Category: Arts & Culture

“I’m Lonely! Please Write:” The Search for Solidarity and the Indiana Crossdresser Society (IXE)

Members of IXE, Courtesy of The New Works News (August 1989): 7, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives, IUPUI Library.

A note on terminology: This post examines gender non-conforming or gender-questioning individuals. This includes those who identified as “cross-dressers [CDs],” male/female “impersonators,” “transvestites [TVs],” “transsexuals [TSs],” and, in modern terminology, “transgender.” When unsure about how individuals identified or what pronouns they preferred, they will be referred to as the name that appears in relevant publications.

For gender non-conforming Hoosiers, the pursuit of kinship and shared identity was often fruitless, if not outright dangerous. Before the connectivity of the internet and the advocacy of organizations like Indiana Youth Group and GenderNexus, many were bereft of social opportunities and emotional support. Beginning in 1987, the Indiana Crossdresser Society (IXE) served these Hoosiers by providing social forums and offering resources to individuals struggling with gender identity. The group also challenged instances of discrimination within and outside of the LGBTQ community.

The Works newsletter provides a bit of insight into early Hoosier female impersonators (at least in predominantly-white areas of Indianapolis), who performed at bars along Virginia Avenue from the early 1900s until World War II. Articles in 1982 remarked on the resurgence in popularity of impersonators, noting that the Alley Cat Lounge and Disco had begun hosting weekly shows. By the mid-1980s, however, The Works reported that the queer community had been gatekeeping gender non-conforming or gender-questioning individuals, approximately 20,000 of whom lived in Indianapolis. In a 1984 Works article, Jim Chaffin—a gay, cisgender man—chastised the “drag queen” mentality among Indiana’s LGBTQ community. He implied that because society considered gay individuals too effeminate “more ‘normal’ acting gays” needed to come out. Couching his criticism in masculine rhetoric, Chaffin alleged of those who kept their identities private: “you guys don’t have the b*lls to just go ahead and say what you are.”

In the following issue, Roy Pershing, also known as LaNora Takie, fired back at Chaffin’s narrow view of queerness and Chaffin’s insistence that masculine gay men live publicly. The author noted that while Chaffin likely had good intentions, it is the “individuals’ business and no one else’s,” that:

‘We are told that we are wrong everyday by straights and others; so is it necessary for this kind of behavior to go on within the community?’ Furthermore, ‘Could you please tell me what your idea of a normal acting gay person is? Is it an overweight, big mouth who runs a male wh*re house or is it someone who dresses in leather from head to toe? . . . To me, a normal acting gay person is a person who is himself and doesn’t run around forcing him or her lifestyle’ on others.’

The author also felt that Chaffin’s use of “drag queen” was derogatory, and that Pershing/Takie considered themself to be an “entertainer” and “impersonator.”

Facing alienation in the Indianapolis area, some Hoosiers like Betty and Lori attended meetings in Cincinnati hosted by Cross-Port, a group that provided support and social opportunities for gender non-conforming people. According to Cross-Port’s newsletter InnerView, Lori was one of the first Hoosiers to attend these meetings, where she “stood close to seven foot in those spike heels, and spent much time ducking the beams in Heather’s basement.” By early 1987, Betty and Lori helped form a similar group in Indianapolis, called Iota Chi Sigma, better known as the Indiana Crossdresser Society (IXE). About thirteen people attended this first meeting, presided over by Chairperson Laura, who “received special recognition for wearing a dress.” In a Q&A published in InnerView, IXE described itself as a “gender group interested in helping gender conflicted persons in the context of a social meeting.” This included a broad range of individuals, who could “be anybody from the transvestite who just wants to wear womans [sic] panties to the transexual person who believes themselves to be of the opposite sex.” Cross-Talk, the “gender community’s news and information monthly,” remarked that IXE members, feeling that the “gender community was always too hard on itself,” sought to “show a ‘happier’ side.”

Kyle Niederpruem, “Cross-dressers Seek Society’s Acceptance,” Indianapolis Star, 1989, H1, accessed Newspapers.com.

After their first gathering, IXE met the first Thursday of every month at the 21 Club, and within a year, attendance outgrew that of Cross-Port. InnerView noted that Cross-Port members sometimes traveled from Cincinnati to Indianapolis to attend IXE meetings and Christmas parties. While in town, visitors shopped at Glendale Mall and Stuart’s Shoes, and participated in fashion shows at the downtown Hyatt Regency. One self-conscious visitor reported that they were treated courteously at these shops.

By 1989, IXE had over 100 members residing in the tri-state area—which included Kentucky—helping forge a social network of support for the marginalized community. According to an Indianapolis Star piece entitled “Cross-dressers Seek Society’s Acceptance,” most members were heterosexual men experiencing “gender conflict,” and came from a variety of professions, including carpentry, business, and law enforcement. The paper noted that once a month, about thirty members socialized at a Westside apartment clubhouse, many bringing their spouses. At one meeting, cosmologists gave members make up tips. At another, police officers advised them on how to avoid a “scene” in public.

The Star piece profiled IXE member Sharon Allan, who spent about 30% of his life dressing as a woman, undergoing “painful electrolysis” to achieve smooth skin, perming his hair, and piercing his ears. Sharon married his high school sweetheart, Ann, who knew about his cross-dressing from the beginning of their relationship. On their first date, she removed the choker from her neck and placed it around his. Ultimately, the couple divorced because Ann felt that although Sharon “is a wonderful person . . . his cross-dressing left no room for me as a woman in the marriage.'” Despite this blow, Sharon chose to be transparent about his identity with his young son in order to facilitate trust, stating, “‘I came to decide there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. There was nothing wrong with feeling feminine, inside or out.'”

Adam, a middle-aged health care professional, did not share Sharon’s perspective. According to the Star article, he began wearing women’s clothes as a teenager, but reported, “It’s not something I want to do. I got tired of feeling bad about myself. There were times I couldn’t control it.” Despite undergoing aversion therapy, Adam continued to dress in feminine clothing. His wife divorced him when she found out, and Adam noted, “It felt degrading to her and me as well. The discovery certainly was unpleasant. And it didn’t feel good to me. It was shaming.” Rita could empathize with Adam’s despair, having experienced two painful divorces. The northern Indiana police officer considered ending his life. Unlike Adam, Rita ultimately concluded that, despite having to keep the crossdressing aspect of his life private, “I wouldn’t give it up. If there was a magic pill, I wouldn’t take it.” The Star profile noted that Rita had begun wearing feminine clothing in elementary school. While in the Marines, he was able to shave his arms and legs “without attracting undue attention from his fellow leathernecks.”

Despite their personal struggles with shame and acceptance, gay bars afforded gender non-conforming Hoosiers a degree of shelter from harassment and discrimination. The Star noted that the venues were particularly important to this minority group because they provided a “place where men won’t try to pick them up.” However, these spaces dwindled when the 21 Club and G.G.’s closed, which according to the New Works News, prompted an influx of gender non-conforming patrons to other local gay bars. As demographics changed, some bar owners implemented exclusionary policies, perhaps reflecting the assertion of transgender activist Evan Greer in her 2018 piece for The Washington Post, that historically “the predominantly white, cis, gay, male leadership saw trans people as a threat to their slowly but surely growing social and economic political power.” Perhaps these discriminatory measures were an attempt to safeguard this hard-fought increase in social “legitimacy.”

In 1989, the New Works News reported on the fallout of the bar closings. Articles reported instances in which bar owners refused to serve cross-dressing and transgender individuals like Roberta Alyson and Kerry Gean. Dressed as the “woman I am deep inside of my biological male self,” Gean and friends went to the Varsity Lounge in February 1989. After they were seated, their server singled out Gean with a request for identification. The server then informed her that she was breaking the law because the photo on her I.D. did not identically match her face. Humiliated and hurt, she returned home, changed into “male” clothes, and upon return was immediately served.

Roberta Alyson, courtesy of The New Works News (August 1989): 1, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives, IUPUI Library.

By June, things were no better for Roberta Alyson, described by The Works as a “pre-operative transsexual.” Alyson was denied entrance to the gay bar Our Place on the grounds of not meeting dress code and identification not matching Alyson’s face, despite having a doctor’s note confirming the necessity of dressing as a woman. Bar officials got an off-duty officer who worked security to check the 31-year-old’s ID. The officer crumpled up the doctor’s note and Alyson “regrettably began to panic,” walking away from the parking lot. The officer pursued and arrested Alyson, who later said one of the back-up officers was abusive and tried to lift Alyson’s skirt. Alyson was charged with and fined for fleeing an officer. Alyson addressed the implications of such discrimination in a letter to the editor of The New Works News, noting Our Place’s dress code “flies in the face of the Stonewall Riots and sends a terrifyingly repressive message to the ‘straight’ community.”

Alyson received assistance from IXE, of which she was a member. That year, IXE had “joined Justice, Inc., a statewide umbrella organization for support and activist groups working in and with the gay/lesbian community. Justice has a full time lobbyist at the state capital.” Forging such partnerships would prove critical in challenging discrimination. With Justice’s help, IXE initiated a series of meetings with bar owners, excise police, and allies like the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. These gatherings provided a forum to exchange perspectives and to gain a better understanding of excise laws.

The groups initially gathered in July for a meeting facilitated by police officer and community liaison Shirley Purvitis. Remarking on the conflict within the queer community, she noted in the Star profile that crossdressers are “‘professional people with good jobs. They’re taxpayers. A lot of them have families. It’s time we started learning about them.'” As expected, the meeting was tense. Some owners claimed that they implemented policies, like denying entrance to those whose photo I.D.s did not reflect their apparent gender, because they feared breaking excise laws and making their businesses vulnerable to legal issues. Responding to these concerns, Excise Chief Okey reassured that “the only requirement that excise has for a person being served alcohol is that they be 21 years of age or older. . . . crossdressing, either male or female, is not grounds for refusal of service.”

Courtesy of The New Works News (August 1989): 7, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives, IUPUI Library.

Other bar owners stated blatantly that they refused to admit these patrons because they intended to “‘preserve the established atmosphere of their bars.’” A 501 Tavern spokesperson stated that these individuals “‘were not wanted there,’ and if they had been admitted violence might have resulted. The bar owners also voiced the fear that if they admitted people in drag their regular patrons might leave.” Our Place owner David Morse sympathized with the 501 Tavern representative. He complained at a later meeting that new patrons had filled his bar with “boisterous, outrageous drag queens in double Dolly Parton wigs and that their presence was very disruptive” to the bar’s masculine ethos.

Works writer E. Rumbarger came away from this first meeting with a greater understanding of those who had been excluded from gay bars. Prior to attending, he had mused, “Did they eat their young? . . . Did they have two heads?” However, he was “very surprised and pleased to find that they were simply a group of very relaxed and congenial people who were ‘doing their own thing. . . . These men quite simply looked and acted like women or to be more precise—ladies.” He added that he could not fathom how any establishment would “object to their presence” and urged that “Greater knowledge and understanding is needed (and quickly) in the gay community regarding the wide diversity of groups that make up the community.” Similarly, Stan Berg, Works publisher and owner of the Body Works bath house, addressed Dee Gordon’s editorial, which criticized the push for greater inclusion. Berg opined that Gordon had articulated the:

feelings and actions of another owner of a gay business who, at one time, and for many years, kept out drags. Now, whether old age, an increasing tolerance for gays of all persuasions, or just the realization that bigotry was wrong, actually changed this business owner’s mind, I can’t tell you. But, that business owner is me. The bottom line is that your arguments are bigoted bullsh*t. My own reasons for keeping drags out of THE WORKS for seven years were also bigoted bullsh*t.

Kyle Niederpruem, “Cross-dressers Seek Society’s Acceptance,” Indianapolis Star, 1989, H1, accessed Newspapers.com.

While the initial meeting spurred greater understanding among certain individuals, it failed to resolve turmoil within the broader community or result in specific policy reform. Upon IXE’s request, Justice, Inc. conducted a survey of those parties involved in the conflict and hosted a subsequent workshop in September. This workshop provided an opportunity to discuss injustices experienced by various groups within the community. Many voiced their anguish about discrimination within the lesbian community, against persons with AIDS, and along racial lines. At the center of the meeting, however, remained the exclusion of gender non-conforming individuals. IXE vice president Sharon Allan detailed the trials faced by crossdressers and drag queens, noting that they “are currently experiencing problems which the gay community faced years ago.”

However contentious, these meetings led to the reversal of policies at some bars and helped open the door to acceptance for other gender non-conforming individuals in Indianapolis. IXE members reported in September that they encountered less hostility at local establishments. Although bars like The Varsity maintained stringent policies, Tomorrow’s was much more welcoming. And while Jimmy’s did not reverse its I.D. policy, employees were more lenient about its enforcement. Roberta Alyson patronized the bar with a friend, who was also dressed in “female attire.” When the server approached, this friend instinctively searched their purse for identification, to which their server said “’Don’t worry about that, honey, we don’t do that kind of discriminating here.’” The Works noted that this action “on the part of Jimmy’s shows that people can change their mind” and should be commended for doing so.

Booth at Pride Week Picnic, New Works News, August 1989, 13, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives, IUPUI Library.

As the 1980s came to a close, the queer community seemed more tolerant—and perhaps welcoming—of gender non-conforming individuals. The Works announced in January 1990 that the owner of the 21 Club was opening 3535 West, which would “cater to all segments of the gay community.” The piece added, “Now that Indianapolis will finally have a gay meeting place where everyone is welcome, perhaps our gay visitors from out of town who have avoided coming here in recent months because of all the discriminatory nonsense taking place in some of the local bars, will once again return to Indy for a renewal of good times shared in the past.”

In 1990, at the first large outdoor Pride celebration, which took place on Monument Circle, people who staffed IXE’s booth reported that they were generally accepted, if not entirely understood. An unidentified member mused in the Works:

‘We all had lots of fun watching and talking. More often than not people would come up to our table and say hello and then look at what was on display and read the titles of the magazines and books, see the word ‘crossdressing’ and then look up at us and then down at the book and then back at us as a look of surprise and realization passed across their faces. . . . One girl was talking with Emily for five minutes before she looked down and saw the title ‘Understanding the Crossdresser’ and said with utter surprise, ‘Oh, I get it! You’re a guy! That’s cool. You know, I never understood why I can wear anything I want and guys can’t wear skirts.’

Similarly, public acceptance of crossdressers increased slightly following media profiles like that published by the Indianapolis Star about IXE. The feature’s author marveled that not only did she not receive vitriolic phone calls from readers after its publication, but got calls asking for more information about IXE. Indeed, Genny Beemyn contended in “Transgender History of the United States,” that in the early 1990s a “larger rights movement” emerged. Beemyn noted that this movement was “facilitated by the increasing use of the term ‘transgender’ to encompass all individuals whose gender identity or expression differs from the social norms of the gender assigned to them at birth.”

Dan Riley, courtesy of Tapestry: The Journal for All Persons Interested in Crossdressing and Transsexualism 58 (1991): 129, accessed Digital Transgender Archive.

Reflecting this movement, the Louisville Gender Society was formed in 1992, serving people living in southern Indiana and Illinois, as well as Kentucky. At the same time, IXE’s membership notably increased, as gender non-conforming Hoosiers searched for solidarity. In a 1991 Tapestry issue, Gloria C., a 33 year-old “transvestite” who lived in a small town, pleaded “I’m lonely! Please Write.” The auto racing and fishing fan hoped to meet “TV/TS” friends. IXE drew members like Michelle Michaels, a 40-year-old self-described transvestite who struggled with addiction resulting from the “guilt, shame, & confusion” of crossdressing. After getting sober, Michaels—who had three children and a supportive wife—joined IXE because of an ongoing struggle with “acceptance, self-esteem and balance.” Member Vickie Mansfield, “a young 47,” was involved in the Catholic Church, enjoyed “fine wines,” and was only “recently out of the closet.” Dan Riley, a 40-year-old “female-to-male” crossdresser, who enjoyed hiking and t’ai chi, joined the organization, in part, because Dan liked “helping others ‘coming out.’” Indianapolis funeral service supplier Yvonne Cook was not only a lifetime member IXE, but a leader and board member of the International Foundation for Gender Education.

IXE served such members until at least 2005. Although, no longer an organization as of 2023, IXE provided solidarity to so many Hoosiers in distress or suffering from loneliness. Additionally, its members’ activism and willingness to facilitate discussion helped change public perceptions about gender non-conforming individuals and contributed to greater inclusivity within the LGBTQ community. The struggle to obtain societal acceptance and secure civil rights in Indiana endures, as evidenced by recent debates about gender-affirming medical practices. Like the Indiana Crossdresser Society, groups like Trans Solutions Resources and Research, continue to fight, in the words of Sharon Allan, for “‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a fundamental right.'”

 

Sources:

Genny Beemyn, “Transgender History in the United States,” in ed. Laura Erickson-Schroth, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, p. 28, accessed UMass Amherst.

Cross-Port InnerView (March 1987, June 1987, July 1987, August 1987, December 1987, July 1988, November 1988, January 1991, August 1991, September 1991, December 1992, June 1995, June 1996), Digital Transgender Archive.

Cross-Talk: The Transgendered Community’s Newsletter (September 1991, July 1992), Digital Transgender Archive.

Editorial, Jim Chaffin, “‘Hoosier Gay Boy, Come on Down!,'” The Works (October 1984): 7, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives, IUPUI Library.

“Indiana,” Tapestry: The Journal for All Persons Interested in Crossdressing and Transsexualism 78 (Winter 1996): D38, accessed Digital Transgender Archive.

“National Gender News,” Renaissance News 3, no. 1 (January 1989): 9, accessed Digital Transgender Archive.

Kyle Niederpruem, “Cross-dressers Seek Society’s Acceptance,” Indianapolis Star, November 26, 1989, 115, accessed Newspapers.com.

“North American Support Groups,” Lady Like (Winter 2005): 44, accessed Internet Archive.

Editorial, Roy Pershing/LaNora Takie, “Darts from a ‘Drag,'” The Works (November 1984): 6, accessed Chris Gonzalez GLBT Archives, IUPUI Library.

JoAnn Roberts, “The Iconoclast,” Renaissance News 6, no. 9 (September 1992): 7, accessed Digital Transgender Archive.

Tapestry: The Journal for All Persons Interested in Crossdressing and Transsexualism 58 (1991): 129-130, accessed Digital Transgender Archive.

Nicole Poletika, “’Walk a Mile in Their Pumps:’ Combating Discrimination within Indy’s Queer Community,” October 7, 2020, accessed Indiana History Blog.

Draft, Nicole Poletika, “’Walk a Mile in their Pumps:’ Combating Discrimination within Indianapolis’s Queer Community,” 2022 Queer History Conference paper, accessible here.

When Harry Refused to Serve Harry: Belafonte’s Visit to Purdue

Clipping, Debris (Purdue University’s yearbook), 1957, p. 27, accessed Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections.

In 1956, Black activist Harry Belafonte was one of the top performers in the United States and his album, Belafonte, reached #2 on the Billboard Chart. When he performed two shows of “Sing, Man, Sing” at the Purdue University Hall of Music on May 5, it was a major hit. Before the first performance,  Belafonte visited Purdue’s famous drinking establishment, Harry’s Chocolate Shop. However, proprietor Harry J. Marlack refused to serve him due to the color of his skin.

Born in Harlem to Jamaican parents, Belafonte experienced discrimination throughout his life. In 1944, while serving in the U.S. Navy, Belafonte was denied entry to New York’s famous Copa Cabana because he was Black. When Belafonte achieved stardom in the 1950s, the Copa Cabana offered him a lucrative contract to perform there. He infuriated the owner by spurning the offer, citing the discrimination he faced at their door years earlier in his decision.

In Spring 1956, Belafonte met Martin Luther King, Jr. for the first time in the basement of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Belafonte committed to “help [King] in any way I could. And for the next twelve years, that’s what I did.”[i] When he concluded the first show at Purdue, Belafonte kept his promise to King and addressed the audience about the discriminatory act and what he thought of it. His words angered Purdue officials and the campus buzzed. While Purdue students and staff talked about the incident at Harry’s Chocolate Shop and Belafonte’s speech for weeks afterward[ii], nothing was written about the incident. This prompted a Ph.D. student, David Caplan, to write a letter to the editor of The Exponent, Purdue’s student newspaper. Caplan wrote:

Many Purdue students and staff members have been talking about a recent incident that took place in ‘Harry’s Chocolate Shop’ when Harry Belafonte and his troupe were in town. Why has no mention been made of this in the Exponent? Certainly an incident of such scope deserves at least a news item, if not an editorial. Burying one’s head in the sand does not change the facts that have occurred. Why has this story not been reported?

The Exponent editor responded to Caplan by writing, “the Exponent has followed and will continue to follow the accepted journalistic practice of not publishing ‘cold’ news or facts that have been distorted by personal opinion or hearsay. The Exponent staff refuses to yield to ‘rabble-rousers’ or free-publicity seekers.”[iii]

Behind the scenes, Purdue University officials had zero tolerance for Belafonte’s civil rights message. In a 1977 interview with the Lafayette Journal & Courier, former director of Purdue Musical Organizations, Al Stewart, talked about many famous people he had met during his long career. Of Belafonte, Stewart opined:

He finished a 7 p.m. show with an angry jab at racial discrimination at a local drinking place. I warned him never to do that again or he’d never get another booking anywhere in the U.S. Second show, Dr. Hovde (Purdue President Frederick L. Hovde) and I sat in the front row and tape-recorded the whole thing as evidence if we needed it. It was a beautiful show.

Stewart’s comments demonstrated stunning hubris. Belafonte was on top of the entertainment world in 1956. He had the #2 album in the United States. In June, he released a second album, Calypso, that spent a record ninety-nine weeks on the Billboard Chart. He headlined Broadway shows and top-tier venues across the country. He played the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles and the Palmer House in Chicago. He broke Lena Horne’s attendance record at the Venetian Room in San Francisco, and broke the color barrier and Frank Sinatra’s attendance record at Waldorf’s Empire Room in New York City. Furthermore, it’s impossible to imagine Stewart belittling Sinatra or Elvis Presley—Belafonte’s peers at the time.

By the time Stewart made his remarks in 1977, the Civil Rights Act had become law thirteen years earlier. Belafonte had recorded a campaign ad for John Kennedy, mediated between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show ten times, hosted the Tonight Show for a full week, had four gold records, starred in movies, and was a world-renowned civil rights leader. For Stewart to think he could have curtailed this superstar’s career is laughable, had it not been so bigoted. In response to racism, university officials told a Black man “Shut up and sing.”

Belafonte (right) at the National Black Political Convention, cover of William Greaves’s Nationtime film.

Harry Belafonte would refuse to “shut up and sing.” Rather, upon his return visits to Indiana, he used his voice to advance racial justice. He donated significant funds to Gary candidate Richard Hatcher’s mayoral campaign and vocalized his support for the unlikely candidate in national media outlets. Belafonte’s efforts helped make Richard Hatcher one of the first Black mayors of a major American city. In 1972, Belafonte returned to Gary to perform at the unprecedented National Black Political Convention, taking the opportunity to implore the massive audience to engage in political reform.

In January 2017, Belafonte returned to Purdue University, serving as keynote speaker for the university’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s celebration, themed “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Where Do We Go From Here?” At age 89, he knew his life’s work was unfinished and he delivered a rousing speech on justice, civic engagement, and meaningful art. Audience member Sandra Sydnor told the Journal & Courier “’I was overwhelmed by his presence. . . . We were just staying rooted in spot, not wanting to leave after he left because of his persona, because of his spirit.’” Belafonte passed away April 25, 2023, but this spirit would endure, along with his legacy of racial justice and equal rights activism.

* This piece will be featured in the author’s upcoming book, Dispatches from a Northern Hoosier.

 

Notes:

[i] Harry Belafonte and Michael Shnayerson, My Song: A Memoir  (New York: Penguin Random House, 2011), 150.

[ii] Conversation between the author and All-American football player Bernie Flowers, 1995.

[iii] The Purdue Exponent, May 23, 1956.

[iv] Lafayette Journal & Courier, November 13, 1977.
Stewart’s judgment is questionable. Belafonte referred to Sing, Man, Sing as “my one indisputable career bomb.” My Song: A Memoir, 142.

Who is Harry Hoosier? And Are People from Indiana Named for Him?

There are a lot of theories about the origin of the word “Hoosier.” And while we’ll probably never find one definitive source for this nickname for people from the State of Indiana, we sure don’t get tired of trying! IHB alone has a webpage, blog post, and podcast episode dedicated to this very question. The Indiana Magazine of History dedicated an entire issue to the various theories and the IUPUI Center for Digital Scholarship’s Chronicling Hoosier project maintains a database of the various theories and related documentation. In recent years, the Harry Hoosier theory has gained some traction, so let’s take a look at how it stacks up to the other “Hoosier” origin stories.

Early Uses of Hoosier

According to Indiana University, the earliest known written use of the word “Hoosier” comes from an 1831 letter written by G. L. Murdock to John Tipton stating that his steamboat would take the name “the Indiana Hoosier.” The earliest printed use appeared in the Vincennes Gazette just days later, commenting on the increasing population of “the ‘Hoosher’ country,” aka Indiana. Both writers used the term in a manner that shows they expected the reader already knew the word and its meaning, so it must have been in use for some time. In 1833, Representative John Finley published his poem “The Hoosher’s Nest,” which characterizes people from Indiana as upwardly mobile farmers. According to an IHB blog post: “It is likely that the moniker was first used as an insult towards people from Indiana, but they appropriated it and made it their own, much as colonial Americans had done with the term ‘Yankee’ in the 1700s.” From this early usage in the 1830s, the term appeared more regularly and almost immediately people began to speculate on its origin . . . something that continues to this day. And lately, the quest to find one neat answer has turned to the theory surrounding Harry Hoosier for a potential resolution.

Who was Harry Hoosier?

Harry Hoosier (circa 1750-1806) was a Black Methodist lay preacher whose elegant speeches made a lasting impression on listeners. Enlightenment thinker Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is reported to have said “making allowances for his illiteracy [Hoosier] was the greatest orator in America.” By 1780, Hoosier was travelling with Methodist Episcopal Bishop Francis Asbury, sometimes speaking after Asbury and soon drawing large crowds of both Black and white listeners. Over the following decade, Hoosier spoke in Eastern and Southern states but never in Indiana. If you’d like to know more about Harry Hoosier’s life and career, access the two scholarly articles freely accessible via the Indiana Magazine of History (IMH) in their 2016 “What Is A Hoosier?” bicentennial issue. Harry Hoosier was undoubtedly a significant figure in American history, but what about to Indiana history specifically? If he didn’t come to Indiana, how could Hoosiers, meaning people from Indiana, be named for him?

Stephen H. Webb, “Introducing Black Harry Hoosier: The History Behind Indiana’s Namesake,” Indiana Magazine of History (September 2016): 112, Issue 3, 226–237, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/25483/31293.

Argument for Harry Hoosier as the Origin of the Term “Hoosier”

This is the question scholars and amateur historians have been recently tackling. The most extensive, and oft-cited study of the Harry Hoosier theory comes from William D. Pierson, professor of history at Fisk University. You can read his IMH article, “The Origin of the Word ‘Hoosier:’ A New Interpretation” here. Pierson builds on early theories explored most notably by Jacob Piatt Dunn at the start of the twentieth century that assume both a southern origin and a derogatory original meaning for the word “Hoosier.” You can read more about Dunn’s explorations of the origins of the word “Hoosier” through IHB’s Indiana History Blog or read Dunn’s 1905 IMH article. In short, Pierson agrees with Dunn on two points: 1. The word “Hoosier” was originally intended to be derogatory and 2. The term originated in the South. It should be noted that these assertions are still theoretical and many early sources do not actually paint Hoosiers in negative light. (Learn more).

In order to argue that the term “Hoosier,” as used in a derogatory fashion, could stem from Harry Hoosier’s career, Pierson makes his own leap of faith. Pierson posits that perhaps southern Baptists would have seen the southern Methodist supporters of Harry Hoosier’s message as “unsophisticated and unlettered.” Pierson then concludes that “it does not seem at all unlikely that Methodists and then other rustics of the backcountry could have been called ‘Hoosiers’ – disciples of the illiterate Black exhorter Harry Hoosier – as a term of opprobrium and derision.”  This is an interesting theory, but there are no primary sources to support it. Pierson himself asserts that his theory “is admittedly as circumstantial as all the other hypotheses.”

The Unravelling Harry Hoosier Theory

Harry Hoosier did not preach in or near Indiana. Pierson argues that the term originated in the South and moved with settlers as they came to Indiana. But many pioneers from Virginia and the Carolinas, where Harry Hoosier did preach, also settled in Tennessee and Kentucky. So, how did the term end up applying to people only from Indiana? Pierson posits that “an original antislavery and African American reference in the term would explain why ‘hoosier’ . . .  settled on the inhabitants of the free and more Methodist territory of Indiana after passing lightly over similarly uncouth frontiersmen in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky who were also often called ‘hoosiers.’” Here Pierson misunderstands the slavery views of both the Methodist Church and the majority of early settlers of Indiana.

While Harry Hoosier himself spoke against slavery, the Methodist church in the U.S. was split on the issue. Among believers, views ranged from vigorous support for slavery to abolition. Some southern Methodists, including church leaders, were also slaveholders. It is also important to remember the devastating impact of early Indiana practices and policies toward Black Hoosiers. Many early Hoosiers worked to prevent free Black settlers from entering the state, allowed enslavers to retain their enslaved or indentured workers for generations, and actively participated in the return of escaping self-emancipated people to their enslavers. While free Blacks and anti-slavery Quakers also shaped the state, the majority of early Hoosiers were not necessarily anti-slavery, and they definitively opposed Black settlement. Furthermore, when Indiana created its 1851 constitution, Hoosiers voted overwhelmingly for a provision prohibiting African American settlers from entering the state.

Pierson concludes that the Harry Hoosier etymology “would be the simplest derivation of the word and, on simplicity alone . . . is worth serious consideration.” However, most historians wouldn’t consider “simplicity” to be a sound historical argument. In his 2018 paper for Indiana University’s Herman B Wells Library, scholar Jeffery Graf critiques Pierson’s argument: “Readers may sense that the article has a certain wouldn’t-it-be-great-if quality, as though the author perhaps never entirely believed in his own argument, or feared no one else would.”  It should also be noted that the IMH published Pierson’s article simply as one of several theories. And that probably summarizes the Harry Hoosier theory best. It’s interesting to muse about, certainly, but there are no primary sources to give it more weight than any other theory.

Back to the Sources

Primary sources, including newspaper articles from the period, show “Hoosier” being applied as a moniker for people from Indiana in a neutral or positive manner as early as the 1830s. In an age of slower communication and travel, it is unlikely that in the approximate decade between Harry Hoosier’s death and the change in the usage of “Hoosier” that the term rocketed from Virginia and North Carolina through Tennessee and Kentucky to end up in Indiana. Meanwhile, on this rapid journey, Pierson asks us to believe it also shed its connection to Harry Hoosier, took on a derogatory meaning for Methodists, lost its derogatory meaning for Methodists, and arrived in Indiana, and was adopted there by all of the people in the state. Again, interesting, but there just isn’t any hard evidence. Stephen H. Webb, late associate professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College, who wanted to support Pierson’s theory because it “makes a better story” than other theories, conceded that “the evidence for the connection between his name and Indiana’s nickname is circumstantial, which leaves room for skepticism.”

“An Argument without End”

As the historian Pieter Geyl famously stated, “History is indeed an argument without end.” So, we encourage you to make up your own mind about the origin of the word “Hoosier.” IUPUI’s Chronicling Hoosier project presents all of the sources and data that they collected on the early uses of the term on their free and searchable website. But in all reality, we probably won’t ever know definitively or be able to neatly wrap up the argument. Like a lot of slang terms, people were using “Hoosier” in different ways. Chronicling Hoosier reports:

Instead of a tidy trajectory from one meaning to another, this newspaper analysis suggests hoosier has always had a variety of meanings and connotations. It was used to refer to individuals from “the West,” which in early 19th century included Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and sometimes Kentucky. However, there is also clear and consistent evidence that during the same time period it was just as often a term for referring exclusively to Indianans.

The project concludes: “We suggest that the term’s definition, like all language, was and remains in flux.” This answer isn’t as satisfying as attributing the origin of the term to one great man. But sometimes history is a bit messy. As Hoosiers, known for our “Hoosier hospitality” after all, it seems perfectly Hoosier-y to welcome all the theories, from Riley’s “whose ear” joke to etymological arguments from scholars. And as more and more sources are digitized each year, it’s likely we’ll find even earlier references than we currently have. Now whether these sources will add clarity or more confusion . . . we’ll have to stay tuned, Hoosiers!

Sources and Further Reading

IUPUI Center for Digital Scholarship, Chronicling Hoosier, http://centerfordigschol.github.io/chroniclinghoosier/index.html.

Indiana Historical Bureau, “The Word ‘Hoosier:’ An Origin Story,” Indiana History Blog, June 12, 2018, https://blog.history.in.gov/the-word-hoosier-an-origin-story/.

Jeffrey Graf, The Word “Hoosier,” Scholars’ Commons, Herman B Wells Library, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, https://libraries.indiana.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Word%20Hoosier-Revised-and-Expanded-2018.pdf.

“What Is A Hoosier?: A Bicentennial Issue,” Indiana Magazine of History 112: 3 (September 2016): 149-252, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/issue/view/1656.

William D. Piersen, “The Origin of the Word ‘Hoosier’: A New Interpretation,” Indiana Magazine of History 112:3 (September 2016): 218–225, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/25482/31292.

Stephen H. Webb, “Introducing Black Harry Hoosier: The History Behind Indiana’s Namesake,” Indiana Magazine of History (September 2016): 112, Issue 3, 226–237, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/25483/31293.

Brian D. Lawrence, “The Relationship between the Methodist Church, Slavery and Politics, 1784-1844,” Master of Arts in History Thesis, Department of History, Rowan University (May 4, 2018), https://rdw.rowan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3573&context=etd.

Sources on treatment of African Americans in early Indiana:

Article 13, Indiana Constitution of 1851, Constitution Making in Indiana, edited by Charles Kettleborough (Indiana Historical Bureau, 1916, reprint 1971), accessed Indiana Historical Bureau, https://www.in.gov/history/about-indiana-history-and-trivia/explore-indiana-history-by-topic/indiana-documents-leading-to-statehood/.

Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1985, reprinted Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 68-69; Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis, 1957), 23-30.

“Indiana and Fugitive Slave Laws,” Indiana Historical Bureau, https://www.in.gov/history/for-educators/all-resources-for-educators/resources/underground-railroad/gwen-crenshaw/indiana-and-fugitive-slave-laws/.

Donnell v. State 1852, State Historical Marker 16.2007.1, Indiana Historical Bureau, https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/donnell-v-state-1852/.

John Freeman, State Historical Marker 49.2006.2, Indiana Historical Bureau, https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/john-freeman/.

Mary Clark, State Historical Marker 42.2009.1, Indiana Historical Bureau, https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/find-historical-markers-by-county/indiana-historical-markers-by-county/mary-clark/;

Polly Strong Slavery Case, State Historical Marker 31.2016.1, Indiana Historical Bureau, https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/find-historical-markers-by-county/indiana-historical-markers-by-county/polly-strong-slavery-case/

“Disguised As A Doughboy:” The Front Line War Work of Sarah M. Wilmer

Poster, Charles N. Sarka, “Lend Him A Hand, Buy Liberty Bonds,” 1918, Digital Maryland, accessed Digital Public Library of America.

Upon her arrival at the U.S. Army basecamp, elegant entertainer Sarah Mildred Wilmer changed out of her travelling dress and into the brown wool jacket, breeches, and steel helmet of a doughboy. A talented performer and dramatic reader, she had arrived in Bar-le-Due, France, on September 4, 1918, on behalf of the Y.M.C.A. She was recruited to entertain the troops, but within twenty minutes of landing at the camp, she knew she would serve in a different capacity. She disguised herself as a soldier and headed to the front lines under heavy fire to help nurse the wounded. Wilmer would return from France to her parents in Hobart, Indiana, in a wheelchair and celebrated as a hero.[1]

Evening Crescent (Appleton, WI), July 8, 1907, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.

Sarah Wilmer was born to Benjamin and Ida Wilmer circa 1881 in Buffalo, New York. Her father worked as a printer for a daily newspaper and her parents made sure that she and her sister received an excellent education.[2] She “studied with the best” teachers and was “thoroughly schooled.”[3] Regarded as a beautiful young woman, Wilmer honed her elocution skills. As early as 1904, she began performing on the circuit of Chautauqua assemblies, traveling across the country and regularly stopping in the Midwest.[4] The Richmond Palladium, reported that she was “well-known by Richmond Chautauqua goers.”[5]  A Wisconsin newspaper called her “one of the greatest artists on the platform today.”[6] The program for a 1909 Chautauqua at Shades Park near Waveland, Indiana, described her skill and artistry:

Miss Sarah Mildred Wilmer’s work is characterized by determination to present literary masterpieces of true dramatic value. She is not content to please by mere cleverness. There must be an honest effort to do her work artistically and well. This quality has always won warm approval wherever she has appeared . . . She presents a repertoire of exceptional strength, embracing many of the best selections from modern and classic fiction and drama. Certainly no reader of the platform has ever given more perfect and artistic presentation than those given by Miss Wilmer.[7]

Caney News (Kansas), September 27, 1912, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.

While her name may not be familiar today, she was famous, sought-after, and respected in her time. Drawing large crowds, Wilmer received top-billing and rave reviews. For example, in 1912, a Kansas newspaper called her “the greatest reader of the present generation” and reported that ten thousand people attended a recent Chautauqua to see her.[8]

She was also glamorous, dressing in fine clothes and staying in the best hotels. It would have been difficult for her adoring fans to imagine her dressed as a soldier, wading through mud, and dodging shells only a few years later.

Through her elocution work, Wilmer met Edward Van Bond of the Lyceum Bureau of Chicago and they were married in 1912. Unfortunately, her young husband died only a few years later, in 1915. She continued to keep a home base in Chicago near her parents who had moved to nearby Hobart, Indiana, and whom she visited often. She also continued touring and performing. After the U.S. entered WWI, however, she decided to use her talents to help the war effort.[9]

Poster, United War Work Campaign, Inc., “One of the Thousand Y.M.C.A. Girls in France. Y.M.C.A.,” 1918, Princeton Poster Collection, accessed Smithsonian Institution.

In 1918, the Y.M.C.A. asked Wilmer if she would be willing to go to France through a partnership with the American Expeditionary Forces to entertain the troops and raise their spirits. Not only did she cancel six months of Chautauqua appearances—a serious personal financial loss—she accepted the offer and refused payment from the Y.M.C.A. Lyceum Magazine reported:

Having had experience in surgical work she is well qualified to work in the hospitals and she plans on giving her programs in the hospitals during the day time and to the soldiers in the camps at night. She will give her regular play readings and also some special programs which she has prepared for the boys.[10]

It’s not clear when she would have gained “surgical work” experience, as newspapers show she was consistently busy with her Chautauqua performances. Whether or not she arrived in France with medical experience, she would soon be practicing on the battlefield.[11]

Postcard, “Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. girls on their way to France,” n.d., Cliff Smith YMCA Postcard Collection, Digital Commonwealth, Massachusetts Collections Online, accessed Digital Public Library of America.
Passport photo, “Sarah Mildred Willmer,”  June 20, 1918, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 569; Volume #: Roll 0569 – Certificates: 30500-30749, U.S. Passport Applications, accessed AncestryLibrary.com.

Wilmer left for France on August 4, 1918 and arrived September 4 at the Y.M.C.A base. Despite feeling scared, she was determined to be brave. In these later years of WWI, advancements in weapons technology meant that the hospitals and basecamps set up behind front lines were now in the line of fire for long range artillery and airplane bombings. She was right to be afraid.[12]

Wilmer gave different firsthand accounts of what happened next. A true performer, her story changed a bit as she polished and dramatized it for a public audience. Regardless, it is clear that she acted bravely and selflessly to aid the soldiers. She told the Chicago Tribune that upon arrival at the basecamp, the man in charge of the division’s entertainment greeted her and asked if she would “volunteer, then, to go to the front lines” to a camp where she would perform for the troops. He warned her that it would be dangerous, that she would “smell gunpowder and high explosives and gas.” She responded, “That is what I hoped for.” She entertained men during the day. However, at night she snuck to the front with the ambulance corps, intending to aid wounded soldiers. She explained:

Aided by friendly officers – entirely outside regulations and unknown to the “Y” man in charge of the base [entertainment] – I would dress in a soldier’s uniform and go up in total darkness.[13]

“Loading ambulance with wounded. American Red Cross Outpost sign shown in the background. American Red Cross men ministering to the wounded. Argonne Forest, west of Marcq, Ardennes, France, October 11, 1918, American National Red Cross photograph collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, accessed https://www.loc.gov/resource/anrc.17955/.

She also gave this description of a brush with death, mentioning the soldier’s uniform only as a passing detail:

I was in an ambulance, disguised as a man and dressed in a uniform, when we ran [the vehicle] into a shell hole, and promptly climbed out of it without stopping, with a driver grimly holding the wheel and never faltering for an instant, although shells were bursting all around us.[14]

A few days after she gave this account, she told the story to the Lake County Times with a few new dramatic flourishes, making the wearing of men’s clothing more central to the story:

How did I get to the front line? Well, I heard a young officer say, “Oh, it’s terrible up there tonight, a lot of the boys have been killed and wounded and there’s not nearly enough men to care for them.”

“Can’t you take me up there?” I asked him.

He told me I was a woman, that it would be breaking the rules.

“Well, get me some man’s clothes and I’ll be a man,” I replied. He hesitated and finally gave me a complete outfit, breeches, blouse, puttees [leg coverings], hobnails [boots] and all. And I went up.[15]

Lucien Jones, “An infantry attack in woods at Argonne front,” print, 1927, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, accessed https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.03879/.

Wilmer explained that she went to the front nine times. And despite a bit of creative license with the details, she was consistent in her telling of the danger she faced and of the soldiers’ sacrifices. She recalled:

I was scared to death every time I went up to the line and would ask myself: “Why did I come here?” and then I would begin to sniffle and sob. But every time something would happen to show me why I had gone up there.[16]

But Wilmer knew why she had “gone up there” when she was able to help medical staff or comfort injured soldiers. One dark night in October, she had once again arrived at the front dressed in her doughboy uniform in order to provide help to the surgeons and nurses at the “first aid dressing station.” That night, the only breaks in the “uncanny” darkness were the “shells bursting” around them. Soldiers and medical staff carried their comrades into the medical station on stretchers. A doctor or nurse would then shine a flashlight on the injured to determine what care could be provided. The sight was often shocking. “O, it was horrible,” Wilmer said. She continued:

I was frightened, O, so frightened, but I did not dare to let that be known, for I was supposed to be a man. I helped with the boys who were brought in, and saw vividly the horror of it all, the lads dying and suffering, and had to remain quiet.[17]

Poster, “Red Cross Nurse,” circa 1918, Princeton University Posters Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, accessed Smithsonian Institute.

One incident in particular stuck with her. While she needed to dress as a man to help at the front, she was able to provide maternal comfort to a dying man. At one point, a soldier felt her hand and thought it belonged to a female Red Cross nurse. Wilmer denied her gender, telling him in “a gruff man’s voice” that there were no women at the front. But soon, when a man who was clearly dying, identified her as a woman, she conceded. This soldier had been shot in the lungs and was bleeding internally. Wilmer could only sit with him so he wouldn’t die alone. She smoothed his hair and he asked how it could be that a woman was at the front. Wanting to give him some of the comfort of home, she told him that his mother had sent her. He responded, “My mother? O, yes, I understand.” She then read to him from the Bible and he died in her arms.[18]

In late October, Wilmer was badly injured during a battle in the Argonne forest. Once again, she “went in front of the barrage, disguised as a doughboy.” She expounded:

I became sick suddenly. I smelled burning cabbage and bad onions and then I realized it was chlorine. Gas shells were breaking all around me . . . I grew faint and stumbled into a German dugout which had been deserted but a day previously. After five hours I recollected my thoughts and heard some voices. I walked out and found several stretcher bearers with whom I made the rear.[19]

While chlorine gas was not usually fatal, the effects could be long lasting or even permanent.[20] Wilmer suffered greatly as the gas “continued burning in her lungs” for weeks. But, she said, “I didn’t want to give up.”[21] Though she was back at base camp, she continued to entertain the soldiers with her dramatic readings. This was almost certainly uncomfortable in her condition. On November 11, 1918, she was reading to a large group of men when a colonel walked in and interrupted her to make an announcement. Germany had surrendered. The war was over.[22]

U.S. Army in France – doughboys cheering news of Armistice, 1918, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, accessed https://lccn.loc.gov/2016652679.

Wilmer soon sailed for the United States, still suffering from her injuries. By the time she reached New York, it became clear that she would need a nurse to continue her journey home to the Midwest and she hired a Mrs. Jane Redfield Vose to help care for her.[23] Wilmer and Vose went first to Chicago. Wilmer was there to visit Dr. Lena K. Sadler “with whom she had lived for years.” She was still suffering to the extent that she had to be carried from the taxi into the house by two men. Once inside, Sadler’s two young children ran to greet their adopted “Aunt Sarah.” Wilmer then needed “restoratives” to allow her to speak to reporters.[24]

Lake County Times, December 24, 1918, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

From Chicago, Wilmer went to her parents’ house in Hobart, which would be her home for some time as she recovered. She arrived in a wheelchair and was advised by doctors not to return to the stage for months. However, she travelled from the Region to Indianapolis as early as March 1919 to attend the “Big Meeting” where she delivered her speech “My Experiences in War.” And we can only imagine how much she had polished her tale during her months of recovery.[25]

Indianapolis Star, March 16, 1919, 3, accessed Newspapers.com

Though she returned to the stage, Wilmer wasn’t finished helping others. In 1928, she moved to Rochester, New York. A local newspaper reported:

Always interested in social service work, Mrs. Wilmer took up reading and soon took over classes in the Rochester schools, teaching lip reading and effective speech.

She also worked for the Rochester Board of Education and the League for the Hard of Hearing. When the U.S. entered World War II and women were again called to service, Wilmer answered. She worked a “line job on the graveyard shift” at the local General Motors factory, which had been converted to war production. She also continued her dramatic performances. She died in 1949, and was remembered in her obituary as a “heroine” who “brightened the lives of many” through her social work and dramatic arts. Though only briefly a Hoosier, she is one to remember.[26]

Notes

[1] “Hobart Girl, Invalided Home, Tells of Experience: Was in Battles in Male Attire,” Lake County Times, December 24, 1918, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[2] Tenth Census of the United States, Buffalo, Erie County, New York, June 7, 1880, District: 116, Ward: 2, Page: 17, Lines: 40-43, accessed AncestryLibrary.com.

[3] Pamphlet, First Annual Assembly of the Pleasant Shades Chautauqua to be Held at “The Shades” Near Waveland, Indiana, 1909, p. 8, Chautauqua Album, Indiana Album, accessed Indiana Memory.

[4] Advertisement, Oshkosh Northwestern (Wisconsin), September 19, 1904, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.

[5] “Chautauqua Performer, Well-Known Here, Returns from Y Work in France,” Richmond Palladium, December 18, 1918, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[6] “In Society,” Sheboygan Press (Wisconsin), February 12, 1913, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

[7] Pamphlet, First Annual Assembly of the Pleasant Shades Chautauqua to be Held at “The Shades” Near Waveland, Indiana, 1909, Indiana Album, accessed Indiana Memory.

[8] “Would Have Ranked High as an Actress,” Caney News (Kansas), September 27, 1912, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.

[9] “Nephew of President Crossfield Is Dead,” Lexington Herald, August 11, 1915, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.

[10] “Miss Wilmer Goes to France,” Lyceum Magazine (July 1918): 31, accessed Google Books.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Sarah Joyce Wilmer, “War’s Glory and Horror as Seen by Chicago Girl,” Chicago Tribune, December 22, 1918, 4, accessed Newspapers.com; “Women in WWI,” National WWI Museum and Memorial, accessed https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/women. Note that the Chicago Tribune misprinted Wilmer’s middle name.

[13] “War’s Glory and Horror as Seen by Chicago Girl,” 4.

[14] Ibid.

[15] “Hobart Girl, Invalided Home, Tells of Experience,” Lake County Times, December 24, 1918, 1, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[16] Ibid.

[17] “War’s Glory and Horror as Seen by Chicago Girl,” 4.

[18] Ibid.; “Hobart Girl, Invalided Home, Tells of Experience,” 1.

[19] “Hobart Girl, Invalided Home, Tells of Experience,” 1.

[20] “First Usage of Poison Gas,” National WWI Museum and Memorial, accessed https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/spotlight-first-usage-poison-gas.

[21] “War’s Glory and Horror as Seen by Chicago Girl,” 4.

[22] Ibid.; “Armistice,” National WWI Museum and Memorial, accessed https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/armistice.

[23] “Hobart Girl, Invalided Home, Tells of Experience,” 1.

[24]”War’s Glory and Horror as Seen by Chicago Girl,” 4.

[25] “Hobart Girl, Invalided Home, Tells of Experience,” 1; “Woman War Worker Will Address Big Meeting,” Indianapolis Star, March 16, 1919, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.

[26] “Sarah M. Willmer [sic] Dies; Heroine, Social Worker,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), July 14, 1949, 18, accessed Newspapers.com.

WWI and the Bathing Suit: “Fashion Decrees Satin and Wool Jersey for Bathing Suits This Summer!”

http://palni.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15705coll8/id/75
“Bathing Beach,” postcard, 1904, Winona Lake Postcard Collection, Grace College & Theological Seminary, Morgan Library, accessed Indiana Memory.

Bathing suits and policing decency have often been a topic of discussion and contention, as noted in a previous Chronicles post. However, while looking through reels of newspapers from 1916-17,  we became intrigued by the affect of World War One on the loosening of gendered fashion restrictions, especially as exemplified by the bathing suit. Here we look through articles, illustrations, photographs, and advertisements at the ways Hoosier women reacted to trends in the context of WWI when bathing suits had become shorter and sleeveless, but fabrics were still thick and heavy, a holdover from an older era.

"Mermaids at Brighton" by William Heath (1795 - 1840), c. 1829, in Emily Spivack, "How Bathing Suits Went From Two-pieces to Long Gowns and Back, Smithosonian Magazine, accessed www.smithsonianmag.com
“Mermaids at Brighton” by William Heath (1795 – 1840), c. 1829, in Emily Spivack, “How Bathing Suits Went From Two-pieces to Long Gowns and Back, Smithsonian Magazine.

The Victorian bathing gowns of the previous century were floor-length and made of dark heavy fabric that wouldn’t float up or become transparent.  According to the Smithsonian Magazine, some women even sewed lead weights into the hems to prevent exposure of the calf. By the early 1900s bathing costumes became knee-length dresses or tunics and were paired with bloomers or tights, “all of which were made from heavy, flannel or wool fabric that would weigh down the wearer, not quite convenient for negotiation the surf,” according to the same article.

"Bathers at Bass Lake," photograph, circa 1900, Starke County Historical Society, accessed Indiana Memory, http://cdm16066.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p181901coll014/id/41
“Bathers at Bass Lake,” photograph, circa 1900, Starke County Historical Society, accessed Indiana Memory.

World War One changed fashion dramatically in large part because women’s roles changed  in wartime as they took on physical jobs such as factory and farm work, in addition to nursing. Manufacturing jobs also made shorter hair more practical and the corset impossible.  Gendered fashion rules relaxed in general to the point where it was even acceptable for women to wear pants for manual labor activities — though it would be decades before they were acceptable beyond certain activities, according to Nina Edwards’ Dressed for War: Uniform, Civilian Clothing & Trappings, 1914 to 1918. 

"Female employees of the Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot, New Albany, Ind." photograph, circa 1918, New Albany - Floyd County Public Library, accessed Indiana Memory, https://digital.library.in.gov/Record/PPO_NAFCHistoricArchive-46C194E1-0380-4F2D-9A10-268786332926
“Female employees of the Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot, New Albany, Ind.” photograph, circa 1918, New Albany – Floyd County Public Library, accessed Indiana Memory.

The rules of decorum were also relaxing in the world of sports as women took up tennis, skiing, and swimming in greater numbers. Pants were allowed on the tennis court and slopes. While bathing suits generally maintained their dress-like appearance for the average beach goer, athletic and competitive swimmers opted for suits that didn’t impede their sport.  These swimsuits that allowed for actual swimming eventually infiltrated the mass market as well.

"Amateur Acrobats Performing on Bass Lake," postcard, circa 1910, Starke County Historical Society, accessed Indiana Memory, https://digital.library.in.gov/Record/ISL_p181901coll014-59
“Amateur Acrobats Performing on Bass Lake,” postcard, circa 1910, Starke County Historical Society, accessed Indiana Memory.

 

"Frances Owen and Marium Mueller Dressed in Bathing Suits, New Harmony, IN," glass plate negative, 1925, University of Southern Indiana, accessed Indiana Memory https://digital.library.in.gov/Record/ISL_p181901coll18-2638
“Frances Owen and Marium Mueller Dressed in Bathing Suits, New Harmony, IN,” glass plate negative, 1925, University of Southern Indiana, accessed Indiana Memory.

These images accessed through Indiana Memory show how Hoosier women, following the general bathing suit trends, shifted from dresses layered over tights or bloomers to more formfitting tunics.

Hoosier women found out about these trends and where to purchase their beach attire through newspaper articles and advertisements.  Indiana newspapers regularly ran illustrated articles about the newest fashions from the east coast beaches, such as this snippet from the Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram:

Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, June 7, 1916, 8.
Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, June 7, 1916, 8.

Articles could be more extensive as well, taking up almost an entire page such as this 1917 article from the South Bend News-Times with the intriguing headline:

fashion-decrees-headline

The article notes the relationship between sportswear trends and swim wear:

South Bend News, June 17, 1917, 23, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
South Bend News, June 17, 1917, 23, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

This season sees the bathing suits carrying out the same colorful note that predominates in all sports clothes and in materials there is also a similarity, namely, in the use of one of the most favored of fabrics — wool jersey. This versatile material seems to make itself at home in any sphere. After having made its importance felt in sports clothes, one-piece frocks and semi-informal suits, the bathing suit has been lately added to its conquests.

The article continues to describe  and illustrate the season’s other popular fabrics:

South Bend News, June 17, 1917, 23, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
South Bend News, June 17, 1917, 23, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Yet, other materials compare very favorably with jersey cloth at the fashionable beaches. Black satin has lost none of its usual charms; taffeta, mohair, alpaca and poplin still retain their popularity; and the rubberized cloths are likewise favored to a great extent.

In the summer of 1917, the Lion Store in Hammond, Indiana, encouraged its neighbors to “spend Sunday in the cool, refreshing waters of Lake Michigan” through this advertisement in the Hammond Times [below].  And what is more cool and refreshing on the skin than dark-colored wool?  The women’s “All-Wool Bathing Suits” were available with a fitted waist, wing sleeves, and “piping and trimmings in contrasting colors” for the low price of $3.98.  However, one would still need the appropriate matching rubber “Swim Kap” ($.50) and “Beach of Swim Shoes, made of sateen with canvas covered soles” ($.25). For just a bit more, however, one could purchase one of “The New ‘Liberty’ Swim Caps, made of all rubber, red crow, blue band with white stars, finished with rubber rosette. As the South Bend News-Times reported:

A complete bathing outfit by no means ends with the selection of the suit. Beach wraps, hats and caps, shoes and stockings, are quite as important.

Hammond Times, August 3, 1917, p. 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.
Hammond Times, August 3, 1917, p. 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Also in the summer of 1917, the nearby competing department store, the E. C. Minas Company, advertised that they could beat the Lion Store’s prices! As advertised also in the Hammond Times, some of their suits were only $2.00 and they offered Bathing Tights.  Bathing tights were usually dark in color and meant to compensate for the shorter hemlines and sleeveless styles of the era’s new suits. They could be worn instead of the looser bloomers.  If you weren’t quite ready for such a propriety-challenging costume, however, they also offered the “bathing corset.”

Hammond Times, July 2, 1917, 10, Hoosier State Chronicles.
Hammond Times, July 2, 1917, 10, Hoosier State Chronicles.

E. C. Minas also had the gentleman bather covered.  They could choose between the “all-worsted,” aka wool, one-piece suit pictured in this advertisement in the Hammond Times [also below] or a two-piece version with flannel pants. The straw hat was a must as well, apparently.

Hammond Times, July 2, 1917 p. 10, Hoosier State Chronicles.
Hammond Times, July 2, 1917 p. 10, Hoosier State Chronicles.

Besides loosening rules for women (and to a lesser extent) men to keep pace with changes in work and sport, the war changed the outlook of those affected by it and, in turn, the way they dressed.  The horrors of war and personal loss contributed to a greater consciousness  mortality and feeling that anything could happen at any time.  For some, this meant that they should live for today and in the moment, thus setting the stage for the fashions and attitudes of the Jazz Age, when fashion would “decree” much different aesthetic rules.  Search Hoosier State Chronicles for more articles on bathing suits!  Combine terms “beach” and “bathing” with “suit,” “outfit,” and “costume.” Let us know what you find on Twitter: @in_bureau

Hoosier Weddings through the (P) Ages

The New York Times ran a piece in 2017 about its long and interesting history of wedding notices, specifically its first notice published on September 18, 1851. Sarah Mullett and John Grant were married by the Reverend Thomas P. Tyler at Trinity Episcopal Church in Fredonia, New York on September 10, 1851. It got us thinking about wedding notices in our neck of the woods. Throughout the decades, newspapers from all across Indiana published wedding notices, sometimes before the wedding and sometimes after, and occasionally with extended coverage of the ceremony. In this blog, we will take you through a few notices to give you a sense of how Indiana newspapers covered Hoosiers tying the knot.

Indiana Gazette, October 23, 1804. Hoosier State Chronicles.

One of the earliest wedding notices that we found came from the Vincennes Indiana Gazette on October 23, 1804, before Indiana’s statehood. During these early years of Indiana papers, the wedding notices were fairly basic, often only sharing the exact details of the wedding and nothing else. Here’s the exact text from the Indiana Gazette:

MARRIED, On Sunday evening last, Mr. John M’Gowan to the amiable Miss Sally Baltis, both of this county [Knox County].

Besides the word “amiable,” this notice contains very little information, despite the couple being local. Similar wedding notices were published in the Vincennes Western Sun in 1810 and 1814 and the Charlestown Indiana Intelligencer in 1825.

Indiana Intelligencer, May 7, 1825. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Early Indiana papers also published breaches of marriage. For example, a piece in the December 14, 1816 issue of the Western Sun  noted that a “breach of marriage promise, between Margaret Logan, plaintiff, and Rob[er]t Gray defendant, was yesterday tried in the Court of Common Pleas of this county [Knox County].” The trial resulted in a “verdict for $1,000 [in] damages—the sum claimed in the declaration,” likely going back to Logan.

Western Sun, December 14, 1816. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Another common tradition in the early years of wedding notices was the use of the subheading “hymeneal,” meaning “nuptial.” Sadly, one of the early uses in the Indiana Republican misspelled the word as “hymenial,” which is a type of fungus.  Nevertheless, papers like the Republican used the term during the early half of the nineteenth century, as a way to group a few wedding notices into a single piece. The Republican hymeneal from 1817 (with the misspelling) provided notices for two weddings, separated by an anonymously authored poem:

Not Eden with its shades and flowers,

Was Paradise till women smil’d; –

Then what’s this dreary world of ours,

Without creation’s loveliest child.

Indiana Republican, October 25, 1817. Hoosier State Chronicles.

In an April 27, 1838 issue of the Brookville American, another Hymeneal, spelled right this time, ran on the third page. Four separate weddings from both Indiana and Ohio make up the column. One particular wedding announcement went out late, so it came with an “apology to the parties . . . that it was mislaid.”

Indiana American, April 27, 1838. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Alongside descriptions of wedding notices, newspapers also advertised the costs of publishing a notice. An advertisement in the December 24, 1855 issue of the Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel displayed the cost of publishing a marriage notice as $1, which in 2016 dollars amounts to $15.92. Still a bargain, if you want people to know about your wedding.

By the 1870s and 1880s, the notices kept the same style but lost some the century’s earlier pretensions. For example, the term “hymeneal” went to the wayside, in favor of a more generic “announcements” section. This is exactly how the Indianapolis News published a wedding notice in its February 12, 1885 issue.

Indianapolis News, February 12, 1885. Hoosier State Chronicles.

That’s not to say there were not outliers. One of the most interesting newspapers available in Hoosier State Chronicles is the Smithville-based Name It and Take It!. A rather obscure paper, it only ran a few months in 1897 before folding. In the June 25, 1897 issue, a wedding noticed was published under the heading of “ROMANTIC!”, the use of an exclamation point being the standard practice on nearly every piece in the notices section. “The Rev. A. S. [Alexander “Sandy”] Baker married a couple on short notice last Saturday, in the clerks [sic] office at Bloomington. The contracting parties were: John Worley, and Catherine Adams,” the paper reported. Based on the exclamation point heading, the paper wanted you to be as excited for the couple as they apparently were.

Richmond Palladium, July 16, 1908. Hoosier State Chronicles.

By the early 20th century, some wedding pieces became slightly more irreverent, like human interest stories you might read in your local paper. In the July 16, 1908 issue of the Richmond Palladium, an article ran entitled “Married in Shirt Waist and Skirt.”  Ted Hall, “a young business man of St. Louis,” arrived in the city, quickly proposed to “Miss Nettie Lamar,” and they were married the same day. As the paper noted, the “ceremony was set in such a short time that the bride had to be married in shirt waist and skirt.” This would be the equivalent of a young lady getting married in a pair of capris and a t-shirt today, which is quaint, even charming.

Indianapolis News, December 27, 1917. Hoosier State Chronicles.

The Indianapolis News during the 1910s provided a large section of its paper to marriage notices, with notifications from all over the state. This trend continued well into the 1920s, as exemplified in an April 29, 1929 issue of the Greencastle Herald. One particular nicety that the Herald extended to the newly-wedded couples was delaying the publication of the notices, after an arrangement with the county clerk.

Greencastle Herald, April 29, 1929. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Other newspapers gave their wedding notice section clever titles. In a 1939 issue of the Indianapolis Recorder, the paper named its section “In Dan Cupid’s Files,” and provided nine separate notices (one was an engagement). One interesting notice noted that “Miss Ella Louise Freeman and L. C. Phelps were secretly married in Chicago” the previous March and then intended to “reside in Philadelphia.” This notice brings up so many questions. Why were they “secretly married?” What necessitated that chain of events? How did their parents feel about it? These would be great topics of research for a more in-depth analysis of wedding notices. However, that is outside the scope of this short tour.

Indianapolis Recorder, June 17, 1939. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Some wedding notices were so detailed that they warranted a front-page publication. This was the case with a notice published in the August 16, 1940 issue of the Dale News. Robert J. Lubbehusen, a U. S. Navy officer, and Miss Frances Fuchs, “second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Fuchs of St. Meinrad, Ind.” were “quietly married in the Abbey Church” in St. Meinrad. The unincorporated community of St. Meinrad houses a monastery and church for Benedictine monks. As their website describes, “Saint Meinrad Archabbey was founded in 1854 by monks from Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland. They came to southern Indiana at the request of a local priest who was seeking help to serve the pastoral needs of the growing German-speaking Catholic population and to prepare local men to be priests.” The small town newspaper published this notice on the first page, which was probably otherwise a slow news week. Additionally, Lubbenhusen’s active service in the Navy, roughly a year out from American involvement in WWII, may have inspired a front-page notice.

Dale News, August 16, 1940. Hoosier State Chronicles.

By the 1950s, photographs became a more standard practice for wedding notices in Indiana papers. The Jewish Post ran a full-page wedding notices section with mostly photographs of happily-wedded couples either leaving on their honeymoon, walking down the aisle together after the ceremony, or cutting their cake. Alongside the couples, the Post also published the names of their photographers, Miner-Baker and Julius Marx. Not only did this give credit where credit was due, but it was great advertising for the photographers. Engaged couples could see these nice photos in the paper and then follow up with Marx or Miner-Baker to have them photograph their unions. The wedding notice as advertisement represents another interesting development in Indiana wedding notices.

Jewish Post, July 11, 1958. Hoosier State Chronicles.

The last three wedding notices on this tour of history, from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s respectively, indicate that while wedding notices have changed since the beginning of Indiana’s history, they maintained a basic structure. The September 23, 1960 page of wedding notices from the Jewish Post provided the same familial and logistical information, but it also included details on the bride’s dress. The bride, Elayne Rosanne Kroot:

. . . appeared in a formal-length gown of pure silk peau de soie of ivory color, trimmed with re-embroidered hand-clipped Alencon lace highlighted by matching seed pearls and crystals forming an Empire bodice.

Jewish Post, September 23, 1960. Hoosier State Chronicles.

This notice’s level of detail contrasted the more direct, less detailed notice for another couple on the same page. (The wedding notice in the August 24, 1979 Jewish Post also displays a shorter, more direct style.) This contrast suggests a subtle distinction of class, where the longer, more detailed notice cost more to publish than the shorter notice. Again, this would be a great avenue for future research.

Newly wedded couple Charles and Aquila Adams, Indianapolis Recorder, June 23 1984. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Our last notice page comes from the June 23, 1984 issue of the Indianapolis Recorder. These notices might be the most complete notices we will unpack in our journey. The notices are detailed, with logistical information, details on the bride’s dresses, the musical arrangements (including songs played), and a rough timeline of the entire ceremony and reception. These were also paired with photographs of the happy couples. To see the most modern representation of wedding notices, this is one of the best examples from Hoosier State Chronicles.

With that, our trip though Indiana’s wedding notices has come to an end. If you’d like to see more notices, head over to Hoosier State Chronicles.  If you search “wedding” or “married,” you get literally thousands of hits, from nearly 200 years of Indiana newspapers. There’s certainly more than a fair share of Hoosier weddings to explore.

 

John T. McCutcheon’s Wartime Valentines

On Valentine’s Day, we thought it would be a great time to share a different side of Indiana culture during the tumultuous years of World War I, in the form of valentine cartoons. John T. McCutcheon was one of Indiana’s most celebrated cartoonists from the era, and his “wartime valentines” help us understand how the home front viewed this integral time in world history.

Cartoonist John T. McCutcheon, Hammond Times, December 26 1918. Hoosier State Chronicles.

John T. McCutcheon was a Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, where he worked for 43 years. Born in South Raub, Tippecanoe County, Indiana on May 6, 1870, McCutcheon grew up “in the rural areas surrounding Lafayette.” He attended Purdue University where he was “a founding member of the University’s first fraternity, Sigma Chi” and the “co-editor of the University’s first yearbook, the Debris.” After graduating college in 1889, he worked as a cartoonist for the Chicago Morning News and Record-Herald until he moved to the Tribune in 1903. His artistic style mirrored his experiences growing up the Midwest; he developed a character called “A Boy in Springtime” who would appear in front-page pieces having small-town fun with friends and his dog (the dog first appeared in a William McKinley presidential campaign cartoon, and became much beloved by readers). As R. C. Harvey of the Comics Journal noted, McCutcheon’s cartoons were “the first to throw the slow ball in cartooning, to draw the human interest picture that was not produced to change votes or to amend morals but solely to amuse or to sympathize.”

George Ade, Indianapolis News, May 20 1902. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Paralleling his more personable cartoons, McCutcheon partnered with another Hoosier author, George Ade, to create a series of valentines for charity during World War I. The idea originated from the Indianapolis Branch of the American Fund for French Wounded and its contributors were a who’s who of Indiana arts, including Ade and McCutcheon as well as Meredith Nicholson, Kin Hubbard, and William Herschell. As reported in the South Bend News-Times on January 28, 1918, “Prominent Indiana artists and authors this year have been making comic valentines . . . and are guaranteed by those who have seen them to send grins and cheer to soldiers at home and abroad.” The article also outlined the American Fund for French Wounded, noting that “the proceeds will go for furthering the work in France among wounded soldiers and destitute families, which is the committee looking after the funds is carrying on.” Ads even ran in the Indianapolis News to promote the Valentines, published by Charles Mayer & Company, once they were available.

Indianapolis News, February 5, 1918. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Four of McCutcheon and Ade’s valentines are publicly available through Indiana Memory/Digital Indy and the Digital Public Library of America.

George Ade and John T. McCutcheon,”From Her Mother.” IMCPL/Digital Indy.

The first valentine in the digital collection, entitled “From Her Mother”, shows a concerned mother writing to a “Mr. Soldier Man” while a variant of McCutcheon’s iconic dog looks on in the background. The photos on and above the desk in the cartoon are important to context, as the photos of the mother’s daughter and her soldier beau face each other longingly, while a portrait of the mother sternly oversees over both of the photos. In the cartoon, the mother’s letter reads:

Mr. Soldier Man.

       Dear Sir:

                I can not send what my daughter wrote,

               It might set fire to the darned old boat.

                                         Yours truly,

                                                – The Night Watch.

The mother’s face shows a concern not only for her daughter’s overly passionate words. McCutcheon’s style of strong lines and warm, humane features also comes through in this valentine.

George Ade and John T. McCutcheon, “Her Choice This Year.” IMCPL/Digital Indy.

Another great valentine in the collection entitled, “Her Choice This Year”, ties the romantic love normally associated with Valentine’s Day with love of country. Ade’s poem reads:

Columbia wants you to know,

That you’re her particular beau.

She’s likewise “particular.” So

That’s why you’ve been picked as her beau.

The young woman, aptly named Columbia, holds the hand of her uniformed soldier as he looks at her lovingly. She’s also dressed in a shirt and skirt of the red, white, and blue with a pair of roman sandals. And of course, McCutcheon’s iconic dog looks up at them in the foreground. This valentine exhibits the strong patriotic fervor during the period, but in a charming, homespun way.

George Ade and John T. McCutcheon, “Some One Has Not Forgotten.” IMCPL/Digital Indy.

The next valentine captures a woman’s longing for her partner who is off at war. Named “Some One Has Not Forgotten,” it depicts a young woman knitting in a chair while thinking of her partner trekking across Europe in a snowstorm. Here’s Ade’s text with the valentine:

My heart to-day

Is far away

Across the rolling brine.

So while I sit

And knit and knit

You’re still my valentine.

This depiction of men and women evokes a more traditional assumption of gender during the period than say “Columbia” and her beau above. The woman’s thoughts of her partner, floating above her head and colorless, attempt to convey the arduous and grim task of war. In contrast, McCutcheon’s drawing of the young woman is clear and with beautiful coloring. Ade and McCutcheon’s valentine cleverly renders the feelings of many young women while their partners were at war.

George Ade and John T. McCutcheon, “To You Somewhere.” IMCPL/Digital Indy.

The final valentine in the digital collection is called, “To You Somewhere,” and it depicts one of Valentine’s Day’s most enduring symbols, Cupid. In this version, a nude Cupid braves the cold weather to deliver a valentine to a soldier in the snow. The message reads:

I don’t know just where you are to-day,

I don’t know how many miles away;

Whether you’re out where the bullets fly,

Or safe and sounds at the good old “Y.” [Y.M.C.A]

I have no message from o’er the sea

To let me know that you think of me,

But I’ll make an oath and my name I’ll sign,

That you are my only Valentine.

The soldier’s delight at receiving the message from a saluting cupid is evident. He even has his gun down and his hands up, perhaps in surprise that the symbol of love is in a war zone, or perhaps the soldier is in the act of accepting the valentine from Cupid. Of the four digitized valentines, this is the only one without a female main subject, despite the text being from the soldier’s love. It shows the perspective of the soldier receiving a valentine, rather than a woman creating or imagining one.

During a time of immense destruction, political revolutions, and domestic instability, Ade and McCutcheon’s valentines provide us with a more homespun, sometimes humorous, quaint and patriotic view of the home front during World War I.

“George Ade, Everybody’s Friend”

George Ade, courtesy of Indiana State Library Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection.

Kentland, Indiana native George Ade is best known as an author who came to prominence during the Indiana Golden Age of Literature. He was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, authored over twenty books, and even penned several successful Broadway productions. But in Newton County, he was known as “just plain George Ade, everybody’s friend.” In the early 20th century, Ade returned to Newton County and built what would become a cultural mecca – a source of support in hard times and a place of celebration in the good.

Even in an age of notable Hoosier authors, humorist George Ade stood out. Compared to contemporaries like Lew Wallace, Meredith Nicholson, and Booth Tarkington, he employed more of an “every man’s” style, peppering his work with vernacular and popular references. This made his work relatable to the masses in the early 20th century, but a bit difficult to decipher today, as seen in the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Fables in Slang, “The Fable of the Slim Girl who Tried to Keep a Date That Was Never Made,” courtesy of HathiTrust.com.

Ade began writing his “Stories from the Streets and Town” column for the Chicago Record in 1893, inspired by the daily goings-on he witnessed as a reporter on the streets of Chicago. By 1896, the column became popular enough to warrant a selection to be published as the book Artie. Subsequent collections Pink Marks (1897) and Doc’ Horne (1899) soon followed and further boosted the column’s popularity. It was Ade’s “Fables in Slang” that rocketed him to national fame, though.

1900 Satirical ‘More Fables’ by George Ade – (1899 Fables in Slang sequel), is courtesy of etsy.com.

Ade’s first fable, “The Fable of Sister Mae, Who Did As Well As Could Be Expected,” was published in the Record on September 17, 1897. “A Fable in Slang” came a year later and was the true beginning of the column, rocketing him to national fame. These humorous stories, each of which concluded with a satirical moral, such as “in uplifting, get underneath,” earned him the moniker the “Aesop of Indiana.” When the collected Fables in Slang was published in 1899, it became his most successful work up to that point.

With the dawn of the new century, Ade made a career move from columnist to playwright with the opening of The Sultan of Sulu. This first Broadway success was followed by others in quick succession. The County Chairman (1903), The Sho-Gun (1904), and The College Widow (1904) all garnered critical acclaim and helped to establish the musical comedy genre.

Not yet 40 years old, Ade had earned a fortune and retired from the hustle and bustle of life in Chicago to a sprawling fourteen room Tudor-style mansion near Brook, which he dubbed “Hazelden.” Here, he continued to write while he hosted political rallies, such as the 1908 Taft Rally, entertained local and national celebrities, and treated the residents of Newton and surrounding counties to lavish parties. The Muncie Star Press noted that Ade “wasn’t a swimmer and he didn’t dance, but on his farm place . . . he built a dance pavilion and a swimming pool.” Along with the dance pavilion and swimming pool, Hazelden featured a pool house, greenhouses, barns, and, by 1910, a golf course and country club.

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Just two months after the U.S. entry into World War I, Ade wrote a plea to his community:

It seems that every part of the country, including Newton County, will have to take an important part in the great war now raging. . . Some can give more than others, but every man that can give something and fails to do so, will have to carry in his soul a reasonable doubt as to his good citizenship. Give to the Red Cross this week.

And what George Ade had to give, other than money, was Hazelden. The estate assisted the war effort in small ways, serving as the meeting place for the Newton County Red Cross Executive Committee, and hosting knitting bees, which made socks for soldiers. But in July 1918, Ade pulled out all the stops for Red Cross Day. A dozen airships, carrying military personnel from the Chanute Air Force Base near Rantoul Illinois, were early on the scene for the festivities. Thousands came from as far away as Indianapolis, South Bend, and Chicago to enjoy the grounds on a day with what newspapers of the day called “George Ade Weather.” Fundraisers included a golf tournament, where fans could bid for the chance to caddy for their favorite player and golf balls were auctioned off afterwards. Proceeds from the day totaled over $5,000 (nearly $100,000 today).

George Ade, courtesy of Alchetron.com.

Described in the Chicago Tribune as a “two fisted drinker,” and “one of the most gregarious men who ever lived,” Ade wasn’t afraid of a good time, and after the war years, he turned his attention to just that. On July 4, 1919, an estimated 15,000 revelers flocked to Brook, effectively doubling the population of Newton County for a day. Attendees brought picnic lunches, were treated to music by Bensons Orchestra, brought in from Chicago, and played a few games of “Cage Ball,” a mix of American football and soccer that became popular during the war. The evening was topped off with a fireworks display.

Perhaps the most beloved event on the Hazelden calendar was the annual Children’s Picnic, which featured activities such as baseball games, tug-of-war, dancing, and daylight fireworks. For one day each summer, all children under twelve years old from Newton and surrounding Counties were invited to take in the sprawling grounds. If a child’s family could not afford clothes and transportation to the event, Ade would furnish a new outfit and send a car to get them. The Lafayette Journal and Courier described the 1926 event:

There were clowns, imported for the occasion, magicians, organ grinders and monkeys, fancy divers and swimmers, vaudeville artists and Punch and Judy shows. Each of the 600 children present received a fancy paper cap to wear, and all feasted on ice cream and lemonade.

Annual Children’s Picnic, 1928, Indianapolis Star, September 28, 1930, 10.

For forty years, from when the home was finished in 1904 until Ade’s death in 1944, the humorist presided over scenes such as that described above time and time again. Local obituaries nearly without exception included reminiscences about the community gatherings hosted amongst the lavish gardens on the manicured grounds of Hazelden. But after Ade died following a heart attack, the estate sat empty for nearly two decades until it was acquired by the George Ade Memorial Association. It was subsequently renovated and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Inside Hazelden, courtesy of Indiana Landmarks.

Today, Hazelden continues to serve as a gathering place for Newton County residents. The George Ade Historic Preservation Commission oversees operations of the estate, which is available to be rented out and often hosts graduation parties, birthday celebrations, and even weddings. The Commission is in the planning stages of a renovation of the mansion, carriage house, and grounds so it can better meet the needs of the community. If you are interested in learning more about this project or would like to rent out the home, contact Commission Chairperson Krissy Wright.

Note: This post was written using the marker notes for the Indiana state historical marker for George Ade, which can be found here.

Fort Wayne’s Charles Allen: Theatrical Ingenue & “Unsung Gay Hero”

Courtesy of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, caption: Pianist Charles Allen, left, and singer Steve Black were part of the entertainment scene in the late ’60s, when bars replaced coffeehouses as the centers of musical activity.

Legendary choreographer and “unsung gay hero” Charles Allen sat with a tape recorder in his Fort Wayne house, a veritable art museum awaiting curation. Sipping gin and orange juice from an empty peanut butter jar, he began to document his life. Notorious for self-mythologizing—once claiming to have killed a man using “voodoo and black magic”—some of the anecdotes he fed the tape no doubt were embellished.[1] These would prove unnecessary, however, as his legacy speaks for itself. Not only did Allen give “birth to generations of dancers and . . . change the way people looked at the world around him,” but he inspired and empowered LGBTQ+ Hoosiers, perhaps unintentionally. Upon Allen’s 1980 death, Jerry Jokay wrote in TROIS, Fort Wayne’s gay newsletter, that “Although he probably wouldn’t have seen it this way, one of his greatest contributions was that he was a gay hero. And he is a gay hero simply because his gayness was a trivial issue in his life even in spite of the oppression it caused him.”[2] Allen, on the other hand, would probably consider his greatest contributions to be advancing performing arts and instilling a love of storytelling and self-expression in Hoosiers.

Gene Stratton Porter, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum, courtesy of KPC News.

Born in 1912, Allen was likely raised by his aunt and uncle in Mongo, Indiana. Depictions of Allen’s childhood are characteristically colorful and include a traipse through Tamarack Swamp with famed author and naturalist Gene Stratton Porter in search of insects and plant specimens.[3] Allen “recalled dyeing his hair pinkish-brown as a child, catching blue racer snakes, putting them around his neck, and startling passersby on highway 20 near his home. A barefoot, innocent, wild-haired child of the swamp.”[4]  The spirited child attended school in Kendallville and spent free time in LaGrange, where he learned to play piano at Wigdon Theater. Fully enamored with artistic expression, he devoured performances delivered by a travelling company. The News-Sentinel reported “there was a troupe of four or five men, who did a two-reel silent movie, and set up an impromptu stage with an indian scene. There was singing, and two of the men did female impersonations. When he left the show, his life had changed. . . . He’d fallen in love.”

The production continued to call to him, long after the caravans departed. He left school, took a train to northern Michigan, where the travelling company had migrated, and became its new pianist. As despair deepened during the Great Depression, the public increasingly took solace in travelling shows. These provided Allen with opportunities to try his theatrical hand and hone his skills as a performer. The News-Sentinel noted, “People were doing almost anything for money. He fell in with a freak show,” dubbed the Palace of Wonders, for which he mesmerized crowds as the Human Pin Cushion. During this period, Allen learned how to perform the “half-man, half-woman” act, styling his feminine half after screen siren Marlene Dietrich. When he returned to Fort Wayne, he would perform this routine at local tavern, Henry’s, and played piano at bars like This Old House, Trolly Bar, and the Caboose.[5] Allen insisted that friends stay at his house once the bars closed down for the night, hating solitude.[6]

The eclectic career he had forged for himself was abruptly derailed by the conformist ethos of the 1940s. At a time of global upheaval, Americans held evermore sacrosanct heteronormativity. The News-Sentinel reported that during this “less enlightened age,” a judge sentenced Allen to six years in a Michigan City Prison after “an affair with a soldier led to a charge of sodomy.”[7] Allen recalled in the Fort Wayne Free Press that the judge declared ironically “we’re going to send you where you’ll be happy; locked up with a lot of men!”[8] This prediction proved correct, as he spent time with paramours in a makeshift room fashioned out of old pianos and curtains. On weekends, he played piano for the men waiting in line to watch a movie. While it played, a band mate would take his place at the piano, so that he could go hold hands with his companion. During his few years in prison, Allen made friends, assembled a band—for which he played the sousaphone—and learned how to dance.[9]

A sketch of Etheridge Knight in prison by Terrance Hayes, accessed theparisreview.org.

The News-Sentinel noted that in prison Allen “kept following his insatible [sic] desire to learn. Where he could find no one else to teach him, he taught himself. The creativity could never let him rest. It would be that way to the end of his life.”[10] This cultivation of self-expression paralleled the journey of African American poet, Etheridge Knight. While serving eight years at the Indiana State Prison in the 1960s, he discovered the restorative power of writing, culminating in his revolutionary Poems from Prison. Knight later stated that “Poetry and a few people in there trying to stay human saved me . . . I knew that I couldn’t just deaden all my feeling the way some people did.”[11]

So, too, did music and dance sustain Allen during his incarceration. Upon release, he returned to Fort Wayne, opening the Charles Allen Dance Studio.[12] According to the Journal-Gazette, he was the city’s only choreographer and, through his trips to New York and Chicago, “single-handedly” invigorated the city’s theater scene. Something of a cultural conduit, Allen traveled to Vera Cruz, Mexico to research indigenous dances. He studied dance at the University of Guatemala and the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico, imbuing midwestern students with unique material and perspectives.[13]

In life and work, Allen gravitated towards those on the fringes, perhaps identifying with their struggles or the stigmatization they endured. He reportedly taught exotic dancers how to improve their performances and played piano at “houses of ill repute.”[14]  In his TROIS article, Springer wrote that Allen played piano and felt a “kinship” with Black Americans because “like him, they were among the outsiders of society.”[15] Though he was exacting and sometimes cruel, the News Sentinel reported that “he would work with beginners no one else had time for, work tirelessly because he felt a love of what he was doing.”[16] Janice Dyson recalled this experience, after her mom “scrimped grocery money to help pay” for lessons for her and her sister, Bernice. She recalled that Allen “was a real taskmaster. . . . Bernice was intimidated by him and quit after about a year. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I learned pretty quickly that when he said practice or else, he meant it.”[17] Perhaps he hoped to provoke the same grit he’d developed through surmounting the many hardships imposed by society.

While he worked with Fort Wayne performers, Allen reportedly knew the jazz greats, like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, and one friend noted that “a lot of famous people used to come here and have him fix their acts. Polish the acts. Reblock them or rechoreograph them.'”[18] Legend has it that one winter Allen sold his horse to pay the train fare to see Holiday perform in New York City. Due to a snow storm, he was the only person to show up at the theater. The usher relayed his presence to Holiday, who performed only for him, after which they went out for a drink. She reportedly drove him to the train station and ran alongside the cars, waving as the train departed. Allen was so moved by the experience that he wept while watching the train station scene in “The Lady Sings the Blues.”[19]

Family Theatre Festival (1975-1976), OnStage On Campus Collection, mDON: mastodon Digital Object Network, Helmke Library, Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Purdue University Fort Wayne (PUFW) recognized the ingenue’s talent, hiring Allen to teach courses like Stage Movement.[20] He felt immense pride about being self-taught. A man who embodied resistance towards oppression and convention, his influence intersected fortuitously with the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s. Friends and colleagues seem to agree that he was not an activist in the traditional sense, but he always answered when called to provide insight about homosexuality or the burgeoning “homophile” movement. He recognized that, as one of few men in the area living openly, if he did not engage in public discourse that no one one would. When asked by WANE-TV to serve as one of five panelists about homosexuality Allen agreed, saying “‘I’m all right here, I don’t have any problems because I’m not scared. But a lot of people are scared; they’re scared they’ll get arrested.”[21] He appealed to dozens of people to serve as panelists, but only two agreed. Those who declined feared that their parents would disown them or that they would lose their job, as had one of Allen’s friends who served in World War II. Others claimed the panel was unnecessary or worried that it would upset the “status quo,” which had provided a modicum of safety. To this reasoning, Allen said, “‘I thought if everything is so fine, why can’t they get on the air and say it’s fine. It’s because it isn’t fine.”[22]

Allen spoke about homosexuality at PUFW campus teach-ins and college classes, and wrote editorials for the student paper, The Fort Wayne Free Press, under the pseudonym “Claude Hawk.”[23] He wanted audiences to understand that sexuality was not a choice, noting that “My own doctor tells me that one gene or chromosome determines sexual preference—not butchness, effeminancy, athleticism, not militancy, but whom you want to go to bed with.”[24] He added that this knowledge, while “comforting,” doesn’t help if you get fired or the “bartender breaks your glass after each drink, etc., etc.” His efforts shifted the perspectives of students like Linda Lamirand and Katharine Stout, who attended a teach-in with the “brave man” who “sat up there and told it like it is.”[25] The authors were enlightened by Allen’s revelations that he knew he was gay at the age of four and that scientific studies suggested that biology dictated sexual preference.

Courtesy of The Fort Wayne Free Press, 3, iss. 16 (July 27, 1972): 9, accessed mDON: mastadon Digital Object Network, Helmke Library, Purdue University Fort Wayne.

In one Free Press editorial, Allen addressed those who had come to terms with their sexuality, but faced the question “where do you go?” to meet someone. Of the dilemma, he wrote:

You can’t find someone at an office party or at a neighborhood bar because someone would ‘find out’. So you experiment. You drink too much or get so horny that, without experience, you get your teeth bashed in saying something dumb to to the wrong person; or the right-wrong person who relieves you of your watch, wallet, and rings. Or sometimes you are picked up by a nicelooking, intelligent, young man with long hair and bare feet, who turns out to be fuzz and you are entrapped, fined, and-or jailed.[26]

He advised readers to find a “gentle, gay” friend, who can help navigate the covert social world, or a relatively tolerant restaurant or bar. A “third salvation,” Allen noted, was to “know an art or theater crowd who don’t give a damn. Not about you, but about it.” The theater provided a world in which he did not have to explain himself or act as a local spokesperson for homosexuality. He wrote that the “freedom, acceptance, and love” afforded by the theater community created “a place to breathe in this pollution of brotherhood. Since one doesn’t have to hide, or lose his job in these fields, these are the more obvious” ones in which to work.[27] In fact, Allen noted that living as a gay man paralleled life in the performing arts, writing:

“You are forced to think and live like a male and play the game so well that you are never uncovered. And this becomes an art, gives you a facility for understanding objectively what’s going on. It’s like a play, and while others are doing it naturally you’re listening for clues, and if well rehearsed, arrive at a happy ending.”[28] 

The Fort Wayne Free Press 4, iss. 3 (January 25, 1973): 6, accessed mDON: mastadon Digital Object Network, Helmke Library, Purdue University Fort Wayne.

While TROIS writer Jerry Jokay considered Allen “Fort Wayne’s unsung gay hero,” he noted that “his fortitude laid in the fact that he didn’t dwell upon his difference . . . Allen was preoccupied with being so much more, as his best friends attest.”[29] Preoccupied, he was. Allen informed Free Press readers about his life, writing in 1971 that “I ran my own school, taught at Purdue, played piano in bars, was connected with Ft. Wayne Civic Theater, Kenosha Little Theater, Theater Alanta, had choreographed a Broadway show, was a Japanese paper folder, an Arabian knot tier.”[30] He had traveled the globe in search of inspiration and imbued new generations of performers with it. The News-Sentinel wrote that “he became unique, in a world of his own creation. His art became his life, his life his art.”[31]

His life, his art. Perhaps it was his cancer diagnosis that inspired him to detail them on tape, stories that writer Dan Luzadder suggested “may have been plucked from the intensity of his nether world.”[32] We don’t know what stories he told, as he ran out of time to complete the recordings,* but perhaps he described the demands of caring for his pet python or recited original sonnets, haikus, and Limericks, “both clean and questionable.”[33] We can be certain that his life and art profoundly influenced those around him. This is evidenced by the obituaries written upon his death in 1980 at the age of 68. Luzadder wrote in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:

There was loneliness and insecurity. There were things that drove him. And there was tremendous courage to live through the times of his life, to aspire to art, to survive with nothing more than intelligence and faith in himself, to go hungry, to be alone, to see the world in its intolerance and still love it.[34]

Dell Ford, “Artists’ Artist Charles Allen Dies,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, March 20, 1980, 1C, 2C, ISL microfilm.

On March 21, hundreds of people from all walks of life—including actors, dancers, bartenders, city officials, and editors—stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the Performing Arts Center to pay their respects to the man “whose life had taught them the meaning of art.”[35] His memorial served as a final standing ovation, with Civic Director Richard Casey reading from “Hamlet,” poets performing spoken word, and dancers delivering a finale performance of “Mr. Bojangles.”[36]

Allen provides us with a window into the experiences of those who lived openly in Indiana prior to the liberating events of the 1980s and 1990s. Before a sense of community was fostered by the formation of groups like Fort Wayne Gay and Lesbian Organization (GLO), Pride Week celebrations, and the publication of gay newsletters, Allen drew upon a deep reservoir of self-assurance and creative impulse to fashion a fulfilling life.[37] In his 1980 tribute, Steve Springer described Allen as “an individualist. Society had its standards of behavior and Allen had his own.” And although he had suffered because of these standards, Springer insisted that “Long after Anita Bryant and her hordes of intolerants are forgotten, the legend of Charles Allen will live on.”[38]

* The author has been unable to locate these recordings. If you know of their location please contact npoletika @library.in.gov.

Sources:

All issues of The Fort Wayne Free Press were accessed via mDON Mastodon Digital Object Network, Helmke Library, Purdue University Fort Wayne.

[1] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, Indiana State Library (ISL) microfilm.

[2] Jerry Jokay, “Who Was Charles Allen?,” TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (March 1983), Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

[3] “Arts Center Site for Allen Service,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 20, 1980, ISL microfilm.

[4] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[5] Dell Ford, “Artists’ Artist Charles Allen Dies,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, March 20, 1980, 1C, 2C, ISL microfilm.

[6] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Claude Hawk, “Boys Will Be Girls!,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 2, iss. 1 (January 1, 1971): 3.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[11] Nicole Poletika, “Etheridge Knight: ‘can there anything good come out of prison,'” May 3, 2017, accessed Indiana History Blog.

[12] Steve Springer, “Chas. Allen,” The Communicator, March 27, 1980, reprinted in TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (May 1980): 5, 7, Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

[13] Dell Ford, “Artists’ Artist Charles Allen Dies,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, March 20, 1980, 1C, 2C, ISL microfilm.

[14] Ibid.; Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[15] Steve Springer, “Chas. Allen,” The Communicator, March 27, 1980, reprinted in TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (May 1980): 5, 7, Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

[16] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[17] Janice Dyson, “Studio Marks 65 Years of Dancing,” KPC News, December 28, 2017, accessed kpcnews.com.

[18] Dell Ford, “Artists’ Artist Charles Allen Dies,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, March 20, 1980, 1C, 2C, ISL microfilm.

[19] Steve Springer, “Chas. Allen,” The Communicator, March 27, 1980, reprinted in TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (May 1980): 5, 7, Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

[20] “Family Festival Slated,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, April 28, 1976, 6C.

[21] “It Isn’t Fine,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 2, no. 17 (September 9-23, 1971).

[22] Ibid.

[23] Claude Hawk, “Wherever You Are!,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 1, iss. 10 (October 7-21, 1970): 4.; Claude Hawk, “Out of the Closet,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 1, iss. 11 (November 2-18, 1970): 3, 6.; “It Isn’t Fine,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 2, no. 17 (September 9-23, 1971).

[24] Claude Hawk, “Wherever You Are!,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 1, iss. 10 (October 7-21, 1970): 4.

[25] Linda Lamirand and Katharine Stout, “Dear Freep,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 2, iss. 7 (April 22-May 6, 1971): 10.

[26] Claude Hawk, “Wherever You Are!,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 1, iss. 10 (October 7-21, 1970): 4.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Claude Hawk, “God Love Us All,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 2, iss. 8 (May 6, 1971): 9.

[29] Jerry Jokay, “Who Was Charles Allen?,” TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (March 1983), Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

[30] Bob Ihrie and Charles Allen, “Holiday on Ice,” The Fort Wayne Free Press 2, iss. 2 (January 18-February 2, 1971): 3.

[31] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Dell Ford, “Artists’ Artist Charles Allen Dies,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, March 20, 1980, 1C, 2C, ISL microfilm.

[34] Dan Luzadder, “Charles Allen: His Life and His Art Were his Epitaph,” (Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel, March 21, 1980, 7A, ISL microfilm.

[35] Dell Ford, “Funeral Celebrates Dance, Poetry, Drama, Music,” Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, March 22, 1980, C1, ISL microfilm.; Steve Springer, “Chas. Allen,” The Communicator, March 27, 1980, reprinted in TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (May 1980): 5, 7, Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

[36] Dell Ford, “Funeral Celebrates Dance, Poetry, Drama, Music,” Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, March 22, 1980, C1, ISL microfilm.

[37] Nicole Poletika, “From ‘Gay Knights’ to Celebration on the Circle: A History of Pride in Indianapolis,” October 5, 2021, accessed Indiana History Blog.

[38] Steve Springer, “Chas. Allen,” The Communicator, March 27, 1980, reprinted in TROIS (Three Rivers’ One in Six) (May 1980): 5, 7, Northeast Indiana Diversity Library Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

Hoosier State Chronicles: The Series | Leedy Manufacturing Company and Purdue’s “World’s Largest Drum”

Purdue’s “World’s Largest Drum”, made by Indianapolis’ Leedy Manufacturing Company in 1921, has been involved in many rivalries over its size. Learn more about its unique history from our latest video.

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Credits: Written and produced by Justin Clark.

Music: “Regimented Instinct” by Teknoaxe, “Jumpin’ Boogie Woogie” by Audionautix, “Anchors Aweigh” by US Marine Corps Band, “National Emblem” by US Naval Academy Band, “Low Tide” by Silent Partner, “Jazz Bar” by Doug Maxwell, Media Right Productions, “Hail, Purdue” by Purdue All-American Marching Band

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