All Stories: 449
Stories
Dillinger Gang Auburn Jail Raid
Americans eagerly embraced the automobile in the 1920s as mass-production made them more available at lower costs. The number of registered cars increased from 8 million in 1920 to almost 18 million in 1925. Indiana specifically saw one car for…
Double-Fabric Tire Company
Auburn manufacturers often had to change their focus to stay relevant in the competitive world of manufacturing. Few instances demonstrate this as well as the 50-year history of the Double-Fabric Tire Company and Auburn Rubber Company in Auburn. The…
E.L. Cord
If you think back on early American automobiles, what comes to mind? Ford? General Motors? Chrysler? If you are a car fanatic, you might know Auburn or Duesenberg. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, automobiles manufactured by the Auburn, Cord,…
Charles Eckhart
The foundation for Auburn’s buggy and automobile heritage was set by Charles Eckhart. A man with business sense, knowledge of carriage making, and a desire to see his adopted home become a better place, by the end of his day, he made many…
Kiblinger and McIntyre Company
W. H. Kiblinger founded the Kiblinger Company in 1887 to manufacture buggies. He was a Civil War veteran, farmer, and businessman who ran the company until his death in 1894. Upon his death, the company was purchased by W. H. McIntyre and S. C.…
African American Churches in Jeffersonville, Indiana
Before you, stands one of Clark County’s historic African American churches, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal. In the 19th Century, numerous African American churches were established to serve the spiritual needs of people fleeing the South in…
Taylor High School
You are standing near an old red brick building. This is what remains of Taylor High School, a remnant of the age of racial segregation in Clark County. According to the paper “Taylor High: A History Lost but Not Forgotten” in 1872, Jeffersonville,…
The Dinnings
You are standing before the site of one of the homes inhabited by George and Mollie Dinning and their children. One winter night, a mob forced Mollie Dinning and her children to abandon their farm in Simpson County, Kentucky, ill-clad and robbed of…
The 1871 Lynching of Three Black Men in Clark County
At Charlestown Cemetery in Clark County the mutilated bodies of three lynched men are buried. On a Saturday in November of 1871, the family of Cyrus Park, a white farmer who lived near Henryville, Indiana, was murdered. Using the Parks' own axe, the…
Obediah Buckner
The Jeffersonville Township Public Library occupies the space that was once Jeffersonville’s train railroad switch yard. In 1854, Obediah Buckner visited the ticket office of the Jeffersonville Railroad, once located near here, expecting to purchase…
York
You are standing next to the Lewis and Clark Handshake statue by sculptor Carol Grende. The sculpture and the annual Handshake Festival at Falls of the Ohio State Park celebrate the moment when Lewis and Clark began their famous expedition in the…
Guinea Bottom: The Earliest Black Settlement in Jeffersonville Township
Falls of the Ohio State Park’s George Rogers Clark Homesite in Clarksville, Indiana is located near what was Guinea Bottom, an early Black settlement established for the convenience of the wealthy, powerful, white Clark County residents who came to…
Hougland Packing Company
In the mid-twentieth century, Hougland Packing Company was one of the largest manufacturing companies in Franklin, Indiana. From 1922 to 1953, this plant canned a variety of produce morning, noon, and night making it an agricultural and…
Living as Migrant Workers
While canning factories employed many people from Johnson County during the harvest season, they also relied on migrant workers to fulfill their labor needs. Migrant workers were people from outside the county who were brought in by the companies to…
Rider Canning Company
In 1930, Kenneth Rider and William Switzer, the owners of the Hoosier Canning Company, opened a factory on the east side of Trafalgar, near the Big Four railroad tracks. A fire on December 22, 1930 caused substantial damage, but the factory was…
Polk's Canning Company
What started as a home business in Greenwood, IN, became one of the largest canning factories in the Midwest. Millions of cans of tomatoes, peas, and other vegetables were once processed here at Polk’s Canning Company.
The Polk family were early…
Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site
Though we cannot be sure exactly where Eliza Harris and her child ended up in Canada, we may have one clue. Levi Coffin wrote in his book that he and his wife, Catharine, visited Canada West in the Windsor and Chatham area east of Detroit, Michigan…
Facer Park - Freedom Coming
Regardless of the exact route that Eliza Harris and her child traveled on their journey to escape slavery, there is evidence that they made it to Canada. There are several possibilities to how that happened. If Eliza continued through Indiana then…
Cabin of Jimmy and Rachel Silliven
Much of what we know today about the experiences of enslaved peoples on the Underground Railroad comes to us through oral testimonies given after the fact or passed down through the generations. One testimony describes Eliza traveling through…
The Greenville Settlement – Union Literary Institute and James Clemens Home
Free Blacks and formerly enslaved Africans living in northern states like Indiana and Ohio were instrumental in providing support for freedom seekers along with white Americans. Though their history is not as well recorded, there are individuals and…
Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site
The historic home of Quaker couple Levi and Catharine Coffin in Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana was connected on the Underground Railroad. The Coffins moved to Newport in 1826 from North Carolina. Growing up in a staunch anti-slavery family and…
Eliza Came Through Here
The importance of Eliza as a cultural figure can be seen in the variety of stories that exist telling of her journey through different places. Some say that Eliza did not go towards Cincinnati, but further north of Ripley, Ohio into Fayette County.…
"Eliza's House": Home of John Van Zandt
Eliza Harris, the Black woman who sought freedom with her child in 1838, journeyed north from the Rankin house. The further she traveled, the closer safety may have seemed. But the reality was that the Underground Railroad was threatened continually…
Red Oak Presbyterian Church and Rev. James Gilliland
John Rankin, whose home Eliza Norris first sheltered in after escaping slavery in Kentucky and entering Ohio, was a Presbyterian minister. Presbyterians were split over the role of slavery in the nation with some supporting slavery and others…
John Rankin House
We know that it was at the home of Presbyterian minister John Rankin that Eliza Harris had her first moment of safety after escaping from slavery. It had not been an easy journey for Eliza leaving in winter February 1838 from Dover, Kentucky with…
Courthouse Square and Mechanics’ Row Historic District
The first courthouse in what was then Washington, Kentucky (now part of Maysville) often was the site of auctions of enslaved Black individuals on the courthouse grounds. In 1833, while visiting one of her students, Harriet Beecher Stowe took a walk…
Camp Atterbury Veterans Memorial and Museums
The Camp Atterbury Veterans Memorial was dedicated in August 1992 to mark the 50th anniversary of Camp Atterbury, a military camp built to train soldiers. It serves to honor the loyalty and bravery of the men and women who were trained, deployed, or…
Regimental Flag Presentation Ceremony
Hopewell community members held grand celebrations as local men prepared to depart for duty as soldiers in the Civil War. On August 28, 1861, Hopewell families bade a sad, but boisterous, farewell to the 7th Indiana Infantry Regiment, Company F as…
Norman Vandivier WWII Navy Veteran Memorial
Many Hoosier families sent a son or daughter to serve in the military during World War II (1939-1945). Pride in their child’s service mingled with worry about their safety. Families’ anticipation of news about the war mixed with trepidation about…
The Gallant Men of Company F
Hours after Confederate forces fired on Ft. Sumter on April 12, 1861, Johnson County residents left their fields and shops to gather at the telegraph office in Franklin for news of the insurrection. The telegraph gave few details and by 9 pm the…