USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana > Part 43
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
prosecuting attorney for the Sixth Judicial District of the State for the term of two years. In 1840 he removed to Lawrenceburg, Dearborn Co., and resided there until 1852, practicing his profession, serving as mayor of the city for two years, and representing the county in the State Legislature for the years 1845-46. In 1852 he removed to Indianapolis, his present place of residence. Mr. Macy was, in 1855, elected presi- dent of the Peru and Indianapolis Railroad (I., P. and C. Railway Company), and, with the exception of a short interval, held its control and management until Jan. 1, 1880, when his resignation as president of the company took effect. In January, 1876, he was elected president of the Meridian National Bank, of Indianapolis, and continues to fill the duties of that office. Mr. Macy is a man of unostentatious demeanor, frank and candid in his bearing, with the suavity and simplicity of the old-school gentleman. He is in business relations a man of untiring energy and unimpeachable integrity, in the State a publie- spirited citizen, and in the church an active and zealous member, with liberality towards all deserving objects. Mr. Macy was married Jan. 17, 1837, to Miss Mary Ann Patterson, of Indianapolis. Their only daughter, Carrie, is the wife of V. T. Malott, general manager of the Indianapolis, Peru and Chicago Railroad, which, under Mr. Maey's super- vision, has become one of the most popular roads in the State.
In the fall of 1872 two savings-banks were es- tablished here, the organization of both being com- pleted within a few weeks of each other. One was the "State Savings-Bank," of which James M. Ray, the veteran banker, was cashier and manager; the other the "Indianapolis Savings-Bank," of which John W. Ray-no relation of James M., but a son of the eloquent pioneer Methodist preacher, Edwin Ray-was cashier. The former was for some years conducted in the room of the Meridian National Bank, on South Meridian Street, in the " Condit Block," but its business increasing, it required more room and removed to North Pennsylvania Street. There it became embarrassed and was placed in a receiver's hands January, 1878. The " Indianapolis Savings- Bank," on Market Street, became embarrassed about
a year later, and was put in the hands of a receiver in December, 1878. The former is about elosed out witha little loss to any one. The latter has paid a considerable portion of its indebtedness, but is not expected to pay in full.
In this connection may be properly noticed the organizations and agencies for the conduct of insur- ance business that have been put in operation here. The first of these as noticed in the general history was the "Indiana Insurance Company," formed in 1836 by the citizens of the town, with Douglass Maguire as president, and Caleb Scudder secretary, a nominal capital of two hundred thousand dollars, and never any business to correspond. After two or three suspensions and revivals, as already stated, it was solidly reorganized in 1865, with Wm. Hender- son as president, and Alex. C. Jameson as secretary, and made exclusively a banking institution in the old branch bank building. The " Indiana Mutual Insurance Company" was chartered Jan. 30, 1837, and organized in February following, with James Blake as president, and Charles W. Cady as secretary. It did well for a few years, but finally failed in 1853. The " Indiana Fire Insurance Company" was formed in February, 1851, with a nominal capital of three hundred thousand dollars. It did little and sus- pended in a few years. The " German Mutual Fire Insurance Company" was organized in 1854, January 21, and has continued successfully ever since. The presidents have been Henry Buscher, Julius Bæt- ticher, and Adolph Seidensticker; the secretaries, Adolph Seidensticker, Valentine Butsch, Charles Volmer, Charles Balke, Adolph Miller, and F. Ritzinger. Mr. Ritzinger has long stood among the most respected of the business men and com- mercial men of the city.
FREDERICK RITZINGER .- Prominent among the German citizens who assisted in transforming Indian- apolis from a small town to a large city of metropol- itan aspirations was Frederick Ritzinger, born June 8, 1819, at Woerrstadt, near Mayence, Germany.
His parents had destined and educated him for the priesthood, but the spirit of liberalism prevailing among the rising generation, and the conviction that nature had intended him for a more active life, caused
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him to change his vocation over the protests of his parents when the time arrived.
He devoted himself during early manhood to agri- culture and winc-growing. On the 15th of May, 1841, he was married to Miss Marianne Kamp, who still survives him. When the German-Catholic move- ment was inaugurated by Ronge in 1844 he sup- ported it, and also identified himself with all progres- sive political aspirations. From 1848 to 1850 he was one of the active and efficient supporters of the movement to liberalize the German Confederation, and consequently was imprisoned in the Castle of Mayence when the reactionary party triumphed. After his liberation he emigrated to the United States, and arrived at Indianapolis March 4, 1853.
He engaged in farming in the suburbs until 1859, when he moved to the city and established an agency for the collection of claims and estates in Germany and the sale of foreign exchange.
His obliging disposition, active habits, strong intel- lect, and wonderful sociability soon caused him to be sought for in public and private enterprises. He interested himself greatly for the independent German and English school, and helped to develop this enter- prise to a condition of great usefulness. A very large proportion of the children of German citizens were educated in this institution. At the beginning of the civil war he was prominently engaged in the organization of the Thirty-second (German) Indiana Regiment, and induced Col., afterward Gen., Willich to drill and assume its command. From 1862 to 1873 he acted as secretary and manager of the Ger- man Mutual Fire Insurance Company, of Indiana, which during his management became well known and prospered by increase of business and resources.
His house served as a social centre, not only for the prominent German citizens of Indianapolis, but for .nearly all distinguished German visitors of the city. His own social talents, assisted by those of his daughter, Miss Mary Ritzinger, made the hours spent there memorable as occasions of pleasure.
His oldest sou, J. B. Ritzinger, became the founder of the still flourishing Ritzinger's Bank, which after his premature death was continued by his two re- maining sons, F. L. and A. W. Ritzinger. About |
one year subsequent to the death of his son, and after a long and trying illness, Mr. Frederick Ritz- inger died on the 10th of November, 1879, sincerely mourned by his family and a large circle of friends.
The "Indiana Fire Insurance Company" - the second one with that name-was organized May 9, 1862, with Jonathan S. Harvey as president, and W. T. Gibson as secretary. It was located in Odd-Fel- lows' Hall. The "Sinnisippi Mutual Insurance Com- pany" was organized Nov. 18, 1863, with Elijah Goodwin as president, and John R. Barry as secretary. It kept in business till 1866, when it capsized from carrying too much sail, and went into a receiver's hands. The " Equitable Fire Insurance Company" was formed on the mutual plan in September, 1863, by William A. Peelle, then recently secretary of State, as president, and E. D. Olin as secretary, with an office in Odd-Fellows' Hall. It suspended and went into a receiver's hands in 1868. The " Home Mutual Insurance Company" was organized April, 1864, with J. C. Geisendorff as president, and J. B. Follett as secretary. It suspended voluntarily in June, 1868, and was put into the hands of a receiver. The office was at 64 East Washington Street. The " Farmers' and Merchants' Insurance Company" was organized on the 1st of April, 1864, with Dr. Ryland T. Brown as president, and A. J. Davis as secretary. The office was in Blackford's Block. It stopped business in the summer of 1867, and closed up its accounts. The " Union Insurance Company" was organized as a stock company in 1865, with a capital nominally of two hundred thousand dollars, and" James M. Ray as president, and D. W. Grubbs as secretary. It was opened on North Pennsylvania Street, but removed to Dunlop's building in 1867, when Elijah B. Martindale became president, and George W. Dunn secretary. It did not succeed, and in April, 1868, it voluntarily wound up its affairs and dissolved. The "Home" Company, of New York, took its risks. The " American Horse Iusur- ance Company" was formed in August, 1865, with Thomas B. McCarty, then recently State auditor, as president, and J. F. Payne as secretary. Its object was the insurance against loss from the death of val- uable domestic animals. Its nominal capital was one
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
hundred thousand dollars. The " Franklin Mutual Life Insurance Company" was formed in July, 1866, with James M. Ray as president, and D. W. Grubbs as secretary. The office was first opened at No. 19 North Meridian Street, but in April, 1868, the old State Bank building, corner of Kentucky Avenue and Illinois Street, was purchased, and business has . been largely and successfully carried on there ever since.
The Etna Company, of Hartford, Conn., may be noticed here as maintaining the oldest agency in the city, and having erected here on North Penn- sylvania Street a handsome four-story building for its own uses and for rent. The first agent here was Simon Yandes, law partner of ex-Senator Oliver H. Smith. William Sullivan was also an early agent, but William Henderson held the agency longest and raised the business to its present level, which Mr. A. Abromet, his successor, has fully sustained. In 1851 the " Franklin Fire Insurance Company," of Franklin, Johnson Co., was chartered, and business carried on there in an indifferent way till 1871, when the company was reorganized and removed to the city. In 1874 the present handsome building was erected by it for its own usc and for rent. The full- size statue of Franklin which occupies a niche in the second story of the Circle Street front was made by a stone-cutter of the city, named Mahoney, whose artistic talent might make him noted in that direc- tion if cultivated. The capital of the " Franklin Fire Insurance Company" is two hundred and fifty thou- · sand dollars. J. E. Robertson is president, William Wesley Woollen, vice-president, and Gabriel Schmuck, secretary.
CHAPTER X. CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS-(Continued.)
THE PRESS.
ON the 28th of January, 1822, Indianapolis saw her first newspaper. It was the most precocious development of the American instinct for newspapers ever seen in that day, and only paralleled among the 1
mushroom mining towns of the last twenty years. The settlement was less than two years old. The town had been laid out but six months, and no man had owned a lot longer than four. It was not even a "yearling" village. There was no road to it, no way out of it, no business in it. Everybody had been down with the chills the summer before. No- body had been well enough to raise erops of any kind, at home or in the " big field." Starvation was held off only by supplies brought on horseback from White Water or down the river in Indian canoes. There was no mail and no post-office. In fact, the first steps towards the establishment of a mail route ap- pear to have been the suggestion of the first appear- ance of the paper. On the 30th of January, two days after the first publication, a meeting of citizens was held to provide a private mail line to the parent settlements in White Water Valley. The county had been organized but a month, and it had held no elec- tion and had no officers. There were not more than four hundred souls in the place, young and old, and not a hundred in the adjoining portions of the county. The land office had been making sales in the New Purchase but a single year. There could be little advertising patronage and no local news where every- body knew all about everybody else, and general news could not be much better with no mails. It was about as unpromising a situation as a new paper ever appeared in, but nevertheless the Indianapolis Gazette appearcd, and kept appearing irregularly till steady mails and supplies made it regular, and it has ap- peared regularly ever since. Of its early history a sketch is given ·in the general history of the city. The partners, George Smith and Nathaniel Bolton, separated in 1823, but reunited in 1824, and contin- ued together till 1829, Mr. Bolton taking the paper alone till its sale, in the fall of 1830, to the late Alexander F. Morrison, who had come from Charles- ton that year as the representative of Clark County, and in the spring, after the adjourninent of the Legislature, had remained and started the Indiana Democrat here. The consolidated paper took the name of the latest, the Democrat. It was owned successively by A. F. Morrison, Morrison & Bolton, Bolton & Livingston, and John Livingston.
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A change came upon it in 1841. Mr. Livingston sold it to George A. and Jacob Page Chapman, then recently proprietors and editors of a paper in Terre Haute, and they moved it to a one-story frame just east of the present site of Masonic Hall, from a little one-story briek where the News building is now, in July, 1841, and changed the name to the Indiana Sentinel. During Mr. Morrison's control of the Democrat, and his later connection with the Senti- nel in 1856, he acquired a high reputation as a writer of vigorous and perspicuous English, with a tendency to invective and personal bitterness that made his antagonists cautious of dealing roughly with him. He was one of the four delegates from this eounty to the Constitutional Convention of 1850. He died in 1857. The Chapmans changed the character of the paper a good deal. They made it more a newspaper than it had been before, while they maintained its spirited attitude and action as the State organ of its party. On Dec. 6, 1841, when the Legislature met, they issued a daily edition during the session, and kept it up till the close of the session of 1843-44, carrying a semi-weekly then, as had been done by their predecessors of the Democrat, till the perma- nent establishment of the daily, April 28, 1851. In 1846, Mr. John S. Spann became a member of the firm, and Chapman & Spaun published the Sentinel till the last of May, 1850. In June of that year the late William J. Brown bought it, and the Chapmans retired from a position in which J. Page Chapman had achieved a national reputation. The campaign cry, " Crow, Chapmau," " Tell Chapman to crow," was aş frequent in Democratic meetings and in papers as any of the " Polk and Clay" period. It originated in the imitation of cock-erowing practiced by a prom- inent local Democrat of Haneoek County by the name of Chapman-Joseph probably-and the mistaken ascription of the feat to the editors of the Sentinel. It helped the paper a little to its remarkable success, and was the suggestion of the jubilant rooster which now mounts the column of dispatches announcing Democratie victories in most of the papers of that party in Indiana, if not throughout the West. In the spring of 1853, J. P. Chapman started a weekly paper called the Chanticleer,-the name derived from
the same suggestion, -- with B. R. Sulgrove as asso- eiate editor, and the late Gen. George H. Chapman, son of Jacob Page, as city editor. Mr. Sulgrove left it the following winter to take charge of the Journal, and it elosed with the end of the first volume. Mr. George A. Chapman died soon after the sale of the Sentinel, and J. P. Chapman's mind became so mueh disordered that he was sent to the insane asylum in 1855, and kept there several years till he died. It should be noted here that the first building erected especially for a paper was the Sentinel building of 1844, ou the east side of North Illinois Street, near the site of the Young Men's Christian Association Hall.
With the retirement of the Chapmans, in 1850, the Sentinel establishment was divided, Mr. Brown taking the paper to a building on West Washington Street, near Meridian, and E. W. H. Ellis, State auditor, with Mr. John S. Spann, taking the job- office, and going on with that business at the old stand. In August, 1852, the paper was removed to the "Tomlinson Block," opposite the " Wright House" now "Glenn's Block," Mr. Austin H. Brown having become publisher a short time before, and his father leading editor. On the 2d of March, 1855, the late Dr. John C. Walker and Charles W. Cottom bought out Mr. A. H. Brown, and the editorial control passed to Mr. Walker and Mr. Holcombe. On the 4th of December, 1855, Mr. John S. Spann and John B. Norman, then of the New Albany Ledger, bought the paper, Mr. Norman becoming editor. He retained the position but six weeks, and returned to New Albany, when the proprietorship passed to the hands of Professor William C. Larrabee, then recently a member of the faculty of Asbury University, and Charles W. Cottom. Jan. 24, 1856, Alexander F. Morrison was associated with Professor Larrabee in the conduct of the paper. Mr. Cottom was city . editor. The following August, 1856, Joseph J. Bingham, of Lafayette, purchased an interest, and the proprietorship became Larrabee, Bingham & Co. till Jan. 13, 1857, when John . Doughty joined Mr. Bingham, and Mr. Larrabee retired. Be- tween this change and the 7th of April the old " Capital House" had been fitted up for the reception
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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.
of the Sentinel establishment, and made the largest and best newspaper building in the State. The cases and other furniture were moved in, and steam started in the press-engine carly in the evening of that day. The boiler was new, and through some carelessness or mistake it was exploded, tearing the building into a chaotic mass that seemed incapable of restoration. A press hand by the name of Homan was killed, and several others injured. The publication of the paper was necessarily suspended, but was resumed on the 21st,-a two weeks' suspension only,-and has never made a break since. Appeals for help were made through the Journal, and supported by other papers in the State, and some substantial assistance was obtained in this way; but the establishment was weighted and embarrassed by the effects of the calamity for a long time.
A company called the " Sentinel Company" took it after this time and retained it till 1861, when John R. Elder and John Harkness, publishers of the weekly Locomotive, joined with Mr. Bingham and bought it, and removed it to the old Locomotive office, in the building that preceded the present " Hubbard Block." In 1863 a three-story brick building was erected for it on the east side of Meridian Street, on the corner of the alley south of Washington, and it remained here in the same hands till 1865. Then Charles W. Hall bought it, took it back to the Capital House, and called it the Herald. Hall & Hutchinson were owners and Judge Samuel E. Per- kins, then recently on the Supreme Bench, was editor. In October, 1866, it went into the hands of a receiver, and was purchased in January, 1867, by Mr. Lafe Develin, of Cambridge City. In April, 1868, he was bought out by Richard J. Bright, late sergeant-at- arms of the national Senate, who changed the name back to the Sentinel, and put in Mr. Bingham as chief editor, a position he had held with but little interruption, except during Judge Perkins' admin- istration, since 1856. He was longer the editor than any man who has ever held the position, except Mr. Bolton, and did more than any one before him to give the paper the character of enterprise as a news- collector and ability as a partisan champion and organ, which it still fully maintains. Mr. Bright re-
moved the office, in December, 1869, to the building he had enlarged from Wesley Chapel. In 1872, Mr. Bright sold to John Fishback and others form- ing the "Sentinel Company," and these in two or three years sold to a second company, partly formed of the first; and io 1878, Mr. John C. Shoemaker, State auditor, 1871-73, became the sole owner, and has remained so. In his hands the Sentinel has flour- ished as it never did before. It is the leading Demo- cratic paper of the State in all respects,-of ability, enterprise, circulation, and influence. It has always been ably conducted, but never more so than in the hands of Col. James B. Maynard, the political editor, and Mr. Charles G. Stewart, the managing editor. The former has held his position some half-dozen years, and his vigorous and effective advocacy of his party seems likely to retain him at his own pleasure. Whatever objections the critical or hypercritical may make to his work, nobody will say that he is ever dull or commonplace. He writes with a vigor, earn- estness, and frequent picturesqueness of style by no means common in the columns of partisan organs. Mr. Stewart, the manager, was for many years con- nected with the extensive book-house of . Bowen, Stewart & Co., but for the past three years or more has been on the Sentinel, mainly as manager, but nevertheless writing a good deal, with the advantage of wide and careful reading, cultivated literary taste, and a clear, easy, and graceful style, when the subject allows it,-not frequently the case, however, with an " editorial paragrapher." He has done much to place the Sentinel in its present popular and efficient posi- tion. Preceding him and Col. Maynard were Henry F. Kecuan, Mr. O'Connor, and Rev. Robert Mat- thews, under the proprietorship of the different com- panies. Early in the fall of 1883 the establishment was removed from the Circle and Meridian Street building to a large and commodious building on West Market specially fitted up for it, where it is better situated than ever before. This removal was sigoalized by the purchase of a six-cylinder press.
On the 7th of March, 1823, a litttle more than a year after the first appearance of the forerunner of the Sentinel, appeared the forerunner of the Journal, the Western Censor and Emigrant's Guide, published
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and edited by Harvey Gregg and Douglass Maguire, two young Kentucky lawyers of recent arrival. Its early history is related in the general history of the city. Its course and success since will be briefly presented here. Mr. Gregg sold out on the 29th of October, 1824, and on the 16th of November was succeeded by Mr. John Douglass, State printer, who had come up from Corydon with the State govern- ment in State Treasurer Merrill's caravan but a few days before he made a connection which was to become a memorable one in the history of the State press.
JOHN DOUGLASS was born on a farm in Chester County, Pa., Nov. 12, 1787, and died in Indian-
apolis in 1851. His mother, by the early death of her husband, was left in limited circumstances to battle alone with the pioneer life of a new and sparsely settled district. Like her husband, she was of Scotch descent, and was well trained in princi- ples of right and habits of industry. In these prin- ciples and habits she trained her son. Her house was distant some four miles from the county school,
yet when the school was in session, which was only a part of the year, she sent her boy. He daily walked the four miles, acquiring, with the rudiments of a good education, firmness in purpose and energy in action. As he grew to manhood his mother, second- ing his own desire for wider knowledge than the little irregular school could afford, advised him to go to Lancaster and learn the printing business ; he could thus educate and at the same time support himself. He obtained in Lancaster what he desired, but after a year or two went to Philadelphia, where he readily found employment. In 1814 he married Maria Green. Six years later he emigrated with her to Vevay, Ind., encountering on the way such difficulties as only pioneers can describe. But they were young; he was sturdy and determined, and she was one of the most active and light-hearted women that ever left a city to find a home in the backwoods.
The prospects of Vevay were not at this time encouraging. A terrible fever prevailed. Mr. Douglass was not established in business before he became a victim of the disease. His wife, watching with him night after night for weeks, could count the cabins of their neighbors on the hillsides and in the valleys by the lights of other watchers by the sick and the dead. Nearly every family in the place mourned the death of one of its number.
The superstitious called the unhappy visitation a judgment of the Almighty on the vain though impres- sive ceremonies of the preceding year in honor of Commodore Perry. For the empty coffin that was carried in imposing procession then, with funeral dirges and orations, scores of coffins were now laid in silence in the graveyard.
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