home from his childhood days.

In politics Mr. Cruse gives an unwavering allegiance to the Republican party, but he has never had anght of desire for the honors or emoluments of public office. He is a member of the Columbia, Commercial and Marion Clubs and also of the Indianapolis Board of Trade, in whose progressive work he accords a hearty co-operation. In the Masonic fraternity Mr. Cruse has attained to the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, in which he is affiliated with Indiana Sovereign Consis- tory. Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret, and is also a member of the allied organization. Murat Temple. Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

In 1896 Mr. Cruse was united in marriage to Miss Fannie Jones, danghter of the late William H. Jones, of Indianapolis, and they have no children.

WILLIAM T. BROWN has been engaged in the practice of law in the City of Indianapolis for more than thirty years and is uniformly rec- ognized as one of the representative members of the bar of the state. It is, in the vernacular

Eli Lilly

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HISTORY OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS.

of the fox chase, a "far cry" from the position of a mere lad working as a section hand on a railroad to that of a prominent member of the legal profession in a state within whose bor- ders this rise has occurred, and yet this, in brief, indicates the measure of personal accom- plishment which stands to the credit and honor of Mr. Brown, who has been in the most sig- nificant sense the architect of his own fortunes and who has been dependent upon his own re- sources from his boyhood days.

William T. Brown was born near Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia, on the 23d of Septem- ber, 1850, and is a son of Burrell E. and Keziah (George) Brown, both of whom were natives of South Carolina and both of whom passed the closing years of their lives in the state of Georgia. The father was a blacksmith by trade and the family history is one that may be desig- nated, in the words of Abraham Lincoln con- cerning his own family, "the short and simple annals of the poor." In his native state the subject of this review gained the rudiments of an education, and in 1864, when fourteen vears of age, he came to Indiana, arriving in April of that year and soon afterward finding em- ployment as a section hand on the line of the old J. M. & I. railroad. He was thus engaged until the following November, when he came to Indianapolis, where he has maintained his home during the long intervening years. Here he found employment in a rolling mill, and for several years he continued to be identified with this line of work, the while he had the ambi- tion and tenacity of purpose to husband his limited financial resources in order to utilize the same in securing higher educational train- ing. At the head of the rolling mill was John Thomas, a man of sterling character and help- ful sympathy. He gave to Mr. Brown all pos- sible encouragement and aid while the latter was working his way through college, and Mr. Brown has ever felt a debt of appreciative gratitude to this kind and considerate friend and counselor of his youthful davs. Mr. Brown was finally enabled to enter the preparatory de- partment of Wabash College, at Crawfordsville, and in this institution he eventually completed the work of the junior year, leaving the college in 1874. In the meanwhile he had continued to work in the rolling mill during the vaca- tions of the college year. Upon leaving college Mr. Brown became a student in the law office of the firm of Gordon, Browne & Lamb, of In- dianapolis, and with such aviditv and such ex- cellent powers of absorption and assimilation did he prosecute his study of the science of jurisprudence that he gained admission to the Indiana bar in the Centennial vear. 1876. In 1878 he opened an office in what is now the

Indiana Trust Company building, and during the intervening years he has here maintained his professional headquarters, while he has moved onward to precedence as one of the lead- ing representatives of his profession in the cap- ital city. In 1878 he was appointed chief dep- uty prosecuting attorney, under John B. Elam, and in 1882 he was elected prosecuting attor- ney of Marion County, of which office he re- mained incumbent for two years, giving an ad- mirable administration and thereby gaining further prestige as a strong and versatile trial lawyer. In 1897 Mr. Brown was appointed county attorney, and he held this position un- til 1900. He has been identified with a large amount of important litigation in the state and federal courts and has appeared in connection with the trial of a number of the most cele- brated criminal causes presented in the local courts.

In politics Mr. Brown has ever been found aligned as a loyal and active supporter of the cause of the Republican party, though he has never sought or held public office except such positions as have been in direct consonance with the work of his profession. In the Masonic fraternity he is identified with local York Rite bodies, as well as with the Indianapolis con- sistory of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite. He and his wife are zealous and valued mem- bers of the Central Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, and he has been a member of its offi- cial board for more than a quarter of a cen- tury. He holds membership in the Marion and the Commercial Clubs, two of the representa- tive social organizations of the capital city, and is also identified with the Indiana Bar Asso- ciation.

On the 26th of August, 1884, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Brown to Miss Hattie E. Sperry, of Fulton, New York, in which state she was born and reared, being a daughter of Ira and Lovina H. Sperry.

COL. ELI LILLY during his active career in Indianapolis did not have a superior among his contemporaries either in the practical achievements of business or in the civic pride and energy which have made Indianapolis a great city. As founder of the great manu- facturing drug house of Eli Lilly Company he gave the city one of its greatest business institutions. And through his leadership in the civic movement which began with the or- ganization of the Commercial Club, he was one of the founders of the modern era of Indian- apolis history.

He was born at Baltimore, Maryland, July 8. 1839, and died in Indianapolis June 6, 1898. When he was a year old his parents, Gustavus and Esther E. Lilly, moved to Lexington, Ken-

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HISTORY OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS.

tucky, and in 1848 to Gallatin County, that state, and three years later located at Green- castle, Indiana.

He was thirteen years old when he moved to Greencastle, and continued his hitherto lim- ited schooling in a private school and also in the preparatory department of Asbury (now DePauw) University. For a time he published the Asbury Notes, the college paper of the time, this being his first business experience. Soon afterward he became a drug clerk, which introduced him to the field in which he was destined to make his great business success. At the age of seventeen he became clerk to Henry Lawrence, an English chemist and pharmacist of Lafayette, Indiana, under whom he gained both a practical and theoretical knowledge of the business.

At Lafayette he became a member of the local company of Guards. This training and experience was prelude to another conspicuous period of his life. He was in the drug busi- ness at Greencastle when the Civil War broke out. Though his father was an abolitionist, and said to have been a station agent on the "underground railroad," the son had more conservative views of the institution of slav- ery, and in fact voted for Breckenridge rather than for Douglas in 1860. However, he op- posed disunion, and when the war broke out he was one of the most enthusiastic Union men in his vicinity and thenceforth supported Lin- coln and the war with all the ardor of his being.

He was one of the first to enlist in what subsequently became the First Indiana Heavy Artillery, which was organized at Indianapolis in July, 1861. His previous training and his efficiency as a soldier soon brought him more responsible duties. As captain, he was as- signed the task of recruiting a battery, which subsequently became the famous Eighteenth. Indiana Battery. In two weeks the full bat- tery was recruited, the officers selected, and it was mustered in August 20, 1862. Lieutenant Campbell, of Crawfordsville, a member of the battery, wrote: "He was an exceedingly young man for so important a position, as the com- mand of a battery in those days was more complex and important than the command of a regiment of infantry. His youthful and slen- der appearance was decidedly against him, the men of the battery thought, as they gathered together at Camp Morton in the middle of the summer of 1862. But the first day of active service in which the battery participated dis- pelled all doubts as to the ability and quali- fications of the youthful captain. From that time on there was no doubt of his fitness and ability."

The words of the same writer may be quoted as the best description of Colonel Lilly's mili- tary experience. To continue the above:

"The rapid advance of the rebel army under Bragg and the retreat of Buell to Louisville, during the latter part of the summer of 1862, required all the raw troops to be hurried down to the Ohio River. In this hurried movement all his admirable qualities as an organizer and disciplinarian were developed. In the space of twenty-four hours he transformed a green lot of men who had never seen a piece of artil- lery, and harnessed and hitched a new lot of unbroken horses together for the first time into an effective battery ready for action. September 1 Captain Lilly drew his guns and caissons from the arsenal at Indianapolis, loaded them on flatcars on the Jeffersonville Railroad, reached Jeffersonville the next day about 9 o'clock, drew his complement of horses and camp equipage from the quartermaster, and by the greatest exertion the battery was harnessed, hitched and moved down to the river, ferried over and assigned a place in the lines of defense around Louisville in the after- noon of the same day. There his untried men stood in line of battle, while the tired and dusty veterans of Buell marched past into the city.

"During the winter Colonel Lilly's battery was changed into a mounted battery. Four more guns were added, making it a ten-gun hattery, and the entire command was attached to the famous Wilder's brigade of mounted infantry, and made a part of the Fourteenth Army Corps under Gen. George H. Thomas. The first severe engagement in which the Lilly battery participated was at Hoover's Gap, Tennessee, July 24, 1863,-the first day of Rosecrans' strategic advance on Chattanooga. For four hours Colonel Lilly stubbornly held his battery on the brow of a hill and poured a triple charge of grape and canister into successive charges of two brigades of Clai- borne's division, which vainly attempted to drive the Union troops out of the gap. All the while the battery received the shot and shell from two batteries of six guns belonging to the brigade opposing it. By deftly retiring the guns below the crest of the hill so that the muzzles just cleared the greensward of the brow, he deceived the aim of the rebel batteries and greatly shielded his men from slaughter, as the rain of shot and shell tore up the earth- work on the crest of the slope. Colonel Lilly dismounted from his horse and was everv- where through the battery directing the aim of his men and encouraging them, his presence inspiring confidence and courage. He fre-

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Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes, Part 10

Author: Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924. cn Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 972

Author: Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924. cn
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 972