By Connie Zeigler
Since this is the Christmas edition of Urban Times, it seems fitting to fill this month’s column with some historic
Connie Zeigler is a resident of Fountain Square who holds a master’s degree in history. She is an architectural historian who operates a green preservation consulting business. C Resources, Inc. offers a variety of writing services as well as historic research, national register nominations and preservation planning.
stocking stuffers. These sugar plum bits of Indianapolis history, acquired over a couple of decades of researching and writing about our city, are a few of my favorite historic stocking stuffers.
◊ Indianapolis has never been the site of a real battle in time of war, but there are two historic battles that occurred here. The first centered around the state Democratic convention in 1863, shortly after Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The anti-war Democrats had a number of run-ins with soldiers on leave and those mustering near the Statehouse. As delegates from the convention were leaving town on May 20, union soldiers stopped their trains near Pogue’s Run aiming to search the Democratic dissenters for weapons.
In the volatile time of the Civil War many of the Democrats were, in fact, armed – and they began to jettison their guns and knives out the trains’ windows into the creek. After the fact, the estimates of the number of weapons found in the water ranged from 500 to 2,000. Republicans claimed the search prevented potentially treasonous actions by the Democrats. Democrats accused Republicans of violating their constitutional rights. The incident became known as the Battle of Pogue’s Run, though nary a shot was fired.
◊ A bit further east and a decade or so later, in 1877, a dispute over a newly elected school board in Irvington resulted in the old board members, including George W. Julian, one of the founders of the community, refusing to step down from their positions. The newly elected members formed a rival board and fired Lydia Putnam, the school teacher hired by the old board. The fiery Putnam refused to accept her firing and showed up on the first day of school only to be denied access by the new school board.
When the teacher refused to leave the building, the frustrated school board members forcibly removed her. As Indianapolis historian Jacob Piatt Dunn recounted the story, two of the board members grabbed the teacher by the arms and pulled while the third one “brought up the rear boosting with his knee.” Not to be bullied, Putnam re-entered from a rear door and but once again pried loose and carried out. Putnam later won an $800 claim against the men for damages. The “Indianapolis News” dubbed the event the “Irvington War.”
◊ The “Foreign District” was an area just south and a bit east of Downtown Indianapolis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The few square blocks – where the present-day Downtown post office is located – once held several saloons, each owned by and catering to members of specific ethnic groups. The area also had a number of boarding houses and several nickel theaters, which troubled social workers from Indiana University who studied the behavior of residents in the Foreign District. They were disturbed that these immigrants were wasting money on cheap, risqué, entertainments rather than staying home and becoming better citizens.
◊ In the early decades of the 20th century, Indianapolis went on the air with its first radio station. Station 9ZJ signed on in 1921 with an address by Mayor Lew Shank. Shank went on to become a vaudevillian broadcaster from owner Francis Hamilton’s garage at 2011 N. Alabama St. 9ZJ merged with The Indianapolis News in 1922. That year the U.S. Department of Commerce assigned call letters to all radio stations. Stations operating east of the Mississippi got names beginning with “W.” 9ZJ became WLK until it closed in 1923. Next in line was WFBM, opened in 1924 and still in existence, now known as WNDE. Indianapolis’s first musical radio program featured zither solos by J. Fremont Frey on 9ZJ.
◊ Indianapolis’s jazz history is rich. A series of oral histories with local jazz musicians revealed a lot about a musical city that no longer exists. There were clubs on Indiana Avenue that were open 24-hours a day. Once, when a murder occurred inside one of the clubs, the police shut it down, but since they’d never closed before the owners had to have locks installed in order to lock the doors, according to Jimmy Coe, the now-deceased band leader and saxophone player.
One of the surprising bits of information about the Indianapolis jazz scene was that it was happening all over the city. Jim Edison, a local band leader and trombone player, recalled one day in which he played second-chair for the Indianapolis symphony, worked an afternoon gig with the Hampton family band, and finished his day playing with a “thump bass” player at the opening of a gravel-lot car dealership.
Former jazz chanteuse Flo Garvin Deakyne (also now deceased) recalled the vast array of piano bars on Meridian Street where she played and sang, but wasn’t allowed to mingle with the all-white customers in the 1950s. Flo claimed to be the city’s “first black blonde.”
Flo Garvin Deakyne became friends with the former movie star, Frances Farmer, who moved to Indianapolis in the 1950s to host an afternoon movie show called “Frances Farmer Presents” on WFBM television. The station fired the troubled Farmer twice for erratic behavior and drunkenness. Eventually she opened a home-decorating business on College Avenue and toward the end of her life wrote her autobiography, which later became a film starring Jessica Lange.
Like all cities, Indianapolis has a million (or more) stories. These are a few that surprised or entertained me when I learned of them. Stuff your stocking with as many as you wish.
Connie Zeigler is president and owner of C. Resources, Inc. Connie is a writer and a historic preservationist who consults on preservation and greening of historic buildings. She lives in Fountain Square and blogs at INArchitecture on cresourcesinc.blogspot.com.
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I believe that Francis Farmer had been subjected to a lobotomy which may have explained the erratic behavior. Lew Shank’s wife, Sarah, was a member of the Park Board and was later honored by have Sarah Shank Golf Course named for her. It is one of the more unfortunate names for a golf course and the source of much comment by out-of-towners when first learning of it. I have been particularly amused by the name Pogue’s Run. While it was named for an early settler and original county commissioner,in the Marines a pogue is someone who has a very easy job requiring very little exertion ie. the company clerk is often referred to as an “office pogue” or even “the office pinky.” Candy is called “Poguey bait” because is was used to lure potential cabin boys onto sailing ships for not all together licit purposes.