One of my longtime goals, finally realized this weekend, was to dredge up the old cabinet I found last year in the basement at Dr. Hackley’s, get it upstairs and brushed off, and see what it was all about.
The cabinet is in two pieces, and it wasn’t clear until it was moved out of the cellar that the two went together. But indeed they do, as can easily be seen in the picture above, which was taken in the kitchen at the Hackley place. Note the old kitchen wallpaper.
We got the roof on today. Still some work to do—the chimney needs flashed yet, and there’s still nothing where the “soffit” would go.
The roofing crew was pretty much ready to never see the house again when they got finished. While the exact quote escapes me, it went something along the lines of “if there had been one single piece of that roof on either side that was square, it would have been a lot easier.”
I am going to reprint here what has become a valuable document for me in my efforts to paint an accurate picture of Medaryville’s past. In 1965, Flossie (Low) Poisel, who grew up in Medaryville, wrote the piece below for the local paper, The Medaryville Herald. It is a memory-generated “walking tour” of the town, beginning on the north side of Main Street at the railroad tracks and proceeding east, then crossing the street, coming back all the way west along the south side of Main Street, then crossing and going back east again, finishing up at the point of beginning. Later on I’ll have some commentary based on this recollection.
Hopefully before the weekend is out, the pile of OSB and roll roofing that can be barely seen in the shadows off to the right of this picture will replace the crappy-looking (and leaky) tarp that we have up there now acting as temporary cover for this building.
The building, known as a drummer’s house, has been associated with the hotel pretty much since the beginning, and there are some intriguing clues, though none of them what could be called airtight, as to just when this building was built, and by whom.
Store expansion brought brother Lee into the business
A note here about Frank Baughman’s store, and his family. I now have a better “after” picture (after the store was expanded), as well as information that fills in some of the timeline of his tenure as a Medaryville businessman.
As the caption in this picture says, by 1953 this building (as later remodeled) was known as Clark’s Drugstore. Later, it was the home of a restaurant owned by Marjorie Fulmer, known as “Marjorie’s Potpourri.” It was razed, unfortunately, and the new library sits on the site of both parts of the store.
Note that the building in the picture above is the western part of the “double” store shown on the next page and elsewhere. The new (east) part left the world first, in a fire on January 12, 1977. That fire is described in detail in the sesquicentennial book.
I spent a few hours today at the courthouse and library in Winamac. The library has an extensive genealogy section, and I found a few things there that I didn’t know existed.
The courthouse visit was fruitful: Joseph B. Shultz bought his first parcel of land in Pulaski county from none other than the famous Turpie Brothers, of Monon! They had extensive landholdings in White County, and were written up in the old White/Pulaski county history book. Francis Horner bought his first piece of Pulaski county land from J.L. Stump. Dr. Elston bought some of his farm property from Henry Ballard. I’m still sifting and sorting, and I’ll definitely need to make a trip back once I digest all of it.
The story of the 1901 remodel by local carpenter Henry Madaus.
One of the challenges presented by very old buildings is figuring out just who did what to them, and when, not to mention why and how. This article presents some of my research into the history of the hotel; hopefully it will illustrate how clues are used to put together a story, too.
This picture, taken from the 1953 Centennial book, shows a view down Main Street looking east. It is captioned as having been taken in 1902. I don’t think this is correct.
Would this make more sense than maintaining pictures locally?
After studying what others are doing with the Radiant CMS, I wonder if it would make more sense for the pictures to live on a high-functioning external site, as opposed to having to maintain those sorts of things here locally. So clicking the photo below will take you to a test page I just put up at flickr.com
I’m open to comments on this: info@oldmedaryville.org
Dr. Hackley came to Medaryville from Wolcott sometime around 1900. He bought the Francis C. Horner house, which was built in the 1870s. It was known as “Father Horner’s” in the recollection of Main Street, 1887 by Flossie Poisel. It is the building on the right in the picture, taken ca 1908. It is thought to be Dr. Hackley standing in front of his office on the newly-constructed brick street.. One of the trees in the picture stood until last year;. It was removed after having been struck by a car.
I can’t decide whether it’s exhilirating or depressing that so much time is spent chasing tiny little clues to how things went down ere so long ago. Both, I guess. There are a lot of wrong turns. But occasionally there is a connection, and all the work is justified.
The official Medaryville sesquicentennial book, published in 2003, doesn’t have any chapters, page numbers, or any other means of navigation. Just page after page after page of stuff, with more stuff after it. A few minutes ago I realized that I have now TWICE read some of these same facts, missed their significance, and then later on, book closed and no markers left within, I suddenly realize a connection. Then what?
The Pulaski County Library in Winamac has a genealogy section, and in it is a book of very old newspaper clippings. There are a number of them from Medaryville, although there are huge gaps in the record. I have made several trips there and tried to scan for things that are of special interest, or have some connection to the Old Medary Ville properties, relatives, etc.
One of those clippings reports a fire that took out, amongst many other buildings, “Cyrus Posey’s store, and home.”
This story always causes some double-takes when it is told, and I think it’s an interesting part of the family history of the extended Shultz family. The folks talked about in this little essay are descendents down the line through John Fletcher Virden Shultz, who was Joseph Bennett Shultz’s oldest son.
John’s son Valentine (b. 2 Apr 1858) was the fifth and youngest child of John and Terissa (Long), his first wife. Valentine was married several times, and the record of his marriages is somewhat confused by what appear to be incorrect family attributions in some local newspaper announcements. There is confusion on a number of issues, including just whch wife bore which children, the maiden name of his wife Sarah, as well as her birthday. This is a ripe topic for more study.
Sorry for the short post here; I’ve been most of the night installing and piddling around with various Rails-based photo-management tools. I’ve played with three different ones, and so far this one, while far from perfect, seems to be the most likely candidate.
My poor server machine is getting clogged up with instances of various servers presenting the content on different ports, which isn’t such a good thing. But in case anyone out there would like to opine, or of course, just look at cool pictures of the project work and old Medaryville stuff, at least for a while I’m going to leave this site up so interested parties can check out both the presentation software and the pictures themselves.
If the link doesn’t work, then I took it down :-)
Note of 11/22/06: It seems almost certain at this point that the picture galleries are going to be migrated to Flickr. Since the Gullery gallery (that sounds funny even when typing it. . ) isn’t really going to be used, I’ve shut it down to save some memory on my poor computer.
The Hunt brothers tie together hotel and doctor’s office families
Brothers Oscar and Frank Hunt grew up in Gillam township. They married the daughters of two prominent Medaryville businessmen, Francis Horner and Gustave Evert. The Evert House hotel was built as an addition to the first house erected in Medaryville, built by Joseph B. Shultz. After Mr. Horner sold his house, it was extensively remodeled and served as the home and office of Dr. Rodman Phythian Hackley, M.D. The structures serve as the anchors of Old Medary Ville.
Oscar Hunt married Eva Horner, daughter of Francis and Margaret Horner. He was an early druggist in Medaryville. He died in 1900 at the age of 42. His widow’s life spanned her husband’s by more than twice-over. She lived to be 99, dying during Medaryville’s centennial year in 1953.
His younger brother Frank married Idalida (Ida) Evert, daughter of Gustave and Henrietta Evert, the original proprietors of the hotel. He worked for the railroad early on, but later became a druggist and practiced for many years in Lowell.
Both couples are buried in the Medaryville cemetary.
If you look carefully at the pictures of the Baughman house that are shown in the various articles on this site, you’ll notice the ugly brown marks above each of the windows and doors where the siding has been removed.
This is because as part of the “upgrade” to the exterior of the house, the trim above the windows and doors, known as a pediment, was removed, in order to allow for the new siding to fit flush. Here’s a picture of a door pediment. This one was preserved when the upstairs porch on the east side of the house was enclosed.
Here is a picture I took today (11/12) of the west rail of the porch, which I have painted in the tentative color scheme that the hotel will use. The base (main) color will be the gray; the pale yellow will be used for the trim, and the deep maroon-ish color will be for the sash. I’m going to try to match these colors on the website, too, for doing the site logo and backgrounds.
Kelly got over to the Baughman house on Saturday, and removed the rest of the cement siding on the north wing. This revealed the original decorative wooden shingles that were on the house from the beginning, which can be seen by looking carefully at the 1908 postcard picture of the house that was posted earlier.
I took a lot of pictures today, and later on will post of a few of them that show interesting aspects of the project houses.
One of the most interesting parts of the project for me has been learning how to do genealogical research. As an offshoot of that, I have discovered connections between the people who owned and lived in the various properties we’re working on.
This note regards the Joseph B. Shultz and Henry Poisel families. Shultz built the old hotel, and Henry Poisel’s widow, Mary, was the first of several members of that family to own the Frank Baughman/Cupka house. In the discussion below, the capitalized names are all either children or children-in-law of Joseph B. Shultz.
Sometime in the next two or three weeks the “beta” version of the new Old Medary Ville website should be up and running. It will have several active components, such as news, interactive picture manipulation, and an online store.
On Monday Kelly Conley and his crew removed the siding from the southeast side of the Hackley House. This is the part that was the entrance to the doctor’s office, and is pictured in the postcard taken of Main Street in 1908. Under the siding was a beautiful ornate wooden door and a “picture” window. In order to get the siding flush, the pediments over the door and window were removed, as well as the window sill and part of the threshhold of the door. Here is a picture taken Sunday. Better ones will be forthcoming when I can get there in better light.
