Watch this Mooresville Moments local history video (below) to learn about George R. Scruggs' dry goods store, which was located in downtown Mooresville, Indiana at 9-11-13 East Main Street from 1891-1918. We also have a digitized handout and a flashcard available that review the store's history.
The 2018 Old Settlers Festival will be held at Pioneer Park (1101 Indianapolis Road) in Mooresville, Indiana on Sunday-Monday-Tuesday, August 5-6-7, 2018. The festival opens at the park at 3 p.m. on Sunday, and opens at 5 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday.
Preceding the festival will be the Old Settlers Parade through downtown Mooresville at 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 5, 2018.
This year, there will also be events held on Saturday, August 4, 2018, as mentioned in a newspaper article by Randy Haymaker (Mooresville-Decatur Times, Saturday, July 28, 2018), reprinted below:
Old Settlers update
From Randy Haymaker
Updated
MOORESVILLE — Mooresville Old Settlers Queen candidates Brianna Card and Brooke Uhls will finish their fundraising events today.
One of them will be crowned Queen of the event Sunday, August 5 at Pioneer Park.
The 147th rendition of the Mooresville Old Settlers picnic and celebration will begin a day earlier than normal this year, with the Delta Theta Tau Flagtown 5 and 10 K race/walk at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 4, and an acoustical music festival from 1 to 8 p.m. the same day — both at Pioneer Park. Food service will be available.
The traditional outing is Aug. 5 to 7 at Pioneer Park on Indianapolis Road.
The event began in 1870, when town founder Samuel Moore donated five acres to hold a reunion of pioneers. With the exception of years during World War II, the festival has provided entertainment, food, fellowship and fun ever since.
Mooresville Lions Club has managed the event since just after World War II, when returning veterans restarted the festival. Profits from ride tickets and booth rentals are shared with the Mooresville park system and the remainder goes to charity throughout the year. No money is retained for club events, which are paid for through dues.
Many other community and school groups participate and use the festival to raise money for charitable causes. Area businesses and agencies also provide marketing and information booths.
The festival begins at Mooresville High School with the Veterans Parade at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 5. Rides open following the parade, and the Kappa Kappa Sigma Queen coronation is at 7 p.m. The project raises money through a pancake breakfast, spaghetti dinner, bake sales and other events.
The first contest was in 1964, and over the years, $100,000 was raised to help buy equipment for the Pioneer Park swimming pool.
Entertainment on the stage begins right after the parade Sunday, followed by the queen contest and then music until 11 p.m. Performing Sunday will be the Spring Hill Christian Center, followed by Jim Harris’ band at 4 p.m. Mike Whitlock’s band will perform after the Queen Contest.
Music begins Monday night at 6 p.m. with Steve Byrd, and the Free Wheeling America Band will hit the stage at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
Discount carnival ride tickets, saving up to 30 percent of cost, are available at the main, Monrovia, Plainfield and Heartland Crossing branches of Citizens Bank, Allen’s Barber Shop, the office of Dr. Phil Wright, Hong Kong restaurant, Village Barber Shop and the Pioneer Park office.
Mooresville resident Martin Van Zant kindly emailed the following photograph showing a medicine bottle that native Mooresvillian William L. Thompson, M.D. (1866-1932), prescribed to a patient in the early 20th century.
Click all photos to enlarge
As the label reveals, Doctor Thompson prescribed a remedy for gastrointestinal distress ("Two teaspoonfuls [in] water every two hours until bowels are qu[iet]" is our best guess). Perhaps the patient was experiencing severe G.I. distress due to chronic constipation, and the prescription was meant to address that. Conversely, the patient may have had the opposite difficulty, and perhaps the bottle's contents were an anti-diarrheal or anti-gas treatment. In any event, we hope the patient found relief from his or her ailment. Although Mr. Van Zant discovered this particular bottle in a shop, he said that, as an avid antique bottle collector, he has found many bottles (and other items) in the pits of old outhouses. He is an expert on the subject and has an extensive collection.
Before indoor plumbing and municipal trash collection, it was common for Americans to dispose of all manner of household objects in their outdoor toilets. Glass bottles were often discarded in this fashion. When one pit filled with waste products (both organic and manufactured), poorer people usually filled it in and dug another privy hole, while more affluent folks simply paid to have the pits scooped. Items that sank below the dredging level would remain to be later discovered.
A typical outhouse (ca. 1920)
Plates found in an excavated privy pit
Cross-section reveals buried treasures at the bottom of a privy pit
Collectors of rare household objects, such as pioneer bottles, cups, dishes, utensils, tools, and other historically curious objects search outhouse pits or other trash repositories as carefully as archaeologists excavate living and working areas in buried structures. There is a veritable treasury of antique household items awaiting discovery at the bottom of pioneers' outdoor toilets.
Outhouses in Mooresville (ca. 1880)
A Mooresville Academy and DePauw University graduate, William Lee Thompson earned his medical doctorate in 1889 from Indiana Central Medical College. Dr. Thompson practiced medicine in Mooresville for over 43 years. He drove an average of 100 miles a day to make house calls and delivered over 3,000 babies.
Dr. William L. Thompson, M.D. (1866-1932) (Flashcard courtesy of Mooresville Public library)
Dr. William L. Thompson, M.D. (1920)
(Photo by Manley Brown)
Mooresville Moments #28
William Lee Thompson, M.D.
by Mooresville Public Library
(Click Above to Play Video)
Mooresville Public Library has a few of Doctor Thompson's medical treatises and an amputation surgical kit (complete with various bone saws, probes, and blood-soaked tourniquet) he probably acquired during his medical school or residency days (see photos below).
Dr. Thompson's obituary record is in the library's digitized Legacy Links database.
Dr. Valentine Magenheimer (left) and Dr. William L. Thompson (right) pose (ca. 1909) outside their offices (at 31 South Indiana Street in downtown Mooresville) in (or next to) the automobiles they used to make house calls in Mooresville and the surrounding area. (Photo by J. P. Calvert)
Advertisement from the 1917 Mooresville High School yearbook,
The '17 Packet
Dr. Thompson served on the Mooresville School Board (from the 1909 Mooresville High School Senior Annual [yearbook])
From the Mooresville Times, April 18, 1974, page 17
William L. Thompson's obituary
(Mooresville Times, February 18, 1932)
Indianapolis News (undated, ca. December 10, 1920)
The latest installment of Mooresville Moments, a local history video series, looks at the Comer & Scearce Lumber Company, which later became Newcomer Lumber Co., in Mooresville.
Comer & Scearce (Newcomer) Lumber
(Mooresville Moments #11), by Mooresville Public Library
On another blog, I recently posted an article discussing local history posting to Facebook as a means of expanding libraries' (in particular, Mooresville Public Library's) "reach" to patrons. Since more people follow the library's Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds than read this blog, it seemed like an excellent vehicle to promote the history of Mooresville and vicinity.
Results have been excellent. MPL's Facebook "reach" for April and May, 2018 was considerably higher than previous months. (Click on the graphic below to enlarge.)
MPL 2018 Facebook "Reach" Statistics
The only content change on MPL's Facebook feed during April and May has been the addition of daily local history quizzes, so the jump in readership may safely be attributed to that material.
MPL's Twitter and YouTube statistics are relatively consistent; the local history quizzes have not been featured on these social media (although both offer other local history content).
Local historians (particularly those employed by libraries) may find non-blogging social media to be an important tool to reach their patrons. Our experience has been that blogs (such as this one) are declining in readership due to the increasing popularity of other social media platforms (Facebook Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.). Consequently, I don't post as much to blogs as I once did. However, I still believe blogs serve a useful informational purpose and so will continue to occasionally use them. UPDATE (JUNE 27, 2018): Anthony Woodside wrote a nice articlein the Mooresville-Decatur Times (Wednesday, June 27, 2018, pages A1-A2) about the library's local history quizzes on Facebook and Twitter.
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