USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana > Part 22
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
ernment was hardly less conspicuous than the improve- ment of business and real estate, and it was much more durable. The "Old Seminary" was finished in 1834, and first occupied by the late Gen. Ebenezer Dumont, Sept. 1, 1834. The following January he was succeeded by William J. Hill, who afterwards taught in the old carpenter-shop on the northwest corner of Market and Delaware Streets, where he was succeeded in 1836 by Josephus Cicero Worrall, as he always signed himself in his magniloquent quarterly announcements. Thomas D. Gregg, who died some years ago and left a handsome bequest to the city, succeeded Mr. Hill in May, 1836, in the seminary, and William Sullivan, for many years a justice of the peace and still living, honored by everybody, followed in December, 1836. Rev. William A. Holliday, father of John H., the founder of the Indianapolis News, came next in August, 1837. James S. Kem- per, still annually honored in the reunions of the "Old Seminary Boys," succeeded Mr. Holliday in the summer of 1838, and continued till 1845, when Rev. J. P. Safford, recently deceased in Zanesville, Ohio, succeeded for a short time, and was followed by Mr. B. L. Lang till 1852. Mr. Kemper's methods and success, and his long retention of the school, made him and the seminary so popular as to draw pupils from other States, and the course of study was as thorough in all branches as that of most colleges. A large number of the prominent men of the city and State were pupils at the Old Seminary. Five years ago they formed an association called the "Old Semi- nary Boys," gray-headed and bald-headed fathers and grandfathers, to hold annual reunions, and with their families renew old games, associations, and memories. Twice Mr. Kemper and his wife have been present, and once Mr. Lang was present. The officers now are : President, Calvin Fletcher ; Secretary, George W. Sloan; Corresponding Secretary, Oliver M. Wilson ; Treasurer, Ingram Fletcher ; Historian, B. R. Sul- grove. In 1878, at the first reunion, there were "Old Boys" present who had not met their old school-mates and teacher, Mr. Kemper, in forty years. It was a gathering almost unique in any country of the world, and entirely so in Indiana. A meeting of the school-boys and teacher of a school long past in a
house long torn away, after the lapse of forty years, was something to remember, at least for the partici- pants. The seminary in 1853 was taken into the free-school system, then first made practical. More will be said of the schools in the proper place.
A few years later than the opening of the County Seminary, mainly for boys, though girls attended for a short time, the Misses Axtell opened a school of corresponding grade for girls exclusively. It was called the " Indianapolis Female Institute," and was chartered by the Legislature at the session of 1836- 37. The first term began June 14, 1837, in the upper story of the Sanders Block, on Washington near Meridian Street. Subsequently a removal was made to the upper rooms on the same street a half- block east of Meridian, where the city offices were kept for a time, and burned in the winter of 1851-52. Soon after a frame building was erected on the grounds of the old Presbyterian Church on Pennsylvania Street, south of the Exchange Block, and the insti- tute taken there, where it remained while the Misses Axtell lived. These two schools were a great ad- vance on those previous to their establishment ; but they were not "alone in their glory." In October, 1847, Gilman Marston, since of national reputation as a member of Congress from New Hampshire, a general during the civil war, and a Territorial Gov- ernor since the war, opened a school in the rooms afterwards taken by the Axtells, in connection with Mrs. Eliza Richmond. The next summer they re- moved to a frame specially built for them on Circle Street, near the site of the residence of Mr. W. H. English. It was called " Franklin Institute," and looked like a country church. Mr. Marston left it the following year, 1839, and was succeeded by Or- lando Chester, who died in 1840, and then Mr. John Wheeler took it and kept for a couple of years, when it was abandoned. In November, 1839, Mrs. Britton, wife of the Episcopalian minister, opened a female seminary on Pennsylvania Street, near the Underhill foundry, afterwards removed to the building north of Christ Church, and long known as " St. Mary's Semi- nary," under Mrs. Johnson, wife of a successor of Mr. Britton in the rectory.
From 1836, Josephus Cicero Worrall kept what
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he called the " Indianapolis Academy" in the old building above referred to. He was a "character," and not by any means a pleasant one. He did not know much, but he could make polysyllabic poluphlos- boyant announcements of the approaching opening of his terms that puzzled the little dictionaries of the day, and would have delighted the classic ears of " Lorenzo Altisonant." They were the periodical jokes of the town. His tastes and habits were as eccentrie as his literature. His fondness for tobacco was a ravenous hunger. He tore it off in wads of a mouthful, and crunched it with the eagerness of a hungry Hoosier at a show on a " quarter section" of gingerbread. He smoked as much as he chewed, and he smoked while he chewed. When he didn't sinoke he kept the stub of a eigar in his mouth and mumbled it, while he rolled a quid as a sweet morsel under his tongue. When he undertook to ex- plain some mathematical intrieaey to a pupil he would spit a shower of damp tobacco flakes on the slate and rub them off to one side like snow off a sidewalk. He whipped incessantly, with little care for provoca- tion, but usually contented himself with a single stroke of a beech switch applied to the pupil in her seat, face to the wall and back turned out, as the house was arranged. He generally made a circuit of the three seated sides of the room about four times in each session of the day, and whipped about one pupil in three in each round. He made the boys saw or chop his wood and carry it into his residence, which was a little shed adjoining the school-house on the north. Some of them were required to lose their Saturday's holiday to help him move to a little frame on the southeast corner of Delaware and Ohio Streets. The girls were made to help his wife take care of the baby, or wash, or do other housework. Of course everybody, boys and girls, detested him. On Christ- mas-day, 1837, they " barred him out," the first and only time that this old game was played with a teacher in Indianapolis. He was not allowed to get in till he " treated," which he did with a half-dollar's worth of cider and apples, and got most of both himself. His school continued in a feeble way after Mr. Kemper took the seminary for five or six years.
Contemporaneously with Mr. Worrall another char-
aeter, that would be called in the apt slang of the day and Guiteau a " crank," taught a small school of small boys in the lower room of a frame building on the opposite side of Market Street from the " Academy." His name was Main, and he was a Scotchman of un- doubted but utterly unavailable learning. He was as fond of snuff as his compeer of the other school was of tobacco, and be carried a Scotch " mull," made of horn and capped with silver, that would hold a half- pint at least. He was very absent-minded, and given to sitting with his spectacles dropped low on the tip of his nose and gazing away off in the atmosphere, as completely lost to his surroundings as if he were asleep, or holding his head squeezed between his hands with his elbows on the table, staring fixedly at a eraek or a nail-hole as a mesmerie subject stares at a dime to induce sleep. In these moods he noticed nothing about him. The boys could play marbles, or pull pins, or run out-doors and roll round in the weeds in perfect safety. If the old fellow should come out of his reverie he would notice no disorder, and had usually to be prompted to know what his next class was. If he wandered off dreaming while hearing a recitation, as he sometimes did, he had to be told what the class was and where the recitation had stopped when he came to himself. Not unfre- quently he would sit through the better of a half- day's session and never think of calling a class unless reminded by some importunate and preposterous pupil, a weakness, however, that very few boys could re- proach themselves with. He taught but a single quarter, and then removed, with his brother, a tailor and his brother-in-law, the first stone-cutter, or one of the first, a Mr. Spear, to Arkansas. But very few, even of the old residents, ever knew anything of him or can now recall him, he was so retiring and indif- ferent to company. Of the earlier private schools and of the public schools an account will be given in the chapter of schools, with a notice of all the educa- tional institutions of the city.
4th. During the short period under consideration were established some of those business conveniences which in old communities soon become necessities ; that is, banks and insurance companies and protection against, as well as indemnity for, damage by fire. The
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
State Bank was chartered Jan. 28, 1834, to run for twenty-five years. The State took half of the stock, and appointed the president and half of the directors. Bonds called " bank bonds" were issued to pay out the State's stock, and made payable from the State's divi- dends. These dividends were to be employed as a sinking fund, and make loans to accommodate farmers and purchasers of land primarily on mortgage security ; the president of the bank to be president of the fund management. The profits of the fund as well as the principal were to be applied first to pay the bank bonds, and the remainder was to go to the school fund. So judiciously was this fund managed that when it was wound up finally some twenty years ago it paid to the support of free schools a permanent fund of nearly four million dollars. The first president of the bank and fund was Samuel Merrill, State treas- urer ; the first State directors, Calvin Fletcher, Seton W. Norris, Robert Morrison, and Thomas H. Scott. James M. Ray was appointed cashier, and remained so till the bank was wound up. In the first place ten branches were created in the principal towns of the State, but the number was finally increased to sixteen. Samuel Merrill was president till 1840, when he was made president of the Madison Railroad. He was succeeded by Judge James Morrison till 1850, he by the late Gen. Ebenezer Dumont till 1855, and he by Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury, succeeding Mr. Fessenden. W. H. Talbott was president of the sinking fund in its last years while closing up, about 1863 to 1864. The first location of the mother-bank was in the Governor's house in the Circle, then on Washington Street, and was re- moved to its own building, corner of Illinois Street and Kentucky Avenue, in 1840. In 1837, when the great financial crash came, the bank and all its branches suspended specie payment May 18th, and remained suspended till Jan. 15, 1842, when the Legislature ordered resumption. This course did not impair either the credit or usefulness of the institu- tion.
The Indianapolis Branch was organized Nov. 11, 1834, with Hervey Bates, president, and Bethuel F. Morris, cashier. The location was on the south side of Washington Street, on the site of the present
Vance Block. The officers and location were retained together till 1840, when the building corner of Pennsylvania Street and Virginia Avenue, corre- sponding in situation to the parent bank, was finished and the institution removed there. Some years after Calvin Fletcher was made president in place of Mr. Bates, and Thomas H. Sharpe cashier in place of Mr. Morris, and these remained till the bank was wound up. Of the Bank of the State, the successor of the State Bank, but with no State interest in it, an ac- count will be found under the head of " Banks," with a notice of all the banking establishments of the city. In this connection may be noticed the first private bank ever opened here. It was owned by Mr. John Wood, one of the firm in the Pennsylvania Street foundry, and began business in 1838. He failed in September, 1841. In 1839, Edward S. Alvord & Co. did a private banking business for four or five years. At the same time Stoughton A. Fletcher, brother of Calvin, began the same business, either at first or soon after joined by William D. Wygant, on Washington Street, and that was the beginning of a most successful business, now in its forty-fourth year, as Fletcher & Churchman's bank.
The first insurance company was organized here March 16, 1836, under a fifty-year charter, with a cap- ital of two hundred thousand dollars. Douglass Ma- guire was president, and Caleb Seudder secretary. It never did much, but was in operation till shortly before the outbreak of the war. In 1865 the stock passed into the hands of able managers and a new company was organized, with William Henderson as president, and Alexander C. Jameson as secretary. The Indi- ana Mutual Fire Insurance Company was chartered Jan. 30, 1837, and organized the next month, with James Blake as president, and Charles W. Cady as secretary and actuary and general manager. It did well for a few years, but the plan was said to be inef- fectively contrived, and it met some serious losses and became insolvent, going out altogether about the year 1850.
On the completion of the State-House in 1835, the Legislature provided for its protection from fire by ordering its insurance and the purchase of twenty leather fire-buckets, and ladders long enough to reach
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the roof. It also proposed to pay half of the cost of a fire-engine if the citizens would subscribe the other half. A meeting was held February 12th to consider the proposition. The old fire company of 1827 reor- ganized as the Marion Fire Hosc and Protection Com- pany, famous for many a ycar after the " Old Marion," and the main dependence of the volunteer department for more than twenty years. Caleb Scudder was the first captain. The meeting requested the trustces to levy a tax to pay the town's share of the cost of the engine, and it was done, aided by individual subscrip- tions, and the Marion end-brake hand-engine, manned by twenty-eight to thirty men, and able to throw an inch stream two hundred feet, was bought of Merrick & Co., Philadelphia, for one thousand eight hundred dollars. The State built a little one-story house for it in 1836, but in 1837 the town built a two-story frame north side of the Circle, with a room for the Council on the second story. It was burned in 1851. The company was incorporated the next year. A second company was formed in 1840, but an account of the whole fire department from the first will be found under that caption. Five firc-wells were made in 1835-36.
The State militia system, as already described, fell into disuse and discredit soon after the settlement of the town, and no substitute was attempted by State or local or individual influence till 1837. Then a meet- ing was held on the 22d of February to form a mili- tary company. Alexander W. Russell, the old militia colonel, was made captain, and succceded the next year by Gen. Thomas A. Morris, then but a few years out of West Point. He distinguished himself in the first campaign of the civil war in West Virginia by really doing all the planning and work that made that so brilliant a success. Gen. McClellan was still in the East, and arrived just in time to sec the completion of Gen. Morris' work, and appropriate all the credit of it. This company continued to drill and parade and decorate. public occasions by its excellent drill and handsome gray uniform faced with black velvet till 1845. The company was incorporated in 1838. The following year the Marion Rifles formed a company under Capt. Thomas McBaker. Their uniform was a blue cotton " hunting-shirt" fringed, with blue
breeches, and they were armed with the clumsiest breech-loading rifles that were ever invented.
A notable event of this period was the completion and opening of what may be fairly called the first " hotel" in the place, in 1836, the " Washington Hall," turned into the "Glenn Block" and New York Store in 1859. It was kept for many years by the late Edmund Browning, and was the Whig head- quarters as long as there was a Whig party, as the Palmer House was the headquarters of the Dem- ocracy. A complete account of the hotels will be found in another part of the work. The Palmer House, now Occidental, it may be observed here, was begun in the latter part of 1839, and opened in 1841 by John C. Parker, of Charleston, Clarke Co., Ind. The first editorial convention was held here May 29, 1837. The first ladies' fair was held December 31st of the year for the benefit of the Ladies' Missionary Society, and made two hundred and. thirty dollars. Professor C. P. Bronson, the first noted elocutionist that visited Central Indiana, lectured Aug. 30, 1836. At the second meeting of the County Agricultural So- ciety, Calvin Fletcher, the orator of the occasion, said that one million three hundred thousand bushels of corn had been produced on thirteen hundred farms in the county. Luke Munsell and William Sullivan beth published maps of the town in 1836, the former May 30th, and the latter in October. Revs. James Havens and John C. Smith held a great camp-meeting that ycar on the Military Ground, August 25th to 30th, and made one hundred and thirty conversions. In 1837, while the metaling of the National road in Washington Street was going on, the trustees took measures to improve the sidewalks. They were made fifteen feet wide in the original plan, but were subse- quently widened to twenty, and the ninety-feet street- walks were originally changed from ten to twelve, and later to fifteen. The property-holders resisted the changes because it increased the expense of improve- ment, which was charged against the property. This was the first street improving ever attempted. The first clothing-store was opened here in 1838 by Ben- jamin Orr. In 1839 a mistake of eight aeres was discovered in the original survey of the donation. Congress generously added the ground to the donation
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
in 1840, on the memorial of the Legislature. The first Thanksgiving ever held in the State was in 1839, on a proclamation of Governor Wallace fixing Thurs- day, the 28th of November, as the day. The winter of 1838-39 saw the first attempt at a regular the- atrical exhibition with orchestra, scenery, and all the usual adjuncts of the stage. The manager was a Mr. Lindsay. His theatre was the wagon-shop of Mr. Ollaman, on Washington Street, opposite the court- house. He returned in 1840-41, and made a theatre of an old printing-office on the present site of the News building. A few years later another company gave concerts and dramatic exhibitions in the upper room of Gaston's carriage-factory, site of the Bates House.
On the 12th of February, 1839, the Legislature ordered the State officers to buy the residence, re- cently finished, of Dr. John H. Sanders, corner of Illinois and Market Streets, for a residence for the Governor. Until that time the need of an official Executive residence had not been felt. Governor Noble, the predecessor of Governor Wallace, was a resident of the town, and lived during his two terms in his own house. So did Governor Ray, who, as acting Governor for a year succeeding in the fraction of the term of Governor Hendricks, who had gone to the National Senate, and for two terms, or six years, as regularly elected Executive, held the office nearly all the time after the removal of the capital from Corydon. But Governor Wallace came from Brookville, had no residence here, and for some time lived in a two-story house on the south side of Wash- ington Street, just west of the canal. The Executive mansion was occupied all the time from 1839 till 1863, in the fall, when Governor Morton abandoned it on account of its unhealthiness, and went to board- ing with his family till he made a purchase of the residence on the southeast corner of Pennsylvania and New York Streets, where he lived the remainder of his life, and died in the fall of 1877. The Governors all suffered in that house. Governor Bigger, who succeeded Governor Wallace, seems to have contracted there the disease that carried him off soon after he left the office. Governor Whitcomb, who married while occupying the house, lost his young wife there.
Governor Wright lost his first wife there. Governor Willard's wife was always ill while there. Governor Lane only held the office two or three days, and never had a chance to test the morbific influence of the house, but Governor Morton did and left. It and the quarter of a square, or one acre, of ground about were sold in 1865, and compact masses of business houses cover the whole space.
In May, 1838, the split that had for some time been moving deeper into the Presbyterian brotherhood reached Indianapolis and a division was made, fifteen members withdrawing and forming the Second Church, Nov. 19, 1838, under Rev. J. H. Johnson. In May, 1839, Henry Ward Beecher was called from Lawrence- burg, where he began his now famous ministry, and served here till Sept. 19, 1847. The Episcopalians, who had been using the court-house for a church since 1835 occasionally, organized a church in the spring of 1837, and built Christ Church the next year. A sketch of the history of all the churches will treat these more fully.
The first murders in the town took place in the seven years of this period which have been under consideration. On the 8th of May, Michael Van Blaricum drowned William McPherson while ferrying him across the river, just below the line of the present Washington Street bridge, by wilfully rocking and upsetting the boat. His motive appears to have been a sort of contemptuous dislike of his victim, whom he regarded as what in these days is called a " dude," and probably meant no worse than to duck him and spoil his clothes. He asserted that he intended no more. But he was convicted and sent to the peniten- tiary for three years in October, 1834. He was par- doned when his time was abont half out. He was the ferryman of the ferry at that point. The second murder was bloodier and less excusable. It was committed April 27, 1836, by Arnold Lashley on Zachariah Collins. Lashley was a coach-maker, who had succeeded the Johnsons in the establishment on the site now occupied by the post-office and the busi- ness houses north of it on the east side of Pennsyl- vania Street, a Kentuckian and a hot-tempered fellow. Collins was a charcoal-burner who supplied Lashley's establishment. On the day of the homicide he had
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brought in a wagon-load of coal, and was unloading it in the usual place, when Lashley complained that the coal was dirty, and ordered him to stop unloading it. Collins seems to have been as surly as Lashley was fiery, and went coolly on with his work ; after a few words more of remonstrance, Lashley seized a single-tree lying on the floor and struck Collins on the head or neck, killing him instantly. He was arrested, and after a preliminary examination held to bail. While under bail he ran away and was never seen or heard of here again. Not long after this an Indianapolis or Marion County man of the name of MeDowell had a quarrel with some one at a raee in Hamilton County, and killed him by a blow that broke his neek.
In 1838-39 a market-house was built for the western part of the town on the west side of Ten- nessee Street at the crossing of Ohio. Ephraim Cole- stoek was paid three thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars for it, and for making an addition to the East Market. The new house was not used at all for four or five years, and never was used like the old one, though a larger and every way better house. The south end of the same square (held by the State) was occupied by the Arsenal during the war. When the State de- cided to build a new State-House, the city surrendered the market-house and vacated Market Street, thus giving the State-House two unbroken squares, with the intervening street making nearly nine acres.
The last division of the second period of the city's history is that extending from the abandonment of the public works to the completion of the first rail- road and the organization of the town under a city charter in 1847. Its leading features are : 1st, The establishment of the State benevolent institutions or asylums, or the adoption of measures with that object, in 1843 and the two or three succeeding years ; 2d, Political events and excitements ; 3d, Incidents wholly local and not important, but worth attention as marks of a development ; 4th, Religious move- ments.
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