Transcript of Taped Interviews

with

Berniece H. Glass and Marjorie H. Montgomery

Hilton U. Brown Branch

of the

Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library

Oral History Project

1982 Marjorie Montgomery and

Berniece Glass 189 4 Berniece Glass and Marjorie Montgomery 1982 o Notable Women Berniece H. Glass Marjorie H. Montgomery O Two sisters describe the culture! atmosphere of Irvington in the early 1900s where the Hall family professions included teaching, preoching and dry cleaning.

C/j "We weren't prudes. There were no Joneses in Irvington. You were who you were and where you came from. Money did not decide that." — Mrs. Glass.

*/ 5/29/79

Baby Marjorie (left) and sister Berniece photographer. They are dressed in finery sewed all clothes for them until they married

Mrs. F. Elbert Glass still stands by as big sister to Mrs. Walter Montgomery. Both ate widowed now. African violets are a hobby of Mrs. Glass. — The NEWS Photo, Gary Moore. 5'29/79 Memories Sisters Share By JEAN JENSEN refrigerator. Crocks of cream and but­ One Of A Series ter were set there to chill. "Even the owls in Irvington said She loved cream and was allowed to 'Who-o-o-m.' " scoop her finger in the crock for a taste. That about sums up the cultural Whenever her stomach rebelled, she'd climate of Irvington during the early take a drink of water out of the trough. 1900s when Mrs. F. Elbert Glass and When she was 6, she contracted and Mrs. Walter Montgomery were "the almost died of typho.id. Hall girls — Berniece and Marjorie." "I had a tutor because I couldn't go For them, it was an era: to school. When he came with lessons, • When a young man and a teen- Marjorie insisted on being right there aged girl became betrothed with a with me. Next year, we both were whispered promise to "wait for each enrolled in second grade together. Why other" — (Marjorie did); not? She knew everything I did." • When a summer Sunday enter­ Conversation with the pair takes tainment was a nickel soda at Wees- place in the Christian Retirement ner's ice cream store; Home, Zionsville. It has been their • When winter excitement was a home since last October when they left ' sled ride down Hilton U. Brown hill — a their spacious, Victorian houses for the i slide that coasted clear to the middle of carefree comforts of modified studio East Washington where traffic was "oc­ rooms. casional;" Family Treasures • When a picnic in Fairview Park meant carting a picnic basket on the Treasures that didn't go to Benton hour-long trolley ride to the area that House or younger family members fur­ now encompasses Butler University. nish their adjoining apartments. Orien­ The park stretched to the canal, and the tal rugs overlay wall-to-wall carpeting. old tow path (now Westfield Blvd.) was Tables, a tufted velvet sofa, upholstered just wide enough for two. rockers and straight chairs are set The Hall sisters, whose father, about the living room. Each is an Robert Hall, was a professor of Latin heirloom with baroque, carved cherry and Greek at Manual High School, or walnut frames and legs. A collection married soon after graduation. Their of figurines, objets d'art and glass husbands became the successive presi­ paperweights is safe in a glass cup­ dents of Crown Laundry and Dry Clean­ board. ing, a business started by an uncle, Brown Willow patterned plates, the Paul Jeffries. Montgomery was presi­ only six left from Grandmother Hall's dent 50 years after which Glass became wedding set of china, have vantage wall senior officer until his death in 1970. space among sentimental plates and pictures everywhere. Straighten Record "Our friends say it's just like step­ ping into the living room at 129 Many think the sisters are twins. Downey," says Mrs. Glass, referring to Mrs. Glass sets the record straight. her Irvington address. Mrs. Montgom­ "We're not. Some of our sorority ery had stayed in her parents' home for (Kappa Alpha Theta) sisters thought so 76 years before moving to her widowed too," she says. sister's residence. Mrs. Glass explains the confusion is The family abounds with scholars. because she and her sister, who is 14 The sisters boast 21 males in Delta Tau months younger, were in the same class Delta fraternity and a fair share in Phi in school. She missed the first year of Beta Kappa Honorary. school due to a bout of typhoid fever. The Scottish-born Forsyth, Sturgeon She recalls that when she was a and Hume forebearers who fought in child a trough ran through the dirt floor the Revolutionary Army (Hume as Gen. of the dairy cellar on her grand­ Washington's surveyor) give the sisters mother's farm. It carried cold water triple-entry into the Daughters of the from a spring and served as the family American Revolution. Present gener­ ations descend from the Hall and Jef­ him to resign from the pulpit calling fries families. him "a liberal Unitarian." Archibald The Hall family put down roots in Hall became a Disciples of Christ Indiana when the first of three Hall minister after graduation from Butler. brothers moved from Pennsylvania to Undergraduate pranks by the boys study at Butler in 1885. Eventually, they survived as family legend. Once the all came, inspired by a visiting boys waited until dark to steal a new preacher who was a Butler ministry buggy from the barn of the college graduate. Tom Hall continued on to president. They hitched up his horses Yale for his Ph.D and became a Con- and drove to Acton. When they finally gregationalist. Robert Hall took his stopped and were unhitching, out graduate studies at Harvard and be­ stepped Dr. Allen Benton. came a Unitarian. "That was a nice ride boys. Now you According to Mrs. Glass, her father can take me home," he supposedly said. 1switche d from preaching to teaching on the advice of a professor who advised Continued on Page IS •••••••• THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS More About Hall Sisters Continued from Page 14 The sisters recount they were charter members of The subject turns to a near-forgotten episode — the the Irvington Dramatic Club but credit Helene Hibben, unusual wording of an engraved card announcing the Edgar Forsyth and Edward Kingsbury as founders. An marriage of Jacob D. Forest to the sister of his de­ aunt, Mrs. Charles (Grace Julian) Clarke founded the ceased wife. Irvington Women's Club inspired by the Indianapolis Originally, Forest, the first Mrs. Forest, her mother Woman's Club founded by her mother, Mrs. George Mrs. Allen and an unmarried sister of Mrs. Forest Julian. Bertermann's adult dancing class was another shared a home. Mrs. Glass explains that after the death social center that functioned in "pre-World War I" of the first Mrs. Forest and the subsequent death of Irvington. Mrs. Allen, Forest and the unwed sister were left alone. Pressed to divulge how the Crown Laundry came "That really rocked old classical Irvington, those into existence, Mrs. Glass attributes it to the resource­ two living under one roof — and not married," Mrs. fulness of Paul Jeffries, her mother's only brother. Glass says. "When he was going to Butler, he made expenses One day a card came which read: "Will you please by a pick-up laundry service for the professors. He refrain from congratulations. Mrs. Forest is not to be carried their collar and cuffs on the handlebars of his known as Mrs. Jacob Dorsey Forest, but as Mrs. Cor­ bicycle," she recalls. nelia Allen Forest." After graduation, he bought the one-room laundry. At a party soon after, Mrs. Montgomery's husband In the ensuing years, it expanded to 35 locations. On observed, "We've been here 15 minutes and no one has advice of its Harvard-educated president, Robert Glass, mentioned Cornelia Allen Jacob Dorsey Forest." the business was sold three years ago. Mrs. Montgomery sits silently and serenely composed Education for men and women in the family has on the Victorian sofa. Her head nods in agreement as been a persistent goal. Their maternal grandmother she listens, but she rarely interrupts. Her lips curve in Jeffries left the Trafalger farm to bring her four i small smile. Her hair is perfectly coifed. She wears children to Irvington after she was widowed beoause a wine colored dress, a choice background for the schooling in the country ended with sixth grade. double strand of cultured pearls around her neck. Her Through her determination, they became college grad­ suede and reptile pumps are the color of the dress. uates as their father had been. It is surprising to learn that this perfectly groomed A generation later, the Hall sisters graduated from woman is paralyzed on her right side. Her sister, Butler in 1915 with degrees in home economics. dressed in burgundy to offset garnets at throat, $ars Despite her major, Mrs. Montgomery admits she has and fingers, adds that Mrs. Montgomery had to have never cooked. many of her rings resized to fit swollen fingers. For "We had a cook, so there was no need," she states. them the lifelong habits of correct deportment, Irving- In her soft manner she adds for confirmation, "She ton-style, are unalterable. was with us for 50 years. Of course, I baked pies and Perhaps to correct an imags of Irvingtonians as things. But not a whole meal." staid or stuffy, Mrs. Glass says, "We weren't prudes, To divert attention from themselves, Mrs. Glass tod there were no Joneses in Irvington. You were who comments that Mrs. Fletcher Hodges was the real you were and where you came from. Money did not pace setter in their heyday. iecide that." "She was the liveliest. She always kept us enter­ Another recall that tickles her happened at a party tained. In Irvington, if you were invited to Dr. and where everyone was dressed to the hilt. It prompts Mrs. Hodges' New Year's Eve party, you had 'made Mrs. Montgomery to finally add a word. it.' " At this point in the story, the years of memorizing "We always dressed to go out in the evening. scripts for IDC pays off for Mrs. Glass. She immedi­ Women wore full-length gowns. Men wore tuxedos or ately reels off Browning's poem: black suits with shirts starched stiff as boards. Im­ "Grow old along with me! portant people like Henry Van Dyke came to speak." The best is yet to be, It might have been at that party when the late Joe the last of life, for which the first was made." Letterman (father of Dave Letterman, frequent guest She ends the soliloquy by quoting her friend's on TV talk shows) punched the late Dr. John S. churlish punch line, "What did he know about growing Harrison, head of Butler's English department, on his old? He wrote that when he was 19." starched armor and loudly demanded, "What's a NEXT: Henrietta Leete, daughter-in-law of the first polygon?" bishop of the Methodist Church for the Indiana area, "As expected, Dr. Harrison launched into a long was instrumental in helping Central Avenue United dissertation. He went on and on. When he was all Methodist Church make the transition from serving through, Letterman said, 'You're all wrong. It's a dead affluent parishioners to meeting the needs of an inner- ' " rer>e?ts Mrs Glass. city congregation. • ones w IV i r.ator of The News: p. slipped inl ngly pleased to read r's seat and puiied ri wn the long rticl ' "The (r lever on the left side Girls" — Mesdames Glass and The electric leaped toward the rear f the garace and fortuitously I re­ ps my memories as their leased the lever. There was a bump, but Dor iars may be interest- the car did not plunge through the xi possiblj startling to "The Hali sriing, ana after pushing the car back I • For example, as a tyke I asked Nothing happened, '- Hall God0" She an Indianapolis newsboy, I liked ired, 'No.'' "But" I said, "He i m> day oglirg their Marmon Howers g Herrmgton V-16 four-door sedan. It was .-. porch ovf Hooked the largest is I recall. (insh pcr.ds. and I remember il was Irvington — an egalita­ st of ice, Mr. Hail's gentle rian society My mother, Florence, bo •.<. ^tacitr when he caaght in- president of the Irvington YSom- tlie por..l aad my tears .•Lb and moved up to president of ?v. my Faster Bunny slipped into the dianapolis and state women's or­ rowned u\ the pond. ganizations. iirls" I must confess my Irvington was not just a place or a deed at cir.a 10. Fascinated by their g or even a happening. Where else uly Detroit electric automobi>. I would Downey Avenue pnss 129 and. jvcly slipped into their garage. The following the cow paths, twist around to o-Jacobean house on Souih Audu­ trie resembled no other car — its 7 ohouse and stubby front and bon Ode - ends sans steering whe-^1 demand- THOMAS V. REESE ntion I . » d the Iiakersfield. Calif OUR FLAG

I saw it--Proud Old Glory—as it fluttered into view, The emblem of our country, and o'er cheering thousands flew, Electric waves of feeling from its folds came rippling down Which breaking o'er the music with delirium swept the town.

I saw it—Proud Old Glory—through the glare of battle-field, The swaying columns urging freedom's struggle not to yield, Its streaming tatters flashing patriotic zeal along; And when the day was ended, lo there rose a victory song.

I saw it—Proud Old Glory—as it wrapped the honored dead Its folds embalmed their memory, o'er their virtues luster shed; And when in state they rested where a nation's eye could see, It seemed that they were donning robes of immortality.

I saw it—Proud Old Glory—signal from the harbored mast, The clouds and winds of England bowing homage as they passed. Around her domes imperial I could hear its message ring: The free-born man of honor is as great as any king.

I saw it—Proud Old Glory--as it caught the balmy breeze And flung it back in blessing o'er the islands of the seas; Then speeding toward the Orient, over waves that foamed and curled, It bore our civilization down the circle of the world.

I see it—Proud Old Glory—mid the banners of the Race, In onward march of progress it is taking foremost place, As down the glowing ages slow they pass in grand review I think "The Great Commander" has His eye upon it too.

—Archibald M. Hall

"This poem was copyrighted in 1917 by Bobbs-Merrill Publishing Company. Archibald Hall was our father's brother. He was a magnificent orator and a great leader in the State's Republican Party from 1910 through the 1920's. He frequently closed his speeches by raising his arms high and reciting this 'Old Glory.' Its inclusion in this volume seems appro­ priate ."

Berniece Glass and Marjorie Montgomery, 1982. The following interview is a conversation with two notable women

of Indianapolis, Mrs. F. Elbert (Berniece) Glass and Mrs. Walter (Marjorie)

Montgomery. Mrs. Glass was born in 189 3 and Mrs. Montgomery in 1894.

As lifelong residents of Irvington, the sisters have many memories to share

concerning life in early Irvington when it was known as Irvington, Indiana;

when streetcars clickety-clacked through the streets of the tiny college

community which was formerly the home of Butler College (now Butler Univer­

sity).

All of their lives they have been known as "the Hall sisters". Their

family was involved in the laundry business. It was their uncle who

founded and managed the Crown Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company in

Irvington. This was first called the Irvington Laundry.

The interview takes place in mid-June, 1978, at 5748 East Michigan

Street, the home of Mrs. Glass for 58| years and also the home both

sisters had been sharing for quite some time. Mrs. Montgomery formerly

resided at 129 South Downey Avenue where she lived for 76 years. At the

time of this interview, the sisters are preparing to move to a retirement

home in Zionsville, Indiana.

The interviewers are Theresa Ilg and Mary Veronica Spiegal, both

from the Hilton U. Brown Library in Irvington and participating in the

Irvington Oral History Project. It should be noted the transcript begins with the conversation already in progress due to a slight problem with the tape recorder at the outset of the interview. Mrs. Montgomery is discussing the location of her birth place at this point. The conversation continues from there and proceeds as follows. . . GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: That's about fifty miles east of Pittsburgh and miles from a little town which is on old Road 30r#used to be the Lincoln Highway. There was only one church in this little town and it was a Christian church.

One summer they sent a student minister from Butler out to preach in this

Christian church. There were several Hall boys and they were interested in coming out to Butler. Now you can imagine way back in the middle

80's (1881's) what that meant for young men to leave home out there in the middle of the mountains and to come out here to Butler. But that's what happened. I think Uncle Arch came first, didn't he?

MM: Yes.

BG: That's an older brother and while one was in school, two of them would stay home and mine coal and chop timber and send him money.

Eventually, all of them got out there at the same time and all played on the famous football team, the State Champions of 1891.

TI: Was that a Butler team?

BG: Yes, at Butler. Three Hall boys and one that came --a brother- in-law — George Miller. Now then, on my mother's side of the house, our ancestors came up into Johnson County, Indiana, from Ford's Creek,

Kentucky, wasn't it?

MM: Yes.

BG: In the early eighteen hundreds and got a section of land -- I don't know how much that was at that time but there were several boys . Their GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

mother, Margaret McGibbon Forsyth, rode horseback through the wilder­ ness of Kentucky at that time into Indiana to be with this son, Thomas

Forsyth, who was our great-grandfather. That house is still standing

just off Road #135 - our old home. In those days, if your children got married, you gave them enough - a hundred acres of land to start a farm

and build a home, which happened to everyone of those children. The

sons - well, there's one farm on one side of the road and one farm on

the other. Johnson County was full of Forsyth's. Our grandmother was married when she was fifteen years old to her school teacher who was twelve years older than she was. He fell in love with her and went to her father and asked if it would be all right for him to wait for Jennie. So when he was twenty-seven and she was fifteen they were married. She was left a widow and she had four daughters and one son that was four and a half years old. The oldest daughter was sixteen. She was just ready for prep - you know in those days they didn't have high schools and if you were going to college you had to go to prep school. So she had the courage to leave that farm in Johnson County and to move up here to Irvington and bought a house. She rented out the farm and all the relatives that came from far and near laid upon her, "Jennie, you're making a terrible mistake. You'd better stay here on the farm and leave

something when you die." She said, "No, my very first obligation is to educate my children and to get them prepared for life." Now the

2 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY courage that it took for both sides of our house to finally get to Irving­ ton to seek an education! Our mother met our father because in a little town down there in Johnson County where all these farms were located, there's a place named Trafalgar. The ministers of the Chris­ tian church in Trafalgar were supplied by Butler. My father's older brother had been minister there. He was the first one that came out,

Arch. In those days, one of the members of the church would take the minister home for dinner on Sunday. It came on a Sunday when my grand­ mother was to take him. They had a surrey with a fringe on top and a pair of matched black horses. I don't know why one of the other girls didn't do it, but my mother was assigned to do it that day. She had struck out into town to bring the minister home but came home alone. My grandmother said, "Well, where's the minister?" "Oh," she said,

"It wasn't the minister at all. It was the handsomest fellow that I ever saw and I never would have gone up and said anything to him."

MM: That was our father, the one she wouldn't say anything to.

BG: It was our father. He was so handsome. Robert Hall was his name. He was so handsome and so tall and had such black hair and black eyes. She was just petrified. She was a rather timid little blond, just as blond as she could be with sky blue eyes. But that was their first feeling for each other. All the sisters in our mother's family in time attended Butler; and her four and a half year old boy also got to go to Butler. He eventually GLASS AND MONTGOMERY was the founder of the Crown Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company. In order to help out with his schooling he went around to the professions and got their collars and cuffs . Of course, in those days, men wore de­ tachable collars. I can remember when we were just children; he was just ten years older than I - no, he was thirteen years older.

TI: Was that an uncle?

BG: That's Uncle Paul Jeffries. I can remember as a little girl, him going around on his bicycle with all those collars and cuffs tied on the back seat and on the handlebars.

TI: I'll bet that was a sight.

BG: Yes, He finally went into business and founded a laundry over here,

Irvington Laundry, and that was his start. That's the background of how we happened to be in Irvington. In those days, of course, Butler was a ministerial school. There was a song written -- "You cannot chew, you cannot smoke, your teachers do get mighty provoked. Who says so? The catalogue says so. So you take it as the truth!" That was a joke, but it was the truth. Our father and one of my mother's best friends met in front of the bank up here and were going down the hall; and they two- stepped down the Virginia Reel instead of sashaying; and everybody was sworn to secrecy because if that ever got to the powers of the college they would be expelled. Butler was a small school. We went into Butler in the fall of 19 01, wasn't it, Majorie? GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: Yes.

BG: We knew everybody on campus by their first name. There were only about four or five hundred students at Butler and most of them were ministerial. By 1912, there had been many others as far as learning is concerned; but in my father's day, most all of the men that were there were studying for the ministry. When he and my mother were married, he got a ministry at Kendallville, Indiana, and that's where I was born — at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ross. They were foreign missionaries and were a very prominent couple in the Christian church. Then my father went to Harvard to get his Ph.D. in Divinity—he got onto those Unitar­ ian teachers—now I'm talking about the old founding Unitarians that came over here from England, not the kind that you have about today.

He came under the Unitarian teachers and became too liberal to preach in the Christian church, no matter what.

MM: In the Downey Avenue Christian Church (and I'm from the longest lineage), there has always been a member of our family. When we move out of here for the retirement home, I'm going to leave my letter so as not to break the chain.

TI: You were saying you were born in Pennsylvania?

MM: That's right. My father's home was in Pennsylvania and they were

getting ready to have this house on Downey and my mother was expecting me. They went out to Pennsylvania and I was born there and brought back

5 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY here.

TI: But you grew up here?

MM: Yes . I never moved in my life until I moved over here with my sister eight years ago the 17th of September.

TI: You lived in the family home?

MM: Oh, my husband died and I had a colored maid for fifty years; and she was killed in an automobile accident. I have cataracts and wear contact lenses and I can't live alone. So when my sister's husband died two months earlier we decided that the thing for us to do was to compact, and since I had been a widow a little longer it was easier for me to make the adjustment than for her. So I moved over here. We're friends as well as sisters so it's gone all right. Out there at the retire­ ment home where we're going, we're to be together. We have two bed­ rooms and two baths and a living room there with our meals and every­ thing. Since I've had this stroke last October, I have to have a great deal of waiting on. I can't dress myself nor comb my hair.

TI- I'll bet you have some fond memories of Irvington.

MM: Oh yes! As I said, I never moved. We've grown up here. My husband had a heart attack, and we went to Florida in the winters.

We bought an apartment down there near the ocean; and I never had straightened up a house. I took the maid down and my sister want with us to get me straightened up because I didn't know anything about GLASS AND MONTGOMERY moving or what kind of furniture I needed or anything. Then when I moved over here, I had been ill so I came over here and they moved me. So this is the first time that I know anything about moving. I'll tell you , all this mess is about to get to me. I'll be glad when Friday comes so we'll get out of the mess .

TI: You're leaving Friday, then? Where did you go to school?

MM: School #57. It was the old school, and it was up on the South

Circle of Audubon Road. That burned and for a year we were just housing around in buildings--that was a little business section up there in those days. Every corner had a store and we were housed all in there until

School #57 could be rebuilt. When it was built, I was already in the third grade. I graduated from there in 1908. I graduated from Shortridge in 1911. I went through high school in three years.

TI: What kind of studies did you have then?

MM: Just regular—reading, writing, and arithmetic—that's what we had.

None of the new-fangled things you have today.

TI: Do you remember any particular favorite teachers?

MM: Oh, we had a lot of them. I had a Miss Edgeworth of the Edgeworth family--they lived in Irvington. They had three girls; and all the girls were teachers. I loved all of them. One of the main persons that we had as our supervising principal who was Lydia E. Blake and she was a very formidable person. She wore a skirt that had a little bit of a train on it

7 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

and a shirtwaist -- very formidable. We were all very good when she came

into the room. Now my sister spent one year at Illinois University; but

I was a homebody, and I didn't want to leave home.

TI: You managed to stay, didn't you?

MS: Where was Shortridge at this time?

MM: It was at North Street and Pennsylvania. We went down on the street­

car. We'd walk up Pennsylvania from Washington Street. In those days, the

Belt railroad over Washington Street wasn't elevated. We'd get off the street­

car when it was muddy and walk through there. We'd get on the car there

and the one that came to Irvington had just come out that year.

TI: On the railroad?

MM: On the streetcar, the trolleycar. We had open streetcars, and they were wonderful in the summertime. If you go an open streetcar, you sat up with the motorman and rode. In Autumn, we'd take a picnic lunch in a market

basket, a split reed bottom market basket, and go out to 1 airview Park. Oh, that was a great occasion in those days ! Spend the day and then come back.

TI: It sounds like it would be fun.

MM: Yes, very simple things were fun. Howard Caldwell, Sr., was in our

class at Butler and he said that when he came over to school, the first thing that he went to was a weiner roast at the Hall girls' (we were called the Hall

girls). My sister had typhoid fever and was out of school. GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

I'm only fourteen months younger than she is so my father was teaching her, and he would teach me so we entered school together in the second grade. We went all through college together, and everybody spoke of us as "the Hall girls."

TI: Were there just the two of you?

MM: Just the two of us.

TI: And your father was a teacher?

MM: Yes, he was a teacher.

TI: Where?

MM: Manual Training High School. He was Assistant Principal there.

(Break in sound of tape indicates she is looking at a picture and describ­ ing the scene.)

Over this way is Michigan Street and it's just the end of Irvington. It didn't even go through to Arlington Avenue and it wasn't paved.

TI: Was it the only house on the street?

MM: Yes, that was originally the old Kingsbury tenant house. The base­ ment and the front part of the house is way over a hundred years old. Then it was remodeled and she and her husband bought it. This house back here was here. That was the Beverages' of the Beverage Paper Company -- their summer home.

TI: So then, there were just the two houses?

MM: Just two houses. No, Doc Kingsbury's wasn't here -- how many

- 9 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY were there when you came over?

BG: In 1920, when we moved here, there were only five houses north of the boulevard. And when we were children--see our old home, 129

Downey--we would come over here—pull our sleds all the way over and go down this hill down here. We called it Bunker Hill. Well, it was a cornfield in the summer and then when we coasted on it in the winter, it was pretty bumpy. But it was lots of fun. All of this property was way on the outside of the edge of Irvington. In those days, Irvington—for us who had lived here all our lives--was south of Washington Street, east of the Brookville Road, Emerson Avenue to Arlington but mostly to Audubon.

It was a college community.

MM: There was an old farm out here at Arlington—the Shank farm--and they had a slaughter house. It was on the northwest corner of Arlington and Washington Street.

BG: And if you'll read in the--I guess it's over there at the Benton

House--on the founding of Irvington, there were to be no saloons, no privies and no slaughter houses, and I don't know what else within the limits of Irvington.

TI: Is that why the slaughter house was off limits?

BG: It was a college community and I remember the college students used to sit with us when our Dad would go over as most of the social life of the community centered around Butler. The main thing was the

10 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Athenaeum, wasn't it Marjorie? They had lectures and so forth.

MM: Henry Van Dyke was there.

BG: The main prank of the boys at Butler was to slip up the back stairs of the old science hall, or whatever it was, and steal the ice cream.

Many times our parents would come home and they had had no refreshments because the boys had stolen the ice cream. Oh, how many years ago was it when Sorrentino over here took the old Carroll house and built a store in front and wanted to sell liquor? Mr. George Thornton, president of the Puritan Bedspring Company, built his big house here on North Audu­ bon Circle; you know, put the boulders all around it -- on North Audubon

Road there. Some of his friends went to court and it was decided that what was written into the founding laws of the community can never be changed.

MM: You can't get any liquor anywhere in Irvington.

BG: See, this tavern down here at Emerson -- that's out of the confines of Irvington.

TI: It's on the north side of the street?

BG: Yes, and there used to be a beer garden — Dietz's Woods was out there and they had a bandstand. They used to have programs out there.

Where the International Harvester is now was another woods and they used to have great parties over there. The Irvington kids, the boys in particular, used to either look through the knotholes on the board fence or else sit on top of it. Those were all out of bounds for Irvington. In a college town

11 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY like that there are no Joneses. You're all in the same sort of financial status and you have the same interests. My daughter was at Purdue for a while as an Assistant Director of a dorm. She loved the university and campus life for that reason. Our parents' best friends and our best friends were made through the confines of Irvington.

TI: And through the college?

BG: The college, yes. The college was the center; in fact, Lola Conner,, nee Blount, who was on a program one time for the Benton House said: "It used to be said in Irvington that the owls even said 'to whom' instead of

'to whooo.'" It was called"classical Irvington."

MM: I think that it's rather interesting to know that of the three Hall boys that came out here from the mountains of Pennsylvania to college, two went on to further their education. Our father went to Harvard and took his Ph.D. He couldn't come back and preach anymore here. Our uncle went to Yale to get his Ph.D. Therefore, he couldn't come back here to preach.

BG: Harvard was Unitarian and they were Congregationalists .

MM: They started out to be preachers after they climbed that high; our family has always believed in higher education.

BG: Our father, then, while he was at Butler, was one of the founders of the Downey Avenue Christian Church.

TI: But not a preacher?

12 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: And my sister, here, Marjorie, told about being the oldest living member. When I was married, I pulled out for a while and did work for the Unitarian Church which was Frank Wick's. That was an entirely different church then, than it is now. We just grew around Irvington.

Our Sunday pastime was to cut through to Michigan — we would walk over from 129 Downey and stop at Weesner's Drug Store and get an ice cream soda. We had more fun than kids do today.

TI: Where was Weesner's?

MM: On the northwest corner of Ritter and Washington — the Weesner's

Drug Store.

MS: It was where the auto place is now.

BG: The whole business center of Irvington was right there at Ritter and Washington. In fact, I've had a bank account in that building since it was built. Three dollars and a half was our allowance when we were in college. One of the tellers at the bank was Maurice Cherry, who later became an agent for laundry machinery. I would see him at the Dry

Cleaning conventions and each time he saw me he'd say: "Berniece, I'll never forget you coming in the front door of the bank and roller skating up to the window. "

TI: Roller skating?

BG: Yes, up to the window. I roller skated all the time and I'd roller skate to the bank, right up to the window and he would not let me forget

13 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY that — all those years he would kid me. So, I thought it was rather impres' sive that I impressed him that much. Forty years later he remembered me coming up to him on my roller skates.

MM: Wnen they began to pave streets in Irvington and had meetings, how wide they should be and all, they said why would they ever want streets wider than 18 or 20 feet?

TI: Altogether?

BG: Yes, that's what Downey Avenue is 20 feet.

MM: All the streets in Irvington are more or less narrow except Audubon.

Audubon is wider because the streetcar turned at Audubon and came to

Julian, made a "U" and headed back downtown.

TI: Then it had to be larger.

BG: Now then, everybody has always thought that my sister and I were twins. We're not.

MM: I've told them that.

BG: Wnen you told them about the school-house burning?

MM: Yes.

MS: How did the school-house burn?

BG: Are you talking about the high school? Well, in the grade school, there was a high school. My aunt taught in that high school as well as her cousin, Edgar Forsythe, and Stewart Schell. When the school-house burned down they moved the grades and put up buildings —

14 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY different buildings at Audubon and the railroad. My aunt got married; my cousin, Edgar Forsyth, went to Shortridge to teach history; and Stewart

Schell became superintendent or principal of all the grades meeting in the various rooms. He eventually went to Manual High School. It was through my mother and grandmother and Mrs. Elijah Jordan (who was one of our mother's most intimate friends and her husband, a professor of philosophy at Butler) that a high school came to Irvington. We had one once and we could have one again. There were just Manual and Shortridge. They started to work to see why we couldn't get a high school, and that is the way Howe High School was born.

TI- When did it come into existence?

BG: From the desire of these women; since we had a school out here once, why couldn't we have it again?

MM: Mr. Howe was a very prominent resident here. In fact, he went to

Harvard at the same time our parents did. He got his education and came back here and was president of Butler.

BG: Did you tell them about our dad getting a Divinity degree and how he went back and got a Latin degree? To this day I just jump out of my chair to hear the English used over television or to hear other people speak. They seem to be afraid of the word "me." They use the word "I" incorrectly. If you have a father that was a Latin teacher, you spoke correct grammar in the house. It offends my ears to hear what I hear over

- 15 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

television and in speech these days. People do not speak good English.

We were brought up on it, don't you see?

TI: Did either of you think of going into teaching?

MM: Neither one of us ever did a thing. Women never did a thing in those days . When you graduated from college you stayed at home and

learned how to keep house and you got married.

BG: We got married, both of us! College was a waste of time. I got married three years after I got out of school. But we came from a family that believed in education. My son has his master's degree in Business

Administration from Harvard, and served a tour of duty in the navy as an

officer. He went into Harvard from the navy. My daughter has her master's degree from Northwestern University in Sociology and was Assistant Direc­ tor of Dorms at Purdue for five years . Then she went to Japan as Head of the Servicemen's Club for two and a half years . This was a very challen­

ging and interesting thing for her to do. She could have married a captain in Japan but you see, the Servicemen's Club was the boys' "home away from home." Dealing with the enlisted man and non-commissioned officers was her job and she could not stand the brass system in the U.S. Army.

She said that she would never be an "Army wife" and she wasn't. She

said that she couldn't be very happy being an "army wife" because she

had dealt with the non-commissioned officer and the enlisted man. She went to Hokkaido. At that time, there was a long series of articles going

- 16 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY in the Saturday Evening Post about the "sex circus" in the U.S. Army at

Chitoshi, Japan. That was on Hokkaido which is a northern island of

Japan, the most beautiful part of Japan because of the mountains and the country. She had read these articles and went aboard an Army transport.

She said the sea was rough and one day she just thought of the little dogs -- there being a lot of families of the men in Japan on that ship --so she went and talked to those dogs . She landed at Osaka and received a train ticket but instead took a car and drove up the western coast. (She also served for a short time in Public Recreation in Salinas, California, where the population was about fifty-five percent Mexican. Everytime she had something going at the park, she would have to call the police and that was hard on her. So she transferred to Seattle.) She ended up at Chitoshi, the very place where the "sex Circus" was in style. She found ten feet of snow on the ground when she arrived. As head of the Servicemen's Club you provided programs interesting enough to keep men from the "sex circus" .

While there, she took many pictures and when she returned to the States, she lectured with them. Everybody asked, "How do you feel about the relationship between the Americans and the Japanese?" She would reply:

"Well, all I can tell you is that we tried to be good ambassadors . I had a dressmaker whose husband was killed in the war and an interpreter who had a teenage daughter. After we had been gone from there about a year, those two were there to greet my roommate and me with tears rolling down

- 17 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY their cheeks ."

MM: But that isn't about Irvington. We'd better get back to Irvington.

BG: You don't need to put that in — that is just about education and how strongly we believed in education.

TI: And Irvington turned out to be a pretty good place for education.

BG: Irvington was called the "classical Irvington."

TI: Was everyone in Irvington interested in education?

BG: No, I don't expect you to put it all in; but I thought that it was interesting to see how it really carried down to children.

MM: Everyone in Irvington was interested in education. All the social life depended upon the college. We did have this wonderful thing, the

Athenaeum, don't you see?

TI: Where was that?

End of Tape 1 side 1 Tape 1, side 2

MM: I figure when I tell you that Henry Van Dyke was one of them, you know what kind of a man he was . All the men were highly educated and it was quite an affair, a social affair; the women wore evening clothes.

BG: How many years after that did Professor Van Dyke send his letter to the "Upper Room?"

MM: That wasn't the same man.

TI: What was the "Upper Room?"

- 18 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: Mr. Iden was a professor at Butler, and he was asked to come to the

University of Michigan to teach. He did and the men he taught, he later sent letters called: The Message from the Upper Room.

BG: I remember my dad and mother looking forward to that letter every

Christmas. They'd wait and wait for Mr. Iden's letter.

MM: We didn't have electricity or a phone.

BG: One day we went to school and the school had burned down during the night. When we returned home mother said, "Why didn't you stay in school?"

And we said, "The schoolhouse burned down last night and it's still burning*"

TI: Do you remember when Irvington was annexed to the city of Indianapolis?

BG: Oh, do we remember -• we didn't want to be annexed!

MM: No, they held it off for I expect as much as five years, but they finally had to go in.

BG: I've got some letters upstairs —

TI: Then it caused quite a furor ?

BG: Now Irvington has changed terribly, particularly to those of us that have lived here these many, many years. (Being in our eighties.) But it still is the only community in Indianapolis, and I really mean that -- that has even attempted restoration and preservation. There has never been any Joneses out here. Nobody has to keep up with anyone else. We've always been a solid middle class community interested in Irvington. They've got over $9 0,000 in the Benton House alone and not a penny owed on it.

- 19 - GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

TI: Were you involved in the Benton House in any way?

BG: Oh my, yes. We were involved. In fact, much of that's in there

was given in memory of our two husbands. The first furniture that was

put in came that way. My husband was particularly interested, and we were there on Saturday night before he died on Monday. In fact, we went

down the stairs, and he said: "I would just love to see enough furniture

in this house to make it look homelike." He said that to me many times.

"And not all these chairs sitting around the walls." That's all there was when we first started. After his death and in memory of him--

MM: There's a case with six little demitasse cups that were wedding

presents from President and Mrs. Benton to our mother and father. We

gave them because we thought it appropriate.

BG: The reason there are not eight is because two were given to my

daughter's co-worker at Purdue.

TI: Is some of the furniture yours?

BG: Yes, there's a cradle in the house that was my husband's parents'.

He was rocked in it as a baby. I was going to give it; and my daughter

said, "You can't replace that!"

MM: The davenport in the house is Ovid Butler's davenport.

BG: He was the founder of Butler College.

MM: He gave the land.

TI: Yes.

20 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: And the silver service was given to Ovid Butler in recognition of what he had done for the city of Indianapolis because he gave the ground

between the 12th and 13th and Central to establish Northwestern Christian Un­ iversity.

TI: It became Butler College.

BG: The silver service was given by the city of Indianapolis to him in honor of giving that land.

TI: Did you know the Bentons?

BG & MM: Oh yes, we were good friends.

BG: They used to go by our house and went to Downey Avenue Christian

Church.

MM: I remember one night our family took a walk around Downey, around

Julian, up Ritter and around by the university and back. It was a good walk. Mother was running and having a good time and I ran back and

thought I had grabbed my father's hand and I said: "Papa, Papa, see

'Fatty' run ?" (talking about my mother); and it was President Benton. I was so embarrassed. He was taking a walk, too, and was behind us.

BG: We had so many happy years here in Irvington. I hate to leave,

but circumstances demand. There just comes a time in your life when you

have to change that happy chapter and start another.

MM: Now the farms over here--let's tell them about the farms. There

was the Ellenberger farm and the Kingsbury and many others.

21 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: There was the old Shank farm. They had a slaughter house there.

The three big ones were Ellenberger, Kingsbury and Shank farms. The

house on the northwest corner of Layman and Michigan Streets is the

farmhouse on the old Kingsbury farm.

Ti: That's the Kingsbury farmhouse?

BG: Yes, and the Shank house stood until they tore it down for that

filling station (gas service station) that made a go of it on the northeast

corner of Arlington and Washington. That's where the Shank house was.

I don't know whether there was something on the books that showed they

shouldn't have a filling station there or not. The house was kinda close

to Arlington which was just a little muddy lane in those days. The house

was kinda close to the comer wasn't it? Mr. Shank finally got to be what — consul to Germany?

MM: Yes, we had a lot of prominent people. You know, Ben Cole who writes for the Indianapolis Star was from Irvington. He lived on Lowell

Avenue and graduated from School #57.

TI: Who was that?

MM: Ben Cole, a columnist for the Indianapolis Star. He writes on the

editorial page.

BG: Don Campbell, who wrote Let' s Take Stock in the Indianapolis Star

for a long period, married one of the Parson girls, remember? He left the

Star and moved to Phoenix and is still there.

22 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: Maybe there are some questions that you'd like to ask us that we have forgotten.

TI: I was told that your family was involved with the Crown Laundry.

Could you tell us about the family business?

BG: Our uncle started out with collars and cuffs.

MM: He died; and it was willed to my grandmother. While my grand­ mother was still living, she arranged for my husband to operate it. He was a Delta Tau Delta; and he had met my Uncle Paul Jeffries at a Delta

Tau Delta convention. Uncle Paul thought that he had possibilities, and he invited him to come up here and go into business. My uncle had several businesses here. Walter came up; and they went into business.

After Uncle Paul's death, he ran the Crown Laundry. As he progressed, and the plant got bigger, he didn't want to be making money for others.

My grandmother was a very understanding woman, so she let him buy the business with us. After my husband died, my sister's husband became president and after that her son. So, it has always been in our family.

TI: Is it still in existence?

BG: (And we've been down there.)

MM: We closed out two years ago in July.

BG: I can tell you. My son, with the business education that he had, saw "the handwriting on the wall."

23 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: It was a very far-sighted move on his part because we closed down and came out nicely on it. We had 70,000 square feet of space; and the man who bought the plant wanted that space, so we sold it.

TI: Where was the business located?

MM: 2901 East Washington.

BG: We'd been there for over 60 years on that one corner.

MM: The day my husband died in Florida, he had been president of

Crown Laundry for fifty years . He died of a heart condition. All the employees signed a scroll for him and sent him fifty red roses; but he was too far gone to realize it.

BG: That's when my husband became president. My husband died in

1970; and my son became president. So it was a very smart move. There's a laundromat around every corner and laundry equipment in every house today and new materials .

MM: Well, we don't know how to use them! They said: "You've got all these chemicals and laundry soaps." I said: "That doesn't do us any good. We haven't even got a rental; so we're going to see if we can't get somebody else to do laundry work, particularly since we've never done any laundry work in our lives . "

BG: It hurt awfully bad at first when we had to pay for all our drycleaning

because we used to send it where everything was free.

24 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: This is nothing about Irvington, but it's rather interesting about my husband and me. We both came from the same ancestry in Kentucky.

They came to Kentucky from Virginia in 1792. My husband descended from one of the sons and my grandfather was descended from another. We had relatives in Kentucky that were descended from another.

TI: All the same family?

MM: Yes. All of them were married but one, Uncle Herby. He was quite successful. He had a big home on a hill with slaves; and all of them used to talk about what they were going to do with Uncle Herby's money when he died. He died; and they all gathered the next day; and the lawyer opened his will and it said: "I, Herby Jeffries, do declare that I am of sound mind and that this is my last will and testament.

Number one, I want all of my just debts paid. Number two, I want all my slaves freed and each one given $50 to start his life anew. Number three, I want all the rest of my estate to go to the lawyers in Montgomery

County, Kentucky, because they'll get it anyhow and my relatives will fight over it; so I'll just give it to them." The family found out that there were just twelve lawyers in Montgomery County. The family bought off ten of them; but two came in for their full share. That will is on probate down at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky.

TI: Was this the Jeffries family?

BG: Yes, that's the Jeffries family and that's on our mother's side of

25 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY the house, too. She was orphaned and it was her father that was mar­ ried to a little nine year old girl; married her at fifteen but fell in love with her when she was nine.

MM: Really, my husband and I were distant cousins; and we never knew it.

TI: Both from the Jeffries family?

BG: We were in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Ind­ iana Pioneer Society. I was treasurer of our DAR three different times.

There's so much red tape and all. You had to be friends with this officer; and then be friends with the next. I was ranting and raving about all of it; for it took me two years to learn to do the work; and then I was out of office. My husband said: "If you feel that way, why do you belong?" I said: "I'll tell you why I belong. First, it's nice to be

eligible; second, it's a patriotic organization; and thirdly, there's

enough patriotic women in that organization that if they take up some­

thing, sometimes the government listens." That's the reason I like to

belong to the DAR. We have just re-established two more lines from our

— Do you remember when they wanted to bring the United Nations

Headquarters here, and the DAR was in working session; and they op­

posed it terrible? You see, the way it turned out, they were right.

America has had all the expenses and still have only one vote against

people like .

26 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: Now the Brown family came here in 1893 and built the Brown home in Irvington.

MS: Where was the Brown house?

MM: The Brown home was on the southwest corner of Washington and

Emerson. It was a rambling old house and they had ten children. The fun we used to have! One of our favorite things was to take the water hose up the front stairs to the third floor and squirt the water out of the third floor. Have you ever talked to Jean Brown Wagoner? You ought to get her started.

BG: Those children—we love them. Our families have been friends for four generations. My grandson and Jean Brown's grandchildren are good friends now. When they had us and the Kittermans over to spend a week­ end at the Brown's, why everyone had a good time. Jean can tell some wild tales about it. They had a hill there. All the kids in Irvington coasted down the Brown hill. In fact, Bob Selby, an Irvington artist who married one of the local Forsyth daughters, made a painting of that hill. I have often wondered where that painting is today. The hill is where the Stan­ dard station is today (at the corner of Washington and Emerson). The

Union of Clubs (our mother and Mrs. Jordan were instrumental in organ­ izing it) did their best to preserve Brown hill because it was an historic site in Irvington.

MM: Mr. Brown said that it was a rule that you could coast but when

27 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY the snow melted down to the dirt he would put a red flag on the hill.

You were't to coast when the red flag was up. He came home one night and one of the children had the flag out and tied on his sled and was coasting down the hill. It didn't make any difference, we could slide clear across Washington and never worry about an automobile.

TI: The traffic wasn't like it is now?

BG: No. Washington wasn't paved. I remember when it was paved.

One interesting thing occurred when they were repaving it down in front of Crown Laundry plant. Harry Weaver, one of the engineers, was our neighbor boy and they ran on to all these tracks that the old horse cars used to use before the electric streetcars.

MM: W.ien my mother and father came to school, there was nothing but horse cars that went back and forth from Irvington to downtown.

TI: Were the cars on tracks?

MM: Yes, they were on tracks.

BG: My gracious, when we were in college (we graduated in 1915) we went to several dances at Woodruff Place on the cars; and we'd walk clear through from Washington Street to Woodruff Place; or if we went downtown we had to wait for the owl car. A group of us would always stop in Thompson's Dairy Lunch, I remember that. All sorts of pranksters

MM: We had lots of fun and didn't spend lots of money.

BG: I remember we were coming out from a party and my date and I had

28 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY to stand up on the owl car to Irvington. They were electric streetcars; but after 11:00 at night they ran them every hour. He said: "You just watch! I'm going to start to yawn and by the time we get to Irvington,

I'll have half the people in this car yawning." And that was the truth.

Try that sometime—it's such a contagious thing. I had never thought about it up to that time. On my first date with him, he took a joke book along because he didn't know how good a talker I was . We didn't have to use it. We talked and had lots of fun.

MM: One cf the main joys we had was walking up and down the railroad tracks. We had the Pennsylvania Railroad in Irvington, of course, and we also had the C. H. £ D. or the Charge High and Damn Rough Riding!

You see, you'd walk one rail; and the boys walked the other; and you would hold hands in the middle and see how long you could walk without falling off.

BG: Our dad was a pioneer. He loved to travel; and being a teacher, he thought book learning without travel was lost. Wliile he was teaching

Latin and Greek at Manual High School, he personally organized and conducted excursions to give the students the advantage of travel. In those days you never heard of anybody taking a personally conducted tour

Oh, somebody would take three to five people to Europe for three months; that's as far as it went. Well, the railroads welcomed him as did the hotels and steamship companies. Before Marjorie and I were even out of

29 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY high school, we had been to every state in the Union. We spent Christ­ mas in Cuba and had been all over Canada. Wnen we were going down to

Cincinnati where Walter was, while we were in college, we went down for the Junior Prom or something; and we had influence enough that the train stopped out at the Butler campus. We always had a great group waving goodbye to us when on our way to Cincinnati. Can you imagine trains stopping down at the campus to let anybody on? But in those days when

Marjorie and I were going to Cincinnati, the trains stopped over on the Butler campus to let us on.

TI: Did you go to Europe?

MM: No, no! Our father had been to Europe and both of us since, but not during our school years.

BG: Wnen he organized the high school student trip, Papa and Mama went along with Grandma and Grandpa; and we had piece after piece of luggage.

The first trip we took was to Florida, and we had a whole special train.

Marjorie and I rode with the engineer. Sometimes he would only have five or six coaches and sleepers. One time when we were going to the Grand Canyon and up the west coast I think we had just five sleeping cars. We got very much attached to the same Pullman porter. So everytime we went we would ask if we could have old Clarence. He would always sing Shine on Harvest Moon for us. We'd be on there about ten minutes; he'd never sing beyond so far. He'd

30 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY say, "Nobody ever hears the rest of this (song) coming down." We had the same fellow year after year. It was lots of fun. Much more fun, in a much simpler way than the kids have today.

MM: Wnere the Methodist church stands today was the home of Jacob

Forsey Forrest and his wife and family. Mrs. Forrest had a sister and a mother; and when Mr. Forrest became a professor at Butler College, they moved here. They built a handsome house and they raised horses in the back part of that circle, very fine horses. The whole circle was enclosed in an iron fence. Mrs. Forrest died and he continued to live there with her mother and sister. When the mother died, they buried her; and the next day all of the people in Irvington who were anybody got this announce­ ment: "Mr. Jacob Dorsey Forrest and Miss Cornelia Allen announce their

Marriage which took place on the way home from the former Mrs. Forrest's funeral. Friends will please refrain from congratulations and Miss Allen will be known as Mrs. Cornelia Allen Forrest and not as Mrs. Jacob Dorsey

Forrest." That upset Irvington a little, or course.

TI: I '11 bet that was a shock.

MM: We had several things that shocked Irvington. One very handsome woman went around the world with Louis Deschler, who was a rich tobacco man of Indianapolis. Now, of course, we don't think about that. It's openly said. The newspaper the other day said that the girl King Hussein married had been living with some man that went to Princeton. That doesn't

31 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY make any difference now; but then, of course, if you went around the world with Louis Deschler, my how we would talk.

The other thing that shocked Irvington was the terrible suicide of Mary Elizabeth Howe.

BG: Her father was the president of Butler.

M VI: She was in love with one of the professors; and when he left that morning, she went home and committed suicide. That was a great thing in Irvington.

BG: What with Aunt Emma's family tree, that was a terrible tragedy. It was very hard to put that on the family. Mrs. Howe came back down to our house. We had become real good friends while at Harvard; and as we have said, we knew each other at

Butler. This professor lived next door; and we were afraid for some time that there would be a tragedy. He never dared come back to Irvington -- we'd tarred and feathered him. He ruined her life. Mary Elizabeth Howe, Catherine Jameson and you and

I were just an inseparable quartet. We'd all go to school together.

You've heard of Catharine Merrill.

MM: We had some very prominent families living in Irvington.

BG: Mr. Merrill was the first treasurer of the state of Indiana. When

32 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Catharine Merrill was a little girl, she used to tell about walking back of the wagon when she got tired of riding. After she became educated, the English Chair at Butler became the Catharine Merrill

Chair of English. After Miss Merrill died, Miss Kate Graydon by that time was old enough to teach at Butler; and she took the Merrill

Chair of English and sat back of the same desk and on the same chair that Catharine Merrill sat on. We were students of Miss Graydon in many of her courses. She left that desk to me in her will. A group of girls who all had Miss Graydon as teacher at Butler, after her death formed a Katharine Merrill Graydon Club. Miss Graydon died in

193 2; and there were about ten or twelve of us formed the club; and we met for 50 years . We had programs, literary programs as near as we could in the way that Miss Graydon would have them. She was very emotional. In one of the classes--! think it was English Literature-- yes, English Literature, some of the football players would sit in the back row; and since Miss Graydon was kinda deaf, these boys would mumble under their breath. Well, she got up one day and said,

"Class, just think. Poor Oliver Goldsmith died in his thirty-fourth year, penniless" and tears began rolling. These football players said something; and of course, Marjorie and I were sitting in the front row and we knew the family so well, we didn't dare smile even.

So we had lots of fun. That's why to this day , we

33 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY always laugh about poor old Oliver Goldsmith. That desk (she used) is still upstairs here; and I thought it should go back to the family.

One of the Jameson children, Lydia, married Evans Wollen, Jr.; and after he died she married Dr. James Ritchey. She lived at 43 West 43rd

Street; and that desk and chair are going back to her. She seems so appreciative. I thought it should be kept in the family.

TI: That is a nice gesture.

MM: Every commencement we would have a basket supper. Imagine having a basket supper and people would bring a market basket full of goods. And it's famous—one woman always brought a can of baked beans and nothing to open it with.

BG: Sarah Shank always brought a loaf of bread and no knife to cut it with.

MM: We had good times in an inexpensive way. See Irwin Field was over there--my grandmother's home was at 5329 University Avenue; and with football, we couldn't get in or out of her driveway. Her carriage barn, which later became her garage, was crowded with people who would just come and park in your yard or any place.

BG: That's something else we should tell them. When we were in school, Irwin Field was there; and we had bleachers to sit on. There was a very personable, cultured, colored boy who was named Noble Sissel.

He would lead the yells; and he also wrote songs. He wrote the Butler

34 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

War Song, I think. In fact, some ot the songs he wrote are based on the city. He teamed up with a pianist named Ube Blake. You've seen Ube

Blake on television several times in the past. He's in his nineties; and he still plays the piano. If you had Sissel and Blake for your big formal dance, you had the tops of everything. Noble Sissel finally became famous; and he and Blake stayed together for many, many years. They went abroad. He played the drums and wrote the songs while Blake played the piano. Blake is still playing the piano. He was on Merv

Griffin's television show one night.

MM: You've heard of the famous Cully Thomas? He had the highest record for football and later became president of General Mills.

BG: Bisquick is his.

MM: There are a lot of things that he invented. He and his wife went to Paris; and they went to a nightclub where Noble Sissel and Ube Blake were playing. Noble Sissel played the Butler War Song and introduced them; and it was quite an evening for them.

BG: In those days we didn't think about that colored boy being at Butler,

He was just one of us. He was very talented. In fact, I've got the book of Sissel and Blake.

TI: Is it a book of memories they wrote?

BG: Yes, full of pictures and things like that. He died. Was the book written after he died? I don't know. I would have to look and see. It's

35 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY been within the last seven or eight years.

MS: I would be interested in hearing about the fraternities and sororities on the campus.

MM: Well, at one time, the Thetas were here very early and left.

BG: Butler wasn't big enough to hold them.

MM: Then they came back in 1903. We were Thetas (Kappa Alpha Theta).

Then the Kappas were there. The Kappas came in the 1890's, I think, and

so did the Pi Phi's (Pi Beta Phi). The fraternities were the Sigma Chi's,

the Phi Delts (Phi Delta Theta), and the Delta Taus (Delta Tau Delta). The

fraternity men had summer houses on the campus and we'd just go there and

sit between classes.

TI: They each had their own?

MM: The summer house was just an open pavillion outdoors. We would

just sit around. In those days it meant a lot. You just needed to belong to

a fraternity; but now it doesn't. A lot of people today don't even want it.

Berniece's two grandsons wouldn't even go into a fraternity or wanted to go

into one.

BG: There had been a wave for the past six or seven years or so. "Oh,

nobody's going to tell me what to do—I'm not going into a sorority or frat­

ernity where they tell me when I have to study and so forth and so on. But

we have 21 Delta Taus in our family. My father put the Delta pin on my son;

and Bishop Hughes of the Methodist church put the Delta pin on his grand- 36 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY son. They were in the same initiate class. Both of our sons were third generation Delts in that class of nine initiates at DePauw University.

I said to my husband, "Oh, what it must have meant to the fathers at home."

MM: You should have seen the grandpas.

BG: I don't think that this is necessary to put on the tape; but there were twelve of us in the Theta sorority in the Class of 1915, -16, or -17, who ate lunch once a month together for twenty years. That meant that our kids came along about the same age.

END OF SIDE TWO, TAPE 1

SIDE THREE , TAPE 2

BG: When the children were through that and most of them were married, we started to meet again—about twenty-five years ago. And believe it or not, out of twelve girls there are seven of us still living. One of them lives in Pasadena, California; and she is the only one who has her hus­ band (alive). One of them lives up in the Edgewater Apartments on College

Avenue; and the other five of us still lived in Irvington until recently. One of them, Mary Louise Rumpler Ragsdale moved down to the Masonic Home in Franklin.

MM: Of course, we're going out now.

BG: We're going to move out, but Urith Dailey Gill and Bonnie Donnell are still here in Irvington . The five that lived in Irvington included the

37 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY two of us, Mary Louise, Bonnie and Erma Weyerbacher Van Tassell. Erma

Van Tassell lives at Edgewater Apartments and Helen Andrews Tafel lives in Pasadena. I think that's a record for all of us to be at our age. I'm

85; and my sister will be 84 in July. We've been very close friends; and in that group there has never been any friction of any kind. In fact,, we call Bonnie Donnell our adopted sister.

TI: Did your group have a name?

BG: Oh, we just called it "The Favorite."

TI: Just a reunion thing.

BG: I meant to tell you when the Katharine Merrill Gradon Club was in its 50th year of meeting, we were all getting older, and one girl from Ko- komo came down every month for that meeting. She was getting old; and we decided to have a great big lovely dinner with all the trimmings and beautiful decorations. That was our last meeting. I ran across the

picture the other day.

TI: Wnen was that?

MM: About three years ago.

BG: Three or four years ago. But we took what we had left in our treas­ ury and one of the girls had a connection where she could get lovely things

at wholesale prices. We gave to the Benton House a beautiful double

punch bowl and the matching tray and a ladle. It is engraved: "To the

Irvington Benton House in Memory of Katharine Merrill Gradon by the

38 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Katharine Merrill Graydon Club." Miss Graydon lived across the street from the Benton House. That punch bowl is at the Benton House; and they use it. We used to have more fun. Miss Graydon was so proper, you know. But we just adored her% She was a lot of fun. We've taken pictures for years of the fun we had; but behind that Catharine Merrill Chair in the school room, she was very strict. We would have these parties with our husbands and we would just have riots. Miss Graydon would be so shocked. "I know, do you remember these? If you remember these

I'll knock your block off because it's the last pair I've got." Things like that, (laughter) Then you've got Howard Caldwell, an advertising man who died recently; and Joseph Ostrander, Nancy Ostrander's (ambassador to Surinam) father. Get those two together and they were a masterpiece.

You didn't need any entertainment; we just made our own.

MM: If you ever got Joe Ostrander, he was prominent in college and so was Howard—whenever you got them together why you wouldn't need any entertainment. They were both Sigma Chi's. One time, the Sigma Chi's were in hard straits financially and Joe was president. They were going to have a meeting to see if they could raise some money.

BG: I think they wanted to start a Sigma Chi house.

MM: So he wired up a chair with electricity that he knew Howard

Caldwell was going to sit in.

39 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: Howard sat in it.

MM: So he would get to talking about how they needed money and who they were going to get and who was going to be the first of the brothers to pledge $1,000. He turned on the switch and Howard got shocked; and he jumped up, you know; and Joe said," Brother Caldwell, how generous of you, the first one to offer $1,000. (Laughter)

BG: Oh, that story. Howard told that to his dying day. He never would forgive Joe, his very best friend, for pulling a trick like that on him. So you see, we had lots of fun.

MM: Now is there anything else that you'd like to know that you haven't asked us? We had little paper car tickets that you got six for a quarter.

Berniece found one of them several years ago and sent it to Lowell

Nussbaum.

BG: I knew Lowell Nussbaum had written articals about things that I had sent to him. One of these was the paper ticket and the old token and he put a write-up about them in his column. They were so yellow; and I thought they were so rotten that I took them out from under the glass on

Miss Graydon's desk and threw them away. They were so yellow. I knew the minute I touched them that the paper was so thin.

TI: What were these things?

BG: Old streetcar tickets. Did you ever read Lowell Nussbaum's column? In the Star? He's been dead, what, for a year?

40 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: No, he resigned from the paper, but he's not dead.

BG: I thought he died.

MM: No.

BG: His was kind of a little gossip. In it he wrote about the ticket.

He wrote about it the second time. I was going through this old desk and found this old streetcar ticket. We had a ticket and they punched the ticket. It showed that it couldn't be used anymore. I had sent in several things to the newspaper about the Irvington area.

MM: The streetcars had the seats going horizontal. There was a step all along the side and the conductor walked along that step and took the fares. It was great fun to ride.

BG: You know how the end seat folded. We would make the fellow that sat on the end seat climb over. The reason I decided that I would never like to drink beer was due to the environment down at what we called the

L. E. & W. tracks (the last tracks you cross before you get out of town).

On both sides of that street were saloons all the way from there down to the Court House. There's nothing worse than the smell of stale beer coming out of those saloons. We'd ride those streetcars in the summer and the smell just wafted across the middle of the street. I decided right then and there I'd never taste beer and I haven't to this day; just from riding the open streetcars and getting the smell from the saloons along the street. 41 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: Anybody that didn't belong to a sorority in those days was called a

"barb." That wasn't a very kind thing to do. "Barbs" stood for barbarians.

BG: Do you want to hear about Wendell Willkie?

TI: Do you know about Wendell Willkie?

BG: Wendell Willkie was an Elwood boy, and when we came to Butler,

Gweneth Harry was in the Theta sorority at that time. She and Wendell

Willkie had been high school sweethearts. She saw the possibilities—his mother, father, and brothers were lawyers. They all just came and went and ate what they wanted to eat.

MM: My husband visited there.

BG: We've been up to Elwood lots of times. Wen went to Indiana Uni­ versity and was the leader of the "Barbs" at I.U. Gweneth was a Theta at Butler and she was, or became one of our most intimate friends. She was at our house and Wen would come up to see her on weekends. She'd

stay at our house all weekend and all night, see. The college permitted that if she'd sign out and put that she was coming over to our house but

she didn't say anything about Wen coming over to see her. She got to the point that she became very uncomfortable about inviting a "Barb" from

I.U. up to our Theta dances. She needled him and needled him to join a

fraternity. He finally said, Well,what do you want me to go? I think

I can have pretty nearly anything I want!" "Well," she said, "I believe

I'd rather have you go Betas. I think Betas (Beta Theta Pi) are kinda "high"

42 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY at I.U." That's what tickled us all during the campaign—how proud the

Betas were of Wendell Willkie. We knew why he was a Beta. She was at our house when he brought his Beta pin up to her. He said, " Gwen, here's your Beta pin. I have sold my soul for it." That pin was buried in the backyard of the Harry home in i£lwood and if it hasn't been dug up, it's still back there. If anyone digs up that yard and finds it, they'll wonder what it was. It really broke their relationship because she insisted that he join a fraternity. In fact, he went out to teach at Coffeyville, Kansas, and he asked Walter Montgomery to come out because he was so heart­ broken that Gweneth had broken up with him. He wanted Walter to patch it up.. But she had seen the possibilities in that man. She knew that he had great leadership abilities. He finally married Billie Wilk, an I.U. girl from Rushville. She just died a couple of months ago. She moved up here to Indianapolis. They lived in New York for many, many years. When he accepted the nomination, all of us went up to Elwood. He was just the

same old Wen we knew when he went to I. U. , even though he was expec­ ting the nomination for the Presidency. We had a great time. Jean Brown

Wagoner and Clifford Wagoner went along with us. But that's the history of Wendell Willkie's romance with Gweneth Harry. They broke up because

she wanted him to belong to a fraternity.

MM: He just talked against a fraternity. He was a real "barb".

BG: He was a real "barb" . Talked very much against them, don't you

43 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY know--being an independent they call it. Now being an Independent at

I.U. in those days was an entirely different thing than being an Indepen­ dent at Butler. In fact, in that situation in many, many cases it just ruined college life for an individual. In fact, it did that at Oberlin College

The man who finally became the president of the Aluminum Company of

America, went to Oberlin. He was not taken into a fraternity. Wnen he became successful, he said that he would endow Oberlin College very, very heavily if they would abolish the fraternities and sororities forever.

Our own cousin became a professor and his mother endowed quite a bit of money to the English Department there because he taught English.

That is why there are no fraternities at Oberlin College . It was that much of a sore spot in the life of many.

MM: We know two or three girls whose lives were ruined by them not taking them. They were just as good as the ones in the sorority and probably better.

BG: In those days, one person could keep you out of a fraternity. That is not so anymore. They quit that. They had to go to the quota system because the stronger sororities got all the good girls at the expense of the newer ones. So they made this quota system that they can only take so many freshman, so many sophomores and upperclassmen. Now then, say you can take twenty-two girls--every girl puts down the names of twenty- two girls that she wants whom she has met through rush. Nobody, unless

44 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY they can prove it on each other, knows who they have put down. The girls who get the most votes get elected to be taken in. One girl can't keep you out of a sorority anymore. They are much more democratic. In fact,

I understand that there is a colored girl or two who are members of a sor­

ority. I don't know which sorority. They have their own sorority out there at Butler, I know. But when we were in school, if you weren't a member

of a sorority, you were left out of the social life and forgotten about.

There were only about 500 students and we knew everybody by their first

name. When my dad and mother went to school, they played pranks

all the time. They put a cow up in the chapel one time and the chapel was

on the third floor of that old building at Butler.

TI: How did they manage that?

BG: They never found out how they did it. It was said that if you would

get Eve Jeffries, my mother's oldest sister and Bob Hall, my dad—if you

got Eve Jeffries and Bob Hall in here, they would talk and you'd know who

did this. They were both terrible teasers. Back when we were little girls,

we'd come home from Sunday school and find our dolls hanging by one leg

in the grillwork of the door—just a terrible tease. She even made my

children think that she was going to turn into a big bear. Our son always

said, "bar." They would do pranks like that at Butler.

MM: They did one prank—they knew that President Benton had a carriage.

It was an old-fashioned kind that closed around.

45 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: He lived here at the Benton House.

MM: They decided that they would take that carriage clear out into the country and leave it. He got wind of it and so he got in the carriage. The boys came and got the carriage and took it clear out and were just ready to leave it when he opened the door and said, "That's been a nice ride, gen­ tlemen—just take me back."

BG: He had the curtains drawn and they didn't know that there was any­ body In there. They just pulled out and he opened the curtains and said,

"You can take me back !"

TI: What about what happened when Butler moved out of Irvington?

BG: It was a really real estate deal.

TI: How did it affect the community?

BG: It affected it tremendously, although Mrs. Elijah Jordan, who was with my mother and my grandmother in person at a high school--said to my mother, "Orpha, the people in Irvington couldn't possibly miss us the way that we miss Irvington. " We never had the same relationship out in our new surroundings that we have now. But I think that has changed. You don't have the same—I don't want to say type, that's really not what I mean--you don't have and I don't want to use the word class because you have nice people out here. But it is a different atmosphere.

MM: You take down Ritter Avenue. Those old homes were mostly profes­ sional homes. Chauncey Butler had his home down there.

46 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: They've all been made into apartments.

MM: Yes, they've all been made into apartments and you see cars parked in the yard and you'd never seen that before. They were all nice homes.

BG: Now we remember—you see the old Ritter house was where School

#57 is and that's why it's named Ritter Avenue. Harriet Ritter was an intimate friend of my mother's oldest sister—the one that was sixteen when her father died. I remember as a child going into the comer where the steps of the driveway went right up around like that and came right straight out from the garage into Washington. Their porch was on that side. I can remember going by there many times as a child and seeing the Ritters sitting out on their porch!

MM: And the old colored coachman that was there. He 'was adopted, I believe, by Ritter. You'd see him driving every afternoon in the carriage.

BG: Wnen they built School #57, they started right after the schoolhouse burned, or at least as soon as they could. We went in that building in the northwest corner of the first floor in #3A grade. My children were always very proud that their mother and their aunt had gone to #57. One day I was sitting out there on the porch sewing and the tree out there was full of little boys. There were nine boys in this neighborhood within a span of three years of ages. John Carr said, "Bob!" That's my Bob.

"I don't like to call you a liar but you said your mom and aunt went to that school over there. That's just not so. That school's not that old."

47 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

I jumped up from the swing and I said, "John, I don't know how old you think I am but Bob is telling you the truth. What's more, we were in it since the 3A grade. So he told you the truth. " At that time it was just the front square building and the auditorium and everything in it was there and upstairs. They have added to it and I haven't been in it for years. I don't suppose I'd know my way around.

TI: Did the Ritter house have to be torn down?

BG: Oh yes, yes. Where the library is today was the old Carvin place.

TI: Carvin? I haven't heard—

BG: C-A-R-V-I-N. Just west of that was the old Moffett place. Florence

Moffett is still living and comes to Irvington. She's a very good friend of our cousin in Orlando, Florida. We see her about every other year.

She comes back to the class of 1917.

MM: Yes, you ought to tell them about that. I think that it's a very interesting class.

BG: What made me think of it was that Florence Moffett has come back every year but this year since she graduated. Urith Dailey Gill was secretary of that class and it was the Class of 1917. Through her efforts and interest and personal letters every year that class has never missed having a reunion here in Indianapolis .

MM: They had one last Sunday.

BG: They come from all parts and this —

48 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: This is the 61st reunion.

BG: This is the first one that Florence Moffett Hahn has missed but she's on a cruise or trip or something. All those years. Their (attendance) is down but I don't remember just how many were in the class . They're still anticipating nine to twelve to come. When we graduated in 1915, I think there were 43 in our class and that was the largest class that had ever graduated.

TI: Was this reunion the Butler Reunion or School #57?

BG: Butler Reunion, Class of 1917. This year they met at—one year they met at the Benton House--two or three years ago and this year they met at the apartment of one of the girls. But they come and will come from even New

York every year. They just come from far and wide.

TI: Has your class had a reunion?

BG: No, our class—it takes somebody dedicated as your bailiff to keep a class together. We had a secretary who would leave the floor and she never wrote up any news for the Butler paper for the Class of 1915. That's the reason why people would think that Marjorie and I were twins. Not very long ago, a girl that was at school with us argued with one of our best friends that she was in school with us and that she knew that we were twins.

Our friend said we weren't. Well, I had typhoid fever when I was six years old. Got it from a spring out in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I loved to go down and run my finger around the cream on top. The ditch was dug

49 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY along this old house basement where the spring water ran and that's where we would keep the cream cool. I would have so much cream in my mouth; and I would go take a drink out of that spring. I got typhoid fever. Mother said to my dad, "This child doesn't act right. I think we'd better get her to a doctor." We lived fifty miles from a doctor or a hospital. So I came home and had typhoid fever and I had it so bad that my temperature was

10 6.6 for over eight hours. In those days, when you had a fever like that it was terrible. I couldn't go to school the next year. Dad, being a teacher, in order to keep me from losing out in school, brought the first grade work and taught me at home. With the chance to go on, Marjorie wanted to get in on it, see. So we started school together and we went all through school together and were married within five months of each other. That's the reason people think we are twins, when it's just because we started school together. . .

TI: You were in the same grades all along, too?

BG: Marjorie was really in my class. As far as she started, we started the second grade there together instead of the first. Our dad taught us all that winter that I had typhoid fever. I've been disgustingly healthy ever since-- to reach 85.

TI: You've done something right.

BG: Even to this day some people think that we are twins. We're just as different as two people could possibly be but we've always gotten along

50 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY fine. She's a Jeffries and I'm a Hall.

TI: You classify yourselves by the different family traits?

BG: Well, the characteristics. My husband said that I'm like my dad.

Once in a while, I flare up and rant and my husband would say, "Now

Ber—Bob Hall, just quiet down!" I've heard that many times in my married life.

TI: I've been thinking about different time periods of history, perhaps during World War I.

MM: I remember so well that when World War I was declared I was out and sat on the front steps of the Musical College and we read the paper there. I remember when the Titanic was sunk and in the old chapel we were told about it. It was all we could think to talk about. Of course, with World War II, I had been out so long but a lot of people went--a lot of boys were lost. Miss Gray--that's one thing she did was keep up on all the soldiers . Hilton Brown, Jr. , went to the first World War and he was killed after the Armistice was signed.

(stop on tape)

MM: William Howe built that house next to the Graydons' .

BG: You know Virginia Kingsbury, when she moved out of that house she had so much family furniture. She had one of those old Wooten desks. Vir­ ginia had an awful time finding a modern house big enough to take her old

51 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

family furniture. She finally found one over on Devon Lane.

MM: Will Howe built the house and Ed Kingsbury bought it from him.

BG: Well, the old Howe home, where those two boys were brought up, was on the southeast corner of Audubon Road. That big old fashioned white

house that sits right close to the street is where Will Howe, Tom Howe and their sister were brought up.

TI: Tom Howe?

BG: Then Tom Howe, you see, moved into the Forrest place. He built a house that faced Audubon Road there just south of Washington Street. They built a filling station there when the house was torn down.

BG: And the Jameson house, where Mrs. Jameson (who was one of the

Gradon girls) lived next to that. That was all torn down for that parking lot there.

TI: On Audubon?

BG: Yes.

MM: And the old clubhouse on the golf course up there used to be the Dis-

settes. The Dissettes are a very old family here in Indianapolis. James I.

Dissette has relatives still living.

BG: In fact, that house was the clubhouse until when?—about four or five years ago when they built the new house. The Dissette home was what

they used as their clubhouse.

TI: It isn't there anymore?

52 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: No, they tore it down to make the present house. They used to have private dances and we'd meet there to play cards . It was a great big house. Isn't she living? Eunice Dissette is dead?

MM: Yes, she was. Her daughter is a friend of Ora Elizabeth Coats Irvin.

BG: They didn't farm that—they didn't have corn or anything—that part there on Arlington Avenue was all lawn—beautiful place on the hill. Plea­ sant Run, believe it or not, used to be big enough there that you could run a canoe down. All of our Christmas trees for years—my dad would just go over to Ellenberger Park and cut out an evergreen tree and that was our

Christmas tree. That picture of Will Forsyth was looking east there from

Emerson Avenue up Pleasant Run.

TI: How were the Forsyths relatives again?

BG: From different brothers. He was a distant cousin of mine.

TI: Will Forsyth lived in Irvington also, didn't he?

MM: Yes, down there on the southeast comer where the filling station is.

TI: Right across from the Benton House?

BG: There was a little graveyard back up there. I don't know whether there are any stones left or not. There was a little, tiny family graveyard back of the house. You used to be able to see it from Julian Avenue.

Somebody told me that all those stones had been removed. Didn't think it was up there anymore. Remember somebody told me that years ago and wanted to know what I knew about that. They had heard that there were

5 3 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY revolutionary ancestors buried there. It was just a little square family graveyard.

TI: Was it a pioneer cemetery?

BG: I suppose there are maybe remnants of the stones up there yet. I

don't know but that used to be it.

TI: Could it be behind the filling station?

MM: No, if you go down Julian Avenue there's a block between Spencer

and Emerson. Well, there are two houses--a house facing Spencer and

a house—the old Weesner house facing Emerson and just between those

two houses is a little graveyard.

TI: I'll have to check on that.

MS: Were there any other cemeteries around Irvington?

BG: My gracious, when we were kids if you were buried out at this

Anderson Cemetery out here, you were just clear, clear out in a cemetery.

We thought it was a big cemetery. I understand the reason why they can

never widen Tenth Street is that they can't get any right-of-way through

that cemetery. See, you've got to get permission from the heirs of any­

body whose grave they would have to disturb. There's not enough right-

of-way along there on Tenth Street that they can ever possibly do that.

They've tried to widen Tenth Street through there but they have never

been able to do it. We used to take basket lunches on Sunday afternoons

and go out to Dietz's Woods.

54 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: It was a beer garden.

BG: They had a band and the band sat out there and they served beer.

It was outside Irvington, don't you see.

TI: The Kingsbury family is quite an old name in the community.

BG: The Kingsbury family and ours have been friends for four generations.

MM: Mr. Kingsbury/ the grandfather, was married five times and there were a lot of children.

BG: Marjorie and I complimented ourselves; for many years we were the only people in Irvington who could tell anybody the "straight" of the

Kingsbury family. I'm not sure that we could do that now because he had children by every wife but the last one and they were both past seventy at that age.

MM: The first wife was a Dorsey and the Dorsey' s were a very fine family here. He had just two children, Jim and Ed Kingsbury. Ed was the one that bought the house that you live in (Mary Spiegl) and Jim was the father of Dr. John. He was the one who lived down there in the old farm house on the southeast comer of Layman; Layman and Michigan.

BG: Mrs. Kingsbury died in that house. Lived there all her life. And

John was so tickled to get this land back. They used to hoe com around this hill by hand in those days. Well, when this land became available—

Tom Howe owned one lot and Carl Wagner owned the other. He was so happy to get that land back because it was a part of the old Kingsbury farm,

55 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

End of Side 3, Tape #2

Side 4, Tape #2

BG: We have National Geographic clear back to 1952. There may be

six or seven or eight of them that have been pulled out because my son's youngest son spent last year in Antarctica, financed by the National

Science Foundation. It was quite an honor for all of us. He graduated from Earlham, Phi Beta Kappa in Marine Technology. Earlham's a very heavily endowed school. They take these biology students on trips. For instance, they spent one Christmas vacation in Jamaica studying the fauna off the coral reefs. So, through Earlham College, he got a job with

Florida State Conservation. He just hated it in Florida; he was so home­ sick. He was looking for a change and you know John Cousteau that you see on the—Jacques Cousteau--he's been out with him lots of times. You see, these scuba divers going overboard and he said to his dad, "Dad, if

I go to Marine College, I'll have to polish up and learn to scuba dive. I don't like the sharks." Well, he's just as good in ornithology as he is —

Bob's boys have always been great in ornithology. "Well, I'm going to have to change my whole life but I'm never going to learn to scuba dive."

Just before, he had told them that he would stay for two years, and just before his two years were about up, they wanted to put a nuclear power plant up in a village down there. The government wouldn't let them until they found out what the refuse they were going to put in the ocean would

56 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY do to the marine life. Where in the world were they going to find out?

Well, they said go to the Florida State Conservation Department. Brian was just ready to leave down there and he was sure sick and tired of it.

They put him on that job. It took him fourteen months. He did a lot of research on it, you can imagine. His paper was 120 pages long. He got the highest commendation on all of it. They printed it under his own name and they're sending it to other nuclear power plants under similar situa­ tions so that they won't have to go through this--see. He decided to go on with ornithology. David, the oldest boy, was just taking a professor­ ship in pharmaceutical research at Emery. He had gone to Minnesota because when he got out of pharmacy at Purdue, there were only two uni­ versities in the country that gave master's degrees--a Ph.D. in pharmacy.

One of them was Berkeley and the other, Minnesota. Well, you know

Minnesota's better. So he went to Minnesota because he didn't want to get into all the campus mess at Berkeley. He would like to live in California.

Well, naturally, having an older brother going to Minnesota, you see, and there are only four universities that offer a master's and a Ph.D. in orni­ thology, besides Minnesota. Brian said, "Don't give me the credit," even though he was Phi Beta Kappa and his dad said, "You can't change." He said,

"I happened to come along with the right credentials. I happened to do well on the job I was given. I happened to choose the right university when they were hunting somebody to go to Antarctica in ornithology. During the second

57 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY interview that he had with the head of the Biology Department up there, they asked him to spend a year in Antarctica, which he did.

TI: I'll bet that was thrilling.

BG: Oh, it was simply fantastic. Oh, the tests they had to go through!

One of them is psychiatric--to see if you can take the pressure, you see.

There is a fellow that goes with you and stays about three months--or is it six weeks-- well anyway, he stays long enough to make sure you are all right. They all went out to some big medical convention in Phoenix to take the tests. One of the boys that Brian liked the most and was hoping would go, didn't pass the psychiatric exam; mostly because he couldn't take the pressure. So now Brian's up at Minnesota and they want him to go back to Antarctica for two years for his Ph.D. But he's not sure.

MM: What was it that Steve said he was giong to change to?

BG: Ecology—He's going to switch over to Ecology. But he doesn't want to go back to Antarctica for two years . His pictures are out of this world.

He had some fantastic experiences and wouldn't take anything in this world for it. Unless you see those pictures, you have no idea what Antarctica is like. They sent a gourmet cook--now imagine—they sent a gourmet cook with the men and a paramedic because when you're that close—they can take care of any fever. I didn't know until Brian went down there that during the summer months it's quite a tourist place. A lot of tourists go to Antarctica. I never had it in my head to go to Antarctica, but a lot of

58 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY people do. Then there are just six scientists and the paramedic and the gourmet cook. He changed to that. He studied the Giant Petrous (it's a member of the turtle family) that lives solely in Antarctica. There's very little known about them. My grandchildren have had interesting exper­ iences. He didn't think that he wanted to go back to Antarctica for two more years. As I say, I wouldn't believe Antarctica; it's so beautiful.

And actually when the last ship leaves, you're there—they won't go in again until spring breaks .

MS: Maybe one last thing we should get can be the ladies' names and birthdates.

TI: Could we do that--each of you give your name. This is statistic time.

BG: Well, our maiden names were both Hall. Mine is Berniece, B-E-R-

N-I-E-C-E, and people leave out the second "E", so be sure to put it in.

The first thing that I look for is to see if my name is spelled right. B-E-

R-N-I-E-C-E Hall.

MS: And your married name is Glass?

BG: My married name is Glass. I was born May 6, 1893.

MS: Where were you born?

BG: I was born in Kendalville, Indiana.

MM: My name was Marjorie Hall and I was born July 11, 1894. My mar­ ried name is Montgomery.

55? GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: You were born out in the mountains of Pennsylvania?

MM: I was born in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.

BG: They say they kept no birth records or anything out there in the country. My dad, before he died, went down to the courthouse and made an affidavit just to when we were born so that we could get passports and have a record of our births.

TI: I hadn't thought of that being a problem.

BG: I was born in Kendalville and about ten or twelve years later, the courthouse burned down out there and burnt up all the records . Oh, it was a long time before that--before Pop died--along about '44. That courthouse out in Kendalville burnt down and it burnt up all the records .

My birth record wasn't up there.

TI: We will stop now.

End of Side 4, Tape #2

Begin Tape 3, Side 1

TI: Cornfield around Pleasant Run Parkway.

BG: Yes, I couldn't tell you when—it just probably came in and didn't

make any impression on us what the time was. Because the Rush house

was along there before those houses were built in there .

TI: In Hilton U. Brown's book, he talks about a golf course. It seems

to me, when I thought about his instructions, it was north of the Parkway?

BG & MM: Oh yes! where the swimming pool is. (MM) There used

S3) GLASS AND MONTGOMERY to be a golf course. (BG) Then he went north from there. There was a tee right there--where the two boulevards come into Tenth Street, I've been told.

MM: Yes, there was.

TI: On the golf course?

MM: On the golf course, clear up to Tenth Street.

TI: It's hard to even visualize.

BG: Yes, it is, because Tenth Street wasn't even cut through there, was it?

TI: Was Michigan Street there?

MM: Yes, but it wasn't paved. It was just a road.

BG: That used to be called Irvington Golf Course.

MM: One of the good tees, one of the good shots was just going up that hill, down from the Pleasant Run up to the swimming pool.

BG: It was the same hill that the swimming pool's on. We'd get a running start and belly-buster down on the sled and see if we could go down that hill so fast so that we'd miss the creek.

TI: The swimming pool there at Ellenberger?

BG: Yes, the swimming pool--that was the hill we were supposed to go on, that and Brown Hill. That was quite a hill, wasn't it?

TI: They still coast right there.

BG: Yeah, they still do; my kids and grandchildren go there.

6] GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

TI: It looks like so much fun in the winter.

MM: I can't tell you—those were just roads. They probably weren't called Tenth Street and that's the reason they weren't called Pleasant

Run Parkway.

BG: Oh, I don't think you could get out with a horse and buggy or any­ thing--! think there was just a tow path back there.

MM: All of those streets north of the creek and east of Ritter Avenue were cut through there. Johnson's was one of the first houses built in there. That was all just farm, when we first moved there in 1920.

TI: I'm kind of a sentimentalist. I would like to perhaps get a descrip­ tion that's personal from you both of your wedding days. Would you like to tell us first, Mrs. Glass? I would like to know - what did you wear; how did it feel; was it a grand occasion?

MM: She still has her wedding dress. I burned mine. I just burned mine when I broke up my home. I burned it because I said that I had no children and there wasn't any reason to keep it any longer. Mine was white brocade satin with outline in pearls.

TI: Did you make it yourself?

MM: No, no—I had a maid for fifty years—she was killed in an automobile accident just before I moved over here. That's the reason I moved over here and she helped me burn all the things.

TI: When were you married then, Mrs. Montgomery?

62 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: Nine months after I was.

MM: 1918.

TI: Was your husband from Irvington?

MM: No, he was from Washington, D.C. He went to the University of

Cincinnati and graduated and my Uncle Paul Jeffries met him at a Delt

convention. He was going to graduate that June. He asked him to come up and take him around by several businesses to take charge of the bus­ inesses .

BG: (Shows pictures, etc.) There's my wedding invitation. Here I am

standing in the doorway at 129 Downey Avenue. That big living room there used to be two rooms .

TI: Were you married at home?

BG: More than 35 people were there. I made my dress, my veil and everything. This is my husband when we were married. There we are on our 50th wedding anniversary.

TI: Is that the same dress?

BG: The same dress. The veil had gone to pieces. We had a style show at the Propylaeum and all the clothes that you wore were supposed to have been in the family. I know Mrs . Fletcher Hodges was ahead of me and she was dressed in Dr. Hodges' mother's outfit. Dr. Hodges said, "Rebecca, they're going to run you in if you go downtown." She had on one of those old bonnets that you tie down. All night she'd say, "Mrs. Glass, don't

63 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY step on my dress because it'll come off." The dress had one of those tiny trains . I wore my original veil at that time but by the time of our

5 0th wedding anniversary in 19 67, the veil had just gone to pieces. We had a veil in the family and I remade it just exactly the way my veil was.

(But there I am in 1917 in a dress I made.)

TI: What kind of material is it?

BG: Beautiful silk. It had a brocade jacket that came over it and came down to a point and had a pearl tassel on it. Can you see it? I'm going to tell my children to burn it. (This is all our fifieth wedding anniver­ sary.)

TI: Wnen was that?

BG: 19 67. I had nine grandchildren. My daughter after a very wonderful career of her own--she has a master's degree in sociology from Northwest- em (I told you yesterday about her) and she came back here and met a man through her minister. He had five children and in the five children was a set of triplets eight and one-half years old. She took on that family.

MM: The mother died when they were born.

BG: The mother had died when they were born. Imagine a man left with a boy six, one four-and-a-half and three newborn babies without a mother.

She took on that family and then when she was 41 she had one of her own.

Now that's my youngest. He is now seventeen, six feet tall, weighs over

200 pounds and plays football at North Central.

64 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

TI: You had a son and a daughter then?

BG: Uh-huh. Aid all grandchildren including the Conly's and my son's three boys came to that wedding reception and they came from four different colleges and two of them had left homecoming celebrations to be at that wedding. Quite heartwarming actually.

MM: Nine grandchildren there.

BG: There's the one that's seventeen now--he's signing the guest book-- he's left-handed. I'm looking for Bob's picture—there it is—that's the one that was just here--see—he's heavier. This is the one that just got his doctor's degree and is going to Emory University. This is the one that is the ornithologist. He's an outdoor boy; he ought to be a park ranger. This is the one that spent last winter in Antarctica. These two boys are excep­ tionally brilliant. This one is just darling--he just isn't that kind of a student. It's nothing against him, he just isn't that kind of a student-- he's plenty smart but just not that way and he doesn't want to be. It makes it hard when you've got an older brother like that and a younger brother like that and you're in the middle and you're not that kind of student. But he is a doll. He told Dr. Val Nolan down at I.U. that there was an eel in

Monroe Reservoir. "Oh," he said, "Steve, there are no eels in Indiana."

"Well," he said, "There's an eel down at Monroe Reservoir and I saw it."

And sure enough Val said, "I'll meet you and you show it to me." Sure enough, there was a pair of them. She was asking me about my wedding

65 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY dress so I was just showing her our pictures of the wedding and the wedding presents. When it was all over we had a family dinner at the Propylaeum.

So it was quite hectic. Mr. Glass lived three years after that. I under­ stand that there are only about five percent of couples that live to see their 50th wedding anniversary.

TI: It is rare.

BG: I even made myself a black velvet coat for that.

TI: Another kind of an historical point—what was your reaction to women getting the vote ?

BG: I couldn't care less. I enjoy being a girl.

TI: You didn't want to vote?

BG: I was perfectly willing to if they were going to give the vote but I never would have gone out and campaigned to vote. I'm not a women's libber in any sense of the word.

TI: I' m just curious.

BG: I enjoy being a woman. I enjoy having a man get up when I come into a room. I enjoy being treated as a woman and I do not want to be on a business level with a man.

MS: How do the women feel in your circle of friends? Do they all feel

that way?

BG: I think so—especially when we were in college.

MS: You weren't out carrying a placard?

66 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: No, no. I still enjoy being a woman. I don't want to get out in the business world and get up before a bunch of people and talk. I enjoy being a homemaker; I love my home. I like to work in it. I've enjoyed being a mother; I've enjoyed being a wife; and this time being a sister.

We've had a very closely knit family all our lives. Personally, I don't feel that women libbers can have that kind of home life on the other. If

I hadn't been married and had a family and had the opportunity to have a home and to have that kind of relationship, I might have an entirely dif­ ferent point of view. I think it depends really upon our background. Our mother was quite a homemaker. I told my grandson that he was getting his great, great, great grandfather's things. The fact that we cared enough about things and were planning to keep them that long shows that we loved our home. I'll bet Marjorie feels much the same—you enjoyed them. Marjorie is much more sort of a dainty person than I am. We're entirely different but we get along just fine. The bows in her hair belong in her hair; they wouldn't belong in mine at all. Entirely different temper­ aments .

MS: The only other thing that I would like to know is about the newspapers

How did they start and keep continuing?

MM: We had the Sentinel of course, and the Indianapolis Times and the

Star-News and we had the Irvington, a new one and the old—in fact, they haven't been too many years old. Ann Hall started the Irvington Review.

67 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

She's still living here. She's a journalistic student and an Alpha Chi

Omega. She's also published their work—their little magazine. She had the Irvington Review.

MS: Was it older than the Sentinel or later?

MM: No, the Sentinel was much older; it was a downtown paper.

MS: So the Irvington Review was the only Irvington paper?

MM: Yes, now it's gone and we have the Eastside Herald.

BG: Well, that's when Jane Gable and Ann Hall.. . . .

MM: They had their Review.

BG: They had the Irvington Review and now it's down here just east of

Sherman Drive.

MM: I think that man publishes several, the Southside Journal and all.

TI: I see that you're getting some more company so I think we'll stop

now.

BG: That's my daughter coming to help me empty out our medicine chest.

End of side 5, Tape #3

TI: Today is June 15, 1978, Thursday morning. We are interviewing Mrs.

Glass and Mrs. Montgomery for the second time. The interviewers are

Mary Spiegl and Theresa Ilg of the Brown Branch Library.

MM: We had what we called "The Art of Irvington Artists Exhibit" out here

for several ^ears and nobody could enter but an artist that lived in Irvington.

There were quite a few of them: Clifton Wneeler, Will Forsyth, Simon Baus,

68 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Frederick Holly, Dorothy Morland, Lucille Morehouse and Bob Selby who married Evelyn Forsyth.

MM: Who was Will Forsyth's daughter.

BG: Charles Yeager was one of the young artists who taught at Manual at the time. They all lived here between Emerson Avenue and Arlington

Avenue. I don't think any of them lived north; yes, Clifton Wheeler. He built that house over here on Lowell Avenue that sits way back just east of Hawthorne Lane. The first house on the south side of the street that faces Lowell Avenue that sits a way back. Clifton Wheeler built that house and if you'll notice the whole front of that house is a window and that was his studio.

TI: I was wondering where he lived.

BG: That was Clifton Wheeler's studio. His wife was an artist, too.

She died. Her name was Hilah Wheeler. We used to call this our Wheeler

Room because there was nothing in it but Wheelers—either Hilah's or

Clifton's. When my sister came over to live with me she brought that one

over there of Will Forsyth's. I told her that that was a painting.

TI: Beautiful.

BG: That's standing just east of Emerson looking east.

MM: The exhibit ran for about—over two weekends. We always had hos­

tesses that opened it around 11:00 in the morning and stayed open until nine

o'clock. We had hostesses that changed every two hours, more than one.

69 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

We really sold a lot of pictures and we always ended up on the last Sunday night with a big pitch-in spread for all the workers from the Union of Clubs .

There was quite a lot of publicity in the papers and it was quite well known.

TI: Did this help the artist's career?

MM: Yes, it certainly did, every year. One of Clifton Wheelers paintings which he showed at the Irvington art exhibit later took first prize at the

Hoosier Salon. I love that picture. He sold this origional to John Kautz, a member of an old Irvington family. Later on I wanted a picture for above

my marble fireplace. Clifton Wheeler said he would paint this same pict­

ure for me but in a lot smaller size.

BG: I think to go along with the artists you'd better tell about Constance

paying for a fur coat by painting my daughter. It caused so much

comment that first year that the second year I--we had her paint my son

who was that much younger; he was just six. He'd been six in May and

this was the next Christmas, around Christmas time. "Well," I said,

"You can't paint Bob unless you paint the dog," which was a little Boston

Bull. She said, "Well, I'll have to talk to Dad about that; I never painted

a dogin my life." She couldn't keep the dog awake. It would put its claws

up Bob's leg and put its head down on his paws and was always asleep.

But she kept him occupied by telling him stories about what the Forsyth

children or Brown children did over at the Brown house or on the Brown Hill.

70 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

She certainly, in that picture in that portrait, caught an attitude of mischief.

My daughter had beautiful red hair and she had on sort of an olive green chiffon dress for the picture. For those two pictures Constance got an awful lot of portrait work. When she did little Mary Stone, she said she didn't know how she ever did Mary because she just caught her running around the house all the time. She was never still long enough so that she could make a sketch of her. It was an excellent picture. So you see that started—just the matter of fact that people were exposed to those things it brought incentive and a lot to the artist.

MM: Every evening, we would serve tea out there and a lot of people would stop by there after work. It was quite an affair.

TI: You served tea at the Artist Exhibit?

MM: Yes. It was in Dr. Silas Carr's Hall and that was over there between

Whittier and Ritter. It was called the Carr Building. It was a big place.

It had lights and all. It was well lighted and even had a stage and all and we would feature a different picture every day to put on the stage. I thought maybe you'd like to know some of the names of Irvington residents of old prominent families?

TI: Yes.

MM: Well, there was one that was an Iden—I-D-E-N . He later went to

Michigan to Ann Arbor and took the chair of Bible Teaching. He wrote back here to his students in Butler for many years a letter, once a year, and he

71 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY always called it the "Upper Room" . Although I didn't know Mr. Iden, I knew about the "Upper Room" letters and I would read them. Then, of course, the Browning name and the Thompson name. Thompson was the man that gave the money to the Bona Thompson Memorial Library.

BG: You told her about that yesterday.

MM: Did I tell you about that yesterday?

TI: No, no. No, I don't think that we got the full story. We had heard of it but not the whole story.

BG: About Bona Thompson dying of typhoid fever?

MM: Yes, she died of typhoid fever and she was an only child. They decided that since she was a graduate of Butler, as a graduation present, they sent her to Europe. In her two months in Europe, she contracted typhoid fever.

BG: That was a terrible time--that was the summer I had it. There was a terrible typhoid epidemic.

MM: He had never endowed it and he had always said that he would endow.

He had a stroke and he used to have his nurse wheel him to the window and prop him up and he kept pointing there. Everybody felt that he was trying to say he wanted to endow it—it was never endowed. Of course, there was nothing legal they could do about it. His money went to nieces and nephews

and they weren't inclined to give it up to endow the library. I don't know

what arrangements they made with the United Christian Missionary Society.

72 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

They use it as a book store. There was a man here yesterday that told us that they have put a second floor. It was a very beautiful building, vaulted building. You went in a center door and right in front of you was a desk for the taking out of books. On either side were reading rooms. In the back were ladders to get a good book. The man that was here yesterday said that they had put a second story in there so I can't imagine—those beautiful vaulted windows that they had.

TI: A lot of the buildings have been changed.

MM: But it still has Bona Thompson Memorial. The Thompson family was from Downey and they lived in the complete block between or halfway between Ritter and Downey. That whole block and it had an iron fence around it with two gates . One was half a block that was the southeast corner. A beautiful brick home with a cupola on it. They were famous.

They had always had Sunday afternoon tea. It was a great thing to go over there and have tea on Sunday afternoon.

BG: There was a beautiful iron fence all around the house.

MM: This cupola came clear downstairs and had little rooms and they always served tea in the round room of the cupola.

TI: Did you have tea there?

MM: Oh yes, we were very good friends.

BG: We were good friends of the children. We used to have Sunday evening supper at the Hibbens' . They would give us so much money and

73 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY we'd go down the market on a streetcar.

MM: Must have been Saturday. The market wouldn't be open on Sunday.

BG: Saturday evening. We'd go in couples and were supposed to--

MM: On the streetcar,too.

BG: Oh, we'd go downtown on the streetcar to market. We'd go about middle of the afternoon you see, and then we'd go downtown and bring back the food for supper. Mrs. Hibben always had a prize for the one that made the best selection. How much would we get? Not over $.50 a piece.

MM: No, it was a small amount, but interesting. A boy and a girl would be sent to see what they would buy.

BG: We've had some glorious times up there.

MM: They had this driveway that came in the west end, circled up in front and there was a porte cochere in the front and you went out from the east—a circular drive.

BG: It was lined heavily with wild flowers. I always liked that. I remember on my sixteenth birthday, Tom Hibben, who finally became an architect and worked on the Scottish Rite Cathedral, brought me a bouquet of violets from--on my sixteenth birthday that he had picked along that drive.

TI: I'll bet that was beautiful.

MM: And there was a very famous family. The oldest son, Paxton, went

74 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY to Russia in government work and he's buried over in the Kremlin, actually.

BG: It was in his will, he requested it--that his ashes be taken to the

Kremlin for burial. F^e was one of the first persons we ever knew who went to Russia.

MM: And the next child was a daughter—Helene, H-E-L-E-N-E and she did a lot of sculpture.

BG: She was a sculptor and she made a bust of Liszt and gave it to my uncle who was a musician. That bust is still in our family.

MM: Then the next daughter was—she was a little bit odd but she came to the parties and all and she finally ended up with a husband. One night in later years we went into a cafeteria in Florida, and there was Hazen

Hibben at the salad bar. It seemed so strange because the Hibbens were really up high in society in Irvington.

BG: Then Jim, the youngest, was the rascal of the family. He used to jump freight cars on the C.H.&D. railroad and ride to Cincinnati and come back. One time he fell and got hurt. I guess half of his foot was taken off. I never did really find out what happened to Jim but anything could have happened to Jim.

MM: Now Tom was an architect and he had something to do with the

Scottish Rite. That was the Hibben family.

TI: These were the Hibbens. Was Helene?

75 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: And the brother was the Hibben Holloway Dry Goods people. Wasn't it his brother?

MM: Yes.

BG: The brother of Tom, Sr. , though and the one that gave me the violets was Tom, Jr. , and his brother was (you're too young to remember the Hib­

ben Holloway Dry Goods Company down on South Meridian. They were

there forever—great big wholesale house.

MM: Who were some of the other prominent people?

BG: They were a part of the Indianapolis families because in the social

register, there was nearly always some of the Hibbens. Then there was

Catherine Merrill who later became--her family became the Gradon family.

That was a good family.

TI: Did she marry into the Gradon family?

MM: No, her sister married into the Gradon family. Katherine Merrill

Gradon was the child of that union. Then another sister married in the

Jameson family. That's an old Indianapolis name. One of their daughters

married Evans Woolen, banker. And then when Mr. Woolen died, she

married Dr. Ritchey. That's the daughter to whom we're returning the desk.

MM: And the Shank family. We told you about the Shank slaughter house,

didn't we? I think I told you yesterday, I'm sure, that one of the great

pastimes of college students was to walk up the railroad tracks, girl on one

rail, boy on the other, holding hands between to see how far they could walk

76 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

And they'd walk to this station. The station was at Audubon and Railroad

Street on the Northeast corner.

BG: It was a white house.

MM: The street along the railroad was called Railroad Street.

BG: Oh, it had a waiting room and everything.

MM: A baggage master.

BG: A baggage master, and we were just thrilled to watch them work the

teletype machine. They had this big wagon with big wheels that they put

the baggage on.

MM: I suppose that was up there at least twenty-five years. It stood

empty. It stood there just as it was even with those benches and every­

thing in it and that wagon outside. No one even touched it. Now it

wouldn't stay there to come along. There were plenty of trains went

through there then and it finally got to be double tracks. We'd walk to the

station and get on the train and go downtown on the train.

MM: A lot of Butler students would go down on the train.

BG: It was quite a gathering place and it was a regular stop. All the

trains stopped and if you wanted to get off at Irvington, you got off. The

station manager, always a very jovial fellow, payed a lot of attention to

the children.

MM: They had a post office at one end of it and later the post office was

moved down to Ritter and Washington on the northeast corner. We always

77 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY went after our mail. That was a chore that neither of us wanted. We had to do that—Mother expected it, to go after the mail. It burned us up.

TI: Did you dislike it for any particular reason?

BG: Yes, it interrupted our play. Mother would come out and say, "It's time for you to go and get the mail."

MM: Our parents had a bicycle club and they called themselves the "Swans," a Society Without a Name. They would take weekends and bicycle clear to

Brookville, Indiana. The ladies had bicycle outfits so their long skirts wouldn't get tangled up in the wheels.

TI: They didn't wear slacks or pants or—

BG: Oh, my no! They had divided skirts.

TI: Like culottes?

MM: No, they were regular skirts but they were divided.

BG: They were divided at the hips. They were a form of culotte but you wouldn't know they were. They weren't full as a skirt so they wouldn't get tangled in that chain around the wheel. On a lady's bike there was always my frame around that shank. The Irvington Dramatic Club is still going, and that was organized at Hibben home in 1914. It was organized by my mother's older cousin and my mother's brother and the old cousin that lived with them most of their life--more like a brother than a cousin. Ed­ gar T. Forsyth, my uncle, and Helene Hibben and Ed Kingsbury. They got together up at the Hibben household and organized the Irvington Dramatic

78 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Club,

MM: Berniece and I were charter members and we're the only ones living.

BG: Helene, at the time, wanted Hazen to come into it and Uncle Paul said, "Well, if Hazen's going to come in, my two neices would want to come in also." It was by invitation and charter members were an invitational affair for those four people.

TI: When did you join it?

BG: In 1914.

TI: Oh, right away?

BG: Yes and we have met regularly up until last year. We used to give a guest play every year. It used to be given at Moore's Hall and then

soon after we went to School #57. One of the kind of things we gave at

Moore's Hall was the "Story of the Blue Willow Platter." Walter Ward lived over here on the boulevard at that time. He was in the managerial

end of L. S. Ayres' and Company so he got the artist, the window trimmer

down there and the background was a huge , blue ,Willowware platter. At

that time there was a Chinese in Butler, U. M. Chen, and he was a friend

of ours and he would stop on the porch. He took us out to dinner a lot and

would be at our house. He had a friend at Indiana University—see the

story of the Blue Willow Platter is a Chinese story. He had a friend at

Indiana University whose father was a mandarin. This fellow was in Ind­

iana and he went down to Indiana University. He got those of us that

were in the "Story of the Blue Willow Platter" real mandarin coats. Mrs.

79 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Ward stood off at the corner in a mandarin coat and made the oration. All

of the acting was in pantomime and it was a beautiful affair, just beautiful.

Those public plays that we gave like that were part social events at first.

In fact, whe n we moved on to the auditorium after 57 was filled, you couldn't

get in without an invitation because we were afraid people would just come

in off of the street. After the play we danced. At that time, the auditorium

was down—I don't know what it is now--in that first square building—the

gym was old and torn down—you went down a few steps and we'd move the

chairs and we'd dance. Then the last two or three years--at that time,

that and the Indianapolis Dramatic Club, which was rather an exclusive

small group from, oh, I would say, the upper crust of Indianapolis, were

the only two dramatic organizations in the city. Not too many years after

-we organized , they began to talk about the Civic Theater. Betty Bogart

(Stephen--her father) and her mother, Mrs. Bogart, were very active in both

clubs: The Irvington Dramatic Club and The Civic Theater. The Irvington

Dramatic Club is still meeting. Not as active as it usually is, but they've

met three or four times this year. I know we always had our June meeting

outside. One June, it was at Mr. Francis Insley's, the second house down

here next to the Korbly House. That real stormy, cold June night—it

couldn't have been colder—everybody came wrapped in blankets and that

night we gave "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It was so funny. Then a

year or two later, we gave the outdoor June meeting at Mrs. Bernard's

80 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY house there on the boulevard. That night it was a lovely June night with all the stars out and everybody enjoying the lovely evening and we gave

"The Tempest," It became kind of a joke in the Dramatic Club why we couldn't strike the right kind of night with the right kind of play.

MM: The first meeting that the Dramatic Club had was a play that took place in a sleeping car. They built a sleeping car in my grandmother's parlor.

BG: Took up floors and everything.

MM: With curtains and all. They had built it right at the edge of the stairway so they could make their entrance down the stairs. They went to a lot of trouble and no one would think of going to a Dramatic Club meeting without being in evening clothes.

TI: You were in some of the plays?

BG: Oh my, yes !

TI: Did you enjoy?

BG: I was in one with Marjorie's husband one time. It was called "The

Philosopher And The Apple Orchard." We gave it at Daisy Long's house out there just back of the old fashioned house on University and Ritter on the northwest comer and first house in back of that is the Long house.

Walter never could learn his lines. He and I were in the play, "The

Philosopher And The Apple Orchard," and I had to learn all of his lines and what he didn't say right I had to change mine to go with his. But it

81 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY was really quite a success. We got through but he said, "But I'll never remember—don't take my cues." He'd never give me the right cue but I knew what it should be so I would change mine. We had a lot of fun.

MM: One play, one of the lines was. He arose and departed." Walter said he realized everything was quiet and it was his turn and he didn't know what to say. Finally, something came through so he said, "He got up and left," instead of saying, "He arose and departed."

BG: Oh! and at that time, Stewart Walker had a stock company here in

Indianapolis, Was it the Englishes? Yes. They gave "The God Of The

Mountain. " Will Forsyth was in it and some of the older men. And Will

Forsyth or was it Charlie Brosman--it was Charlie Brosman--and one of his lines was, "It is terrible, it is terrible." Every time he would say,

ii

"It is turrible, turrible." Finally, the man that was coaching said, Mr.

Brosman, you must say, 'It is terrible, terrible.' " It was all men and

they came thumping in—I don't know why they came thumping in like this--

the Gods of the Mountain were coming in and the night of the play he said,

"It is terrible."

MM: Well, invitations to come to the meetings were much sought after.

We usually had two guest meetings a year and a good time.

MS: Wnere was the Moore's Hall that you said the plays were staged?

BG: That was the building that had just been built when our school house

burned down. They put all of us grade schoolers around at different buildings

82 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY and Stewart Schell became principal instead of going down to Manual

Training High School.

MM: On the northwest corner at the railroad and Audubon.

BG: Where that shopping center is now. Right next to the railroad on the west side of Audubon Road.

MM: Where the Clarks lived. Then the streetcar came out to Audubon which was then called Central Avenue and turned south and came down to

Julian and then made a "Y". Of course, streetcar conductors always knew everybody and Grace Julian Clark lived in the old Clark home and they'd sometimes over wait because they'd know that today was the day that Mrs.

Clark had to go to the doctor so we'd better wait until she comes out. She was quite old.

BG: There have been some terrible accidents at that track. When they put in two tracks and everybody for so many years had been so used to one track, they'd wait for one train to go by and forget about another one coming.

There have been many bad accidents-- mostly just people crossing.

MM: We told you yesterday about Mrs. Kate Gradon learning to drive a car after she was quite elderly. Well, we always said that when she came to the railroad tracks she'd toot her horn so that the train would stop and let her go by.

BG: She'd toot the horn at streetcars that she thought were coming, (laughter)

MM: I think that's all we have now. Did we think of everything? In two

83 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY meetings we've told about the Dramatic Club, the sleeping car, Bicycle club, and the Station and the Post office. I told you that the Post Office was moved down to the northeast corner of Ritter and Washington after it moved out of the Station. That's where we had to go, down there.

BG: Oh! I remember one thing that we haven't told. The building that was built in the Moore block that held the Goe Grocery, the first building on the northside was Goe's Grocery. The old, old house is still standing on Ritter Avenue. In those days, an old man came around to your door and wanted to know what you wanted from the grocery that day and it was delivered.

TI: Was that Gode?

BG: Goe.

TI: And where was the grocery?

MM: In the Moore block. I'll tell you the Moore block is where there's a little group of stores now.

TI: On Audubon?

MM: On the northwest corner of the railroad there. That was where we had our business.

BG: We got our meat—a man came around in a wagon by the name of

Mike V-O-G-H-T. He had all sorts of cuts of meat. He would stop at your house. He rang a bell and when he rang a bell, if you wanted to go out to get meat, you did. I know, we had a chicken yard out at the back

84 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY end of the house on Downey Avenue. Everybody had a chicken yard.

We had a chicken yard and a garden growing back there. My dad had

straw on the floor and he had some setting hens out there and he found out they had rape. Rupe was like a cold and fever and it was very con­ tagious. He thought, "Well, I'll just strike a match to this straw and

I'll keep it under control." Well, that thing just went poof and Mike

Voght came then and said, "Well, Mr. Hall, you remind me of the man whose vet told him that his dog had fleas and he could get rid of them by soaking them in gasoline and setting fire to them." He said, "That's what I thought you were doing to the chickens."

MM: What was Mike's last name?

BG: Voght, V-O-G-FI-T. He had that little grocery store at Riley and

Michigan. He's still living there, isn't he? Made into a brick double,

right?

MM: Yes.

TI: I would like to ask about another person. We get questions in the

library by a lot of high school students wanting to know about this partic­

ular person of Irvington, D. C. Stevenson.

BG: Oh yes !

TI: How did the community feel about him? He was not our usual

famous person from Irvington. How did that happen?

85 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: Now you know the area across from the Guardian Home, don't you?

MM: Do you know where it is?

End of Tape 7

TI: Could we repeat the question on the D. C. Stevenson story?

Would you continue for us?

BG: First, I'll start with the Oberholtzer house. That's the house on the corner where Good comes around and meets University and has white columns on it. A rather pretentious looking frame house. That's where

Oberholtzer lived. He was a construction man and it was one of the better of the fine houses of Irvington; the newer houses of Irvington. They had a daughter named Madge. She was about our age; we went to school together and we knew her and we were very, very good friends. She worked down at the State House as a secretary. The Ku Klux Klan was organized. How a group of that kind ever got attached to Irvington, I do not know. But D. C.

Stevenson did not build the house which you know as the Stevenson house on University Avenue. It was built by A. B. Graham who came here to put his children in Butler College. Stevenson had, I think, the only private three-car garage here in Irvington at that time. Above it was a kind of apartment that he rented out or had servants in it. He became acquainted with Madge Oberholtzer while she was working at the State House. He

called her one night and he said — she did some work for him as a secretary.

I don't think that she was his secretary but she did some work for him.

86 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Do you remember Marjorie?

MM: No, she was working for the State.

BG: He called and she wasn't home and her mother said that he could try again. He wanted her to come to his office—to come to his house and take some dictation that had to be done. Well, he took her to Chicago.

MM: Well, her mother said she couldn't go.

BG: Madge said, "I don't believe that I want to go down there." Why

she felt that way none of us ever knew. Madge lived in Irvington. Her mother said, "I think in the job you're in and for the security of your job as having a following of people such as Mr. Stevenson, that you'll have to go.

MM: He sent for her.

BG: He sent for her and he took her to Chicago on a sleeper. What she went through that night on the sleeper and the hotel, nobody will ever

know but she took bi-chloride of mercury.

MM: They got off at Gary. He was smart enough to know that he couldn't

take her across state lines to Chicago.

BG: They brought her back to Indianapolis by car. Brought her back to

Indianapolis ! He brought her back to Indianapolis and put her in the

apartment above the garage.

MM: They said that her mother got worried around midnight on Sunday and she

came down to the house, knocked and tried to get in and her father did, too. GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

They couldn't get in. They were very worried. Then when Stevenson and

Gentry drove Madge back on Monday night (it was Sunday night when he took her to Chicago) they put her in that apartment above the garage.

BG: That's right. You sorta have to pluck this out of your memory.

MM: After a short period of time they took her back home. So when they

saw how sick she was, Dr. John Kingsbury was called and he said she was going to die—there was no hope for her and he took her deathbed statement

The judge allowed that to be used in the testimony.

MM: She met him one night at the Indianapolis Athletic Club at a dance.

She and I were down in the ladies' room at the same time and she told me then that she met him. They wanted me to come and testify but I didn't know anything. All I knew was that she told me she met him, that her

escort that night introduced her to D. C. Stevenson.

BG: He was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. See, that's where he

was getting his money to build a house like that.

TI: Did many people know that?

BG: Oh, yes, it was public knowledge. It was in the papers.

MM: You mean, did people know ahead of time that he was going to

abduct her?

BG: Oh no. We drove down in my mother's and father's electric and

Stevenson was ahead of us one day going downtown. You see, we had

88 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY to stop when the streetcars stopped and pull up to the curb for the street­ car. He pulled to the curb several times and I remember that my father said something, "I don't like that—I don't like the actions of that man. Maybe he'll pull even with the streetcars and maybe the streetcars will get even with him." Some of them did and some of them didn't. Of course, at that time, some people did drive jitneys (a cab with an open door for people) . They'd go downtown and pick up people and they'd go for a nickel.

There was no law that you couldn't. Of course if you got in with D. C.

Stevenson, you just got in with the wrong guy.

TI: Did he develop his reputation from this?

MM: No, not at this time but after this .

BG: John Kingsbury testified at that trial. Fie testified and, of course, he went to jail (D.C. Stevenson). He was in how many years? Oh, they said that he lost his mind. He was in and out in the custody of his sister and brother for a little time. Finally, he did get out didn't he, after I don't know how many years . He died not too many years ago.

But he wouldn't have dared come back to Indianapolis.

MM: But Mr. and Mrs. Oberholtzer never got over it. They never went out anywhere or did anything.

BG: Their hair turned white over night. The brother, Mark Oberholtzer, was a contractor here in town for many years . He died not too many years

ago.

89 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

TI: She was one of two children?

MM: Yes, A very good-looking girl. Dark hair.

BG: She was a beautiful girl.

MM: She was a Pi Beta Phi.

BG: Yes, a Pi Phi at Butler. Very fine Irvington family. You'd never have thought that anything like that could ever happen to anybody that lived in Irvington. Her mother felt so awful because she felt that maybe

Madge had a reason for not telling her mother that she ought to go with him

Her mother said, "Well, in the position you hold, I think that you'll have to go with him. "

MM: Governor Jackson, the governor was Jackson at the same time and he. . .

BG: He was a Ku Klux Klanner.

MM: Governor Jackson was.

TI: Really?

BG: So Irvington had some pretty high big-wigs in the Ku Klux Klan and the stalwart citizens of Irvington didn't like it a bit.

MM: My husband was offered the position of organizing the Ku Klux Klan in Irvington and they said they would give him a dollar for every person that he got in. He made the remark, "I didn't have to have money that bad. " Then they got another person to do it.

TI: So some people did join it at that time?

90 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: Yes, but of course we were never told.

BG: You never knew. They never went out without a hood on their head, you know. Nobody ever told whether they were a member or not. This scandal with Stevenson was what brought it out that he was head of it.

Nobody at that time, when he moved into the house knew that he was the head of the Ku Klux Klan.

TI: I didn't know whether he was famous before he moved here or not.

MM: No, he was just rich. There were many cars in his garage.

BG: He had that great big garage back there; nobody ever had such a big garage. The ground is still as it was. The houses are—in fact, my mother lived in half of that double just east of it, didn't she? When she first came to Irvington. The Fitzgerald house, just to the west of it, was there. So that ground clear back to the railroad--see our old home--you

see how the railroad goes; it goes clear back—our old home is on Downey and we said at the time, "My gracious, as close as we were with that garage we didn't know what was going on." John Kingsbury came here--

I don't know but one of the children was sick-- and he said, "I've just

come from Madge Oberholtzer and her fever is 108° and she hasn't long to live.

TI: I'll bet that that was just very sad.

BG: Oh, it was like setting off a bomb in Irvington.

MM: I know another thing that we can tell about is the Irvington Woman's

91 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Club. It was the first woman's club.

BG: I told you where the old Kingsbury house was down there. John

Kingsbury's mother was named Minnie Kingsbury. She was a real good friend of Grace Julian Clark. In those days, you would call back and forth. I can remember Mrs. Clark coming down to call on Mother and then women always left their card. In any house was a little silver or crystal dish that would be where you left your calling card. So Mrs. Clark came over to Mrs. Kingsbury's — came through the chicken yard. They had a chicken yard out there. Mildred Kingsbury was telling us this yesterday.

I had forgotten about it. She married Layman, John's brother. Mother

Kingsbury had told her this. So Julian Clark came over to Mrs. Kingsbury's and she had come through the back gate and through the chicken yard just to visit with Mrs. Kingsbury on the back porch, one of these little narrow back porches. Grace Julian Clark said, "Minnie, I believe it would be a nice thing to do if we had literary club here." Minnie Kingsbury said, "I agree with you. Now who else should we ask in?" They asked Vida Cottman

MM: Cottman was another living .

TI: Cottman?

MM: C-O-T-T-M-A-N.

TI: The Woman's Club was literary organization?

MM: Yes.

BG: It was the first and only literary club that had ever been in Irvington.

92 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: 1892.

BG: We are still going and very active. It's the oldest club in Irvington among all the other thirty-five clubs here.

MM: It was a terrible thing to do any sewing or anything at that club because you were supposed to be giving your attention to the speaker. I remember that one of the members who started it came with her knitting.

They spoke about her ball of yarn falling off her lap and how it distracted the woman who was speaking.

BG: In fact, Lola Conner had never seen so much of the art classes as in everyday Irvington because art had taken over the council. The girls just came and mentioned it as I was pulling some stuff out of our garage.

I think that we're about the only club in Irvington that has its history.

That scrapbook is just precious. Jane Wright came and got it yesterday and she's going to call some of the Irvington members. Marge and I are both members; our aunt is a member. Our mother never joined that. She joined the Indianapolis Monday Club. They used to go to meetings on the street­

car and change cars downtown some place and they didn't think a thing about it.

TI: It was easy and safe.

BG: They brought their children with them if they wanted to. The children

would play. The Irvington Woman's Club was organized by Grace Julian

Clarke.

93 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

MM: In 19 67 we celebrated our 7 5th anniversary.

BG: Every Christmas—oh and it was tradition that they brought in the birthday cake on a tea cart—Skeet Moore was just a baby.

MM: He was six weeks old.

BG: He was the brother of Florence Moore Huggins who was the daughter of the Moores of the Moore block people. As he grew up he would push the tea cart around. You know, silly as it is, up to ten or twelve years ago, they still tried to carry it and they had to hunt a tea cart because there wasn't an antique cart anymore. You know they were quite popular for awhile. I had one and we gave it away but we don't do that anymore-- for the last ten or thirteen years, we quit that. It would probably look kind of funny for an elderly woman to be pushing a tea cart around with a birthday cake on it. We still have a bouquet of red carnations. They did it on that first day and they have carried that tradition until this day.

MM: You know George Julian was in the House of Representatives.

TI: George who?

MM: Julian--and Grace Julian Clark was his only child. She had his desk out of the Congressional room where he sat as a Representative.

BG: That's at the Benton House—that's his—that's George Julian's desk.

Isn't that right, Marjorie?

TI: I don't think that Ive ever been up there.

MM: Well, we had it for awhile. I don't know whether they have given

94 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY it back or not.

BG: It's by that north window. I haven't been over there for awhile but

MM: I belong to the Irvington Historical Society.

TI: How many other groups do you belong to?

BG: That we belonged to or that started here in Irvington?

TI: No, that you belonged to.

BG: Wien we were not too much younger we belonged to almost all of them: the Woman's Club, the Dramatic Club, Tuesday Club...

MM: My grandmother was one of the founders of the Tuesday Club.

BG: I was always quite musical all of my life. I belonged to the—here's my actual papers—Music Club.

TI: Which ones were founded after Butler left?

BG: Oh! Most of the thirty-five .

TI: Most of the thirty-five?

BG: The Home Study Club was formed before Butler left.

MM: The Tuesday Club.

BG: I think it was the Fortnighters.

MM: I think it was the Coterie.

BG: I think it was the Coterie but most of the other clubs—and of course,

Mrs. Elijah Jordan was in that. Her mother, her grandmother and some of the other women had the idea of the Union of Clubs . Mrs. Elijah Jordan got Mother and other people interested. She's really founder of the

95 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Irvington Union of Clubs„

MM: They had rooms during the First World War on the second floor of the building at the northeast comer of Ritter and Washington. That whole second floor was known as the knitting rooms. They manned it so many hours a day and people came in and got their yarn.

BG: Our mother and Mrs. Jordan became such intimate friends as they worked together over in that knitting room knitting socks for soldiers.

MM: Of course, the Butler family was here. They lived right across from

129 Downey where I lived.

TI: They had lived downtown at one time, hadn't they?

MM: They lived where the Northwestern University campus was and then they moved here. Ovid Butler's son, Scott, married and he went to Germany to study. When he came back, he was made president of Butler. He was president for many years. His brother, Chauncey (some call it " chancy" )- we always pronounced it "Chawncy"—was made the treasurer of the college.

TI: Then the Butler name was . . .

MM: Oh, then Amos Butler-he was a great naturalist.

BG: He lived in a house where the Catholic church's parking lot is. He was a great ornithologist and he had built a little house that was full of stuffed birds . It was one of the great treats that when he would go over and let certain groups of school children—we had to always take them and watch over there because they were valuable—and they are now at Purdue —

96 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY those birds.

TI: That's interesting, I had no idea what was there before.

MM: That was Amos Butler and his little birdhouse.

TI: I'll bet that was quite an experience.

MM: Well, it was . We feel that we had a good many things to be thankful for that we were made so that we were close to them and could touch the things that happened. The first automobiles in town were the electrics.

Mrs . Clifford, who was a member of the Butler family and married Perry

Clifford, had an electric and Grace Julian Clark did, too. There were four cars in the town that were electric.

TI: Did you ever drive an electric?

MM: Oh, I should say I did. I was saying yesterday to Berniece that I needed some spools of lavender thread. I said, "Do you remember the times when we would get into the electric and go down to Ayres for a spool of thread?"

TI: (laughter)

MM: I think it would there was angle parking right in front of Ayres. We went down one time and had Mother with us and we went around this block. I came out Maryland and up Illinois and as we came up

Illinois, my father got on the streetcar going out to the Scottish Rite. My mother said, "Look at your father—he looks like a million dollars." He was very handsome~-he was over six feet tall and he had black hair and

97 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY black eyes and he had on a white suit, panama hat and white shoes. He got on this streetcar going up to the Scottish Rite for lunch. She said,

"I doubt it very much if he has more than enough to buy his lunch and to pay his car fare home ." But he always looked like a million dollars . He never wrote a check in his life. He said he couldn't manage money. One time he said to my mother, "I think that I should have a bank account."

She said, "All right, you take a thousand dollars to the bank." About six months later he gave orders , "Never give me any more money. I have no idea where that thousand dollars went. I just spent a little at a time."

TI: I'm sure that's still true today.

MS: I would like to know about Dirks' Market and any other businesses.

BG: That was the center of Irvington at 5:00 in the afternoons.

MM: Oh yes, Dirks' Market. My grandmother was his first customer when he opened his doors. She was the first one that went in. Of course, they delivered all the time and I remember we went in there one time and there was a sign that said, "We deliver something besides bread." You could call Dirks' and ask them to send you a loaf of bread.

BG: Etta Dickman was another name here in Irvington. She was a main woman at Charles Mayer's.

MM: Etta Dickman was always calling them for a loaf of bread and it only cost 5£.

BG: She always wore her hair tied up and braided round and round and

98 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY round because she had so much hair. She always looked so—well, she was the prettiest and she worked for Charlie Mayer until they closed. Charlie Mayer—if you want anything from Charlie Mayer's

. In fact, that doll head right there came from Charlie Mayer.

It' s probably the only place in Indiana where my mother-in-law could buy it.

TI: Was Charlie Mayer's in Irvington?

BG: No, it was downtown right next to Ayres.

MM: When they closed, we had a friend that asked for the old doorknobs from the front door. Thatcher was another name here in Irvington. I think that we've told about all now, just about everything we know.

MS: Could you tell us something about the 4th of July pageants at

Ellenberger Park?

MM: One time we were violets over there.

TI: You were violets?

BG: In the chorus .

MM: It was the grade school. We had lavender dresses on shaded into purple.

BG: OH! It was quite an Irvington affair. They had a program, a reg­ ular pageant.

MM: They always had the Indians. We always had a fight between the

Indianapolis Indians and. . .

99 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: We were in something else—I can't remember—we were violets in an operetta over at Butler Campus. Butler used to give these operettas over there. Muriel Brown—I remember that violet chorus and Bob Hamp had a beautiful voice. I don't remember which operetta it was but he never could remember his lines and he was up at the top of the chimney singing, "Dum de dum de dum de dum." He couldn't remember his lines but he was singing just the same. We were violets in that chorus and we had tulle dresses. We made our own dresses I think.

MM: We didn't know that you could buy yard goods until we were big girls. We had a wealthy friend that had wonderful things and she didn't sew. She'd send us out a box of dresses and my mother would make them over for us so we never knew about the store.

BG: I've sewn all my life. We had some sewing lessons and I remember at that time I made everything that I wore and everything that my daughter wore, most everything my sister had and some of the things my aunt had-- even their hats. I love to sew. Blind as I am, I can still put in a hem.

My husband said to me one night—we were at the theater—and I said, "I wish I had a box of pins so I could pin up all these necks so they would fit better." He said, "Ber , can't you go anywhere without saying'I can't stand those clothes that don't fit well?" A woman was sitting in front of me with the neck bulging all out where it needed to be pinned in place.

Another time they had the Indiana University's Women's Drum and Bugle

100 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Corps and they put on a show before the baseball game. My son played

in the Knothole Band. He played trombone in the band so we had to go to

all the baseball games. They had white pleated skirts and real bright red

jackets and the green on the grass was just beautiful. Why, they came

out in those skirts hung every way from Sunday and I said to my husband,

"Look at the way those skirts hang. I can't imagine sending a bunch of

girls out in a pleated skirt that could hang so nice and straight with them > hanging so crooked. Again he said, "Can't you enjoy anything without

wishing that you had brought a box of pins with you?" My mother sewed

like that. She was a perfectionist. She said when I was little and she

was at the sewing machine that I would put my doll down and take the

scraps and cut a pattern around my doll and make the doll a dress. It

just came naturally. To this day I just can't stand something that doesn't

fit. I'll work and work. My sister's hard to fit.

MM: Yes. Dirks' was quite an institution in the early days. It was a

social center at 5:00 for the young mothers and their babies.

BG: I wouldn't miss that for anything. I had two of them—I'd put them

in the cart. One would sit up and the other would lie down and we'd head

for Dirks' about five o'clock. The babies were through with their naps

and that was just the place to go to find out all the things that were going

on. I miss it. I miss it terribly.

TI: I don't think that I have heard of anything like that nowadays.

101 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

BG: Of course, you can't have it with the selection you have of super­ markets. But you knew everybody in the store.

MM: You'd go in there and find Mr. Dirks going over the strawberries and picking out the rotten ones.

BG: Boxing the berries. My own cousin when he was fifteen or sixteen started in there. They had two customers, one of them was Stewart Schell who taught at the high school and was principal after we were going to school there and one, Georgia Butler Clifford. They were very particular when they came to the meat counter. My cousin would say, "I tell you, when I see Mr. Schell and Mrs. Clifford come in the front door, I've got to head for the deep freeze. I don't ever wait on them. I leave them to

Pete."

MM: Then he'd say that when he was working out in the grocery and they would come in that they would pick off the outside leaves of lettuce because they didn't want to pay for them. Dave would say that he always added just enough weight for those that they had picked off- Mr. Dirks was a fine citizen. They were great Lutherans. They belonged to the

Lutheran church—an old, old Lutheran church and a rather aristocratic one at the time down on the south side, rather close to town. I think Ed and Jane still go down there. Then they had another grocery store that was over on the northeast comer of Washington and Whittier called Karnes'

Store. The old Kames home is still on Julian Avenue. Then we had the

102 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY engine house, of course. The engine house was quite something. We had the horses with the engines .

TI: That was right across from where the library is right now, wasn't it?

BG: It was built out of shingles. After that fire building was built, they

had a fire inspector come out to be sure of everything and he took one look, and said, "Hell man, the worst fire trap around here is the fire house."

(laughter)

TI: It did eventually bum down, didn't it?

BG: It was silly—built out of shingles and a very steep roof. Why, it would have just gone up like an egg shell. When we were at school over

there we would hear the fire engines go out. It was still over here when

they built the one up on Sheridan. Yes, it was there for many, many years.

I know Dr. Carr used to laugh at the worst fire trap in Irvington.

TI: We discovered when we were talking to each other that we really

didn't know where Ellis Field was—where they played football.

BG: Irwin. I-R-W-I-N Field.

TI: Well, I got that all wrong. But we couldn't place it.

MM: Do you know where Irwin Field is?

BG: Oh, there's my son, Robert Glass.

RG: "Hi, ladies."

BG: These are the ladies from the library. I'll tell you the reason why

it was named Irwin Field. The Irwins were a very rich family that lived in

103 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

Columbus but they were Butler people; they were Butler graduates . Butler depended upon them terrifically for financial aid. That's the reason for the song, "You cannot chew, you cannot smoke, the teachers you can never provoke." The catalog says so because the Irwins said so and

Butler couldn't have existed without the Irwin aid.

MM: Well, Irwin Miller, the very wealthy man from Columbus, is one of the decendants.

TI: Oh, well, OK.

MM: His first name is Irwin.

BG: That's the reason it was called Irwin Field.

TI: That was over in the south. . .

MM: Ohmer Avenue was the east boundary and Butler Avenue was the north boundary,C. H. and D. railroad was the south boundary and Butler

Avenue was the west boundary.

BG: It's that block in there. Then further west from that was the little summer house built out of boulders. That was the Phi Delt summer house.

MS: What were some of the other buildings on campus?

MM: Right at the end of University Avenue was the Main building and then just to the south of that was the Science building. Both of them had cupolas on them. In back of the Main building was the engine house and the gym and over next to the Pennsylvania Railroad was the dormitory. On the west side of Butler Avenue south of the Pennsylvania Railroad was the Observatory

104 GLASS AND MONTGOMERY

TI: There were no roads through the campus, were there? Just paths?

MM: Just paths.

TI: Were they brick or wood?

MM: Just paths—not made out of anything—except those that went around the main buildings so that a horse and buggy could go around it.

TI: But other than that it was all walking? Since you have guests perhaps now we should stop.

MM: Anytime that you think of anything I will be glad to answer it.

TI: When was the parkway built along Pleasant Run Creek?

MM: Oh my, I can't tell you but it's been many years.

TAPE ENDS ABRUPTLY

105 The Elbert and Berniece Glass Home 5748 E. Michigan 1920 - 1978 5 748 E. Michigan \

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»«/. ^s •AHAHJ1956, iW.. Mrs. Berniece Glass with paperweight collection - 19 77 1978 Berniece Glass and Marjorie Montgomery Indiana Christian Retirement Park 1982 Marjorie Montgomery Marjorie Hall Montgomery. 90, Zionsville, died Thursday in Method­ Friday, December 7, 1984 ist Hospital. Services will be at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Crown Hill Gothic Chapel, with calling one hour prior Montgomery to services. Flanner and Buchanan Broad Ripple Mortuary is handling rites tomorrow arrangements. She had been board chairman of Crown Cleaners and Services for Mrs. Walter (Marjo­ Laundry for five years, retiring in rie) Montgomery, 90, retired board 1975, and was a member of Downey chairman of Crown Cleaners- Avenue Christian Church, Irvington & Laundry, will be at 2:30 p.m. Women's Club, Society of Indiana tomorrow in Gothic Chapel at Pioneers, Benton House Association Crown Hill Cemetery. and Kappa Alpha Theta. Mrs. Mont Friends may call at the chapel gomery also was past president of an hour before services. Flanner- Indianapolis Propylaeum and a past & Buchanan Broad Ripple Mortu­ regent of Daughters of the Ameri­ ary is assisting with arrangements. can Revolution, Cornelia Cole Fair­ Mrs. Montgomery, Zionsville, banks chapter. She was a graduate died yesterday in Methodist Hospi­ of Butler University. She was the tal. She was board chairman of widow of Walter Montgomery. A Crown Cleaners & Laundry five native of Indianapolis, she lived in years, retiring in 1975. Zionsville most of her life. Contribu­ Mrs. Montgomery lived in Irving­ tions may be made to the Indianap­ ton about 85 years and moved to olis Propylaeum Maintenance Club. Zionsville in 1978. Survivor: sister. Berniece Glass. She was a member of Downey Avenue Christian Church, Irvington Woman's Club, Society of Indiana Pioneers, Benton House Association and Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority. She also was a former president of the Propylaeum and a former re­ gent of Cornelia Cole Fairbanks Chapter of Daughters of the Ameri­ can Revolution. She was a graduate of Butler University. Memorial contributions may be made to the maintenance fund at the Propylaeum or a favorite chari­ ty- Survivor — sister Berniece Glass.