Month: January 2025
Elwood’s Airport Restaurant. The world’s only fly-in / drive-in.
Original publish date March 24, 2022. https://weeklyview.net/2022/03/24/elwoods-airport-restaurant-the-worlds-only-fly-in-drive-in/
A couple of weeks ago, my wife Rhonda and I drove about 40 miles north of Irvington to Elwood to visit the world’s first (and only) fly-in drive-in restaurant. Resting just northeast of the intersection of Indiana 37 and 13, the Airport Restaurant is located at 10130 State Road 37 on what was once the Elwood Airport. The planes are long gone, and diners no longer rub elbows with pilots, but the Airport Restaurant is still the place where all the locals eat.
The airport was founded just after World War II by Elwood residents Don and Georgia Orbaugh. It featured two grass runways, measuring 2,243 feet and 2,076 feet. The sod landing strips accommodated single-engine planes and their specialty was known as the $100 hamburger. The restaurant did not charge $100 for burgers, but for pilots, that’s what they became. “By the time you get in your airplane, fill it up with gas, and fly a 100 miles, it’s a $100 hamburger,” the old pilot’s joke went. Don and Georgia Orbaugh owned and operated the airport for 56 years before it passed to daughters Ann Brewer and Donna Ewing.
In 1952, “Sullivan’s Airport Restaurant” gained statewide attention when it opened an ice cream shack staffed by pretty young carhops. By 1953, a dining room was added to the shack, and young girls wearing tiny green uniforms with boxy marching band hats served curbside customers in their cars and pilots in their planes. Truth be told, the airport was really a “touch-and-go” facility where pilots practiced their landings and takeoffs. Most pilots only flew into the airport to visit the restaurant and ogle the carhops. By the end of the 50s, the novelty was over. There are a few photos (and at least one postcard) surviving of the Airport Restaurant during its heyday. The photos show the young waitresses in their carhop uniforms and the postcard pictures one of them standing on the wing of an airplane serving food to the pilots inside the cockpit.
Al Swineforth, the current owner of the Airport Restaurant, has a long history in the restaurant business. “I moved to Elwood in 1970. I was a General Manager for Darden Foods in Anderson for 22 years when I retired,” he stated. For those who don’t know, Darden’s family of restaurants features some of the most recognizable and successful brands in full-service dining — Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and Cheddar’s to name a few — serving more than 320 million guests annually in over 1,800 restaurants located across North America. Al smiled wryly, then said, “The day I retired, I was driving north on 13 when I stopped at 37 and saw the old Wheeler’s truck stop. I stayed retired for a total of four hours.”
Anyone who has ever driven through northern Hamilton County on State Road 37 knows the old “Wheelers” building. The truck stop opened in 1940 as “Scotty’s Inn.” This was back when SR 37 was the main route between Fort Wayne and Indy, so Scotty’s became a well-known stop for truckers, local farmers, and travelers alike. It featured gas pumps, a restaurant on the main floor, and “tourist rooms” upstairs. Swineforth reopened the restaurant after it sat derelict for many years following a devastating kitchen fire in the 1970s.
Swineforth recalled that the place was a mess when he took it over. “Oh the stories that building could tell,” he said. “Those rooms upstairs were rented to truckers by the hour,” he whispered with a wink. “You know, Elvis Presley came through there once back in the 1950s.” Swineforth ran his restaurant from 1993 to 1999 before the ancient infrastructure finally forced him to shut it down. The building remained vacant for nearly two decades before it reopened in 2018 as Mercantile 37.
After Swineforth closed his restaurant at the old Wheelers, he landed in Elwood. “I rent the building from the Orbaugh daughters. I own the name and everything within these walls, but the 74-acre airport property remains in the Orbaugh family,” Al noted. “Every Governor since Otis Bowen has stopped in here. Well, except Evan Bayh, he was never here. Mike Pence came in here all the time before he became Vice-President.” Al said, “He used to hold meetings right over there at that corner table.” Swineforth recalls one Governor’s visit in particular. “Frank O’Bannon came in here once for a meet-and-greet. We were running planes then and there were a couple of pilots in here. The Governor’s bodyguards went out and pulled the car up to leave and while they were gone the Governor said that he’d really like to take a plane ride. Pilot John Ward told him his plane was right outside and the Governor took off out the back door and was circling the runways within minutes.” Al closed by saying, “When those bodyguards came back in to get him, you should have seen the looks on their faces when I pointed to the sky and told them ‘there he goes.’ You couldn’t get away with that nowadays.”
The airport closed for good on September 1, 2008. The former runways were leased to a local farmer, who has since planted them in crops. Statistics from the previous year showed that the airport had 2,604 general aviation aircraft operations, an average of 217 per month. When I asked him how it affected his business, Al replied, “I lost $100,000 overnight.” That wasn’t the only calamity Swineforth had to weather. Like most restaurants, the COVID-19 pandemic nearly devastated the Airport Restaurant. “We never closed during COVID,” he stated. “Oh we shuttered the dining room but we were open for curbside and delivery.” It might surprise some to learn that Swineforth thinks the pandemic actually helped his business. “The community really came through for us. I think they appreciated that we never closed. Our business picked up after we reopened.”
I visited the Airport Restaurant on a weekday and was immediately greeted by owner Al Swineforth. Al insisted that we have lunch before we sat down to chat, his treat. We were seated in the dining room right next to the fireplace. Our waitress Holly Fettig greeted us warmly and informed us that she had worked there since she was 18 years old. “My mom worked here for a few years before I started,” Holly said. “I’ve been here for over 25 years now.” I question that statement because she looks like she would still get carded in any bar she found herself in today.
The menu is full of so many different dishes that it is hard to zero in on any one particular selection. The restaurant fare runs the gamut from Hoosier staples like grilled tenderloins, onion rings, fried green tomatoes, and double-decker hamburgers to steak, chicken and noodles, or fish dinners. Holly informed us that they are “famous for our elk burgers.” Rhonda had broccoli cheddar soup and a grilled ham & cheese sandwich and I opted for a giant hamburger, fries, and chili. Next time, I’m trying that elk burger. We were not disappointed. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner with homemade pies also available.
After lunch, we sat down with Al and Holly and explained the reason for our visit. Turns out that the restaurant has a family connection. My mother-in-law, Kathy Hudson, worked at the restaurant in 1968 at a time when it was being managed by my wife’s great-grandfather, Virgil Edgar Musick. Rhonda’s dad, Ron Musick, has told us for years about his grandfather and his restaurant and recalled helping with the bookkeeping when he was in high school. “The restaurant was called Musick’s Airport Restaurant back then. Granddad was a musician. He played slide guitar in a band along with running the restaurant.” Ronnie said, “Seemed like he was playing on the radio every weekend on WOWO up in Fort Wayne. He backed up some pretty big-name musicians in his day.”
Kathy told us that she was working as a waitress there when Bobby Kennedy’s campaign flew into Elwood in May of 1968. “I don’t remember Bobby being there, but his advance guys were there, all dressed up in suits and dark sunglasses. They asked me if I wanted to go for an airplane ride and I told them, ‘Well, only if my husband can come along.’ The advance men told her, ‘Sure, he can sit on the wing.’ Did I mention that Kathy, former homecoming queen at Anderson Highland High School back in 1964, is quite the looker? The fireplace table was important because Rhonda’s only memory of the restaurant centers around a photo of her and grandmother Nina Pace standing in front of it. Rhonda told Al, “But I remember it as red brick, not white.” Al explained, “Yes it was red but we painted it white when we remodeled the place several years ago.”
The planes don’t come here anymore and the runways were plowed over years ago. However, evidence of the airport survives in the many pictures of planes, parked on the grassy runways, taken back in the 1960s and 70s that now line the walls of the restaurant. My father-in-law, Keith Hudson, remembered tooling around Elwood back when it was a working airport. “We used to cut through here by driving up the runway back then. I still eat there from time to time.” When I mentioned Hud’s name to Al, he said, “Oh yeah, I know Keith from Bernie’s bar in Frankton.” Turns out that before he ran the Airport Restaurant, Virgil Musick ran the 128-club in Frankton. Seems like Al Swineforth knows everyone in Madison County. And as for those shortcuts through a working airport runway, don’t worry Hud, I think the statute of limitations has run on that by now.
Leopold & Loeb A Hundred Years On.
Original publish date June 6, 2024. https://weeklyview.net/2024/06/06/leopold-and-loeb-a-hundred-years-on/
Last month, Rhonda and I drove to the outskirts of Chicago to visit Joliet Prison in Illinois. Like many ancient jails, prisons, and penitentiaries, Joliet has experienced a second life as a tourist attraction. It opened back in 2018. During the summer months (June to September) Joliet is open daily for tours until 6 p.m. For $20 you can go visit the old stomping grounds of notorious inmates like Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, James Earl Ray, and Baby Face Nelson. In my case, I was interested in the place because of Leopold and Loeb. Okay, okay, I was also there thinking of the Blues Brothers, but mostly Leopold and Loeb.
Old Joliet Penitentiary (originally known as Illinois State Penitentiary) opened in 1858 and was a working prison until 2002. In “The Blues Brothers” movie, Dan Aykroyd (Elwood J. Blues) awaits outside the prison gate for the release of John Belushi’s character (“Joliet Jake” Blues). Guests enter through the same gate Belushi exits. If you are sly, you can sneak over and crank the gate open or closed on your own. The prison was also used in the cult classic James Cagney film “White Heat” and the 1957 movie “Baby Face Nelson.”
Like many of these incarceration-as-entertainment venues, Joliet is in a perpetual state of arrested decay. The tours are entirely self-guided and for a double sawbuck, you are handed a map and told to go explore “any door that is open.” We followed instructions and were only chased out of one building: the maintenance building. Which begged the question, “Then why did you leave the door open?” Visitors are warned not to shut the cell doors because they don’t have the keys and, oh, look out for rats. (For the record we saw none.) The women’s prison is still in place across the street but is only used nowadays for Halloween seasonal haunted houses and ghost tours.
Why, you ask, Leopold and Loeb? Well, because it was the 100th anniversary date of a crime that is mostly forgotten today but was the first “Crime of the Century”, the first “Trial of the Century” and the first “Media Circus” this “country-as-world-superpower” ever experienced. Fresh off the victory in World War I and smack dab in the middle of the Jazz Age, everything was bigger, faster, and more important in the US at the time. The crime hit the USA like a Jack Dempsey knockout punch to the jaw.
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 29, 1971) and Richard Albert Loeb (June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), were two affluent students at the University of Chicago who kidnapped and murdered a Chicago boy named Bobby Franks on May 21, 1924. They disposed of the schoolboy’s body in a culvert along the muddy shore of Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana. The duo committed the country’s first “thrill kill” as a demonstration of their superior intellect, believing it to be the perfect crime without possible consequences.
Leopold (19) and Loeb (18) settled on identifying, kidnapping, and murdering a younger adolescent as their perfect crime. They spent seven months planning everything, from the method of abduction to purchasing rope and a heavy chisel to use as weapons, and to the disposal of the body. To make sure each of them was equally culpable in the murder, they agreed to wrap the rope around their victim’s neck and then each would pull equally on their end, strangling him to death. To hide the casual nature of their “thrill kill” motive, they decided that they had to make a ransom demand, even though neither teenager needed the money.
After a lengthy search in the Kenwood area, on the shore of Lake Michigan on the South Side of Chicago, they found a suitable victim on the grounds of the Harvard School for Boys where Leopold had been educated. (Today, Kenwood has received national attention as the home of former President Barack Obama and his family.) The duo decided on 14-year-old Robert “Bobby” Franks, the son of wealthy Chicago watch manufacturer Jacob Franks. Bobby lived across the street from Loeb and had played tennis at the Loeb residence many times before.
Around 5:15 on the evening of May 21, 1924, using a rented automobile, Leopold and Loeb offered Franks a ride as he walked home from school after a baseball game. Since Bobby was hesitant, being less than two blocks from his home (which still stands at 5052 S. Ellis), Loeb told the victim he wanted to talk to Bobby about a tennis racket that he had been using. While the exact details of the crime are in dispute, it is believed that Leopold was behind the wheel of the car with Bobby in the passenger seat while Loeb sat in the back seat with the chisel. Loeb struck Franks in the head from behind several times with the chisel, then dragged him into the back seat and gagged him, where he died.
Loeb stuffed the boy’s body into the floorboards and scrambled over the back of the passenger seat. There is little doubt that the deadly duo’s demeanor was joyous as they exchanged smiles below bulging eyes accentuated with anxious breathing and giggles of laughter. The men drove to their predetermined body-dumping spot near Wolf Lake in Hammond, 25 miles south of Chicago. They concealed the body in a culvert along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks north of the lake. To hinder identification, they poured hydrochloric acid on the face and body. When they returned to Chicago, they typed a ransom note, burnt their blood-stained clothing, and cleaned the blood stains from the rented vehicle’s upholstery. After which, they spent the remainder of the evening playing cards. They didn’t know that police had found a pair of Leopold’s prescription eyeglasses (one of only three such pairs in the entire city) near Franks’ body.
Their plan unraveled quickly. When Roby, Indiana, (a now non-existent neighborhood west of Hammond) resident Tony Minke discovered the bundled-up body of Bobby Franks along the shore of Wolf Lake, the gig was up. The thrill killers destroyed the typewriter and burned the lap blanket used to cover the body and then casually resumed their lives as if nothing ever happened. Both of these demented little rich boys enjoyed chatting with friends and family members about the murder. Leopold discussed the case with his professor and a girlfriend, joking that he would confess and give her the reward money. Loeb, when asked to describe Bobby by a reporter, replied: “If I were to murder anybody, it would be just such a cocky little S.O.B. as Bobby Franks.” When asked to explain how the eyeglasses got there, Leopold said that they might have fallen out of his pocket during a bird-watching trip the weekend before. Leopold and Loeb were summoned for formal questioning on May 29. Loeb was the first to crack. He said Leopold had planned everything and had killed Franks in the back seat of the car while he drove. Once informed of Loeb’s confession, Leopold insisted that he was the driver and Loeb the murderer. The confessions were announced by the state’s attorney on May 31, 1924.
Later, both admitted that they were driven to commit a “perfect crime” by Übermenschen (supermen) delusions, and their thrill-seeking mentalities drove a warped interest to learn what it would feel like to be a murderer. While it is true that Leopold and Loeb knew each other only casually while growing up, their relationship flourished at the University of Chicago. Their sexual relationship began in February 1921 and continued until the pair were arrested. Leopold was particularly fascinated by Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of Übermenschen, interpreting themselves as transcendent individuals possessing extraordinary, superhuman capabilities whose superior intellects would allow them to rise above the laws and rules that bound the unimportant, average populace.
Early in their relationship, Leopold convinced Loeb that if they simply adhered to Nietzsche’s doctrines, they would not be bound by any of society’s normal ethics or rules. In a letter to Loeb, he wrote, “A superman … is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do.” The duo first tested their theory of perceived exemption from normal restrictions with acts of petty theft and vandalism including breaking into a University of Michigan fraternity house to steal penknives, a camera, and the typewriter later used to type the ransom note. Emboldened, they progressed to arson, but no one seemed to notice. Disappointed with the lack of media coverage of their crimes, they began to plan and execute a sensational “perfect crime” to grab the public’s attention and cement their self-perceived status as “supermen”.
After the two men were arrested, Loeb’s family retained Clarence Darrow as lead counsel for their defense. Clarence Seward Darrow (April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was perhaps the most famous lawyer of the late 19th / early 20th centuries. He was known for his strenuous defense of women, Civil Rights, early trade unions, and the Scopes “monkey” trial. Darrow was also a well-known public speaker, debater, and writer. He took the case because he was a staunch opponent of capital punishment. Darrow’s father was an ardent abolitionist and his mother was an early supporter of female suffrage and women’s rights.
The trial took place at Chicago’s Cook County Criminal Courthouse. For his efforts, Darrow was paid $65,000 (equivalent to $1,200,000 today). Everyone expected the defense would be not guilty because of insanity, but Darrow believed that a jury trial would convict his clients and impose the death penalty regardless of the plea. So Darrow entered a plea of guilty and appealed to Judge John R. Caverly to impose life sentences instead. The sentencing hearing ran for 32 days. The state presented over 100 witnesses, meticulously documenting the crime. The defense presented extensive psychiatric testimony to establish mitigating circumstances, including childhood neglect in the form of absent parenting, and in Leopold’s case, sexual abuse by a governess. But it was Darrow’s impassioned, eight-hour-long “masterful plea” after the hearing (called the finest speech of his career) that saved Leopold and Loeb’s lives. Darrow argued that the methods and punishments of the American justice system were inhumane, and the youth and immaturity of the accused should be considered in their sentencing.
Darrow’s speech, at least in part, is worth revisiting here. “Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university…Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly why not the boy?…The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud…(I) would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows. In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”
Both men were sentenced to life plus 99 years. During Darrow’s month-long courtroom argument to save their lives, Leopold and Loeb’s families greased the guards with bribes to soften their stay at the Cook County Jail. That abruptly ended when they reached Joliet. The Illinois State Penitentiary was already out of date and seriously overcrowded when they arrived. It had been condemned as unfit for habitation twenty years prior, yet, was still open. According to the Joliet Prison website, “Built in 1858 of limestone quarried on the site by prisoners to house 900 inmates; by 1924 over 1,800 prisoners were incarcerated there. The cells, four feet by eight, were damp, had narrow slits for windows, and possessed no plumbing: prisoners were given a jug of water each morning and made do with a bucket to use as a toilet. Every aspect of life at Joliet was regulated. Prisoners were given two changes of underwear, blue shirts, pants, socks, and heavy shoes to use each week. Contact with the outside world was limited. Inmates could send a single letter and receive visitors every second week. Using funds from their prison accounts, they could purchase tobacco, rolling papers, chewing gum, and candy from the prison commissary. There were no other privileges. A bell awoke prisoners at 6:30 AM and the cell blocks filled with sounds of locks opening, doors slamming shut, and boots marching along the steel flooring. After dressing, inmates grabbed the buckets and carried them into the courtyard, emptying their refuse into a rancid trough. Meals were served in a large dining hall; twice a week prisoners had beef stew for breakfast; other days hash was served. The food was cold and unappealing, sitting in pools of congealed fat on aluminum trays.”
As the Medieval prison loomed before them, its towers bathed in the glow of arc lights shadowing what lay behind the walls, the two convicted killers surely swallowed hard in fear. Thanks to the specialized skills of attorney Darrow, they had escaped the death penalty only to find themselves condemned to life imprisonment in this foreboding fortress. Leopold and Loeb were introduced to their new life at the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet on the night of September 11, 1924. Bound in ankle chains tethered by a chain to their handcuffs, the duo shuffled through the front gates of the inmate reception area. By the next day, their heads were shaved; they were photographed and fingerprinted; authorities assigned them prison numbers: Leopold was Inmate No. 9305, and Loeb No. 9306. After processing, they were led to separate cells, disappearing into the penitentiary population. Once they entered regular prison life, they were kept in solitary cells for several months, both because of the publicity of their crime and also because they were among the youngest inmates of the prison. Although kept apart as much as possible, the two managed to maintain their friendship. Leopold and Loeb spent most of their days working in prison shops: Leopold wove rattan chair bottoms in the prison’s Fibre Shop, while Loeb constructed furniture. Between meals, they were allowed two fifteen-minute breaks in which to walk or smoke. After dinner at four, they returned to their cells. At nine, lights out.
The Liberty Bell In Indianapolis.
Original publish date July 3, 2024. https://weeklyview.net/2024/07/03/the-liberty-bell-in-indianapolis/
The Liberty Bell is believed to have been brought to Pennsylvania by William Penn, arriving in Philadelphia on September 1, 1752. Its original use was to announce the opening of the Courts of Justice to the people and to call members of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly together. Surprisingly, the main purpose of the Liberty Bell was to announce the accession of a member of the British royal family to the throne, and the proclamation of treaties of peace and declarations of war. Ironically, the bell rang out loudly when the Declaration of Independence was publicly read for the first time in Philadelphia, on July 8, 1776. Contrary to legend, the bell did not crack at that time. It cracked exactly fifty-nine years to the day later during ceremonies honoring the death of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who died two days prior on July 6, 1835.
Since the time of American Independence, no other inanimate symbol has come to represent the United States more than The Liberty Bell. Although inextricably associated with the city of Philadelphia, The Liberty Bell has traveled through Indianapolis on three separate occasions. The first visit came to our city on Friday, April 28, 1893, on its way to the World’s Fair in Chicago. It was traveling over the Pennsylvania rail lines which sent it directly through the heart of Irvington. America’s most famous relic to freedom arrived at 5 a.m. and was placed on a sidetrack at Tennessee Street (present-day Capitol Avenue) at downtown Union Station. By the time Mayor Thomas Sullivan and Chief of Police Thomas Colbert arrived with a squad of eight guards, the street was already choked full of people anxious to see The Liberty Bell. Nervous carpenters worked feverishly building wooden ramps to access the bed of the converted passenger coach upon which the flag-draped relic was fastened.
The Indianapolis News reported, “Patriots came with such a rush to see the ‘Voice of Freedom’ that the ropes stretched around the car and along the street were incapable of holding the throng in check. Captain Charles Dawson began shouting at the top of his voice: ‘Get your tickets ready. Be sure and buy your tickets before you get in line!’ Of course, no tickets were necessary, but the cry had the desired effect. Hundreds fell out of the jam to make inquiries regarding tickets, and the police were then able to get the line properly formed.” The article details a strange phenomenon that swept that crowd. “When the crush was at its worst, a man passed up his matchbox to one of the policemen and asked that he touch the bell with the box. He felt that the mere touching of the bell would hallow the matchbox. Instantly, the policemen on guard were besieged with requests that they touch the bell with rings, ribbons, watches, canes, handkerchiefs, and a hundred other things.” Mothers and fathers handed babies up to the policemen for a rub against the bell. One child fainted amid the confusion. It resulted in a panic or sorts and “the touching incident had to be closed by the police for the sake of safety.”
That 1893 visit culminated with a viewing at the Indiana State House where former President Benjamin Harrison delivered a speech honoring the bell. During the celebration, children from the Indianapolis Blind School were permitted to “get the sense of sight through the joy of touch. They fingered the beloved relic and went back to school fully satisfied.” The second visit of the Liberty Bell came on November 17, 1904, on its way back to Philly from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition aka the St. Louis World’s Fair. Sadly, the bell’s 6 p.m. arrival at the intersection of West and Washington Streets occurred the same day that the historic landmark Meridian Street Methodist Episcopal Church burnt to the ground nearby. The poet James Whitcomb Riley was among the official greeters for that 1904 visit. The Liberty Bell was on display at the interurban train sheds and Ohio Street traction station through the night, leaving the next morning. The culmination was a parade of all Indianapolis Public School children to the interurban station where they marched in front of the cherished relic to music provided by the Indianapolis News Newsboys Band. The Indianapolis News reported that the scene “moved grownups to tears and brought a full realization of the patriotic value of The Liberty Bell.” The bell was removed to the train station and sent on its way back to Philadelphia “almost buried under chrysanthemums that had been provided by patriotic citizens. As the car passed westward on Washington Street, the school children strewed the track with flowers.”
On July 5, 1915 (109 years ago this Friday) The Liberty Bell left Philadelphia for the last time on its way to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition World’s Fair in San Francisco, California. The bell debuted in the city by the bay on “Liberty Bell Day” on July 17. It was displayed in the Pennsylvania Building at the Fair for four months, every evening it was rolled and stored securely in a vault. Finally, on November 11, the bell left the Fairgrounds accompanied by cheers, church bells, and tearful smiles of farewell from those present. During the trip home, the bell made its final visit to Indianapolis. The event was planned (perhaps fittingly) by an Indianapolis Mayor named Joseph E. Bell, an interesting but long-forgotten figure in Indianapolis history. Bell, a Democrat and former law partner of John W. Kern, served from 1914 to 1918. Bell is notable for establishing the first police vice squad in the city and for his many public improvements including the the transformation of Pogue’s Run from an open sewer to an immense covered drain and a flood levee along the west bank of the White River and railroad track elevation permitting street and the development of the boulevard system. He also authorized the construction of the sunken gardens at Garfield Park. During Bell’s administration, 281 miles of streets, sidewalks, and sewers were built. Bell, a founder of the Indiana Democratic Club, died from an accidental, self-inflicted shotgun wound suffered at the Indianapolis Gun Club.
Just as in 1904, The Liberty Bell narrowly escaped disaster during that 1915 visit when a warehouse fire in Louisville swept two large warehouses, coming within a thousand feet of the relic. No wonder Philly hasn’t let the bell out of its sight since that trip. The Liberty Bell was greeted upon its 7:45 p.m. arrival in the Circle City by 5,000 flag-waving citizens lining East Washington Street. The relic bell visited over 400 cities during its trip home. The Liberty Bell welcoming parade was led by a contingent of GAR Civil War Veterans, mounted Policemen, and cars containing Teddy Roosevelt’s former Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks, Governor Sam Ralston, Butler President Thomas Carr Howe, & Poet James Whitcomb Riley. The Nov. 22, 1915, Indianapolis News reported, “Impressive features of the occasion marked the stopping of the bell at the statehouse and courthouse where school choruses from the Manual Training and Technical High Schools led by the teachers of those schools, sang ‘America’ and other patriotic songs.
An interesting side note occurred when Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s founding father Carl Fisher volunteered to repair the crack in the Liberty Bell. The Nov. 20, 1915, News reported, “Practical-minded Carl F. Fisher is going to propose that they leave the bell and its celebrated crack in Indianapolis so that by processes now in use at the Prest-O-Lite plant, near the motor speedway, the long silence of The Liberty Bell may be broken and its voice again proclaim the sweetness of American freedom.” Fisher, perhaps the greatest huckster the Hoosier state ever saw, told the News, “Philadelphia has been living off that crack long enough. We have had at our plant in the last two years bells that are older than the Liberty Bell. They were on old Spanish men-of-war and merchant vessels that represented ports older than Philadelphia itself. Unless Philadelphia wakes up and has some repair work done pretty soon they’ll have a total wreck of their famous relic. We can patch that crack up as easily as a shoemaker half-soles a shoe. Expansion and contraction are making the bell’s crack wider, and something must be done to heal that wound. If they will just let Indianapolis play surgeon for their beloved patient we will show them that we can do it.” The News further reported, “It was learned that the Philadelphia people have a pride in the crack and do not wish it mended.” The train carrying the Liberty Bell left Indianapolis at 12:30 a.m. en route to Columbus, Indiana. On Thanksgiving day in 1915, Philadelphians welcomed the Liberty back to Independence Hall at nightfall after its cross-country tour. Although the bell has been “tapped” many times for historic events after that 1915 homecoming, on September 25, 1920, it was rung for the last time in ceremonies in Independence Hall celebrating the ratification of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
In Search of Ann Rutledge: Lincoln’s lost love.
Original publish date March 23, 2023. https://weeklyview.net/2023/03/23/in-search-of-ann-rutledge-lincolns-lost-love/
(Author’s trinket explained below)
On March 1 I visited Springfield Illinois while working on an ongoing book project. My wife Rhonda wanted me out of the house for a couple of days for heavy spring cleaning. So I took advantage of an opportunity to visit some of the places I had long wished to visit but never seemed to get to. I visited a few of the markers on Lincoln’s 400-mile 8th judicial court circuit that he regularly traveled as a young lawyer during the 1840s and 1850s. I visited the courthouse in Taylorsville, where Lincoln’s court proceedings were often interrupted by the sounds of squealing pigs rooting under the courthouse floor — once so loudly that Lincoln asked the judge for a “writ of quietus” to calm the commotion. As you might imagine, Illinois is full of interesting Lincoln sites off the beaten path.
The place that I longed to see most was the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln’s first love, Ann Mayes Rutledge. She was born on January 7, 1813, near Henderson, Kentucky, the third of ten children born to Mary Ann Miller Rutledge and James Rutledge. In 1829, her father moved to Illinois and became one of the founders of New Salem, a community located 21 miles northwest of Springfield.
James Rutledge built a dam, sawmill, and gristmill in New Salem and is credited with laying out the town and selling the first lots of land there. In time, he converted his home into a tavern and inn where Ann worked — eventually, she took over the family business. Allegedly, Ann was the first (some say the only) girl to attend New Salem School. She was described as physically beautiful, 5 feet, 3 inches tall, 120 pounds with auburn hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. Her attitude was always positive, described as sweet and angelic, beloved by all who knew her. Her schoolteacher, Mentor Graham, described her as beautiful, amiable, kind, and an exceptionally good scholar. In 1832, young Abraham Lincoln boarded at the Rutledge Inn, where he got to know her.
While historians may disagree on the depth of her relationship with the rail splitter, there is no doubt that Ann Rutledge knew Abraham Lincoln. Ann died before the invention of photography, so no photos of her exist and no contemporary drawings of her have ever been found. Little in the way of verifiable data survives about Ann. Most of the details of her life were collected by Lincoln’s law partner of 17 years, former Springfield Mayor William Herndon. Billy was among the first to research those early years of Lincoln. While researching his book on Lincoln, Herndon retraced Lincoln’s tracks through central Illinois and southern Indiana. Billy Herndon did not care for Mary Lincoln and the feeling was mutual. So it comes as no surprise that Herndon was the first to push the relationship between Abraham and Ann.
Herndon’s details about Ann’s life came from people that knew Ann in New Salem, witnesses that historians have called “Herndon’s informants.” Rutledge neighbor James Short described Ann as “a good-looking, smart, lively girl, a good housekeeper, with a moderate education.” Likewise, Harvey Lee Ross, a boarder at the Rutledge family tavern in New Salem described Ann as “very handsome and attractive, as well as industrious and sweet-spirited. I seldom saw her when she was not engaged in some occupation – knitting, sewing, waiting on tables, etc…I think she did the sewing for the entire family. Lincoln was boarding at the tavern and fell deeply in love with Ann, and she was no less in love with him. They were engaged to be married, but they had been putting off the wedding for a while, as he wanted to accumulate a little more property and she wanted to go longer to school.” When interviewed by Herndon, Ann’s family testified that Lincoln was certainly smitten with Ann.
Not only was Lincoln attracted to Ann’s good looks, but he was also intrigued by her intelligence, a rare quality on the frontier. Herndon once said “I believe his very soul was wrapped up in that lovely girl. It was his first love – the holiest thing in life – the love that cannot die.” That all changed on August 25, 1835, when typhoid fever swept through New Salem and 22-year-old Ann Rutledge died. Legend states that Ann called Lincoln to her deathbed for a final goodbye before passing. Ann’s death unhinged Lincoln, leaving him severely depressed, a condition he would battle for the rest of his life. Upon her death, Lincoln confided to Mentor Graham that he felt like committing suicide, but Graham reassured him that “God has another purpose for you.” New Salem resident John Hill later said “Lincoln bore up under it very well until some days afterward when a heavy rain fell, which unnerved him.” Lincoln’s friend, Henry McHenry, testified that after Ann’s passing Lincoln “seemed quite changed, he seemed retired, & loved solitude, he seemed wrapped in profound thought, indifferent, to transpiring events.”
According to author Harvey Lee Ross in his book The Early Pioneers and Pioneer Events of the State of Illinois, Lincoln told friends: ‘My heart is buried in the grave with that dear girl. He would often go and sit by her grave and read a little pocket Testament he carried with him.” Another New Salem neighbor, Isaac Cogdal told Herndon that President-elect Lincoln confessed his love of Ann to him before leaving Springfield for Washington. “I did really – I ran off the track: it was my first. I loved the woman dearly & sacredly: she was a handsome girl – would have made a good loving wife – was natural and quite intellectual, though not highly educated…I did honestly – & truly love the girl & think often – often of her now.”
Ann was originally buried at the Old Concord graveyard (sometimes called Goodpasture graveyard) a pioneer cemetery located about seven miles northwest of New Salem. Some 200 people were buried there, many of whom knew Abraham and Ann personally. Today they stand as silent sentinels to the truthfulness of their courtship. Lincoln visited her gravesite frequently. According to Herndon, after Ann’s death, Lincoln “sorrowed and grieved, rambled over the hills and through the forests, day and night. He suffered and bore it for a while like a great man — a philosopher. He slept not, he ate not, joyed not. This he did until his body became emaciated and weak, and gave way. In his imagination he muttered words to her he loved … Love, future happiness, death, sorrow, grief, and pure and perfect despair, the want of sleep, the want of food, a cracked and aching heart, and intense thought, soon worked a partial wreck of body and of mind.”
To friends, Lincoln claimed that the thought of “the snows and rains fall(ing) upon her grave filled him with indescribable grief.” For days following her death, damp, stormy days, and gloomy weather triggered a deep depression that sent Lincoln to her gravesite where he lay prostrate over Ann’s grave. Lincoln’s behavior became so alarming that his friends sent him to the house of another kind friend, Bowlin Greene, who lived in a secluded spot hidden by the hills, a mile south of town. According to Herndon, “Here Lincoln remained for weeks under the care and ever-watchful eye of this noble friend, who gradually brought him back to reason or at least a realization of his true condition.” Yes, Abraham Lincoln knew Old Concord Graveyard well.
Here’s where the story takes a strange turn. Many years later, some enterprising citizens of nearby Petersburg, a town located four miles to the north, decided that Ann’s grave could help put their town on the map. Chief among them was Petersburg undertaker Samual Montgomery, ironically an elderly relative of Ann’s, and a cemetery promoter with the improbable name of D.M. Bone. These ad-hoc graverobbers decided it would be financially advantageous to move Rutledge’s remains for fear that their cemetery needed the draw of a famous name to compete with crosstown rival Rose Cemetery.
For three decades, all that marked Ann’s grave at the new cemetery was a rough stone with her name emblazoned in white letters on the front. In January 1921, Rutledge’s grave was fitted out with a magnificent granite monument inscribed with the text of the poem “Anne Rutledge,” from Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology. His words, engraved on her cenotaph at Oakland Cemetery are haunting: “I am Ann Rutledge who sleeps beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, Wedded to him, not through union, But through separation. Bloom forever, O Republic, From the dust of my bosom!” Regardless of the attempts by Lincoln biographers like Herndon, Ward Hill Lamon (Lincoln’s bodyguard), Carl Sandburg, and Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge to legitimize the Lincoln/Rutledge romance as fact, by the 1930-40s, Lincoln scholars expressed increased skepticism of the story. Most biographers agree that Lincoln and Rutledge were close, but several historians point to a lack of evidence of a love affair between them.
For my part, as a lifelong student of Lincoln, I choose it to be true. It is for that reason that I traveled to Petersburg, Illinois in search of Ann Rutledge’s grave. Finding Oakland Cemetery is an easy task and worth the visit. The massive granite marker is the most impressive memorial in the graveyard. Surrounded by an equally impressive wrought iron fence, the rough stone marker that originally graced her final resting place remains tucked away at the front of the plot although her name is slowly eroding away. Edgar Lee Masters’ epitaph is clear, legible, and easy to read. Master’s grave is only yards away. As impressive as the site may be, if you know the backstory, an overpowering soullessness pervades the spot simply because she is not there.
The place I really wanted to find was the Old Concord Graveyard. So I did what every stranger in a strange place does: I consulted Google maps. Oh, the navigator took me there, but just barely. The map directions led me to Route 97 North and the Lincoln Trail Road through the farm fields of Menard County, off the paved highway, and onto a gravel road. Like most midwestern roads, the winding serpentine roadways mimic the buffalo traces of centuries past. They wind through hills cut not by machinery, but by carts pulled by oxen and horses generations ago. Blind hills make the driver wonder if the road continues past each rise and dangerous curves make you tighten your grip on the steering wheel. Along the way, pheasants and quail stroll leisurely along the roadside. This is their domain and they fear no man out here.
Time and time again, my GPS ended in front of a brick farmhouse proclaiming “You have reached your destination.” This was not a cemetery, so I retraced my route, and five miles later, I found myself in the same spot. Finally, I pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door. My summons was answered by a friendly dog followed by a lovely mature woman. I threw myself upon the mercy of a stranger, apologized for the intrusion, and asked if this was the place. She smiled and said, “Well, you’re close” and led me to the side of the house where she pointed to the cemetery about a half mile in the distance.
She told me to head back out on the county road and keep turning left until I found an abandoned, dried-up waterway through a pair of cornfields. She said, “It is not really a road but the county crews still drive their equipment back there to keep the grass cut, so you should be able to find it,” The cemetery can not be seen from the gravel road, so it took me two passes to find it. When I did, I nervously went offroading about a quarter mile back upon a grassy lane between two cornfields. It had been raining before my arrival and rain was predicted for later that day, so I was less than confident that I could make it without getting stuck. Luckily, I arrived there safely.
The ancient graveyard is filled with veterans of the Revolutionary War like Robert Armstrong from North Carolina who died September 9th, 1834. Next to Robert is the marker of his son, Jack Armstrong of the Clary Grove gang, who famously fought Abe Lincoln to a draw in a wrestling match in New Salem. The battle became the stuff of legend and ultimately got Lincoln inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame. It did nothing for Jack Armstrong though. He died in 1854 although his stone incorrectly lists the death date as 1857. Most of the stones have been laid down face up so that they may still be read. Many are broken and rest in pieces strewn about in this ancient burying ground. A flagpole stands guard with a tattered American flag that shows the scars of a constant battle with the rough winds of the Illinois plains.
Ann’s grave rests on top of the hill next to that of her father, whose body was not removed to the new cemetery. Also near Ann is the grave of her brother David who died in 1842, a decade after serving with Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hawk War. There are many Rutledges still resting here. It is likely that most, if not all of them, were known by Ann or she by them. From Ann’s grave, I could look over my shoulder and see the farmhouse where I started. I wonder to myself what it would be like to live so close to such a magical place. Talking with the lady she told me they had been living there for 30 years. They had directed a few travelers like me to the spot, but not many. She informed me that her home was built by the Grosbaugh family and that it would have been there in 1835 when Ann drew Lincoln there. She pointed to an ancient natural stone step in the sideyard between her house and the graveyard and stated, “This was the watering trough and buggy turnaround, the start of a path that used to lead directly to the cemetery. It hasn’t been used in over a century.”
I’ve chased Lincoln all over this country. I’m sure I have stepped in his footprints many times. This spot, the Old Concord Cemetery, is the toughest Lincoln site I have ever found. It is impossible to find on your own and no map will lead you here. Here young Abraham Lincoln came day after day to mourn over his lost love. Here he lay upon her grave from autumn to winter, protecting her because he could not bear the thought of it raining or snowing upon her mortal remains. Today, a modern stone rests in Old Concord Graveyard on the spot that reads: “Original Grave of Ann Mayes Rutledge Jan. 7, 1813-August 25, 1835. Where Lincoln Wept.” Lincoln was here and here Ann remains. Her body literally melted into the soil of the central Illinois prairie. Here is the lone individual spot where anyone may visit to experience the raw emotion that was Abraham Lincoln.
Alan E. Hunter 