Overlooked—Emma Molloy: “God Made Me So Radical”

The following post contributes to an IHB blog series celebrating the upcoming presentation by New York Times editor Amisha Padnani on her Overlooked project. Overlooked tells the stories of remarkable women and people of color whose deaths were never reported by the New York Times in its 168-year history.

Learn more and register to attend Padnani’s presentation for free as part of the October 5, 2024 Hoosier Women at Work History Conference.


Emma Molloy was not your average reformer. Her advocacy of women’s suffrage, women in the workplace, temperance, and prison reform was so radical that women’s and reform groups ostracized her. Nevertheless, she continued to write and speak prolifically in the 1870s and 80s, engendering a reputation as “one of the most effective woman orators of the west.”[1]

Born in South Bend in 1839, Molloy’s childhood was a lonely one. Her mother died when she was just eleven, forcing her to live in boarding homes. She found solace in writing and won awards for submissions in local newspapers as a teenager. Around that time, she married a printer, and the couple traveled the country, working various jobs. However, her husband’s alcoholism cost them employment, breeding resentment that he took out on his wife. After his untimely death due to the disease, Molloy committed herself to lobbying for temperance and protecting Indiana divorce laws.

Image of Emma Barrett Molloy
Emma Molloy, courtesy of Elkhart Public Library.

Her second marriage was a happier one, and led to professional and personal fulfillment. She became the business partner of her husband, Edward, helping edit and print the South Bend National Union. Molloy’s editorial influence created a more nuanced publication, as her personal anecdotes and heartfelt obituaries balanced Edward’s political and economic reporting. In addition to writing and managing the household, she undertook business aspects of the publication, which included collecting payment and soliciting advertisements—earning praise from Harper’s Bazar.

The ambitious Molloys moved to Elkhart, where they co-founded the Observer in 1872. Emma came fully into her own in the city, growing into a prolific political reformer and public speaker. In her editorials, she encouraged women’s independence and entry into the workplace, writing “woman’s true sphere is in any latitude of occupation that she is capable of.” She wrote:

I am told that women are not as thorough on details as men are. Well, let a woman educated as a reporter, walk beside the male reporter, and she will see twice as much in a walk down the street as he will, and can draw just as largely upon her imagination too in reporting it. . . . As for the girls employed in our office, I find them as efficient as men , and much more reliable, for they never get on a spree.[2]

Molloy refused to downplay her contributions. In an address for the Women in Country Journalism Congress, she described the:

. . . many days and nights of persistent toil at the case, in the editorial chair, and sometimes at the press. To help out I have set type all night after working at other branches of the business all day, and I am certain my husband, capable and industrious as he is, would not have been where he is to-day without my aid.[3]

Molloy also used her publications to advocate for women’s right to divorce and the need to abolish “legal marital slavery” through legislation. This, along with temperance, would reduce wives’ financial hardship and abuse. She had been one of these wives herself, after all.

Realizing the ballot was necessary to effect this change, she advocated for women’s suffrage. Her fiery speeches and emphasis on women’s involvement in politics set her apart from other suffragists and temperance leaders at the time. According to the Ribbon Worker, she first demonstrated her “oratorical gifts” in Elkhart, which soon garnered here invitations to speak in various Indiana cities and eventually across the country and abroad. The Rochester Union Spy described one of her lectures as a “feast of reason,” adding:

We were ourself surprised at the breadth of her views, and the profundity of her reasoning. It must be conceded that intellect, as well as virtue, has no sex, and that  women who try can reason just as closely and as logically as their brethren.

Similarly, the South Bend Tribune wrote “By reason of her native eloquence and the force of her arguments she attracted large audiences wherever she went.” Molloy not only delivered passionate speeches and editorials, but went door to door, canvassing neighbors for the cause of temperance. This resulted in one Elkhart bar owner throwing eggs at her.

Biographer Martha Pickrell noted that some newspaper editors and WCTU members found Molloy’s strategies and emphasis on women’s political involvement too extreme. In 1877, Molloy wrote to the Woman’s Journal that she had been ousted from local temperance efforts, noting “in my own State, the greater portion of the women of the Union regarded me as ‘dangerous to their work.’” She added that:

God made me so radical and . . . so adverse to suffering that when I see a way to avoid it, for myself or anyone else, I cannot help making a suggestion as to the means, even though it may be shocking to conservative ears.

Perhaps feeling ostracized, she pivoted to prison reform and evangelical preaching. Because of her experiences with those suffering from addiction, she viewed prisoners as humans, worthy of humane conditions and a second shot at life after incarceration. In the late 1870s, Molloy visited Indiana prisons and lobbied for better conditions, such as proper ventilation. She served as a maternal figure for those incarcerated and often encouraged them through correspondence. She wrote “Too often he finds himself thrown upon the world homeless, friendless, illy educated to grapple the with the world. It is very hard for an ex-convict to get employment.” In her efforts to reduce recidivism and help with rehabilitation, Molloy worked with Quakers and WTCU members to establish the Ex-Convicts’ Aid Society, with the goal to create halfway houses in northern and southern Indiana for released prisoners.

Emma Molloy marker dedication in Elkhart, September 4, 2024, courtesy of author.

In her final years, Molloy moved to the West Coast and undertook the cause nearest to her heart—preaching Christianity. She once again leveraged her public speaking skills, but this time from a church pulpit. Although she could not officially be ordained, she essentially served as a preacher and helped build up struggling churches in smaller towns.

Molloy died in 1907. Her death garnered scant obituaries and one published in her native South Bend misspelled her name. We hope that this Indiana Overlooked profile helps restore the agency and legacy of a woman so ahead of her time. Suffering had not made her bitter, but empathetic, and ready to take up the sword to prevent the suffering of others. For this, she should not only be remembered, but emulated.

For sources used to compile this post, see our historical marker footnotes.

Quotations:

[1] “Well Known Woman Gone,” South Bend Tribune, May 15, 1907, 5, accessed Newspapers.com.

[2] Emma Molloy, Woman’s Congress Address in Chicago, October 1974 in Martha Pickrell, “A Woman in Country Journalism,” Traces of Indiana and Midwest History 12, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 27, accessed Indiana Historical Society.

[3] Emma Molloy, Address on Women in Country Journalism, Woman’s Congress, Chicago, Illinois, October 15-17, 1874, published in Woman’s Journal (November 28, 1874) in Pickrell, p. 93.

Abe Martin’s World War I

In a previous post, we published a story on John T. McCutcheon and George Ade’s charity cartoons during World War I. In this post, we will be sharing another cartoonist’s work during the war.

Hoosier cartoonist and author Kin Hubbard. Indianapolis News, November 30, 1917, Hoosier State Chronicles.

Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard, cartoonist for the Indianapolis News and creator of “Abe Martin,” delighted “millions of Americans” through his folksy-cartoons and down-home, Midwestern wit. Abe Martin as a character represented the “nineteenth-century crackerbarrel figure traditionally focused on political involvement, rural residency, the fatherly image, employment, and success.” Hubbard developed the character during the 1904 Presidential Election and its success endured in the pages of the News until his death in 1930. Always a political, yet down-home character, Abe Martin expressed his own “views” of key moments during World War I. In this blog, we will share with you some of Hubbard’s best Abe Martin cartoons during the war and how they represent the cartoonist’s own views of the conflict.

Indianapolis News, April 2, 1917. Hoosier State Chronicles.

First, here is some historical context. After the bombshell revelation of the Zimmerman Telegram on March 1, 1917, in which “German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann promise[d] the return of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico as reward for siding with Germany if the U.S. enters the war,” Americans increasingly became pro-war. Then, the breaking point occurred. Exactly a month later, a German U-boat torpedoed an American cargo ship, the S.S. Aztec, in British waters. The next day, April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a Joint Session of Congress, and called for action to make the world “safe for democracy” (we’ll come back to this phrase later). Wilson’s address likely inspired one of the earliest Abe Martin cartoons about America’s impending involvement in World War I. In the April 2, 1917 issue of the Indianapolis News, Hubbard’s Abe Martin quipped: “What’s become o’ the ole-fashioned patriotic citizen who used t’ say, ‘Well, I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my President jist th’ same’? Actions speak louder’n flags.” Hubbard, through Martin, is expressing an earnest, trusting patriotism that became a common theme for his cartoons during the war.

Indianapolis News, May 30, 1917. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Congress declared war on Germany four days after Wilson’s address. For the next two and half years, Hubbard’s Abe Martin routinely commented on the war and its influence on the home front. As an example, Hubbard promoted an essential war-time product in his columns, the Liberty Bond. Liberty Bonds were the brainchild of William G. McAdoo, President Wilson’s Secretary of the Treasury, and facilitated a revenue stream for the federal government to finance the war. Within his cartoons, Hubbard encouraged purchasing Liberty Bonds and connected them to patriotism. In a cartoon from May 30, 1917, Hubbard opined that “Talkin’ big an’ flyin’ a flag from your radiator cap won’t keep an army goin’. Buy a Liberty loan bond!” The very next day, the News ran an advertisement for Liberty Bonds, available for purchase from the Fletcher American National Bank, with Hubbard’s passionate call the day before. A year later, another mention of Liberty Bonds emerges in Hubbard’s column. “One o’ th’ best returns from a Liberty bond is an eased conscience,” declared the humorist through his down home alter-ego, Abe Martin.

Indianapolis News, June 1, 1917. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Hubbard also criticized what he saw as empty forms of patriotism through his Abe Martin cartoons. “Patriotism,” wrote the cartoonist, “that don’t git below th’ neckband, don’t help much t’ win th’ war.” Patriotism in wartime, in Hubbard’s eyes, also manifested itself through sacrifice. “It begins t’ look like we’d all have t’ wait till [former Secretary of State William Jennings] Bryan  is President before git our hair cut,” Hubbard penned. Bryan left his post at the State department in 1915 over objections with Wilson’s pro-British support in the Lusitania’s sinking. Conversely, Wilson’s response also led to growing antagonism toward Germany. Hubbard is implicitly saying that until a peace-candidate like Bryan won the presidency and the war came to a close, consumer luxuries like haircuts must be jettisoned. In another cartoon from May 2, 1917, Hubbard wrote that, “It begins t’ look like even th’ feller that kin whittle out a wooden chain will be made t’ feel th’ war.”

Indianapolis News, October 2, 1918. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Another target for Hubbard’s criticism in defense of patriotism was the “tightwad,” or someone not willing to sacrifice for the war effort. In an October 22, 1917 piece, Hubbard declared that, “Th’ attitude o’ th’ tightwad briefly stated is this: ‘Why should I help win th’ war when I didn’ start it?” This notion had been articulated in two earlier cartoons but without the “tightwad” moniker. “It hain’t goin’ t’ help us win th’ war if you eat as much as a panther downtown while your wife skimps at home,” and, “Ever’ once in a while we meet a feller that’s too proud t’ beg an’ too honest t’steal, an’ too lazy t’ work,” Hubbard wrote. His belief on this was clear; war is costly and the sacrifice of a citizenry is essential for the success of its cause. Therefore, it is up to a citizenry to make the right choices during a time of conflict and not become a “tightwad,” as Hubbard termed it.

Indianapolis News, October 22, 1917. Hoosier State Chronicles.

While liberty loans, patriotism, and sacrifice exemplified the home font, other developments were not as positive. During the war, a growing cadre of teachers, legislators, and citizens advocated against the teaching of German in Indianapolis public school system. This movement sought to undermine the culture of the state’s substantial German-American community. Many Hoosiers viewed German-Americans as disloyal, unpatriotic, or anti-American because of their ancestry, and their continued use of the German language. On May 3, 1918, Hubbard wryly commented on the situation via Abe Martin: “Now that they’ve taken German out o’ th’ schools let’s take Latin out of the seed catalogs,” mocking the taxonomic descriptions of plants. Despite his strong support for America during the war, Hubbard’s subtle critique of removing German language instruction from the schools showed his commitment to cultural diversity and his rejection the crass chauvinism of its opponents. For the benefit of .  By 1919, despite Hubbard and others’ criticism, Indiana legislators (led by future Governor Warren McCray) crafted and passed legislation that eliminated the teaching of German in all Indiana schools. As a result, German language instruction, with a few exceptions, disappeared from Indiana’s schools.

Indianapolis News, May 3, 1918. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Hubbard’s cartoons received national recognition from former Indiana governor, vice president, and jokester in his own right, Thomas Marshall. The News reported on December 19, 1917 that Marshall wrote to Hubbard and noted his precarious position as Vice President:

Dear Kin Hubbard—Not the least among your many admirable qualities is your memory of the needs of a Vice president [sic] to be cheered upon his lonely way. He is supposed not to talk, but the right chuckle is guaranteed to him. As a chucker in the laughter rib you never miss.

I thank God for you and for your friendship.

Indianapolis News, December 19, 1917. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Despite Marshall’s kind words, Hubbard nonetheless continued his appraisals of American involvement in the war with Abe Martin as his proxy. In an April 12 1918 cartoon, Hubbard wrote that “if the United States would jest wake up an’ take t’ th’ war like it t’ belted overcoats an’ high shoes we’d git on faster.” Another column from May 28, 1918 encouraged leaders to “wait till we win th’ war an’ we’ll all have a banquet.” That doesn’t mean he was unwilling to rhetorically rough up the enemy. A May 2, 1918 piece noted how “th’ only time th’ kaiser’s [sic] six sons ever git in th’ front line is when somebuddy comes along with a camera.”

Indianapolis News, December 14, 1918. Hoosier State Chronicles.

In the fall of 1918, Hubbard’s Abe Martin Publishing Company released a compendium of Abe Martin cartoons and musings under the title, On the War and Other Musings. Multiple ads for the book ran in the News, particularly during the holiday season. “Hundreds of Abe Martin’s inimitable paragraph’s touching on everything under the sun from sassafras to world peace,” read an ad from December 2, 1918. It was also fairly easy to purchase to book. For the low price of $1.06 ($15.71 in today’s dollars), readers could have their copy shipped to them as long as they were within 200 miles of Indianapolis. It’d be “return to sender” if the postage was farther.

Indianapolis News, January 22, 1919. Hoosier State Chronicles.

The last couple of relevant war musings came in 1919, when the peace negotiation process was underway. “Th’ travelin’ salesman out ‘o Germany after peace is signed ‘el have t’ be some salesman we’d say,” the January 22, 1919 cartoon opined. Another cartoon from May 14 sniped that “Germany reminds me o’ th’ feller that has t’ have a pair o’ shors, but won’t pay th’ price. . .” The final major cartoon from July 15, 1919, after Germany and allies signed the Treaty of Versailles, brought some levity and irony to the whole affair. “My how time flies! After th’ ratification o’ th’ peace treaty comes th’ state fair, an’ them kraut makin’. . . .”

Indianapolis News, July 15, 1919. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Kin Hubbard’s “Abe Martin” earned him the respect of his readers, political leaders, and the broader general public. His cartoons during World War I showed a commitment to his community, his country, and his craft. Hubbard, through Abe Martin, gave readers a Midwestern, “crackerbarrel” embodiment of the home front: rustic, altruistic, and patriotic. While certainly idealized, Hubbard’s art represented a commonplace, earnest notion of America during the war.

W. H. LaMaster: The Hoosier Iconoclast

The masthead of the Iconoclast, W. H. LaMaster’s freethought newspaper. Indiana Memory.

Indiana’s contribution to the “Golden Age of Freethought” during the late nineteenth century has been covered by previous blogs for the Indiana Historical Bureau; in particular, iconoclastic author Ambrose Bierce, the Vonnegut’s, and Robert Ingersoll and Lew Wallace’s “legendary train ride.” This blog covers another another Hoosier freethinker, W. H. LaMaster. His freethought newspaper, the Iconoclast, became a staple of Indianapolis thought through the 1880s and he continued his column writing until his death in 1908. LaMaster advocated for religious skepticism, scientific advancement, and was a staunch anti-temperance advocate. LaMaster, alongside notable freethinkers like Ambrose Bierce, Clemens Vonnegut, and Robert Ingersoll, helps us understand the rich religious diversity in the Midwest during the late nineteenth century.

Listing of W. H. LaMaster and his family, 1850 Census. Ancestry Library.

William Hammon LaMaster was born on February 14, 1841 in Shelbyville, Indiana, to Benjamin and Elizabeth LaMaster. His early life is mostly unknown to us, but we do know that he lived for a time in Missouri on the family farm, according to the US Census. From there, LaMaster served for the Union army during the Civil War, serving in the 89th Indiana Infantry and the 146th Indiana Infantry. After the war, he returned home to Shelbyville (and later Liberty), passed the bar exam, and began his law practice. As early as 1868, he was beginning to make a splash within Republican Party circles. As the Daily Ohio Statesman reported, LaMaster was a “rising young lawyer of that city [Shelbyville, Indiana], a gentleman and a scholar, and hitherto was the main hub in the Republican Party in that county. He was in the war, and bears honorable scars.” In 1868, he advertised his law practice in the Connersville Examiner, and described his credentials as “Attorney at Law, and Deputy Common Pleas Prosecutor. Will practice in the Courts of Union and Fayette Counties.”

Connersville Examiner, February 10, 1869. Newspaper Archive.

Also in 1868, LaMaster began writing a regular newspaper column writing for the Connersville Examiner called “Liberty Items.” In it he shared his thoughts on local happenings in Liberty Township, Union County, Indiana. In personal affairs, he married Harriet Reed on December 26, 1866, with the usual proceedings of a “Minister of Gospel,” as described on their marriage record. LaMaster’s iconoclastic views  had not yet bubbled to the surface, at least with regards to his nuptials.

Terre Haute Weekly Gazette, May 1, 1879. Hoosier State Chronicles.

From there, LaMaster’s story is unclear until the late 1870s, when his religious skepticism was in full force. While LaMaster’s evolution into a freethinker is of great importance, it is outside of the scope of this initial post. By May 1879, his public life as a freethinker was evident in a lecture entitled “The God of the Bible” that he delivered at Terre Haute’s Dowling Hall. The Terre Haute Weekly Gazette described, “From the way he states his subject something of an idea of his manner of treating it may be learned.” Unfortunately, research has yet to uncover the text of this lecture. However, an advertisement published in an 1884 issue of the Index suggests that it might have been akin to known-agnostic Robert Ingersoll’s critical lecture, Some Mistakes of Moses.

Index, October 2, 1884. Google Books.

Later that year, LaMaster published an investigative piece in the Indianapolis People critical of spiritualism and spirit mediums. LaMaster wrote:

Being a skeptic, so far as spiritualism is concerned in any form, whether manifested through ignorant mediums or otherwise, I must say that I saw nothing on my late experience among spirits in Terre Haute to convince me of the truth of modern spiritualism.

LaMaster’s expose criticized local mediums Anna Stewart, Laura Morgan, and the ever-popular Dr. Allen Pence, concluding rather jokingly that “in the future I shall try very hard to steer clear of the ‘loving and affectionate’ embraces, or even the touch, of such familiar creatures as ghosts.”

Indianapolis People, May 31, 1879. Newspaper Archive.

When LaMaster was not debunking spiritualism in Terre Haute, he was trying to debunk another popular notion during the period: temperance. The movement, which called for either the curtailing or elimination of alcohol consumption, gained steam during the late nineteenth century. LaMaster viewed the movement as he did most creeds—as an overzealous, dogmatic group who wanted to control people’s lives. He did not parse words when he wrote in the Indianapolis People that the first temperance lecturer was the Devil, who “taught a very remote grandmother of ours the art of using, in a very temperate manner, a certain kind of ‘fruit,’ to her ‘mental’ advantage, before any wicked distiller ever thought of solving the difficult problem, how to convert its juice into intoxicating beverages.” Now, it is important to clarify LaMaster’s personal view; while he supported any individual or personal efforts to be temperate with drink, he was opposed to using laws to move people in that direction, a distinction the Indianapolis News made sure to print.

Indianapolis News, June 16, 1879. Hoosier State Chronicles.

In the summer of 1879, LaMaster gave an anti-temperance lecture at Indianapolis’s Grand Opera House, where he criticized the “intemperance of temperance orators and temperance people.” He gave another anti-temperance lecture in Lebanon, Indiana in November, where a correspondent to the Indianapolis Journal of Freedom and Right criticized LaMaster’s “shot gun principle” of oratory. The critic concluded, “I would advise him to quit lecturing as it is certainly not his fort [sic].” Nevertheless, LaMaster continued to criticize temperance reforms and reformers in the press, specifically his problems with the 1895 Nicholson Law, which “provided that all persons applying for a license had to specifically describe the room in which he, she or they desired to sell liquors along with the exact location of the same.” LaMaster believed the law was not “in the interest of temperance” but was rather “a measure to increase liquor drinking and drunkenness in our state.”

“What Agnosticism Is?,” in the Improvement Era, December, 1898. Google Books.

While temperance was one of LaMaster’s political hobby horses, his dedication to freethought and secularism was his main contribution to the growing diversity of Indiana’s religious thought during the late nineteenth century. In an 1898 article for the Improvement Era, “What Agnosticism Is?,” LaMaster outlined his own view regarding theological matters. He wrote:

Agnosticism as an applied theory or doctrine may therefore be said to be one which neither asserts nor denies the existence of the infinite, the absolute. Or, it may be defined as a “theory of the unknowable which assumes its most definite form in the denial of the possibility of any knowledge of God.” And so the agnostic may be said to be one who does not claim or profess to know of the existence of a supreme being called God.

Biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. Known as “Darwin’s Bulldog,” Huxley was a early champion of evolutionary theory and coined the term, “agnosticism.” Getty Images.

Regarding agnosticism, LaMaster’s view mirrored the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (who coined the term) as well as the other titan of Midwestern freethought, Robert G. Ingersoll. Conversely, LaMaster’s agnosticism under-girded his poor estimation of Christianity, which he believed rested on a poor foundation of “faith.” He declared:

To state the proposition more tersely we will say that while Christianity is willing to rest on “faith” alone in arriving at any one or more objective religious truths, agnosticism demands something more—it demands evidence of the highest character before accepting as very truth any kind of a religious belief or dogma. Hence we find Christianity standing for a bare and empty faith and agnosticism for the strongest and the most indisputable of testimony. And so it must be admitted that as between the Christian and the agnostic there is an impassable gulf.

For LaMaster, the use of reason, in conjunction with evidence, provided a person with the clearest picture of the world and their place within it.

Seymour Times, August 20, 1881. Newspaper Archive.

LaMaster promulgated his ideas in a newspaper he planned in the fall of 1881 and began publishing in 1882, called the Iconoclast. First published in Noblesville, LaMaster later moved printing operations to Indianapolis. As the Seymour Times reported, “Mr. LaMaster is a bold and fearless writer, [and] infidelity right in our own midst even in its most unsavory forms to the tastes of Christians may be expected to be advocated by him.” LaMaster published his own essays as well as works from the “world renowned orator and noble defender of free thought and mental liberty, Col. R. G. Ingersoll.” During his time in the capital city, LaMaster undertook his most enduring publishing effort, at least in regards to historical scholarship. He published a series of answers that Ingersoll had given to four Indianapolis clergy on matters concerning the historical accuracy of Jesus’s life, the beginnings of the universe, and pertinent moral questions. LaMaster subsequently printed Ingersoll’s Answers to Indianapolis Clergy as a pamphlet form in 1893. Another notable freethought newspaper, the Truth Seeker, reprinted the essays in 1896.

Ingersoll’s answers to Indianapolis Clergy, as published by W. H. LaMaster, 1893. Indiana State University.

In the introduction to the 1893 version, LaMaster further explained his worldview and the impetus for publishing Ingersoll’s answers. He wrote:

It is for the good and well-being of the whole people that a natural religion should take the place of a supernatural one. With the imaginary or idealistic, progressive thought can have nothing to do, since it is the real, and not the ideal, that men and women should crave to find. The world is in need of a religion of humanity—one of philosophy and good deeds—and not one of creeds.

A lithograph of Robert Ingersoll, Iconoclast, March 10, 1883. Indiana Memory.

The idea of a “religion of humanity” recalls the proto-humanistic philosophy of Auguste Comte, who argued for a natural religion based on altruistic impulses and mutual affection among individuals without the need for supernaturalism. LaMaster also published with these letters an essay that he likely prepared for the International Congress of Freethinkers in Chicago entitled, “The Genesis of Life.” In it, he argued for a naturalistic explanation for life on earth, noting that “whilst there may be no particular source of life in the universe, there is always to be found a general or universal one from which it may emanate and become an active, moving, and expressive energy in organic nature.”

Mind & Matter, April 22, 1882. IAPSOP.

His years publishing the Iconoclast were difficult, especially in a city like Indianapolis, where its community of freethought was “without organization,” according to the Index. “With the Iconoclast,” wrote B. F. Underwood in the same paper, “existence is yet a struggle, as it necessarily is with all young liberal journals.” Despite its success with Ingersoll’s Answers to Indianapolis Clergy, the Iconoclast ceased publication in 1886.

Over the next 20 years, LaMaster continued writing and publishing a variety of essays and pamphlets, both in journals and newspapers. In 1896, he published, “The Growth and Magnitude of the Sidereal Heavens,” in Popular Astronomy, where he speculated on the existence of extraterrestrial life. “Let us then, in our magnanimity,” declared LaMaster, “rise above the compass of our human selfishness and allow our minds to be inspired with the thought that there are other worlds than ours in the starry vaults of heaven, which are the abode of even more sentient beings than ourselves.” These ideas would be echoed nearly a century later by astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan, in his television series, Cosmos.

“How Do We Think,” Improvement Era, June, 1898. Internet Archive.

In another piece, “How Do We Think?,” LaMaster speculates on the interaction of language and human minds, and whether language is necessary for human thought. LaMaster mused:

If it be true, then, that mind is one of the endowments of matter, even in its organized forms, and one of its functions is that of thinking, it cannot be denied that it will think independently of words actually spoken or disguised . . . . Words themselves presuppose some kind of thought; in fact, words are the natural and legitimate offspring of thought.

Again, LaMaster was extremely prescient about this point. The hypothesis that thought comes before language and that our brains are hard-wired for language has been buttressed by cognitive scientists like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Despite his training as an attorney, it is evident that LaMaster was a man whose interest in ideas, particularly of the sciences, was particularly well-rounded, especially for the nineteenth century.

Indianapolis News, February 26, 1895. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, he continued writing newspaper columns, including authoring pieces for the Indianapolis News . In one article from February 26, 1895, he wrote about the enduring legacy of American revolutionary and freethinker Thomas Paine. In one of his final columns, written for the August 16, 1907 issue of the Indianapolis Star, LaMaster shared his thoughts about the human soul:

The soul per se, unlike other forms of matter, can have neither growth nor decay. It having therefore its own eternal place and fixity in the universe, it can be neither born nor can it die. And whatever then may be its form or shape it possesses potential being, and one, too, of the highest order.

This nascent spiritualism should not be taken to mean that he had changed his mind. Rather, LaMaster believed that the “soul” was likely an emergent property of humanity’s natural place in the universe.

Indianapolis News, July 31, 1908. Newspapers.com.

In 1906, he and his family moved to Westphalia, Knox County, Indiana, away from the hustle of Indianapolis, where he continued his intellectual pursuits until the end. LaMaster died on July 28, 1908, at the age of 67. In his obituary from the Indianapolis News, he was described as a “frequent contributor to the Indianapolis News and other Indianapolis newspapers,” and was a “vigorous writer.” In that last remark, they were certainly correct. In his lifetime, LaMaster had written for numerous newspapers, journals, and pamphlets on a wide-range of topics. His newspaper, the Iconoclast, helped to cement a growing freethought community in Indianapolis. His speculations on science are still noteworthy today. In this regard, LaMaster was a classic, nineteenth century “polymath.” In his explorations and religious unorthodoxy, LaMaster contributed much to our understanding of freethought in the Midwest during the late nineteenth century.

W. H. LaMaster’s death certificate, 1908. Ancestry Library.

“The Saloon Must Go:” Fred Rohrer, the Berne Witness and the Fight for Temperance in Berne, Indiana

Fred Rohrer, unknown date, located in the Thirtieth Anniversary Souvenir Edition of the Witness,1926, accessed Indiana Memory.

On December 24, 1903, an article from a Kentucky-based newspaper known as The Bee highlighted the following: “Not daunted by the fact that his house was blown up by dynamite, by being assaulted twice and severely beaten, nor by an attempt to made to lynch him, Fred Rohrer, editor of the Berne Witness, declares that he will continue his relentless war upon the saloon element of the town.”[1] That year had proved to be a defining moment for both Rohrer and the City of Berne. With the help of the Berne Witness, Rohrer tied Berne to the Temperance Movement, and helped put Indiana on the national map to Prohibition.

Religion and the Rise of Temperance

In the early nineteenth century, Indiana and other states across the Midwest saw the arrival of Mennonites, who traveled from northeast Switzerland, and Germany. Their religious beliefs stemmed from the Anabaptist Movement of the sixteenth century and encompassed a range of practices, such as “believer’s baptism, the separation of church and state, personal nonviolence, a rejection of church hierarchy and the refusal to take an oath.”[2] A range of societal changes influenced their exodus from the homeland, such as the Napoleonic Wars, poor harvests, and mandatory military service. As more Mennonite families experienced a world of religious and social freedom on America’s frontier, extended kin soon followed.[3] The network of chain migration resulted in the creation of small, German speaking settlements across the Midwest landscape, as Swiss Mennonites made the U.S. their new home.

Interior of Mennonite Church in Berne, courtesy of the Thirtieth Anniversary Souvenir Edition of the Witness,1926, accessed Indiana Memory.

This was the case for sixteen-year-old Fred Rohrer, who emigrated from Berne, Switzerland to Sonneberg, Ohio, in the spring in 1883 with his parents and thirteen siblings. Three years later, the Rohrer family made their way to the newly incorporated town of Berne, Indiana, named after their original hometown. They arrived at a pivotal time in the town’s history. Rumblings of the Temperance Movement gripped the city leaders within the freshly established city, as the Mennonite population dealt with Berne’s growth. Historian John Eicher explains that during the late nineteenth century, the Temperance Movement began to influence religious and political identities of the United States and inspired the many secular organizations to link alcohol consumption to moral and economic problems that faced the U.S. landscape.[4] Methodist groups served as the bedrock of early temperance activism, and soon more religious groups followed, with the first major temperance group in Indiana appearing in 1826 with the formation of the American Temperance Society. However, it was not until 1828 that activism surrounding temperance intensified in Indiana.[5] Between 1830 and 1850, temperance organizers helped pass nearly 125 laws throughout the state that bolstered temperance by regulating liquor prices and amount sold.

Eicher explains that beliefs of piety, self-restraint, and morality connected Mennonites to the Temperance Movement. Drunkenness coincided with sex work and gambling – all sins originating in the saloon.[6] Rohrer was quick to join the fight against liquor consumption. After purchasing an old Washington hand press and equipment from the Decatur Press and Decatur Democrat offices, Rohrer established the Berne Witness in 1896, publishing its first issue on September 3. Recognized as a Temperance paper, the Berne Witness began as a weekly newspaper that by the turn of the century had a circulation of about 700. At the time, the city had a population of approximately 1,037 individuals.[7] That same year, Rohrer incorporated a supplement to the Witness in the German language, reflecting the steady growth of the Mennonite population.  Berne’s status as a respected Hoosier town was emerging – but in 1902, the discovery of oil just a few miles outside of Berne’s city limits threatened the population’s solitude. Transient single, working-class male workers, alongside prominent oil men seeking a fortune, flooded the local population. As a result, concerns over vice-related activities, like drinking, gambling, and sex work, skyrocketed.[8] Many prominent leaders believed this was the perfect opportunity to enforce liquor laws before the town became any bigger.

Image courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.

As a leading supporter of Prohibition, as well as an active voice within the Christian Temperance Society of Berne (CTSB), Rohrer’s role in establishing the city as a dry town is highlighted in the Berne Witness. Tales of his protests, his success and failures, and his dedication to upholding his religious beliefs are spread across nearly twenty years of publications. His influence in the CTSB allowed Rohrer to use his paper to establish a fluid connection between Temperance activists and the larger community. Rohrer and the Witness played a crucial role in turning Berne into a dry town. It frequently reported updates on local Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s meetings, alongside changes in Indiana’s liquor laws and liquor license requirements. More importantly, the Berne Witness became a weapon that enabled Rohrer to call out local authorities and saloon owners for their illegal activities. As his paper grew in popularity and readership, Rohrer became a local legend – but his fame also made himself the main target for retaliation.

Rohrer’s Fight

In September of 1902, Rohrer met with several other men met to discuss the “enforcement of the local option provision” brought on by the Nicholson Law.[9] The law required a two-year waiting period between liquor license applications and its issuance. Additionally, the law allowed for remonstrances – or public votes and petitions – for the denial of any liquor license.[10] The CTSB was quick to form petitions against every saloon in Berne. Rohrer, also a member of Indiana’s Anti-Saloon League, commented on the remonstrance’s in the Witness in 1902, saying that Christian patriotic forces in Indiana were attempting to solve the saloon question by eradicating saloons all together. “The saloon must go,” he wrote, “Remonstrances have been circulated and a great majority of the names of voters have been secured.”[11] Initially, these remonstrances were successful. The Witness reported on December 5 that two saloons – one owned by Jacob Brennaman and the other by Jacob Hunsicker – officially closed, with another to cease in March of 1903.[12]

However, the celebration of these closures did not come without complaint from others. Though the Berne Witness gave him unfettered access to disseminating his opinion, it also opened the door to immense retaliation by saloon owners and liquor drinkers. And, by the start of the new year of 1903, tensions escalated between saloon owners and Rohrer.  Early in January, Rohrer posted a notice on the front page of the Witness, incentivizing the community to report liquor violations and sign their public petitions:

Opponents to the remonstrance often said that there would be more liquor sold in Berne if licenses were refused than if said license were granted. To assist in demonstrating the matter, $100.00 has been deposited with the undersigned to be used as follows: $10.00 to be paid for the first, $15.00 for the second, and $25.00 for the third conviction of any one party by the Adams Circuit County. Money to be paid by the undersigned to such parties that file the complaint.[13]

Monetary incentives, however, failed and remonstrances were ignored. The board of commissioners approved liquor licenses for several men across town, directly violating the Nicholson Law. The CTSB complained but were forced to take their grievances to the circuit court.[14]

Rohrer spent the summer of 1903 biking ten miles to Decatur daily to bring Berne locals remonstrances to the circuit court. As early as March, the Decatur Democrat reported on Fred Rohrer’s appearance in Decatur on “temperance and saloon business.”[15] On June 4, the Democrat claimed that the City of Berne, despite protests, was still “wet,” as the commissioners court granted a license to John Reineker to operate a saloon in town. Rohrer’s remonstrance against Reineker had been declared insufficient due to his lack of attorney.[16] A month later, the Democrat claimed that Rohrer was still busy in the auditor’s office, where he filed remonstrances containing 396 local signatures “against the granting of license to sell liquors to J. M. Ersham, William Sheets and Sammuel L. Kuntz.”[17]

Berne Witness staff,1906, courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.

Tensions between Rohrer, Berne’s saloon owners and local anti-Temperance supporters peaked by September. After midnight on September 10th, Rohrer’s wife, Emma, awoke to a scratching noise coming from the first floor of the house. After investigating and finding nothing out of the ordinary, she returned to bed. Twenty minutes later, Rohrer awoke to two heavy explosions in his home. As Rohrer and his family slept on the second floor, someone slipped one stick of dynamite through a downstairs window and another under his front porch. The explosions destroyed half of his home. Rohrer described the wreckage in the Berne Witness a few days later:

We looked out the windows in the kitchen and dining room and then came into the sitting room, just beneath the bed room we were all sleeping in. The moon was shining in through a large hole in the wall where the front door used to be, and through two other large holes where windows were missing. A few shreds of the curtains left hanging from the top were wafted in by the south wind and made a spectral noise and together with the debris of broken pieces of glass and dishes and furniture lying topsy-turvy gave the room a ghastly appearance.[18]

Local carpenters were quick to get to work on repairing Rohrer’s home the following morning. News of the attack spread across the Midwest, with articles regarding the murder attempt appearing in the Indianapolis News, the Kentucky Post, and even the Salt Lake Herald.[19] But many, especially Rohrer, were not surprised. He wrote in the Berne Witness, “As had been stated in Friday’s issue and in other papers, the attack was not unexpected to us…Every night as we went to bed last week I told my wife to be prepared for almost anything.”[20] It was later reported that the special grand jury tasked with investigating the incident failed to bring any indictments in the case, and no one was charged.[21]

Rohrer’s home, courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.

Women within the CTSB began surveilling Rohrer’s home shortly after the attack. The Plymouth Tribune reported that five women, armed with their husbands’ revolvers, kept guard to ensure that Rohrer could rest peacefully. In fact, their continued support encouraged him to move forward. On September 11, the morning after the bombing, Rohrer biked back to Decatur to approach the commissioners’ court with a remonstrance against Joseph Hocker, a Monroe resident who was seeking to apply for a liquor license in Berne. The Berne Witness stated that Rohrer also brought thirty-three cases of law violations to a grand jury against Berne saloonkeepers, claiming that the attack on his house was “very naturally connected” with the saloon fight in town. A grand jury convened and handed down six indictments and saloonkeepers had to pay a minimum fine, As a result, on November 18, sixty suspected patrons of Berne’s saloons received subpoenas to appear before the court to testify. [22]

“Only Women Guard at Night,” The Plymouth Tribune, October 1, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Enraged by the indictment, a mob against Rohrer formed on November 19. Resident Louis Sprunger approached Rohrer in the Berne Witness offices, challenging him to a fight out on the street, which Rohrer refused. Later that evening, Sprunger followed him into the post office, and Sprunger attacked him. Two female workers came to Rohrer’s defense, tackling Sprunger and forcing the man to leave. After retreating to the safety of the Witness offices, the president of the town council, Abe Boegly, attempted to drag Rohrer out but failed to get him on the street. Instead, Boegly decided to give Rohrer a “beating” until the local marshal arrived at the scene to break up the fight. As Rohrer was taken to safety, a mob – consisting of saloonkeepers and other locals – gathered outside of the Witness offices to determine the extent of Boegly’s assault.[23]

The Indianapolis News covered the incident and stated that Rohrer was advised by the local sheriff to temporarily leave Berne out of fear of more violence. He found asylum in Decatur, where he released a statement that he “proposes to continue the fight against the saloon until his enemies kill him.” Rohrer did not return home until a week later, and on December 4, the Kansas Prohibitionist reported that Rohrer began arming his home and offices with revolvers and shotguns. His wife, who refused to leave her husband’s side, began practicing with the weapons to protect the home. The increased violence in the town, however, forced saloonkeepers to come to a compromise with Rohrer and the CTSB. On December 18, the Berne Witness reported that John Reineke, J. M. Ehrsam and Samuel L. Kuntz offered a compromise – the saloonkeepers would go out of business on April 1 of 1904, provided they were dismissed on paying the costs of their current indictment charges.[24]

Image courtesy of the Tenth anniversary souvenir edition: The Berne Witness, accessed Indiana Memory.

As concessions were deliberated, Rohrer released another statement on Christmas Eve, declaring that he would not concede despite his friends fearing that he would be murdered. It was clear that Rohrer would not back down, no matter how much violence saloonkeepers and liquor supporters inflicted on him. On December 29, the Indianapolis Journal reported that “after one of the bitterest anti-saloon battles in the history of the State,” saloon owners Reineke, Ehrsam, and Kuntz agreed to close their doors on the grounds that within a few days Rohrer would drop his cases against the men regarding various liquor violations.[25] As the City of Berne approached the new year, it seemed that the liquor fight was finally coming a peaceful end.

Moving Forward – Rohrer’s Legacy

Ultimately, 1903 proved to be the most defining year for Rohrer’s activism and for the City of Berne. Over the next three years, Rohrer and the Witness reported the continued forced closures of Berne’s saloons and liquor law violators. However, the election of Governor James Franklin Hanly – a staunch supporter of Prohibition – in 1904 brought an end to the violence that accompanied Rohrer’s fight. Governor Hanly’s involvement in the Temperance Movement solidified the ban of alcohol at the highest political level with the Moore Amendment, which enacted a county option law regarding the ban of alcoholic beverages.[26] The liquor fight officially ended in 1907, when the city rejoiced over the last quantities of alcohol being carried into the street and drained. Berne was officially a dry town and remained that way until the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1932.[27]

* The Berne Witness will soon be digitized and incorporated into the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America database and IHB’s own Hoosier State Chronicles, to give historians the chance to explore Hoosier grassroots efforts within the Temperance Movement and Prohibition.

Notes:

[1] “Indiana Editor, Takes His Life in His Hands,” The Bee, December 24, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com.

[2] John Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty’ Piety, Politics, and Temperance in Berne, Indiana, 1886 – 1907,” Indiana Magazine of History 107, no. 1 (2011):  4, accessed https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/12591/18853.

[3]  Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 5.

[4] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 10.

[5] Charles E. Canup, “The Temperance Movement in Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History, 16 no. 1 (1920): 13, accessed https://www.jstor.org/stable/27785940.

[6] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 11-13.

[7] U.S. Census Bureau, “Indiana City/Town Census Counts, 1900 to 2020,” City and Town Census Counts: STATS Indiana, accessed https://www.stats.indiana.edu/population/PopTotals/historic_counts_cities.asp. According to the 2020 Census, the population of Berne is just above 4,000 people.

[8] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 2; Learn more about the connection between vice and industrialization with our post about the effects of the Gas Boom in Muncie, Indiana.

[9] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 21; In 1895, the Nicholson Law was passed in Indiana. This law states that the majority of voters in townships and cities can halt the approval for liquor licenses issued to any applicant. See the Indiana Historical Society’s Temperance and Prohibition Time Line for more information on Indiana legislation regarding Temperance.

[10] Jane Hedeen, “The Road to Prohibition,” Indiana Historical Society, 2011, p. 3, accessed 1d7d71dfbb39529a736fdba5279a5ba9.pdf (indianahistory.org).

[11] “War on Saloons,” The Berne Witness, November 11, 1902; In this context, a “remonstrance” refers to a forceful protest, expression of complaint, or formal statement of grievance.

[12] “The Liquor Fight,” The Berne Witness, December 5, 1902; “War on Saloons,” The Berne Witness, November 11, 1902.

[13] “Liquor Being Sold Illegally in Berne?,” The Berne Witness, January 20, 1903; For reference, $100.00 is equivalent to about $3,549.23 today.

[14] Eicher, “’Our Christan Duty,’” 24.

[15] Decatur Democrat, March, 5, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[16] Decatur Democrat, June 4, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[17] Decatur Democrat, July 9, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[18] “God Saved,” The Berne Witness, September 15, 1903.

[19] “Two Explosions Under Residence,” The Indianapolis News, September 10, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Dynamited,” The Kentucky Post, September 11, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Dynamite Outrage,” The Salt Lake Herald, September 11, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[20] “God Saved,” The Berne Witness, September 15, 1903.

[21] “Failed to Indict,” Daily News-Democrat, September 30, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[22] “Only Women Guard at Night,” The Plymouth Tribune, October 1, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “F. Rohrer’s Home Dynamited,” The Berne Witness, September 11, 1903; Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 26.

[23] “Editor Rohrer Brutally Assaulted,” The Berne Witness, November 20, 1903.

[24] “Editor Rohrer in Peril from Mob at Berne,” The Indianapolis News, November 19, 1903, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Fred Rohrer Again,” The Kansas Prohibitionist, December 4, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com; “Saloon Keepers Offer Terms,” The Berne Witness, December 18, 1903.

[25] “Indiana Editor, Takes His Life in His Hands,” The Bee, December 24, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com; “Editor Fred Rohrer Wins a Long Fight,” The Indianapolis Journal, December 29, 1903, accessed Newspapers.com.

[26] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 28; Stacey Nicholas, “J. Frank Hanly,” Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, accessed J. Frank Hanly – indyencyclopedia.org.

[27] Eicher, “’Our Christian Duty,’” 17, 29.

Art and Controversy: Thomas Hart Benton, Herman B Wells, and the Indiana Murals

Content Note: This video reproduces a panel of art depicting the Ku Klux Klan. It appears at 10:55 in the video and continues to 11:55. Viewer discretion is advised.

Thomas Hart Benton, one of America’s premier artists during the twentieth century, painted series of murals about Indiana for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. A controversial collection of artworks, the Indiana Murals engaged viewers in a dialogue about Indiana’s complex history—a dialogue that continues to this day. The murals stayed in storage of the Indiana State Fairgrounds until someone believed they deserved a new home. That someone was Herman B Wells, the newly elected president of Indiana University.

Learn more Indiana History from the IHB: http://www.in.gov/history/

Search historic newspaper pages at Hoosier State Chronicles: www.hoosierstatechronicles.org

Visit our Blog: https://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/

Visit Chronicling America to read more first drafts of history: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

Learn more about the history relevance campaign at https://www.historyrelevance.com/.

Please comment, like, and subscribe!

Credits:

Written and produced by Justin Clark. 

Music: “Fresno Alley” by Josh Lippi & The Overtimers, “Lazy Boy Blues” by Unicorn Heads, “Progressive Moments” by Ugonna Onyekwe, “Creeping Spiders” by Nat Keefe & BeatMower, and “Plenty Step” by Freedom Trail Studio

Continue reading “Art and Controversy: Thomas Hart Benton, Herman B Wells, and the Indiana Murals”

“Oh Boy! She’s Coming to Richmond”: Mamie Smith Brings the “Crazy Blues,” 1921

talking-machine-jan-1921
The Talking Machine World, January 15, 1921, 27, accessed archive.org.

Historians of blues music and folk culture consider Mamie Smith to be the first African American woman to record blues vocals.  In 1921, only a year after this historic recording, Smith performed to sold-out crowds in Indiana.  Newspapers covered the release of Smith’s records and her Indiana performances extensively. We were interested especially in a spring 1921 performance by this African-American star in Richmond, Indiana, a Ku Klux Klan stronghold at the time.

Before 1920, African American entertainer Mamie Smith, who was born in Cincinnati,  worked in Harlem as a chorus girl and cabaret singer. Here she met the black pianist, singer, and composer Perry Bradford who had found success in theater and minstrel circuits in New York.  Bradford, who was interested in preserving African-American musical traditions in recordings, convinced Fred Hager, recording director of the obscure label OKeh Records to take a chance on recording Mamie Smith.  Bradford convinced Hager that African American music lovers were an untapped market and that “they will buy records if recorded by one of their own, because we are the only folks that can sing and interpret hot jazz songs just off the griddle correctly.”

"A studio headshot portrait of American blues singer Mamie Smith," photograph, circa, 1923, Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images accessed "Mamie Smith and the Birth of the Blues Market," All Things Considered, NPR, http://www.npr.org/2006/11/11/6473116/mamie-smith-and-the-birth-of-the-blues-market
“A studio headshot portrait of American blues singer Mamie Smith,” photograph, circa, 1923, Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images accessed “Mamie Smith and the Birth of the Blues Market,” All Things Considered, NPR.

In February 1920, Smith recorded “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” for OKeh Records. Blues music historians consider this to be the first blues recording by an African American woman. Record producer Hager received boycott threats if he recorded Smith or any other African American singer. In the face of the controversy, Bradford convinced Hager to continue backing Smith, as opposed to the white singer Sophie Tucker, who Hager was alternatively considering.  Bradford recalled:

Mr. Hager got a far-off look in his eyes and seemed somewhat worried, because of the many threatening letters he had received from some Northern and Southern pressure groups warning him not to have any truck with colored girls in the recording field. If he did, OKeh Products – phonograph machines and records – would be boycotted. May God bless Mr. Hager, for despite the many threats, it took a man with plenty of nerves and guts to buck those powerful groups and make the historical decision which would echo aroun’ the world. He pried open that old ‘prejudiced door’ for the first colored girl, Mamie Smith, so she could squeeze into the large horn – and shout with her strong contralto voice.

Smith recorded another set of songs penned by Bradford for Okeh in August of 1920. The track “Crazy Blues” became massively popular and in less than a year the record sold over a million copies. According to long-time music writer Jas Obercht, Smith’s “Crazy Blues” “could be heard coming from the open windows of virtually any black neighborhood in America.” Okeh Records called it “a surprise smash hit.” According to New Orleans jazz musician Danny Barker:

There was a great appeal amongst black people and whites who loved this blues business to buy records and buy phonographs.  Every family had a phonograph in their house, specifically behind Mamie Smith’s first record.

Image of "Crazy Blues" on OKey Records accessed: Jas Obrecht, "Mamie Smith: The First Lady of the Blues," http://jasobrecht.com/mamie-smith-the-first-lady-of-the-blues/
Image of “Crazy Blues” on OKey Records accessed: Jas Obrecht, “Mamie Smith: The First Lady of the Blues,”

This was certainly true in Indiana.

Indiana newspapers ran ads for Mamie Smith’s records not long after the release of “Crazy Blues.”  Often the ads for Smith’s records were also attempts to sell phonographs as Barker mentioned in the above quote. A downtown Indianapolis music store ran this advertisement in the Indianapolis News in November:

Indianapolis News, November 30, 1920, 16, Hoosier State Chronicles
Indianapolis News, November 30, 1920, 16, Hoosier State Chronicles.

The C. W. Copp Music Shop ran an advertisement in the South Bend News-Times in December for the hit “Crazy Blues,” but also let an interested public know that they stocked other Mamie Smith records. Hoosier interest in Smith’s records continued into the new year.  In March of 1921, the same South Bend music shop ran several advertisements for five new Smith records and the Hammond Times ran an advertisement for Okeh Records releases, featuring Smith, and to sell listeners the phonograph  to play them on:

Hammond Times, March 4, 1921, 5, Hoosier State Chronicles
Hammond Times, March 4, 1921, 5, Hoosier State Chronicles.

According to Obrecht, Mamie Smith recorded 22 songs this year and “between sessions, she kept a grueling schedule of concert appearances.” The Talking Machine World magazine reported that Smith and a revue of entertainers were going to perform in all the major U.S. cities. By April 1921, many Hoosier music fans were familiar with Mamie Smith, as we can see from the newspaper ads.  So when the news broke that she was booked to play in Indiana, the coverage continued almost daily until the performance.

According to the Talking Machine World she performed in Indianapolis and Evansville on this tour, but a search of Hoosier State Chronicles and our recent work to digitize the Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram shows that she also performed to sold out crowds in Richmond and South Bend. This is especially interesting considering 1920s Richmond was only about 5% African American, while perhaps as many as 45% of white males belonged at some point to Whitewater Klan #60, an active chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. We wondered, what brought Smith to Richmond and how was she received?

The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram ran a notice of Smith’s Saturday, April 23, 1921 performance at the Coliseum for weeks before the date.  Here are some great examples:

Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921, 7.
Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.

And:

Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 19, 1921, 7.
Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 19, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.

On April 21, 1921 alone there were three ads for Smith’s upcoming performance and records, including this extensive listing of popular songs:

Richmond Palladium and Sun Telegram, April 21, 1921, 3.
Richmond Palladium and Sun Telegram, April 21, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.
"Famous Colored Star Sings Here Saturday," Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921. 9
“Famous Colored Star Sings Here Saturday,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Advertisements were not the only coverage of Smith’s upcoming appearance in Richmond. On April 18, 1921 the Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram reported on the “forthcoming appearance here of Mamie Smith, the popular phonograph star of the colored race, and her All-Star Jazz Revue next Saturday night at the Coliseum,” and called it “the greatest jazz concert that has ever been sent on tour.” The newspaper called Smith “a phonograph star of the first rank” and claimed that she “has done more than any other singer perhaps in America to popularize the genuine ‘blues’ song of the day.” The writer continued to laud Smith for her ability to make songs into “living, potent things charged with a pulsing and individual rhythm.” The paper reported that the popularity of her record had made Richmond residents excited to see her perform live and that they were expecting a “sold-out house when she reaches this city.”

Jazz Revue Seats On Sale Wednesday," Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921, 4.
Jazz Revue Seats On Sale Wednesday,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 18, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Perhaps the most interesting article in the Palladium was the one that appeared the following day, April 19, and covered not Smith but the revue company traveling with her. Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds were the headlining, crowd-drawing act, but her tour included other acts as well: dancers, vaudevillian comedians, and minstrel performers. The appearance of a newly-minted  blues and jazz star on the same stage as the historically popular minstrel performers marks and intersection of trends in African American music and performance history. While minstrel performers had both conformed to stereotypes out of employment necessity and defied them through their self-presentation (learn more), Mamie Smith’s rise to stardom ushered in a new era of music divas who presented themselves as upper class, educated, rich, and demanding of respect.

Obrecht writes:

While blues music had been performed in the American South since the very beginning of the twentieth century, no one had made recordings of it before, largely due to racism and the assumption that African-Americans couldn’t – or wouldn’t – buy record players or 78s. “Crazy Blues” changed all that, sparking a mad scramble among record execs to record blues divas. The stars they promoted in this short-lived era of “classic blues” were not the down-home country singers who’d record later in the Roaring Twenties, but the glittering, glamorous, and savvy veterans of tent shows, minstrel troupes, and the vaudeville stage. These mavericks defied stereotypes…

"Colored Star Wears Exprensive Creations," Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram, April 22, 1921, 11.
“Colored Star Wears Exprensive Creations,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 22, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.

As if in response to this very idea, on April 22 the Palladium followed the coverage of the revue with an article detailing the glamorous appearance and presentation of Smith. The newspaper stated that through her record royalties “the popular young colored star is enabled to indulge her fancy in the latest creations both from Paris and New York, and in each city in which she has appeared a gasp of astonishment has greeted her every appearance, for her gowns are described as riots of color and beauty.”

In a telling sentence, the article called Smith “one of the most gorgeously dressed stars of the musical comedy world.”  This notes both the respect for her appearance and success and a misunderstanding of her role in music history.  While African American music fans were connecting to Smith’s sincere and authentic portrayal of the blues music that they grew up with, this white Midwestern newspaper still saw her as part of the vaudeville and perhaps even minstrel genres — understandably perhaps since it was marketed as such.  While Smith had come from such a tradition, through her work with the blues and and jazz performers she had transcended her past.  Black newspapers understood her importance much earlier than white newspapers.  On March 13, 1920, the Chicago Defender wrote:

Well, you’ve all heard the famous stars of the white race chirping their stuff on the different makes of phonograph records . . . but we have never – up to now – been able to hear one of our own ladies deliver the canned goods. Now we have the pleasure of being able to say that at last they have recognized the fact that we are here for their service; the OKeh Phonograph Company has initiated the idea by engaging the handsome, popular and capable vocalist, Mamie Gardner Smith.

Similarly, the African American gospel, jazz, and blues music Thomas A. Dorsey explained, “Colored singing and playing artists are riding to fame and fortune with the current popular demand for ‘blues’ disk recordings and because of the recognized fact that only a Negro can do justice to the native indigo ditties such artists are in demand.”

There were African American audience members at the Richmond performance, who likely had a better understanding of the significance of Smith’s success.  The Richmond Palladium Sun-Telegram reported: “The best seats are selling fast from the plat at Weisbrod Music company as white and colored folk alike are wager to see and hear the ‘Queen of the Blues,’ a capacity house is predicted for Saturday night.”

Unfortunately, there are no extant issues of the historic African American newspaper the Indianapolis Recorder for this period. It would be interesting to explore the differences in the coverage of Smith’s performances between a white and black newspaper and perhaps this could be accomplished using the Chicago Defender, but is outside the scope of this post.

As expected, Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds sold-out the Richmond Coliseum, which held 2,500 people, for the April 23, 1921 performance.  The next year, the KKK also sold-out the same venue.  The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram reported on December 12, 1922 that a crowd awaiting a Klan rally “taxed the space at the Coliseum waiting for the ceremonies quite a long time before the Klansmen finally arrived.”  So how was the white population of Richmond able to enjoy an African American musician one year and then attend a Klan rally the next?

While this contradiction may seem surprising, there was (and some argue still is) a tendency for white Americans to de-contextualize African American music from African American culture.  That is, the white residents of Richmond were able to appreciate black music while continuing to oppress black people.  There has been much written on this topic (two good places to start are Imamu Amiri Baraka‘s The Music: reflections on Jazz and Blues and Perry Hall’s “African American Music: Dynamics of Appropriation and Innovation“) and an extensive analysis of Smith’s career through this lens is outside the scope of this post.  However, advertisements continued after her performance, from which we can draw that she was a hit regardless of why.  Notice the advertisement claims that there was “a capacity audience.”

Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 25, 1921, 5
Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, April 25, 1921. Hoosier State Chronicles.

While we were unable to find an article reviewing the Richmond performance or the crowd’s reception, it likely went well because she returned to Indiana the next month.  On May 31, 1921, she performed to another capacity crowd at the Oliver Theater in South Bend.  The South Bend News-Times covered her performance in much the same manner as the Richmond Palladium.  The paper noted in various articles, her fame, her genius, and her status as “the first colored girl artist to attain world-wide fame as a singer and phonograph record star.”

Mamie Smith’s importance to music history is hard to overstate, according to a story on NPR’s All Things Considered for which famed activist Angela Davis (now a professor at University of California/Santa Cruz ) was interviewed.  Davis summed up Smith’s importance succinctly:

“The recording of ‘Crazy Blues’ led the way for the professionalization of black music, for the black entertainment industry, and indeed for the immense popularity of black music today.”

Search Hoosier State Chronicles for yourself to find more on Mamie Smith in Indiana. For more on Mamie Smith’s long career see Jas Orbrecht’s well-researched article, “Mamie Smith: The First Lady of the Blues.”

“The Best of the Season:” Mark Twain’s Indiana Lectures

"America's Best Humorist," Mark Twain. Lithograph by Joseph F. Keppler, 1885. Library of Congress.
“America’s Best Humorist,” Mark Twain. Lithograph by Joseph F. Keppler, 1885. Library of Congress.

From James Whitcomb Riley to Kurt Vonnegut, Indiana is well-known for its literary heritage. This heritage developed, in-part, through personal appearances, where authors read from their works and shared new material with audiences. Of the lecturers, one of the most successful during the Gilded Age was Mark Twain. Born in Missouri as Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain became one of the late-19th century’s most popular and acclaimed authors. Alongside his successful career as a novelist and cultural critic, Twain crisscrossed the country, regaling packed theaters with stories, readings from new written material, and plain-old good jokes.

Map highlighting Mark Twain's lectures in the Midwest. Mark Twain Project.
Map highlighting Mark Twain’s lectures in the Midwest. Mark Twain Project.

One of his first visits to Indiana as a lecturer was January 4, 1869, when he performed a reading of “The American Vandal Abroad.”  As reported by the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel:

We caution our readers not to forget the treat prepared for them this evening by the Library Association. Mark Twain, one of the real humorists of the day, will deliver his lecture entitled “The American Vandal Abroad,” and his merits entitle him to a large audience. The lecture will be delivered at Metropolitan Hall, and reserved seats may be secured without extra charge at Bonham’s Music Store.

Mark Twain, circa 1860-1880. Indiana Memory,
Mark Twain, circa 1860-1880. Indiana Memory,

While the exact content of his performance from that night was not reported, he had repeatedly given the lecture through 1868-69, and a compiled version was published by literature scholar Paul Fatout, in his book, Mark Twain Speaking. In this lecture, Twain referred to the “American Vandal” as someone who “goes everywhere and is always at home everywhere . . . His is proud and looks proud. His countenance is beaming. He does not fail to let the public know that he is an American.” Twain’s lecture, like his broader work, represents an American voice that spoke to the Midwest, especially places like Indiana.

Indianapolis News, January 1, 1872. From Hoosier State Chronicles.
Indianapolis News, January 1, 1872. From Hoosier State Chronicles.

In 1872, Twain returned to Indiana and gave a lecture sharing snippets from his then-upcoming work, Roughing It. According to the Indianapolis News, Mark Twain gave his lecture at the Y.M.C.A. Association hall on January 1, 1872, at a cost of 50 cents at the door, 75 cents for reserved seats (what a bargain!).  As the News reported:

Mark Twain, the noted humorist and author, lectures here to-night [sic] on “Passages from Roughing It.” Mr. Twain has a national reputation and should appear before a hall of people; besides the Y. M. C. A., under whose auspices he lectures, are in absolute want through lack of means. Let Association Hall be crowded to-night [sic].

This lecture was a marked departure from “Vandal,” both in style and in subject. Twain shared with audiences his experiences out west, from camping in the outskirts of Carson City, Nevada to riding colt horses and getting in duels.

Terre Haute Evening Mail, January 6, 1872. From Hoosier State Chronicles.
Terre Haute Evening Mail, January 6, 1872. From Hoosier State Chronicles.

Twain’s stories were printed in newspapers during his time in Indiana in 1872 as well. For example, the Terre Haute Evening Mail published an article entitled “Mark Twain on His Travels.” Among the witty stories than were shared by the Mail, this one is golden:

When we got to Rochester I called for a bowl of bean soup. I send you the receipt for making it: “Take a lot of water, wash it well, boil it until it is brown on both sides; then very carefully pour one bean into it and let it simmer. When the bean begins to get restless sweeten with salt, then put it in air-tight cans, hitch each can to a brick, and chuck them overboard, and the soup is done.”

The above receipt originated with a man in Iowa, who gets up suppers on odd occasions for Odd Fellows. He has a receipt for oyster soup of the same kind, only using twice as much water to the oyster and leaving out the salt.

However, not everyone was taken with Twain’s sardonic lectures. The Indianapolis People wrote that “It is the decided opinion of all we heard speak of Mark Twain’s lecture that it read better than it was spoken.”

George W. Cable. Library of Congress.
George W. Cable. Library of Congress.

When Twain returned to Indiana in 1885, he came with a traveling lecture partner. George W. Cable, novelist of the southern-creole experience and an influence on William Faulkner, shared selections from his novels while Twain shared early pages from Huckleberry Finn as well as stories like “The Golden Arm.” Twain and Cable couldn’t have been more different. Twain was described by the Indianapolis Sentinel as “awkward and lanky” whereas Cable was more reserved. As Fatout observed, Twain often bristled as Cable’s religiosity and rigorous commitment to formality while Cable scoffed at Twain’s unorthodox and scattered disposition. To get a sense of their differences, review this blurb from the Indianapolis News: “Mr. Cable eats chocolate ice cream at midnight, after his readings, and still lives. His yoke-fellow, Mark Twain, hurls his bootjack at St. John, and uncorks a bottle or so of pale ale.”

Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, January 7, 1885. From Hoosier State Chronicles.
Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, January 7, 1885. From Hoosier State Chronicles.

Nevertheless, their joint appearance at Plymouth Church in Indianapolis, Indiana on January 7, 1885 was greatly lauded. The Indianapolis Sentinel reported that their performances was “the best of the season” and the Indianapolis News wrote that it was “one of the finest audiences that could be gathered.” The Greencastle Times even reported that efforts were underway to bring the two over to Greencastle to perform (alas, it was not to be).

Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, January 8, 1885. From Hoosier State Chronicles.
Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, January 8, 1885. From Hoosier State Chronicles.

That evening, Twain shared with the audience his short story, “Dick Baker’s Cat,” a short tale about a special cat who had a propensity for mining. Here’s a short snippet from the story:

‘Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which you’d ‘a’ took an interest in, I reckon—, most anybody would. I had him here eight year—and he was the remarkablest cat I ever see. He was a large grey one of the Tom specie, an’ he had more hard, natchral sense than any man in this camp—’n’ a power of dignity—he wouldn’t let the Gov’ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his life—’peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man I ever, ever see. You couldn’t tell him noth’n’ ’bout placer-diggin’s—’n’ as for pocketmining, why he was just born for it.’

The rest of story involves a hilarious scenario where the mining-savvy cat gets stuck in a quartz shaft, which explodes, and he flies out of there all covered in soot and his whiskers burned off. It was exactly the kind of zany, improbable yarn that Twain was so gifted at and the audience at Plymouth Church agreed.

Twain’s and Cable’s appearance would be the last time they would appear together in Indiana and Twain’s last lecture in the state. Over the next 20 years, Twain continued to travel the county and the world, going so far as India and New Zealand, to share his lectures and stories. His last known lecture, according to the Mark Twain Project, was a reading for Mary Allen Hulbert Peck on the Island of Bermuda on March 27, 1908. Mark Twain died on April 24, 1910 at the age of 74 from heart failure, at his home near Redding, Connecticut. An obituary in the Plymouth Tribune complimented Twain’s success as a novelist, humorist, and lecturer. It also cited the loss of much of his family, particularly his daughter, and friends as one of the main reasons for his passing.

Plymouth Tribune, April 28 1910. From Hoosier State Chronicles.
Plymouth Tribune, April 28 1910. From Hoosier State Chronicles.

Reflecting on what was referred to as the “American style” of humor, Mark Twain shared his thoughts to a reporter from the Detroit Post, later reprinted in the Terre Haute Express:

“Is the American taste for humor still growing, in your opinion?”

“Yes, I think so. Humor is always popular, and especially so with Americans. It is born in every American, and he can’t help liking it.”

“Is it true that the American style of humor is becoming very popular in England?”

“Yes, the liking of American humor over there has become immense. It wakens [sic] the people to new life, and is supplanting the dry wit which formerly passes for humor. American humor wins its own way, and does not need to be cultivated. The English come to like it naturally”

In his lectures in Indiana and elsewhere, Twain exhibited the type of natural humor “born in every American” that characterizes the American cultural identity.

Mark Twain, 1907. Library of Congress.
Mark Twain, 1907. Library of Congress.

“Go West, Young Man”: The Mystery Behind the Famous Phrase

Go west
Go West, Young Man! Movie Poster, Binged.com.

Newspaper history is full of myths, “viral” stories, and tall tales. Folklore and journalism are often close cousins, especially the colorful “yellow journalism” that sold outright lies to rake in subscriptions.  In the annals of Hoosier and American journalism, one persistent, tantalizing tale continues to baffle the sleuths at the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Who wrote the famous slogan “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country”?  It’s one of the great catch phrases of Manifest Destiny, an exhortation that echoes deep in the soul of Americans long after the closing of the frontier.  But when you try to pin down where it came from, it’s suddenly like holding a fistful of water (slight variation on a Clint Eastwood theme) or uncovering the genesis of an ancient religious text — especially since nobody has ever found the exact phrase in the writings of either of the men who might have authored it.

“Go west, young man” has usually been credited to influential New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley.  A New Englander, Greeley was one of the most vocal opponents of slavery.  Antebellum Americans’ take on “liberal” and “conservative” politics would probably confuse today’s voters:  a radical, Greeley famously opposed divorce, sparring with Hoosier social reformer Robert Dale Owen over the loose divorce laws that made Indiana the Reno of the nineteenth century.  A religious man, he also promoted banning liquor — not a cause “liberal” politicians would probably take up today.  Greeley helped promote the writings of Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau and even took on Karl Marx as a European correspondent in the 1850s.  (Imagine Abraham Lincoln the lawyer reading the author of The Communist Manifesto in the Tribune!)  In 1872, the famously eccentric New York editor ran for President against Ulysses S. Grant, lost, and died before the electoral vote officially came in.  Greeley won just three electoral votes but was a widely admired man.


Horace Greeley -- Matthew Brady circa 1860
Greeley around 1860. Daguerreotype by Matthew Brady.

Though Greeley was always interested in Western emigration, he only went out west once, in 1859 during the Colorado Gold Rush. Originally a utopian experimental community, Greeley, Colorado, fifty miles north of Denver, was named after him in 1869. The newspaperman often published advice urging Americans to shout “Westward, ho!” if they couldn’t make it on the East Coast.  Yet his own trip through Kansas and over the Rockies to California showed him not just the glories of the West (like Yosemite) but some of the darker side of settlement.

“Fly, scatter through the country — go to the Great West,” he wrote in 1837.  Years later, in 1872, he was still editorializing:  “I hold that tens of thousands, who are now barely holding on at the East, might thus place themselves on the high road to competence and ultimate independence at the West.”

“At the West” included the Midwest.  Before the Civil War, Indiana was a popular destination for Easterners “barely holding on.”

A major cradle of Midwestern settlement was Maine, birthplace of John Soule, Greeley’s competitor for authorship of the mystery slogan.  As the logger, writer, and popular historian Stuart Holbrook wrote in his 1950 book Yankee Exodus, Maine’s stony soil and the decline of its shipping trade pushed thousands of Mainers to get out just after it achieved statehood in 1820.  The exodus was so bad that many newspaper editors in Maine wrote about the fear that the new state would actually be depopulated by “Illinois Fever” and the rush to lumbering towns along the Great Lakes — and then Oregon.


JBL Soule
J.B.L. Soule, courtesy Blackburn College Archives.

One Mainer who headed to the Midwest in the 1840s was John Babson Lane Soule, later editor of The Wabash Express.  Born in 1815 in Freeport, Maine — best known today as the home of L.L.  Bean — Soule came from a prominent local family.  His brother Gideon Lane Soule went on to serve as president of Phillips Exeter Academy, the prestigious prep school in New Hampshire.  Though the Soules were Congregationalists, a likely relative of theirs, Gertrude M. Soule, born in nearby Topsham, Maine, in 1894, was one of the last two Shakers in New Hampshire.  (She died in 1988.)

J.B.L. Soule — whom an 1890 column in the Chicago Mail claimed was the man who actually coined the phrase “Go west, young man” in 1851 — was educated at Bowdoin College, just down the road from Freeport.  Soule became an accomplished master of Latin and Greek and for decades after his move west published poems in New England literary magazines like The Bowdoin Poets and Northern Monthly.  A poem of his called “The Wabash” came out in Bowdoin’s poetry journal in August 1840, so it’s safe to assume that Soule had moved to Terre Haute by then.  By 1864, he was still writing poems with titles like “The Prairie Grave.”

The Wabash 1840 -- soule
Excerpt from “The Wabash”, Google Books.

While Soule’s conventional, classical poetry might be hard to appreciate today, he was hailed as “a writer of no ordinary ability” by the Terre Haute Journal in 1853. Additionally, Soule and his brother Moses helped pioneer education in Terre Haute, helping to establish the Vigo County Seminary and the Indiana Normal School (precursor of Indiana State University) in the 1840s. J.B.L. Soule taught at the Terre Haute Female College, a boarding school for girls.  The Soule brothers were also affiliated with the Baldwin Presbyterian Church, Terre Haute’s second house of worship.

John Soule later served as a Presbyterian minister in Plymouth, Indiana;  preached at Elkhorn, Wisconsin, during the Civil War; taught ancient languages at Blackburn University in Carlinville, Illinois; then finished his career as a Presbyterian pastor in Highland Park, Chicago.  He died in 1891.

He seems like a great candidate to be the author of “Go west, young man,” since he did exactly that.  But it’s hard to prove that Soule, not Horace Greeley, coined the famous appeal.

In November 1853, the Soule brothers bought the Wabash Express from Kentuckian Donald S. Danaldson, who had acquired it in 1845.  Danaldson tried to make the paper a daily in 1851, but it failed in less than a year.  John Soule and Isaac M. Brown worked as editors on Danaldson’s paper from August to November 1851, when it went under the name Terre Haute Daily Express.  By the time J.B.L. Soule’s name appears on its front page for the first time on November 16, 1853, the paper was only being printed weekly and was called The Wabash Express.  Soule, who also edited the Courier in nearby Charleston, Illinois, served as editor of The Wabash Express for less than a year.


Wabash Express 11-16-1853
The Wabash Express, under Soule’s leadership, was “Devoted to the Whig Policy, News, Commerce, Literature, and Good Morals.” A piece written in first-person by Horace Greeley on the front page of Soule’s very first issue suggests that the New York Tribune editor might have visited Tippecanoe County in 1853 to see the Indiana State Fair. Courtesy of Chronicling America.

Four decades later, in October 1891, an anonymous writer in the Chicago Mail reported a tale from an equally anonymous “old-timer,” told in an anonymous Chicago bar.  The “Dick Thompson” of this story is Richard Wigginton Thompson.  Originally from Culpeper, Virginia, Thompson moved out to Bedford, Indiana, to practice law, and settled in Terre Haute in 1843.  During the Civil War, Dick Thompson commanded Camp Dick Thompson, a training base in Vigo County.  Oddly for a man from almost-landlocked Indiana, he served as Secretary of the Navy under President Rutherford B. Hayes from 1877 to 1880.  He died in Terre Haute in 1900.


Richard W. Thompson
U.S. Navy Secretary and Terre Hautean Richard W. Thompson around 1880. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Supposedly based on Thompson’s own memory, the story showed up in a column called “Clubman’s Gossip” in the June 30, 1890, issue of the Chicago Mail.

“Do you know,” said an old–timer at the Chicago club, “that that epigrammatic bit of advice to young men, ‘Go west,’ so generally attributed to Horace Greeley, was not original with him? No? Well, it wasn’t. It all came about this way: John L.B. Soule was the editor of the Terre Haute Express back in the 50’s, and one day in ’51, if I remember right, he and Dick Thompson were conversing in the former’s sanctum. Thompson had just finished advising Soule to go west and grow up with the country and was praising his talents as a writer.

“‘Why, John,’ he said, ‘you could write an article that would be attributed to Horace Greeley if you tried.’

“‘No, I couldn’t,’ responded Mr. Soule, modestly, ‘I’ll bet I couldn’t.’

“‘I’ll bet a barrel of flour you can if you’ll promise to try your best, the flour to go to some deserving poor person.’

“‘All right. I’ll try,’ responded Soule.

“He did try, writing a column editorial on the subject of discussion—the opportunities offered to young men by the west. He started in by saying that Horace Greeley could never have given a young man better advice than that contained in the words, ‘Go West, young man.’

“Of course, the advice wasn’t quoted from Greeley, merely compared to what he might have said. But in a few weeks the exchanges began coming into the Express office with the epigram reprinted and accredited to Greeley almost universally. So wide a circulation did it obtain that at last the New York Tribune came out editorially, reprinted the Express article, and said in a foot note:

“‘The expression of this sentiment has been attributed to the editor of the Tribune erroneously. But so heartily does he concur in the advice it gives that he endorses most heartily the epigrammatic advice of the Terre Haute Express and joins in saying, ‘Go west, young man, go west.'”

Though the story shook the foundations of the slogan’s attribution to Greeley, even on the surface the Chicago Mail piece is doubtful.  What would Dick Thompson — no literary man — have to get J.B.L. Soule (a graduate of Phillips Exeter and Bowdoin College and one of the best writers in Terre Haute) to get over his modesty? The story also makes Thompson out to be a patriarch giving advice to the young.  In fact, he was only six years older than Soule.  It’s hard to imagine Thompson acting the father figure and “advising Soule to go west and grow up with the country” while they sat in a “sanctum” in Terre Haute — which was the West in 1851.  Soule, from Maine, had already come farther than Thompson, from Virginia.  And he kept on going.


Greenfield Daily Reporter, October 16, 1939. Newspapers.com.

The bigger problem is that there’s only a few surviving copies of the Terre Haute Express from 1851, and nobody has ever actually found the exact phrase “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country” in its pages or in any of Horace Greeley’s extensive writingsIt would be understandable if the “old-timer” of the Chicago Mail or Richard W. Thompson got the date wrong after forty years, but researchers who have scoured all extant copies of the Terre Haute papers and Horace Greeley’s works have never found a single trace of the famous slogan in its exact wording.

J.B.L. Soule got mentioned in East Coast papers at least once:  the Cambridge, Massachusetts Chronicle lauded his wit in their September 30, 1854 issue.  So it’s plausible that a “Go west” column by him could have made it back East from Terre Haute.  If so, it hasn’t appeared.

The exact phrase probably never got written down at all, but entered popular memory as short-hand for Greeley’s exhortations to migrate. Iowa Congressman Josiah B. Grinnell, a Vermont expatriate, used to be identified as the “young man” whom Greeley urged to get out of New York City and go west in 1853.  But Grinnell himself debunked claims that he got that advice from Greeley in a letter.  Even the oral advice Greeley gave Grinnell wasn’t the precise phrase we remember him for.  Instead, he said “Go West; this is not the place for a young man.”

Wherever the phrase originated, as late as 1871, a year before his death, Greeley was still urging New Englanders and down-and-out men tired of Washington, D.C. to hit the western trails.  However, the editor himself mostly stuck close to the Big Apple, venturing only as far as his Chappaqua Farm in Westchester County, New York during the summertime. While only at the big city’s edge, Greeley continued to play the role of western pioneer.

Greeley at Chappaqua Farm, 1869
Horace Greeley at Chappaqua Farm in New York, 1869. Wikimedia Commons.

Will Hays and the Hollywood Production Code

At just 110 pounds, Sullivan, Indiana-native Will Hays was not exactly the imposing figure you’d expect to be the film industry’s regulator, but he nevertheless left a substantial mark on the movie industry during the first half of the twentieth century.

To learn more about Will Hays and the MPPDA, check out Stephen Vaughn’s article from the Indiana Magazine of History.

Learn more Indiana History from the Indiana Historical Bureau: http://www.in.gov/history/

Search historic newspaper pages at Hoosier State Chronicles: www.hoosierstatechronicles.org

Visit our Blog: https://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/

Visit Chronicling America to read more first drafts of history: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

Learn more about the history relevance campaign at https://www.historyrelevance.com/.

Please comment, like, and subscribe!

Credits:

Written and produced by Justin Clark.

Footage of Will Hays and Irene Dunne courtesy of the Indiana State Library. 

Music:  “Days Are Long”, “7th Floor Tango”, and “Time Stops” by Silent Partner

Continue reading “Will Hays and the Hollywood Production Code”

The Love Story That Built St. Mary Catholic Church

Tony Valainis, St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 2008, IUPUI Image Collection, accessed Indiana Memory.

St. Mary Catholic Church is an architectural gem. Its gothic towers help define the downtown Indianapolis skyline, while its bells call the faithful to worship. For its congregation certainly, but also for those dining and shopping in the Mass. Ave. Cultural District, the cathedral provides a moment of stately beauty in the urban landscape. But St. Mary’s is more than an elegant building. It is a love story—one set into motion by a kind matchmaking priest.

Hermann Joseph Gaul, n.d., personal collection of Lisa Dillman Wright, accessed AncestryLibrary.com

Herman (also spelled Hermann) J. Gaul was born in Germany in 1869 and immigrated to the United States in the late 1880s.[1] He was a devoted Catholic who loved the architecture of Germany’s churches, especially the Cathedral of Cologne. From an early age, he aimed to bring this gothic vision to the Midwest. In the early 1890s, he began an apprenticeship with the renowned Chicago architect Louis Sullivan.[2] In 1891, Sullivan’s Chicago firm sent Gaul to Indianapolis for several months to supervise the building of a new plant for the Home Brewing Company.[3]

Home Brewing Company Brew-House, 1900-1910, Ray Hinz Collection, courtesy of Indiana Album, accessed Indiana Memory.

The beer company incorporated in the summer of 1891 with $200,000 in stocks from notable residents. Construction, at a cost of $70,000, began soon after. The company was influential enough to garner city permission to construct a switch that would allow shipping via railroad right out of its backyard—not without some objection over this “bow to the brewers” from temperance factions in the city. The Home Brewing Company began operations early in 1892 and was a huge financial success.[4]

Indiana Tribüne, July 24, 1892, 8, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

For the local business community, this ambitious and visible project made Gaul a young architect to watch. For the ladies of Indianapolis’s German Catholic community, it would have made him a fetching romantic prospect. And luckily for Gaul, the 1890s were actually a great time to fall in love.

Romance Card, 1912, Greeting Car Collection, Vigo County Historical Society, accessed Indiana Memory.

In previous eras, women’s labor was necessary for a couple’s survival and a man seeking a wife looked for someone who would make an economic contribution to the farm or family business—regardless of his personal feelings for her. On the flip side, a young woman’s family would make a similar financially-minded decision, using her to link two families together to build wealth — regardless of the bride’s feelings for her groom. Of course, financial concerns never disappeared from matchmaking, but by the eighteenth century, love became more central to a match, and romantic marriage became more common.

Nineteenth century conventions placed more emphasis on the husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker. And while this social construct had some serious political and economic disadvantages for women, it did allow for the consideration of romantic love in choosing one’s spouse. [5] Gaul’s luck at being born in this period and his dedication to his faith soon led to his own romantic match.

Anthony Scheideler, German-Language Family Bible, 1830-1885, Indiana State Library Genealogy Collection, accessed Indiana State Library Digital Collections.

When he arrived in Indianapolis in 1891, Gaul knew that he wanted to stay in the home of a respectable German Catholic family as opposed to a hotel or boarding house. He was also eager to find a spiritual home. He looked to St. Mary, the heart of the German Catholic community, located at that time on Maryland Street. Indianapolis German Catholics and regional Catholic leadership had organized this church for German-speaking congregants in the 1850s. In addition to serving the community’s spiritual needs, St. Mary was also the cultural hub for the local German immigrant community, hosting concerts, theatrical performances, and festivals featuring traditional German food and entertainment.[6]

Rev. Scheideler, Indianapolis News, October 11, 1918, 18, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Gaul’s first stop in his new city was the home of Father Anthony Scheideler, pastor at St. Mary since 1874. Father Scheideler knew his congregants well. So when Gaul asked him to recommend a nice family who might take him in as a boarder and who lived near the Home Brewing Company construction site, Scheideler immediately had the right fit: the Seiter family. They were also of German origin and described by Scheideler as “one of the best families in my parish.”[7] Christopher Seiter, the patriarch, owned a saloon, while his wife, Cecelia, took care of the home and their children. In his two months with the Seiters, the young architect fell in love with their daughter, Mary, who was about sixteen years old, seven years younger than Gaul. He was smitten but would have to be patient for several more years. With a smile on his face that the pastor remembered decades later, Gaul told Father Scheideler:

I am going back to Chicago, but I shall return soon. I have found the oldest daughter of Mr. Seiter very interesting.[8]

Father Scheideler was pleased with the match. It’s not clear how often Gaul returned to visit Mary or if they stayed in touch mainly by mail, but he kept his promise to return. On April 22, 1896, Father Scheideler officiated the wedding of Herman Gaul and Mary Seiter at St. Mary Catholic Church.[9]

“Personal and Society,” Indianapolis Journal, April 14, 1896, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

On his wedding day, Gaul thanked the pastor for connecting him “to such an estimable family” and told him he would never forget his kindness. He vowed:

If you ever build a new church, Father Scheideler, I will be the architect.[10]

It seemed like the kind of lofty promise a young man would make on an emotional day, and the pastor “laughed and thanked the enthusiastic young architect but gave no further thought to his promise.”[11]

R.W.R. Capes, Sacred Heart Church, n.d., architect: Herman J. Gaul, Building a Nation: Indiana Limestone Photograph Collection, Indiana University Bloomington, accessed Indiana Memory.

Gaul and his new wife moved to Chicago. He opened his own architecture firm and grew his career over the following decade, building a half dozen churches as well as schools, orphanages, and hospitals for German institutions around the Midwest. One major commission, St. Nicholas Church in Evanston, Illinois, stood proudly on an elevated site with “romantic ambience.”[12]

Over the following years, Herman and Mary Gaul welcomed seven children. Unsurprisingly, Mary’s name doesn’t appear in newspapers outside of a real estate transfer (along with Herman’s name). She seems to have been busy taking care of her large family with little time to lead a literary or church club that would have landed her coverage in newspapers. But we can assume their marriage was a happy one, since Gaul still felt inspired by it to fulfill the promise he made in Indianapolis.[13]

Turn Verein Eiche, n.d., American Turners Local Societies Collection, IUPUI Digital Collections, accessed Indiana Memory.

Meanwhile in the Circle City, the German immigrant population continued to grow, as did the congregation of St. Mary Catholic Church. Father Scheideler knew he would soon need a bigger building. In 1906, the pastorate purchased land at the intersection of Vermont and New Jersey as a future investment with “no thought of building immediately entertained.”[14] Nonetheless, local newspapers printed news of the transfer.

Sanborn Insurance Maps of Indianapolis, Vol. 1, 1914, Library of Congress, accessed Historical Information Gatherers via Indiana State Library.

Father Scheideler may have “practically forgot Herman Gaul and his promise to draw the plans for a new St. Mary’s,” but Gaul had not forgotten. When the architect read about the new St. Mary property in the newspaper, he quickly left for Indianapolis. Father Sheideler opened his door and there was Gaul, again wearing that memorable smile. The architect said, “I have come to make good my promise to draw plans for a new St. Mary’s.” Father Sheideler told him that unfortunately they did not yet have the funding to build, but Gaul was undeterred. He replied, “Well, I am going to draw the plans anyhow, true to my word.”[15]

James Palik, Cologne Cathedral, Germany, photograph, n.d., UNESCO World Heritage Centre, accessed https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/292/.

The two men spent hours chatting and catching up and soon discovered that they were both born near the Cathedral of Cologne in Germany. Gaul shared that he had dreamed of building a church like it since he was a boy—a building that would “bear the stamp of its beauty.” Father Sheideler doubted that such a feat was possible but the architect said simply, “Well, we shall try.”[16]

Several months later the driver of an express wagon arrived at the pastor’s door bearing a large package: Gaul’s plan for “a miniature cathedral of Cologne” in Indianapolis. Father Scheideler shared the plans with leading St. Mary congregants and “Herman Gaul’s dream for a new St. Mary’s spread through the parish.”[17]

Indianapolis News, September 9, 1912, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.

In spring 1910, clergy and parishioners, assisted by hundreds of Catholic school children, broke ground on a new location for St. Mary’s at Vermont and New Jersey Streets.[18] That fall, the congregation laid the cornerstone.[19] By July 1912, the new building was complete. The Indianapolis News ran a feature on its architecture with the headline: “After Twenty Years Herman Gaul Makes Good His Wedding Day Pledge to Plan for the St. Mary’s Parish a Miniature Cathedral of Cologne.”[20]

Indianapolis News, July 6, 1912, accessed Newspapers.com.

While we don’t have a record of Herman’s love for his wife Mary in letters or diaries, we see their love reflected in his tribute to her and to his faith. Recorded for posterity in the architecture of St. Mary is one German immigrant’s joy at finding a partner to share his Catholic faith and German traditions, and with whom he built a family and home in addition to a church. And he owed it all to one savvy matchmaker, Father Scheideler, who just might have known what he was doing from the start.

Notes

[1] Passport Application, September 7, 1893, No. 4331,  Roll 410, National Archives and Records Administration, accessed AncestryLibrary.com;  Twelfth Census of the United States, June 14, 1900, Chicago Ward 14, Cook County, Illinois, roll 262, page 13, National Archives and Records Administration, accessed AncestryLibrary.com. On his passport application, Gaul declared he immigrated to the U.S. in 1886.

[2] Edward R. Kantowicz, “To Build the Catholic City,” Chicago History 14, No. 3 (Fall 1985): 14, accessed Chicago History Museum.

[3] “After Twenty Years Herman Gaul Makes Good His Wedding Day Pledge to Plan for the St. Mary’s Parish A Miniature Cathedral of Cologne,” Indianapolis News, July 6, 1912, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.

[4] “Articles of Incorporation,” Indianapolis Journal, June 23, 1891, 8, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Minor City Matters,” Indianapolis Journal, August 26, 1891, 6, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Bow to the Brewers,” Indianapolis Journal, November 3, 1891, 8, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Industrial Notes,” Indianapolis Journal, January 4, 1892, 6, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[5] “The History of Romance,” February 13, 2017, National Women’s History Museum, accessed https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/history-romance.

[6] “Religious Ceremony,” Indianapolis State Sentinel, August 26, 1857, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “Laying of the Corner Stone of the German Catholic Church,” Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, September 1, 1857, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; No title, Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, May 14, 1858, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; “The German Catholic Church, Maryland,” Daily State Sentinel, August 13, 1858, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles; McEvoy’s Indianapolis City Directory and Business Mirror (Indianapolis: H. N. McEvoy Publisher, 1858), 219, accessed IUPUI Library Digital Collections; “Dedication,” Daily State Sentinel, September 12, 1859, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[7] “After Twenty Years Herman Gaul Makes Good His Wedding Day Pledge,” 13.

[8] Ibid.

[9] “Personal and Society,” Indianapolis Journal, April 14, 1896, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[10] “After Twenty Years Herman Gaul Makes Good His Wedding Day Pledge,” 13.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Kantowicz, 14.

[13] Conclusion gleaned from searching census records and Chicago newspapers.

[14] “After Twenty Years Herman Gaul Makes Good His Wedding Day Pledge,” 13.

[15-17] Ibid.

[18] “Church Ground Broken,” Indianapolis Star, May 2, 1910, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.

[19] “Lays Cornerstone of New St. Mary’s,” Indianapolis Star, October 24, 1910, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.

[20] “After Twenty Years Herman Gaul Makes Good His Wedding Day Pledge,” 13.