Lincoln Highway Celebrations

by Nancy McCammon-Hansen


When you live in the Midwest or on the Great Plains, travel via automobile is something you take for granted. If you want to go from Point A to Point B, you hop in the car and go. If you’re like many of us who grew up in the last century, you probably traveled often on the Lincoln Highway.

Next week, the Lincoln Highway Centennial Celebration begins the culmination of a year of events celebrating the history of America’s first paved transcontinental highway. Are we Americans the only ones who celebrate roads?

Beginning June 21 in Times Square in New York City and June 22 in San Francisco, 270 people travelling in 140 vehicles—many of them “vintage” cars—will trek across our country via the Lincoln Highway to meet up June 30 at the Archway Museum in my hometown of Kearney, NE. The Archway spans Interstate 80 and celebrates travel in our nation. If you’re crossing Nebraska on your way west, you should stop and take a look around. 

On June 26, the westward group will begin the day in Mansfield, OH and end in South Bend, lunching in Elkhart at the Manufactured Housing Hall of Fame and having dinner at the Studebaker Museum (see my blog post from last fall—it’s a great day trip from Fort Wayne).

We owe the Lincoln Highway in large part to the founder of the Indy 500. Carl Fisher was well aware that the poor condition of roads outside towns was not conducive to travel other than by train. Brick was the preferred method of paving streets in towns but asphalt and concrete had yet to be used as paving material. Fisher decided in 1912 that America needed a transcontinental highway. He’d also go on to turn a swamp into the beach resort of Miami Beach.

From the website: http://lincolnhighway.jameslin.name/history/part1.html:

“He called his idea the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway. The gravelled road would cost about ten million dollars, low even for 1912. Communities along the route would provide the equipment and in return would receive free materials and a place along America's first transcontinental highway. The highway would be finished in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and would run from the exposition's host, San Francisco, to New York City.

“To fund this scheme, he asked for cash donations from auto manufacturers and accessory companies of 1 percent of their revenues. The public could become members of the highway organization for five dollars.

“Fisher knew that success of the ten-million dollar fund would depend on the support of Henry Ford. Unfortunately, even after many persuasive attempts by friends and close associates, Ford would not support the project. The public would never learn to fund good roads if private industry did it for them, he reasoned. This put the fund in jeopardy; there would not be enough time or money to finish the highway by the exposition in 1915. However, now that the country had become so enthusiastic about the highway, Fisher would not give up. Two men from the automobile industry who pledged money to Fisher's idea would later play major roles in the highway's development: Frank Seiberling, president of Goodyear, and Henry Joy, president of the Packard Motor Car Company.”

Joy decided the highway should be named for Abraham Lincoln, thinking that a good road across the nation was a fitting tribute to the Civil War president and that the patriotic feel to the name would help with fund raising. 

“He wrote Fisher urging him to write a letter of protest to Congress, which was considering spending $1.7 million on a marble memorial to Lincoln… Fisher asked Joy if he wanted to be involved directly with the highway project. At first, Joy was hesitant, but soon he wholeheartedly supported the project and became the primary spokesman for the highway.”

You can learn more about the Lincoln Highway through Indiana via the website: http://indianalincolnhighway.org/

The highway took several routes through Indiana over the late teens and early 1920s and today you can see signs along streets such as State to indicate the later route through Fort Wayne.

Traveling the Lincoln Highway gets you off the Interstate and into parts of our country some seldom see. If you’re looking for a good road trip, consider this route. You’ll be glad you did!

The Beginnings of the Portage to the Wabash River

by Tom Castaldi

One of the principal reasons there is a community in Fort Wayne today is the “portage.”  Not far from our Indiana city, to the west across the river, was the eastern entrance to this important feature.

The portage, a French term for “carrying place,” denotes the route where early travelers carried their canoes from one river over to another.  At Fort Wayne the portage connects the Saint Mary’s River and the Maumee Valley to the Wabash River and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers beyond.  It is the only place where travelers by boat had to go overland when making their way from the Great Lakes to the great western rivers leading to the Gulf of Mexico.

The eastern terminus of the portage was located in today’s West Swinney Park where there were many campsites.  The portage route followed the high ground away from the St. Mary’s River, along Portage Boulevard and through the Fort Wayne County Club grounds, southwest past Fox Island Park to a site near Ellison Road in today’s Aboite Township, where the Little Wabash River begins to make its way to the Wabash.

Usually the route was about nine miles long.  Often after the spring floods, however, there would be water all the way to the Wabash; during drought the carrying distance might be as long as twenty-five miles.  The portage was well marked by paths and wagon tracks and was elaborately developed with bridges and causeways to help travelers in the crossing, although there were frequent complaints about beavers damming the Little Wabash River.

The portage made the Miami wealthy, for the tribe levied a charge on those who used it.  Even in the earliest accounts from the 1690s, the portage was referred to by the French as a “Toll Road Swamp.” Through their control of the portage, the Miami enjoyed power and prestige in the region.  They also attracted attention, first from the French and the English who sought to dominate the Indians through their influence, and then from the Americans, who sought to conquer the area and establish their own control over the vital crossroads.

The importance of the portage declined sharply with the coming of the Wabash and Erie Canal in the 1830s.  By the time of the Civil War, it was little more than a trail through the western marshes of the country; and with the great drainage projects of the 1890s, it virtually disappeared, leaving behind the community to which it gave birth.

 Originally published in Fort Wayne Magazine, “Along the Heritage Trail with Tom Castaldi” – June 2005 No 13, p. 37

 

For a map of the portage, please see:

http://acfwhs-collections.lib.ipfw.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/cc_acfwhs&CISOPTR=372&REC=1

Liturgical Fashion

by Nancy McCammon-Hansen

John Beatty is an interesting guy. The first time I met him he told me we had a common ancestor. Since I did not know him, I was a little surprised that he knew this tidbit of information but now that we’ve known each other for seven years, his knowledge of my family tree makes far more sense. John and I are both Episcopalians and both interested in history. In our church on West Berry Street, John maintains not only the historical records for our congregation but also for the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana. Recently, he pulled some artifacts to show to a genealogy group meeting at the Allen County Public Library, where he works in the Genealogy Center. When the photos popped up on Facebook, I saw the opportunity for a blog post.

Genealogists use church records of baptisms, confirmations, marriages and deaths when researching a family tree. If you do a “Google Search” of genealogy + church records, quite a few sources pop up that you can utilize in your search for your ancestors. Many parish records from English churches are now online or will be soon. John has copied a number of parish records from throughout the Episcopal Church in Northern Indiana and given copies back to the churches and to the ACPL Genealogy Center while maintaining the originals in the space our church has allotted for the archiving work he does.

The parish records are interesting but so are particular artifacts such as photos and vestments.

Examples of some of the records are shown here. The second photo is of baptismal records and the third photo is of Vestry minutes. The book with the red binding in the bottom photo is a Bible.

On the day I visited the “archive room”, John showed me a cope worn by Episcopal Bishop John Hazen White.

Bishop White is depicted in the top photo. In the second photo, John holds a cope used by Bishop White and in the bottom photo you can see detail of the back of the cope.

White was consecrated on May 1, 1895. The Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana had not been created as yet—Indiana parishes and missions were all a part of one diocese with 15 of those parishes in the northern part of the state. White had headed Seabury Divinity School prior to becoming bishop. Seabury would later merge with Western Theological Seminary to become Seabury-Western, an Episcopal seminary located in Evanston, IL.

In 1898, the Diocese of Northern Indiana was formed after a vote at the annual convention. Bishop White had the option to remain in Indianapolis as Bishop of the Diocese of Indiana or to move to the new diocese, which he did. That diocese took as its “see city” Michigan City. At that time, Fort Wayne had only one Episcopal Church, Trinity, formed in 1844. 

In 1918, the name of the diocese was changed to the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana. Bishop White had left the episcopate (bishop’s office) and become the rector of St. James in South Bend. The Diocese of Northern Indiana was re-organized in 1921. In 1925, The Rev. Frances Campbell Grey was elected bishop.

The vestments shown here were a gift of Bishop Grey and date from the time of John Marshall. The pelican is a symbol of self-sacrifice.

“The symbolism of the mother pelican feeding her little baby pelicans is rooted in an ancient legend which preceded Christianity. The legend was that in time of famine, the mother pelican wounded herself, striking her breast with the beak to feed her young with her blood to prevent starvation. Another version of the legend was that the mother fed her dying young with her blood to revive them from death, but in turn lost her own life.

“Given this tradition, one can easily see why the early Christians adapted it to symbolize our Lord, Jesus Christ. The pelican symbolizes Jesus our Redeemer who gave His life for our redemption and the atonement He made through His passion and death. We were dead to sin and have found new life through the Blood of Christ. Moreover, Jesus continues to feed us with His body and blood in the holy Eucharist.”

(The Symbolism of the Pelican by FR. WILLIAM SAUNDERS, http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0682.html)

Other vestments are also housed in the diocesan archives.

The miter, or hat, is worn by a bishop. “The mitre is perhaps the most distinctive symbol of the bishop. Although there is some dispute about how longstanding the tradition is (some claim it is from the time of the apostles) there is no question that mitres have been worn by bishops for at least 1,000 years. Mitres are usually white, gold or red, sometimes quite beautifully embroidered, and have two tails, called ‘lappets’, that fall from the back. The shape of the mitre represents the tongues of fire that rested on the heads of the disciples gathered in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost, when God sent the Holy Spirit to the Church. A bishop receives a mitre during his or her ordination as a bishop, when the Holy Spirit comes to the new bishop in the same way that the Holy Spirit came to the first disciples. …during church services, bishops take their mitres on and off, depending on what is happening in the liturgy. For instance, the bishop always removes the mitre when offering prayer to God.

“The cope, shaped like an outdoor overcoat worn during ancient Roman times, is a cape or cloak that is semicircular, richly ornamented, with a clasp in front and a hood in back. It is worn over the alb and stole. The bishop usually wears a cope at non-Eucharistic liturgies in place of the chasuble. He or she may wear a cope at the Eucharist during the entrance procession and even during the liturgy of the word. Bishops sometimes wear it when performing Episcopal functions such as ordinations and confirmations.”

From http://www.nwtdiocese.org/people/bishop-mayer/bishops-vestments.html which lists as sources including the Episcopal Dictionary of the Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, www.askthepriest.org., Texas Episcopalian November 2008, www.wikipedia.org and The College for Bishops.

The book “Our Heritage: a History of the First Seventy-Five Years of the Diocese of Northern Indiana” by Robert J. Center, 1973, was also used as a source for this blog post.

Special thanks to John Beatty for sharing this information with us.