Jonathan Jennings: Honoring the Autonomy and Democratic Values of Pioneer Hoosiers

Governors’ Portrait of Jennings, Artist: James Forbes, American, c. 1800-?, oil on canvas, 36 x 29 (91.5 x 73.6) Signed l.l.: Jas. Forbes/Pinxt, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Bureau.

Jonathan Jennings was born in 1784 in New Jersey, the sixth child of Jacob and Mary Jennings. His father was a physician and minister. The future first governor of the State of Indiana grew up in western Pennsylvania. He moved to the Indiana Territory at age 22, settling first in Jeffersonville, where he began a law practice. In 1807, Jennings moved to Vincennes, capital of the territory. There, he clerked for the land office, the General Assembly of the Indiana Territory, and for Vincennes University. An incident at the the university between Jennings and Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison and his supporters, prompted Jennings to leave Vincennes. In search of a more hospitable residence and career, he returned to Clark County and settled in Charlestown by 1809.

Jennings’ move would prove to be very timely for his political ambitions. Congress separated the Illinois Territory from the Indiana Territory, which lessened Governor Harrison’s political influence. Furthermore, Congress mandated that the Indiana Territory’s delegate to Congress be popularly elected, as opposed to elected by the territorial legislature.

William Henry Harrison, circa 1813, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Herbert Lee Pratt, Jr.

While Jennings was an outsider to Harrison’s clique, he was extremely personable and a great campaigner. His outsider status was also relatable to the population in the eastern counties, who resented the patriarchal political power structures in Vincennes. Indiana historian William Wesley Woollen described Jennings’ appeal, noting he was “a man of polished manners . . . he was always gentle and kind to those about him. He was not an orator, but he could tell what he knew in a pleasing way.”

An oft-repeated story about Jennings illustrates his political populism in contrast to his patrician political opponents. Author John Bartlow Martin described the scene this way:

Jennings’s opponent, a Harrison man, arrived during a logrolling [at a Dearborn County farm], chatted at the farmhouse a short time, then rode away. But Jennings, arriving next day, pitched into the logrolling and when it was done, tossed quoits and threw the maul with the men, taking care to let them beat him. He was a natural politician, the kind the Hoosiers lived, almost the original model of the defender of the people against the interests.

Historical marker located in Jennings County, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Bureau.

In 1809, only white, property-holding men could vote in the Indiana Territory. At age 25, Jennings ran for Congress and defeated an older and better politically connected candidate. Jennings won re-election in 1811, 1812, and 1814. As a territorial delegate, and not a fully vested member of Congress, Jennings could not vote on legislation. However, his role was very important to Indiana’s road to statehood as he advocated for legislation from Indiana Territory constituents, including petitions for statehood. The first statehood petition was sent to Jennings in 1811, which Congress denied on account of the territory’s population not yet reaching 35,000. The United States had more pressing problems in subsequent years, most notably the War of 1812, which raged until 1814. The war disrupted the business of Congress when the British Army burned the U.S. Capitol and the White House.

A year after the Treaty of Ghent ended the war, Congress was back to lawmaking. On December 28, 1815, Jennings introduced another territorial petition for statehood. This time the U.S. House leadership referred the petition to a committee and named Jennings as chairman. A week later the committee reported a bill, which eventually passed. On April 19, 1816, President James Madison signed it into law. Known as the Enabling Act, the legislation authorized residents of the Indiana Territory to hold a Constitutional Convention. On June 10, 1816, convention delegates convened in Corydon to draft a constitution. Jennings was one of the delegates. He was so esteemed by his peers that he became president of the convention. The resulting document borrowed from previous state constitutions, but reinforced a lot of democratic ideals. Although there was a system of checks and balances, most of the power lay with the elected representatives, which many people viewed as being closer to the people than the governor. The constitution also allowed for universal white, adult male suffrage, gave voters the right to call for a new constitution, recommended a state-supported education system, prohibited establishment of private banks, and prohibited slavery.

Portrait of Posey, Artist: John Bayless Hill, American, 1849-1874 oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 26 3/16 (76.5 x 65.6) Unsigned, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Bureau.

Indiana held its first state elections in August 1816, and Jennings won the gubernatorial election over Territorial Governor Thomas Posey. Jennings was then only thirty-two years old. For the next six years he would serve as Indiana’s first executive. Keep in mind, under the 1816 Constitution, a governor’s powers were limited, and he could not set legislative agendas. He could make appointments, including judges, and could also sign or veto legislation.

According to Carl E. Kramer’s profile of Jennings in The Governors of Indiana, the state’s first governor faced the daunting challenge of “placing Indiana on a sound financial footing, implementing a court system, and developing rudimentary educational and internal improvements systems, while also attempting to prevent government from becoming so burdensome that it obstructed personal advancement and enterprise.” Kramer noted that as governor, Jennings concentrated on “organizing an educational system that reached from the common schools to a state university; creating a state banking system; preventing illegal efforts to capture and enslave blacks entitled to their freedom; organizing a state library; and developing a plan of internal improvements.” His limited success in accomplishing these, was “as much a reflection of the governor’s limited powers and the state’s impoverished financial condition as it is upon his political skills and knowledge of the issues.”

Courtesy of the Indiana Historical Bureau.

His most far-reaching action during the time he served as governor actually occurred when he was not acting in that capacity. In 1818, Jennings served as a treaty negotiator on the Treaty of St. Mary’s which obtained title to a large part of land from the Miami Indians. As an aside, while Jennings was absent from Corydon during these negotiations, Lieutenant Governor Christopher Harrison tried unsuccessfully to take power and remove Jennings from office.

The low-light of Jennings time as governor came in 1820 as the State Bank teetered and eventually collapsed. As historian Dorothy Riker noted, “Jennings was severely criticized for his failure to supervise the Bank and his refusal to instigate and investigation earlier.”

In 1822, with only months left to serve in his second term, Jennings resigned as governor so that he could return to Congress, where he served from 1822-1831. Internal improvements like roads and canals were hallmark pieces of legislation at this time in American history, especially under President John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) and his proto-Whig Party (Adams/Anti-Jackson) adherents like Jennings. For Jennings, internal improvements were a way for Indiana to advance, economically by allowing for Indiana’s agricultural goods to make it more easily to markets, and for finished goods to make their way into the state. Good roads and canals would also encourage immigration into the state, especially along the National Road, and would facilitate communication with other parts of the nation. Because of Jennings advocacy of better transportation networks, it is fitting that the Indiana Department of Transportation designated this section of I-65 as the “Governor Jonathan Jennings Memorial Highway.”

Historical marker located in Charlestown, Indiana, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Bureau.

According to Woollen, Jennings lost his congressional seat in 1830 due, in part, to his drinking problem. He retired to his Charlestown farm, where he died on July 26, 1834. Historians have conflicting views on Jennings legacy. He was not an activist executive, which present-day observers have come to expect when rating their leaders. However, he was an incredibly popular politician. He played important leadership roles in Indiana reaching statehood, including at the Constitutional Convention. As for his role as governor, it is important to think about his service in the context of the time. Hoosiers at the time did not want an aristocratic leader like William Henry Harrison. Rather, Jennings set a precedence as the first governor which sought to honor the autonomy and democratic values of pioneer Hoosiers.

Before Milan: Wingate High School’s Basketball Championships of 1913 and 1914

In 1954, tiny Milan High School beat the odds, and became Indiana’s high school basketball champion. Writers have told, re-told and immortalized the tale in the 1986 film Hoosiers. Drowned out among the Milan hullabaloo are histories of other and earlier small schools that slew goliaths to win basketball crowns. In 1914, Milan played in its first state basketball tournament and lost in the first round. Their opponent that year was not a big-city juggernaut. Rather, it was the original Indiana basketball version of David: Wingate High School. If Milan is the “greatest basketball story ever told,” then Wingate is the “greatest basketball story seldom/never told.” To help bring their overlooked story to light, here is a survey of Wingate’s championship seasons in 1913 and 1914.

Wingate’s 1913 team. Front row: Leland Olin, Jesse Graves, Homer Stonebraker, Lee Sinclair, and Lawrence Sheaffer (mgr.). Back row: Coach Jesse Wood, John Blacker, Forest Crane, and McKinley Murdock.

Tucked away in the northwest corner of Montgomery County, Wingate’s 1910 population was 446. The recently consolidated Montgomery County schools discarded the inefficient one-room school models, and Wingate High School now boasted a student body of 67, of whom 22 were boys. From this small pool, Coach Jesse Wood selected a basketball team comprised of forwards Leland Olin, and Forest Crane, guards John Blacker and Jesse Graves, and Homer Stonebraker at center, with substitutes Lee Sinclair and McKinley Murdock.

Wingate had a notable disadvantage in fielding a basketball team. They had no gymnasium. Coach Wood conducted practices in “a small room in the southwest corner of the basement,” or “outdoors when the weather permitted.” Twice a week the coach and his squad would travel six miles to New Richmond, which was the nearest gym in the county. (Ironically, seventy years later would act as the backdrop for the town of Hickory in Hoosiers). Wingate would also play its “home” games at New Richmond, although they played most of their scheduled games on the road. They logged 576 miles during the 1912-13 season and 1,675 miles of travel during the 1913-14 season. They did most of their travel via trains and interurbans.

While Wingate had the disadvantage of being “gym-less,” they had a couple advantages. Wood was a very good coach. A former basketball player at Indiana State Normal (now Indiana State), he took a program that was only playing against other small, nearby schools, and started scheduling truly competitive games against recent state champions Crawfordsville and Lebanon. Wood also unlocked the potential in a lanky, sophomore without previously playing experience. He molded the boys’ innate ability and skill into a dominant and transcendent athletic talent with a name to match: Homer Stonebraker. Newspaper accounts frequently reported, “Stonebraker was practically the whole team at Wingate.”

IU’s Indiana Student newspaper selected an Indiana All-State (actually All-Tournament) Team for 1914. Homer Stonebraker is in the middle of the photo. Other players shown from left to right: Ralph Worley of Lebanon, Herman Sayger of Culver, Jesse Graves of Wingate, and Oris “Abe” DeVol of Lebanon.

Wingate finished the 1912-13 season with an impressive 16-4 record. Among their many victories were games against Romney, Hillsboro, Odell, Linden, Breaks, Waveland, Crawfordsville’s B team, Covington, Roachdale, Greencastle, Colfax, and Cayuga. In the Hillsboro game, Stonebraker contributed 74 points in a one hundred-point blowout. Wingate’s four losses on the season came in the form of two losses to Crawfordsville, a loss to defending state champion Lebanon, and a one-point loss to Thorntown.

In previous years, the team, high school, and community would have taken pride in their record, but moved on to thinking about baseball and crop planting. However, Indiana high school basketball in 1913 was different. For the first time, the state tournament was open to all challengers. Wingate was among thirty-seven teams that entered the two-day tournament held at Indiana University’s campus on March 14 and 15.

Wingate arrived in Bloomington “unnoticed and practically unheard of.” A reporter from the Indianapolis Evening Sun optimistically assessed, “Over two- thirds of the people attending the tourney did not know where [Wingate] is situated.” The reporter then proceeded to misplace it forty miles away near Frankfort. Indiana University’s Daily Student was even worse at geography and placed Wingate in Grant County.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 fans attended the opening rounds of the 1913 tournament, but fewer than fifty showed up to watch Wingate’s opening contest against Whiting, which many pundits believed would be a “walk-away” for Whiting. However, “in a slow game void of spectacular features” Wingate defeated Whiting 24 to 12. That evening, Wingate defeated Rochester, a perennial tournament favorite, in a sudden death overtime in which Stonebraker caged the winning goal.

Wingate’s 1912-13 basketball team. Bottom row: Leland Olin, Forest Crane, Homer Stonebraker, John Blacker, Jesse Graves. Top row: Lee Sinclair, Superintendent Shanklin, Lawrence Sheaffer (student manager), Coach Jesse Wood, and McKinley Murdock. Photo from IHSAA Annual Handbook and Report of the Board of Control, 1913.

On Saturday morning, March 14, the Wingate team arose to meet Indianapolis’ Manual Training High School. It appeared in the first half that the city boys would end the country boys’ run, as Wingate fell woefully behind 11-2 at intermission. Nevertheless, “the plucky bunch from Montgomery County” rebounded in the second half, and outscored Manual 14-0 for a 16-11 upset.

By defeating Manual, Wingate advanced to the semi-finals along with Crawfordsville, Lafayette Jefferson, and South Bend. Wingate again played underdog to the heavily favored Jeff squad, but Wingate never trailed in the contest and defeated the Tippecanoe team, 23-14. On the opposite side of the bracket, South Bend easily dispatched Crawfordsville, 19-11, which set up the first David v. Goliath contest in Indiana high school basketball tournament history.

As the two finalists ran out onto the floor for the game before 3,000 spectators, the crowd welcomed the South Bend boys “with tremendous applause” while the reception Wingate received was “cool and indifferent.” The game started slowly as both teams stressed defense more than offense. Late in the game, Wingate held a 13-12 lead before South Bend tied the game with a free throw to send it into overtime. Just like the Rochester game, the first team to score two points in overtime would be the winner. South Bend scored first with a free throw. Then for eight minutes, neither team succeeded in scoring until “the unexpected happened.” Wingate forward Forest Crane eluded his defender and caged the winning field goal. With the shot, the originally tepid crowd erupted “in the wildest enthusiasm” for Wingate. The Indiana University Booster Club awarded the tournament trophy to Wingate, and praised their endurance, “superb physical condition,” and “sheer pluck and aggressiveness.”

Wingate High School vs Kokomo High School, 1915. Source Kokomo High School yearbook, the Sargasso, 1915. This may be the earliest photo of an Indiana high school basketball game. Click the photo to learn more.

Wingate’s victory gave the team a statewide celebrity that carried on into the next season. Even though the team lost Forest Crane to graduation and Coach Wood left for a job at Rockville High School, they returned four of their starters including Stonebraker. New coach Leonard Lehman immediately began fielding requests for games from all over the state. Challengers were eager to test their mettle against the defending state champions.

Wingate opened the 1913-14 season without facing any quality competition. Over the first third of the season, against Williamsport, Cutler, Advance, Rockville, and Waveland, they averaged 40 points, and held their opponents to 16.5. At mid-season, Wingate stumbled in a schedule designed to test them against strong teams. They lost four straight against Lebanon, Thorntown, Bloomington, and Anderson, which dropped their overall record to 7-4.

It may have been hard to see the silver lining in the midst of a four game losing streak, but the Indianapolis News offered an encouraging and reasoned assessment of Wingate’s recent record: “It should be remembered . . . that the champs have played all these games on strange floors and have lost none of them by more than four points.” The News still counted Wingate among six front-runners for the championship.

After the mid-season slump, Wingate closed the regular season strong, and went 6-1 over their final games. Wingate compiled a 13-5 record on the season, in which they averaged 38.3 points per game while outscoring their opponents by an average of twenty-one points a game. According to extant newspaper box scores and game accounts, Stonebraker averaged a very impressive 25 points a game. While their record was not as stellar as the 1912-13 season, they played a much more difficult schedule. That fact and playing over 80% of their games on the road made them one of the better-prepared teams entering the state tournament.

Wingate’s 1914 team. Photo from Wingate Spartans: A History of Wingate Athletics blog.

Tournament participation in 1914 ballooned to seventy-five entries in 1914, up from thirty-eight schools in 1913. Wingate’s team was the first to arrive at Indiana University for the March 13-14 tournament, and expected to be the last one to leave. Wingate’s title defense started at 10 a.m. on Friday against Milan High School. However, there was no Milan Miracle in ’14, and Wingate easily dispatched their fellow small-town foe, 42-14. Wingate played their second round game at 8 that evening against another small-town team from Westport, which they also easily rolled past, 42-13.

Wingate’s team likely expected their next opponent to be more challenging than their first two, when they squared off against Montgomery County rival Crawfordsville at 8 o’clock the next morning. Crawfordsville, however, failed to exhibit any winning qualities as Wingate defensively smothered them in a sometimes-testy 24-1 rout.

Up next for Wingate was another familiar foe in Clinton. In the regular season, they defeated Clinton, 23-12, but the rematch would prove a much greater challenge. The standing room only crowd witnessed a “neck and neck tussle,” and one of the most competitive games of the tournament. Clinton, as the underdog, played with the crowd behind them. Clinton managed to control the lead from the opening tip. They led 8-6 at half time, and 13-12 with two minutes left in the contest. The crowd was ready to “bust with delight” over the upset. In a bit of controversy, and with 120 seconds left on the clock, “A Wingate guard either was hurt or pretended to be.” Officials granted Wingate an extended time out as the player tried to recuperate. Some Clinton fans said it was a charade, and charged that some of the uninjured Wingate players received rubdowns from a special trainer during the five-minute time out. When the game resumed, Wingate’s defense clamped down and Stonebraker scored five unanswered points to secure a 17-13 victory. In the victory, Stonebraker accounted for all of Wingate’s points.

Wingate’s 1914 championship basketball team. Bottom row: Leland Olin, Jesse Graves, Homer Stonebraker, John Blacker, and Lee Sinclair. Top Row: Superintendent M. Z. Coons, Paul Swank, Cuyler Brown (student manager), Lee “Pete” Thorn, Coach Leonard Lehman. Photo from Indiana High School Athletic Association Annual Handbook and Report of the Board of Control, 1914.

At this point in the tournament, only three teams remained (the product of having an irregular number of teams in the tournament): Anderson, Lebanon, and Wingate. “Battered and bruised and well nigh exhausted,” Lebanon took the floor to face the defending champions. By all accounts, Lebanon’s quintet gave all they could in the game. They fell behind Wingate 8-4 at half time. Wingate extended their lead after intermission to secure a 14-8 win.

Anderson versus Wingate in the championship game was a study in contrasts. Anderson had the seventh largest population in the state with 22,476, or, in other words, 22,000 more people than lived in Wingate. Despite this demographic discrepancy, Wingate’s players were taller and heavier than their opponents were. The sum of all these elements, in addition to the closely played, regular-season game between these teams, promised a compelling championship contest. Yet the end result failed to meet expectations.

4,000 fans packed the Men’s Gymnasium an hour before the game’s 8 p.m. tipoff. With only two hours rest, Wingate “started as fresh as if it were their first game and never slowed down.” Wingate forward Lee Sinclair scored the first field goal within the first thirty seconds. Wingate surged out to an early 12-1 lead. The “stellar work” of Wingate’s guards monopolized the game’s possessions, and “handled the ball with ease over the heads of the smaller Andersonians.” Wingate went into half time with a twenty-point lead, 23-3. Anderson came out of the break and scored two quick goals. After that spurt, Wingate closed the game on a 13-1 run to win the lop-sided championship 36-8. Stonebraker, who accounted for half of his team’s points, collapsed from exhaustion near the end of the game. He recovered enough to finish the contest, but remembered later, “I couldn’t dress after the game. I had two broken fingers and three broken ribs. It was rough under the basket.”

The Bloomington Evening World praised Wingate’s victory as “a tribute to the country and the small town. A corn-fed youngster who goes to bed with the chickens and gets up before day has an advantage over the ‘city-feller’ and his cigarette.” After the win, Governor Samuel M. Ralston invited the team to Indianapolis. They “got a bird’s-eye view of the city from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument, they explored the federal building, they saw the sights of the state museum, they flocked through the big department stores, they wandered through the lobbies of the fashionable hotels and they ate lunch at the Columbia Club as honored guests.” They also met the governor and the first lady in the executive office at the capitol. The governor praised the team members, saying, “You boys have become champions and are able to display great endurance because you laid the foundation by leading the right sort of life.” He also extolled the rural life that the team members knew, “The farm forms the basis for a healthful and moral life, and the occupation of the farmer is indeed an ideal one.”

While Milan and Hoosiers have become the prevailing archetype for Hoosier Hysteria, it is important to remember that they were part of a long tradition dating back to the earliest years of the state tournament. If part of the transcendent appeal of Indiana high school basketball is the potential of the upset, then the origin of that story really begins forty-one years before Milan when a tiny school from a tiny town “Put the Win in Wingate.”

This sign greets visitors to Wingate today.

The Underground Railroad in Montgomery County: An Annotated Letter

Researching the Underground Railroad (UGRR) is a difficult task. One must remember that the activities of UGRR participants was illegal according to Section 7 of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Consequently, primary source evidence of UGRRs is often scarce. In rare instances, someone like prominent Hoosier abolitionist Levi Coffin might leave a record of their involvement. Some times there may be court cases that document UGRR activity. Yet, in most cases, knowledge of UGRR participation passes into memory and tradition, which is less reliable than contemporary documentary records.

The Indiana Historical Bureau placed the Speed Cabin marker in Crawfordsville in 1995. Due to the tenuous nature of finding primary source evidence of Underground Railroad activity, the marker text is qualified with the word “reputed.”

In 1958, Wabash College history professor and Montgomery County, Indiana historian Theodore G. Gronert made the following assessment of the historical records:

The Wabash Valley members of the Underground left no detailed records such as those made by . . . the Whitewater Valley antislavery group. When participants and observers, some years after the event, told the story of the Underground Railroad, there was a natural tendency to embroider the story with fanciful details or even to recall events that never happened. . . . Unfortunately our source material for the contribution of Montgomery County to the Underground Railroad is limited. Only a few scattered reminiscences, some vague references in contemporary newspapers . . . are available to those who desire a record of the county’s part in this dramatic episode in the nation’s history.

In the late nineteenth century, Ohio State University professor Wilbur H. Siebert embarked on a remarkable project to collect reminiscences of UGRR activity from a decreasing pool of living participants and their descendants. He wrote to residents all over the county in an attempt to document UGRR routes, participants, and incidents. When he identified informants who could give him first or second-hand information, he mailed questionnaires asking seven basic questions regarding: 1) the route through the area; 2) the years of activity; 3) the system of communication between conductors; 4) memorable incidents; 5) the informant’s personal connection with the UGRR; 6) names and addresses of any potential additional informants; 7) a biographical sketch of the correspondent or the chief UGRR participant in the area.

Accessed archive.org.

Siebert’s research culminated in The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom published in 1898. Among the thousands of letters he collected, he deemed one incident that occurred in Montgomery County, Indiana to be especially noteworthy, and he included an extract of the letter in his book. The critical reader is always interested in an author’s sources. Fortunately, Siebert’s research archive survives today at the Ohio History Connection. Within that archive is a typescript of the entire letter that Siebert quoted in his book. Written by Sidney Speed in 1896, the letter is the most interesting, detailed, and closest thing to an extant primary source concerning UGRR activity in Montgomery County. A transcript of the letter with added annotations and commentary is below.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As a word of caution to readers, Speed uses a racial slur to describe African Americans several times in his letter. While the Indiana Historical Bureau does not condone the use of this word, it is part of the historical record.

Sidney Speed. Image from Crawfordsville District Public Library Reference Department’s Image Database of Montgomery County.

Letter from Sidney Speed[1] to Wilbur H. Siebert

Crawfordsville, Ind. March 6, 1896

W. H. Siebert

Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Sir:

Replying to your circular[2] of March 1. The old time abolitionists of this section are now all, or nearly all, dead.  Twenty years ago it would have been easy to gather the information you want, but now I am afraid you are everlastingly too late.  I was only a boy and do not remember much of interest.

Map used as an illustration in Siebert’s Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1898)

The route traveled by the fugitive slaves and those conducting them was from Annapolis (now Bloomingdale), a Quaker settlement in the north western part of Parke Co. to this place and for sometime [sic] this place was the terminus of the Underground proper, as at this place the fugitives were supplied with money, and put on board the car of the old L. N.A. & C. road[3] (now the “Monon”)[4] whose Management was then friendly, and were safely run through to Detroit,[5] and over the river.[6]  Afterward however the conditions were much changed on account of the great number of spies and nigger catchers that sprung up for the rewards to be earned.  Then the line of the Underground railroad was extended from this place through the Quaker settlement near Thorntown, Boone Co., and had its terminus at or near Noblesville in Hamilton Co. and it may have been extended farther than that afterward.[7]  But of that I do not know.

Crawfordsville’s Democrat newspaper, the Review, regularly took aim at Fisher Doherty’s political stances, as exemplified by this statement in the January 23, 1858 issue.

The main men connected with the road here [in Crawfordsville] was Mr. Fisher Doherty,[8] and my father John Speed.[9]  They were often assisted financially and personally by others who were never known as abolitionists.  Notable among these was Major I. C. Elston[10] a banker of this place and a staunch and life long democrat who always contributed something and would say “I don’t want to know what you are doing” “go away.”  An old Virginia slave named Patterson[11] was also of great service.  His wife[12] had bought him in Virginia.  She was born free, and I remember that when she would become angry at “old Pat” as we all called him, she would threaten to take him back south and sell him.  Calling him at the same time her “old pumpkin colored nigger.”  She was black herself. [13]  I think he was used as a guide, and watchman.

Nelson Patterson, junior, and his wife, Mariah, both registered in Montgomery County’s Register of Negroes and Mulattoes in 1853. According to Indiana’s Constitution of 1851, which prohibited African American immigration into the state, blacks who were Indiana residents before the Constitution went into effect had to appear before the county circuit court clerks to verify their pre-1851 residency in the state, usually with the help of a white witness. Search and view the entire Montgomery County register at the Crawfordsville District Public Library’s Local History Database.

Sometimes the fugitive negroes were brought to this place, in the night generally, by a man named Elmore, who lived between this place and Annapolis – (near Alamo this county) [14]  and sometimes Mr. Doherty or my father would go and bring them.  Sometimes Mr. Doherty or my father would go on from here to the next stopping place with them, but often an old Quaker named Emmons[15] who lived six or eight miles north east of here would come after them.  I remember yet his kind old solemn face, and his old farm wagon covered with black oil cloth with some old hickory bottomed chairs, and pots tied on the feed box behind, and a brindle bull dog under the wagon, just behind the driver’s seat a sheet was drawn across and in the interior was seats down the sides that would accommodate [sic] ten or twelve nicely.  He usually came to our house soon after dark, and at once taking in his cargo sometimes from the house, and sometimes from the cornfields or woods, he would start out for the next station. Somewhere near Thorntown, which he would reach and return to his own home before daylight.[16]

In 1844, the Sugar River Monthly Meeting of Friends, where Joseph Emmons belonged, censured him for co-publishing an article that the meeting deemed excited “disunity and discord.”  In the article, he and his co-authors criticized Friends (Quakers) who by “recognizing and supporting those political movements [which support or legislate slavery] and laws , they are actively countenancing and supporting Slave-holders, Slave-holding and Slavery.” Image from Indiana Yearly Meeting Minutes. Earlham College Friends Collection & College Archives, Richmond, Indiana, accessed via Ancestry.com.
The fugitives were not always attended.  They would sometimes come in singly or two or three together on foot traveling generally by night and being safely hidden during the day.[17]  These were sometimes accompanied by one of their own race, who had gone over the rout [sic] before.  The fugitives were usualy [sic] men in the prime of life there were exceptions however.

  1. My recollections of the period of activity of the road was from about 1854, when I was eight years old to 1863,[18] when I was sixteen years old, and enlisted in the 18th Ind. Battery.[19]
  2. I have no knowledge of the system of communication between members.[20]
  3. At one time in 1858, or 1859, a mulatto girl, about eighteen or twenty years old, and very good looking and with some education had reached our house, when the nigger catcher became so watchful that she could not be moved for several days.[21] In fact for some days some of them were nearly always at the house either on some pretended business or making social visits.  I do not think that the house was searched, or they would surely have found her, as during all this time she remained in the garret over the old log kitchen, where the fugitives were usually kept, if there
    The Speed’s home was located on the southwest corner lot of North Street and West Street (today Grant Street) in Crawfordsville. Although the home no longer stands, the log kitchen that Sidney Speed describes is on the right end of the photo. The Speed Cabin, as the kitchen portion is known today in Crawfordsville, is preserved on the grounds of the Montgomery County Historical Society’s Lane Place. Image from Crawfordsville District Public Library Reference Department Image Database.

    was danger.  Her owner, a man from New Orleans, had just bought her in Louisville, and he had traced her surely to this place she had not struck the Underground before, but had made her way alone this far, and as they got no trace of her beyond here they returned here and doubled the watches on Doherty and my father, but at length a day came, or a night rather, when she was gotten safely and through the gardens to Nigger Patterson.  Then she was rigged out in as fine a costume of silk and ribbons as it was possible to procure at that time, and was furnished with a white baby borrowed for the occasion, and accompanied by one of the Patterson girls (Mariah I think was her name)[22] as a servant and nurse, she boldly boarded the train at the station and got safely through to Detroit.  But what must her feeling have been when she board the train to find that her master or owner had already got on the same car.  However she kept her courage and [he] did not discover her identity until the gang plank of the ferry boat at Detroit was being hauled aboard, and the Patterson girl with the borrowed baby had returned to the shore when she removed her veil that he might see her and bade her owner goodbye.  That this parting was affecting you can imagine.  He tried to wreck his vengeance on the Patterson girl, but was restrained by strong hands.  There were usually plenty at Detroit.

  4. My own connection with the Underground Railroad consisted in trying in common with the other members of the family to get enough victuals into the house to feed the hungry without creating suspicion.[23]

    Indiana Centennial Celebration Pageant in 1916 in Montgomery County where the citizens re-enacted the incident with Allred the butcher. Photo from Crawfordsville District Public Library Reference Department.
  5. Mr. T. D. Brown[24] of this place, who was a contributor to the cause can tell you a good story of how the Allens of Browns Valley,[25] once caught a fugitive slave and brought him to town for identification, and stopping in front of the hotel, they went in to examine the “runaway nigger notices” leaving the negro holding the horse, and how old man Alred,[26] who had a butcher shop next door, picked up a dornick[27] or two from the street and ordered the nigger to “git.” (and he got, and to a place of safety too) and how Alred threw a rock into the hotel after the Allens and following it in himself was soon in a fine quarrel with them, which continued only until the nigger was safe.[28] (Make Brown tell you the story.)

Mr. Doherty’s wife Isabel Doherty is living,[29] and could likely help you [with more information].

John and Margaret Speed. Photo published in the Crawfordsville Journal and Review, October 21, 1931.
  1. My father John Speed was born in 1801. He was the twelfth and youngest child of his father’s family who was a small land owner and miller in Perthshire, Scotland.  My father came to America in 1823, and was employed at his trade, Stone cutter and Mason in building dry docks, and other government work at or near Washington D. C.  He came to Indiana with a contract to build the first state house at Indianapolis, Ind.,[30] but subsequently threw up the contract because the commissioners would not use stone that he thought suitable, but persisted in using a species of shale, which is abundant there, and which soon giving way caused no end of trouble[31] until the building was finally replaced by our present Magnificent structure.[32] He shortly after this contracted to build the part of the National Wagon road from Indianapolis to St. Louis.[33] During the building of the road [P]resident Jackson “busted the banks”[34] and the contract fell through, and “busted father” because the government had no money with which to either pay or continue.  He then returned to the east on foot, going by the way of Cumberland Gap – leaving his family here.  He built the present State House at Raleigh North Carolina[35] – returning here he ended his days living true to his conception of right.  He was elected twice Mayor of this place,[36] and died in 1873 universally respected for his honesty and integrity.

Hoping that you may find something in this that may assist you, but fearing that it will all be useless I am.

Yours Very Truly

Sidney Speed.

 

[1] Sidney Allen Speed (1846-1923) was the son of John and Margaret Speed. He attended Wabash College for a few years before the Civil War, served in the 18th Indiana Artillery, and later became a stone mason. Some of his stonework includes Lew Wallace’s  grave obelisk, which measures 30 feet in height, located in Oak Hill Cemetery North in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

[2] The circular is in reference to Siebert’s seven-question survey.

[3] The Louisville, New Albany, & Chicago Railroad originally started as the New Albany and Salem in 1847. By 1854, the line extended from the Ohio River to Lake Michigan and Chicago.

[4] The railway became popularly known as the Monon after the L. N. A. & C. consolidated with Chicago and Indianapolis Airline Railroad Company in 1881. The junction of these two routes in White County was near two creeks named the Big Monon and the Little Monon. The extant town at the junction, New Bradford or Bradford, was renamed Monon.

[5] The Monon did not run to Detroit, so freedom seekers would need to transfer at some point in northern Indiana or go into southern Michigan.

[6] The Detroit River which is part of the border between the United States and Canada.

[7] The map published in Siebert’s Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom differs from Speed’s recollection the Wabash Valley route heading northwest from Thorntown to Lafayette and northerly from there. The map traces a central route through Indiana from Madison to Columbus to Indianapolis through Westfield in Hamilton County, and through Noblesville and points north.

[8] Fisher Doherty (1817-1890) according to his obituary in the Crawfordsville Weekly Journal settled in Crawfordsville in 1844. He is listed in the 1850 U.S. Census as a carpenter, and in the censuses thereafter as a wagon or carriage maker. His obituary stated, “He was one of the original and most uncompromising Abolitionists all over the State. Crawfordsville became one of the main stations of the underground railway and Mr. Daugherty’s [sic] house was the stopping place of all runaway slaves struggling toward Canada. He is said to have assisted hundreds on their way and spent much time and money most cheerfully in this manner.”

[9] John Speed (1801-1873) was a native of Scotland and a stone mason by profession. He served as mayor of Crawfordsville from 1868-1870. Sidney Speed gives a fuller biography of his father later in this letter.

[10] Isaac Compton Elston (1794-1867) was a merchant and banker. He was by most accounts the wealthiest man in Crawfordsville. He had a large family, and his daughter Joanna and Susan were married to U.S. Senator Henry S. Lane and Ben-Hur author Lew Wallace, respectively.

[11] Based upon Speed’s description, this was Nelson Patterson, senior. Patterson (1786/90-?) was born in Virginia. The 1850 U.S. Census recorded him as a laborer, and the 1860 census listed him as a brewer. The Patterson family is listed in the 1850 census as living next to the Speeds. Among the seven children listed with him in the 1850 U.S. Census was a son also named Nelson (circa 1828-1873). The son served in the 28th U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War.

[12] Martha Patterson is listed in the 1850 and 1860 censuses as being born in either 1797 or 1790. Her place of birth is recorded as Virginia.

[13] Both the 1850 and 1860 censuses described Nelson Patterson as a mulatto. Martha Patterson is described as black in the 1850 census.

[14] According to the 1903 book, Twenty-five Years in Jackville: A Romance in the Days of the Golden Circle by James Buchanan Elmore, the author identifies Thomas Elmore as being involved in Underground Railroad activities in and around Alamo. Thomas was the uncle of the book’s author. Thomas Elmore (1816-1879) was an Ohio-born farmer. In 1856, he served on a Ripley Township Republican committee in Alamo that called slavery “the greatest evil of the nation.” The committee also resolved to make no compromises with the South on the slavery question.

Although Twenty-five Years in Jackville contains some historical and factual errors, James B. Elmore does list several other UGRR operatives in and around Alamo and Ripley Township. Among the names he associates with UGRR activity are: Hiram Powell, Joab Elliott, William Gilkey, Dr. Iral Brown, and Abijah O’Neall at Yountsville.

[15] Joseph Emmons (1812-1880) was a physician, and an active member of the Sugar River Monthly Friends Meeting. He lived in rural Montgomery County near Binford, which is currently the unincorporated community of Garfield.

Emmons’ involvement in the UGRR was also attested to by Siebert correspondents in Bloomingdale and Darlington, which were on both ends of the line through Montgomery County. Because Emmons’ involvement in the UGRR was so widely acknowledged by Siebert’s informants in the area, it suggests that he was a central actor in ferrying African Americans through Montgomery County.

[16] In 1896, long-time Darlington physician Isaac E. G. Naylor wrote to Siebert that “Alexander Hoover a Methodist, Joseph Emmons and Hudson Middleton – Quakers” were the principal “superintendents” along the branch passing through Franklin Township area including Binford, Darlington, and through to Thorntown.

Emmons’ medical profession could have presumably given him a plausible pretense for traveling at dusk or night if stopped by authorities or bounty hunters.

[17] As for contemporary evidence of African American freedom seekers traveling through the county solo: On August 16, 1855, the Crawfordsville Journal reported on an incident when a couple of hunters stumbled across a black man along a creek in the southern part of the county. After questioning the man, the hunters threatened to apprehend him as a fugitive. The man tried to escape, but ended up drowning.

[18] This statement is in response to Siebert’s second question on the questionnaire regarding the period of activity.

[19] The 18th Indiana Battery of Light Artillery was also known as Lilly’s Battery after their commanding officer Eli Lilly, who later founded a pharmaceutical company. The battery participated in battles at Hoover’s Gap, Chickamauga, and General William T. Sherman’s campaign against Atlanta.

[20] This statement is in response to Siebert’s third question about how Underground Railroad conductors communicated with each other.

[21] Here Speed related this memorable incident in response to another Siebert query.

[22] Mariah is likely one of two people. The Pattersons’ daughter, Almira, would have been in her late-teens or early twenties around this time. Another possibility is Mariah Patterson, who was married to Nelson Patterson, junior. Mariah would have been about twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the time, but she also had several young children, which makes her participation in the escape less likely.

[23] In a biographical sketch about John Speed, presumably provided by Sidney or another child, printed in Hiram Beckwith’s History of Montgomery County offers a few more details regarding this activity: “At one time the garret [of the house] was so full [of freedom seekers] that to prevent suspicion that he [John Speed] was harboring anyone he bought twenty-five cents’ worth of bread, then required his children to purchase a like amount each, until he obtained sufficient food for his attic visitors.”

[24] Theodore Darwin Brown (1830-1916), according to his obituary, settled in Crawfordsville in 1844, and worked for decades as a druggist. He also served as county clerk. Also according to his obituary, Brown was “an uncompromising Republican” who inherited his political views from his father, Dr. Ryland T. Brown, “one of the early abolition leaders of the state.”

[25] Enough information is not given to conclusively identify the Allens. According to the U.S. censuses, there were several Allen families residing in Brown Township in the 1850s.

[26] This probably refers to James Allred or Alred (1784-?). Allred, a native of North Carolina, appears in the 1840 and 1850 censuses as residing in Montgomery County. In the 1860 census, he is listed in Marion County.

[27] “Dornick” is an arcane word meaning a small pebble or stone.

[28] According to an 1898 article in the Crawfordsville Review the incident described took place in 1848. The article also offers some other particulars, like Allred’s first name.

[29] Whether Speed wrote the name wrong, or Siebert transcribed it incorrectly, Fisher Doherty’s wife was Sarah Owen Doherty (1820-1901). Her obituary notes Fisher Doherty as “a prominent promoter of the underground railroad, harboring many a runaway negro in his home. Mrs. Doherty was devoted to him thoroughly in his work and was a woman liberally endowed by nature of a great force of character.”

[30] Indiana’s first state house in Indianapolis opened in 1835.

[31] The construction of the building was problematic, and included the collapse of the House Chamber ceiling in 1867. A legislative committee began studying replacing the building in 1873, with a plan finalized in 1878.

[32] Construction on a new state house began in 1878, and continued until 1887/88. This building still serves the Indiana State Capitol.

[33] The National Road was the first interstate highway built with federal funds. Construction began in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811. Federal funds for the road ended in 1838 while construction was still being done in Indiana.

[34] President Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill in 1832 to re-charter the First Bank of the United States. Jackson reasoned that the Bank was not authorized by the Constitution, and “subversive to the rights of States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people.” Jackson took further steps to weaken the Bank when he decided to place federal funds on deposit in state banks. The Bank’s charter expired in 1836, and contributed to a major economic recession (some sources say depression) that lasted until the mid-1840s.

[35] The North Carolina State Capitol was completed in 1840.

[36] Speed was Crawfordsville’s second mayor. He served from 1868-1870.

Guns, Germs, and Indiana Athletics, 1917-1920: How Did the Great War and the Great Pandemic Affect Indiana Sports?

In September 1918, the sports reporter for the Bloomington Evening World wondered how the expanded Selective Service age range (revised to include 18-21 year olds) would affect the local high school basketball team’s prospects. Only two of Bloomington high’s players were young enough to be exempt from draft registration. A month later, the World reported that the influenza epidemic had incapacitated six of the squad’s fourteen players. The intrusion of World War I and a worldwide influenza pandemic disrupted the lives of many Hoosiers. In particular, this article explores how war and the Spanish flu affected Indiana athletes and sports. The Great War and the Great Pandemic had calamitous short-term effects on Indiana athletics, but long-term benefits in developing athletes and sporting culture in Indiana.

In September 1917, these thirty-nine civilians from Blackford County were drafted into military service for WWI. They are posed on the courthouse grounds in Hartford City. Source: Indiana Historical Society.

A month after Congress declared war in April 1917, the legislature passed the Selective Service Act re-instituting the military draft. The first draft registration began in June 1917 for men ages 21-31. A second draft registration occurred a year later in June 1918 for those who had turned 21 since the last draft, and by September 1918 Congress expanded the conscription ages from 18-45. Indiana as a state contributed 130,670 soldiers to the conflict, over 39,000 of them volunteers. Indiana University claimed that 35% of their alumni and current undergrads had enlisted. Purdue University and Rose Polytechnic in Terre Haute stated that over 12% of their alumni were in the service, whereas Butler College [changed to university in 1925] and Quaker affiliated Earlham College counted around 2% of their graduates at war.

Enlistments of college men would ultimately erode the short-term quality of college athletics. A March 1918 article in Indiana University’s Indiana Daily Student reckoned that enlistments and the draft would reduce the number of quality players for the upcoming football season. At Wabash College, several athletes left school at the close of the 1917 football season and enlisted, including multi-sport star Francis Bacon. A Crawfordsville Journal reporter assessed that these athletes had attributes that would make them excellent soldiers. The reporter wrote, “Training, alertness, physical fitness and courage to tackle a hard task and stick to it along with the habit of “team work” have all contributed to their advancement [in the military].” Meanwhile in Lafayette, a Purdue sports reporter held out hope that Purdue’s athletes could avoid military service. He wrote, “If Uncle Sam can do without several of Purdue’s basketball stars until the present season is over, Purdue should be able to look forward to a very successful season.” Uncle Sam could not do without, and Purdue lost the athletic services of several basketball players as well as basketball Coach Ward Lambert, a future Naismith hall-of-famer, to the military.

1917-18 Purdue basketball team. After being conference runner-up in ’17, Purdue fell to .500 in Big Ten play in ’18 without Coach Ward Lambert to guide them. Source: Purdue University Debris yearbook, 1918.

College athletics experienced great uncertainty during the war, especially regarding the loss of student athletes to the military. South Bend News-Times reporter Charles W. Call calculated that 13 of the 15 Notre Dame basketball players from recent years were in the armed forces, which was a higher service percentage than any of Notre Dame’s four major sports. Among Call’s statistics was multi-sport athlete, and basketball captain-elect Thomas King, who, in October 1917, awaited a summons to Camp Zachary Taylor, the mobilizing center for Indiana recruits near Louisville.

Similar to Notre Dame, IU lost three-sport letterman, and 1917 team basketball captain, Charles Severin Buschman, to the Army when he graduated at the end of the spring semester, enlisted, and received a captain’s commission in September 1918. College athletes who became officers in the armed forces came as no surprise to DePauw University coach Edbert C. Buss, who had seen seven of his football eleven* enlist. He assessed the military value of athletics and said, “We feel that college athletics is as big a factor in developing our men as any other department in the university, and it is a well known fact that army officers are picking football and basketball men for some of the most important branches of service.”Arguably the most-famous Indiana college (or ex-college) athlete to be drafted into the Army was 6’4” basketball sensation Homer Stonebraker of Wabash College. College authorities stripped Stonebraker of his collegiate athletic eligibility his senior season in 1917 because he violated his amateur status. Although not an active college athlete, the Army’s drafting of Stonebraker carried such importance that the New York Tribune and the Boston Herald both carried news items on the matter.

Indiana University’s 1916-17 basketball team. Three-sport athlete and basketball captain, Charles Severin Buschmann (seated front row with the ball), graduated and immediately enlisted in the Army. Source: Indiana University Archives Photograph Collection.

An Indiana Daily Student reporter surveyed the college athletic landscape at IU in 1918, and wrote the following:

Athletics at Indiana, like all other activities, have been materially affected this year by the war. Not only has the status of the primary sports been changed but nearly every one of last year’s stars who were eligible to play this year are in the service, and the participants for this season must be culled largely from the ranks of the inexperienced.

Curiously, even while experienced college-age men were leaving academia for the military, college enrollment grew. At IU, student enrollment increased, even though the quality of their athletics decreased. The Daily Student in October 1918 reported the largest enrollment in the history of the school with 1,953 students; 1,100 of that number were freshmen, and 875 of the freshmen were men, or 600 more males than the first year class enrolling in 1917. More males enrolled to take advantage of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) classes that were also available at Purdue, Notre Dame and other college campuses around the state. The 1918 freshman class at IU also saw a decrease in female enrollment: 695 down from 780 in 1917. The university authorities speculated that the decreased number of female enrollees was due to young women entering the workforce to take the place of men going to war.

Student Army Training Corps, DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind., 1918. Source: Indiana Historical Society.

The SATC proved a mixed blessing for the campuses that housed the corps. The War Department initially advised that intercollegiate football in institutions with SATCs be discontinued as a war measure. This policy would allow students to devote 14 hours a week to military drill and 42 hours a week to studying military tactics. Wabash College was without a SATC, and had no such time demands. The Crawfordsville college planned to proceed uninterrupted with their football schedule. The proposed change did not go over so well in football-crazed South Bend with first year coach Knute Rockne. The War Department ultimately backed off their initial proposal and instead set limits on travel, mandating that only two away games could be played during the season that would require the team to be absent from campus for more than 48 hours.

Another change the war prompted was changing freshman eligibility rules. Freshmen were eligible to compete in varsity athletics at smaller schools like Wabash and DePauw. Larger schools like IU, Purdue, and even Notre Dame prohibited freshmen from playing on the varsity. While not concerned with varsity athletics specifically, the War Department encouraged mass athletics participation by every enrollee in the SATC so that “every man . . . may benefit by the physical development which . . . athletics afford.” The Daily Student reporter assessed this development:

Sports on a war basis will probably lose some of the excitement and glamour, but the benefits derived from them will be much greater than it has been in the past. Not a favored few, but the mass of the student body will profit by the advantages thus afforded.

Notre Dame Coach Rockne opposed freshman eligibility. The South Bend News-Times explained Rockne’s position: “men . . . might be strong football players but not genuine college students.” Representatives of the Big Ten and other Midwestern college athletic associations met in Chicago and voted to allow freshmen to play in 1918. While Rockne may have opposed the measure in principal, in practice it was a good decision since he had only two returning lettermen including the famous George Gipp. Among the freshmen Rockne coached in 1918 was Earl “Curly” Lambeau from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

University of Notre Dame’s football team, 1918. Back row: Coach Knute Rockne, Charles Crowley, Early “Curly” Lambeau, George Gipp, Raleigh Stine, Frederic Larson. Middle row: Eddie Anderson, Maurice “Clipper” Smith, Captain Pete Bahan, Bernard Kirk, Heartley “Hunk” Anderson. Front row: Frank Lockard, Norman Barry, William Mohn. Source: University of Notre Dame Archives

Notre Dame’s need for athletes was not unique. At IU, only six players, including three who had never played football before, turned out for the team’s first practice. IU football coach Ewald O. “Jumbo” Stiehm remarked, “I have never before faced a season with so few experienced men to rely upon.” The Daily Student explained, “The teams will have to be built up almost entirely from green material, strengthened by men who had training on the freshmen squads throughout the year.” In Crawfordsville, seven Wabash College freshmen won varsity letters at the conclusion of the 1917 football season. To which the Crawfordsville Journal commented on the benefit, “This is an unusually large number of first year men to receive such recognition and the situation is brought about by war time conditions which have depleted the ranks of the older athletes. However, it is encouraging as it means that the majority of these men will be on hand to form the nucleus of next year’s team.”

As if the effects of mobilizing for war were not enough to inhibit Indiana athletics, the state also had to deal with an influenza epidemic. Indiana health authorities reported the first cases of influenza in September 1918. While the flu pandemic in Indiana was less severe than in other parts of America, it still afflicted an estimated 350,000 Hoosiers, and claimed 10,000 lives between September 1918 and February 1919. In October 1918, the South Bend News-Times reported on how the flu impacted college football:

Already staggering under the new military regulations, middle western football was dealt another blow tonight when a score of colleges and universities cancelled gridiron games scheduled for tomorrow because of the epidemic of Spanish influenza. Nearly 20 of the 30 odd games scheduled were called off. Reports received at Chicago indicated that some of the games had been called off because members of the teams were slightly indisposed, others because of probable attendance due to the influenza epidemic, and still others for the reason that it is feared crowds cause a spread of the disease.

Authorities cancelled the first three games on Notre Dame’s 1918 schedule on account of flu quarantines. Health officials even forced Rockne to cancel a practice. IU football coaches cancelled the team’s season finale, scheduled for Thanksgiving Day in Indianapolis, on account of the influenza situation in the capitol city.

The flu also affected high school sports. Bloomington High School expected to play their first basketball game of the season on October 18, but the city’s influenza quarantine forced the team to cancel games against Waldron, Orleans, Mitchell, Sullivan, Greencastle, and Indianapolis Technical. Coach Clifford Wells hoped that they could open their season on December 6 against 1918 runner-up Anderson. Hoping to stay sharp, the team played an exhibition game against an alumni team on November 17, but it was not much of an exhibition since health officials mandated the gym doors be closed to the public. The team succeeded in playing their first inter-scholastic game 43 days after their season was set to begin when they defeated Greencastle in Greencastle on November 29. The Bloomington team did not expect to play a home game until after the New Year on account of the flu.

Bloomington High School’s basketball team would win the 1919 state tournament despite a rocky season interrupted by flu and war. Their coach, Clifford Wells, was serving in the Navy reserves at the time. Source: Indiana High School Athletic Association Handbook for 1919.

At South Bend, the high school cancelled the first game of the season against Elkhart on account of the flu. They scheduled a replacement game against Michigan City, who had not practiced much indoors on account of the flu. The next game on the schedule against LaPorte was cancelled for the same reason. A replacement game against Valparaiso saw South Bend at half strength as one player was recovering from the flu, and two others had fallen ill.

While the Great Pandemic in Indiana officially lasted from September 1918 to February 1919, another wave of severe respiratory problems afflicted Indiana the following winter as well. In South Bend, there were 1,800 reported cases of the flu in January 1920. Notre Dame basketball coach Gus Dorais was among the afflicted and lay in the hospital for weeks. In his absence, Knute Rockne took over coaching the basketball team. Mishawaka High School lost a star player for the season on account of an attack of pneumonia that nearly cost him his life. At Goshen High School, basketball captain Clement McMahon recovered from scarlet fever, only to die a short time later from double pneumonia.

The effects of war and disease should have been enough to end competitive inter-scholastic sports for at least one season. Instead, Hoosier athletes played on. The ordeals Indiana sportsmen experienced at home and abroad strengthened athletic teams, developed sporting culture, and contributed to the growth of professional sports in the 1920s. As one observer noted, “On every side there is convincing evidence that the war has and will prove a great stimulus to sport.”

The playing experience first-year college athletes gained while upperclassmen were away became a competitive advantage to teams in the war’s immediate aftermath. As a Notre Dame sports reporter observed, Rockne made “a team out of a lot of fatheads” whose year of seasoning “will bring back the [glory] days [of Notre Dame].” Major college athletic associations rescinded freshmen eligibility after the war, but they allowed the athletes who had competed as freshmen to have a total of four years of athletic eligibility.

The combination of game-tested underclassmen, returning war-tested veterans, and an infusion of good athletes from the SATC who remained in college after demobilization produced extremely strong post-war teams. The best example of this was at Purdue for the 1919-20 season. Coach Lambert returned from his military service, which was enough of a boost in and of itself for the Boilermakers’ prospects. Several pre-war veterans returned to the court and joined four returning lettermen from the previous season. United Press reporter Heze Clark, who had followed college basketball for 25 years, forecasted a strong season for Purdue that should “net them not only the Big Ten Championship, but also western collegiate high honors.” Purdue ended the season as runner-up in the Big Ten, but they tied for the lead the following season, won the Big Ten outright in 1922, and continued to have strong teams throughout the 1920s and 30s.

The war’s aftermath not only created stronger teams it also gave an incredible boost to American sporting culture in terms of increased public interest and participation in sports. The fact that sports continued to be played during a war and in spite of a national health pandemic shows that sports meant something special to Americans, perhaps as an escape from worldly worries. In military camps, soldiers regularly engaged in boxing, baseball, basketball and football in military camps. In some cases, soldiers gained exposure to sports they never played, which developed not only new athletes, but also new sports enthusiasts. This was not unlike the growth baseball experienced after the Civil War when soldiers learned the game in camps, and brought it back to their communities after the war. One newspaper reporter assessed, “With thousands of Uncle Sam’s soldier boys equipped with baseball, boxing and football paraphernalia while in the service, thousands of young bloods coming [home] . . . will demand red-blooded recreations and pastimes on a larger scale than ever before and the country at large weary of death-dealing conflicts and grateful for the chance to relax, sports should thrive on a greater scale than ever.”

Purdue football fans celebrate a touchdown in 1918 by tossing their hats in the air. Source: Purdue University Debris (yearbook), 1919.

Reporters all around America drew the same conclusions. International News Service reporter Jack Veiock observed, “In spite of the war and the hardships it worked in college circles, the pigskin is being booted about by more elevens* today than in any season that has passed.” He observed that  public interest had not only increased for the sport, but participation exploded in colleges and army camps. Men who had never even tried the sport drove the increased participation. A syndicated article printed in the News-Times agreed, “Boys who came away from desks to go into the fight have come back trained men who will want to continue in good red blooded competition. . . . The war has made an athletic team of about four million men.” South Bend News-Times reporter Charles W. Call added,

This world conflict has proved a number of things but none more emphatically than that intercollegiate athletics, often as they have been questioned in time of peace, have made sinewy and adroit the army of a nation hastening to the ordeal of battle.

Another positive effect of World War I on sports was the growth and emergence of professional athletics in Indiana, including football, but specifically basketball. Professional football had a weak hold in Indiana in the early-twentieth century. Pine Village was a notable professional team before the war. After the war, Hammond was an inaugural member of the American Professional Football Association/National Football League from 1920-26.

Historical marker, Indiana Historical Bureau.

On the other hand, professional basketball in Indiana boomed in the 1920s. Todd Gould in his book Pioneers of the Hardwood: Indiana and the Birth of Professional Basketball just gives passing reference to the war and does not examine the impact war mobilization, male social fraternization, athletic competition in military camps, and demobilization had in the birth of professional basketball. During the war, an all-star amateur squad of members of the 137th Field Artillery, which was constituted of men from northern Indiana, fielded a basketball team in France to compete against other military units. Many such groups of athletic veterans would continue to play as league-independent teams, often with local business sponsorship after the war.

Indiana’s basketball star, Homer Stonebraker, made the acquaintance of Clarence Alter while serving in France. In pre-war civilian life, Alter managed an independent basketball team in Fort Wayne that competed against other independent clubs in the state. Alter and Stonebraker discussed joining forces after they were discharged. Their relationship became the basis of the Fort Wayne Caseys, one of Indiana’s most successful, early professional basketball teams. Alter recruited other veterans for the team, including Stonebraker’s old Wabash teammate Francis Bacon. Semi-professional teams cropped up all around the state in the 1920s in cities such as Bluffton, Hartford City, Huntington, Indianapolis, and Richmond. The athletes on these teams were often former local high school stars, but more often than not they were also veterans.

The Great War and the Great Pandemic changed sports in Indiana. In the face of severe, outside adversity, sports emerged from the war with greater popularity. In high school basketball, attendance at the state basketball tournament went from 2,500 before and during the war to 15,000 several years later. More racial diversity slowly appeared on high school teams because of the influx of African-American emigrants from the South during the war (although segregated black high schools were barred from IHSAA competition until 1942, individual black athletes could be on teams at non-segregated schools). Some military veterans returned to college and gave a boost to college sports fandom, if not actually contributing on the field of play. The veterans who returned home probably had a greater appreciation if not love of sports from being exposed to them in camp life. This rise in post-war interest in sports strongly contributed to the “Golden Age of Sports” in the 1920s, and the adulation of sports heroes like Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, and Rockne.

*“Elevens” is a term commonly used at this time to refer to the eleven players on a football team. Similarly, baseball teams were often called “nines” and basketball teams “fives” or “quintets.”

“All for Lebanon!”: A Retrospective of the 1917 Indiana High School Basketball Championship Season

In 1917, basketball was only twenty-five years old. Indiana high school basketball was a bit younger than that, and the state tournament was only in its seventh year (its sixth under Indiana High School Athletic Association control). Hoosier Hysteria was quickly taking root, as year after year more high school teams entered sectional tournaments with dreams of hardwood glory. Basketball in Lebanon began a bit later than other communities, but it quickly became a favorite sport of the town’s teenage boys. The school team’s reputation and skill-level improved year after year and culminated in a state title in 1912. Many influential figures in basketball’s development in the state walked the halls of Lebanon High School in the 1910s. The following narrative provides an overview of some of those people, and their accomplishments that culminated in Lebanon winning a second state basketball title in 1917.

Lebanon High School’s coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert was among the best Indiana high school coaches in the nineteen-teens. He came to Lebanon after their first state championship, and started coaching in the fall of 1912. He won 79% of his games in four seasons on the bench. His teams were perennial title contenders. Perhaps the best team that he coached at Lebanon was the 1914 squad, which due to an unfortunate draw in the state tournament played six games in a little over twenty-four hours before succumbing to fatigue and the well-rested, Homer Stonebraker-led, Wingate team, which won the 1914 crown. In 1915, Thorntown’s team surprised Coach Lambert’s squad in the sectional, and went on to win the 1915 title. Lambert and his boys reclaimed the sectional in 1916, but suffered a narrow, and disappointing defeat to Martinsville in the second round of the state tournament.

Lebanon coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1915. Accessed via Ancestry.com

Lebanon projected to return most of its team the following season, including two impressive underclassmen who were first and third on the team in scoring. Unfortunately, Coach Lambert would not return for a fifth season. In the summer of 1916, he became the head basketball coach at Purdue University where he would go on to a hall-of-fame career, and positively influence generations of players, including John Wooden. Lebanon’s high school administrators hired Wabash College graduate Alva R. Staggs to replace Lambert, and teach English. However, Lambert’s coaching in the years before had honed athletic skills, developed high basketball IQs, and created a winning culture in his high school charges, and set the stage for Staggs’ successful season.

THE REGULAR SEASON 

Due to injuries and eligibility issues, the 1916-17 Lebanon squad did not start the season as anticipated. Three year letterman and team captain Frank “Doc” Little, who played back guard, would miss most of his senior season due to a hip injury. Gerald Gardner, who the Indianapolis News described as “evasive as a mosquito,” had been a third team all-tournament player in ’16 after accounting for 42% of Lebanon’s points. Yet, academic eligibility issues erased most of the forward’s junior season.

Don White, floor guard, led the team in scoring with 11.4 ppg during the regular and post season. His scoring accounted for 30% of the team’s offense. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1917. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.

Even with these personnel losses, the Lebanon coach and players adapted. Staggs cycled through six different starting line-ups in the first ten games of the season. The two constants in the line-up were floor guard Don White and back guard Clyde Grater. White, a junior, was the team’s leading scorer as a sophomore and would retain the honor for the rest of his high school career. Grater, a sophomore, was in his first year on the varsity. At 5’ 8½” in height, he was much shorter than the prototypical back guard who was at this time the tallest and heaviest player on the team. Despite his average stature, Grater played the defensively-obsessed role very well. Other players who started for Lebanon in the early part of the season were George White (Don’s older brother), Charles “Dutch” Frank, Bob Ball, Harry “Peck” DeVol (the Whites’ first cousin), and Fred “Cat” Adam (the second-leading scorer from the previous season).

Lebanon rolled through the first half of the season. They compiled an 9-0 record against Veedersburg, Advance, Rockville, Washington, New Richmond (twice), Thorntown, Lafayette Jefferson, and Martinsville. The squad averaged ten points better than their opponents during this span. The game against defending state champ Lafayette Jeff was such an anticipated early season event that a Jeff physics teacher sent in-game updates via wireless to an amateur radio operator in Lebanon. The Lebanon receiver subsequently relayed updates of the game to local businesses via telephone.

Clyde Grater, defensive ace. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1918. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.

After the triumph over Jeff, a few cracks appeared in the quality of the team’s play. A revenge-hungry New Richmond team played a physically rough game in which Lebanon escaped with a five point lead. In the next game, Lebanon had to go into overtime to defeat Martinsville by a last second field goal.  They returned home to play Advance, and the wheels fell off. The up-start Boone County rival shellacked Lebanon, 28-6. A week later Lebanon lost to another Boone County team in Thorntown, 30-20.

Although on a two-game losing streak, the “Black and Gold” had a 9-2 record and a favorable schedule ahead against Frankfort (twice), Crawfordsville (twice), an away game against Rochester, and home games against Jeff, Washington, Martinsville, and Bedford. Over the final ten games, Coach Staggs settled on a regular line-up of DeVol and Adam at forwards, Ball at center, and White and Grater in the back court. With this line-up, Staggs fielded a trio of his best scorers. White was the team’s most consistent scorer all season with ten points per game. Ball and Adam disappointed over the first ten games with averages of less than three points. However, once inserted into the starting line-up the duo averaged ten points a piece over the final 10 games. With five games left in the season, “Doc” Little and Gerald Gardner returned to the team. Their immediate contributions were minimal, but they bolstered the bench of a booming Lebanon team. Over the final nine games, the Lebanon cagers routed their opponents by over 26 points a game. On the season, the team compiled an 18-2 record, with an offensive average of 33.15 points a game, and a defensive average of 17.9 points against.

THE SECTIONAL TOURNEY

Fred “Cat” Adam, forward/center, averaged 7.5 ppg as a junior in ’17. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1917. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.

The Indiana High School Athletic Association selected Lebanon as a district host for a sectional tournament, which was held on March 9 and 10, 1917. The townsfolk welcomed squads and fans from Boone, Carroll, and Clinton counties, including: Advance, Bringhurst, Burlington, Colfax, Cutler, Delphi, Flora, Frankfort, Jamestown, Kirklin, Thorntown, and Zionsville. Don White and company had little trouble with their first two sectional opponents, Cutler and Delphi, and defeated the Carroll County teams by an average margin of victory of 59 points.

Their next challenger, Thorntown, would present a much tougher match-up. The friendly rivals had split their regular season series. Thorntown also had the advantage of having three players and a coach from their championship season in 1915. The scores were close throughout the sectional game. Thorntown held a 10-9 lead at intermission. This was only the third time all season that Lebanon trailed at half time, and they lost on the previous two occasions. Don White determined to not let it happen again. He came out white hot in the second half with seven unanswered points. His scoring whipped the fans into a frenzy. Thorntown was down seven with a quarter to play. They clawed back, and cut Lebanon’s lead to three, but a series of miscues including two missed free throws sealed the fate of the Sugar Creek Township team.

Prognosticators picked the sectional final between Lebanon and Advance to be another tough contest, especially after Advance’s surprise victory over Lebanon at mid-season. However, Advance lost their star player to injury in the semi-final. To compound matters for Advance, Lebanon’s bench depth allowed Coach Staggs to flex his line-up to rest his regular starters and give “Doc” Little and Gardner some additional playing time. In the final, White’s 17 points almost outscored Advance single-handedly as Lebanon powered past Advance, 37-18.

THE STATE FINALS

On March 16, twenty sectional winners convened at Indiana University to vie for the state title. Lebanon played three uncompetitive contests in the early rounds to advance to the finals. They sank Trafalgar in their first contest, 34-14. In the quarterfinals, the Lebanonites left Kendallville tilting at windmills, 43-8. In the semis, the Boone County boys sent Martinsville packing, 36-12.

The final pitted Lebanon against the speedy Gary Emerson team. The majority of the crowd of 4,000 rallied behind the underdogs from Gary at the start. Yet the crowd grew silent as Lebanon built a 25-15 lead by half time. The Steel City team went on a run in the second half to make it a three point game. With the score at 25-22, Lebanon surged ahead with a 9-4 run to ice the game, 34-26. White and Adam tied for team highs with ten points a piece.

With the win, Lebanon won its second state championship. White was a consensus all-state tournament first team member. Adam, Little, and DeVol appeared on various all-tournament lists either on the first or second teams.

1917 Indiana basketball champion team from Lebanon. Photo from Lebanon High School yearbook, The Cedars, 1917. Accessed at Ralph W. Stark Heritage Center, Lebanon Public Library.

POSTSCRIPT

Coach Staggs left Lebanon after the school year to accept a job at Anderson High School. Little, DeVol, and Frank would join mid-season graduate George White in the ranks of Lebanon alumni. Bob Ball although technically a junior would leave high school and enter DePauw University, depriving the team of its second leading scorer. Yet the core of White, Grater, and Adam would return for the 1917-18 season. Under the tutelage of a new coach, Glenn Curtis, and a younger cast of supporting characters they would win the state tournament again, and join the historical annals with Wingate as back-to-back state champions.

After graduating in 1918, Don White reunited with his old coach, Ward Lambert, and continued his athletic career at Purdue. He was second in the Big Ten in scoring as a sophomore, and led the conference in scoring as a junior while also leading the university to the conference title in 1921. After college, White entered the coaching ranks where he had a thirty-five year career at Washington University (St. Louis), the University of Connecticut, and Rutgers. He even coached Thailand’s Olympic team in 1956.

After high school, Adam and Grater teamed together again at Wabash College where they were multi-sport athletes, and fixtures in the basketball line-up. After graduation they both became high school teachers and coaches.

Learn more about Lebanon High School basketball history with a presentation by IHB Director Chandler Lighty at the Lebanon Public Library. The talk takes place Monday, March 20, 2017 from 6-8 p.m. and includes a special viewing of an LHS 1967 basketball film.

Is This the Earliest Photo of an Indiana High School Basketball Game?

This may be the earliest photo of an Indiana high school basketball game. Wingate High School vs Kokomo High School, January 16, 1915 at Kokomo Y.M.C.A. Source: Kokomo High School yearbook, The Sargasso, 1915, accessed via Howard County Memory Project (howardcountymemory.net).

For all of basketball’s cultural worth to the state, finding a photo of a basketball game from before the 1920s is a difficult task. Early basketball team photographs are rather plentiful, and frequently appeared in yearbooks, and newspapers.  Action shots are much rarer, likely due to early-20th century Hoosiers having cameras that required long exposure times, which were unable to clearly capture moving subjects.

The introductory photo at the top of this blog post is the earliest that the Indiana Historical Bureau has yet to encounter of Indiana high school basketball players on the court, and about to play a game. The story behind the picture is an interesting one. The photo depicts the teams from Wingate High School and Kokomo High School before a January 16, 1915 game at the Kokomo Y.M.C.A. This moment was photographically commemorated because Wingate was the defending state champion, having won back-to-back titles in 1913 and 1914. Situated in northwestern Montgomery County, Wingate was a small school with only 67 students. Among those enrolled in that student body, however, was one of the best Indiana basketball players of that generation, Homer Stonebraker.  The 6’4″ Stonebraker was a giant among his competitors. In 15 of the 18 box scores that research could uncover from Wingate’s 1913-14 regular season, Stonebraker averaged 24.9 points a game. By comparison, Wingate’s opponents only generated 17.3 points a game. After leading Wingate to consecutive state titles, Stonebraker graduated in 1914, and matriculated at Wabash College where he continued his athletic success and eventually carved out an eleven season career playing with professional clubs and early American Basketball League affiliates like the Fort Wayne Caseys, the Detroit McCarthys, and the Chicago Bruins.

Wingate’s 1914 championship team. Stonebraker is seated in the middle of the first row.             Source: Indiana High School Athletic Association Annual Handbook for 1914, accessed via Indiana Memory.

Wingate was hardly the same team after Stonebraker’s graduation. On the eve of their Kokomo game in 1915 they could not even boast about their 5-6 record. To complicate their season, they cancelled most of their December games as a result of the entire town falling under a small pox quarantine. Despite their struggles, fans and the press continued to hype any contest against Wingate. The Kokomo Tribune announced:

This game Saturday will be the most important home game for the locals this season. Wingate’s team is a real championship contender again this year and a victory for Kokomo would mean that we also have a team of first class ability.

The very calm composure of the players in the photo taken before the game hardly indicated the animosity that developed in the ensuing contest. Kokomo lost the contentious game 31-15. The Indianapolis Star reported that “Wild scenes, which threatened frequently to break up the game, marked the second period of play and may result in . . . breaking off athletic relations.” The hired referee failed to show up for the game. Consequently, the two schools agreed to let a representative of each of the respective teams officiate one half each. Wingate led 13-7 at half time with Kokomo’s ex-player Tyner Spruce officiating. Wingate’s coach Hugh Vandivier refereed the second half and according to the newspaper reports showed favoritism to his own team, which drew the ire of the Kokomo fans. Ultimately, both squads would finish the season with disappointing records [Wingate (11-8) and Kokomo (7-10)], and neither team would advance out of their division tournaments to qualify for the state tournament.

1918 state championship game between Lebanon and Anderson at Indiana University’s “New” Gymnasium. Source: Indiana University yearbook, The Arbutus, 1918.

Attempts at basketball action photography continued to be a novelty throughout most of the 1910s. The 1918 title game between Lebanon and Anderson is one of the earliest-known attempts to photograph an Indiana high school championship game. Even then the visual chronicle leaves much to be desired, as the camera’s exposure time had yet to catch up to the action on the court.  All of the players are out of focus, and several are nothing more than blurs in the image.  Despite this, these pictures can give modern viewers small windows to glimpse the earliest years of Hoosier Hysteria.

For your bonus enjoyment, here’s another photo of a non-high school basketball practice from the 1912 Purdue University yearbook, The Debris. This photo is likely posed, which is why all the players are in focus with the exception of the top right defender’s blurry arms.

Purdue University yearbook, the Debris, 1912. Credit: Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries.

Do you know of any Indiana basketball action photographs that are earlier or contemporary with these shown here?  If so, let us know at ihb@history.in.gov.

Lincoln’s Forgotten Visit to Indianapolis

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Portrait of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln prior to delivering his Cooper Union address in New York City, February 27, 1860, image courtesy of the Library of Congress. Lincoln reportedly said, “Brady and the Cooper Institute made me president.” Read this blog to decide if that actually was the case.

Quick, Abraham Lincoln buffs! Can you name all the dates Lincoln delivered a public address in Indiana after moving to Illinois in 1830?

Did you guess February 11 and 12, 1861?  Identifying those days were probably fairly easy since that was when Lincoln journeyed through Indiana en route to Washington for his first inauguration. According to historical records, he delivered whistle-stop speeches at State Line City, LafayetteThorntown, Lebanon, and Zionsville. His train stopped at Indianapolis that evening where Governor Oliver P. Morton and 20,000 Lincoln supporters welcomed him. He addressed the citizens of Indiana from the train platform before he disembarked to his hotel room at the Bates House. Lincoln adherents called upon the president-elect later that evening, and he delivered an ad hoc speech from a balcony of the hotel. He resumed his journey east the next morning, which also happened to be his fifty-second birthday.  Lincoln continued to greet and deliver short speeches to well-wishers in Shelbyville, Greensburg, Morris, and Lawrenceburg as his train steamed on to Cincinnati, Ohio.

If you are an advanced Lincoln enthusiast, you may be able to identify another Lincoln visit to Indiana that occurred in 1844 while he campaigned for Whig presidential candidate Henry Clay. During that fall visit, he spoke at the Spencer County Courthouse in Rockport.

Site of Rockport Tavern
This Indiana Historical Bureau marker in Rockport references Lincoln’s visit in 1844.

According to oral lore and tradition, he made several other speeches around Spencer County (and allegedly spoke in Knox, Daviess, Warrick, and Vanderburgh counties). However, the Rockport address is the only southern Indiana speech corroborated with a contemporary source. While in Spencer County, Lincoln visited his boyhood home and the graves of his mother and sister. This would be Lincoln’s first and only return to his childhood home since he left Indiana in 1830.

Aside from those two visits in 1844 and 1861, most Lincoln fans would be hard-pressed to identify the other time that Lincoln visited Indiana for political purposes. It happened on September 19, 1859 in Indianapolis, where he delivered a speech so obscure that it was largely forgotten for 70 years before a Lincoln researcher and an Indiana State Library employee uncovered it in an issue of a short-lived Indianapolis newspaper, the Daily Evening Atlas.

First, some historical context is helpful to illuminate Lincoln’s Indianapolis speech. In January 1859, Lincoln lost his U.S. Senate campaign to Stephen A. Douglas. Financial necessity forced him to pay more attention to his legal career in the aftermath of this political defeat.  Practicing law, however, had lost some of its luster after the political-high of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. As the foremost Republican in Illinois, Lincoln felt an obligation to lead the fractious Illinois Republican political alliance and craft a vision for party success in 1860. Lincoln was particularly concerned about Douglas’s attempts to position himself as a centrist presidential candidate who could siphon off some of the fledgling Republican Party’s conservative-to-moderate-leaning internal factions.

In early September 1859, Lincoln declined an invitation to speak in Illinois citing the necessity of devoting himself to private business. However, two things occurred in September that changed Lincoln’s mind. Harper’s Magazine published his arch-rival’s article that extolled the political virtues of popular sovereignty. Ohio Democrats also invited Douglas to campaign for state candidates. These two events compelled Lincoln to confront the Little Giant, albeit indirectly.

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“The Undecided Political Prize-Fight,” political cartoon from 1860. Source: http://www.paperlessarchives.com/lincoln_douglas_debates.html

There was no formal head-to-head continuation of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in September 1859, but Lincoln shadowed his nemesis throughout the Buckeye State, and delivered speeches in Columbus and Cincinnati following Douglas’s wake. On September 16 and 17, Lincoln spoke at the Ohio capitol, Dayton, and briefly at Hamilton. The overall texts of these speeches were similar to one another, and presented sharper arguments than Lincoln first introduced during the formal debates in 1858.

Of all the oratory Lincoln delivered during this circuit, his Cincinnati speech on the evening of September 17, 1859 stood out from the rest, as he crafted his address to speak directly to the many southern Ohioans and Kentuckians in the audience. It was probably the best attended speech during his tour through the state. The speech also reached a much larger audience when newspapers throughout the North widely reprinted and commented on the Cincinnati address. The text so thoroughly saturated the 19th-century news network that few journalists covered the Indianapolis speech that he gave two days later.

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Image from Jacob Piatt Dunn’s History of Greater Indianapolis (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1910).  The street shown is Louisiana Street.

On the morning of September 19, 1859, Abraham Lincoln, his wife, and one of their sons departed Cincinnati for Indianapolis.  They arrived at the Union Depot in the Hoosier capital at four o’clock.  A party of political friends, led by Atlas editor John D. Defrees, welcomed the Lincolns as they disembarked.  The hosts escorted their visitors across the street to the American Hotel (located near present-day 18 W. Louisiana St.) where they would spend the night.

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Masonic Hall in Indianapolis, ca. 1850s, image courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.

At seven o’clock that evening, an audience packed the Masonic Hall (then located on the southeast corner of Washington Street and Tennessee, which is now Capitol Avenue) to hear the Illinoisan speak.  Among those in attendance were political dignitaries from both sides of the aisle, including Indiana’s Democratic Governor Ashbel P. Willard, Lincoln’s future cabinet member Caleb Blood Smith, future Indiana governor Oliver P. Morton, and Congressman Albert G. Porter (also a future governor).  Although not mentioned in newspaper coverage as being in attendance, the Atlas reported that Henry S. Lane registered at a hotel that day.  Most likely he attended too.  If Lane was in the audience, then his presence would be of interest since he became an instrumental lobbyist for Lincoln’s presidential nomination at the 1860 Republican National Convention, and later as a U.S. Senator during the Civil War he voted for many of President Lincoln’s legislative proposals.

One wonders how Lincoln appeared and sounded to his Midwestern audiences during the late summer of 1859. The descriptions of Lincoln in the Indianapolis newspapers are somewhat limited. However, the audience’s impression of the orator were perhaps not unlike the Democratically leaning Cincinnati Enquirer‘s colorful introduction of the then not-so-well-known Lincoln to their readers:

“Hon. Mr. Lincoln is a tall, dark-visaged, angular, awkward,
positive-looking sort of individual, with character written on his face and energy expressed in his every movement.  He has the appearance of what is called…a Western man – one who, without education or early advantages, has risen by his own exertions from an [sic] humble origin….He makes no pretension to oratory
or the graces of diction, but goes directly to his point…regardless of elegance or even system….With orthoepy [correct pronunciation of words] he evidently has little acquaintance, pronouncing words in a manner that puzzles the ear sometimes to determine whether he is speaking his own or a foreign tongue.”

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Ambrotype, September 1858, unidentified artist, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.  A year before Lincoln lectured in Indianapolis, he sat for this portrait around the time of the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate in Charlestown, Illinois.  Lincoln probably did not look too different a year later while speaking to Hoosiers.

After Lincoln’s old congressional colleague Caleb Smith introduced the lecturer to the Indianapolis crowd, Lincoln opened his address with some reminiscences of growing up in Indiana. The Atlas, the best extant source for this speech, reported his words in the third person:

“Away back in the fall of 1816, when he was in his eighth year, his father brought him over from the neighboring State of Kentucky, and settled in the State of Indiana, and he grew up to his present enormous height on our own good soil of Indiana. [Laughter.] The scenes he passed through to-day are wonderfully different from the first scenes he witnessed in the State of Indiana, where he was raised, in Spencer county, on the Ohio river. There was an unbroken wilderness there then, and an axe was put in his hand; and with the trees and logs and grubs he fought until he reached his twentieth year.”

The Democratic-leaning Sentinel, while not fully reporting on Lincoln’s oration, did supply a few anecdotes from Lincoln’s youth in Indiana that the Atlas omitted.  The Sentinel supplemented:

“[H]e had chopped wood, raised log cabins, hunted bears, drank out of the same bottle as was the fashion of those days, with the woodsmen of Indiana for years. He gave a graphic account of a bear hunt in the early days of this wooden country, when the barking of dogs, the yelling of men, and the cracking of the rifle when Bruin was treed, would send the blood bounding through the veins of the pioneer. Those were the days when friendships were true, and he did not think any other state of society would ever exist where men would be drawn so close together in feeling and affection.”

It is an interesting addition considering Lincoln had authored a poem about a bear hunt, and evidently the incident left quite an impression on him.

Lincoln stopped with his reminiscences, and admitted that he expected that his audience came to hear him say something about politics. At this point, he transitioned into a critique of Stephen Douglas’s advocacy of popular sovereignty. Lincoln opened his political remarks by recalling his famous words: “this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free; that a house divided against itself cannot stand.” He pointed out that Douglas had critiqued this thesis, and counter argued, “Why cannot this government endure forever, part free, part slave, as the original framers of the constitution made it?” Lincoln set out to answer Douglas’s question over the next two hours.

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Stephen A. Douglas, ca. 1855-1861, image courtesy of the Library of Congress.  Lincoln challenged the Democratic incumbent for the U.S. Senate in 1858.  After a series of well-publicized debates, Lincoln lost the election in January 1859.  Douglas and Lincoln would continue challenging each other over the next few years, culminating in their respective candidacies for the presidency in 1860.

Lincoln reasoned that the U.S. Constitution was silent about slavery’s continued existence in America, and he disputed Douglas’s contention that the country was to endure “part free, part slave.”  Lincoln’s main support for this argument was legislation near and dear to the history of Indiana: the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited the introduction of slavery into the Northwest Territory. Lincoln correctly pointed out that the Second Continental Congress passed the ordinance at the same time as legislators were crafting the U.S. Constitution.  Therefore, Lincoln maintained,

“There was nothing said in the Constitution relative to the spread of slavery in the Territories, but the same generation of men said something about it in this ordinance of ’87, through the influence of which you of Indiana, and your neighbors in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, are prosperous, free men….Our fathers who made the government, made the ordinance of 1787.”

Lincoln proved to be an astute student of Indiana history, and related to his audience that a few Indiana Territory residents had once petitioned Congress to amend the ordinance to allow for the introduction of slavery.  Lincoln likened this to the residents trying to exercise popular sovereignty. Yet in this case, Congress denied the petition. Lincoln reasoned, “[H]ad it not been for the ordinance of ’87, Indiana would have been a slave State.” He thereby refuted Douglas’s key political doctrine, by citing an example where the federal government had prohibited the spread of slavery, and ignored the supplications of some citizens seeking to exercise popular will. “Popular sovereignty,” Lincoln argued, “has not made a single free State in a run of seventy or eighty years [of the nation’s existence].”

In addition to focusing on popular sovereignty, Lincoln’s speech also focused on economics by contrasting slave labor and free labor. Lincoln summed up Douglas’s popular sovereignty in this way: “If one man choose[s] to make a slave of another man, neither that other man [n]or anybody else has a right to object.”

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The Atlas reported, “The speaker himself had been a hired man twenty-eight years ago.” This Indiana Historical Bureau Marker tells about some of the hired work Lincoln performed while living in Indiana. The opposite side of the marker tells about Lincoln ferrying customers across the Ohio River, and his flatboat journey to New Orleans in 1828 with a load of goods.

For Lincoln, that was a dangerous proposition. As a counter to this prospect, he praised the merits of free labor. Citing Indiana’s labor force, Lincoln said, “[O]f all that is produced, seven-eighths of it is produced by the hands of men who work upon their own ground; and no more than one-eighth is produced by hired men.  The condition of the hired man was not worse than that of the slave.”  Lincoln recalled his own work in Indiana as a hired man, and assessing his own experience at that time he did not consider himself worse off than a slave.  He concluded:

“Men who were industrious and sober, and honest in the pursuit for their own interests, should after a while accumulate capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in peace, and if they chose, when they had accumulated capital, to use it to save themselves from actual labor and hire other people to labor for them, it was right.”

At this time and before this audience, Lincoln spoke out against slavery not on moral grounds, but on economic grounds. Near the end of his two hour address, he said, “The mass of white men were injured by the effect of slave labor in the neighborhood of their own labor.” In other words, free labor’s value was depressed because of the existence of slave labor in the United States.

After Lincoln concluded, Oliver Morton took the stage to say a few words, but on account of the lateness of the hour, he kept his remarks brief. The next day the Lincolns continued their westward journey home to Springfield.  The Indianapolis press, both Republican and Democratic organs, gave accounts of the previous night’s events, but other papers largely ignored the future president’s remarks.

In the grand scheme of things, one could conclude that Lincoln’s visit to Indianapolis in 1859 was rather insignificant. Chalk it up as one of those “George Washington slept here” historical moments. However, there is another interpretation of his visit, which adds historical significance to it.  Historian Gary Ecelbarger in a Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association article argued against the common narrative that Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech delivered in New York City in February 1860 was the speech that made Lincoln president. Ecelbarger persuasively argues that before Lincoln could get an east-coast endorsement for his candidacy, he first needed to mobilize political support among Midwesterners. Obviously, Lincoln was a well-known figure in Illinois politics, but his first deliberate and substantial politicking outside of his home-state’s borders started with his September 1859 trip to Ohio and Indiana.

These speeches were the first of about 30 addresses Lincoln delivered in eight states and the Kansas Territory in the nine months leading up to his nomination for president in May 1860. As Ecelbarger interpreted it, “[This] is evidence that Lincoln sought to increase his exposure outside of Illinois for a run for the presidency.” In this light, Lincoln’s visit to Indianapolis takes on greater significance, as he introduced himself to the Hoosier demographic that would aid his political ascent. Many of the Republican attendees who heard him that night in Indianapolis would become influential brokers in helping him secure the presidential nomination, electoral influencers that would enable him to carry the Hoosier state in the general election, and strong backers of his executive and military policies as president during the Civil War.

To read the full text of Lincoln’s Indianapolis speech, click here.  View summaries of some of Lincoln’s most poignant assertions in his Indianapolis speech via the Atlas:

1 2 3 4 5 6

Ben-Hur Races to the Top in Indy

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2016 movie poster, courtesy of Imdb.com.

The release of the new Ben-Hur movie this summer reminded us of the story’s Hoosier origins.  This latest production from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey is the fifth time that film producers have interpreted Crawfordsville native Lew Wallace’s best-selling novel for the screen. Many are familiar with the 11 Academy Award winning adaptation starring Charlton Heston in 1959 and most film buffs know that there were two earlier versions in 1907 and 1925.  The 1907 film prompted a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that protected copyrighted works from unauthorized motion picture adaptation.  The 1925 film arguably has a better chariot race than the 1959 movie. There was also a forgettable and regrettable Canadian mini-series reboot of Ben-Hur in 2010.

In a world of constant movie reboots, one ponders: if Lew Wallace were alive today and re-wrote Ben-Hur in a contemporary setting, would he have Ben-Hur racing in the Indianapolis 500?

What if we told you that Ben-Hur did, in fact, race at Indianapolis?  Of course, the race did not take place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; instead it took place in 1902 at English’s Theater during the BenHur stage play’s first visit to Indianapolis.

The stage race as explained and illustrated in pages of Scientific American. Image from General Lew Wallace Study and Museum website.

On November 13, 1902, the Indianapolis News reported “J.J. Brady is here in advance of ‘Ben-Hur,’” and “brings with him a corps of stage carpenters and mechanics, who have practically to reconstruct the stage . . . so that the play may be given properly.”  Although English’s stage was new, crews needed to rebuild it in order to accommodate the chariot race. Producing that scene called for eight live horses running at full gallop on treadmills, cycloramic scenery and, other apparatus.  All this equipment and animals imposed an estimated weight of over 50 tons on the stage, which required pouring a special cement foundation. The public was anxious to see the spectacle, even if it meant staking out a place in line many hours in advance.  The Indianapolis News reporter observed:

“A few individuals sat and shivered all night in the lobby of English’s waiting in patience and with an unwonted supply of cash in their pockets for the box office to open.  They were men who had been hired to buy seats for some of the performances of ‘Ben-Hur.’”

Ticket prices ranged from fifty cents to two dollars. Even at that rate, a day after the tickets went on sale, the English Theater reported “over $10,000 was taken in at the box office window” and representatives for the producers of the play (Marc Klaw and Abraham Erlanger) announced that the sales “beat all records for the play in advance sales.”  The Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur, a national benevolent society headquartered in Wallace’s hometown of Crawfordsville, nearly bought out one performance by itself.  The Tribe planned to run an excursion via train for its members from Crawfordsville to see the play.

Basill Gill as Messala (Left) and William Farnum as Ben-Hur (Right) in the 1902 Indianapolis production. Courtesy of Hoosier State Chronicles.
Ben-Hur and Messala face off in a promotional picture for the production. Courtesy of Hoosier State Chronicles.

However, a few members of the Hoosier public were dubious about purchasing tickets.  In particular, one woman was of the opinion that the play was to take two weeks to complete.  When the box office manager informed her that the entire play was presented every night, she remained quite suspicious that anyone “could put all that book into a one-night drama.”

Production managers sought to cast extras from Indianapolis’s denizens, advertising a salary of $4.25/week. That was enough to encourage a crowd of men, women, and children to stand outside in a late Indiana autumn for an hour and a half waiting for their opportunity at show business.  An assistant stage director eventually made an appearance and sorted through the crowd.  One “gray beard” was turned away because the assistant director believed him not to be “nimble afoot.”  The rejected man futilely protested to the assistant director and argued “he could get around faster than two-thirds of the younger fellows that had been accepted.”

With the extras cast, the production opened on Monday, November 25, 1902.  After witnessing opening night, an Indianapolis reporter wrote, “There [will] be critics who see nothing good in the American stage or in the works of American dramatist: if the American stage had done absolutely nothing worthy in its long career but this, had its fame to rest solely on this production of ‘Ben-Hur’ it has justified its existence.”

Mabel Bert in costume for theatrical production of Ben-Hur. Courtesy of the Digital Public Library of America.
Mabel Bert in costume as the mother of Ben-Hur. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The cast, as it appeared in Indianapolis, included William Farnum as Ben-Hur and Basil Gill as Messala.  Farnum’s performance was described as realizing the part to the fullest degree.  Among the other actors and actresses in the production, Mabel Bert’s portrayal as the mother of Hur is worth noting because she was the only cast member with a major role to be with the company continuously since the production opened on November 29, 1899 in New York City.  Mrs. Bert told a reporter,

“I have always been the mother of Ben-Hur – various Ben-Hurs, however, for Mr. Farnum is the third I have mothered on the stage…It does make me a trifle lonely sometimes to lose my stage children and stage friends that way.  But then, too, it affords a certain amount of variety that is interesting and keeps my work from becoming at all monotonous.”

Ellen Mortimer as Esther (Left) and William Farnum as Ben-Hur (Right) in the 1902 production. Courtesy of Hoosier State Chronicles.
Esther and Ben-Hur in a promotional photo for the production. Courtesy of Hoosier State Chronicles.

The public certainly found nothing monotonous about the play.  In fact, the production was originally slated to run for two weeks in Indianapolis, but four days after opening night the Indianapolis News reported that the high demand for tickets had prompted producers to extend the play for another week.  Box office receipts for the first two weeks alone were estimated in excess of $35,000.  That figure broke all box office records for Indianapolis and was the highest figure for all productions of Ben-Hur to that date.

The cover of the Souvenir Album of the 1902 Indianapolis production of Ben-Hur. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
The cover of the Souvenir Album of the 1902 Indianapolis production of Ben-Hur. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.

The Indianapolis News attempted to describe the sales phenomenon in Indianapolis:

“‘Ben-Hur’ occupies a unique position on the native stage, since it appeals alike to habitual theater patrons and those who seldom find enjoyment in offerings of the stage.  While the elaborate scenic equipment and realistic chariot race command the admiration of the spectators, the rare beauty and force of ‘Ben-Hur’ as a drama give a lasting distinction to this most uplifting, inspiring and soul-stirring play.”

This description of the popularity of Ben-Hur, while no doubt true, neglects that a major reason for the large turnouts was because the author of Ben-Hur was a native Hoosier son.  Some Indiana cities, such as Covington, Franklin, and Noblesville, brought large numbers of their population and sold out individual performances.  In fact, Covington could not secure as many tickets as they had citizens who wanted to attend; the Indianapolis Sentinel reported that a small riot broke out as a result.

While various Indiana cities were hoping to witness the performance, Crawfordsville was no exception, as it was Ben-Hur’s birthplace.  A contingent of Athenians and Montgomery county residents had the theater to themselves for a performance on December 2.  Among those in attendance at that performance was James Buchanan Elmore, aka the Bard of Alamo.  After witnessing the arrest of the Hur family, Buchanan leaned over to a newspaper reporter and said, “Seems to me if I was bossing that show I would make the actors speak softer and not so rough, it don’t seem like Scripture voices.”

An example of the final scene from the theatrical version of Ben-Hur, which opened at the Grand Opera House, Seattle, on Oct. 9, 1905. Courtesy of the University of Washington.
An example of the final scene from the theatrical version of Ben-Hur, which opened at the Grand Opera House, Seattle, on Oct. 9, 1905. Courtesy of the University of Washington.

Although the December 2 performance hosted one Montgomery County literary celebrity, another one was conspicuously absent, that being General Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.  Wallace was recovering from an illness during the Crawfordsville excursion.  However, he was sufficiently recovered to attend a matinee with his son, daughter-in-law, and his two grandsons on December 12.  Wallace watched most of the play from a private box and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible, lest he be called upon to deliver a speech.  Wallace and his party were invited behind the stage so that they could witness how some of the scenes were produced, especially the chariot race.  Wallace took special interest in watching the race and all of the mechanization that was involved.  While backstage, Wallace met the starring members of the cast and reportedly chatted for several minutes with the actor incarnating his literary creation.  Before returning to his box Wallace remarked to a stage manager that the production had reached a state of perfection. Ben-Hur ended its stay in Indianapolis the day after Wallace’s visit, before moving to Milwaukee for a two-week engagement.

Eleven years later, when Ben-Hur was making another visit to Indianapolis, Hector Fuller aptly noted in the Indianapolis Sunday Star,

“If Indiana had contributed nothing else, save this one play to the American stage it might be counted that the Hoosier state had done its part.  For ‘Ben-Hur’ is the dramatic marvel of the age.  It has held the stage now for fourteen years, and in that time over 10,000,000 people have seen it.”

Learn more about Lew Wallace, his father David Wallace, his stepmother Zerelda Wallace, and his mother Esther Test Wallace with other IHB historical resources.

exhibit 1

Stop by our exhibit in the Indiana State Library to see memorabilia from productions of Ben-Hur.

Finding the “First” Indiana Basketball Games

For over 70 years, Hoosiers have told, re-told, printed, and re-printed a story about how basketball came to Indiana.  According to the tale, Rev. Nicholas McCay (nearly always incorrectly spelled as McKay) was a protegé of James Naismith at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts.  McCay allegedly learned the new game of basketball from Naismith, and brought it with him to his first post at the Crawfordsville YMCA.*  It was there that the supposed “first” basketball game in Indiana happened on March 16, 1894 between teams from the Crawfordsville and Lafayette YMCAs.  Several contemporary newspapers reported on this game, including three of Crawfordsville’s four newspapers, and brief mentions appeared in Lafayette and Indianapolis papers.

Crawfordsville Daily Journal, March 17, 1894. Click the image to view a PDF of the entire article.
Crawfordsville Daily Journal, March 17, 1894, reported on the game. Click the image to view a PDF of the entire article.

There is ample evidence that a Crawfordsville-Lafayette game took place.  However, was this game really the “first”?  Superlatives (“oldest,” “first,” “last”) are always challenging to historically verify.  In 2007, I came across the first shred of evidence to suggest that Crawfordsville’s claim was not undisputed.  The evidence was an article in a November 17, 1894 issue of the Crawfordsville Review, which is shown here.

Crawfordsville Review, November 17, 1894
Crawfordsville Review, November 17, 1894. Click on the image to view a larger picture.

Notice the second sentence: “Basket ball was introduced into the State by the Indianapolis association through its physical director.”  It seemed odd that a Crawfordsville paper would carry this article; especially if Crawfordsville citizens in 1894 believed that they introduced the sport to the state nine months earlier.

Further research was necessary.  Could this statement about Indianapolis basketball be confirmed with contemporary sources?  At the time of this article’s discovery in 2007, very few historic Indiana newspapers were digitized.  An effort to find corroborative evidence of basketball played in Indianapolis before the Crawfordsville game in March 1894 would have required many, many hours of microfilm research, probably over several weeks (if not months), to search several major Indianapolis dailies (NewsJournalSentinel, and Sun) from 1892-1894.  The time required to conduct the search forced me to delay pursuing the research.

In 2013, IUPUI’s Center for Digital Scholarship digitized and uploaded a large run of the Indianapolis News.  Here at last was an easy way to search for evidence to confirm what the Crawfordsville Review published in 1894.  After entering the search terms, I received numerous results, which I then sorted by date.  Then low-and-behold, there in black and white, tucked between an illustration of an acrobatic hound, and accounts of meetings of the State Board of Health and the Haughville Republicans, was the earliest mention of basketball being played in Indianapolis.  The News published this article on March 30, 1893, which was almost an entire year before the Crawfordsville-Lafayette game occurred.

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Indianapolis News, March 30, 1893. The acrobatic hounds garnered more attention than the first mention of basketball played in Indy.

The News gave greater attention to the new game in the April 1, 1893 issue (p. 7).  They devoted an entire two columns to the sport.  The reporter noted that basketball “has taken hold here and is awakening interest and promises to become the all-around game for general fun in the future.”  The article credited Indianapolis YMCA physical director, William A. McCulloch, with introducing the game at the Indianapolis branch a few months prior.  McCulloch organized a four team league at the Indianapolis Y.  However, could the 1894 newspaper claim that “Basket ball was introduced into the State by the Indianapolis association” be taken at face value for being accurate regarding “firsts”?

A few months after IUPUI uploaded the News, the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library digitized millions of pages of Evansville newspapers through the commercial firm NewsBank.  Researchers can use the resource on site at EVPL.  I had also come across mentions of Evansville playing basketball earlier than the Crawfordsville-Lafayette game, so I thought this would be a prime opportunity to check this out.  The search results did not disappoint.

Based upon the newspapers currently digitized, Evansville was one of the earliest adopters of basketball.  The Evansville Journal and the Evansville Courier both reported on contests as early as November 1892, which was less than a year after Naismith invented the game.  Evansville also hosted an inter-city Indiana basketball game several months before the Crawfordsville-Lafayette game.  In January 1894, the Evansville YMCA squad defeated a team from the Terre Haute YMCA.

It is important to remember that YMCA leaders in Indiana first learned about basketball through the Triangle, the YMCA’s national newsletter. Naismith published an article introducing the game in January 1892, and he later credited this article, and the correspondence that resulted from it, with spreading the game across the nation.  By September 1892, the YMCA publication Physical Education advertised a “descriptive pamphlet” on the “new and popular game” available via mail for ten cents. Theoretically, by that time, any of Indiana’s twenty-seven YMCAs could have read Naismith’s original article or acquired the pamphlet, and subsequently implemented the game.  

In this context, identifying the “first” game then becomes a somewhat subjective matter, because the sport did not enter Indiana and spread from any single locus.  Rather, it originated and developed around the state simultaneously and often independently at multiple YMCAs at roughly the same time.  Also, what is the criteria for declaring a “first”“First” YMCA gym class instruction of basketball? “First” practice? “First” scrimmage? “First” exhibition? “First” YMCA intramural league game? “First” intercity or inter-institutional game?  The possibilities of what would constitute a “first” seem endless!

After searching digitized Indiana newspapers in several content management systems, I assembled the following timeline of the earliest-known basketball games, practices, and exhibitions in Indiana (Note: Because Indiana newspapers continue to be digitized, it is likely this timeline will need subsequent revision.  In particular, Richmond, Lafayette, Elkhart, South Bend, and Terre Haute newspapers for the early 1890s have not been digitized as of March 2015.  Those cities’ newspapers might yield early accounts of the game as well):

timeline part 1

Timeline part 2

timelines part 3

If you are interested in reading more about this research, see the 2015 Thornbrough Award-winning article: S. Chandler Lighty, “James Naismith Didn’t Sleep Here: A Re-examination of Indiana Basketball’s Origins,” Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 110, No. 4 (December 2014), pp. 307-323.  You can possibly find a print copy at your local library’s local history room, otherwise you can order a copy, or download a copy from JSTOR.

*Research confirms that Naismith and McCay were not contemporaries at the YMCA training school.  McCay graduated from the school a full academic year before Naismith arrived.  See Fifth Catalogue of the School for Christian Workers (Springfield, Mass., 1890), Springfield
College Digital Collections, http://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/ collection/p15370coll1/id/146.

The First State Basketball Champs: Crawfordsville High School 1911

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Crawfordsville High School won the first Indiana high school basketball tournament in 1911.                                                                                               Image source: https://sites.google.com/site/wabashavenue/history

In 1936, Dr. James Naismith, basketball’s inventor, attended the Indiana high school championship game between Frankfort and Fort Wayne Central.  In his first exposure to Hoosier Hysteria, he recalled that the sight of the stadium “packed with fifteen thousand people, gave me a thrill I shall not soon forget.”  During his visit, Naismith told an Indianapolis audience: “Basketball really had its beginning in Indiana which remains today the center of the sport.”  Expanding upon this comment, Naismith associated Indiana’s national distinction in basketball with the popularity and success of the state high school basketball tournament.

The Indiana high school basketball tournament began in 1911, when Crawfordsville High School (C.H.S.) defeated Lebanon High School for the state title.  This post provides an historical examination of the first Indiana high school basketball champions’ season, and the beginning of one of Indiana’s most cherished cultural traditions.

EARLY CRAWFORDSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL

In 1900, C.H.S. organized one of the earliest high school basketball teams in Indiana.  Unfortunately, finding high school opponents in the nascent years of the sport in the Hoosier state often proved difficult.  During the 1901-02 season, Crawfordsville defeated Indianapolis’ Shortridge High School, the lone high school team on their schedule.  In the opinion of the C.H.S. team, this victory gave them “the championship of the High Schools of Indiana in basketball.”  They justified this claim because they defeated Shortridge, and Shortridge defeated Indianapolis’ Manual Training High School.  A Crawfordsville newspaper issued a standing challenge on behalf of the local team, “They are willing to defend their title any time and any where,” but no other challengers came calling.

THE BIRTH OF A RIVALRY

More high schools began playing basketball in the subsequent years.  In 1907, C.H.S. again styled themselves “the state champions” after finishing the season undefeated, but this time four high schools numbered among their opponents.   By the 1908-09 season, all but two of C.H.S.’s opponents were high schools.  Lebanon High School debuted on C.H.S.’s schedule that season.  Although Lebanon finished with a 22-2 record, both their losses came against Crawfordsville.  Because of this, the Lebanon Patriot conceded that Crawfordsville could claim the title of “state champions” yet again.

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A contemporary basketball practice. Image source: Purdue University yearbook The Debris for 1912.

Any high school’s claim to be the “state champions” based simply upon best record grew more contentious at the end of the following season.  In 1910, C.H.S. claimed to be the “state champion” after compiling a 13-1 record, a 92.8 winning percentage.  Crawfordsville’s lone loss that season came against Lebanon High School.  Lebanon and Crawfordsville split their season series, each team winning on their respective home courts .  Lebanon finished their season with a 20-2 record, for a 90.9 win percentage.  Even though Crawfordsville had the better winning percentage, Lebanon won seven more games.  Consequently, Lebanon refused to concede the “state championship” to Crawfordsville.  The Lebanon High School yearbook argued their team’s case, “Lebanon . . . has played more high schools than any other claimant, has defeated them all, and has been defeated only twice.”

Lebanon proposed a solution, and challenged Crawfordsville to a third game on a neutral court to decide the state champion.  If Lebanon won they could justly claim the “state title” by virtue of having defeated Crawfordsville twice, and having the overall better winning percentage.  Conversely, if Crawfordsville won the third game their claim to the title could no longer be questioned.  Crawfordsville refused a re-match.

The controversy over the “state championship” of 1909-10 created strong enmity between the neighboring high schools of Crawfordsville and Lebanon.  After Crawfordsville declined to play a third game, Lebanon proceeded to discredit “the motives and actions” of their rival.  C.H.S., in turn, threatened to file charges with the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s (IHSAA) Board of Control, charging Lebanon with “unsportsmanlike conduct and unfair criticism.”  Thus, the Crawfordsville-Lebanon rivalry was born.

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Coach Glascock and two of his starters: Clio Shaw and Ben Myers. Image Source: Crawfordsville High School yearbook 1911.

The “state championship” controversy demanded a solution.  Although the IHSAA began in 1898, the Indiana University Booster Club organized the first Indiana high school basketball tournament.  It planned the event to take place at Indiana University in March 1911.  The Booster Club’s proposal called for a twelve-team tournament, which would include the teams with the best records from Indiana’s congressional districts.  The tournament winner would receive “a suitable trophy, emblematic of the state championship,” and thereby quash any debate as to which team was the rightful title holder.

CRAWFORDSVILLE’S 1910-11 SEASON

During the regular season, Coach Dave Glascock led his team to a 12-2 record.  Crawfordsville’s starting line-up was comprised of forwards Carroll Stevenson and Orville Taylor, center Ben Myers, and guards Clio Shaw and Newt Hill.  The substitutes were forward Hugh “Buddy” Miller, and guard Grady Chadwick.  The team averaged a little over 29 points a game while holding their opponents to 16.5.  Myers led the team in scoring with 12.3 points a game, and Stevenson averaged 9.3.  Regarding the team’s defensive abilities, the Crawfordsville Journal reckoned Shaw, “As a back guard has no superior in the state,” and Hill many times spoiled what looked like sure goals “by his phenomenal guarding.”

As impressive as C.H.S.’s team and individual successes were, they still had four games to play to prove that they were Indiana’s best.

THE TOURNAMENT: FIRST ROUND

The teams invited to the “First Annual State Interscholastic Basket Ball Tournament” at Bloomington included Anderson, Bluffton, Crawfordsville, Evansville, Lafayette, Lebanon, Morristown, New Albany, Oaktown, Rochester, Valparaiso, and Walton.  The tournament teams and fans convened at Indiana University’s original Assembly Hall on Friday, March 10.  In the first round of play, New Albany eked past Rochester, 19-18, “Walton walloped Morristown,” 31-23, Bluffton carried “off the bacon” against Evansville, 38-23, Lafayette “romped away from” Oaktown, 31-14, and Lebanon defeated Valparaiso, 23-11.

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Indianapolis Star

Crawfordsville’s first round game was against Anderson High School.  The game remained competitive in the first half, and at half-time Crawfordsville led 14-10.  The pace changed dramatically in the second half.  The Anderson Herald described, “The Crawfordsville quintet showed [a] burst of varsity playing which swept the Anderson players off their feet and the ball fell into the basket with great rapidity.”  Crawfordsville went on a 22-6 run in the second half, as the “Blue and Gold” won, 36-16.

THE TOURNAMENT: SECOND ROUND

On Saturday, March 11, Lebanon began the second round of tournament play against New Albany at 9 a.m.  Although it took fifteen minutes for either team to score, Lebanon led 14-3 at the half, and at the end of regulation Lebanon triumphed, 28-10.  Following that game, Bluffton took the floor versus Lafayette at 10 o’clock.  In a game “replete with sensational floor work and fine basket shooting,” Bluffton defeated Lafayette, 34-22.

Some members of the Crawfordsville team. Image source: Crawfordsville High School yearbook for 1911.
Some members of the Crawfordsville team. Image source: Crawfordsville High School yearbook for 1911.

The next game tipped at 11 a.m., and matched Crawfordsville against tiny Walton High School from Cass County.  The Daily Student reported, “The first half proved a soul stirrer [with] both teams fighting savagely on the floor.”  The half ended with Crawfordsville leading 16-10.  In the second half, and held Walton field goalless.   Myers continued to shine offensively for Crawfordsville, “playing a speedy, heady and nervy game,” en route to fifteen points.  Myers’ teammates, Miller, Hill, and Taylor combined for sixteen more points as Crawfordsville advanced past Walton, 31-12.

THE FINAL FOUR THREE?

Instead of a final four, the first Indiana state high school basketball tournament had a final three, a product of seeding the tournament with twelve teams.  Tournament organizers held a drawing with Bluffton, Crawfordsville, and Lebanon to determine which teams would play next, and which team would receive a bye into the final round.  The story of Indiana’s first basketball tournament would lose much of its intrigue if Lebanon and Crawfordsville met in the semi-final game.  As chance would have it, Lebanon drew the bye, and advanced to await the winner of Crawfordsville v. Bluffton for the championship.

In their first two tournament games, Bluffton averaged 36, but their defense surrendered 5.5 points more than their regular season average.  Injuries to key Bluffton players, sustained in their quarterfinal game against Lafayette, further weakened the team.  Bluffton’s top-two scorers in the regular season, Doster Buckner and Dwight Fritz, hobbled into the game against Crawfordsville on sprained ankles.Bluffton did what they could against Crawfordsville, and “fought gamely all throughout the fray.”  Yet, Bluffton’s scrappiness could not contain Crawfordsville’s “tall, husky lads.”  Crawfordsville led 21-7 at the half, and easily won the game, 42-16.  Myers again led the offense with sixteen points, despite receiving a “deep gash on his forehead” after colliding with Bluffton center Claude Ware.  “Chine” Taylor had his strongest tournament showing with six field goals.  Carroll Stevenson saw his first tournament action in the second half, and exhibited no ill effects from his injury, finishing with 12 points.  In defeat, Bluffton’s Homer Brumbaugh led his team in scoring with 10 points.

STATE FINAL: CRAWFORDSVILLE VS. LEBANON

After all the antagonism expressed between Lebanon and Crawfordsville the previous three seasons, it was only fitting that these two squads met in the finals.  The high school championship would be decided that evening (March 11); “played as a curtain-raiser” to Indiana University’s regular season finale against Northwestern University.  Entering the contest Lebanon had a clear advantage of a nine-hour rest, after defeating New Albany earlier that morning.  Crawfordsville, on the other hand, must have felt fatigued preparing for their third game in eight hours.

Indiana University's original Assembly Hall hosted the state tournament in 1911. Image credit: http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/photos/P0020435
Indiana University’s original Assembly Hall hosted the state tournament in 1911. Image credit: http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/photos/P0020435

Crawfordsville evidently shook off some of their weariness after the opening tip, and rushed out to a 7-1 lead in the first five minutes.  After this opening run, Lebanon responded, and “started some of their brilliant team work.  Beautiful passes . . . [left] the Crawfordsville lads . . . utterly bewildered at times in following the ball.  Despite their fancy passing the Lebanon men couldn’t score, blowing about four out of five shots right under the basket.”  The half ended with Crawfordsville still in control, 13-7.  Coach Glascock recalled that at half-time, “The boys said, ‘Coach, if we win this game we’re all going downtown and really celebrate.’  I told them if they won the game I didn’t care what they did.”

In the second half, Crawfordsville’s “Athenians” continued at an “undying pace.”  Lebanon never got closer than three points in the entire game.  Shaw and Hill’s “close guarding   . . . kept [Lebanon’s] score down” while Crawfordsville’s frontcourt kept a “continual attack on the basket.”  Lebanon’s defense concentrated on keeping Taylor “completely smothered,” but he still managed two field goals.  Myers, after averaging more than seventeen points in the first three tournament games, only mustered six points in the finale.  He was exhausted as a result of being “battered up in nearly every scrimmage.”  Fortunately for Crawfordsville, Stevenson was fresh.  The Daily Student praised Stevenson as “a marvel in finding the net from the foul line and also hot when it came to making field goals.”  He finished with a game-high fourteen points.  At the end of regulation, Crawfordsville prevailed over Lebanon, 24 to 17.  The Daily Student proclaimed, “Crawfordsville . . . [won] the first state high school championship basket ball tournament and is now undisputed state champion.”

Indianapolis Star, March 12, 1911
Indianapolis Star, March 12, 1911

At half-time of the IU-Northwestern game, Booster Club chairman, Charles H. Nussell, presented to Coach Glascock the tournament trophy: “a handsome oak shield decorated with metal letters describing the event.”  The newspaper articles do not report the players being present at the trophy presentation.  Glascock remembered, “I had no idea where the players had gone.”  He perhaps thought they stuck to their half-time promise and went downtown to celebrate.  Nevertheless, Coach Glascock stayed and watched the second half of the IU-Northwestern game.  After the game, Glascock recalled, “When I went back to the fraternity house where we were staying, I found them all sound asleep, worn out completely.”

Crawfordsville High School’s basketball team’s three year run of “state championships” would end the next season.  C.H.S. finished the 1911-12 season with an 11-4 record, but “for the first time in the school’s history, [their] colors fell before Lebanon,” not once, but twice.  If that was not enough humiliation, Clinton High School clinched the district invitation to the tournament, and thereby denied Crawfordsville High School the opportunity to defend the state title in 1912, which Lebanon, incidentally won.  Furthering the irony, the 1912 tournament was the first Indiana high school basketball tournament that the IHSAA sanctioned.  Consequently, Lebanon, for many decades, claimed to be the first IHSAA basketball tournament champion.

In 1957, Crawfordsville High School found their place in Indiana basketball history restored.  The IHSAA accepted a resolution from Indiana University, whereby the university transferred its claim to recognition of the first Indiana high school basketball championship to the IHSAA’s Board of Control “for inclusion in the official records of that body.”  At halftime of the forty-seventh annual high school basketball championship, played between South Bend Central and Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks at the Butler University Fieldhouse, the IHSAA recognized Crawfordsville’s 1911 high school basketball team as Indiana’s first state tournament champions.

For that feat, and for being the first state tournament champion, they will be remembered as long as high school basketball is played and celebrated in Indiana.

This blog post is excerpted by the author from a more detailed essay about Crawfordsville’s 1911 state basketball championship.