Mooresville High School Gymnasium Dedication (1920)

Mooresville High School's gymnasium was dedicated 100 years ago today (on December 31, 1920), when the MHS boys basketball team played against Center Grove, and the Monrovia girls basketball team played against Center Grove.

Learn more about the century-old gymnasium from this superb handout by Susan Haynes, communications director for the Mooresville Consolidated School Corporation.  We have another blog post that explains where MHS basketball games were played before the gymnasium was built.

Martinsville Daily Reporter, Friday, December 31, 1920, page 4

Click the image below to read an article about the gymnasium in the Indianapolis News, January 1, 1921, page 13.

Click (Above) to Enlarge

A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

Did you (or any of your family) live through the earthquakes that struck Morgan County, Indiana on Saturday, November 9, 1968 and Monday, March 8, 1937? See the newspaper clippings below. (Articles courtesy of the Martinsville Daily Reporter, Monday, November 11, 1968, p. 6; and Tuesday, March 9, 1937, p. 3.)

 

 

Shade of a Haunting

In classical literature and folklore, a shade is a spirit or ghost of a dead person, living in the underworld.  Homer wrote of shades in The Odyssey, and they are spooky indeed.  Some such spirits of the deceased appear to reside in and around a home on appropriately-named Shady Lane, which is between Pennington and Rooker Roads a few miles southeast of Mooresville, Indiana.

Shady Lane Southeast of Mooresville, Indiana

(Courtesy of MapQuest)

(Click Images to Enlarge)

 

Satellite View of Shady Lane

(Courtesy of Google Maps) 

 

Although the occupants of an apparently haunted house on Shady Lane have asked that we not identify its location (or their names), I think we can provide an aerial photo without giving too much away.

 

Satellite View of Allegedly

Haunted House on Shady Lane

(Courtesy of Google Maps)

This case was investigated by paranormal researchers Karl C. B. Muilliwey and Lianed Tilloe (both pseudonyms), who, like the property owners, desire that their privacy be respected.  The incidents were reported as occurring between 2001-2003.

The first paranormal incident involved a teenage boy living at the house in question.  On several occasions, he clearly saw in his desktop computer monitor the reflection of a strangely-dressed man standing behind and to the teen's left.  The monitor was turned off each time, and the reflection appeared on the dark glass, much like old television screens when turned off.  No one else was in the teen's bedroom, and, on each occasion, he turned immediately to see whose reflection it was, but nobody was there.  The reflected personage appeared dressed in what the teen characterized as 19th century "Amish" clothing, although the details suggested Quaker clothes.  The teen insisted that he had been totally awake and aware of his surroundings--he had, in fact, been finishing homework for school.

This could, of course, be nothing more than a visual hallucination, although the teen witness has never experienced such "mirages" at any other time.  A reasonable explanation would be that the teen saw something reflected that he mistook for a person, but his careful observation of the details of the reflections' clothing suggests it was not a cursory misapprehension of a stationary, inert object.  The observer was insistent that it was a male individual dressed like a 19th century settler.

The father of the household had a more startling story.  One night he "awoke" to find himself lying in bed, cataleptic, with his eyes closed (he could feel the eyelids covering his eyes) but able to see his bedroom all around.  The room appeared lit in an electric blue glow, and the witness could feel the weight of his body lying senseless in bed while he slowly "looked" around the room without using his ordinary eyesight.  He could clearly see objects around the room--furniture in its correct locations, including items he had placed upon a dresser top and, surprisingly, items his wife had placed upon a table that he had not previously seen there.  When his "bluesight" reached the bedroom door, he was startled to "see" a man standing inside the doorway, looking directly at the father.  At first, the "doorway man" was looking toward another side of the room but suddenly turned to look directly at the father, as if he (the doorway man) had just realized that the father had seen him.  The doorway man was dressed in 19th century apparel typical of Quakers or Methodists.  He appeared curious but was not apparently hostile-looking.  The father, through an extreme exercise of determination, regained movement of his body, as he thrashed about in bed in an attempt to arise.  This movement awoke him--he became fully conscious and found the room completely dark, with only his wife asleep in bed next to him, and, of course, no ghost-man in the doorway.  Everything was placed in the room as it had appeared during the father's "blue vision."

What are we to make of these descriptions?  The father could easily have dreamt, or at least imagined, the entire episode.  This was, however, a unique experience--he has never had another, before or since--although he has had "lucid dreams" in which he seemed to have been visited by discarnate family members.  Neither the father nor his teen son are particularly imaginative fellows; nor is either prone to daydreaming or fantasizing.  They are down-to-earth types who trust in scientific explanations of the world.  Regardless, both described these experiences as feeling completely real--"as real as anything I've encountered in conscious, daily life," said the father--and both searched the house following their incidents, finding nothing untoward and no unaccounted people present.  When asked what their explanations of these events were, both admitted that they could offer no rational answers.  "It was strange and unsettling," said the teen son.  "If it's my imagination, I'd rather imagine something else."  The father was more insistent:  "It was real, whatever it was.  It happened, I'm convinced of that."

Paranormal literature is filled with sightings of discarnate entities residing in "haunted" houses or other places.  Reflections of such phantoms are often seen out of the corner of one's eye, often reflected in a shining surface, a mirror, a crystal, television screen, etc.  Apparently physical spirits are commonly observed in haunted environments.  Whether they are actual disembodied beings cannot be proven from witness testimonies, no matter how sincere and carefully made.  However, we should not rudely dismiss witness statements on the a priori notion that there is no such thing as ghosts, so the observations must be wrong.  Eighteenth-century scientists said there was no such thing as meteorites, because rocks could not fall out of the sky by themselves (rocks, after all, were always seen to sit firmly on the ground unless someone threw them into the air).  Lots of "impossible" things happen in our daily lives.  To a medieval citizen, it would be impossible to speak to someone on the other side of the planet using some "magical" device; however, 21st century citizens routinely do this through their telephones or computers.  Space travel was utter fiction as recently as the 1940s.  Major organ transplanting could not have been accomplished before the middle of the 20th century.  Who is to say that it is impossible that deceased people survive as spirits, that they therefore cannot be observed, and that communication between incarnate and discarnate humans cannot be achieved?  Careful investigation is more sound than mere dismissal.

If you're interested in similar paranormal encounters, your local public library should have books on the subject.  For those using the Dewey Decimal System, look under the call numbers 133, 398.2, and 398.47.  For libraries using topical classification systems, look under these subject headings:  ghosts; hauntings; haunted places; haunted houses; poltergeists; spiritualism; supernatural; out-of-body experiences; astral projection; spirit communication; seances; spirit photography; clairvoyance; psychic mediums; future life; near-death experiences; deathbed visions; telepathy; ESP; and parapsychology.

New, Improved Legacy Links (Mooresville Obituary Database)

 

Mooresville Public Library has its own obituary database called LEGACY LINKS, which includes over 20,000 obituaries, primarily of deceased residents of Mooresville and Morgan County, Indiana. This database has been redesigned (in Fall 2020) to provide a more user-friendly interface.

 

Updated Local History Slideshows

We have some updated links to slideshows for some of our local history highlights:

• Virtual Walking Tour of Historic Downtown Mooresville, Indiana;
• Mooresville, Indiana Local History Slideshow (plays like a video);
• Mooresville Public Library Centennial Celebration Slideshow

All are PowerPoint slideshows saved as either PDFs or video, so you should be able to view them all in your web browsers.

Mooresville's Honolulu Connection

The Oahu Publishing Company of 2108 Payne Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, offered music lessons and sold guitars between 1926 and 1985. Oahu's Honolulu Conservatory of Music (HCM) was franchised to provide music lessons in many cities and towns across the U.S., including Mooresville, Indiana.

HCM-Mooresville Studio (1939)

(click images to enlarge)

 

Here's a May 21, 1939 photo of the Mooresville Studio of the HCM. Unfortunately, none of the persons in this picture were identified. The photo was taken on the stage in the old Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church (later called First United Methodist Church) (1882-1995), which was located on the northeast corner of Indiana and Harrison Streets in downtown Mooresville (the building is now part of the Mooresville Government Center). The American flag was typically displayed above HCM students, as shown in this photo as well as in photos from various franchise studios (e.g., Tacoma, Washington's HCM studio, courtesy of the Tacoma Public Library).

Below are images of the:

• Honolulu Conservatory of Music logo (1940s). 
• Oahu piano & accordion course book (1950). 
• Oahu guitar brand (1930s). 
  

 

The history of Oahu Publishing was told in the book, Hawaiian Steel Guitar & Its Great Hawaiian Musicians (1996), by Ruymar, Lorene, & Boyd, Joe (Anaheim, CA: Centerstream Publications).

If you'd like a handout of this blog post, click here.

 

 

James Hill, Emma Torr, and the Indiana Y.P.R.C.

A few days ago, a patron donated to Mooresville Public Library's Indiana Room a framed membership certificate for 1904-1905 to the Young People's Reading Circle of Indiana (Y.P.R.C.).  The certificate belonged to James Hill and was signed by Emma Torr, teacher.  Who were these people?

James Hill's Y.P.R.C. membership certificate (1904-1905)

as it appeared framed and matted

(with decades-old dirt obscuring the glass)

(click images to enlarge)

 

James Hill's Y.P.R.C. membership certificate (1904-1905)

removed from its frame and digitally scanned

One of the first lessons in archival research is, if possible without damaging the artifact, to remove it from a frame to see what, if anything, is written on the back.  We hit paydirt, as someone (probably James Hill himself) wrote his name (including middle initial) and hometown on the back of the certificate.

James F. Hill of Belle Union, Indiana

(written on the back of the Y.P.R.C. membership certificate)

Belle Union is located in Jefferson Township, Putnam County, Indiana, about 14.3 miles west of Monrovia (Morgan County, Indiana) along State Road 42.  It was an unincorporated town, with a post office established in 1870 but discontinued in 1906.  The village's name was taken from the Bell family who resided there and from the church they attended, Union Valley Baptist Church (Baker, 1995).

Belle Union in Putnam County, just west of Morgan County

(courtesy of Google Maps)

 

James Frank Hill (1895-1970) grew up in Belle Union, and when he was age nine and ten, his teacher was Emma Torr (married name, Pitchford) (1883-1971).  Emma Mabel Pitchford (née Torr) was born and raised in Greencastle, Putnam County, Indiana, receiving her education from schools there.  She taught in the Putnam County school system.  In 1905 Emma married James Harley Pitchford  (1879-1948).  Emma died in Urbana, Illinois, in 1971.  The 1910 U.S. census shows Emma and James Pitchford living in Marion Township, Putnam County, Indiana.  The 1920, 1930, and 1940 U.S. censuses show the Pitchfords living in Greencastle, Indiana.  James Pitchford's 1942 WW II draft registration card lists their address as 425 North Chauncey, West Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana.  James Pitchford worked for the Hoover Vacuum Company through the Lafayette Carpet and Rug Shop.  In 1945, the couple had moved to Linden, Madison Township, Montgomery County, Indiana, where Emma continued to reside following her husband's death in 1948.  Emma was a member of the Linden-Kirkpatrick United Methodist Church and also belonged to the Greencastle Order of the Eastern Star for over half a century.

Emma Mabel Torr marriage record (1905)

 

Emma (Torr) Pitchford's Obituary

(Lafayette [Indiana] Journal & Courier, Friday, August 6, 1971, p. 6)

James Harley Pitchford's WWII draft registration card (1942)

 

James Frank Hill (1895-1970) was a nine- and ten-year-old student when he received his Young People's Reading Circle of Indiana (Y.P.R.C.) certificate in 1904-1905.  Apparently, he did not complete the four-year membership, which would have entitled him to a diploma from the Putnam County School Superintendent.

Y.P.R.C. members were expected to read a series of approved books that were perceived by the Indiana State Teachers Association to be of wholesome value.  According to the pamphlet entitled Concerning the History and Management of the Teachers' and Young People's Reading Circles of Indiana (1904-1905):

We regard the subject one of the highest importance.  To place the general reading of the half million of children of the public schools under competent guidance and control, even to a limited extent, would, in our judgment, be productive of most beneficial results.  To substitute for the trashy and often vicious reading matter which finds its way into the hands of children and youth a grade of literature at once sound in its contents, chaste in its language and imagery, and pure in its moral tone, is an end which may properly command the best and most earnest efforts of this Association, and of the teachers of Indiana.  To  your committee the enterprise proposed seems a means for accomplishing, in a measure, this highly desirable end.

The selected books were typical of the variety the Association sought to promote, as excerpts (below) from their pamphlet indicate.  These were the books that James F. Hill would have been reading while participating in the program.

(Below) Y.P.R.C. reading lists for third, fourth and fifth grade students

(during the 1904-1905 academic years)

The Y.P.R.C. was quite active in Putnam and Morgan Counties during 1904-1905, according to the pamphlet (see below).

The 1900 and 1910 U.S. censuses show that James F. Hill lived with his widowed mother, Mary E. Hill (born 1863), in Belle Union.  In 1918, James entered the armed forces and served in France.  At the time, he was, according to his World War I draft registration card, living at 153 North Marion Street in Martinsville, Morgan County, Indiana, and was employed by the Martinsville Auto Company.

 

World War I draft registration card

James F. Hill (1918)

A letter James Hill wrote home to his mother appeared in the Martinsville Daily Reporter, February 24, 1919, page one:

James F. Hill's late 1918 letter to his mother, Mary E. Hill

 

Following World War I, James worked as a truck driver for Standard Oil Company.  He subsequently entered the poultry business, as shown on his 1942 draft registration (below), from which he retired many years later.  James' World War II draft registration card indicated that he then lived at Rural Route #3, Martinsville, working for the Hatchery and Poultry Farm there.

James F. Hill's WW II draft registration card (1942)

 

The 1920 U.S. census shows James living with his mother in Martinsville.  The 1930 and 1940 U.S. censuses showed James still living in Martinsville but, now, married (in 1924) to Estelle C. Hill (née Clore) (1894-1989).  James and Estelle were living at 1441 South Ohio Street in Martinsville at the time of James' death.  The couple are buried together in the Greenlawn section of New South Park Cemetery in Martinsville.

Burial marker for James F. & Estelle C. Hill

James F. Hill funeral announcement

(Martinsville Daily Reporter, Tuesday, March 3, 1970, p. 1) 

 

James tragically died in a vehicular accident on Saturday, February 28, 1970 in Kentucky.  His sister-in-law was also killed and his wife injured.  The newspaper article stated that James and his parents, James and Mary Hurst Hill, had moved to Martinsville in 1903, but this is contradicted by the 1904-05 Y.P.R.C. certificate, which would suggest that he was attending Putnam County schools then.  Also, the 1900 & 1910 U.S. censuses clearly state that James and his mother were living in Putnam County at the time.  Further, the 1900 U.S. census listed James' mother Mary as a widow, and no male parent was shown as residing with them in the 1910 census, either.  James must have moved to Martinsville sometime after 1910 but before 1918, given the address shown on his 1918 draft registration.

 Martinsville Daily Reporter, Monday, March 2, 1970, pp. 1, 9

 

Using the Y.P.R.C. membership certificate as our starting point, and searching the resources available in the Mooresville Public Library Indiana Room, we were able to unlock James F. Hill's and Emma Torr Pitchford's personal histories, at least to some extent.  It's amazing what stories one may find from an ordinary, everyday document found among lost or forgotten belongings.

OTHER SOURCES:

Ancestry Library Edition (online), various documents.

Baker, Ronald L. (1995).  From Needmore to Prosperity: Hoosier Place Names in Folklore and History.  Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, pp. 63-64.

Concerning the History and Management of the Teachers' and Young People's Reading Circles of Indiana (1904-1905) (digitized copy available here).

Spooky Hoosier Books, Part BOO --er-- Two

We continue with our recommendations for ghostly tales from Hoosierland.  (See our previous post, too.)

Hoosier folklorist Tom Baker has published several haunted books, including the ever-popular Indiana Ghost Folklore (Arglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2009).  Baker includes stories from across the state, and besides ghosts and haunted placed, he includes werewolves and other monsters, lucid dreams, spirit possession, witches, and other supernatural offerings.  This is folklore, so the cases aren't presented as factual events; rather, they are legends that have grown over time in particular places or surrounding specific circumstances.  Did they actually happen?  That's beside the point.  In folklore, the legend is everything.  Baker deftly delivers riveting yarns that will fascinate readers.  Check it out from an Evergreen Indiana (E.I.) library near you (if you're a cardholder, that is).

 

When I was a student at Indiana University, its folklore department was recognized as the best in the world, or so I was informed by a folklore major who had travelled from Israel to study there.  I had (and have) no reason to doubt the academic strength of the I.U. folklore department, as I discovered first-hand when I read Linda Dégh's classic treatise, Indiana Folklore:  A Reader (Bloomington, IN:  Indiana University Press, 1980), available to checkout from Evergreen Indiana.  It is a scholastic masterpiece.  The book includes a superb cross-section of Hoosier folklore, but for our purposes, its accounts of magic, horror, ghosts, and haunted places make this an essential read for anyone interested in the supernatural.  After reading it, I regretted not having taken any undergraduate folklore courses at I.U.  I even reflected that it would have been a more interesting major for me than the one in which I earned my bachelor degree (I won't tell tales out-of-school, so to speak, which means I won't divulge what my major was.  Anyway, I'm old now, and it's possible I've forgotten.  Since my B.A., or, as I.U. shows it, my A.B., theoretically helped me gain admission to a top I.U. graduate program, from which I earned a doctorate, I don't have too many regrets.)

 

 

Speaking of Indiana University (Bloomington), Kat Klockow compiled a collection of ghost stories from Monroe County (and elsewhere in Indiana) that focuses upon I.U.  Like most good folklore, the tales include horror (the "McNutt hatchet man," for instance) as well as more traditional supernatural activities, ghosts, or haunted places.  A few of these I had heard as a student over forty years ago, but most were new to me.  They'll raise the hair on your neck, I'll wager.  Evergreen Indiana cardholders can checkout a copy.

Mark Marimen is a prolific writer of Hoosier hauntings, and his books explore the gamut of Indiana-related supernatural stories.  They remain some of the most popular books on the subject at Mooresville Public Library.  If you're an Evergreen Indiana cardholder, you'll have a field day checking them out and reading them.

 

Nicole R. Kobrowski has written several haunted Indiana books, of which her Encyclopedia of Haunted Indiana (Westfield, Indiana : Unseenpress, 1st edition, 2008--see also the updated 2017 edition) gathers statewide stories of the macabre, organized by location.   See the Evergreen Indiana catalog for a listing of Kobrowski's titles available to checkout.

 

Another popular author of Indiana hauntings is Wanda Lou Willis, whose Haunted Hoosier Trails (Cincinnati, Ohio : Clerisy Press, 2002) and More Haunted Hoosier Trails (Cincinnati, Ohio : Emmis Books, 2004) are perennial favorites for ghost aficionados.  Find these titles here in Evergreen Indiana.

Edrick Thay's Ghost Stories of Indiana (Edmonton, AB, Canada : Ghost House Books, 2001) includes a wide range of haunted places (houses, public places, universities, historical landmarks, bridges and tunnels, cemeteries, and legendary ghouls).  Evergreen Indiana cardholders can check it out here.

Tom Baker and Jonathan Tichenal teamed-up to present hauntings from Indianapolis (and other Hoosier locales) in another excellent survey of the supernatural.  E. I. Cardholders can  check it out.

I was born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, but I hadn't heard of most of these haunted tales compiled by Dorothy Salvo Davis and W. C. Madden in Haunted Lafayette (Charleston, SC : Haunted America, 2009).  Recognizing the locations helped bring to life the scary stories from Tippecanoe County (and nearby).  Find it here in E.I.

 

 

  

S. E. Schlosser retells several supernatural stories in Spooky Indiana (Guilford, CT : Globe Pequot Press, 2012).  Schlosser garnishes these folklore favorites with some spine-tingling spice.  Find it here in E.I.

 

 

K. T. MacRorie's Hoosier Hauntings (Grand Rapids, MI : Thunder Bay Press, 1997) is an earlier compilation of supernatural and paranormal tales that will send shivers down readers' backs.  It's here in E.I.

 

There are many, many more spooky Indiana books out there, but these will get you started.  Others are easily found in your libraries' catalogs or local (or online) booksellers.  Let's end on a terrible pun:  Put the BOO in books this Halloween season.  There's nothing quite as invigorating as a good ghost story, especially when so many may be found in your own state.