Dearly Departed 2014

by Nancy McCammon-Hansen

Saturday is Dearly Departed at Lindenwood Cemtery, located on the west end of Main Street. This free program runs from 2 to 5 p.m. and features a look at some of Fort Wayne’s more notable residents who are buried there AND....have streets named for them. 

You can read more about my love of studying history through headstones at http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2012/05/history-and-headstones-celebrating.html but for now, here’s a look at who will be featured in this year’s tour.

Dearly Departed is sponsored by ARCH with assistance from the History Center.

Harry W. Baals - Section C, Lot 14 Most newcomers to Fort Wayne, or those not familiar with the city’s past, will remember the name Harry Baals as a suggestion for the name of what is now Citizen’s Square. Baals was mayor of Fort Wayne and a former postmaster. One of Baals’ major accomplishments was to garner Federal funds for various city projects in a time when a Republican office holder (1935) had a harder time than he would have today. But Baals was successful and the city was able to undergo street construction, improvements to the City Light and Powerworks and the erection of a $5 million sewage treatment plant.

Sylvanus F. Bowser - Section I, Lot 7 Bowser founded the S.F. Bowser Company in 1885 on Creighton Avenue (the former police station was in the building until moving into the Rousseau Center). Bowser’s design for a water pump eventually led to the invention of the gasoline pump. To learn more about Sylvanus Bowser, go to our blog and read: http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2012/08/sylvanus-bowser.html

Joseph Brackenridge - Section J, Lot 86 Brackenridge was a judge, first appointed to the Courts of Common Pleas in 1857. He ran for re-election in 1858 and 1860 and served until 1864. Brackenridge had been a Circuit Court Judge in 1846 and was Allen County Prosecuting Attorney from 1846-1851.

Louis Curdes - Section I, Lot 21 Lt. Louis Curdes was Fort Wayne’s first WWII ace, piloting a P-38 Lockheed Lightning. On April 29, 1943, he was attacked by a dozen German planes. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was involved in other major battles, was shot down over Italy and taken prisoner, escaping and reaching Allied lines. He was then assigned to the Pacific theater and achieved the distinction of being only one of three airmen to destroy German, Italian and Japanese aircraft.

Captain Asa Fairfield - Section B, Lot 114 Much of the property south of Creighton was once owned by Fairfield as part of his farm. This property was annexed in 1894 and made a part of the city. Fairfield was a former sea captain who moved to Fort Wayne from Maine in 1835. He constructed the first boat to operate on the canal.

Oscar G. Foellinger - Section A, Lot 90 The Foellingers were one of the most influential German-American families in Fort Wayne in the 20^th century. Oscar became general manager of The News in 1906, after joining the company only twelve years prior as a junior accountant. Oscar died unexpectedly in 1936 on a hunting trip in Canada and his daughter Helene became publisher. The Foellinger Foundation is a lasting legacy of this family and a tribute to Oscar’s campaign to “Build Fort Wayne”.

Colonel David N. Foster -  Section G, Lot 178 Foster was one of the owners of the Foster Shirtwaist Factory. You can see a shirtwaist in our gallery Allen County Innovation. Foster and his brother Samuel donated the land where Foster Park now is located near Bluffton and Old Mill Roads between 1912 and 1913. This occurred as part of a move to improve the overall appearance of Fort Wayne and followed upon George Kessler’s plans for beautification.

John B. Franke - Section I, Lot 59 Franke was the founder of Perfection Biscuit Company in 1901. Franke donated the 80 acres of land on North Sherman for the park that bears his name.

Bert J. Griswold - Section I, Lot 34 If you’re a reader of the Old Fort News, the magazine published by the Historical Society, you’ve likely seen a Griswold cartoon. You’ll find a number of his illustrations in the two-part “History of Fort Wayne” that is for sale in our gift shop. Griswold was the author of “A Pictorial History of Fort Wayne” published in 1917. You can see his portrait in the stairwell at the History Center or on our blog at http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2014/09/portraits-in-grand-staircase.html

Olaf N. Guldlin - Section G, Lot 174 Guldlin Park is named for Olaf in one book and another says the park was named for his wife. Olaf outfitted the children’s playground at this park at  his own expense. The play equipment was later destroyed by river ice one winter. Olaf was married to Addie Bleekman Guldin, who was a major advocate for the establishment of playgrounds for children. See http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2013/04/signs-of-history-times.html and http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2011/03/addie-bleekman-guldlin-notable-reformer.html

Allen & Emerine Jane Hamilton - Section H, Lot 27 Allen was a sheriff in 1824 shortly after Allen County was formed. He formed a partnership with Chief Richardville and amassed a great deal of wealth through land purchases from Richardville’s land reserve. He became postmaster in 1828 and joined with other “civic leaders” in businesses. Hamilton is said to have fraudulently acquired some of his land. Emerine Hamilton, Allen’s wife, took an active interest in the promotion of women’s rights, particularly as they related to ownership of property and the abolishment of “legislative divorces” that allowed men to divorce their wives and take their possessions. She was a friend of Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony and pressed the issue of suffrage at First Presbyterian Church. At Emerine’s urging, Allen “introduced a motion in the Presbyterian assembly that ‘the ladies be allowed to vote on the question before the meeting’.” This was not a popular position to take at the time but the Hamiltons prevailed, women gained voting privileges and Elder James Robinson, who vehemently opposed the measure, left the congregation.

Samuel Hanna - Section B, Lots 60 & 61 Hanna was an influential businessman in the early days of Fort Wayne and opened a trading post at the corner of what would become Barr and Columbia Streets in 1819. He was a long-time investor in his adopted cit. You can see his portrait in the stairwell at the History Center or by reading http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2014/09/portraits-in-grand-staircase.html Hanna was highly in favor of a canal linking Fort Wayne with the Great Lakes. He became a canal commissioner in 1828. Land values in Fort Wayne increased and Hanna gained wealth by being a major purchaser of property. See also http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2013/07/samuel-hanna-founder-of-fort-wayne.html

William Rockhill - Section F, Lot 5 Rockhill was prominent in Fort Wayne in the same time period as Hanna. Rockhill’s land holdings eventually became the West Central neighborhood which at one time was the most prestigious spot in Fort Wayne in which to own a residence. The Rockhill House hotel, built in 1840, was considered the most elegant building in Fort Wayne during its heyday.

Henry W. Rudisill - Section H, Lot 1 Rudisill, a contemporary of Hanna and Rockhill,  built a flour mill on the St. Joseph River. He later constructed a major woolen mill for carding of wool into yarn. Rudisill was instrumental in urging John Barr to bring German immigrants to the city to work. In 1841, Rudisill and S.C. Freeman joined forces to create a regulator group after a number of citizens expressed frustration with the local marshal. The Wayne Guards were short-lived and just one of many groups that tried to bring law and order to the city.

Colonel Thomas Swinney - Section D, Lot 86 Swinney built a federal-style mansion near the St. Mary’s River which still stands today and is the home of The Settlers. The house was the original location of the Historical Society. Swinney is also remembered as a farmer, speculator and entrepreneur. The grounds of the Allen County Fair were once located on a part of Swinney’s farm property. See the blog post http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-short-historical-tour-of-central-fort.html and also http://historycenterfw.blogspot.com/2014/04/swinney-home.html

Information for this blog post comes from The History of Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana and Twentieth Century History of Fort Wayne by John Ankenbruck

The Extraordinary Hamilton Family

by Tom Castaldi

The Hamilton Family appeared in the northern Indiana frontier village of Fort Wayne in the early 1820s and soon began to emerge as one of the most extraordinary families in the community.  The original homestead occupied a vast area south of Lewis Street stretching across the three blocks between Calhoun and Lafayette streets.  After the Civil War, the family built a grand mansion and carriage house on the eastern end of the property and enclosed the area with fences and hedgerows.

Despite this physical separation from the daily bustle of Fort Wayne, by the end of the nineteenth century the Hamiltons had become one of the premier families of Fort Wayne.  From their position of wealth and privilege nearly every member of this remarkable family left the confines of the homestead to make outstanding contributions to the community, nation and even, on occasion, the world.

Allen Hamilton (1798-1864), the patriarch of the clan, came to the United States as an impoverished Irishman in 1817 and settled in the wilderness village of Fort Wayne in 1823.  Almost immediately he was elected the county’s first sheriff.  He made the family fortune, however, through a variety of typical pioneer enterprises, from milling grain and fur trading to land speculation.  It was in this last, especially as the executor of the will of the Chief of the Miami Indians, Pechewa (Jean Baptiste de Richardville), that Allen Hamilton established his family as the wealthiest in Northern Indiana.  For generations to come, the family would benefit from this substantial patrimony.

As one of the foremost citizens of the community, Hamilton recruited the town’s first schoolteachers, two New York women named Susan Man and Aleda Hubbard.  In 1828 Allen married the extraordinary Emerine Jane Holman (1810-1889), a southern Indiana woman whose father, Jesse Lynch Holman, was a judge on the Indiana Supreme Court, a United States District judge and one of the founders of both Franklin College and Indiana University.  Her brother, William Steele Holman, was a Democratic congressman for thirty-two years.  Emerine was the Matriarch of the Hamilton Homestead, an enclosed three square-block area Hamilton Homestead where at one time as many as seventeen cousins lived with their three sets of parents.

One of the distinguishing features of the mansion complex was the thousands of volumes of rare and contemporary books that filled the shelves of several libraries.  Emerine was a passionate reader who often lost herself in her books.  Her children and grandchildren remembered being enthralled by her stories and poems.  She was an introspective but generous woman with a great sense of responsibility.   Typically, she gave away as much as one-fifth of her yearly income to the public and needy causes and she paid special attention to the small African American community in Fort Wayne.  She also gave to the American Women Suffrage Association and counted among her friends and occasional house guests Susan B. Anthony and Frances Willard.  She was the founder of the first public library in Fort Wayne, which dedicated its first reading room in her memory.  The children of Allen and Emerine, especially, continued their parents’ devotion to study and achievement.

Andrew Holman (1834-1895), who succeeded his father as head of the clan in 1864, was an avid rare book collector (amassing more than 6,000 volumes, then the largest library of any kind in the city) and served two terms in Congress (1875-1879).  His brother, Montgomery, attended Princeton but left early to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War.  After the war, he led a Bohemian life in Germany where he met and married Gertrude Pond, a kindred spirit and daughter of a Wall Street broker.

Once settled back in Fort Wayne, Montgomery became involved in banking and politics; but he also took an intense interest in the education of children.  He and Gertrude disapproved of the standard public school curriculum and chose to educate their children at home, stressing language, literature, and history and encouraging them to learn by reading on their own, including pursuing research questions in the family’s ample library.  One friend recalls that it was not uncommon to come upon the Hamilton children all in a circle outdoors heartily enjoying themselves reading Dante’s Divine Comedy aloud in the original Italian.

Gertrude had a profound impact on the many young cousins who grew up and were educated in the Hamilton Homestead.  She fostered the notions of personal ambition and achievement through learning.  Her daughter, Dr. Alice Hamilton, later recalled her mother’s admonition: “There are two kinds of people, the ones who say ‘Somebody ought to do something about it, but why should it be I?’ and those who say ‘Somebody ought to do something about it, then why not I?'"

In this atmosphere young Hamiltons such as the sisters Alice, Edith and Norah and their cousins Agnes and Allen grew and matured into extraordinary people.  Norah (1873-1945) was an artist.  She had worked in Paris with James McNeil Whistler (whose father had been born at the original log garrison of Fort Wayne, which his father had built in the days of the Indian wars.)   She also pioneered in art education for immigrant children at Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago.

Norah’s sister, Edith (1867-1963), was the most precocious of them all.  A passionate reader, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College and studied classical literature in Germany at the turn of the last century.  She became headmistress of Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore and developed it into a rigorous college preparatory school for women before her retirement in 1922.  It was after she retired that Edith became an internationally recognized scholar in Greek civilization and culture.  Her works on ancient Greece are still required readings in many universities today, an achievement for which she was awarded by the people of Greece the only honorary Athenian citizenship ever granted an American.

Sister Alice (1869-1970) went to Fort Wayne College of Medicine before attending the University of Michigan School of Medicine, from which she graduated with an MD in 1893.  Alice, driven by her desire to reach out and help others less fortunate than she, joined the settlement house movement at Hull House in Chicago and worked among the immigrant neighborhoods for many years. 

Her profession, however, took her into the new field of industrial medicine, and there her meticulous skills as a scientist combined with her rare abilities to negotiate and convince made her a formidable force in changing the American factory setting to one more healthful for American workers.  In view of this, she was invited to become the first woman on Harvard’s Medical School faculty to be a specialist in the field of industrial toxicology.

Her activities also extended far beyond the classroom and laboratory.  Always deeply committed to the primacy of personal freedoms, she became an active part in the movement for American neutrality in World War I and an ardent anti-fascist.  After World War II she was a fervent opponent of Senator John McCarthy; in the 1960s. While in her nineties, she actively opposed the Vietnam War.  She died in 1970 at the age of 101.  The last project on which she was working was the problem of disposing nuclear waste. 

Their cousin, Agnes (1868-1961) was a life-long friend of Alice.  She also became intensely involved in Fort Wayne social reform issues at the turn of the century and into the 1930s.  She worked daily with immigrant mill workers in the Nebraska Neighborhood in a community center she called “The Noon Rest,” and she was the first president of the Fort Wayne branch of the YWCA.  She spent the final decades of her life serving others at the “The Lighthouse” the Presbyterian settlement house in   Philadelphia.

Her cousin Allen (1868-1960) became a physician and an outspoken advocate for women’s suffrage and then women’s rights in sex-segregated professions.  His own wife, Marian Walker, was a practicing physician and mother, a dual role for women to which even most activists did not ascribe very readily early in the twentieth century.  Among the later generations one of the outstanding members was Holman Hamilton (1910-1980) who became an award-winning history professor at the University of Kentucky.

Throughout the Hamilton family’s extraordinary career, the thread that tied the members together over the generations and gave them all-purpose was education.  It was this above all else that was shared, relished, cherished and used by each in a world which they strove to make a difference.

Originally published in Fort Wayne Magazine, “Along the Heritage Trail” with Tom Castaldi – March 2005, No. 10, pp. 40-41