USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana > Part 25
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teachers were employed, new houses built, old ones enlarged, and the average attendance increased from three hundred and forty in April, 1853, when the system went into operation, to fourteen hundred in 1856 and eighteen hundred in 1857. Ten houses had been built, forty-four per cent. of the children of " school age" enrolled, and seventy-three per cent. of the enrollment was in average daily attendance. Just in this most promising condition the Supreme Court struck the system a blow that prostrated it at once and paralyzed it for five years. At the suit of Fow- ler, of Lafayette, the court held that local taxation in aid of schools was not the "uniform taxation" re- quired by the Constitution, and could not be enforced. The opinion was very general at the time, and has only grown stronger since, that there was nothing but the thinnest of distinctions to sustain this disastrous ruling. It was made in January, 1858. The Coun- cil at once met to see what could be done, and called upon the citizens of each ward to hold meetings with the same object. This was done on the 29th of Jan- uary. Subscriptions were taken to maintain the schools anyhow, and three thousand dollars were con- tributed. This would not go far, and at the end of the current quarter, seeing that without a revenue backed by law nothing of value could be done, the effort was abandoned, the schools closed, the teachers left the city many of them, and the houses were rented for private schools sometimes, and when they were not they were occupied by thieves and strumpets. The houses were kept in indifferent repair by a small tax, and the State fund allowed a free term of a few months, amounting to four months and a half in , 1860 and 1861. No attempt at free schools was made in 1859. In 1862 the Supreme Court reviewed its decision, the system was reorganized, the tax re-estab- lished, and the flourishing condition of 1857 fully restored and improved. The further history of the public schools will be treated in its department, as ahove intimated.
Third .- The Madison Railroad, in its progress towards the capital, after the State had sold it to a company in 1843, was slow, halting for several months at temporary stations, as North Vernon, Sand Creek, Clifty Creek, Columbus, Edinburg, Franklin, and
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Greenwood. It reached the last station in the latter part of the summer of 1847, and that left but ten miles of staging from the city. The influence of the great public improvement, as already intimated, had gone ahead of it, and inspired the most active and prom- ising enterprise and permanent progress that had yet appeared. Thousands of the old settlers had never seen a railroad, not even this one, which for a half- dozen years had been within fifty miles of them. The curiosity about it was universal, and there was plenty of time for it to grow full-size and spread as far as convenient access could reach. The citizens held a meeting a few days before the 1st of October, the day track-laying would be completed to the depot already in progress on South Street, and made arrange- ments to celebrate the occasion in a suitable manner. The last spike was driven about nine o'clock in the morning of Oct. 1, 1847, and the rail was barely in place and ready when two big excursion trains came up from the lower part of the road, and were received with much shouting, shooting, and spouting. Spald- ing's Circus, with the band, led by Ned Kendall, the famous bugler, was in the city, and the whole availa- ble portion of it turned out to decorate the occasion. Governor Whitcomb made a speech from the roof of a car at the depot, and an illumination and display of fire-works at night closed a demonstration that events proved was not the glittering illusion of the popular rejoicing ten years and more before when the project of the road was adopted by the Legislature. The good effect of a means of transportation that could be depended on, and would not consume the full value of the article in the cost of getting it where some- body would buy it, was speedily felt. The pork packed here and at Broad Ripple by the Mansurs since 1841, and sent down the river in flat-boats on the spring floods, could go anywhere now, choose a market, and run no risk. Corn and wheat doubled in price before Christmas, while goods brought from abroad were cheapcned by the same process that en- hanced home products. Further notice will be taken of the changes produced by this first admission of the city to the commercial connections of the country and by its successors a little later.
From the time the completion of the Madison
Road became a certainty railroad enterprise moved more energetically, and finally with long bounds that have not ceased yet and hardly slackened, except as financial straits have forced it. The Peru and In- dianapolis line was chartered in 1845-46, completed to Noblesville, twenty-one miles, in the spring of 1851, and to Peru, seventy-three miles, in April, 1854. The Bellefontaine (Bee Line) was chartered two years later, but was completed to Pendleton, twenty-eight miles, three months sooner, and to the State line at Union City in December, 1852, over a year sooner. The Terre Haute Road (Vandalia), chartered in 1846, was finished to Terre Haute, sev- cnty-three miles, in May, 1852. The Jeffersonville Road, begun in 1848, was finished to Edinburg, sev- enty-eight miles, and connected with the Madison in 1852. The Lafayette (now Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago, or Big Four) was begun in 1849, and finished to Lafayette, sixty-five miles, in 1852. The Central (Pan Handle) was begun in 1851, and finished to the State line near Richmond, seventy-two miles, December, 1853. The Cincin- nati Road (now part of the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago) was begun in 1850, but not chartered as a through road till 1851, because it would cut off all the up-river trade of the Madison Road. It was completed to Lawrenceburg, uinety miles, in October, 1853. The Junction Road, to Hamilton, Ohio, was begun in 1850, but delayed by one obstruction or another, so that it was not com- pleted to the city till May, 1868. The Vincennes Road was started in 1851, and the company organized under the late John H. Bradley in 1853, but nothing of consequence till a reorganization was made under the late Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, in 1865. It was then pushed vigorously, and completed to the city in 1868. The city gave it a subsidy of sixty thousand. dollars. An " Air Line" road to Evansville was pro- jected in 1840, and taken up in 1853 by Oliver H. Smith, the founder of the Bellefontaine Road, to con- neet with the latter and make a through line from the lower Ohio to Lake Erie, and under this organ- ization surveys were made and work advanced vigor- ously till the financial crash of 1857 stopped it, and before the effects of that had passed away Mr. Smith
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died, and the " Air Linc" is still a project instead of a fact. A " Short Line" road to Cincinnati was pro- jected in 1853, surveys and contracts made, but stopped in 1855 by financial stress, and has remained dead ever since. The Toledo and Indianapolis Road, a direct line of one hundred and eighty-five miles, was organized in 1854 for a short lake connection, but hard times killed it. The Indiana and Illinois Central, one hundred and sixty miles, to Decatur, Ill., was projected in 1852, and organized in 1853, began work and advanced hopefully till the " hard times" came upon it. Later it was reorganized as the Indian- apolis, Decatur and Springfield Road, and was com- pleted in 1881. In 1866 the Cincinnati Road wanted a connection to reach Chicago business, and its man- agement projected a rival line to the Lafayette through Crawfordsville, to which the city voted a subsidy of forty-five thousand dollars. Work was begun and progressing favorably, when the Lafayette was bought and absorbed and the Crawfordsville abandoned. This did not please the people of the rich corn and pork section traversed by the proposed line, and then another company was formed, contracts re-let, and the road completed to the city as the Indianapolis, Bloom- ington and Western in 1869. The Indianapolis and St. Louis Road was begun in 1867 to make a Western connection for one of the great Eastern trunk lines, and was finished in 1869. Within the last two years the Indianapolis, Bloomington and Western has made an eastern extension, entering the city beside the Bee Line tracks, and about a year ago consolidated the Indianapolis, Decatur and Springfield Company with itself, running both lines. The " Chicago Air Line" road, after a long period of embarrassment and ob- struction, was completed into the city last spring, 1883. The Union Railway Company, wholly confined to the city, was organized in 1849, mainly by Gen. Thomas A. Morris, Oliver H. Smith, Chauncey Rose, and Edwin J. Peck. The Union tracks were laid in 1850, and the depot, upon Gen. Morris' plans, in 1853. Previously the Bellefontaine trains had started from the Terre Haute (now Vandalia) Depot, on Tennessee and Louisiana Streets, one square west of the Union Depot. A Belt Road, to connect outside of the city all the roads entering it, by which they could transfer
cars and trains from one to the other without passing through the city, was projected and partly graded by a company, mainly composed of other railroad com- panies, eight or ten years ago, but abandoned in the stress of finances. In 1876 it was taken up by a company, mainly of capitalists in the city or con- nected with the railroads centring here, and on popu- lar approval by a vote the city indorsed the company's bonds to the amount of five hundred thousand dol- lars, taking a mortgage on the road and stock to secure itself, and the road was rapidly built in con- nection with the stock-yard, and opened for business in November, 1877. Within a year it has been leased by the Union Company, and both are now under one management.
The first telegraph line was constructed in the spring of 1848, from here to Dayton, by a company organized by Henry O'Reilly, under a general law passed the preceding February. The first dispatch was sent from here to Richmond on the 12th of May ; the first published dispatch appeared in the Sentinel of May 24th. The first operator was Mr. Isaac H. Kiersted, and his office was in the second story of the building where the Hubbard block now stands. Two years later a second line was built by Wade & Co., but consolidated with the other in April, 1853. Other lines have been built and absorbed here, and all over the country. The operators here have been Isaac H. Kiersted, J. W. Chapin, Anton Schneider, Sidney B. Morris, J. F. Wilson, and John F. Wallack. The last was made superintendent here when an officer of that kind was first found necessary, and he has filled the place ever since, nearly twenty years. For the first eight or ten years dispatches were taken by im- pressions of the Morse alphabet on long ribbons of heavy paper; and newspaper men had to copy these, fill out the abbreviations, and arrange them in some sort of coherent order each for himself. A very few years before the war operators here ·began to read by sound, Coleman Wilson being the first resident sound reader. From that time forward the operators made manifold copies for the press, and saved editors a good deal of work. The most notable event, next to the first appearance of the electric telegraph, was the suc- cessful laying, so soon ruined, of the first Atlantic
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CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
R.A.H
SITE OF UNION PASSENGER DEPOT IN 1838.
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
cable, in August, 1858. There was an illumination and bonfires, and a general congratulatory time that night. Governor Wallace made a speech, and Gov- ernor Willard had a pleasant reception at the executive residence. It is not generally known that the appro- priation which enabled Professor Morse to build his experimental line to Baltimore was carried in com- mittee by the vote of Governor Wallace, and but for that vote the appropriation and pregnant experiment would have both failed for another year at least. The committee on .commerce, in which the appropriation of forty thousand dollars was considered, was evenly divided, as it happened, and Governor Wallace's name coming last on the roll liis vote decided the question for the appropriation. At the ensuing congressional election his antagonist used this vote against him with such effect that it helped to defeat him. Faith in electricity forty years ago was hardly as wide and solid as it has grown to be since.
In February, 1851, the Indianapolis Gaslight and Coke Company was given a special charter by the last Legislature under the old constitution to run fifteen years, and on the 6th of March stock-books were opened, stock subscribed readily to the amount of twenty thousand dollars, the capital limited by the charter, and on the 26th an organization made by the choice of David V. Culley as president, Willis W. Wright as secretary, and H. V. Barringer as superin- tendent. The projector of the affair was Mr. John J. Lockwood. The city gave the company the sole right to make and supply gas here for public or private use, requiring street gas at the price of that in Cin- cinnati. In July the company bought a small tract of half swampy creek bottom on the east side of Pennsylvania Street, on the south bank of the creek, and erected, in a small, cheap way, the buildings needed. Mains were laid in Pennsylvania and Wash- ington Streets at the same time. On the 10th of January, 1852, the first gas was furnished for regular consumption. In the following April, 1853, a few weeks over a year after the organization of the com- pany, seven thousand seven hundred feet of pipe had been laid, six hundred and seventy-five burners were supplied for one hundred and sixteen consumers, and thirty bushels of coal were used per day. Previously
Masonic Hall, and the two street lamps in front of it, had been lighted with gas made by a little apparatus of its own. The enterprise ran heavily at the start till a superintendent who knew his business was ob- tained, and the works were enlarged and improved. A special tax to pay for lighting the streets with gas was defeated at the city election of 1852, and the lighting of Washington Street from Pennsylvania Street to Meridian was paid for by the property owners. In December, 1854, a contract was made with the company to light the central portions of Washing- ton and the adjacent streets, and it was done in 1855. From that time a steady annual addition was made, the property holders paying for the posts and lamps, till in 1868 the total length of mains was twenty- three miles, and of service-pipe seventy-five miles, with fifteen hundred and fifty consumers of gas, and an average daily production of one hundred and seventy-five thousand feet. The largest gas-holder is on Delaware Street, and has a capacity of three hun- dred thousand cubic feet. In February, 1859, the Council decided to put four lamps to a square, the opposite corners to be lighted, and the two intermedi- ate lamps to be allowed equal intervals from the other two and each other, one on each side of the street. The original charter expired March 4, 1866. The City Council, thinking to get better terms than before, ordered, in May, 1865, an advertisement for proposals to light the city for twenty years. No bid was made but by the old company, and its demand not being satisfactory, a committee was appointed to investigate the matter, and made a report of terms and conditions that the company would not accept. In. this emer- gency, R. B. Catherwood & Co. made a proposition on the 5th of March, 1866, to take a charter for thirty years, with the exclusive right of the city, and furnish gas for three dollars per one thousand feet, the city to contest a claim for longer continuance made by the old company. The gas committee made a counter-proposition to charter the "Citizens' Gaslight and Coke Company," with an exclusive city right for twenty years instead of thirty, reserving the right to buy the works after ten years, and dividing equally the profits above fifteen per cent. The new company was to attend to the litigation with the old one, the
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CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.
capital was to be appraised every five years, the com- pany was to fix the gas rate annually, in March, at not more than three dollars per one thousand feet, were to extend mains wherever fifteen burners to a square were promised, insure their works, and forfeit their charter if they made default in the conditions. This move started the confident old company to a serious consideration of the casc, and while the counter-proposition and ordinanee of the Council were pending, it advanced a proposal to take a twenty years' charter, supply gas at three dollars per one thousand feet, extend mains and fill all other con- ditions required of the new company, and lower the price of gas if improved processes of manufacture would allow it. The city would light and clean the lamps, and have the amount and quality of gas tested. The bargain was closed and is still binding. In a little while, however, it was found that the gas bills were getting to be bigger under the new arrangement at three dollars per one thousand fect than the old one at twenty-eight dollars and forty-four cents a lamp, for gas, lighting, and cleaning. A committee investigated the matter, and found that more lamps were charged for than had been used and more gas charged for than had been needed, and a gas inspector was recommen- ded. George H. Fleming, excellently qualified, was appointed, rules for testing the quality and pressure of gas were made, the number of hours of lighting fixed, and all the lamps but those on the corners were shut off at midnight, thus saving twenty thousand dollars a year. Since that time there have been some considerable changes.
In 1877 a new gas company was organized here in competition with the old one, called the " Citizens' Company." Works were built at the west end of St. Clair Street, and a considerable extent of mains laid, private consumers supplied, and a fair prospect of good business opened. The gasometer exploded soon after operations began, and in a short time the old company bought the new one. It operates the new works, however, in connection with the old ones, now so greatly enlarged as to cover more than half of the square between the creek and South Street. Some ten years ago a branch establishment, for the conven- ience of the northeastern part of the city, was opened
near the crossing of the Poru Railroad and Seventh Street.
The first suggestion of a street railway was made in November, 1860, and renewed in 1863, when a company was formed with Gen. Thomas A. Morris as president, Wm. Y. Wiley as secretary, and W. O. Rockwood as treasurer. They applied to the Council, and while the application was pending, a rival com- pany was formed by R. B. Catherwood, of New York, and some citizens here, with Col. John A. Bridgland as president. They proposed better terms than the earlier company, and offered security to fill their con- tract ; but the " Citizens' Company," as it was called, finally lost the charter, and it was given to the Indian- apolis company and refused ; whereupon it was ae- cepted by the other, and the conditions settled. These facts are familiar to most readers, from the frequent controversies of the press with the company. Owing to unavoidable delays, the Council granted an exten- sion of time for sixty days in 1864, in the latter part of August, in fulfilling all the conditions, but portions of the work had been donc, and the Illinois Street Line to the Union Depot had been opened with due ceremony by the city authorities in June of that year. The company, consisting of Catherwood and his associates, sold to Wm. H. English and E. S. Alvord in 1865, and these a few years later sold to the Messrs. Johnson, the present proprictors. The present extent and condition of the business of the company is stated in the summary in the last chapter. It only needs to be noticed further here, that within the past year the stables and shops have been enlarged and cover an acre on the northeast corner of Louisiana and Tennessee Streets, with a half-acre more on the opposite side of Tennessee Street which is laid down with tracks and shelter for cars not in use. A stable and car-house have been built in Indianola within a little more than a year, for the service of the line running to Mount Jackson and the Insane Asylum. The Tennessee Street establishment was seriously damaged by fire a few years ago, but it was not al- lowed to interfere with the operations of the company at all. Within a few months past attempts have been made to charter a second street railway company, under the name of the " Metropolitan," but so far they
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
have not succeeded, though backed by some of the best men in the city. On the morning of the 6th of January, 1884, the stables of the " Citizens'" company were again seriously damaged by fire.
The first proposal for a water supply was made in 1860 by a Mr. Bell, of Rochester, N. Y., but idly. The company that had come into possession of the canal renewed it in 1864 as idly as Mr. Bell. Mayor Caven recommended to the Council the initiation of a water system, with Crown Hill as the site for a reservoir, but the Council decided that while a supply system was desirable, it was not desirable that the city should make it. Nothing further was done till 1866, when the mayor again brought the matter before the Council, and in November of that year the inevit- able Catherwood came forward and accepted a charter requiring the water to come from the river far enough up to avoid contamination, with other conditions needless to specify, as nothing came of the affair. In 1869 the Central Canal Company, then mainly a resident of Rochester, N. Y., tried to get the Council into a joint-stock company to introduce the Holly scheme, which acts by direct force without a reservoir, and put in their canal as the source of sup- ply, at a price that would make that theretofore useless property remunerative ; but that would not work. In the fall of 1869, Mr. Woodruff organized a company for a water supply on the Holly plan independently of the city, and he was given a charter under strict limitations, and introduced the supply slowly and not very successfully at first. The com- pany has changed a good deal, and is now under the presidency of Gen. Thomas A. Morris, with Mr. John L. Ketcham as secretary, and supplies a large part of the domestic and manufacturing service of the city and all its fire service. Two or three years ago, the sources of its supply being suspected of impurity, it was decided to bring the whole of it from a point . so far above the city as to make contamination im- possible, and a point was selected near the river above the Fall Creek "cut off." This has been reached by a costly conduit which brings water from a "gallery," or elongated well, about twelve hun- dred feet long by fifty wide and fifteen deep, which cannot be damaged by river infiltration, or by any
cause that does not equally damage all springs. Below its bed, about forty feet, is a second current which has been reached by boring, and rises above the surface of the "gallery" water. This can be depended on to maintain a pure supply if needed. Several analyses have proved the "gallery" to be as nearly pure as anything drawn from the ground and undistilled can be.
For some years Governor Wright had made a specialty of agriculture and its requirements, and in 1853 the Legislature chartered the State Board of Agriculture, with the Governor as president, the late John B. Dillon as secretary, and State Treasurer Mayhew as treasurer. The first fair was held in Military Park in October, 1852, from the 19th to the 25th, with thirteen hundred and sixty-five entries. The next was held in Lafayette, October 11th to 13th. Horace Greeley delivered the address. Then it went to Madison, where its success was so indif- ferent that it returned to Indianapolis for four years. In 1859 it was taken to New Albany, and returned to Indianapolis for five years, till 1864, none being held in 1861 on account of the war. In 1865 it went to Fort Wayne, then came again to Indianapolis. Since then it has remained here. Up to 1860 it was held in Military Park ; then the State Board bought a tract of some thirty acres north of the city, with the assistance of the railroads, and held the fair there that year. During the war it was used both as a camp for national troops, and as a prison camp for prisoners of war. Some years ago an association of citizens and railroads joined the State Board in erecting the "Exposition" building, with the pur- pose of maintaining an annual exhibition of such products of skill as could not be advantageously shown in ordinary fair buildings. The success of the enterprise was not such to encourage its continuance long, and the State Board took the building with the assurance of protecting the obligations incurred in its erection.
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