Wright guys – Part I

 Years ago, two boys were hiking through the woods and came to a stream. The younger boy suggested they find a log and float across the stream. The older boy said, “I have a better idea. Let's build a machine and fly over!”

Thus began the legend of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who in theory did see the other side of the stream near Quakertown during their pre-teen years. Later on, they took a train to Kitty Hawk, which is in North Carolina. They'd have flown there but the airplane had not yet been invented.

A dozen definitive histories have been promoted as the legitimate story of the Fathers of Flight. Most of them offer a paragraph or two about how the boys’ mother Susan was from Union County, Indiana. This is not one of those definitive histories, but it’s still informative. Tell your friends you read it here.

That tidbit is enough to put Wilbur and Orville a whole lot closer to Brookville than you imagined, thanks to a gimmick from the Department of Arranged Facts. Or, DAFT.

It’s not like we make this stuff up. What we know is useful. It’s how we do history that can be shared, not stashed on the top shelf of a dusty old bookcase.

To get to Kitty Hawk by way of the Dunlapsville bridge, we have to go to a cozy place in Virginia, which is where John G. Koerner and his loving bride Catherine lived in the earlier part of the 1800s. For reasons uncertain – but explainable – they left Loudoun County (northern part of Virginia) and came to Union County. Before they left, daughter Susan was born. That was 1831.

Union County was still quite undeveloped at the time and it’s likely John G. Koerner seized on that as an opportunity to become king of his own destiny. That’s a common theme across the years when Indiana went from land technically owned by native tribes to parcels of taxable property owned by squatters from elsewhere.

Koerner’s history is glossed over as much as it’s fleshed out. He’s far more important to this story than we realize as we see where he landed and why. To learn that, we’ll head over to DAFT headquarters and inquire.

The early settlers to Indiana came for the same reasons they always did as America was colonized – to worship as they wanted, to start their own communities and share like goals and dreams. Koerner was a Presbyterian, at the time a very hard-core Protestant branch that despised slavery.

Fighting it in Virginia was a lost cause. Instead, the Presbyterians joined the Quakers and the Universalists and the Brethren sects in heading for places where slavery didn’t exist. Indiana had always been a beacon and, into the 1830s, it still was.

Koerner’s wife Catherine’s maiden name was Frey (or Fry.)

The name was connected with United Brethren churches, including one at Farm Hill. For the unenlightened, Farm Hill is also known as Old Franklin, the brick church you see on the left as you approach Fairfield Causeway toward the Union County line.

Since Catherine’s kin were already in the area, it’s possible she persuaded her husband to “remove the family” to Indiana. Soon thereafter, the Koerners became members of the United Brethren church. The family on Catherine’s side has a robust history from Cincinnati north to an area that eventually became Dayton. It’s interesting, not useful for our story.

Old Franklin Church, incidentally, has been conducting services on that spot since the late 1830s. It’s recognized as a historical landmark. Its cemetery includes many of the Whitewater Valley’s original families, including the Koerner family.

• John
• Catherine (wife)
• Daniel (son)
• Elmira (Daniel’s spouse)

John Koerner’s footprint is larger than his grave site, but he doesn’t present much in the way of prominence. He evidently was never an elected official or a power broker. Simply a farmer who built carriages and had a knack for fixing things. At one point he appears to have been something of a landowner and, as such, somewhat affluent for his time. An 1854 classified ad in the Liberty Herald pinpoints him.

Real Estate for Sale – The undersigned offers for sale a house, lots of ground with all the appurtenances on the State road leading from Dunlapsville to Billingsville … it is one-half mile south of Moses Freeman and about the same distance east of James Martin’s.

Or just a mile or so east of what was once Quakertown. The “State” road is most likely a well-traveled path. You could probably hike it now. Or you could drive there.

Still, a trek in those days from the Vale of Dunlapsville to Old Franklin, which was in another county, no small task. Maybe one of the kids can invent an airplane, huh?

Great idea, said Susan Koerner, who’s mysterious in this yarn as well, although the whole of the Wright story is explained away by what seems to be a form of familial tolerance. It makes sense if we want it to make sense. If not, there are other shiny objects. Just be home in time for supper and your chores.

This is inching you closer to the Flying Wrights, but you have to learn first about Bishop Milton Wright. That’s Susan’s husband, father of the whole family that netted us rocket ships to Mars. (That may have been Goddard or Einstein but neither of them caught a fish in the Whitewater River. Then again, Einstein. ...)

The accepted tale of John Koerner was that he was his own thinker (great trait) and a man who enjoyed making things from scraps of stuff just lying around. Throughout this odyssey of being a builder, waxer, painter, handyman, farmer, mogul, all-around smart guy, the story is that daughter Susan picked up on it.

Most likely she was given a broom and told to stand over in one corner and “hold up that end” and all the while asking, “Father, why is your thumb all black and blue?” (Nail jump’t up and bit me. Mind yourself, girl!)

Other histories diverge on this, claiming Susan was well-equipped to handle any tool her father gave her.

Susan was told in the early 1850s that she needed to learn something besides crude language and applying varnish to wagon seats. Off she went to college, probably because she was too snobby for the local boys and the only place to find her a husband was in Hartsville, Indiana.

Hartsville, heartbeat of the United Brethren Church. It’s not far from Columbus. In those days, it was a lot farther from Columbus. The college doesn’t have an extensive history. Its archives are in Huntington, Indiana, which is where the school moved following a disastrous fire in the late 1890s.

Stories don’t tell us much about what Susan Koerner was expected to learn at the church-managed school, but she reportedly excelled in mathematics and science and was credited by one biographer of later being the most significant contributor to the education of her children.

It was at Hartsville where Susan met Milton, and the romance was instant. Milton, who was devout in his United Brethren principles, began to preach. Milton was born in Rush County and some of his history suggests he preached at a denominational church in Andersonville, western Franklin County.

He also preached at Old Franklin.

Pinning the Wright Brothers to northern Franklin County is a breeze now. Seats and tables in full upright position. Please fasten safety belts. Flight 1 is about to depart.