History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 50

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942

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In anticipation of the completion of the Madison Railroad, Robert B. Duncan built a three-story brick on the southeast corner of South and Delaware Streets which was called the " Duucan House" at first, and did a first-rate hotel business till the rivalry of other roads damaged the Madison, and then the hotel became a boarding-house, as it is yet. The name was changed to the " Barker House" while T. D. and D. J. Barker had it, and to the "Ray House" when Martin M. Ray, brother of Governor Ray, took it. Senator Harrison made his first con- spicuous step forward in his profession by prose- cuting and convicting the colored cook at this house of poisoning one of the inmates with arsenic which he put in the coffee or some other article of food. The " Carlisle House" was a large three-story frame, built by Daniel Carlisle in 1848, on West Wash- ington Street, south side, at the intersection of Cali- fornia. It was more pretentious than successful, fell off to a second-rate boarding-house and then to a saloon, and was then changed to a hrewery by J. P. Meikel, and is now a very dilapitated structure occupied by a variety of tenants apparently. In 1852-53, while the building of the Union tracks and depot was under discussion and in progress, Gen. T. A. Morris built a three-story brick hotel, subsequently made four stories, on the north side of Louisiana Street, opposite the Union Depot. It was called the "Morris House." Some years later it was joined to the building on the east directly and

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to a building west of the adjoining alley by arching over the alley, and called the " American House," kept by Gen. Elliott. It was the " Mason House" a while, and kept by Ben. Mason. When Thomas B. McCarty bought it of Gen. Morris, some ten or a dozen years ago, the name was changed to the "Sher- man House," which it still bears.

In 1852-53, Hervey Bates built the " Bates House," on the northwest corner of Washington and Illinois Streets. It was opened by D. D. Sloan in 1853. He was succeeded by Curtis Judson, lately and for many years of the "Gramercy Park House," New York, and by John Woolley and his partner, Mr. Ingoldsby. It has also been kept by William Judson, Bradford Miller, and others, but always under the same name, further than Mr. Miller made it " Hotel Bates" instead of plain " Bates House," a little bit of affectation that did no harm. It has been enlarged to double its original size and greatly improved by the son of Mr. Bates, who suc- ceeded to the property by inheritance and has recently sold it to Mr. E. F. Claypool for one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. In 1856-57, Francis Cos- tigan, the architect of the post-office and Odd-Fel- lows' Hall, built the " Oriental House," on the east side of South Illinois Street, at the alley south of Maryland. It was opened in June, 1857. It is now the south end of the Grand Hotel. The Tre- mont House, now the Spencer, was built in 1857 at the corner of Illinois Street and the Union tracks. It is a four-story brick, and has been enlarged and greatly improved since its original crection. It was opened by J. W. Canan, and has been kept by M. Harth and Henry Guetig since. In 1856, Henry Buehrig (" Lieber Bruder") built the Farmers', afterwards the Commercial Hotel, northeast corner of Illinois and Georgia Streets. Mr. Reitz raised it from a three- to a four-story building when he changed the name. It is now a part of the Na- tional Surgical Institute, controlled by Dr. H. R. Allan and Dr. Wm. Johnson. The Macy House, southeast corner of Illinois and Market Streets, was built by David Macy in 1857. It was quite a popu- lar hotel for a time, but is now a boarding-house, with the name of the St. Cloud Hotel. The St.

Charles is a hotel on the European plan on the west side of Illinois Street, next block north of the Bates House. It was built by T. F. Ryan and E. S. Alvord and others in 1870.

In or near the year 1870 the first work was done on the hotel now called the " Denison House," then a joint-stock enterprise in which a number of leading citizens were interested. The work was not vigorously pushed and the property fell into the hands of Harry Sheets, representing the heirs of the late William Sheets, who owned the larger part of the site. When sold on foreclosure he bid it in, an incomplete four- story brick, covering the greater part of an acre of ground. It remained in this unfinished condition till the great fire of 1874 seriously damaged it. A few years later John C. New and Mr. Denison bought the unfinished, partially burned new ruin and finished it in a better style than was contemplated by its pro- jectors, and it was opencd as the "New-Denison House," under the management of H. B. Sherman, in January, 1880. A few years later than the New- Denison in starting, but much sooner finished, was the " Grand Hotel." Mr. Schnull built up the corner of Illinois and Maryland Streets, formerly occupied by the residence of Dr. G. W. Stipp, used as the first Deaf and Dumb Asylum, with a large and handsome five-story hotel, to which he joined the " Oriental House" and all the intermediate buildings, improving them into some uniformity of style and convenience. This was opened as the "Grand Hotel" in 1876. The " Weddell House" occupies the upper stories of the block on the east side of Illinois Street between Louisiana and Georgia. It has been opened within the last two or three years. In 1875, Mr. A. C. Remy, a member of the county board that finished building the new court-house, tore out the old Wesley Chapel parsonage, on the southwest "quadrant" of Circle Street, and erected one of the finest hotel structures in the city, though smaller than several, and opened in 1876, with Mr. Sapp, now of the " New-Denison," as landlord. In May, 1879, Mr. Remy sold the house to the present proprictor, Mr. David Nicholson, the contractor with his partner, Adam Scott, for the stone work of the new court-house. He is still the owner. | In August, 1879, Mrs. Rhodins, who had for twenty

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years kept the " Circle Restaurant," on North Meri- dian Street, finished the " Circle House," on Circle Street, and opened it as a first-class hotel. She still retains its management. It is on the southeast " quad- rant" of the " Circle." On the northwest " quadrant," inclosing the " English Opera House," is one of the finest buildings in the West, erected within the last five years by Mr. W. H. English. It occupies a little more than half of that " quadrant," and will ultimately eover it all. It is to be opened as a first-class hotel in February, 1884. The " California," on South Illi- nois Street, was opened some ten years ago. There are a number of other hotels in the eity, but these are the oldest or largest, and best known. The Di- reetory reports forty-nine.

Restaurants .- The first restaurant of any con- siderable pretension was kept by a half-blood by the name of John Crowder, somewhere about the time that the first theatre made its appearance in Ollaman's wagon-shop, in 1838 or thereabouts. It was at the height of its reputation while located in one of the rooms of Blackford's row of one-story frames, where the present palatial Blackford's Block stands. Here he was succeeded in two or three years by John Hodgkins, an Englishman, who kept a confectionery establishment with it, and made his own eandies, the first of that class of manufactures in the place. He also built, or dug, the first ice-house to store ice for sale, as well as the manufacture of cream. It was at the corner of the two alleys where the rear of St. John's Cathedral stands, and the remainder of the quarter of a square, or one acre, which had formerly been the residence of George Smith, the first news- paper founder,, was covered with an orchard which was filled up with seats and arbors, and graveled walks and flower-beds, and made the first pleasure- garden in the city, as has been elsewhere related. It was not till the completion of the Madison Railroad, however, that eating-houses became a permanent feature of business, and even then it required the impulse of the war to give them the importance they have since attained. Now there are over forty, chiefly located in the vicinity of the Union Depot and along Illinois Street.

The first oysters were brought here by the late

James Blake, it is said, but for years only the " pickled" could bear transportation even in winter. The pioneers did not take kindly to the luxury. Its looks were against it, and the oyster was sneeringly compared to a nasal excretion. But settlers from the East gradually brought it into general favor, and by the time the railroads could bring it in good condi- tion in the legitimate months (with an "r" in the name) it was a general favorite. The tomato, or " love-apple," as it was called, was not considered fit for anything but hog feed for the first twenty years or so of the settlement. It was grown as an orna- ment or curiosity, but as an edible was not ranked even so high as the "ground cherry," which was rather popular with children, and not nearly so high as the " May-apple." Celery was unknown till oysters had beeome an established addition to the primitive bill of fare. The pheasant, once a common game bird in the woods, disappeared as the oyster advanced in favor, and now is never seen near the city, and rarely anywhere in the county. The quail, however, has been preserved in considerable abund- ance by the game laws, as has the " prairie chicken," or grouse.

Fish, especially game fish,-the " bass" and " red- eye" chiefly,-were nearly swept away by reckless processes, like seining and trapping, till a statute enacted some fifteen years or so ago checked the evil, and succeeding amendments, coupled with systematie, though not yet extensive, efforts at replacing them, have begun to restore something of the former better condition of our streams. Pork-houses and manufac- tories have driven off the good fish from the vicinity of the city, and few are left but the scavengers of the river, " cats" and " suckers." A few miles away, though, up or down the river, the fishing is some- times pretty good. In early times all the streams were full of fish, including the game fish we now have, and the pike, salmon occasionally, and “ buf- falo" frequently, which are now rarely seen. The abundance of game and fish in the New Purchase was doubtless the reason the Indians held to it so tenaciously, and retained possession even after they had sold it by treaty. At this time the offal of pork- houses makes a profusion of food for the poorer vari-

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eties of fish, and in the season-at almost any season when there is no ice-fishermen erowd the banks of the river, from the water-works to the lower Bell Road bridge, to eateh the " cat" and "sueker." They are coarse, but wholesome, and save many a dollar to the poor, who have more time than money, and always appetite enough for what is not bad eating for any- body. The bulk of all the fish food consumed here, however, both in restaurants and families, comes from the lakes, with occasional considerable additions from the sea-board. Fresh codfish were brought here on ice before the war, and so were shell-oysters, but not in any considerable quantities. The latter are now one of the constant imports from the East, and, with lobsters and other food of salt-water cultivation, form a large item of the city's business. The oldest res- taurant in continuous existence is the Crystal Palace, established first about 1858 by Edwin Beck, and, after several changes sinee his death, is now in the hands of his brother-in-law, Ferdinand Christman. The others are all of the post-war period. The Women's Christian Temperance Union keeps one of the best dining-halls in the city, and uses the profits for benevolent purposes.

The visits of Vice-President R. M. Johnson, in 1840, and ex-President Van Buren and Mr. Clay, in 1842, have been referred to in the general history. There are a few others of historieal interest that may be noticed here as appropriately as anywhere. On the 28th of May, 1850, while the Union was under- going the periodical process of being " saved" by concessions to slavery, Governor Wright, who was an ardent " Union saver," invited Governor John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, to make an official visit here in the interest of Union. He did so, and was hospitably received, regaled with Union speeches and resolutions in the State-House yard, and made a fine speech himself. On the 20th of December, 1851, the Legislature invited the Hungarian patriot and exile, Kossuth, to visit the city, and a publie meeting of citizens appointed a committee of fifty to receive and take care of him and his rather extensive and troublesome suite. They met him at Cincinnati on the 26th of February, 1852, accompanied him here by way of Madison, arriving about noon at the Madison

Railroad Depot on South Street in one of the largest crowds ever seen here. The boys pressed upon some of his suite, and were treated with a harshness that made those who saw it detest them heartily. A pro- eessiou marched to the State-House yard, where Kos- soth spoke for more than an hour, reading a speech he had written on the cars as he came up, it was said at the time. The party were provided for at the " Capital House" at the State's expense, and they made it pretty expensive by a liberal use of wines and liquors, so said current report. At night a recep- tion was held at the Governor's residenee, and a good deal of money given the exile by admiring Hoosiers. His " bonds" were kept as curiosities by some of the donors. The next day (Saturday) he was received by the two houses of the Legislature, and met dele- gations of sympathizers,-there was no one in the State who was not a sympathizer with Hungary,-and took in a considerable amount of contributions, in all about one thousand dollars. He attended church at Roberts' Chapel on Sunday morning and some of the Sunday-schools in the afternoon. On Monday he re- ceived more delegations and money, and delivered an address in Masonie Hall to the " friends of Hungary." He left on Tuesday, making one marked and prominent change of fashion here. The " Kossuth" soft felt hat became the general male wear, instead of the stiff, ugly plug, and it has remained so ever since.

Two or three years later Governor Powell, of Kentucky paid Governor Wright an official visit, ac- companied by some of the other State officers, by Mr. Hodges, editor of the Whig State 'organ, the Frankfort Commonwealth, and by Capt. John Rus- sell, a brother of Col. A. W. Russell, and noted all over the West as the strongest man of his day. He was said, when a boy of twenty, to have knocked down Lafitte, the noted pirate of the Gulf, and to have had in his prime the strength of four ordinary men. He was the father of Mr. W. H. Russell, of this eity. In 1859, on the 5th of May, Richard Cob- den, the celebrated English " anti-corn law" leader and free-trade statesman, was in the city a few hours. Mr. Lineoln was here twice before his death. He spoke in Masonic Hall on the 19th of September, 1859, and from the balcony of the Bates House on the afternoon

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of the 12th of February, 1861, while on his way to his inauguration. In this speech he first developed the course he proposed to take with the seceded States. When it was learned that his body would be brought through the city on the way to Springfield, Ill., the city authorities and citizens made extensive and ap- propriate preparations to receive it. A superb funeral arch was erected at the State-House gate, and a plat- form prepared for the corpse in the lower hall, in the rotunda. There was a parade of military and citizens on the 30th of April when the funeral train arrived here, but greatly reduced from what it would have been by the rainy, dismal weather.

CHAPTER XII.

CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS-( Continued.) MEDICAL PRACTICE AND PRACTITIONERS.

THE early doctors of the New Purchase were all of the old school of heroic treatment. Disease to them was an enemy intrenched in certain functions, and had to be driven out, and the more incessant the attack and profuse the ammunition the sooner the siege would be over. They maintained the system of Molière's doctors, " saignare, purgare, et clysterizare" with little change, and like them knew no resource when their first processes failed but " re-saignare, re- purgare, et re-clysterizare." Happily, they had to deal with patients of simple lives and temperate habits, with constitutions solidly built and functions undisturbed by luxuries and unstrained by excesses, and capable of resisting both the disease and the remedy. Calomel and the lancet, the "purgare" and " saignare," were the invariable remedies for every disorder. There were few residents in White River Valley who had not suffered under the doctor's in- junction, with a half teaspoonful of calomel, " Now, you mustn't drink any cold water or vinegar, or eat anything sour ; if you get very dry drop some clean live coals in a tin of water and warm it a little, and drink that." There were plenty of mutilated mouths, loosened teeth, and shriveled gums, and sometimes decayed jawbones and ulcerated cheeks, to warn

patients of the perils of "salivation" and of dis- obedience of the doctor's orders. And there were few who could not show a little scar in the inside of the elbow where a lancet had cut the visible vein there. Quinine for malarial complaints was unknown. Pelletier discovered it about the time that the Pogues and McCormicks discovered the site of Indianapolis, and its use did not get West for a score of years or near it. In its stead the crude bark was used with wine.

All this is changed now, and has long been changing. The doctor of to-day, whatever his school, depends less on drugs and more on natural agencies that renovate the system rather than resist disorders of its parts. He maintains artificial conditions and uses artificial remedies as little as possible. Air, water, suitable diet, comfortable temperature are his " phar- macopœia," with a good nurse to administer its doses. Ice and pure water are harmless agencies, but more powerful and more used than all the bitter drugs dug out of the tropics. So while increasing wealth and luxury increase the complications of diseases, the doctor increases the efficiency of his remedies by simplifying them. He does not use so many nor so much of any. He does not carry a small drug-store in his "pill-bags," and fill his own prescriptions now as he used to do. A little pocket-case not larger than a tobacco-box serves to store all his artificial remedies in. In no other profession or pursuit is there so marked a contrast between earlier and later conditions. The middle-aged man of to-day can remember the doctor and his " pill-bags" with more distinctness, probably, than any other character of his childhood. The disturbance always, the distress often, into which he came, quiet, unruffled, smiling to the children, shaking hands with the " old folks," with his "pill-bags" slung over his left arm, made a figure set in a scene not easily effaced from the tenacious memory of childhood. Associations are different now. The neat buggy, the boy to wait and watch the horse, the little pocket-case of occasional medicines, the dry pikes, the comfortable " lap-robe" of to-day were undreamed developments of the pro- fession, as the old song of those days said, " when this old hat was new." A five-mile horseback ride

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on a bitter night, with no protection but an overcoat and a pair of " leggings," over roads roughened with " crossways" or frozen into lumps and ruts, or sloppy with thawing mud, was a rather different experience from that which to-day takes a drive on a longer journey in half of the time, with less of the exposure and none of the obstacles of the road. But the faithful doctor of to-day, with all his conveniences, has a harder life than any other professional or busi- ness man.

There were no doctors in Indianapolis in the first year of the settlement (a misprint on page 29, in the list of early settlers, makes Dr. Coe a settler in the spring of 1820 instead of 1821), and there appears to have been no need of them. So it looks like a providential arrangement that in the following six months no less than five competent young dectors should come to make their homes here just in time for the malarial epidemic that prostrated the entire settlement in the summer of 1821. Dr. Samuel G. Mitchell came first, in April, 1821, from Paris, Ky. He built a log house on the site of the present State buildings, and soon afterwards built a frame house on the northwest corner of Washington and Meridian Streets, where Henry Porter, a well-known early merchant and son-in-law of the doctor, long had his. store-room. He was a brother-in-law of Samuel Henderson, the first postmaster and first president of the Town Council, and first mayor. He died of paralysis, among friends in Ohie, in 1837. His office for some years was a little one-story frame on the south side of Washington Street, where Charles Mayer, in 1840, opened his grocery- and gingercake- store, and where his present palatial building stands. Dr. Sanders also occupied it for a term.

Dr. Isaac Coe came here first in May, 1821, from New Jersey, and, wisely or luckily, came liberally pro- vided with the remedies that were soon to be specially needed. Mr. Nowland's sketch of him says he was " provided with a large supply of Peruvian bark and wine," and if it had not been for his services and remedies the mortality of the epidemic would have been worse than it was. His prominence in the growth of the city is referred to in the general his- tory. In this connection it may be noticed that he

was one of the three "fund commissioners"-Caleb B. Smith and Samuel Hanna, of Fort Wayne, and afterwards Milton Stapp, of Madison, were the others -to settle the State's claims on her debtors, and to dispose of the assets she got, as the "Georgia Lands," the "Brooklyn Water Lots," the "Soap Factory," which figured largely in the political diatribes of the State contest in 1843, and the legislative sessions preceding. During this time, frem 1837 er 1838 te 1841 or thereabouts, a radical change came upon Dr. Coe's professional convictions. He became indoctrinated with the views of Dr. Hahnemann, unknown in England ten years before, and introduced by Dr. Gram in New York but two years earlier. In his past practice he had been distinguished for " heroic" treatment. He gave mere doses and bigger ones than anybody else. Mr. Nowland has preserved a satirical couplet suggested by this practice to the doctor's rival, Dr. Jonathan Cool,-

" Oh, Dr. Coe, oh, Dr. Coe, What makes you doso your patients so ?"

The doctor acted on his convictions, and thus became the first homœopathist in the city and the New Purchase.

Dr. Jonathan Cool came during the "sickly season" of 1821, when Dr. Coe was the only one left of four who could attend to patients. He was a graduate of Princeton, a New Jersey man, and a classmate of the distinguished jurist and judge of the Supreme Court, Isaac Blackford. He had been a surgeon in the United States army before coming to Indianapolis, and stationed at Newport barracks, Kentucky. He was too far gone in dissipation, says Mr. Newland, to practice his profession with any success after he came here, and lived with and upon his mother on a farm three miles northeast of the town; but there were occasional stories current forty years ago or so of his suggesting remedies and effecting cures, in his better condition, that other doctors had given up as hepe- less. He died about 1840, the earliest and saddest example in the city's history of fine native abilities and fine attainments ruined by liquer. Shortly be- fore Dr. Cool came Dr. Kenneth Scudder, whe opened the first drug-store in 1821-(a misprint on

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page 29 makes him a settler in 1820, instead of 1821). So little is said of him or remembered of him that all that can now be safely accepted is that he was one of the doctors in the great epidemic of 1821.

Dr. Livingston Dunlap came here from Cherry Valley, N. Y., in midsummer, 1821. In a few days after his arrival, while making his home with Dr. Mitchell, in the cabin where the State buildings are, he and Dr. Mitchell and all the latter's family were attacked, and Mr. Matthias Nowland, to relieve the distress, carried Dr. Dunlap home with him on his back. Dr. Dunlap was the best-known physician of the city of the early settlers. He was physician to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, a commissioner of the Insane Asylum, a member of the City Council for several years, and founder of the City Hospital. He died in 1862.

Before Dr. Coe introduced the homeopathic treat- ment here, Dr. Abner Pope came from Baltimore- originally from Massachusetts-in the spring of 1836, with the Thomsonian system, popularly called the " steam" system. It had been practiced a little by vagrant doctors, but Dr. Pope was the first settled adherent of that school. He continued in it while he continued in the profession, a dozen or fifteen years, and at the same time kept a store espe- cially provided with vegetable remedies, as “prickly ash," " lobelia," " pocoon" or blood-root, " cohosh," " May-apple root," and scores of others, with such preparations as "number six,"-liquid flames,- " bread of heaven," a dark-hued putty as of hot ashes, nevertheless pleasantly flavored, and similar stimu- lating remedies, in connection with a miscellaneous stock of goods such as was generally held by the merchants of that time. He, and some years later Dr. Brickett, who had been employed in the Yandes and Sheets paper-mill, were the best-known prac- titioners of this school. Contemporaneously with them, or nearly so, was Dr. J. F. Merrill, technically a " Uroscopean" of the school of Burns' " Dr. Horn- book ;" also an " Indian doctor," as he described him- self, decorated with the nominal profusion of " Wil- liam Kelly Frowhawk Fryer." He dealt in Indian baths and remedies, and sold Indian nostrums that

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 50

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 942

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942