F- 521 - 148 -VOLS- N02 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Frank A. Bracken, Indianapolis Dianne J. Canmel, Seymour Ralph D. Gray, Indianapolis Charles A. Johnson, Carmel Larry S. Landis, Indianapolis 1-1. Roll McLaughlin, Carmel Mary Jane Meeker, Carmel Edwin W Miller, Indianapolis Thomas M. Miller, Carmel Janet C. Moran, Hammond Ronald V. Morris, Lafayette Kathleen Stiso Mullins, South Bend Alan T. Nolan, Indianapolis, Chair Larry K. Pius, Indianapolis William G. Prime, Madison Robert L. Reid, Evansville £valine H. Rhodehamel, Indianapolis, Vice President john Martin Smith, Auburn, President P. R. Sweeney, Vincennes Stanley Warren, Indianapolis, Treasurer Michael L. Westfall, Fort Wayne

ADMINISTRATION Peter T. Harstad, Executive Director Raymond L.Sho emaker, Administrative Director Annabellej.jackson, Conu·oller Su·an P. Brown, Human Resources DirecLOr Carolyn S. Smith, Membership Secretary

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TRACES 01' INDIANA AND MIDWESTERN HISTORY Thomas A. Mason, Executive Edit.or J. Kent Calder, Managing Editor Megan L. McKee, Editor Kathleen M. Breen, Editorial Assistant George R. Hanlin, Editorial Assistant

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PHOTOGRAPHY

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EDITORIAl. BOARD Richardj. M. Blackett, Indiana University, Bloomington Edward E. Breen, Fort Wayne Journal Gazelle James T. Callaghan, Indianapolis Andrew R. L. Cayton, Miami University, Ohio David E. Dawson, Indianapolis Robert L. Gildea, Indianapolis Ralph D. Gray, Indiana University, Indianapolis James 1-1. Madison, Indiana University, Bloomington Richard S. Simons, Marion

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Traces of lnd;anu and Midwestern 1/lstory (ISSN 1040·788X) is published quanedy and disLributed as a benefitof membership by the Indiana J listor·ical Society; editorial and executi\'c orrices, 315 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202 -3299. �lembcrship categories are Annual 30 , Sustaining 50. Single copies are 5. Second- class posLage paid at indianapolis, Indiana; USPS Number003-275. Litnarycontributions: A brochure cor1t.a.ining information for contributors is available upon request. 'lhuf's accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts submitted without return postage. Indiana newspaper publishers may obtain permission to reprint articles by written request to the Society.The Society will refer requests from other publishers to the author. ©19961ndiana llistorical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in . . the United States of America. Poslmn.sler: Please send address changes to �fi'aces oflndian(l wulAlidwestem 1-fistory, Indiana I li�itorical Society, 315 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3299. 'l"i-actsis a member of the Conference of llistoricaljounmls. RECEIVED

The Lost Astronaut : Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom of Mitchell, Indiana RAY BOOMHOW ER

Removal: An Excerpt from The Miami Indians of Indiana: 1 6 A Persistent People, 1654-:-1994 STEWA RT RAFERT

Down to Earth in the Midwest: Scott Russell Sanders and Writing from 2 0 the Center DAVID HOPP E

From "The Common Life," in Writing from the Center SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

"Scraps from My Army Ll]e": The Remembrances of Private Lewis King 2 8 WILB UR D. JONE S JR.

King of the Coney Men: Master Counterfeiter Peter McCartney 3 6 PETER F. STEVENS

Destination Indiana: Ruth mere lf lf RAY BOOMHOW ER lf 8 Letters FRONT COVER: ASTRONAUT VIRGIL I. "Gus" GRISSOM. NASA. INSIDE FRONT COVER: MIAMI INDIANS OF INDIANA CHIEF GEORGE GODFROY HOLDS A WAR CLUB, WHICH WA S LAID ON THE TABLE DURING TRI BAL COUNCIL SE SSIONS. MIAMI COUNTY HISTORICAL SO CIETY. ABOVE: ASTRONAUTS ROGER CHAFFEE, EDWARD WHITE, AND Gus GRISSOM (LEFT TO RIGHT) PR ACTICE FOR THEIR APOLLO I MISSION, A FLIGHT THAT NE VER LEFT THE LAUNCHPA D. NATIONAL SPACE SCIENCE DATA CE NTER. BACK COVER: DETAIL, PRINTING PLATE. INDIANA STATE AR CHIVES. INDIANA SUNRISE, POLAROID TRANSFER :ro WATERCOLOR PAPER, BY DARRYL )ONES. E D I T 0 R S' P A G E

CIRCLING AND ROOSTING

1:INDIANA WINTER IS ALWAYS Of course, the interaction of people and place is what this magazine is about, TOUGH ON ME, BUT THIS ONE HAD TAKEN A DIRE TOLL. SINCE LATE NOVEMBER, and as I sat in Te xas beneath a rising

I HAD DRIVEN THROUGH FOG, SLEET, SNOW, RAIN, WIND, AND HAIL AND VARIOUS moon, I couldn't help but think about Ray Boomhower's cover story for this INGENIOUS COMBINATIONS THEREOF. HAD SLID OFF ROADS, FA LLEN DOWN I issue on Gus Grissom and how the astro­

naut's background was perhaps at once NUMEROUS TIMES, AND EXPERIENCED A ROTATING SERIES OF COLD AND FLU the source of his success and at least a SYMPTOMS. I THOUGHT I COULD FEEL THE SALT THAT WAS DES TROYING MY CAR part of the reason for his depiction by the popular press as a scapegoat. Never WORKING ON MY VERY BONES, AND WAS AWARE THAT THE CONSTANT DARKNESS I as comfortable in the spotlight as his

astronaut colleagues, the laconic Grissom IN WHICH I THOUGHT I LIVED HAD SURFACED IN MY AT TITUDE . I HAD was not a media darling. "If you were a NO TROUBLE CONVINCING ANYBODY THAT I NEEDED TO GET OUT OF TOW N. shoe salesman," he once explained in an effort to justify his request to fly an extra

I went to Te xas, where I saw what As I watched hundreds of buzzards twenty-f ive combat missions in Korea seemed to me extraordinary things. restlessly circling and roosting because when he had already flown one hundred,

Redbuds and cherry trees bloomed; they had been driven out of their habitat "you'd want to be where you could sell people walked about the streets without by the grass fires that raged nearby, I shoes." Grissom's language and behav­ overcoats; diners sat outside; and con­ recalled passages from Sanders like the ior seem as familiar to Hoosiers as the vertibles cruised the freeways unhooclecl. following: "In our books,as in our hearts landscapes and people depicted by

I went fishing on the upper Brazos River and minds, we need a much greater Sanders. Regardless of what they think with my father and came back with the knowledge of the earth and the human about him in Hollywood, this original pleasant sting of a sunburn on my face. past, and a deeper regard for other crea­ American astronaut will forever be a hero

We saw a blue heron,wild turkeys, hawks, tures." The kind of wisdom that Sanders in Indiana. and more buzzards than I have ever seen advocates derives from studying the soil, Back in Indianapolis, I was greeted by together at one time. We watched for a creatures, weather, plants, and lore of 20-clegree temperatures.The next morn­

beaver that he had spotted a few clays our immediate surroundings and involves ing on the way to work, however, I before. putting the community before the indi­ noticed through the patches of icy fog

I saw this place, where I had spent so vidual and the spiritual before the mate­ that the sw1light was a good deal brighter much time during my youth, with new rial. lt is not difficult to understand, but than it had been the week before at the eyes. My senses were heightened both by its influence is scarce in our society. "The same time. Driving south down State long absence and by my recent reading of ego is too small an enclosure and too Road 13, I looked east across a frozen

Scott Russell Sanders's essay collection feeble a source for enduring art ...," he cornfield and saw an Indiana sunrise that Writing Jrorn the Center, which David writes; "unless you draw from deeper nearly took my breath away. Hope of Hoppe reviews herein.Though, as Hoppe springs, the work will be thin and spring began to rise,just like it is sup­ explains, Sanders has made a career out vaporous." Like his spiritual predeces­ posed to. I was glad to be home and of writing about the Midwest and explor­ sor, Thoreau, Sanders has reached far ready to "sell shoes." ing the subtle and not so subtle con­ below the surface to craft a work that nections between this place and its bucks the torrent of mass consumer cul­ inhabitants,his perceptions, advice, and ture. It deserves to be read and remem­ ). KENT CALDER warnings are applicable to any place. bered, if not memorized. Ma11ngi119 Editor

Spri119 J 996 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 1r------I I I I I r------I 1 I I I I I I I I I I I I I Virgil/. "Gus "Grissom OF MITCHELL, INDIANA lf_wante:d:::to:::b:e:::an::::as:tranaac::a�::-star::voy_ag:er.� Like many youngstt?rs who grew up during the 1960s, I thrilled to the adventures of the Amt?rican space program, constructed rocket models (including the giant Saturn 5), and strained to stay awake on the evening of 20 July 1969 to watch on television as Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon and to hear him uttt?r the now famous remark: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Space fever still gripped me a few years later when my family took a vacation to Spring·Mill State Park near Mitchell, Indiana. What impressed me on that trip wasn't the park's Pioneer Village, with its restored log cabins and working gristmill, or the blind fish swimming in Donaldson's Cave, but ratht?r a simple, low-slung structure near the gark's entrance: the Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom State Memorial. RAY � 0 0 M H 0 W f R

4 TRAC ES

GRISSOM

rmally declicated by Governor Edgar D. Whitcomb Gemini flight played in the This portrait featuring the first n 1971, the memorial pays tribute to the Mitchell­ background. To this Hoosier, three Americans in space, born Grissom, one of the nation's seven original Gus Grissom has always been (left to right} Grissom, Rastronauts, the second American to go into space, a full-blooded American hero. John H. Glenn Jr., and the first person to travel into space twice, and one of the To others, however, Alan B. Shepard jr.,was taken first in the space program-along with Apollo 1 crew­ Grissom is not now rem em- during a Time-Life Magazine mates Edward White and Roger Chaffe e-to die, when bered as such. Both To m photography session in a fire swept through the spacecraft during countdown Wolfe's best-selling TheRight July 1962.The enormous tests at Cape Ke nnedy early on the evening of 27January Stuff ( 1979) and the movie public curiosity about 1967. To a space nut like me, the Grissom memorial was based on that book have im- the astronauts overwhelmed heaven. My two brothers and I eagerly explored the plied d1at Grissom panicked- NASA headquarters. interior of Grissom's Gemini 3 two-man capsule, which "screwed the pooch"-at the end of his 1961 spaceflight. the astronaut had named after the title character in the Whether Grissom accidentally brushed against the but­ Broadway musical The UnsinkableMolly Brown, about a ton or purposefully pushed it, the book and movie woman who helped save a number of her shipmates on blamed him for triggering the explosive hatch on the the ill-fated Titanic. Naming the capsule after that char­ Mercury capsule, which caused the craft to take on water ·· acter, Grissom reasoned, might help avert a calamity and eventually sink to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. like the one that befell him when his Liberty Bell 7 Grissom's explanation of "I was lying there, flat on my Mercury spacecraft, loaded with valuable scientificdata, back-and it just blew, " was met, according to Wo lfe, by sank at the conclusion of his previous flight into space a healthy amount of skepticism from space-agency offi­ in 1961. Also impressive to my young eyes was the me­ cials and Grissom's test-pilot brethren. "The damned morial's Universe Room, which included a six-foot-in­ things had been wrung inside out, but never, so fa r as diameter illuminated globe that rotated as a tape of anyone could recall, had a single hatch ever just blown,"' Grissom and his ground-control cohorts during his Wol fe noted. The author fo und his hero in Chuck Ye ager,

6 TRACES GRISSOM World War II fighter ace and the first man to break the Caudell, who worked for years to build the rocket-shaped sound barrier; Grissom became the book's goat. memorial honoring Grissom that now stands on the site Wolfe's assertions about Grissom's panicky behavior of the astronaut's former elementary sch9ol in Mit.��ell, after the Mercury flightand the depiction of Grissom in spoke for many residents of the town when he said he the movie as a bit of an oaf were met with anger by worked so hard on behalf of the project not because of Mitchell residents, who had turned out by the thou­ the astronaut's tragic death, but rather because of his sands to cheer their local hero at a special Memorial achievements. "He came from the ground up and, by his Day parade following his Gemini flight in 1965. 'The Gus own efforts, he got to a place where people hadn't been Grissom that Mitchell knows is not the Gus Grissom before," Caudell said of Grissom. "That's what made that's depicted in the movie," said Bill Jenkins, who him special." owned the theater where the movie played in Mitchell. Located just off State Road 37 in southern Indiana, "They just wanted to make a movie and they needed a Mitchell was recognizable to motorists for many years little excitement, so they picked on Gus, probably because of the bright -yellow school buses being built at because he's dead and the others are still alive." Don the Carpenter Body Works. Virgil Ivan Grissom, born

Lower left: In April 1959 NASA selected these seven men, all from the astronaut office, and Bob Gilruth, head of NASA's Manned the military, as the first astronauts for the Mercury program. Front Spacecraft Center in Houston, had agreed that if possible the first row, left to right: Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, man on the moon should be one of the original seven Mercury John H. Glenn Jr., and M. Scott Carpenter. Back row, left to right: astronauts. Alan B. Shepard Jr., Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and L. Gordon Cooper Jr. Bottom right: Donning a space suit fo r his Mercury-Redstone Center: Wea ring a new Mercury space suit, Grissom poses fo r 4 mission, Grissom waits while spaceflight equipment specialist pictures during training activities at the Florida space center. Joe W. Schmidt helps him with his gloves in the personal equipment Far right: Grissom, shown here in a 1963 NASA portrait, might have room of Hanger S at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Shortly after this been the first man to walk on the moon instead of Neil Armstrong photograph was taken, the launch was postponed two days because if the Apollo I fire had not claimed his life. Deke Slayton, head of of bad weather.

Spri11g 1996 7 GRISSOM on 3 April 1926, the oldest of four children raised by wedding. Perhaps sensing the often difficult and lonely Dennis and Cecile Grissom, was brought up in this life of an Air Force wife that awaited her daughter, her Hoosier town in a white frame house at 715 Baker Street mother, Betty recalled, tried to prepare her by issuing (a road later renamed in his honor). Grissom's father the following warning: "I just want you to know that I'm was a signalman for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, not going to be a baby sitter. I'm not going to raise your where he worked six days a week at fifty cents an hour. kids for you, and if you have fights, don't come home." The young Grissom was no stranger to work himself, fter his discharge from the armed forces, Grissom rising early in the morning to pick up copies of the found a job installing doors on school buses In dianapolis Starat the downtown bus station for delivery at Carpenter Body Wo rks. With the help of to local residents. In the evening he delivered issues of A the GI Bill, Grissom left Mitchell to enroll at the Bedford Times. Grissom also kept busy as a member Purdue University as a mechanical-engineering student. of Boy Scout Troop 46, an association that almost cost Life for the young couple was rough; during his first him his life. One day he and his friends were practicing semester Grissom shared a basement apartment with tying knots, an essential skill for any self-respecting another male student while his wife remained behind Boy Scout. Jokingly rigging a hangman's noose, the in Mitchell with her parents. Joining her husband youngsters slipped it over Grissom's head, threw the during the second semester of his studies at the other end over a rafter, and pulled to see whether the We st Lafayette campus, Betty Grissom helped pay for knot would hold. It did; Grissom's face had already the future astronaut's education by working as a long­ turnedblue by the time his friends could get him safely distance operator for the Indiana Bell Te lephone down. Company. Grissom, who worked after class as a short­ Reportedly equipped with an IQ of 145, Grissom was order cook, finished his degree early by skipping sum­ nevertheless, he later admitted, not much of a "whiz" in mer vacations and graduated in 1950. Donald S. Clark, school. "I guess it was a case of drifting and not know­ one of Grissom's professors in mechanical engineering, ing what I wanted to make of myself," he said. "I suppose recalled that the future astronaut was a "better than I built my share of model airplanes, but I can't remem­ average student and was a very determined young man ber that I was a flying fanatic." Although sons in rail­ who wanted more than anything else in the world to roading families often follow in their father's footsteps, become a test pilot." Grissom recalled that his father encouraged him instead After graduating from Purdue, Grissom needed a to explore other career possibilities "in which he felt job, and fast, he said, "because I didn't want Betty spend­ there were better chances for getting ahead." Standing ing any more of her life at a switchboard. She had made only five feet, four inches tall when he entered high my degree possible." He decided to rejoin the armed ser­ school at age fourteen in 1940, Grissom was too short vices and became an air cadet at Randolph Air Force to make the school's basketball team, the dream of many Base in Te xas. After completing his basic training, he a Hoosier youth. "Maybe if l had even made the squad moved on to Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, where as a substitute," said Grissom, "I would have been encour­ his wife and six-month-old son, Scott, joined him and aged to give athletics a try even though I was awfully his $105 monthly salary. "By that time I'm sure she must small." Instead of taking the court as a member of the have felt that flying equaled poverty," Grissom said of his team, he led his Boy Scout honor guard in carrying the wife. In March 1951 Grissom received his commission American flag at the opening of games, impressing fel­ as a second lieutenant in the Air Force and saw his pay low student and future wife Betty Moore, who played skyrocket to $400 a month; they were "practically mil­ the drum in the school band. lionaires!" he joked. Just nine months later Grissom During his high school years, Grissom completed one received orders for Korea where he joined the 334th year of precadet training in the United States Army Air Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Kimpo Air Force Base, Corps. Following his graduation in 1944, he was inducted .. just twelve miles from the front lines. Here the Hoosier into the Army Air Corps and sent to Wichita Falls, Te xas, flier experienced firsthand the fighter-jock ethos for five weeks of basic training. Stationed eventually at explored so well by Wolfe in The Right Stuff While rid­ Brooks Field in San Antonio, Grissom spent much of his ing a bus to his awaiting F-86 fighter jet, which he had time before his discharge In November 1945 serving as named Scotty after his firstbornson, Grissom discovered a deskbound clerk. He made it back to Mitchell for his that those pilots who had not been shot at by an oppo­ marriage on 6 July 1945 to Betty Moore, who received sition North Korean MIG had to stand for the trip to the some hard words of advice from her mother before the airfield. The next morning Grissom sat on the bus. He

8 TRACES GRISSOM The Mercury astronauts After a few false starts (early roc�ets had the dis­ lobbied successfully to concerting habit of blowing up), scientists managed be allowed to continue to to put the first American satellite, Explorer 1, into fly while they completed orbit nearly four months after the Russians' ·space their training. For Air success. As the public and politicians clamored for Force officers like action, the United States initiated in 1958 its firstman­ Grissom and Slayton, the in-space program, Project Mercury. President Dwight flight time was essential Eisenhower decided that the astronauts for the space in order to earn extra program should come from the ranks of military-service pay each month. Here, test pilots, and the National Aeronautics and Space Grissom stands beside Administration asked the services to list their members an F-1 02 on the flight line. who met specific qualifications. A candidate for the space program had to be under forty years old, be less than five feet, eleven inches tall, hold a bachelor's degree or equivalent in engineering, be a qualifiedjet pilot, be a graduate of test-pilot school, and have at least fif­ teen hundred hours of flyingtime. Approximately 500 had learned, as Wolfe noted, that the "main thing was candidates qualified; llO survived the initial screening not to be left behind." process. In the approximately six months that he was in Korea, One of the pilots called to Wa shington, D.C., at the Grissom flew more than one hundred combat missions beginning of February 1959 to be evaluated as a possi­ and received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his ble astronaut was Grissom, who received the top secret actions on 23 March 1952 as he flew cover in his F-86 news from the adjutant at Wright-Patterson, who asked for a photorecon naissance mission. Even after flying him, "Gus, what kind of hell have you been raising his one hundredth mission, which meant a ticket back lately?" A confused Grissom expressed puzzlement over to the States, Grissom wanted more, requesting to fly the question and learned that he had received orders to twenty-fiveadditional missions. "If you were a shoe sales­ report to Washington wearing civilian, not military, man," he explained, "you'd want to be where you could attire. Before he left home, Grissom's wife, thinking of sell shoes." With his request denied by the Air Force, the wildest possibility, prophetically asked him: "What he returned home as an instructor, an assignment that are they going to do? Shoot you up in the nose cone of Grissom considered the most dangerous in his career. an Atlas [rocket] ?" Reporting to the nation's capital­ "I know what I'm going to do when I'm up there, all he felt like he had "wandered right into the middle of the time," he noted, "but I don't know what that stu­ a James Bond novel"-Grissom was ushered into a large dent is going to do." reception room filled with men who were, he discov­ In August 1955 Grissom took a vital step toward ered after a brief time talking with them, fellow test becoming a test pilot, and consequently an astronaut, pilots. From this group, a total of thirty-nine men, when he enrolled at the Institute of Te chnology at Grissom included, were sent to Lovelace Clinic in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be probed and prodded he met and became friends with Gordon Cooper, by scientists. They later underwent pressure-suit tests, another future space explorer. Both also attended test­ heat tests, acceleration tests, and vibration tests at the pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Aeromedical Laboratory of the Wright Air Development Completing his test-pilot training, Grissom was assigned Center in Ohio. by the Air Force to return to Wright-Patterson. He From this torturous process NASA picked seven to was still at the Dayton facility testing aircraft like the serve as Project Mercury astronauts and presented F- 104 Starfighter on 4 October 1957, when the Soviet them to the public in Apri1 1959. The American astro­ Union shocked the world by announcing it had suc­ nauts were, from the Marines, John Glenn; from the cessfully launched the firstsat ellite, Sputnik, into space. Navy, Wa lter Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Malcolm Scott The 184-pound satellite, the size of a basketball, could Carpenter; and from the Air Force, Donald "Deke" be heard by American tracking stations as it circled the Slayton, Gordon Cooper, and Grissom. The Hoosier globe making its "beep-beep" sound. The space race flier had al most missed out on the historic designa­ had begun. tion when doctors during their wide-ranging tests

Spri11g 1996 9 Before he left home, Grissom's

wife, thinking of the wildest

possibility, prophetically asked

him: "What are they going to do?

Shoot you up in the nose cone

of an Atlas [rocket]?"

Above: Fellow astronaut John Glenn helps Grissom into his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft before his 21 July 1961 suborbital flight. The first United States spaceship was a cone-shaped one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. The capsule was six feet, ten inches long and six feet, two and a half inches in diameter. The blunt end of the craft was covered with an ablative heat shield to protect it against the three-thousand-degree heat of entry into the atmosphere. Right: From left to right, astronauts Glenn, Grissom, and Shepard stand in front of a Redstone rocket ready fo r launch. Although NASA had decided on the order of the Mercury flights, Shepard first, fo llowed by Grissom and then Glenn, it announced to the public only that the three had been selected as candidates fo r the ever to don disguise to duck the waiting press. He always first Redstone flight, leaving most Americans unaware of who would considered one of his greatest personal successes his be the first of their countrymen into space. slipping by assembled newsmen in a floppy planta­ discovered that Grissom suffe red from hay fe ver. His tion hat and a pair of dark glasses." The media scrutiny pointed reply-"there won't be any rag-weed pollen would only grow as time went by. On 19 January 1961 in space"-s aved him from being dropped from Robert Gilruth, head of Project Mercury, confidentially consideration. informed the astronauts of the flight order: Shepard With his allergy problem out of the way, Grissom and would be the first man to ride the Redstone rocket; his fe llow astronauts underwent training to see which Grissom had the second flight; and Glenn would be the one, NASA confidently predicted, would be the first backup fo r both missions. ·• man in space. The astronauts, with the exception of It failed to work out as the American space agency Glenn, seemed more at ease with training fo r going into had hoped; on 12 April 1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri A. space than they did with dealing with the crush of media · Gagarin made a one-orbit flight around the Earth that attention on them and their fa milies. The press cover­ lasted 108 minutes in his Vo stok spacecraft Swallow, age grew so great that Grissom, never comfortable in winning fo r the Soviet Union the honor of being the the spotlight, went to great lengths to avoid the demands first nation to put a human being into the inky void of of publicity. "As far as I know, " noted CBS television space. Glenn, the most comfortable with the press, spoke anchorman Walter Cronkite, "he was the only astronaut fo r the rest of the astronauts when he noted: "They [the

10 TR ACES GRISSOM space went well. The same could not be said of Grissom's flight, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral on 21 July 1961. The Hoosier native had "maintained an even strain," as fe llow astronaut Schirra liked to say, the morning of his mission. During a last-minute phys­ ical, the doctor examining Grissom had been surprised at his subject's low blood pressure. His fifteen-minute, thirty-seven-second flightwent off without a hitch, as his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft made a successful splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. From that point on, however, things began to go wrong. s Grissom waited to be picked up by Marine heli­ copters from the carrier Randolph, he informed the chopper pilots that he would need three or A four minutes to check the switch positions on his instrument panel. According to the recovery plan, the helicopter pilot was supposed to radio to Grissom as soon as he had lifted the capsule from the water. At that point, Grissom would remove his helmet, blow off the hatch, and exit the spacecraft. "I had unhooked the oxygen inlet hose by now and was lying flat on my back and minding my own business," Grissom recalled, "when suddenly the hatch blew off with a dull thud. All I could see was blue sky and sea water rushing in over the sill." To ssing off his helmet, the astronaut hoisted himself through the hatch. "I have never moved as fast in my life," said Grissom. "The next thing I knew I was float­ ing high in my suit with the water up to my armpits." Although a helicopter managed to snag the capsule, it could not handle the weight of the waterlogged space­ craft and had to cut it loose; it was the fi rst time in his

To p: Betty Grissom and her son Scott watch grimly from the long flying career that Grissom had ever lost an aircraft. audience at a press conference held at the Starlight motel in Florida Meanwhile, the astronaut was struggling to keep from two days after Gus Grissom's Mercury flight. Writing about the drowning. Although his space suit kept out the water, he was losing buoyancy because of an open air-inlet port experience in her book Storfoll, Betty Grissom recalled being struck by a "manipulated sourness in the demonstration." in the belly of his suit. As he fo ught to stay afloat, Grissom regretted the two rolls of dimes, three one-dollar bills, Bottom: A Marine helicopter from the carrier Randolph attempts two sets of pilot's wings, and some miniature models of to lift the waterlogged Liberty Bell 7 capsule. Effo rts to save the craft, which had filled with water after its hatch had blown off the Liberty Bell spacecraft he had stowed in the leg unexpectedly, failed and the capsule with its valuable scientific data pocket of his space suit as souvenirs of his flight. "I sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. thought to myself, 'Well, you've gone through the whole flight, and now you're goi ng to sink right here in front Russians] just beat the pants off us, that's all. There's no of all these people,"' Grissom recalled. Finally picked use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space up by a helicopter, the exhausted astronaut had strength age has begun, there's going to be plenty of work for enough to grab a Mae We st life jacket and put it on for everybody. " That hard work resulted in Shepard finally the flight back to the aircraft carrier. "I wanted to make becoming the first American into space with his sub­ certain that if anything happened to this helicopter I orbital flightaboard Freedom 7 on 5 May 1961. would not have to go through another dunking," he Except fo r a problem with a full bladder, which said. Once Grissom was safely aboard the Navy ship, an Shepard solved by relieving himself in his space­ officer came up to him and handed him his space hel­ suit, the United States' initial manned mission into met, which had been plucked from the water by the

Spri11g 1996 II GRISSOM r------, I

I I I I I I I I I

Gus, celebrate the successful completion of Gus Grissom's Gemini mission in 1965. Grissom and John W. Yo ung completed three orbits in the first test of the Gemini spacecraft. recovery system on the Mercury capsule and a friend Rieht: Flanked by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and of Grissom who believed in the astronaut's courage and President Lyndon B. Johnson, Grissom listens as NASA poise, thoroughly investigated the incident and discov­ administrator James We bb talks to the press at a White House ered two ways in which the hatch could have blown in ceremony awarding the astronaut the NASA Exceptional Service the manner described by Grissom. Even the actor who Medal and a second NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Grissom played the unlucky astronaut in the movie The Right accepted the awards as "tokens of affectionfrom the nation, not just Stuff, Fred Ward, expressed doubt about Grissom blow­ fo r us but to the millions involved in the [space] program." ing the hatch on purpose. Ward learned that all the astronauts who did blow their hatches suffered bruised crew of an escort destroyer. "For your information," the knuckles, and Grissom's knuckles were not bruised. "I officer told the astronaut, "we fo und it floating right think NASA sort of pointed the finger at him to take the next to a ten-foot shark." blame off themselves fo r losing the capsule," the actor After his harrowing swim Grissom had enough com­ said. "I don't think he was responsible at all." posure to call his wife from Grand Bahama island. A Whatever the reason fo r the accident, Grissom con­ relieved Betty Grissom lightheartedly informed her hus­ tinued his career at NASA, becoming so involved in the band that she had heard he had "got a little bit wet." design of the two-man Gemini spacecraft that fe llow Moving on to more serious matters, she asked him the astronauts dubbed it "the Gusmobile." He and john W crucial question: had he done anything wrong that con­ Yo ung were selected to make the first manned flight in tributed to the capsule's sinking? "I did not do anything the Gemini program. In naming the Gemini 3 spaceship, wrong," Grissom emphatically replied. "That hatch just Grissom fo und a way to exorcise the demons from his blew." With that matter resolved fo r the moment, the Mercury misfortune. At first he had wanted to use astronaut calmly ended the conversation by asking his Wapasha, after a Native American tribe that had lived wife to bring some extra slacks and shirts with her when along the Wabash River. Then someone pointed out to she met him in Florida. Grissom that people might start calling the spacecraft !though an accident review panel cleared The Wa bash Cannon Ball. "Well, my Dad was working fo r Grissom, and the other astronauts supported the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and I wasn't too sure him, unanswered questions about the hatch just how he'd take to The Wa bash Cannon Ball," said

• A dogged the Hoosier native fo r the rest of his . Grissom. "How would he explain that one to his pals career. Wo lfe's insinuations of panic on Grissom's part on the B&O?" Instead, the astronaut, attempting to were way off base according to astronaut Gordon . squelch ideas that he was still sensitive about losing the Cooper. "He [Grissom] d,id not screw up and lose his Liberty Bell 7, christened his Gemini craft Molly Brown spacecraft," Cooper said. "Later tests showed the hatch after the character from the Broadway musical. Some could malfunction, just as Gus said it did. A vacuum officials at NASA were not amused at the choice of names built up in the firing pin channels." Sam Beddingfield, and asked him to pick another. "Well," Grissom told a NASA engineer responsible fo r the pyrotechnics and one, "what about the 'Titanic?" Molly Brown it was.

12 TRACES

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.. ,.... "J . ..,. tl y-, / / • Edward White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffe e (left to right) died on 27 january 196 7 when a fire swept through their ... ,).J) spacecraft during tests. Deke Slayton expressed what many of their fe llow pilots fe lt over the loss of,the three- men: 9 ),.. "An accident on the pad like this, when suddenly everything goes to hell-it's so ... inex,cusablel q 1 Yo u're not supposed to get killed on the ground when you're a test pilot. Still, you shrug it off and continue flying.

, /" •• I , • •

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• (> .� � .. I• • ... GRISSOM Grissom and Yo ung's three-orbit Gemini flight on 23 ing a fire. Fueled by the pure-oxygep atmosphere that March 1965 went off without a hitch, except fo r some permeated the Apollo spacecraft's pressurized crew consternation on behalf of space-agency scientists who cabin, the fire fe d itself on a host of combustible mate- . .. fretted over an unauthorized meal sneaked aboard by rials in the command module, and by doing so, released Yo ung, in cahoots with Schirra: a corned-beef sand­ poisonous gases that suffocated the three astronauts. wich. The astronauts ate a fe w bites before concern The well-trained crew attempted to exit the inferno about the possibility of crumbs damaging sensitive elec­ according to emergency procedures but could not make tronic equipment caused the duo to stow it away fo r it out in time. Ironically, the multilayered hatch to safekeeping. In spite of the media latching onto the the capsule, which took at a minimum ninety seconds "sandwich affair" after the flight and some members of to open, had come about because of Grissom's diffi­ Congress wailing that the space agency had lost control culty with the Mercury capsule's hatch blowing open of its astronauts, Grissom remained one of NASA:s top prematurely. men and was picked to command the fi rst manned Grissom was given a hero's burial at Arlington National Apollo mission, one of the initial steps on the way to Cemetery in Virginia, with the service broadcast nation­ meeting President John F. Kennedy's ambitious goal of wide on television. Neighbors from Mitchell joined landing a man on the moon before the end of the President Lyndon B. Johnson, members of Congress, decade. Joining Grissom on the crew were Edward White and fe llow astronauts at the fu neral. It took NASA more II, who had flown into space on Gemini 4 and had been than a year after the accident, during which time the the firstAmerican to walk in space, and rookie astronaut spacecraft was extensively reworked, to launch another Roger B. Chaffee. Slayton, responsible fo r selecting manned mission. Apollo 7, commanded by Grissom's flight crews, privately told his friend Grissom that if all friend Schirra, made 163 orbits during its eleven-day went well, he would be firstin line to command a lunar mission in the redesigned command module; America mission. was on its way to the moon. Ye ars later, after six suc­ roubles plagued the Apollo program from the cessful landings on the moon, Betty Grissom, reflect­ start, especially with the scheduled firstmanned ing on her husband, said: "I hate it that Gus is gone, vehicle, Spacecraft 012, built by North American but I guess the program was worth it. He wouldn't have TAviation. Betty Grissom remembered her husband had it any other way. " receiving a number of phone calls at home concern­ ing difficulties with the Apollo craft. "That was not Ray Boomhower is a contributing editor- of Traces. He is cur-­ like Gus," she said. "He never brought work problems r-ently working on a biogr-aphy of Indiana historianja cob PiaU home with him .... But now he was uptight about it." Dunn Jr. Questioned by a reporter about rumors swirling around that the program had experienced problems, Grissom FOR FURTHER READING did express some misgivings. "We've had problems Chappell, Carl L. Seven Minus One: TheSlaTy of Astmnaut Gus Grissom. before," he said, "but these [with Apollo] have been Madison, Ind.: New Frontier Publishing, 1968. coming in bushelfuls. Frankly, I think this mission has Grissom, Betty, and Henry Still. StaTfa ll. New Yo rk: Thomas Y. Crowell a pretty damn slim chance of flying its fu ll fo urteen Co., 1974. days." On what was the final time he was ever home, Grissom, Virgil I. "Gus." Gemini: A Pe TSonal Account of Man's 'kntuTe

Grissom, according to his wife, went out to their yard and into Space. New Yo rk: Macmillan, 1968. cut down a lemon to take with him to hang on a full-scale Hi II, Herbert R. "Memorial to a Hoosier Astronaut." Outd,ooTfn diana duplicate of the troubled Apollo spacecraft. 46 (September 1981 ) :23-29. Grissom's premonition of trouble came tragically Murray, Charles, and Catherine Bly Cox. Apollo: TheRace /,o the Moon. true on 27 January 1967 during a test of the Apollo New Yo rk: Simon & Schuster, 1989. spacecraft and Saturn 1B rocket. Once again, glitches Shepard, Alan, and Deke Slayton. Moon Shot: The Inside StoTy of frustrated the astronauts. A sour odor fo uled the cap­ ArneTica's Race to the Moon. Atlanta: Tu rner Publishing, 1994. sule's pure-oxygen interior fo r a time. Grissom, upset Wolfe, To m. The Right Stuff New Yo rk: Fa rrar Straus Giroux, 1979. over a communication problem with the test-control sites, angrily told mission control: "If I can't talk with Those with access to the Inter-net's Wo rld Wide We b can you only five miles away, how can we talk to you from obtain infor-mation on eaTly Amer-ican spaceflights thmugh the moon?" Shortly after 6:30 in the evening, under the Kennedy Space Center-'s Wo r-ld Wide We b site at Grissom's commander seat, a frayed wire sparked, caus- http://www.hsc. nasa.gov /histor-y/histor-y.html.

Spriug i 99 6 15 GEORGE GODFROY ( 1863-1 929), CHIEF OF THE MIAMI INDIANS OF INDIANA IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

MIAMI COUNTY HISTORIC..Al SociETY STEWART RAF ERT

AN EXC ERPT FROM THE MIA MI INDIA NS OF INDIANA : A PE RSISTEN T PE OPLE, 1654-1994. FORTHCOMING FROM THE INDIANA HISTORICAvSOCIETY IN MAY 1996.

Four groups of Miami were exempt from removal in 184 5, and the rest of the tribe were not . . inclined to leave the state. The small size of the Miami tribe, the botched Potawatomi removal of 183 8, and the value of the land and size of Miami debt settlements all conspired to delay and frustrate their removal years after other tribes had been taken from the Midwest.

16 TRACES he contract fo r the Miami In August 1845 a delegation of five a miserable place, and that they removal took on a perverse Miami leaders traveled to the Kansas would so report to the rest of the Tlife of its own. Thomas Te rritory to inspect the new reser­ tribe. Even though Ewing opposed Dowling of Te rre Haute originally vation. Several older leaders had Miami removal at the time because received a contract fo r nearly sixty died in the 1830s, so the inspection he had no financial interest in the thousand dollars to remove six hun­ group included a new generation outcome, his impression of Miami dred Miami to Kansas Te rritory. of leaders who represented all fe elings was probably not exagger­ Later, Dowling sold the contract to the Miami groups. Included were ated. Chief Lafontaine was also Robert Peebles of Pittsburgh. Ta hquakeah (J. B. Brouillette), dragging his fe et on removal, plead­ Peebles in turn sold the contract Pimyotamah, Chapendoceah, Louis ing fo r an extension of the 1845 to three groups deadline in order of investors, the to get the land and Ewing brothers debt concerns of [Ge orge and the tribe settled. William], Samuel Miami delay­ Edsall, brother-in- ing tactics were law of the Indian successful, and agent Joseph removal did not Sinclair, and take place in 1845. Alexis Coquillard. George Ewing, who Coquillard had was still angling to carried out the make money on brutal removal of the deportation, the Potawatomi commented acidly in 1838. As an on the humanitar­ experienced "con­ ian arguments of ductor" he was [Allen] Hamilton put in actual and others that charge of the the Miami would Miami removal. be better off west Coquillard had of the Missouri. gone west many Ewing often trav­ ti mes, making a eled through the profession of mov­ region of the new ing the Potawatomi THE DUST JACKET OF THE MIAMI INDIANS OF INDIANA FEATURES reservation and from one location KILSOQUAH AND HER SON ANTHONY RIVARRE. noted that it bor- to another. He was dered the Missouri dreaded by the Miami who called Lafontaine, and George Hunt. state line, where there would be him "Cutiah," their way of saying his Francis Lafontaine, the ostensible many sellers of whiskey. In fact, he last name. Miami dread was based "principal chief," sent his sixteen­ said, "many of those despicable ras­ on some terrifying episodes. On one year-old-son Louis. George Hunt was cals are already stationed along there occasion in the 1830s Coquillard a half-blood Miami who worked fo r in advance, anxiously awaiting the dunned a Miami chief at an annuity the Ewings in their Peru store. arrival of their victims." Tw o months payment. Ta king the chief's reply as Miami acceptance of removal was later, when the Ewing brothers pur­ an insult, he lunged at the man and not improved by what the visitors chased a third of the removal con­ tore off his ornaments and clothing, saw. The heat was suffocating dur­ tract, such concerns disappeared and took them to his cabin. When ing their visit, the land scorched, and from his correspondence, to be the chief returned later, Coqui liard most of the creeks dry. George Ewing replaced with a firm commitment stepped behind the door as he encountered the Indians in St. Louis to deport the Miami from Indiana. admitted him and knocked him on their return trip and reported During the summer of 1846 senseless from behind. they did not like the land, that it was Lafontaine apparently lost his effec-

Spri>�g 1996 17 REMOVAL "THE CAUSE OF THEIR tiveness with the other Miami lead­ the government." REAL ers who were opposed to removal. Without the support of the traders UNWILLINGNESS WAS THIS- Attempting to mend matters, he the Miami could no longer delay took Pimyotamah and other village emigration. In March the Ewing THEY DREADED THE VERY IDEA chiefs on an unauthorized trip to brothers reached a settlement of OF LEAVING THAT SPLENDID Washington, D.C., to confer with their outstanding Miami claims and

President James K. Polk. Although with the permission of Chief INDIAN COUNTRY WHERE THEY the tribal leadership was exempt Lafontaine and the Indian Office from removal, their resistance was had gained control of the entire HAD LIVED ALL THEIR LIVES." making the removal of those who $12,500 annual debt installment. - GEORGE EWING were not exempt impossible to orches­ The Ewings now warmly supported trate. Lafontaine was caught in the privates from middle between Newport Barracks fe deral officials near Cincinnati. demanding re­ By 1 October not a moval and virtu­ single Miami had ally the entire tribe come to the col­ that was against it. lection point, and Hamilton, always Sinclair announced the humanitarian, that troops would argued against the begin to search fo r use of troops to fugitives in two coerce the unwill­ days. After that ing Miami. With­ threat the Miami holding annuities gathered. The would get the removal began on proper results. 6 October when "Let them," he three canal boats wrote the commis­ loaded with Miami sioner of Indian and their effects Affairs in August, departed on the "be without their Wabash and Erie usual resources for jOHN BUNDY AT A PAGEANT IN THE LATE 1920s A FEW YEARS BEFORE HIS DEATH. THE Canal. Tw o more one winter only, MILD·MANNERED BUNDY WAS FLUENT IN THE MIAMI LANGUAGE AND WAS A HUNTER, boatloads of Miami and their state of FISHERMAN, AND STORYTELLER WHO WAS POPULAR WITH ALL MIAMI PEOPLE. were collected at starvation will Fort Wayne. teach them in a Several whites fo rcible manner accompanied the the absolute necessity of complying Miami removal. On 7 September group, including William G. Ewing. with their solemn stipulations." 1846 Commissioner of Indian They proceeded northeast to To ledo, Hamilton had not seen the prolif­ Affairs William Medill ordered where they turned down the Miami eration of grogshops along the Joseph Sinclair, the Miami subagent, and Erie Canal, passing through border of the sweltering Miami to demand a council with the Miami Dayton to Cincinnati, roughly retrac­ '' reservation and assured the com­ and to inform the Miami and the ing the route of the 1790s military missioner in Washington that "feel­ traders that there would be no more expeditions sent against them. At ing fo r the welfare of the Indians, as annuities or debt awards paid until Cincinnati they were transferred to we do, we wish sincerely fo see them removal was complete. Sinclair the steamboat Colorado, on which removed far from the corrupting called fo r a small military fo rce, they traveled down the Ohio River influence ofwhit e people and placed and on 22 September Capt. W R. to the Mississippi, then up the under the immediate protection of Jouett arrived in Peru with sixty-four Mississippi to St. Louis, where they

18 TRACES REMOVAL arrived 20 October. At St. Louis they The division of the historic Miami base, and in the midst of a rapidly transferred to the Clermont II and tribe, itself a fragment of a larger populating, dynamic European­ steamed up the Missouri River to Miami-speaking group, into two American culture. The remainder Kansas Landing (now Kansas City). tribes, the Eastern,or Indiana Miami of this work concer.ns both change Here they unloaded and traveled tribe, and the Western, or Oklahoma and persistence of older ways in the fifty miles overland to the reserva­ Miami tribe, occurred on 9 Nov­ eastern branch of the Miami tribe in tion, where they finally arrived on 9 ember 1846. The Miami had come their Indiana homeland. Some of November. The local Indian agent through fiftyyears of rapid change, those Miami fo und a new future in certified the arrival of 323 Miami, unlike any they had known before. the We st, of their own choice, and with the death of six and the birth In the last thirty years they had many of the Miami taken west of two. endured rapid population loss at the returned to their homeland, further George Ewing frustrating fe deral came from the Sac intentions and and Fox agency in complicating the Iowa to meet the work of the histo­ emigrating Miami rian. The Miami on 3 November people were doing and accompanied as they always had, them on the last seeking opportu­ leg of their trip. nity and adapting His assessment of to change, but the removal gives remaining Indian. a grimmer picture than the brief Stewart RajeTt was report filed by the the fir-stre cipient of Kansas agent: a graduate fe llow­ ship fo r studies in They have suffe red midwestern history considerable from sick­ fro m the Indiana ness on the way and Historical Society some have died. They in 1978. A gradu- have lost, in all, since ate of Earlham they left Pe ru, Indiana College, he Teceived and up to this time his Ph .D. jTom SARAH WARD PARKHURST AND CORA WARD MENEFEE ABOUT 1905. [November 24th] 16 the Un iveTsity of BOTH MARRIED WHITE MEN WHO WORKED FOR PERU•AREA CIRCUSES. persons-all but 5 of Delaware in 1982. these were children He has worked fo r and infants. I am the Indiana Miami informed that much tribe in its bid fo r sickness prevailed amongst them previous same time their ownership of prime fe deral recognition and teaches at the to their departure. real estate, good leadership, and an Un iversity of Delaware and Wilming­ alliance with powerful traders had ton Friends School. The Miami Re moval had finally taken place. enabled them to play off powerful Indians of Indiana: A Persistent Ewing summed up the years of delay groups in American society. People, 1654-1994, will be avail­ and resistance and in his matter-of­ Both tribes now faced an uncer­ able in May 1996 at a tetail price of fact way went to the heart of the tain future, one on the western edge $29. 95. IHS members can order it matter: "The real cause of their of the eastern woodlands in a directly from the Society at the dis­ unwillingness was this-they country far harsher than the one count price of $23. 95. Postage is dreaded the very idea of leaving that they had left. The other tribe $2. 75 fo r the first book, $1.00 jo T splendid Indian country where they remained in its homeland, but with each additional. Call 1-800-IHS-1830 had lived all their lives." an uncertain legal status, a tiny land fo r information.

Spri11g 1996 19 � DAVID HOPPE

SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS  WRITING FROM THE CENTER The midwestern character is a little like Sasquatch. People say they've seen it but no two of them will agree on exactly what it is. Scott Russell Sanders has made a career of identifying and defin­ ing its elusive traits. Neither sloganeer nor cheerleader, he writes about the Midwest because of the

potential he finds in this place and because he understands the risk of neglecting it. '!! Wr iting from the Center (Indiana University Press� 1995) is Sanderss nineteenth book and his fifth collection of essays-· a form he has not only mastered but possibly helped to extend. While American literature boasts a rich line of authors who have used storytelling techniques to write about

20 TRACES ILLUSTRATION BY BRUCE DEAN.

their own experience, fe w have done it with Sanders'splainspoken, yet sophisticated, authenticity. Fewer still have done it while living in Indiana. Scott Sanders has lived in Bloomington fo r more than twenty years. He has willingly set himself apartfro m the destinations usually asso­ ciated with American literary accomplishment, preferring instead to ground his writing on a midwestern fo undation. It may be instructive that, during a period when literature's public rel­ evance is being questioned more than ever, Scott Sanders's message of commitment and com­ munity is winning recognition and attracting readers throughout the English-speaking world.

Spri>Jg 1996 21 DOWN TO EARTH This accomplishment is especially significantbecause exile has been the strategy adopted by most midwestern writers. Since at least World War I, the midwestern story has been: Born There; Grew Old Enough to Leave; Moved to New Yo rk. Once ensconced in a place where writers earned real money, where there was such a thing as an arts economy, transplanted midwesterners-from Hemingway to Vo nnegut-looked back at where they'd been. As a literary subject, the Midwest, not surpris­ ingly, became a wellspring of coming-of-age nostalgia and social satire. But, writes Sanders, this literature of exile is insuffi­ cient. "I believe that we need a literature-as we need a culture-of inhabitation ....What most needs our attention now, I believe, is the great community of land­ air and water and soil and rock, along with all the crea­ tures, human and otherwise, that share the place. We need to imagine the country anew ... as our present and future home, a dwelling place to be cared fo r on behalf of all beings fo r all time." or Scott Sanders, the project facing the midwestern Fwriter and, by extension, all of us who share this place, is to reimagine where we live: "In reimagining one's region, it is safer," writes Sanders, "to begin by studying the land than by studying the yellow pages. Informed by a sense of natural history, we should be PHOTOGRAPH BY EVA SANDERS. ready to learn the human history, the tales that have been told, the songs that have been sung; we should be able to see more clearly how the land has invited certain community derives its sense of self-esteem. They are kinds of work and worship and community, and how in the means by which identity and conscience are created turn our presence has transformed the land." and preserved. Without this public vein of images and The midwestern landscape, observes Sanders, pre­ stories, the spirit of place is vulnerable, its history eas­ sents an object lesson in what happens when we fa il to ily fo rgotten, and its character reduced to whatever can be fu lly engaged by our home ground. It is taken from be bought and sold. us. Returning to his boyhood home in Ohio, Sanders For too long, the story of the Midwest has been about finds the river that once ran by his family's farm exploitation. The lay of our land invited this. "Sane dammed, the woods that grew beside it flooded, and people," notes Sanders, "do not think of conquering a the agricultural community he had known abandoned. mountain range or a desert; but generations of quite "If enough people had spoken fo r the river, we might sane people could imagine conquering grasslands and have saved it," he reflects. "If enough people had hardwood fo rests, clearing the trees and breaking the believed that our scarred country was worth defending, sod, draining the swamps, damming the rivers, reduc­ we might have dug in our heels and fo ught. Our attach­ ing the land to obedience." ments to the land were all private. We had no shared lore, The first settlers and those that fo llowed them fo und no literature, no art to root us there ....The Ohio land­ the Midwest a place that, fo r all its hardships, was ulti­ scape never showed up on postcards or posters, never mately pliable. It could be tamed. In 1785 a fe deral grid unfurled like tapestry in films, rarely fi lled even a para­ survey began that systematically parceled the region graph in books." into square-mile blocks, turning the entire terrain into Sanders understands the vital connection between real estate. For Sanders, this "lucid geometry imposed the arts and the everyday as well as anyone writing. on messy reality" exemplified an obsession with con­ The lore and literature he talks about are not indul­ trol, the roots of which originated in the settlers' puri­ gences. They are, rather, touchstones from which a tanical religious fa ith. According to Sanders, this religion

22 TRACES "Of all regions in America, II asserts Sanders,

"the Midwest is the one most easily

-if superficially-subdued, and

therefo re the one where the fa ilure of our effo rts,

the waste of riches, the betrayal of promise

is most painfu lly evident. If the literature

of the Midwest began as the story

of arrivals and departures, it has evolved

into a literature of loss. II

Spriug i 996 23 DOWN TO EARTH projected its basic fe ar of the body onto a region The Midwest has suffered. For generations it has been "that is all body. " This primal conflict between people seen by others-and often by ourselves-as "a realm with a deep distrust of the sensual and the fe rtile land­ of rich soils and pinch-penny souls, a country of raw scape they claimed is the central fact from which farms and small towns and grubby industrial cities, pop- so much of our ulated by gossips midwestern and boosters and story proceeds. Bible-thumpers "Of all regions who are hostile to in America," ideas, conformist, asserts Sanders, moralistic, utili­ "the Midwest tarian, and per­ is the one petually behind most easily-if the times." Such superficially­ an image has subdued, and served neither our therefore the environment nor WRITING one where the our culture. "The FROM THE fai lure of our land cannot be CENTER efforts, the waste damaged without of riches, the damaging the Scott Ru�scll San

Freedom, argues Sanders, is based on respect fo r an .• stop at a "local" mall will find "the same stores, the same entire web of relationships. If our relationships are products, the same movies, and, so far as you can tell based on models of control, domination, and rugged from a quick visit, the same customers as the mall back individuality, if they are �riven by fe ar, suspicion, and home. In what sense have you in fact left home?" the desire fo r personal gratification, then the web is The triumph ofAmerican material mass culture may bound to be tangled. The land, the communities we be due not to its superiority but to the degradation of build upon it, and, ironically, our cherished individuality local meaning in people's lives. The problem, though, will suffe r. is that materialism, fo r all its seductive charms, doesn't

24 TRACES DOWN TO EARTH satisfy: "By now, on the eve of the third millennium," distinctly midwestern. But, as Sanders is quick to point observes Sanders, "we know too much about erosion, out, coming to midwestern consciousness can have pollution, extinction of species, overpopulation, and planetary implications: "Every thread you discover resource depletion, about ozone holes, acid rain, smog, in the local web of life leads beyond your place to life traffic congestion, poverty, homelessness, epidemics, elsewhere." addiction, crime, and numerous other ills to think that In the meantime, what could be more midwestern the country we have made out of the raw land is beau­ than an approach to living that is, literally, down to tiful and harmonious." earth? "I am convinced that we need to live in our places Dark as this description may seem, it does offe r some more conservingly and more lovingly, and that we can hope. Where frustration and loss are acknowledged only do so if we see our places more truly. In our books, there may also be a will to change. For midwesterners as in our hearts and minds, we need a much greater this means construc- knowledge of the tive meditation on earth and the human where and who we past." Sanders's con­ are, reimagining our Dark as this description may viction is that such landscape, our com­ knowledge can make munities, our selves. the reimagining he As Sanders says, seem, it does offe r some hope. talks about more pos­ "None of us lives sible. It can facilitate at the point where the necessary attitude the Creation began. shift from our his­ But every one of us Where frustration and loss toric self-image as lives at a point where masters of all we sur­ the Creation contin­ vey to servants of lan­ ues." The Creation are acknowledged there may guage, the land, continues here in community, craft, the Midwest. For and history itself. Sanders this means a also be a will to change. Servant, in Sanders's renewed respect fo r usage , is not about our natural history: toil, but good work "I suggest we begin that "may renew us, our search for a new sense of place not by tuning in to by giving expression to our powers." the global village, nor by tracing our ancestry, nor by What does it mean when at the end of the twentieth studying our own remarkable works, but by learning all century an artist's desire to do good, in other words, we can about the land." to connect with and contribute to his or her commu­ Great as the spiritual and ethical implications of nity, seems like a radical stance? However you choose this learning process might be, there is also a midwest­ to see it, Sanders's commitment to the kind of writing ern practicality behind Sanders's suggestion. He points he does about his place represents a lease on life for out that we need a richer vocabulary of place, that, on the Midwest. "The surest way of convincing your neigh­ average, there are fewer place-names per square mile in bors that they, too, live in a place that matters is to give the United States than anywhere else on earth. This is them honest and skillful writing about your mutual not trivial. What is named can be talked about, and home," he says. what is talked about can be remembered-not only pri­ It is also as fine a way as I can think of to make litera­ vately, but collectively. Naming helps us keep a place in ture that matters. mind. It is a way of paying attention that, in turn, helps us "begin to notice patterns in the local landscape. Editor of Hard Pieces: Dan Carpenter's Indiana ( 1993) Perceiving those patterns, acquiring names and theories and Where We Live: Essays about Indiana (1989) and and stories fo r them, we cease to be tourists and become award-winning author of numerous articles and stories, David inhabitants." And inhabiting a place enables one to Ho ppe has also spent a good deal of time, talent, andener gy share in and contribute to its continually evolving char­ thinking about the Midwest. His article, "Moon Va lley, " acter-in this case, to come to terms with what is appeared in the spring 1993 issue of Traces.

Spri11g i996 25 ver since the eclipse of robber who killed a bystander in fo r making a decent life in common. our native cultures, the front of a crowd, or a bank official Hands off, we say; give me elbow dominant American view who left a trail of embezzlement as room; good fe nces make good neigh­ has been ...that we wide as the Mississippi. bors; my home is my castle; don't should cultivate the self rather than Our religion has been marked by tread on me. I'm looking out fo r the community; that we should look an evangelical Protestantism that number one, we say; I'm doing my to the individual as the somce of hope emphasizes personal salvation rather own thing. We have a Bill of Rights, and the center of value, while expect­ than social redemption. To "Get which protects each of us from a bul­ ing hindrance and harm from society. Right with God," as signs along the lying society, but no Bill of Responsi­ What other view could have roads here in the Midwest gravely bilities, which would oblige us to emerged from our history? The first recommend, does not mean to rec­ answer the needs of others. Europeans to reach America were oncile your fe llow citizens to the Even where America's fo unding daredevils and treasure seekers, as divine order, but to make a separate documents clearly address the pub­ were most of those who mapped the peace, to look after the eternal lic good, they have often been interior. Many colonists were rene­ future of your own singular soul. turned to private ends. Considerjust gades of one stripe or another, some True, we have a remarkable history one notorious example, the Second of them religious nonconformists, of communal experiments, most of Amendment to the Constitution:

''THE COMFROM MON LIFE''

WRITING FROM THE. CE.NTE.R Scott Russell Sa nders some political rebels, more than a them religiously inspired-from A well regulated Militia, being necessary to few of them fugitives from the law. Plymouth Colony, through the the security of a free State, the right of the The trappers, hunters, traders, and Shaker villages, Robert Owen's New people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be freebooters who pushed the fron­ Harmony, the settlements at Oneida, infringed. tier westward seldom recognized any Amana, and countless other places, authority beyond the reach of their to the communes in our own day. It would be difficult to say more own hands. Coast to coast, our land But these are generally known to us, plainly that arms are to be kept fo r has been settled and our cities have if they are known at all, as utopian the sake of a militia, and a militia is been filled by generations of immi­ fai lures. to be kept fo r defense ofthe country. grants more intent on leaving For much of the present century, In our day, a reasonable person might behind old tyrannies than on seek­ Americans have been fighting vari­ judge that the Pentagon deploys ing new social bonds. ous fo rms of collectivism-senile quite enough weapons, without requir­ Our government was fo rged in empires during Wo rld War I, then ing any supplement from household rebellion against alien control. Our Nazism, communism, and now fun­ arsenals. Ye t this lucid passage has economy was fo unded on the sanc­ damentalist theocracies-and these been construed to justify a domestic tity of private property, and thus our wars, the shouting kind as well as the arms race, until we now have in Amer­ corporations have taken on a sacred shooting kind, have only strength-. ica more gun shops than gas stations, immunity through being defined ened our commitment to individu­ we have nearly as many handguns as under the law as persons. Our crim­ alism. We have understood freedom hands, and we have concentrated inal justice system is so careful to fo r the most part negatively rather enough firepower in the average city protect the rights of individuals that than positively, as release from con­ to carry on a war-which is roughly it may require years to convict a bank straints rather than as the condition what, in some cities, is going on. Thus,

26 TRACES by reading the Second Amendment along with countless lonesome cow­ In TheIn vasion ofthe Body Snatchers, through the lens of our obsessive boys, all wander, unattached, through a filmfrom my childhood that still individualism, we have turned a pro­ the great spaces of our imagination. disturbs my dreams, an alien life vision fo r public safety into a guar­ When society begins to close in, fo rm takes over one person·after antee of public danger. making demands and asking ques­ another in a small town, merging Observe how zealously we have tions, our heroes hit the road. Like them into a single creature with a carved up our cities and paved our Huckleberry Finn, they are fo rever single will, until just one freethink­ land and polluted our air and lighting out fo r the Te rritory, where ing individual remains, and even he burned up most of the earth's petro­ nobody will tell them what to do. is clearly doomed. Along with dozens leum within a single generation­ Huck Finn ran away from what he of other invasion tales, the filmwas all fo r the sake of the automobile, a called civilization in order to leave a warning against communism, I symbol of personal autonomy even behind the wickedness of slavery, suppose, but it was also a caution more potent than the gun. There is and who can blame him, but he was against the perils of belonging, of a contemptuous ring to the word also running away from church and losing your one sweet self in the "mass" in mass transportation, as if school and neighbors, from aunts group, and thus it projected a fe ar the only alternative to private cars who made him wash before meals, as old as America. were cattle cars. Motorcycles and from girls who cramped his style, Of course you can findAmerican snowmobiles and three-wheelers fill from chores, from gossip, from the books and fi lms that speak as pas­ our public lands with the din of whole nuisance of living alongside sionately fo r the virtues of our life engines and tear up the terrain, yet other people. together as fo r the virtues of our lives any effort to restrict their use is In our literature, when community apart. To mention only a fe w novels denounced as an infringement of enters at all, it is likely to appear as from the past decade, I think of Gloria individual rights. Millions of a conspiracy against the free soul of Naylor's Mama Day, Wendell Berry's motorists exercise those rights by a hero or heroine. Recall how restless A Place on Earth, Ursula Le Guin's hurling the husks of their pleasures Natty Bumpo becomes whenever Always Coming Ho me, and Ernest onto the roadside, boxes and bottles Cooper drags him in from the woods Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men. But and bags. Ravines and ditches in my to a settlement. Remember how stren­ they represent a minority opinion. part of the country are crammed uously Emerson preaches against The majority opinion fillsbestseller with rusty cars and refrigerators, conforming to society and in favor of lists and cinema screens and bill­ burst couches and stricken TVs, self-reliance, how earnestly Hawthorne boards with isolated, alienated, rebel­ which their fo rmer owners would warns us about the tyranny of those lious figures who are too potent or not bother to haul to the dump. Puritan villages. Think of Thoreau sensitive fo r membership in any group. Meanwhile, advertisers sell us every­ running errands in Concord, rush­ thing from jeeps to jeans as tokens ing in the front door of a house and Scott Russell Sanders is a professor of of freedom, and we are so infatu­ out the back, then home to his cabin English at Indiana Un iversity, ated with the sovereign self that we in the woods, never pausing, lest he Bloomington. His books include Staying fall fo r the spiel, as if by purchasing be caught in the snares of the town. Put, Secrets of the Universe, and The one of a million identical products Think ofthe revulsion Edna Pontellier Paradise of Bombs. His work has been we could distinguish ourselves from fe els toward the Creole society of selected fo r the Associated Wr iting the herd. New Orleans in Kate Chopin's The Programs Award in Creative No nfiction, The cult of the individual shows Awakening. Think of Willa Cather's the Ohioana Book Award, Best up everywhere in American lore, or To ni Morrison's orJames Baldwin's American Essays, and the Kenyon which celebrates drifters, rebels, and high-spirited women and men who Review Award fo r Literary Excellence. loners, while pitying or reviling the can only thrive by fleeing their home In September 1995 he was named win­ pillars of the community. The back­ communities. Think of Spoon River, ner of the Lannan Literary Award, woods explorer like Daniel Boone, Winesburg, Gopher Prairie, Zenith, which carries a $50, 000 grant to sup­ the riverboat rowdy like Mike Fink, all those oppressive fictional places, port fu rther writing. This excerpt from the lumberjack, the prospector, the the backward hamlets and stifling Wr iting from the Center is published rambler and gambler, the daring suburbs and heartless cities that are by permission of Indiana Un iversity crook like Jesse James and the fit only fo r drones and drudges and Press, and the book is available at book­ resourceful killer like Billy the Kid, mindless Babbitts. stores or by calling 1-800-842-6796.

27 Spri11g 1996 FRoM My ARMY LtFE

THE EVENING MEAL OF THE 7TH REGIMENT NEW YoRK NEAR fREDERICK, MARYLAND, /863. SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD. THE 27TH INDIANA CAMPED IN THE SAME AREA DURING THE WINTER OF 1861-62.

The Remembrances of L e.w ·•s Private K1ng

WILBUR D. JONES JR. . "I did not achieve anything except a je 1v ha-rd kn:ocks fo -r myself, and a fe w simila-r expe-riences fo -r my commandi_!lg office-rs, " P-rivate Lewis King w-rote of his se-rvice in the Civil Wa r. "I was eithe-r bo-rn too late o-r the 1va-rcame too

soon fo -r me to be old enough to have sense enough to achieve anything that sho1ved any g-reatness. " � In adulthood,

King wouldbeco·me a p-rominent citizen, se-rving as a min­ iste-r in Columbus, Indiana, and as the state commande-r of the G-rand A-rmy of the Republic. His wa-r memoi-r, however, desc-ribes a t-roubled childhood fu ll of pe-rsecu­ tion and self-pity, t-raits that ca-r-ried ove-r into a-rmy life. It vividly po-rt-rays, also, the eve-ryday t-rials of the com­ mon soldier, whose battles we-re not all on the battlef ield.

King was born and raised in Pa ris, Indiana, in "and since I had served more than ten years in the

Je nnings County. His parents died when he was two, most crueland bitter kind of slavery, I wanted to teach

and he was lef t in the care of an uncle who in turn them they could not do as they pleased with their

lef t him to the "tender mercy of strangers. " At age five slaves. " He rode his employer 's horse to Crothersville

he went to live with a couple who lived fo urteen miles and boarded a train fo r In dianapolis 's Camp Morton,

away. "They had controlof mefo r more than 10 years, where he joined the 27th Indiana.

and they surely did control me, " King wrote. ''I have SPANGLER'S MEADOW, GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA. ON THE MORNING of ten wondered how any boy could endure the ignominy OF 3 jULY 1863 THE 27TH SUFFERED HEAVY CASUALTIES AS IT ATTAC KED CONFEDERATE LINES LOCATED ACROSS THE MEADOW NEAR THE BASE OF that I endured; let alone the exacting toil, the lack of CULP'S HILL.THE MONUMENT IN THE FOREGROUND IS DEDICATED TO THE a decent place in which to sleep, the lack of decent, to SOLDIERS OF THE 27TH.

say nothing about comfortable, clothes to wear, and last,

but not least, the cruel beatings which were my daily portion, and not develop into a dirty scamp. " � King was fif teen when the Confederatesfired on Fo rt Sumter,

South Carolina, on 12 April 1861. At the time King was

!0 workingfo r a fa rmer on Big Creek inJe nnings County. g

D. He heard that the South was fighting to re tain slaves, � " 29 Spr iHg 1996 ARMY LIFE The fo llowing excerpts from King 's memoir detail his early The 27th Indiana spent three weeks training at Camp war experiences, including an ongoingfeud with one ofhis supe­ Mortonand then traveled to the Wa shington, DC., area. There riors. The manuscript, titled "Scraps from My Army Life, "is the soldiers received guns, and there King first ran intotr ouble held in the Lewis King Collection, Box L-83, in the Indiana with his superior. Division, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis. Spelling and - punctuation have generally been preserved as in the original Some further experiences, manuscript. For instance-with Slugs. We were now equipped as soldiers, but lacked the abil­ � Mustered in. ity to play soldier in every particular. For instance most of he night passed and morning came, and I the men knew very little about cooking-as certaina woman Twas marched up to face the Mustering Officer said about her husband-they couldnt boil water without alone. Perhaps it may have been well that I did not burning it. I however, happened to be an exception, having have to stand along side of done plain cooking from men, or I might have been the time I was 8 years old, rejected. now got along finely until As it was, the Mustering company cooks were detailed. Officer looked at me, asked We drew flour, fat meat and my age-l have often been coffee, with an occasional asked about the lie I told? allowance of rice or beans. I answer that I told no lie. The cooks finallylearned The Orderly Sergeant, in to fry or boil the pork, and his eagerness to get the boil the coffee, but they company recruited to its never learned to make full number, hastened to bread out of flour, with nei­ tell the lie fo r me. ther milk, soda or baking The Mustering Officer powder to mix with it. fe lt around my ribs a Their method was to add little-said: "you are rather salt and water to a large a small pattern, maybe you batch of flour, mix it, roll it will do; hold up your hand out to about an inch in thick- and be sworn. " ness, cut with a knife into inch squares, and fry these squares in an abundance of � Orderly changes LEWIS KING. hot grease, like doughnuts-­

his mind. hDI�N.� S IArl LIIIRARY but mind you, they neither A fe w days later this looked, smelled or tasted like Orderly Sergeant had a doughnuts. change of mind. This 15 The boys named them year old boy that he had lied "slugs, " but having nothing so readily to get into the service, he would just as read­ better in the way of bread, we ate them, and suffered the ily have lied out of the service, if it had been possible. consequences with a fu rious round of camp diarrhoea. Another company had an excess of a half dozen men. They gave me this and something more-My first They were offered to our officers,whose company was night in the guard house.

now fu ll. The Orderly Sergeant tried to get two or three .• One day I was on guard, and could not get to come of us boys to back out, and give place to some of these fo r supper at supper time. 6 fo oters; but we simply hung on. When I did come fo r my supper, the cooks were not Perhap [s] , if the offe r h�d been made at a later date, to be fo und. After hunting fo r them fo r a time, I opened when we were making some of our hard, fo rced marches, the flap door of the cook tent, reached in and got a or fighting some of our hard battles, we might have handful of "slugs, " and started to my tent eating them: been inclined to listen to the offer. another youngster of the company-a pet with the offi­ cers, but not worth a continental to the army, discharged

30 TRACES A LETTER FROM A 27TH INDIANA SOLDIER TO HIS FAMILY. CAMP HALLECK, THE 27TH'S HEADQUARTERS NEAR fREDERICK, MARYLAND, APPEARS ON THE LETTERHEAD. IN ONE OF HIS LETTERS ANOTHER SOLDIER NOTED: "THE ARTIST SPELLED OUR CAMP HOOSIER INSTEAD OF HOOSIER CITY AS IT SHOULD BE & I TRIED TO ALTER IT TO AN H BUT WITH POOR SUCCESS!'

31 ARMY LIFE at the end of three months, drew one of the largest pen­ In the early part of the winter, I caught cold, and that sions after the war, etc. This youngster spied me leaving kept increasing, little by little until I seemed to be a the cook tent, and raised the alarm. The same Orderly mass of cold clear through. Sergeant who lied to get me into the service, came charg­ A little extra exertion would start me to coughing, ing out of his tent, and, in thunder tones, ordered a cor­ and from coughing to vomiting. poral to take me to the guard house. I would vomit up everything available-the most of I was charged with stealing sugar-I denied the which seemed to be phlegm-after which I could march charge, but my denial did no good, and so, to the guard fo r awhile. house I went, and staid there all night. All this racket I remember the morning we left Camp Halleck-our was raised over winter quarters­ three little "slugs, " fo r Harper's Ferry. when, if I had I fe lt that I could fo und the cooks, not march to save I would have my life; but what to received at least a do I did not know. half dozen of Up to this time, them, besides meat I had never both­ and coffee. ered the doctors, and, with my low � In the winter of estimate of my 1861-62, the 27th own importance, I camped near Fred­ had no faith in erick, Maryland. going to them now. That winter the I started with no sergeant who ordered purpose only to go King to the guard as far as I could. >- house-Nehemiah � I soon emptied Wa lton-was � my stomach of promoted to second & all it contained, lieutenant. and then marched GENERAL ABNER DOUBLEDAY WATCHING HIS TROOPS CROSS THE PoTOMAC. �- about 3 miles to � DAVID GILMOUR BLYTHE. THE 27TH INDIANA CROSSED THE POTOMAC � And bitterly did R. Road Station, SEVERAL TIMES WHILE FIGHTING IN THE EAST. � your humble ser­ j where we took flat vant rue the day cars and rode to �:;g that gave this man z H arper'F s erry . more power. From Sandy He was a big man physically, and as pompous as he was Hook we marched to ground on which we could camp. big. He was afraid of the men of the company: and so he We lay on the frozen ground, without tents; and to me, picked on the boys, and on this boy in particular. at least, it was a miserably, bitter, cold, never to be fo r­ The captain and firstLieut turned the company over gotten night. to him. They took their ease, drank whiskey and played I was not sick, but freezing. I would crawl under our cards; and whenever a commissioned officerwas in evi­ two blankets beside my comrade, and lie there fo r a fe w

. dence, on drill, on picket, or inspection he-Walton- • minutes, and when I could stand it no longer, would was the one; and it seemed to me that whenever anything crawl to the fire and sit there as long as I could, and went wrong, he held me responsible. then try the blankets again. And thus the night finally I finally stood it the limit, and then fe ll to cussing · passed, and it was the morning of Feb. 26-1862. him; but this only got me in deeper; and by the time the That day we crossed the Potomac River on a Pontoon winter was over, I hated him, and I suppose he hated me. boat bridge-the first one we had ever seen. We spent I took care to keep in the line of duty and managed that night in deserted houses on Bolivar Heights. to squeeze through. I slept some that night and fe lt a little better the The winter, however, proved to be a severe one on me. next day.

32 TRACES ARMY LIFE We marched, perhaps, a mile out of town put up our his pompous tone: "King, What in the h-1 are you lying tents and slept in them the night of the 27. The next there fo r? [ "] morning I was still sick, but went on guard. I fe ebly answered: ''I'm sick." His next question was: I stood two heats of two hours each, and in the "Why in h-1 dident you go to the Dr?" evening we were ordered to pull out fo r Charlestown­ I answered: "Ive been on guard and had no chance the place where John Brown was hung-our guard to to go. " take the lead. After some further parleying, he put my knapsack Had I known the distance-7 or 8 miles, I would have and gun in the companys wagon, but says he: ''You will given up at the start-As it was, we went all the way at have to march.["] double quick, with By leaning on a loaded guns, ex- comrade, I man­ pecting to run into aged to walk 60 or the rebels at any 75 yards to the time. I said not a pike. As soon as it word to the com­ was reached I mander or anyone dropped at its side else. and awaited devel­ And so, when we opments. Soon the started on the dou­ Dr came riding by. ble quick, I simply He stopped and had to throw up, asked me, what was and kept on dou­ the matter? All my ble quicking the answer was: "Im entire distance. Sick." He exam­ hen the ined me, gave me W regiment a dose of medi­ reached the camp cine, stopped an we were thrown ambulance, and around as camp put me in it. I soon guards. I stood two lost consciousness, INDIANAPOLIS'S CAMP MORTON FIRST SERVED AS A RECRUITMENT CENTER AND hours on and fo ur and rode all day TRAINING GROUND FOR HOOSIER TROOPS, INCLUDING THE 27TH INDIANA, BUT off the entire night. with a fe arful AFTER fEBRUARY 1862 OFFICIALS USED IT MAINLY AS A CONFEDERATE PRISON But 0, how I did nightmare haunt­ CAMP. THIS PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS PRISONERS AND BARRACKS IN 1864. chill! But I lived ing me-l knew over or through it nothing more fo r until the next day, 3 days. and the next. As I walked back and fo rth on my beat, that We camped at the end of that first days march at, or night, with the North wind whistling across the ridge near Smithfield,and remained here 4 days, and then, in where we stood, I fe lt as though the marrow in my bones two days more reached Winchester. This made 7 days in was frozen. During those days I ate but little, if any­ all that I was under the Doctors care. At Winchester, I thing. When not on duty, I simply moped. I had no idea was turned loose and sent to my company to run afoul what was the matter. I have since learnedthat I had a bad ofWaJton again. It happened on this wise. I was detailed case of what the doctors termed: "Luny fe ver." Well, in the next morning after leaving the hospital, to go on a couple of days I was detailed fo r guard duty again. I guard. I was posted in front of the colonels tent, where crawled out of bed and went, and managed to stay with I was expected to keep moving all the time. I was so it until the next morning, when we were dismissed and weak that my gun made a load. sent to our quarters. When I had dragged my heavy fe et I kept on the go, however, until my time was up and to my tent, I fo und it torn down, and my knapsack I was relieved. In addition to any weakness, I had the packed. I lay down with my head on my knapsack, and toothache in one jaw, and mumps in the other. That lay there until Lieut Walton called fo r Co H to fall in. afternoon our company was detailed to march 3 miles, When he discovered me lying there, he called out in and guard a signal station. As usual, Lieut Walton called

Spri11g 1996 33 ARMY LIFE Co H. into line. I came out of my tent gun in hand company, and this threw me in contact with Walton. intending to try to go, but I was so sick, I begged Walton The train stopped in the midst of cavalry camps on to excuse me. Walton again demanded to know why I had either side of the road. The tents were torn down, but not gone to the doctor? I answered that at sick call I did not the Cavalry were still there. know of this detail. He abruptly said: ''You get into the ranks I had a sudden call, of a private nature, and started and go. " I simply said "I will not," and turned and walked to go on out of the camp. Walton discovered me going; to my tent. He drew his dirk knife and started fo r me: but and in his usual gentle tones? Ye lled out: "King, where some of the men of the company, told him he had better in hell are you going?" stop and let the sick boy alone. He concluded he had better I might, perhaps, have given him a more decent do so, and finally answer, but was the company qui- not then in a eted down and more decent marched away to mood. the Signal Station. I answered I spent the him in the mood next 3 days in my he had displayed tent suffering in his question. I agony with my told him plain!� aching tooth on with an oath what one side and the I was going to do. mumps on the Nothing more other. And at the was said until I same time won­ carne back, then dering where my Walton carne insubordination blustering up to woul[d] lead. me threatening But when what he would the company lAWRENCE COUNTY CIVIL WAR VETERANS, MANY FROM THE do to me ifl ever returned to 27TH INDIANA'S COMPANY 0, AT AN 1891 REUNION. spoke so disre­ camp, I was get- spe[c]tful to him ting better, and again. I was still was soon able fo r fe eling saucy, and duty, and nothing gave expression was ever said about my squabble with Lieut Wa lton. to the fe eling. He proceeded to tie me by one hand to .-,... the curtain rope, at the rear end of the rear wagon, On 25 May 1862 at Winchester, Virginia, the 27th Indiana which happened to be our companys wagon. The wag­ fo ught its first battle. The Corifederates routed the Un ion army, ons finallystarted with a rush, and left the company in and the 27th fled north of the city, crossing the Po tomac and the rear. camping near Wi lliamsport, Maryland. The next month, King I soon unloosed my hand, and went around and and Wa lton clashedfo r the last time. climbed on the off wheel mule, and rode the next fo ur .-,... miles. Then the wagons stopped; and when the com­ Another and last row with Walton. pany came up I was sitting on a log by the side of the My next and most serious and final touch up with' road, looking like an innocent child. Lieut Walton, occurred the morning that we crossed Walton said: "I thought I tied you to the wagon." the river and started in pursuit of the Johnnies again.• I answered: "Yes you did, but I did not stay tied." It so happened that our company was detailed to He chided me mildly, and turned away. I learned from guard a long division wagon train. The right half of the the boys what happened when he returned to the com­ company, under the command of Lieut Hudson, pany after tying me up. Some one said to him: 'Why marched in front of the train, and the left half of the dont you pick on a man sometimes, instead of always company, under the command ofLieut Wa lton, marched picking on a boy?" This made Walton mad. He drew his in rear of the train. Of course I fe ll to the left of the sword and advanced on the man; but he fo und himself

34 TRACES ARMY LIFE advancing on a fixed bayonet. The assailed bayonet officer, he was no coward. For that was the charge holder said: "Dont come any closer or Ill let your old brought against him-let him be branded with in�om­ paunch out.["] When he [Walton] called on some of petency rather than cowardice. the rest of the men to help him out, they all refused, and � ordered him to release me as soon as they came up with Lewis King remained with the 27th Indiana until the the wagon. troops were mustered out in September 1864. During this We did not make a long march that day, and when time the company participated in Burnside 's Mud March we got into camp, the story goes that Walton appealed and campaigns at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and to Lieut Hudson Atlanta.Accor ding to take the matter to King's memoir, up reporting that confro ntations his part of the with certain supe­ company had "DvRINc; THOSE DAYS I ATE riors continued, mutinied against and in one instance him. It is said that BVT LITTLE, IF ANYTHINc;. the regiment's Lieut Hudson colonel, Silas told him he had Colgrove, fa lsely better go a little WHEN NOT ON DVTY, accused King of slow about bring­ deserting King also ing charges of ' SIMPLY MOPED . I HAD NO had run-ins with mutiny against other soldiers and the boys-that IDEA WHAT WAS THE MATTER. fo und himself a he had better frequent target drop the mat­ ' HAVE SINCE LEARN ED THAT of thieves. King 's ter-and so he fo rtunes began dropped it. to change zn ' HAD A BAD CASE OF WHAT February 1864 � No t long after when, while sta­ this incident, King THE DOCTORS TERMED: tioned in Tennessee, received guard he had an experi­ detail with an 'LVNY FEVER.'" ence that was ammunition train. "greater than any He spent the next and all the others of five months away my soldier life - from the 27th. In the fa ll of 1862, whilevisitin g the regiment, ! was born again. "After mustering out of the 27th Indiana, he encountered Wa ltonfo r the lasttime. Wa lton had been court­ King enlisted with the 145th Indiana Infantry and served martialed fo r improper conduct af ter the Battle of Cedar untilJanuary 1866. Mountain in August and discharged from the army in October. Up on entering civilian life, King became a Methodist min­ ister and preached in several towns throughout southern � Good bye Walton. Indiana. He eventually settled in Columbus, where he became Going up the river we met Lieut Walton-ex Lieut active in the local branch of the Grand Army of the Republic. now, fo r he had been dismissed from the service, and In 1915-16 he served as state commander of the G.A.R. and was now started on his way home. later served on the organization's administration committee. He grasped me by the hand, and shook and shook, as King also helped establish a reunion group of the 27th Indiana though he had fo und a long long lost friend, and said: in 1885 and was responsiblefo r keeping the group active until "King, you have been the best Soldier in the regiment. ["] 1928. He died the fo llowing year. I was amazed, and could only think, if that were so and � you treated me the way you did, what kind of treatment Wilbur D.Jo nesJr. is a professor at the Department of Defense might the poorest soldier in the regiment have expected Systems Management College, Fo rt Belvoir, Virginia. He is at your hands. As I dismiss Walton from these pages, let the author of Giants in the Cornfield:A Social Study of me say fo r him, that while he was incompetent as an the 27th Indiana Infantry.

35 Sp ri11g 1996 In the sumrner of1864 a train roared eastward from Indianapolis to Wa shington, D. C., at thirty-five miles per hour. Pe ter McCartney, shacklesra ttling on both his arms and legs, waited fo r his guards to get careless. Suddenly he bolted to the rear platform of the train and jumped into the darkness. The locomotive screeched to a halt, and the Un ion soldiers, expecting tofind their prisoner's shattered body, combed vainly along the tracks. McCartney had vanished; one ofthe nation's most skilled counterfeiters was on the loose. After his escape, McCartney, dubbed the "King of the ConeyMe n, " headed back to Indianapolis, the site to which his landmark counterfe iting exploits had necessitated the dispatch of US. Treasury agents to ·· pursue the master fo rge r. A potentially disastrous crisis infected Indiana from 1862 to 1864, the height ofthe Civil Wa r. The problem, however, was not that posed by Confederate guerrillas or by Copperheads, Southern sy mpathizers in the region; rather it

36 TRACES \\\NG OF THE CONEY MEN

PETER MCCARTNEY

DETAIL OF A PLATE FROM THE SALEM BANK OF INDIANA.

was posed by counterfe iters. Shortly af ter the fe deral government's 17 March 1862 issue of greenback bills (not backed by specie, the money was to help pay war costs), counterfe it greenback bills were appearing in banks, stores, and anywhere else money changed hands. Throughout the Un ion a "startling increase of counterfeiting" had conjured, according to the front page of the 30 ju ly 1862 edition of the New Yo rk Times, "a national evil demanding a national remedy " from the monetary depredations of master counterfe iters, such as mid westerner McCartney and the infamous Ne w York cabal of Thomas Ballard, Jo shua D. Miner, and He nry C. Cole. Although counterfe it bills turned up all over the Un ion, nowhere did the "national evil" materialize more virulently than in Indiana from 1862 to 1864. Already beleaguered by thieves, ga mblers, and camp fo llowers who had appeared with Un ion army regiments bivouacked between the Central Canal and Fa ll Creek, Indianapolis confronted thefirs t well-organized counterfeiting scheme of the greenbacks era and the plot's most dangerous architect, master fo rge r Pe ter McCartney.

PETER F. STEVENS

Sp ri11g 1996 37 MASTER COUNTERFEITER i th bogus greenbacks pos­ a small grocery store, placed a few McCartney was a handsome, mus­ ing a threat to the Union's items on the counter, and handed cular man with thick, dark hair, wartime economy, the the storekeeper a phony $10 bill. hazel eyes, and, most important fo r W Lincoln administration The grocer, scrutinizing the bill, a coney man, an abundance of responded quickly to counterfeiting said: "I don't know about that." geniality and charm. He married schemes, and in the chase of McCart­ McCartney later wrote that he was Martha Ackerman that year and ney and his cronies throughout preparing to flee if his mark dis­ began scrambling up the fo rger's Indiana unfolded one of the region's covered the phony numerals on the career ladder. most intriguing episodes. banknote. Moments later, however, McCartney burst onto the coun­ The mastermind of the Indiana the counterfeiter strode jubilantly terfeiting scene of the Midwest dur­ greenbacks caper was born Thomas from the store with change for the ing the 1850s, his phony banknotes Peter McCartney in Illinois in 1824. brilliantly engraved and easily cir­ A quiet, extremely intelligent boy, culated, his bogus bill plates and coin his ordinary life on his family's farm dies virtually matchless. The quality veered into a criminal course when, of his work led to partnerships with as a teen, he went to work fo r a the most successful and infamous renowned criminal dynasty of the coney men of the Midwest, and he pre-Civil War Midwest, the Johnson amassed a small fortune in genuine family of Lawrence, Indiana. money fo r his wife and himself. Virtually the entire Johnson As the Civil War loomed, clan-grandfathers, fathers, sons, McCartney realized that Indianap­ mothers, and daughters-was olis, teeming with new industry since involved in the production of coun­ the arrival of the railroad, would be terfeit bank drafts and phony bank­ a major military center and that the notes. William Johnson, the family's city's wartime economy would make finest engraver, taught young it a fe rtile site fo r passing counterfeit McCartney printing, engraving, and bills. As chronicled in Secret Service all the other arts of the coney man's files, McCartney employed many of trade. The youth soon displayed an IN THE 1860s COUNTERFEITER the era's major counterfeiting tech­ astounding eye fo r detai I and a deft PETER McCARTNEY LECTURED UNDER niques. What set him apart from the drawing hand, and his mentor, rec­ THE NAME PROFESSOR jOSEPH WOOD ON coney men's rank and file was his ognizing the pupil's illicit talent, HOW TO DETECT COUNTERFEIT MONEY. masterful engraving touch, not to introduced the youth to other coun­ HE ALSO PASSED COUNTERFEITS ON HIS mention a nineteenth-century coney terfeiters. AUDIENCES AT THE TICKET OFFICE. man's most valuable asset: criminal

McCartney ran his first scam in NATIONAl ARCHIVFS PHOTOGRAI'H 1!Y CRK.OKY f.,.\. STEVENS nerve. the early 1840s, during a trip to visit McCartney wasted little time in relatives in northern Illinois. After phony ten in his pocket. The grocer applying his fo rmidable fo rger's selling a load of produce fo r a farmer had not suspected a fo rgery; he had skills across Indiana's economic land­ employing him, McCartney took his only wondered whether he had change scape once the Civil War had begun. cut of the money and scraped off in his till fo r the ten-dollar note. With the Johnsons, he concocted a the $1 denominations marked on Soon afterward, McCartney struck plot to flood Indiana with bogus bills the bills. Then, using the numbers out on his own to launch a career in the nation's firstorg anized green­ from torn, worthless bills he had col­ in counterfeiting; but he maintained backs scheme, according to Secret lected, he carefully glued higher ties to the Johnson family. He stud­ Service records. Because wartime numerals to the good bills. "Why ied with a notecl midwestern en­ inflation ranged from 30 to 150 per­ should anyone make one-dollar bills graver named Ackerman and, during cent and legal bills were plentiful, when it was just as easy to make fives the tutelage from the Prussian­ McCartney experienced little or tens?" McCartney later asked as a immigrant craftsman, fo und time to trouble in moving his merchandise means of describing his gambit. His fa ll in love with the teacher's daugh­ to unwitting bank clerks and shop­ bogus bills ready, the youthful fo rger ter, tall, lovely Martha Ackerman. keepers. As other Indiana men left drove his rig to Indianapolis, entered By 1852, twenty-eight-year-old Pete their farms, their businesses, and

38 TRACES MASTER COUNTERFEITER their families to don uniforms and by using a number of aliases includ­ By the summer of 1864, McCart­ march off to distant battlefields, Pete ing the name Professor Joseph Wo od ney and the Johnsons had circulated McCartney prowled Indianapolis, (whether he did so as a jab at his more than $100,000-a staggering passing phony greenbacks and reap­ chief fo e, W P. Wood, is unknown). sum fo r the era-in phony green­ ing illicit profits in his guise as a The fe deral government evinced backs. But finally Treasury agents, legitimate businessman. The war was little doubt that McCartney and the by tracking McCartney's "business" making McCartney and his partners Johnsons controlled the region's dealings at banks and the post office, rich. counterfeiting trade. According to were closing in on the counterfeiting Flushed with success, the Johnsons the Secret Service file on McCartney, ring and casting McCartney as the decided to cut McCartney out of the he was "an expert engraver, printer, key to shattering the greenbacks scheme. When he discovered his and photographer ...and in con­ gang. Wo od wrote inJuly 1864 that ruthless partners' intention, nection with other notorious McCartney was "connected" with the McCartney broke Johnsons and held into their offices, a share in a coun­ stole their coun- terfeit $20 U.S. terfeit plate, made Tr easury plate an electrotype made by them. copy of it, and The agent believed returned it before McCartney was the Johnsons sus­ "a desperate and pected anything. notorious villain" While one histo- who, "if caught and rian writes that the cornered will blow plate was fo r bogus on the gang and $10 bills, it was ...give much more than likely a information." Wo od $20 plate since never elaborated fe deral agents fin­ on his confidence gered him as a that McCartney counterfeiter of could be induced $20 bills. to turn on his part­ By 1864 the ners. In the cut- Treasury Depart- throat world of ment was investi- coney men, how­ gating the rash THE INDIANAPOLIS POST OFFICE OCCUPIED THE LOWER STORY AND BASEMENT ever, such behavior of counterfeiting OF THIS BUILDING, WHICH WAS BEGUN IN 1857 AND COMPLETED IN 1860, was not uncommon. in Indianapolis, AT THE CORNER OF PENNSYLVA NIA AND MARKET STREETS. IT WAS HERE, Agents pounced and the search, INTHE SUMMER OF 1864,THAT TREASURY AGENTS CAPTURED PETER McCARTNEY. on McCartney and reportedly under the Johnsons in a the direction of double-pronged William P. Wo od, a shrewd agent on counterfeiters ...issued most of the raid, seizing the Johnsons at Law­ the rise in law-enforcement circles, well-executed counterfeits.... In rence and McCartney at the Indi­ soon targeted the Johnsons and fact, McCartney put the finishing anapolis post office in the summer McCartney. The latter, running his touches and finework to the major­ of 1864. The swaggering, handsome operation out ofseveral rooms in the ity of plates which were made We st counterfeiter who had passed so city, was still attempting to mask his of the Allegheny Mountains. many bills in that very post office illicit deeds beneath the veneer of a McCartney was fo r some time con­ was dragged away in chains. respectable businessman, even buy­ nected with the notorious gang of Curiously, agents did not search any ing various bits of property through­ thieves, highwaymen, and counter­ of McCartney's Indianapolis rooms, out Indianapolis. He also navigated fe iters [the Johnsons] in the vicin­ where he stored his electrotype the murky course of counterfeiting ity of Seymour, Indiana." plate, a vast improvement over the

Spri"g 1996 39 MASTER COUNTERFEITER

rt

A VI OF ICIIDIANAPOLIS IN 1862. DURING THE CIVIL WAR McCART�EY FLOODED THE CITY vyiTH COUNTERFEIT GREENBACKS. IT IS ESTIMATED THAT DURING THE WAR ABOUT OI#E•THIRD OF ALL .. PAPJ!R MONEY IN CIRCULATIONIN THE COUNTRY'WAS COUNTERFEIT.

40 TRACES MASTER COUNTERFEITER Johnsons' $20 plate, and cranked out daredevil fe at. His erstwhile part­ Although the government had his counterfeit bills. McCartney's ners in crime cut a deal: they sur­ shattered the Indianapolis green­ and the Johnsons' captors whisked rendered their counterfeit plate to backs gang, McCartney's elusiveness the fo rgers under heavy guard

aboard a Penn-Central train bound 1 1 1 1 1 111111111111j 111 11l111111'1 '�'1 '1' ' l I' I '1' ' I ' '1'1 1 1' l 1 ' 1' I l(ftt.IQ I l 1'112 1' 1 I' 11 3 '1'1'111 "11'14' 1 Il '1'1'S '11 '1' 1 'I: fo r the Old Capitol Prison in Wash­ J I I 1 ington, D.C., where captured Con­ fe derate spies and other criminals deemed threats to the Union lan­ guished in filthy cells. As the train chugged eastward, McCartney and his ex-partners, still unaware that McCartney had duplicated and bet­ tered their $20 plate, had plenty of time to dwell upon their plight and to plot how to avoid justice. "I didn't want to go to Wa shing­ ton," McCartney later wrote. "I didn't like the look of that arrangement. I could manage the boys out West. I had managed them frequently. It cost me a heap of money.... In Washing­ ton, I thought it was different. And besides, I hadn't just then a pile of money ready by me. So I watched the guard and made up my mind I'd rather not go to Washington. And I didn't!" aj or Wood tersely recorded what happened next: "McCartney jumped from M the rear platform of a train of cars on the Penn Central Railroad while they were going at the rate of 35 miles an hour and effected his escape from the officers who had � � him in charge fo r counterfeiting." 1111 1111 1111 '11' "" 11 f 1 1 lll I I I' .. "' 1 1 .,liUI'"'I'HIIl I' ., II ' I' I '< "I was hurt, of course," McCartney .,._ ' z 3 4 Is e I 1 • 'I g' 1., o , I 1 I 3 1 4 15{ � � would recall. "But I fled to the z � woods, waited till all was quiet and � ;t the train had gone, struggled along �------� � fo r hours, skulked and secreted DATED 10 MARCH 1863, THIS COUNTERFEIT OF A $50 LEGAL TENDER NOTE IS BELIEVED TO BE ONE myself, and With a StOne fi naJJy DESCRIBED IN DYE'S GOVERNMENT COUNTERFEIT DETECTOR OF fEBRUARY 1883. NOT UPTO THE QUALITY Smashed the iron ShackleS from my OF MCCARTNEY'S WORK, THE BILL FEATURES COARSE ENGRAVING, DEFECTIVE LATHEWORK,AND limbS. I SUffered fo r Want Of fo od IMPERFECT NUMBERING. THERE ARE NO KNOWN SURVIVING COUNTERFEITS BY McCARTNEY. and from the bruises I got, but finally fo und daylight and got among the government and "blew out" bedeviled the Secret Service, estab­ friends, once more in safety. " other fo rgers in the region, escap­ lished on 5 July 1865 as the Treasury The Johnsons also conceived a ing trial and eliminating sev­ Department's anticounterfeiting way to elude prosecution, although eral of their criminal rivals in the arm and headed by McCartney's a less thrilling one than McCartney's bargain. nemesis William P. Wood. For years

Sprittg 1996 41 MASTER COUNTER�F�E �IT�ER�------�----�--�------���

State Pri on. Main Entrance Michigan City, Ind.

42 MASTER COUNTERFEITER . McCartney passed his trademark greenbacks plot in Indianapolis him the sobriquet "the Albrecht well-crafted counterfeit bills twenty-six years earlier. Durer" of the coney men made more throughout the Midwest. The Secret The sixty-four-year-old coney man than fifty sets of counterfeit plates Service's McCartney file steadily would never run another scam. and issued more than $1,000,0.00 in swelled, detailing his numerous Thomas Peter McCartney, alias John fo rged bills in an era when $500 was arrests, his fa lse names, a small fo rtune. Among McCart­ and his changing physical ney's longtime law-enforcement appearance, which in­ ' fo es, his death prompted grudg­ cluded the loss of two c ARTNEY S ABILITY TO ing accolades fo r his counter­ teeth and bullet and knife M U fe iting prowess. Renowned wounds, the hazards of his detective Allan Pinkerton, dangerous profession. BREAK OUT OF JAILS FROM fo under of the famous agency McCartney's ability to bearing his name, wrote: "He break out ofja ils from NDIANA TO LLINOIS REACHED [McCartney] was not an ordi­ Indiana to Illinois reached I I nary man, and when he disap­ near-legendary propor­ peared suddenly, it was as if tions after successful NEAR-LEGENDARY PROPORTIONS some great wreck had gone down escapes in 1866, 1867, and at sea. The waters were tossed 1870. His success, as he and troubled, while ruin engulfed noted, was rooted not in AFTER SUCCESSFUL ESCAPES the smaller craft around him, jailbreak cunning, but in and many of the less ambitious cold, hard cash. "I have coney men, who depended IN AND paid away over $70,000 in 1866, 1867, 1870. upon this bold and daring pris­ good money to escape the oner, were soon detected and clutches of the law, " he IS SUCCESS, AS HE NOTED, brought to punishment." stated. H McCartney's luck ran Peter E Stevens is a historian and out in 1875 when he was WAS ROOTED NOT IN JAILBREAK fu ll-time freelo,nce writerwhose arti­ arrested fo r passing a cles have appeared in such publi­ counterfeit bill in Rich­ cations as American Heritage, mond, Indiana, and sen­ CUNNING, BUT IN COLD, HARD America's Civil War, and Ameri­ tenced to twelve years in can History Illustrated. In 1993 the Indiana State Prison CASH. HAVE PA ID AWAY OVER Wi lliam Morrow and Company in Michigan City. He " I published his book Mayflower served the fu ll sentence, Murderer & Other Forgotten was released in early 1888, IN GOOD MONEY Firsts in American History. and turned up in New $70,000 Orleans, a bitter man with FOR FURTHER READING a bone-racking cough, the TO ESCAPE THE CLUTCHES Glaser, Lynn. Counlerjeiting in America. telltale sign of bronchitis. [New Yo rk] : Clarkson N. Potter, 1968. In his sixties, McCartney, " Johnson, David R. Illega l Tender-: flat broke, returned to the OF THE LAW, HE STATED. Counterfe iting and the Secret Service only profession he knew. in Nineteenth-Centur-y America. Wash­ On 18 February 1888, ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

Secret Service agent Patrick Looby Warren and Professor Joseph Wood, Press, 1995. arrested McCartney fo r attempting was soon transferred to the Colum­ Rochette, Edward C. Making Money: Rogues to pass a phony $50 bill in Louisiana. bus (Ohio) Penitentiary and died and Rascals Who Made Their Own. Frederick,

The scarred, stoop-shouldered man of acute bronchitis behind bars on Colo.: Renaissance House, 1986. arrested by Looby bore scant resem­ 21 October 1890. Smith, Laurance D. Counterfe iting: Crime blance to the handsome, roguish During his lifetime, the counter­ against thePe ople. New Yo rk: W. W Norton man who had masterminded the fe iter whose artistic skills earned & Co., 1944.

43 Spri11g i996 I DESTINATION INDIANA I RUTHMERE A Bea ux Arts Mast erpiece

In the 1880s zn the northern Indiana town of Elkhart, Dr. Franklin Miles, an eye and ear specialist who had received his medical trainingfr om Rush Medical College, began to mar­ ket to consumers through his Dr. Miles Medical Company a host of home remedies. Products mar­ keted by the Elkhart physician included the popular

Elizabeth Beardsley. Dr. Miles ' Ne rvine, a sedative to be taken by those ALL PHOTOCRAPHS COURTESY Of RUTHMERJ:. MUSEUM suffering from "nervousness or nervous exhaus­ tion, sleeplessness, hysteria, headache, neuralgia, backache, pain, epilepsy, sp asms, fits, St. Vi tus ' dance. " The company 's fortunes improved in 1889 when two successfu l local businessmen, George Compton and Albert R. Beardsley (known by all as A. R.), joined the firm.

Beardsley, who became general combines the elaborate fo rmality of manager in 1890, was a member of the Beaux Arts style with the more a fa mily significantin Elkhart's his­ functional midwestern Prairie school tory. In 1832 Dr. Havilah Beardsley, of architecture. After an extensive Albert Beardsley's uncle, opened a renovation sponsored by the Andrew gristmill on the north bank of the Hubble Beardsley Foundation, SaintJoseph River and platted the Ruthmere opened to the public as village of Elkhart along the south a house museum in 1973 with bank. The Beardsley name is perhaps Indiana Governor Otis R. Bowen best known in Elkhart today, how­ presiding. ever, because of the impressive three­ Born in Dayton, Ohio, on 7 Novem­ story mansion built between 1908 ber 1847, Albert Beardsley had a and 1910 fo r A. R. and his wife Eliz- simple common-school education . .. abeth: Ruthmere. Named fo r the While he was in his early teens, he couple's only child Ruth, who died in moved to Elkhart to live with his infancy, the structure, designed aunt, Rachel Calhoun Beardsley, the by architect Enock Hill Tu rnock, widow of the community's fo under. A. R. earned his keep by rising each RAY BOOM HOWER morning to milk his aunt's cows. To 44 TRACES help clothe himself, he did chores conservative and able members of fo r neighbors, including sawing wood that body [the legislature]." While at fiftycents a cord. In 1864 Beards­ in the assembly Beardsley sponsored ley began work as an apprentice bills fo r the creation and upkeep of clerk in john Davenport's dry goods good roads fo r the state and a mea­ store. Five years later, with a $250 sure prohibiting the use of live gift from his father, A. R. opened pigeons in shooting matches. The his own dry goods store and through latter passed the senate but was the years became one of Elkhart's defeated in the house. leading merchants. In 1876 he left The Elkhart entrepreneur also the dry goods business and acquired fo und time to pursue other, more stock in the Muzzy Starch Company, personal, matters. On 24 September

An outstanding example of Beaux Arts architecture, Ruth mere was built by A. R. Beardsley, one of the original organizers of Miles Laboratories, Inc., which later became Bayer Corporation. becoming president of the firm in 1872 Beardsley married Elizabeth 1882. Florence Baldwin. The wedding Beardsley enjoyed great success proved to be a surprise to the com­ in politics as well. A staunch Re pub­ munity. "The matter was kept an lican, he started his political career almost perfect secret," reported the on the local level, serving as city Elkhart Evening Review, "only a few clerk, city treasurer, and council­ friends being admitted to a knowl­ An L. C.Tiffany "Golden Poppy" man. By 1899 Beardsley was ready edge of the event until it was a mat­ shade overhangs a linen tablecloth set fo r statewide office, winning elec­ ter of the past. The wedding was a with monogrammed Dresden service tion as state representative from Elk­ quiet affair, only a fe w guests being plates and Ve netian stemware in hart County. He went on to serve two present." After honeymooning in Ruthmere's dining room. terms (1905 and 1907) in the state New Yo rk, the couple returned to senate. In his history of the Indiana Elkhart and settled into a house at Republican party, Russel Seeds 307 We st High Street. In December praised Beardsley as "one of the most 1880 Elizabeth Beardsley gave birth

45 Spri11g i 996 DESTINATION INDIANA to the architect. "W hatever labor ten thousand dollars-quite a sum and material you buy, " Beardsley is fo r turn-of-the-century Indiana. reported to have said, "try first to Along with its luxurious decor, the secure it in Elkhart. Ifyou can't get Elkhart mansion fe atured numer­ them here, try the next county; if ous innovations fo r its time. A not the county then in Indiana, and Choralcello pipe organ, given to if not the state then in America. Get A. R. as a birthday present in 1918 everything as close to home as you and located in the entrance hall, could can." Tu rnock listened. When fin­ be played manually or with piano ished in 1910, Ruthmere included rolls. The music from the organ was walnut woodwork believed to be piped into the first-floorlibrary and from Elkhart County; limestone the downstairs game room. The

A. R. Beardsley. to a daughter, whom the couple named Ruth. Tragically, the infant was afflicted with hydrocephalus, an abnormal increase in the amount of fluid within the cranial cavity. The baby died in July 1881; the Beards­ leys never had another child. The couple were able to keep their daughter's name alive. When the Beardsleys started building a new home along the bank of the Saint Joseph River in 1908, they decided to name it Ruthmere: Ruth, after their beloved child, and mere, mean­ ing near the water. For the design of their new home, the Beardsleys retained the services of an English­

born architect, Enock Hill Tu rnock. Ruthmere's library features rich Cuban mahogany paneling surrounding a marble fireplace. Tu rnock, who attended grammar The room also includes elegant fabrics, objets d'art, and Louis XV fu rnishings. school and high school in Elkhart, had received training at the Art from Bedford, Indiana, quarries; yel­ greenhouse is joined to the main Institute of Chicago in the 1880s. low Belden brick from Canton, house via an underground tunnel After working fo r several years in Ohio; and Cherokee marble from decorated with murals depicting the offices of architect William Le Georgia. An exception to Beards­ scenes from the Italian lake coun­ Baron Jenney, Tu rnock opened his ley's rule was the extensive ma­ try where the Beardsleys often vaca­ own firmin 1890, practicing firstin hogany paneling in the house; it tioned. Ruthmere may be one of the Chicago and then in Elkhart after was reputed to be from Cuba. Also firstprivate residences in the coun­ 1907. He is best known fo r designing responsible fo r designing the home's try to possess a fire-protection sys­ the Brewster Apartments, now a Chi­ interior, Tu rnock filled Ruthmere's tem and an air-purifying unit, which, cago landmark. In Elkhart Tu rnock rooms with silk upholstered wall cov­ unfortunately, never seemed to work received commissions for a number erings, intricately painted ceilings, properly. Even the garage had all the of municipal buildings, churches, and satin and velvet draperies. The modern conveniences. Joseph factories, and homes fo r some of the cost fo r all of this is unknown, but Frazier, the Beardsleys' butler and community's leading cit�zens. one longtime Eikhart resident told driver, could pull the fa mily's Detroit Upon hiring Tu rnock to plan his a Beardsley descendant that her Edison electric car into the garage home, fam ily legend has it that stonemason father once told her the and park it on a turntable, which A. R. offered a few words of advice mansion's perimeter walls alone cost then could be cranked by hand so

46 TRACES DESTINA1:10N INDIANA that the car would never have to be neighborhood fo r "his nasty dispo­ Beardsley believed he was preserving backed out. sition and the big red bow Aunt "one of the finestexamples of pre­ By all accounts, the Beardsleys Elizabeth often made him wear." Wo rld War I domestic architecture enjoyed their home, hosting numer­ With the Beardsleys' deaths in extant in the country. In addition, I ous parties. Elizabeth Beardsley 1924 (they died within five months wanted to show that houses like often received her guests wearing a of each other), Arthur Beardsley, Ruthmere were fo und not only in hat and gloves while standing in A. R.'s nephew and an officerwit h Newport, Palm Beach, and the big front of the drawing-room fireplace. the Miles Company, pw·chased Ruth­ coastal cities but in small towns as "She was gregarious and hearty," said mere for $30,000. Upon his death well." Later on he added his own Robert B. Beardsley, the couple's in 1944, the home passed out of the touch by opening the Robert B. great-nephew who oversaw Ruth­ family's hands, bought by a family Beardsley Arts Reference Library of mere's restoration in the 1970s, with five young sons fo r $25,000. American Domestic Architecture and Decorative Arts, which is housed in the fo rmer chauffe ur's quarters. The restoration took fiveyears and involved more than three hundred laborers, some of them earning as much as eighteen dollars an hour, an unbelievable figure compared to that received by the workers who originally built Ruthmere. While preparing the mansion's walls fo r new fabric, the renovators discov­ ered pencil notations on the plaster from 1909. The figuresshowed fifty­ two-and-a-half hours of labor at the rate of twenty-seven cents an hour. In another part of the home, work­ ers discovered that Elizabeth Beardsley, undertaking some redec­ orating before her death in 1924,

The Beardsleys were proud of their impressive home. Shortly after its completion, had increased the rate of pay-an Elizabeth Beardsley put together a booklet with photographs of Ruthmere's various rooms entry noted fo rty-eight hours of to hand out to her guests. She also hosted gatherings where she related the customs of the labor at sixty-seven cents an hour. countries she visited on her vacations, including Great Britain, Italy, France, and Germany. Open to the public since 1973, Ruthmere, which is listed on the "wore lipstick and heavy white pow­ Through the years the property ational Register of Historic Places, der when few women did, loved fe ll into disrepair. Seeing the build­ is available fo r guided tours at Wo rth perfume and tea roses, swore ing's plight, Robert Beardsley per­ 11:00 A.M., 1:00 P. M., and 3:00 P. M. when she fe lt like it, and in later suaded the Andrew Hubble Beardsley Tu esday through Saturday from the years drank a split of champagne Foundation to acquire Ruthmere first Tu esday in April through mid­ (on doctor's orders) before going to and restore it with the intention of December. Admission is $4 fo r bed." opening it as a house museum. adults, $3 fo r senior citizens (sixty­ The Beardsleys employed only two Beardsley hired O'Hara Decorating two years and older), $2 fo r students, servants to look after Ruthmere, Service, Inc., of Chicago, to conduct and free fo r children five andunder . Frazier and Mary Ta ngborn, a maid major portions of the restoration Groups of five or more should and housekeeper. Childless, the effort. Others consulted on the proj­ call ahead fo r reservations. For Beardsleys showered their affection ect included White House decorator more information, write or call on their pet chow named Wang. Edwin K. Bitter and the National Ruthmere at 302 E. Beardsley Ave., According to Robert Beardsley, the Trust fo r Historic Preservation. Elkhart, IN 46514; (219) 264-0330; dog was known throughout the In saving the mansion, Robert or fa x (219) 266-0474. 47 Sp ri11g 1996 LETTER<;

SHARED HERITAG E AND SACRED SPAC E

t is fitting that Susan Neville now, after so many years, are quite are not necessarily manifest in his I included Indianapolis's new distinct. Ms. Warkel's assessment or her behavior or manner. Circle Centre Mall in her thought­ of Wo odruff and his work seems I count my meeting with Hale fu l article "Sacred Space in Ordi­ to me to be precisely on target. Woodruff as a memorable experi­ nary Times." Last year I helped to Wo odruff, I recall, was an ence. My thanks to Harriet Warkel open a busy store at the Mall, fo r I extremely gentle and thoughtful fo r her fine article. wanted to be a part of the revitali­ man. He was not simply a painter, W D. Ha rtley zation of the area that has been out to "express himself." He had No rmal, Illinois the heart of retailing in Indiana's an almost academic approach to capital since the 1840s. the history of art. He quite obvi­ The night watchman of the still­ ously was strongly influenced by vacant south Ay res building assures Cezanne and Picasso, but, deep read "Pilgrims on the Ohio" in me that the place is not haunted, inside him, there was, I think, a I Traces and wanted to write about but I am not so sure. For over one love of the naturalism of the how grand it was to see Reuben hundred and fifty years thousands American regionalists. The Mrican Gold Thwaites's photographs of men and women worked most American artists were, unlike those reproduced so handsomely. I have of their adult lives in these fe w with European or Caucasian back­ done research on Thwaites which blocks of space. Thousands more grounds and roots, faced with an fo cused more on his role as direc­ came from around the city and identity crisis. I think that the time tor of our Society but which did state to shop "downtown" during period itself fo rced them to face not neglect his energetic and some­ good and bad times. Many immi­ more directly their ethnic roots. times unusual travel narratives. grants, businessmen, and politi­ The stylistic differences between The combination of the astute cians have staked their fortunes, Wo odruff's Afr ican Memory (inside observations that Thwaites careers, and reputations on the cover) and the two woodcuts on recorded along with his pho­ "contested space, space worth fight­ p. 46 are so great, it fo rces one to tographs is a record of a much ing fo r. " A fe w interested spirits are realize the inner conflict in the changed river landscape that probably still hanging around, creative psyches of men like Wo od­ should find a new and appreciative making sure we do things right. ruff who were trying to reconcile audience. Robert E Gilyeat ethnic, social, and stylistic inter­ Ja mes E Danky Indianapolis ests. The style of the execution of State HistoricalSoc iety of Wisconsin the panels from the Tr evor Arnett Madison, Wisconsin Library in Atlanta (p. 4 7) makes the con flict even more apparent. eading Harriet G. Warkel's fine Hale Wo odruff was, in a sense, R article, "A Shared Heritage : pulled in several different direc­ The Art of William E. Scott, John tions at the sarpe time. W Hardrick, and Hale A. Wo od­ To me, the anger that is manifest ruff" (winter 1996) was particu­ in By Pa rties Un known and Giddap Tra ces welcomes letters to the editor. Please larly interesting to me. It reminded is difficult to r'econcile with the· write to: Tra ces Letters, 315 W Ohio St., . me that I met and talked with Hale ge ntle, thoughtful, and spiritual Indianapolis, IN 46202-3299. Send e-mail Wo odruff in 1959 when I was a man whom I met in New Yo rk. to: [email protected]. Include name, address, graduate student in art at New Yo rk But we must not fo rget that the and daytime telephone number. Letters may University. The recollections I have conflicts raging inside a person be edited for clarity or space.

48 TRACES MUGS, MURALS, AND MOR. E

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AUTOMOBILE MUGS commentary by W Douglas Hartley and essays by historians of The IHS celebrates Indiana's automotive heritage with these photography Anne E. Peterson and Stephen ]. Fletcher. Pa per, o- handsome collectible coffee mugs. Available separately or in a 8 7195-105-3, $19.95/$1 5.95 Members set of two, the mugs feature a 1929 Duesenberg and a 1926 INDIANS AND A CHANGING FRONTIER: Stutz; they will be on sale only through the 1996 calendar year. THE ART OF GEORGE WINTER 1929 Duesenberg, 0-87195-000- 11, $9. 95/$7.95 Members, During the last days of the Potawatomi and Miami tribes in 1926 0-87195-000- 12, $9. 95/$7.95 Stutz:, Members, Set of Indiana, a British-born artist, George Winter, captured 0-87195-000- 13, $1 8.ool$1 4.00 both, Members through his painti ngs, watercolors, and drawings the culture A SIMPLE AND VITAL DESIGN: THE STORY OF THE of these Native Americans. Published by the Society in INDIANA POST OFFICE MURALS cooperation with the Tippecanoe County Historical Thirty-six of the thirty-seven original murals created for Association, th is lavishly illustrated volume focuses on the Indiana post offices built under the New Deal still exist. career of George Wi nter. It features essays by Christian F. 0- 87195 -097-9, In his text, John Carlisle gives a brief history of the federal Feest and R. David Edmunds. Clo th, arts programs undertaken by the New Deal and tells the $4 9.95/$39.95 Members stories of the art and artists. Color photography by Darryl INDIANA: A NEW HISTORICAL GUIDE Jones brings the murals to life. Pa per, 0-87195 -110-X, "This massive guidebook," praised the Illinois Historical $2 4.95/$1 9.95 Members Jo urnal, "bubbles with human interest and local lore." OTTO PING: PHOTOGRAPHER OF BROWN COUNTY, The Guide offers nineteen large circular tours of the INDIANA, 1900-1940 state perfect for the weekend traveler. It also includes Otto Ping began taking pictures of the people and places of his detailed information on more than 2,000 sites and 425 cities native Brown County, Indiana, in 1900. He captured and towns that will delight any armchair traveler. Cloth, the often harsh life endured by those living in southern o-87195-049-9, $45.ooi$3 6.00 Members, Pa per, o-8 7195-04 8-0, Indiana. The book offers a sampl ing of Ping's work with $1 9.95/$15.95 Members

FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF IHS PUBLI CATIONS, CALL I -800-IHS- 1830. To ORDER THESE ITEMS, SEND A CHECK OR MONEY ORDER, PAYABLE TO E TO: INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, OHIO ST., INDIANAPOLIS, TH IHS, TRACES-IBC, 315 W IN 46202-3299. POSTAGE AND HANDLING IS $2.75 FOR THE FIRST ITEM AND $1 .00 FOR EACH ADDITIONAL ITEM.