Pulaski County

Karen Clem Fritz

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780738561189
• eBook ISBN: 9781439636732
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

For centuries the shimmering waters of the historic Tippecanoe River have quietly marked the history of rural Pulaski County as the stream winds through the heart of the countys landscape, its banks lined with lush woods and rich farmlands. The river was the lifeblood of the Potawatomi Indians who fished its waters and canoed home to camps along the shores. They were followed by pioneer hunters and trappers lured by plentiful wildlife. Early settlers harnessed the rivers energy to run saw- and gristmills. Later the Tippecanoe attracted weekend and summer visitors from the city looking for some quiet fishing and peaceful reflection. Pulaski County was established in 1839. Dotted with quaint towns, family farms, and locally owned businesses and light industry, the county has been shaped by a heritage of hard work, simple pleasures, neighborliness, and a determined self-sufficiency that comes of relative isolation. It is a rich and increasingly rare bucolic prospectnourished by a vigilant river.

Three

GOING ABOUT BUSINESS

By the time he was six years old in 1921, young William L. Starr, whose father operated a grain elevator in Winamac, began spending his boyhood days wandering the brick streets of town visiting the various shops and merchants. The practice of everyday trade left a lasting impression on his young mind. “Growing up in a small town [I] was free of the cares and problems a child faces these days,” he recalled decades later. “I knew no restrictions, nor felt any limitations since nearly everyone knew me and my family. My mother did not worry about where I was, knowing full well that when I got hungry I would show up. There were so many places of interest to a small boy, and I was welcomed nearly everywhere.”

Dressed in his summer wardrobe of denim overalls, a blue chambray shirt (and one-piece BVD underwear), barefoot, young Starr stopped by Felker’s Blacksmith Shop on Monticello Street where he was excited by the sights, smells, and noises of the coal fires, hot metals, glowing forge, roaring bellows, and the pounding hammers on the anvils. He was impressed by the muscular, sweaty workmen dressed in their leather aprons and a little frightened of the powerful horses. Other favorite destinations were John H. Kelly’s Hardware Store and the Big Garage next door, operated by Fred Borders and Chester Blinn. Here two fire trucks were kept, one for the county and one for the town. And here also, young Starr was allowed a credit account to pay for the pop and candy he snacked on nearly every afternoon.

Two of Starr’s contemporaries, Herb Hoch and Jim Freeman, also remembered that the Winamac streets of their boyhoods in the World War I era were filled with popcorn vendors; numerous groceries; meat markets and dry goods stores; a magnificent hotel; doctors, dentists, and law offices on the second floors of the downtown buildings; an ethnic mix of shopkeepers; summer band concerts; and passenger trains that arrived and departed several times a day.

These same enterprises were booming in the neighboring county towns of Francesville, Medaryville, Monterey, and Star City. Many continued to thrive through the 1960s. Eventually, school consolidation left several of the towns without the bustle of school activities, and the variety of the big shopping malls and the volume discounts of the big box stores began to lure shoppers away from their hometown merchants.

Henry Penry (center), proprietor of Penry Hardware store in Medaryville visits with his father, Eli (left), and older brother Charles. Penry purchased the hardware stock in December 1901 from P. M. Querry of Medaryville. The Penry family moved from Star City to Medaryville in 1902. Their hardware store is believed to have been located on Main Street between a drugstore and a confectionery. The store was sold in December 1907 to a Mr. Darrow and soon resold to the Marbaugh brothers of Monterey. (PCHS Museum.)

Young Cleo Shank feeds chickens at her home in Pulaski in this undated photograph from the early 1900s. She was the daughter of Agideon and Susannah Weaver Shank and the sister of Rosa Shank Gilsinger. Lucile Degner Roth, who grew up on a nearby farm at about the same time, remembered a “big, black snake” that was allowed to reside in her family’s chicken house because it protected the fowl from raccoons and weasels. (Brenda Gilsinger.)

The workmen in this photograph are believed to be laying pipe for the Indiana National Gas and Oil Company. The original line was placed in 1891 but proved to be too small at only eight inches. It was replaced by a 10-inch line in the summer of 1899. This line was supposed to meet up with one running from Greentown. The trench was dug about four feet deep by a crew of 50 or 60 Italians from Chicago. Then the crew pictured here laid the pipe. A handwritten notation on the back of this photograph reads, “the ‘X’ indicates my brother Chauncey R. Bader, then aged 17 and deceased in 1902.” (PCHS Museum, donated by Elmore Jackson.)

Star City barber Ola (Ollie) Heward shaves customer Skeet Baker in this photograph believed to date to around 1915. Heward was born in 1892 and eventually moved to Michigan. (PCHS Museum.)

Students at Francesville High School work on a chemistry experiment in this pho...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• One - HOW IT ONCE LOOKED
• Two - PEOPLE MET ALONG THE WAY
• Three - GOING ABOUT BUSINESS
• Four - PUTTING TIME OFF TO GOOD USE