Historical image of the day

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers strike ballot, 1962.

Historical image of the day

The Grannon School, a one-room schoolhouse in the north of Reeve Township, shown in 1900. The only person identified in this photograph is the teacher, Marion Arvin.

DCHS at the Fair

The Historical Society will be on site for the Daviess County Fair all week from 5 10 PM in the community building.

We will have a display on the origins of the Farm Bureau Association, pictures from the Museum, an 1888 atlas of Daviess County and more.

Stop by and talk, sign up for a membership to the Society and find out about the Corning Heritage Center restoration project.

Image of the Day

Spanish-American War memorial in the Odon Park.

Historical image of the day

Montgomery band playing for the William McKinley campaign in 1896. Members are: Ernest Harris, Wallace Wade, "Professor" Rice, Pat Disser, John Zinkans, Bernard Spaulding, Ed Carrico, W.M. Bell, Henry Becket, Jack Doyle, Lew Walker, and Charles Connaughton.

Historical image of the day

1940 map of the village of Epsom in Bogard Township. The first settlers appeared near its location around 1815. The town was named after a certain Mr. Pace dug a well which the locals thought tasted like magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt).The town's high schooll, which lasted until 1968, was fittingly nicknamed the Epsom Salts.

Epsom salt, in turn, takes its name from the town of Epsom in Surrey, England, where water from the local mineral spring was boiled down to create what would become the popular home remedy.

Historical image of the day

Downtown Elnora in 1940

Beulah AME Church

The Beulah African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington. It was first organized in 1848 by a group of six members; Jacob Hawkins, Jesse Perkins, Ellen Hawkins, Onely Delany, Charles Delany and Archibald Anderson. It has been operational ever since, save for a brief spell in the 1970s due to a lack of membership.

Beulah is a part of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, the oldest black religious organization in the United States. Richard Allen, a former slave from Philadelphia who bought his way to freedom, became disillusioned with the racist practices of the Methodist church where he and other free blacks attended and began to organize a network of independent African-American congregations in 1787. These churches would eventually coalesce into the present AME Church in 1816.

Links:

African Methodist Episcopal Church (official site)

Doctrines and Disciplines of the AME Church (1817)

Mother Bethel AME Church (first church of Rev. Allen)

August 9, 1919

The museum recently acquired a stack of old Farm Bureau records. Included is a record of a metting held on this date; perhaps the first serious attempt to create a farmers organization in Daviess County similar to the ones already operating in other counties of the state. According to the Washington Democrat

Farmers from all over Daviess county gathered at city hall today to give aid to the plan of creating a fund of $100,000 to protect the rights and advance the interests of Indiana farmers.

Lewis Taylor, the general secretary of the Indiana Federation of Farmers' Associations arrived this afternooon to outline the plan of the agricultural interests of Daviess county, as follows:

1. Agriculture should and will organize, as capital and labor have organized, to protect itself and develop new phases of production.

2. Farmers must get together to take up methods of meeting the practices of the packers and the grain men, where these methods are not to the benefit of agriculture or the community at large.

3. Farmers must protect themselves on the question of freight rates.

4. Problems of farm management and business methods must be met.

5. Agriculture must be protected against unfair and unjust legislation, by a group of alert students of farm problems.

The meeting passed ten resolutions, mostly ceremonial, noting the farmers' patriotism during the war, applauding the students of Purdue University, and ridiculing the idea of daylight savings time. The most significant resolution was a rebuke of the nation's railroad workers, who had been appealing to President Wilson claiming the cost of living had risen to a critical level following the war. The farmers argued that "cost of living" was synonymous with food prices, and declared to fight any attempt to bring prices down as well as disrupt any plans for the railroad workers to strike.

Be it further resolved, that it is the sense of this meeting that the 20,000,000 of farmers should organize immediately and act as a unit and notify the Government that the farmers of this county stand for law and order, that we believe in justice to all and special privileges to none, and as a united body we will stand behind the Congress in the enactment and enforcement of such laws as will be necessary for the peace and prosperity of all the people, and any man who should choose to march under a red flag shall be denied membership to this organization and that the government deport him without unnecessary delay.