Historical image of the day

Workers at the Reliance clothing factory in Washington, ca. 1930s

Quarterly program coming up Friday

Don't forget about the quarterly DCHS program coming up Friday July 10 at the 4-H building in Washington. The featured speaker will be Margaret Kennedy presenting two books by her mother Enid Gabhart about early 20th century life in Reeve Township.

Dinner will begin at 6 PM. Seats are $15 per person, a table of 10 can be had for $100. Call the museum to make reservations or for more information.

$2 tickets are also being made available for the program portion only on a walk-up basis. The program should begin at approximately 7 PM.

Historical item of the day

From the Washington Herald, September 22nd, 1917, a preview of the final game of the season between the Vincennes Overlands and the Washington Greys. The text of the article reads:

The last game of the association schedule and possibly the last of the season will be played at Woodlawn tomorrow afternoon between the Vincennes Overlands and Washington.

This is being made "Booster Day" and the fans are urged to turn out in large numbers in order that the association season may be fittingly closed. A record-breaking crowd should be in attendance and judging by the interest that has been aroused in the contest the management is going to be treated to a welcome surprise in the number of patronage.

Vincennes has always played well against Washington and Washington looks for a hard game. Information from Vincennes is that a large crowd of fans is coming from that city to witness the battle.

The local team must win to stay in the race with Bicknell for first place. Hancock and Dark will be the opposing pitchers. The game will be called at promptly 2:30 o'clock.

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.

Historical Item of the Day

1896 Presidential ballot from the Daviess County Courthouse. The four minor parties are the Prohibition Party, People's Party, Socialist Party and Socialist Labor Party.

John Dillinger

Public Enemies, the new film about the federal pursuit of John Dillinger starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, is scheduled for release on July 1st.

Before he became the country's most infamous gangster, Dillinger allegedly kept a hideout in Daviess County; a place called High Rock on the White River south of Glendale. Dillinger's name and the outline of a gun are carved into the limestone there.

Dillinger had many sympathizers in the general population, as some people saw him as a Robin Hood-esque antihero delivering a deserved comeuppance to crooked bankers. Among other things, he was known to burn the bank's mortgage records during a heist.

In the museum we have the records from the Otterbein Methodist Church, including the longtime minister's personal log. Every entry over the span of 40-plus years concerns the Methodist church except for two. One noted his witnessing the launch of an Apollo moon mission in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The other marked the death of John Dillinger on July 22, 1934.