Historic Traders Point Indiana

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Several years ago a neighbor gave me this picture of the flooded village.  I believe this dates to a massive flood from the late 1950s.   It was this flood that led to the construction of an earthen levee along the westside of Eagle Creek, and later the development of the Eagle Creek Reservoir.   The photo’s orientation is from the northwest corner of Dandy Trail (which led into the village from the westside of the Eagle Creek Valley) and Lafayette Road.  It is looking to the north with Lafayette Road on the right side of the photo.   The Traders Point Christian Church is the white building to the right of the Standard pylon sign.   Nelson Roetter, a lifelong resident of the area, remembers seeing the pews floating in the sanctuary.   The church later relocated to the top of the Lafayette Road hill at Moore Road and is now the site of the New Life Worship Center.

The web address for Old Pleasant Hill Cemetery is www.ophc.info

Ford Bridge construction to begin in 2012.

http://s969.photobucket.com/home/piketwphistory/allalbums
Great news.  I have just completed the process of photographing the Stevens glass plate collection.   These plates were found in the basement of Maxine Steven’s house by her son J.K.   He recently loaned them to me so that I could “digitize ‘em”.

The photographer may have been Maxine Steven’s grandfather Wiley who lived near West 71st and Zionsville Road (now Park 100).
 
Please forward this link  (to the glass plate negative slide show) to anyone who might enjoy seeing these pictures.   Lots of school class photos, some New Augusta buildings, and a great photo of the NEW Bethel Methodist Church on 52nd. Since it was built in 1905 that is my general guess for when these pictures were taken.
 
There are few “named” photos but there is a Geo. Hollingsworth barn depicted, as well as a Kissel family barn.   But I don’t know where these barns were located.   Lots of Pike School #9 photos (high school).     It would be really neat if we could identify some of these folks.   Please have people contact me at this email address if they can help.   I will be bringing a small collection of prints to the October 30 event.
 
This has been great fun and I am indebted to J.K. for providing me with so much entertainment.  And not a single plate broke!
 
In case anyone asks, the process for getting from the negative to these images did not involve traditional photo developing baths or solutions.   It was entirely dry!    I used a white screen on my computer (like a light box) and carefully laid the negative onto the computer screen in a “dark” room (just a windowless closet).      This provided backlighting that was sufficient to illuminate the plate.   I mounted my digital camera on a tripod and photographed the 4″ x 6″ plates first, then I readjusted the tripod and photographed the 5″ x 7″ images.   Then I removed the memory card from the camera, inserted it into my computer and reversed all of the images (to make them positive) using photo editing software.   This really didn’t take more than a few hours.   A lot faster than manually printing each one in a real wet darkroom with the three baths of developer, toner and fixer.   Once the images were filed on my computer it took five minutes to upload them to the internet.    They are in two separate slide shows.   There are some duplicates and that is unintentional.   The original photographer probably took about five minutes between each photo (because of the time required to remove the glass plate from the camera, carefully store it, unwrap the next negative plate and insert into the camera etc.)
 
One interesting observation about plate glass photography, it was on its way out in 1905.   George Eastman had invented roll film in 1885 that could be taken to a photo lab (like an apothecary) and developed professionally.    An amateur photographer taking pictures with plate glass in 1905 was a serious and devoted hobbyist or a professional.   It was not a casual device or a toy that anyone can operate (like the one I used to take the pictures of the negatives!)

Several years ago a group of concerned citizens living west of 465 and north of Eagle Creek Park organized an association (TPAN) to address the opportunities and threats facing residents within the Traders Point area. Meeting irregularly at the West 86th Clubhouse or the Traders Point Creamery loft introduced us to topics and interests that are not often found within a typical neighborhood association setting. So it is not surprising that our interests and concerns have spanned topics as eclectic as the personalities of our neighbors. Behind each of these accomplishments are neighbors who care deeply for this rural place in the city. Acting alone or on teams, and many times without any help or money from others, they have helped to improve the 5000 acre triangle and beyond we fondly refer to as Traders Point. I would like to recognize a few of these special neighbors (there is a special treat at the end of this letter).

1. Wendy Ford organized a second major planting at the Traders Point Gateway Project (West 71st and Lafayette Road) with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful. Dozens of volunteers spent a major part of their weekend beautifying government land west of Lafayette Road and north of West 71st to welcome us home and to distinguish our area to visitors.

2. Jerry and Cindy Baker led a grass roots campaign in a landmark case heard by the Indiana Regulatory Commission in which legal tree

trimming by utilities was redefined. What started as a simple request by neighbors to understand private property rights and duties by utilities has turned out to be a major victory for tree owners with a media spotlight focused on Traders Point.

3. Cindy Lamberjack and Fritz Kunz receive notification from the United States Department of Interior/National Parks Service that 1500

4. Former Indiana resident Sheila Fortune breaks ground on a new barn on her organic farm located on the northwest corner of West 86th and Moore Road. TPAN assisted in attracting the out of state owner when we learned that Pike Twp. Schools were considering the site for a new middle school.

5. Neighbors and Indiana Historic Landmarks attracted a buyer for the Historic Asher home on Moore Road after we learned it was slated for demolition. This 135 year old home is considered an important contribution to the Rural Historic District. New owners plan a faithful renovation for their family residence.

6. Traders Point Creamery donates its facilities and all gate proceeds to Greater Historic Traders Point at the annual Oktoberfest event. Funds will be used by Greater Historic Traders Point to raise awareness and appreciation for the area.

In the coming year we will be using this publication to widen the awareness and appreciation for the history and many distinguishing

Please accept an invitation from neighbors Patti and Dennis Smith to join them at their home, featured on the cover of this publication, on Friday, March 12th around 6:00 ~ 8145 Moore Road.

acres within Pike Twp and Traders Point has been designated a Rural Historic District. Neighbors are currently organizing a board, Greater Historic Traders Point to address the needs of the district and educate the public about it. It has been said that this is the largest Rural Historic District in the nation that is located within a metropolitan area, a fact made possible by our rural area being within the city limits of Indianapolis.characteristics of our area. We invite you to attend our meetings and to contact our officers if you would like more information about TPAN. We always have room for new ideas, and new projects. But one of our greatest pleasures is getting better acquainted with the neighbors we already have.

Please RSVP: 290-0022 – (if they answer, “Hello DLS”, that’s because they have a construction office in their home.) Patti will make

I look forward to seeing you soon.

a main dish, maybe a big pot of soup, but if anyone wants to bring anything to add to the meal or drinks, please feel free. Let Patti know what you can add. They look forward to sharing their beautiful home. We hope everyone can make it, and please feel free to bring your kids if they want to come. We have new folks in the neighborhood and it will be nice to meet them as well.

Ross Reller

Vice President

TPAN

Eagle's Edge

Eagle’s Edge ,8140 Moore Road, The Samuel Dowden House, is currently owned by Dennis and Patti Smith. It was built in 1930 for Attorney Samuel Dowden and has since been owned by several prominent Indianapolis doctors and lawyers. It is believed that Dowden originally constructed a cabin in the 1920s with a sunroom on the site which overlooks Eagle Creek. In 2004 Dennis and Patti, who are professional contractors, meticulously renovated the original structure. Their renovation took nearly every wall down to the original plaster lathe. They moved doorways, butler pantries, hallways, even bathrooms. They turned a maid’s room into a master closet. They also

installed hickory plank flooring and crown moldings as the home would have had originally and opened ceilings in the foyer and the master bedroom. It is a showplace for the Smith’s capabilities in remodeling the older home. The original house was rated by Indiana Historic Landmarks in 1990 as an outstanding example of the Colonial Revival architectural style. The property is also noted in Eliza Steelwater’s comprehensive document “National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form” that led to the recognition of the Traders Point area’s significance by the U.S. Department of Interior/National Park Service which in 2009 named a portion of Pike Township a Rural Historic District.

view of elder farm from church school site

Cows graze atop this triangular knoll today.   It’s a wedge-shaped parcel created by Lafayette Road on one side and Moore Road on the other.  By the late 1800s the Tolbert Moore Free Gravel Road was the preferred route from Traders Point to Zionsville.   Even today this winding cow path of a shoulder-less road is a popular scenic route.  

So it is hard to imagine a time when a brick school house stood atop the hill between these roads.   The Rural Academy, or School # 12 as it was called by the Pike Township authorities, was a two-room school house where area farmers sent their children from the 1850s to the early 1900s.   A neighbor told the writer many years ago that the school’s water well pipe, with its handle still attached, was a familiar site to motorists long after the school had come down.    Evidently the highway department had removed part of the crown on this hill where the two roads came together.   Highway 52 (as Lafayette Road was called for a while) was carrying large amounts of traffic as the main route to Lebanon.   So in the interests of safety, a hill was softened but in the removing of the crown they left behind the odd sight of a lonely towering pump.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)was once called the most famous man in America.   He preached in a church on this infamous pasture long before there was a school here and at least a decade before the creation of Traders Point, Indiana in 1855.  In 1884 Berry R. Sulgrove authored a comprehensive and well-respected history of Indianapolis and Marion County.   His account of Prospect Presbyterian Church where Beecher preached in Pike Township omitted its exact location.  A recent discovery of an 1855 map of the area included the words “Prospect Pr. Ch.” near this intersection.    All we know about Prospect Presbyterian Church is from Sulgrove:

Prospect Presbyterian Church was organized
about 1835, at Burns’ school-house, by the families of
Thomas Burns, Thomas McMannis, James Moore,
James Duncan, John Duncan, Joseph Patten, and
some others. In a few years after the organization
they built a house for worship on the northwest corner
of James Duncan’s land (where the Rural Academy
now stands), and the first preacher who occupied the
pulpit there was the Rev. Stewart, who continued to
preach for this church for a number of years. After
him the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (the noted Brook-
lyn divine) preached here, and he was followed by the
Rev. Reed, who preached for the church for a number
of years, and the Rev. Long, who was the last minister
of this church. As some of its leading members had
moved to the West, and others had died, the house
was sold for a school-house, and is now known as Rural
Academy.

Who was Henry Ward Beecher and why was he once called the most famous man in America? In a review of Debbie Applegate’s biography on Beecher: The Most Famous Man in America, : “Now nearly forgotten, Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was an immensely famous minister, abolitionist and public intellectual whose career was rocked by allegations of adultery that made nationwide headlines. In this engaging biography, American studies scholar Applegate situates this curiously modern 19th-century figure at the focus of epochal developments in American culture. Beecher’s mesmerizing oratory and fiery newspaper columns made him one of the first celebrities of the nascent mass media. His antislavery politics, though often tepid and vacillating, Applegate argues, injected a note of emotionalism into the debate that—with his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—galvanized Northern public opinion.”  

Before Beecher was famous, and long before his fame was marred by scandal, he preached in Indianapolis for eight years.

Beecher, who was to become the subject of Thomas Nast cartoons and the idol of the thousands who each Sunday crowded into churches to hear his spell-binding preaching, first came west from New England to study at a seminary in Cincinnati and preach in Lawrenceburg, Ind. That’s where the Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis discovered him and invited him to the big city, which Lyman Abbott in Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of His Career, said was then a town of fewer than 4,000 souls where dog fennel grew wild and pigs ran wild through the streets.

That was May of 1839 and Beecher accepted the call. Beecher brought with him his wife and two sons. His wife Eunice Beecher, according to Claudene Atkinson’s account in the November 1980 edition of Indianapolis Magazine, enjoyed poor health.

Said Atkinson: As [had been the case] in Lawrenceburg, Eunice became the object of some discussion by locals. She was known as the boyish Beecher’s ‘ailing and wailing wife,’ and no one believed it for a minute when, eight years later, the family accepted the call to Brooklyn because of Eunice’s `illness.’ 

Yes, Beecher was in Indianapolis only eight years, but those were important ones for him, and for journalism.

Hungering both for a wider audience and for a way to help feed his family, Henry Ward Beecher founded the Indiana Farmer and Gardener, a semimonthly journal devoted to farm life. The financial backing for the periodical came from the Whig newspaper, the Indiana State Journal, and Beecher was given permission to reprint as much of the contents of the Journal as he wished. He advised his backers he would do so only insofar as he was allowed to identify the source of the materials, for he detested and often spoke about the prevailing practice of plagiarism.

Beecher did his writing and editing early in the morning, before breakfast.

According to Jane Shaffer Elsmere in Henry Ward Beecher, the Indiana Years, Beecher’s wife had long ago taught him the habit of rising early. As a result, Beecher said, “most of my work on the paper is done before my neighbors are up in the morning. His work included mostly information about gardening and farming, but Beecher never passed a chance to preach. In one passage quoted by Abbott, he told farmers it was very shiftless to build your barnyard so that every rain shall drain it; to build your privy and dig your well close together…

After spending eight years in Indianapolis, Beecher had developed a reputation for his skill as a speaker. In his sermons he vehemently attacked drinking and slavery. He also called for more political and legal rights for women. As the North and South grew further apart during the 1850s, some ministers condoned violence to settle the differences between the two regions. Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, he sent rifles to anti-slavery forces participating in “Bleeding Kansas.” These guns became known as “Beecher’s bibles” because they arrived in Kansas in crates marked “bibles.” During the American Civil War, Beecher’s church equipped an entire regiment of Union soldiers. The entire Beecher family opposed slavery. Beecher’s sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

“And on the day (in 1847) when the railroad came at last to Indiana’s capital, bringing with it prosperity and fortune to those who had held on through so many years of hardship and patient faith, Henry Ward Beecher left, . . . the first passenger out of Indianapolis on the new railroad.”  (from Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait” by Paxton Hibben and Sinclair Lewis.)

Eighteen years later, in 1865, Traders Point, Indiana, was platted in the valley of Eagle Creek, a short mile from the church where Beecher had preached atop Lafayette and Moore Roads.