Railroad that sort of didn't/did happen

 

The yellow line is the proposed route, so far as we can tell.

A railroad history expert says that in 1854, a rail line was being proposed from Hamilton, Ohio, across Bath Township to Roseburg, on north to Cambridge City and eventually Chicago. According to him, the line was to cross the state line a little north of Reilly, go through an area between Old and New Bath, and cross the river somewhere around Brownsville.

This rail line was platted and land evidently secured somewhere near Billingsville, although that's where most of the story ends. It's likely the plan was dropped for financial reasons and inevitably because of the civil war.

There was very little industrial population in Indiana until 1880, so the rail line would not have served many people. Most likely it was just rich people thinking they could manipulate land values. Railroads were always fond of doing that.

But we didn't get our canal either.

 Learning more about the almost-railroad through Jersey toward Roseburg. Sometime after 1858, the C&O modified its plan and decided to make the short line cross into Indiana at Peoria in Springfield Twp., where it had a grain stop in Raymond and on to a grain stop on the toll pike from Colter's Corner to Oxford. That grain stop eventually became the town of Bath. A post office was supposed to be put there but the government accidentally put it in Colter's Corner and in fixing their mistake, just changed the town to Old Bath, which then created New Bath.

The rail line went north, instead of northwest, through Cottage Grove and finally a little grain stop in Harrison Township owned by a guy named Kitchel. The train then went on to Richmond, etc.

The line had been platted in 1858, according to Reifel's history, and was put on hold until the Civil War was over and the railroad building boom made for an amazing industry. Evidently, and we can't prove this, the C&O through Bath and Kitchel was originally supposed to cut northwest through Roseburg and on past Brownsville and Connersville toward Cambridge City and thence to Chicago.

It obviously made sense to go straight north instead and connect elsewhere than to build a rail bridge across the East Fork north of Dunlapsville. Still, that's speculation.

Reifel concludes in the 1915 history that the land for the railroad out of Billingsville was surveyed and partially graded. The work stopped for reasons not clear -- it was probably financial. When the war started, manpower shortages doomed it.

But it was eventually built and New Bath prospered. It also has its own post office now. Colter's Corner remains just Old.

BATH AND STORIES ABOUT IT.

The above map shows the rail line. Find Cottage Grove. It's just west of there.

Cclips from the 1867 Brookville American showed an advocacy for a railroad from Ohio across through Fairfield, and to points north.  As of April 1868, people in Richmond were still bellyaching that the railroad wasn't interested in this. Turns out, they were partly right. 

In truth, some people really were interested and in the early 1870s, a line was completed from Richmond north to Fort Wayne through the town of Winchester. The towns financed their own chunk of the work through stock sales and other nefarious methods. The Cincinnati connection was completed in an alternate way around Eaton, Ohio. More or less. 

The East Fork never got railroaded, which would not have made a difference. A lot of the track between Richmond and Fort Wayne was abandoned. Most likely, people ride bikes there and never give a second thought to Fairfield.

Which was what the Cincinnati-Richmond-Fort Wayne Railroad did.

RAILROAD PANIC 1873 (OUR SIDE OF IT)

Photos of kids and social groups

Many photos were provided during the years that the Fairfield history was being gathered, sorted, recorded -- and essentially left to its own devices. Those will stay in the dustbin of time.

1. Nobody remembers these people.

2. It's no longer interesting.

Why it's no longer interesting is that group and school photos from the 1940s are essentially all alike. They meant something at the time, and the people who it meant something to are long gone. We are talking an entire lifetime or two In some cases, three or four generations. 

Those who will be looking for Fairfield history in the future are probably looking for evidence that the town had any supportive value. That's always subjective. In any case, most photos we received over the years were less-than-complete about identifying the people being photographed. We tried to fill in some of the blanks with marginal success. It stopped mattering. 

Here is a representative photo just to prove they existed. 

There are places to find nostalgic group of family photos. The Brookville (IN) Public Library is the place to start. They have books on this subject. Several, in fact.

 

Dam construction photos

 These are from the collections of Tom Wewe and Mary Beth Siebert. More detail is available through the Brookville Library or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Links to both:

BROOKVILLE LIBRARY

DETAILS ABOUT THE LAKE

Dam construction

Fairfield south side with SR101 wrapping around the valley

Control tower, 1967

Constructing a base for the dam

The lake began to fill in the mid-70s.

Work at Fairfield Marina. Remnants of this little bridge
are still visible if you know where to look at the foot of the hill.

The dam at Brookville. It's safe, they say.

1966

Music music music

 The photo is from the Lori Goodman collection. She is a member of the Johnston clan of Fairfield, among the original settler families and merchants in the community in the late 1800s. Without connecting all the Johnston dots -- and there were many -- one man, Omar Johnston, stands out. 

He is apparently one of the builders and developers of the town's cornet band, which may have been really good, really really really good, or just another cornet band. Most towns had something of that nature, and they were often attached to community events, graduations, weddings, parades and holiday festivals. There isn't much detail on them or where the musicians learned their craft. As a rule, the wealthier people gave their children music lessons. 

There are many old newspaper articles that say a town's "orchestra" was to perform at a function. Definitions matter in towns of 250 residents. The photo is from around 1910 and was taken in the town's central Square. 

This clip is from April 1902, Brookville newspaper. Odd Fellows were one of several social societies in town. 

Lodge life and all its glory

 If two roads intersected anywhere near a field of grazing cows, a secret society was set up in Indiana in the 1840s. Most of them were loosely connected to church principles, and all of them have endured in one shape or another. Perhaps their mission is different. One suspects traditions date back to ancient times.

Fairfield had several such clubs, including the racist Red Men, the Odd Fellows, the Pythias and the Masonic Lodge. Of that lot, the Masonic Lodge still holds a spot in New Fairfield. No idea what happened to the others. A Brookville newspaper in March 1854 published an article that reported the Odd Fellows Lodge was near completion and that the first floor was already being occupied. So, that place was about 120 years old at the end. 

The Fairfield Masons were formed in 1849 and got a charter the following year. Their building on Main Street was one of the town's architectural 'icons,' if that's possible. The charter was relocated to New Fairfield in the early 1970s when a clubhouse was built there. 

No real details other than what Reifel reported in the 1915 county history that gave promotional service to such clubs around the area. There were lots of such social groups, as well as their women's auxiliary clubs. The women were active in civic affairs and were notably present in raising money for the Red Cross during World War I. 

Reifel says the Fairfield Masons had 39 members in 1915. It is probably more than that now. The Masons are quite popular, even after nearly 180 years in Fairfield. 

A MOST PECULIAR ORGANIZATION IN BROOKVILLE BACK IN THE DAY 

The Lodge icon lamps were still attached to the building
even as it was being demolished. 

Essays and memories

 Much of our history depends on our memories, real or modified to fit the fun.

Feel free to peruse the rest of the blog, with the oldest entries at the bottom of the menu on the right. You may share the links with others. 

Glenda Reese Smith

Since we moved a few months into my third grade, my teacher memories are of Mrs. Moore in first and second grade. I spent a lot of time wondering about her eye patch. Was there an eye behind it? Or just a big hole? Not that I would ever ask, of course.

Well, I just loved that woman. First of all, she would pull our loose teeth. She pulled my first one. And not long after that, another one was loose, but I managed, quite by accident, to pull it myself in the restroom. I thought she might be mad, but she stood me up in front of the class and said how proud she was that I had done that by myself.

Seriously, if I could have forced more teeth out, I would have, because nothing was better than to have Mrs. Moore brag on you. [And just as an aside to the tooth thing ... Rosemarie Hanna brought a dime to school every day, and after lunch she would spend it at the Davis store. Her friends, me included, were always happy to offer our advice on what to buy. A dime. Every day. A dime was what the tooth fairy brought me for all my hard work yanking out my own tooth. [I was sure Rosemarie was rich and probably lived in a castle.]

One day, early in my second grade year, my mom drove to school to pick us up. I don't know why--it wasn't a usual thing.

Anyway, Mrs. Moore came out to the car to talk to her. I jumped in the back seat with my little brother, Nicky, who was five. Nicky started reading out loud from my reader. (Yes, we played school a lot at home.) Mrs. Moore heard him reading and told my mom, "Put him on the bus tomorrow."

And just like that, Nicky was in first grade. Simple times. Shortly after he started to school, Nicky got sick. He was in and out of the children's hospital in Indianapolis, sometimes for weeks at a time. And I was jealous. I was sure he was having a great time opening presents and learning to make potholders. When it was time for him to go back to the hospital, he would cry because he had to go, and I would cry because it wasn't me.

Mrs. Moore understood that. She gave me the responsibility of reporting on Nicky and, if my report wasn't good, he would not be eligible for the nickel conduct drawing at the end of the week. And so I would (not so sadly or truthfully) inform her that Nicky had misbehaved in the hospital, and she would gravely put that mark beside his name. Looking back, I see the error of my ways.

If his name had remained in the drawing, I would have had a second chance at that nickel!

Mrs. Moore had an interesting way of treating injuries. If you scraped your knee or elbow on the playground during recess, she would clean it up, paint it with mercurochrome, and then paint your initials on your hand -- your own badge of courage.

However, if you were injured doing something careless or something you should not have been doing (like wrecking Carol Klein's bicycle at recess), Mrs. Moore cleaned it up, painted it liberally with stinging iodine and, you guessed it, no initials. And to make matters worse, my parents were aware of her system and iodine is impossible to wash off.

And my last, and fondest, memory of Mrs. Moore ... My mother had made me a blue plaid dress with a circle skirt from a feed sack I had picked out myself from the grain mill in Bath. To someone who often wore her brother's hand-me-downs to school, I thought it was beautiful.

I thought I was beautiful. And so the very first day I wore my beautiful new dress to school, I was absolutely prancing.

And so at recess I was at the top of the slide. Just as I started to go down, Bimbo Browning accidentally(?) stepped on the hem of my dress. As I slid down, my dress started ripping in about a one inch strip around and around and around.

When I hit bottom, I was standing in the top of my dress and my slip. The long tail of what had been my twirly skirt was stretched up the slide, with the end still under Bimbo's foot.

I was mortified. I reeled my dress in and ran screaming into the classroom. Mrs. Moore, bless her heart.

She moved a desk into the coat room. She took my dress off and gave me her sweater. And all afternoon, while teaching, Mrs. Moore sat at her desk and basted my dress back together enough that I could wear it home.

Wilson: original Fairfielder

Fairfield was platted October, 1815, by Hugh Abernathy, George Johnston, Tomas Osborn and James Wilson, the four corners of their respective lands being in the center of the platting.

James Wilson was born in 1779 in Virginia. His father was one of four brothers who served in the Army during the Revolution and was the only one of the four to survive the conflict.

In 1800 James came to the Indiana Territory, settling in Jefferson County where, in the following year, he married Nancy McCarty, who had been born in a Kentucky fort in 1785.

In 1808 Wilson decided to try another locale and with his rapidly increasing family moved on to Franklin County. By 1815 the population of this Whitewater Valley county had increased to the point where another trading post, closer to some of the settlers than Brookville, seemed necessary and feasible.

Consequently, Wilson and the three neighbors platted a town to be named Fairfield, located in the northern section of the county and centered at the spot where the lands owned by each of the men came together.

Evidently they all had high hopes for the future of the then non-existent Fairfield, even believing that someday it might become a county seat of a new political subdivision for “the proprietors donated a public square in the center of the plat and this is still used for such minus the coveted courthouse.”

If Wilson was disappointed in the non-growth of his first plan, he was willing to try again.

About that time (1817), Jacob Wetzel had finished work on his historically significant “trace” across Rush and Shelby counties.

W(H)ETZEL TRACE BLOG ITEM FROM THIS WEBSITE

Soon after Wetzel had completed his work on the trace, Wilson, accompanied by a “man named Logan and one named Hanna,” came up the newly opened path, following it as far as its junction with Blue River.

Here, Wilson decided, was a goodly site for a new home and he immediately returned to Fairfield to fetch his three oldest sons. The four soon returned to the spot he had chosen and began the building of a cabin — the first home in Shelby County.

On January 1, 1819, Wilson, his wife, four daughters, a baby boy and the 11-year-old Isaac started on their journey to their new abode.

Around nine o'clock in the evening of the third day, they arrived at their destination and found that the older boys, who had completed the log structure during their father's absence, had a roaring fire burning on the hearth to welcome them.

Caw, caw

Jimmy Boyd lived in the house just south of the Methodist Church. We lived in the house directly north of it. Like all kids, we lived our fantasy world with a degree of sincerity … one that lasted the length of the summer. When school started, we’d drop the whole thing.

But there was a barn not too far from the house that had a loft. We took a broom up there, swept it out and made it our clubhouse.

OK, now that we had a clubhouse, we needed a club.

A pretty special one, we decided. No girls allowed, naturally. We were in fourth grade.

Owing to the time, two major images came to mind:

DAVY CROCKET

PETER PAN

So, Jimmy, Joel and I developed, built and maintained the exclusive (very very exclusive) Jolly Roger Club.

We were pirates.

Why we weren’t frontiersmen was simple: Davy Crockett had been killed at the Alamo and that was last year, anyhow. We had lost our coonskin caps.

When it was time for the club to meet, Jimmy would ride over to our house on his bike, stop outside and go “Caw, Caw!” That was the sign. A bit of a takeoff, it was, on the old, really really old “Lassie” show where the kid with the dog (the one before Timmy; the kid, not the dog)) had a friend named Porky or Sylvester. Their greeting call was “E-Aw-Kee.” Do your own research.

But when meetin’ time came, we met. We shared Kool-Aid and Reese’s Cups and almost anything we could get to eat. Tomatoes served nicely.

We had a flag, complete with a skull and crossbones on it and a few other special secret codes and signs. No girls allowed.

Jimmy was learning to play the clarinet and his mother made sure he did his lessons. Joel and I were either inept at music or disinclined to care much about it, but Jimmy was doing a pretty good job. I could never blow a note. 

Jim Boyd was director of music at Franklin County High School in Brookville for many years, which made us all proud. 

-- jcu

 

Basketball at Fairfield

 

Team photos from various times in the 1950s-1960s. 

The 1954 team won the Franklin County tournament title. That was a big deal.

LINK TO A PREVIOUS POST HERE

1954

1956

1957

1961

1962

Fairfield's gymnasium