Emma Pouder, sheriff of Union County

In January 1923, Milton L. Pouder, the elected sheriff of Union County, died in office and was replaced by his widow Emma. She had been appointed by the Union County Commissioners, voting in Liberty at the Jan. 18 meeting.

According to the Liberty Express: “On finding out that Mrs. Pouder very much desired the appointment, the board backed by the opinion of many whom they heard express themselves, decided to appoint her.” She would have needed confirmation from the governor’s office, and she obviously received it.

Emma Pouder was elected in 1924 to a full term and served until she was replaced in December 1927 by Albert DuBois. Milton Pouder had been elected in November 1922, defeating Democrat Jack Booth. Pouder was listed as a Republican. Emma Pouder defeated Democrat William O. Line in the 1924 general election, winning by about 500 votes.

Her strengths were known to be her attachment to prohibition law enforcement and she’s cited in a number of stories between 1923 and 1926 for actively participating in raids on stills in Union, Franklin and Fayette counties. Most of her raids resulted in convictions that included fines and 60-day terms in the state penal farm.

Emma’s time as sheriff is closely connected to the reign of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and while there’s no direct evidence saying she was a member, many of her raids included members of the Horse Thief Detectives, who were a public arm of intimidation by the KKK.

Pouder was highly popular in Liberty, according to several stories in the newspapers published there at the time. She appointed Virgil Shouse as her deputy.

There isn’t a specific roster of women who served as sheriff in Indiana, but Pouder is obviously not the only one. Oddly, Franklin County had also mulled appointing a woman in August 1924 after Sheriff William VanCamp had been killed near Mt. Carmel by two car thieves.

VanCamp’s wife Bertha had popular support for succeeding her late husband, though the Commissioners did not follow up on that. Bertha VanCamp never held law enforcement office at any time. Bertha VanCamp and Emma Pouder were evidently friends, and one item in the Liberty Express reported in November 1923 that the two had been dinner guests of a Liberty couple.

Emma Pouder, in a 1924 interview, called herself “a plain country woman and I had no thought of entering public life until circumstances seemed to make it necessary.” She claimed she also did the cooking for the prisoners.

One might assume the Klan was involved in her decision to seek her husband’s position, though no such questions were asked of her. The Klan’s influence in Indiana was significant until the end of the 1920s.

Pouder’s most notable law enforcement action came in August 1926 when she was tasked with finding clues that helped convict Willard Carson of Liberty with killing his father, Carson. Pouder led a search for Willard Carson and helped apprehend him.

Emma Pouder was 86 when she died in 1958, and her obituary said she was a native of the Billingsville area.

Milton Pouder was 56 when he died. He had served as a postal carrier in Liberty before moving to Billingsville to farm alongside his wife. It is not clear why he chose to enter law enforcement.

His obituary said he died of the “grippe,” another term for influenza.