CHS Alumni Present a Gala "Vodvil" Show--1922

          Many of us remember the old Strand Theater on Green Street.  I remember seeing many movies there, at both the upstairs and the downstairs screens.  I do not know when the theater was divided, but I do know that many years ago, when there was just one stage, that the Strand Theater was a great place to view all sorts of traveling and local shows.  In today’s entry, I will highlight one particular show put on by alumni of Crawfordsville High School.   

     In December of 1922, several alumni of Crawfordsville High School decided to help fund the purchase of theater equipment for the school by having a “vodville” show.  It promised to be one of the “most interesting of its kind ever offered in this city.”  Since the show was announced, several theater groups from around the county pledged their attendance. Two young ladies from Indiana University offered a song and dance routine with costumes. Several members of the Wabash community would also be involved.

     The Detchon’s Orchestra would be playing “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye,” while Tony Bostwick would be performing “Sunshine of Your Smile” on his violin. 

    

      A  group of ladies in a chorus sang “Carolina in the Morning” and “My Honey’s Lovin’ Arms.”  The chorus was comprised of Katherine Dorsey, Lois Southard, Kathleen Straughn, Betty Moon, June Pett, Katherine Whittington, Margaret Coombs, Mildred Roach, Betty Wallace, Mary J. Herron, Dorothy Long and Dot Clark.

       During intermission, the patrons were invited to dance in the foyer and also received a memento of the evening from the alumni.                                                                                                                         

    

First County Casualty at Pearl Harbor Back From the Dead!

     We recently had an out-of-state guest come to the Local History department of CDPL with a very interesting story about her uncle, Leroy White, 26 years old, at the time, who had been stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

     The family story related that he was aboard on the USS California, at Pearl Harbor and had been smoking up on deck when the ship was torpedoed on December 7, 1941.  He supposedly jumped off the flaming ship into the harbor and swam through the burning waters to the shore and was not found for several days.

      As told in another post in this blog, citizens here learned of the bombing by radio and by reports given out to the crowds at the Crawfordsville Journal Review on Green Street. The December 12 article in the Journal reported that “ the Arizona and five other warships were lost,” but no mention was made of the USS California. 

     Imagine the horror felt by Mr. and Mrs. David White of near New Market when the headline on December 16 read: 

    "LEROY WHITE SLAIN AT PEARL  HARBOR.”

     Those were terrible days at the White household  until a letter, mailed on December 19, arrived at their home.  

  

      Christmas must have been a very merry occasion with the White family that year! 

Leroy survived the war and married Alice Lidester in October, 1953.  He died in August, 1994 and is buried in Boone County. 

     What happened to the USS California?  In early 1942 it was refloated and dry docked.  Later, in June, it was sent to Puget Sound for refitting and major repairs.  This fine ship later returned to the seas to play a significant role in the battles around the Philippines and Japan.   A Japanese kamikaze pilot slammed into it on January 6, 1945, so immediate repairs were made to it, and its men continued  on to battle near Okinawa, Japan.  The “USS California” was finally scrapped in 1959.   

The First Airmail Letter Arrives From Washington, D.C.!--1918

    Just a few short years after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, airmail became the wave of the future in communications.  A certain B. E. Hinkle in Washington, D.C., needed to renew his subscription to the Crawfordsville Daily Journal.  He enclosed a letter with his payment.

        "I was so fortunate as to see the first plane, in flight, that carried mail from our capital to New York City, and also the incoming plane from the metropolis to Washington."

                                                     (May 17, 1918. Crawfordsville Daily Journal.)

  

  

  The letter bore a new twenty-four cent stamp had only just been printed for the first time on May 14, and this letter appeared in our local paper on May 17.

    

 This stamp was to become famous when it was accidently printed upside-down. The “Inverted Jenny,” after the Curtiss Jenny airplane it depicted, is now worth about 1.6 million dollars.  Don’t you wish you had one?

     

Adding to Our Database and Local Family Histories

    (continuing from the last post)  I recently donated scans of Hostetter family photos to CDPL to be uploaded onto the “image” database on our Local History/Reference page, because I know that I am related to several families in the county, as Anna Marie’s sister, Mary, married Perry Nichols, and had eight children. Many of their families are scattered throughout the county.  If you have any historical pictures of your family that you can identify, we would love to scan them into our database. 

     On the right are my grandmother Anna Marie Hostetter Hatfield's grandparents--Simon D. Hostetter and Catherine Goodbar.  They lived near Ladoga in the 1800's.

     We also have a Family Bible Project database that we would like patrons to add to. Just bring in a Bible that has a family history written in it, we can scan it, or you may donate the book to our archive. We add your information to our searchable database for others to use. Here is an example from a family Bible I found somewhere years ago, that records many people in my fifth-great-grandmother's family. 

      Mathew Thompson, at the bottom, rode in a canoe with his parents Samuel and Catherine from Cincinnati to a spot on the Mad River, in 1796, to be the first white boy to live in Dayton, Ohio. He later moved to Hagerstown, Indiana, to live with a sister, who was the great-grandmother of the Wright brothers! He lived in Ladoga for a while, and then he and his wife, Margaret Gillespie, moved to Remington in the 1860's to live with their son, George, the first postmaster there, and that is where they are all interred. Most of that information I did not find online, but from library research. 

"Who Do I Think I Am," Montgomery County Style!

Margaret Thompson and Corbin Hostetter, my great-grandparents, parents
of  Mary (Nichols), George, Eugene, and Anna Marie (Hatfield).

     I’ll come out from behind my “blogger” anonymity and reveal that I am Dianne Hatfield Combs, not born in Montgomery County, but I have lived here since 1986. I knew my American grandmother,  Anna-Marie (nee) Hostetter Hatfield had grown up near New Market. But what else did I know about her family?  My family history curiosity started with some old pictures in Grandma’s trunk, and now I have folders full of information. For several years I have dug through many county and city resources at CDPL to discover that in seven generations, my father is the only person in my direct line to not have lived in this county.  Just how far back do I go in this county?  Well, I have Goodbars settling in Scott Township in 1830’s, Halls in Brown Township during the same time, Wassons in Brown’s Valley, and the Hostetters showed up a bit later. I have many family members buried at Harshbarger’s Cemetery, and at Ladoga.  My husband and I have traveled to many libraries in and out of Indiana searching for more pieces to our family puzzles.

     At CDPL, we have many family history books that are the result of family historians organizing their own research and publishing it in book form. I have not started one yet, but on the off chance that there may be some of my family in a book here, I researched and found the “Zug,  Zuck, Zouck, Zook” family history that just happens to contain information on my American grandfather’s Hatfield/Zook side of the family, from Johnson and Brown counties. 

     

Thou Art Greatly Beloved!

     What wonderful words to be said of anyone, and especially our subject today, Benjamin Taylor Ristine!  He was born in Gallatin County, Kentucky, in 1807 and lived for a while in Madison, Indiana.  Ben's father, Henry, was a ranger in the War of 1812, and having traveled through the Wabash Valley,  picked Montgomery County as a place to raise his young family. They moved by wagon from Madison, Indiana, in 1823, taking ten days to make the journey. They purchased land in section 31, next to Ambrose Whitlock, on property which is now Farmington Hills subdivision. They built a "log hotel" in the downtown area, kept that until 1829, moved away, moved back and bought another public house east of the courthouse. Young Ben worked in the hotel business, while "reading" for the law.  He abandoned law, and ran a dry-goods business for seven years.  He resumed the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1840. He was in partnership with several lawyers: William T. Noel, Hosea D. Humphreys, and Alexander Thompson.  He later partnered with two of his own sons--Theodore and Hosea.

from Beasley's Crawfordsville Directory for 1878-79

   Ben married Hosea Humphrey's sister, Florinda, in 1837, and produced six sons, and one daughter-- they became two attorneys, two doctors, a farmer, and a soldier, and a well-placed daughter.  Albert, the soldier, died immediately after the Civil War, of illness. 
   In his full front page obituary of the Crawfordsville Weekly Journal on January 1, 1897, high praises rang across the page for this early settler and well-regarded attorney. He was held with great esteem by all those who knew him across the state of Indiana, and in our own vicinity. The Ristine name would go on to be intertwined throughout the history of Montgomery County, and a search on our library database will provide much proof of this. 

James T. Mack--An VERY Early Citizen of Crawfordsville

I recently discovered the name of a very early Crawfordsville pioneer, James T. Mack, while perusing “History of Montgomery County, Indiana” by Hiram W. Beckwith. This publication is a wonderful resource for early Montgomery County history, whether you have a relative in there or not.  Printed in 1881, there are scores of biographies of early settlers listed by township. For today’s entry, I’ve searched in Union Township and found this industrious merchant from our town’s early days.  

Photo from CDPL Image Collection

       Mr. James T. Mack and his wife, Catharine Wilhite Mack, had families that settled in Oldham County, Kentucky and then moved to Montgomery County. The Wilhites bought land here as early as 1824 in Union Township. Imagine that Crawfordsville at the time consisted of two cabins!  James helped the other early settlers in clearing the land for the town to grow. Later he became a tavern owner when he bought the “hotel,” or double log house situated next to the original log courthouse. He moved on from there to a home on Vernon Street, which is now Pike Street. He decided to farm, and moved south of town. James would haul his grain by himself the fifty-six miles to Terre Haute. He was also known for his skill in cabinet making. James T. Mack died in 1841, leaving his wife, and  a daughter, Mary Jane, both of whom supported themselves through needlework. There were two sons, Samuel, a newborn, and James T. Mack, age 11. James was not afforded an education, but instead, worked hard and became a very successful restaurant owner in Crawfordsville, at no. 44 East Main Street, near the courthouse. He married Elizabeth E. Wasson in 1849 and had four children: Susan, Sarah, Jennie, and James T. Jr.
(check out post on 8/2/2017 for info on son-in-law, Charles Townsley)