- So happy almost Thanksgiving to everybody. Considering how close we are to the holiday, this is a good
- crowd. So welcome to another program of the History Club. My name is Michael Carter. And welcome to
- my beautiful wife, Paulette, and my cousins who are over there, as usual. Hi, guys. Our brother couldn't
- make it today. He's here a lot of the time, too. I left some sheets of paper on all the tables. I think I did.
- They list all the upcoming programs up until, I think, next September. So you can share amongst yourselves.
- Don't fight over or anything like that. Take pictures of it. So yeah, we have programs listed all the
- way up until next September, I think. And keep in mind that these aren't set in stone. It's real people
- doing them, so sometimes things happen.
- that were people that had to cancel. And we had one, our February program, a person had to cancel out,
- at least for a while, and replacing that with another one. We just find a way to work around it. Many
- thanks to the American Legion Post for allowing us to have these programs. We've been partners in...
- We've been partners in presenting and preserving local history for over 12 years. And thanks so much
- to their wait staff and kitchen staff
- Be patient, because there's only one of Brooke here. She's running around best she can. And I'd like
- to also thank CATS-TV for recording our programs for the last 10 years. And I'd like to recognize a
- fellow who's been recording these for the last few years, Dave Walter. And he has a helper today, Suzanne.
- It's a very important service to us, because it allows us to upload
- each program to YouTube for people who can't make it to live programs. In addition, it allows us to
- preserve our local history for future generations to enjoy. And also thanks to our local history enthusiasts
- who attend these programs in person. That's great. We really appreciate your support. And also those
- who have to watch them on YouTube. I hear from them. They're all over the country. And they write and
- tell me, thanks for what you're doing.
- keeps us in touch with home. How many new attendees today? Very many? OK. If you want to add your email
- address to our email list, you can write it down. And I'll give it to Stephen Brewer over here, who's
- taken on the job of helping us with these lists to help out George Carpenter. And thanks, Stephen. That's
- really great. So you can either give them to me or him, and I'll make sure they get to him.
- We don't sell your information or anything like that. Right now, Daniel Schlegel, the director of the
- History Center, would like to make a few comments. I'm on the board there, proudly. And a big thank
- you to Michael. Can we get a round of applause for Michael as well? I can't imagine what he does with
- trying to organize everybody.
- And Brooke did ask me, can anyone raise their hand if you have not placed your order yet? Is there anyone?
- Okay, nicely done, Brooke. So I just wanted to let everybody know that our June garage sale will be
- coming up. Cook had sold the property, but they made sure to look out for us and our garage sale ladies.
- So we have the property into next year to have the garage sale again. So if anybody is able to, if you
- need to do some spring cleaning a little early or whatever the case is, make room for new presents with
- the holidays coming up. Our donations will open February 11th. So I grabbed the wrong sheet. I grabbed
- the old November one. So I do apologize. I don't have the new ones this month.
- I'll make sure they're here in January. But the June garage sale will be coming up in 2025, same location,
- and then donations open February 11th. So I just wanted to make sure everyone knows. Oh, sorry. That's
- what I meant. June 26. June of 26, not June of 25.
- the wrong year. And then also encouragement for everyone to come out and visit us at the History Center.
- We have several exhibits that are only up through the end of the year, and then they will be taken down
- and changed out. Hey Neighbor, about the historic neighborhoods throughout Bloomington, will be up through
- the end of the year. It's a great exhibit, so make sure you stop by and learn about all those historic
- neighborhoods. Life with Lanterns, with the lantern slides from the last turn of the century in the
- early 1900s.
- It's a great exhibit that they specially did, redid the lighting to make sure that the lantern slides
- really pop. We redid our limestone exhibit so that it's a whole fresh new look when you walk into the
- permanent gallery. So make sure you stop by and see that. And then we have Violetta, an immigrant story,
- is one of our other stories that we tell on our stairway landing. So make sure to come by and see those
- before those exhibits are gone.
- And then the last thing I have besides a plug to come see me after the presenter over here to my left
- is we will be open for Canopy of Lights from 5 to 9 on Friday. So make sure if you get a little cold
- that day or anything or want to come see all these great exhibits I just mentioned, stop by and see
- us this Friday from 5 to 9 at Canopy of Lights. Thank you. Thanks, Daniel.
- So you've got those sheets with the upcoming programs. You probably noticed that for December, there
- is no program this month. And we've been at the last two years. It's kind of hard for the Legion here,
- staffing and all, through the holiday days. And it's worked out OK the last two years. So we're going
- to do the same thing. So our next program after this one will be in January. That brings us to today.
- Our presenter is Devin Plankenship.
- And Devin is a member and past chair of the Monroe County Historic Preservation Board of Review, and
- he's the current president of Bloomington Restorations, which our friend Derek Ritchie used to do. So
- the name of our program is Modesto, Indiana, in the middle of somewhere, Monroe County. You may not
- be familiar with it yet, but you will be after today. So Devin wrote from the bean blossoms,
- up near our ravines to higher ridges of field and forest. Modesto is a rural community first dubbed
- by a post office with a California namesake. Modesto, California. But anyway, Derek, or Devin, elucidate
- us on this. I know who you are. Oh, listen to that.
- Thank you very much for joining me here today as I talk about my real hometown of Modesto, Indiana.
- One of my brags is I never lived in the city of Bloomington. I've always lived in Modesto.
- And even in Utero, I was in an AFA area, which is an area for annexation, which was never annexed. So
- just one of my little rural brags. I want to give a few credits here at the beginning. First of all,
- I want to give photo credit to Clint Deck.
- You might know Clint Deck is a 4-H educator by day and a superb amateur photographer at Sunset, apparently.
- Clint comes from a background of farming in northern Monroe County. I've known him since he was about
- five. We rode the bus together. He helped neighbors reboot our High Hopes 4-H club, which serves modern-day
- Modesto and beyond. I also wanted to mention the late, great Nancy Hiller. This was supposed to be,
- yeah, feel free to clap for Nancy Hiller.
- So this was supposed to be a chapter in Nancy's book many years ago when she was collecting essays on
- historic preservation. And I never got around to writing it. So thank you for believing in me anyway,
- Nancy. I wish you were here to roll your eyes about artificial intelligence and the M-Debate. And definitely,
- Jean and Don Rhodes, who are both no longer with us,
- Had it not been for Jean's research and Don's support and advocacy thereof, much of Modesto's history
- would have been lost. We neighbors thank you and miss you both. There they are, falling water. I thought
- that was a nice historic preservation picture to put. And Michael Corita. Michael Corita. Very much
- alive, though sometimes using an alias. Michael Corita, a close childhood friend,
- Found the book on Modesto, which Gene Rhodes wrote, in the Indiana Room at the Public Library in the
- early 90s, sparking many conversations and further fueling my interest in local history. Growing up
- with Michael was always an adventure or case to be solved. I will never forget when we explored redacted.
- Ran away from redacted. Or found the truth behind redacted.
- What memories? And of course, my neighbors, some of whom are present today. Past, present, and future
- neighbors are what make Modesto what it is. Tellers of stories, throwers of parties, makers of meals,
- givers of advice, gratuitous bush-hoggers of brush. If you need someone in your corner or someone to
- get the job done, look for someone from Modesto. A Hindu standee or dolanite might do, though.
- OK, about me. So I don't have one of those Monroe County names. I'm a first-generation Monroe Countian.
- My parents moved to the Modesto area 10 days before I was born. I like to take credit for it because
- it was because I was coming along that they were looking for a house. My childhood babysitter lived
- in a historic home and introduced my sister and me to the Monroe County interim report. For those of
- you who are real history nerds, you know what I'm talking about.
- For those of you who don't quite know what I'm talking about, it's our inventory of historic homes from
- 1989, which was created by Bloomington Restorations, which I'm now involved with. My grandfather is
- from a Gold Rush ghost town, Gilt Edge, Montana. So I always loved learning about local history here,
- and a lot of my family history is like Custer's Last Stand and burial duty of Custer's Last Stand and
- things like that.
- So we're the weird ones who live in Indiana. I spend a lot of time in Ireland, where nearly every bend
- in the road or every field has a name. You have your town. You have your townland. You have your parish.
- Everything has a name. I'm a teacher by day. Don't tell my employer right now. I'm a teacher by day.
- And I teach English and social studies, middle school and high school, online.
- which is why I'm able to be flexible like today. Okay. And then, uh-oh. I'm a longtime member of and
- past chair of Monroe County Historic Preservation Board and current president of Bloomington Restorations.
- And I'll tell you, I have probably about nine hours worth of material, but I have a two o'clock dentist
- appointment. So between those two, we'll be fine.
- I'll just book out all of 2028. Michael can just put me on that. It'll be a Modesto year or something.
- So where is Modesto? North of Square Pond or Curry Pond. If anybody went ice skating or broke a leg
- or anything there, that might be memorable. Close to Oliver Winery. Remember the Star of Indiana?
- Have you seen the Scholars in Bakehouse baking facility? Do you know where the Sycamore Land Trust Bean
- Blossom Bottoms boardwalk is? So this deep one is the one that I have to use with people who are not
- familiar with any of those. Follow Rogers to Madison to Kinzer to Bottom. Then just keep going until
- you've gone through two sharp 90 degree angle turns. I-69, exit 125.
- Go West. Did you hear about the Covered Bridge Project? And then, of course, in the hearts and minds
- of its residents. You're going to find through this presentation, Modesto is a bit of an abstraction,
- OK? But really, a lot of towns, communities are. So I grew up with a Bloomington address, an Ellisville
- phone number, and electricity from Martinsville, because I live in Modesto.
- OK. So I'm going to do a little bit of prehistoric Modesto. I won't go too deep. Don't worry.
- Proto Modesto, as I'm calling it here. So before Modesto was Modesto. Modesto on the map. Modern Modesto,
- the newest old stuff. And my Modesto, the newest new stuff.
- Just to give you a bit of my perspective as a historic preservationist with architecture, 50 years old
- is around the point where something is eligible for the National Trust of Historic Preservation. So
- that's kind of my breakdown in modern is sort of that within 50 years range. And also happens to be
- when Gene Rhodes did this documentation of material. So prehistoric Modesto or when trilobites ruled
- the bean blossom.
- Or, bottom road was always flooded in the Mississippian period. The geology nerds get it. Like the rest
- of the county, the Modesto area is made up of limestone bedrock with fossils of crinoids. Here's a living
- crinoid pictured to the side. I did not know crinoids were an active living thing today until I saw
- one on the cover of a magazine at PetSmart when I worked there. And I was like, wait, crinoids?
- modern-day crinoids. Sinkholes are the main indication of karst topography in the area. And Modesto's
- bean blossom bottoms are around 580 feet above sea level. And the highest ridges top off around 810
- feet above sea level. So we get some steep hills in there. I'd say we're at a geological crossroads.
- So Modesto is right about here, where you see the southern limit of older glacial deposits, crossed
- with the edge of the Norman uplands there. So older deposits from the Illinois glacier cross the Modesto
- area diagonally and intersect with the Norman uplands just south of the Wisconsin glacier line. I always
- give my friends from Wisconsin a really hard time. I'm like, we did not want your glacier, and we did
- not take it.
- The Norman Uplands are what make Brown County Brown County. And much of it is what gives Monroe County
- its rolling hills. So when people ooh and ah about Brown County, I go, yeah, it's nice to live in a
- place that looks like that that's not overrun with too many tourists. So the area was home to a range
- of indigenous peoples. This is not my area of expertise, so feel free to correct me with any knowledge
- you have or any information you have to the contrary.
- Basically looking at Kickapoo, Peoria, and Miami Indians in our area. There's this lovely map. If any
- of you have the Giant Indiana Map book, it's like the historic map book. It's a beautiful book. They
- have this map in there that shows the Native American names for Bean Blossom Creek and as well as Clear Creek.
- It's a very cool map to look at. You also see the 10 o'clock line on there. So the 10 o'clock line is
- a significant part of what goes through the area. It was established as a territorial line in 1809,
- and it served as a settlement border when Indiana gained statehood. So if you see those first Indiana
- maps, you can find Modesto right there at the angle in Monroe County at the top.
- northern border of Orange County. We all used to be Orange Countians, if you can believe it. It was
- the northern border of Orange County, Indiana prior to incorporation of Monroe and Lawrence County.
- And it does have a vestigial presence on select property lines. So there's one of our neighborhood property
- lines that shows the 10 o'clock angle there. Proto Modesto.
- Simpson Chapel. So a lot of you would have heard of Simpson Chapel. It's a long-standing Methodist church.
- It's got a road named after it. So in September of 1838, the first Methodist meetings were held in the
- homes of Samuel Gaskins, Hosea Kite, William McNeely, and Bartlett Baston. In 1848, arrangements were
- made to build a log meeting house on land donated by Mary Ann Gaskins. My understanding, and anybody
- else can correct me if I'm wrong,
- My understanding is that's about here. Got Williams Road here and Simpson Chapel that curves around.
- I'm just picturing, they were like, you know where we should build Simpson Chapel? Simpson Chapel Road.
- I don't think that's how it worked, though. It's named after Bishop Matthew Simpson, the 1839 Asbury
- College president. Anybody know Asbury College, Green Castle, Indiana?
- DePauw. So Thomas M. Gaskins and Amos W. Jones were two early members who held minister licenses. Gaskins
- was a captain in the Union Army during the Civil War. They built a small-frame church just east on land
- from, it said in the report James and Mary Mulphy, but I'm wondering if it's Mulkey because there's
- Mulkey Cemetery right there, just east.
- Basically, they built another one here, and then the new one is over here, kind of off the chart here.
- And then in 1885, a larger building was started. So growing and surviving. So in 1886, Reverend John
- Crow was appointed to a five church circuit. As of 1963, Simpson Chapel was the only one of those five
- that still existed.
- 1888 was when the new building was dedicated. Here's a picture of the new building. That is not 1888,
- but that's a picture of the new building. Those are World War I veterans. So clearly after 1888. Schools.
- It's always nice when a place had schools and churches that are the same name as the place, and you
- can kind of go, oh, yeah. Well, that's not the case in Modesto. Everything's named something different.
- So we had Carlton School and Wayport School. I'm not going to bore you with close-up pictures of children
- you don't recognize standing outside a building that you can't tell what it is. It's a one-room school,
- and those are young school children. But one of the things I want to point out, I'm not going to read
- this whole thing for you, we had a custom in Washington Township that if we walked to school barefoot
- in the wintertime, we would take a heated-up board or stone
- to sit down and stand on to warm up our feet. Apparently, this was a unique Washington township
- characteristic. We're very innovative in Washington township, I should tell you. And that's from the
- history of Monroe County. So if you want some leisure reading of Monroe County history, I highly recommend
- that book. We have an account from Dovah Jones of Carlton School.
- It sounds pretty typical for a one-room school. Carleton School was just a one-room school. And they
- had just a sheet iron stove in there. And they had these rough seats. So the kids pay attention. They
- had these rough seats. And then they'd call them up to class, probably where they had to recite. They'd
- sit on that. And it was about three or four kids sit on it. It was up by the teacher's desk. The teacher
- had one of the bells that whenever it was time for her to collect books, she would ring the bell, or he.
- One of our most popular teachers in Washington Township was Thomas Brown. That name comes up later.
- Thomas Brown worked at both Carlton School and Wayport School. So predating the Modesto name, we have
- the Robinson House from roughly 1864. It's always tough in historic preservation to know for sure, but
- we can get pretty close.
- It is a very typical eye house. You've got a five bay eye house there for the historic preservation
- nerds. Five bay eye house, which means five window openings or five openings including a door, symmetrical.
- Usually the main part's about 16 feet deep. The front's usually about 32 feet wide. Eye house. They're
- called an eye house because they're very common in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. And part of it was thought
- that from the side, because they're tall and skinny,
- This one less of an example, but from the side, they're tall and skinny. They looked like the letter
- I. That was another theory. We have the Amos Jones House from 1870. It's gothic revival, classic gothic
- revival there with a point in the middle. Notice these scroll cut wood trim gingerbread. Some good stories
- behind that. So Ola Robinson, who lived in the Robinson House later,
- She believes that George Stout and Wiseman Anderson were the builders of the house and she said the
- house was finished by the time she moved in So the original house is a smaller log home that is embedded
- in this larger I house because a lot of times when you're Upgrading you try to make it look like the
- thing that's common now So somewhere in there is a log house and one fireplace was real and one fireplace was not
- Ola comes up a lot in this because she was one of the informants on the oral history report that Gene
- Rhodes did. The McNeely House, this is a blurry version because it's a copy from the interim report.
- You'll see it again later. It's a very typical I house Greek revival. It has, I think, dental detail
- at the top, which is what makes it Greek revival. And it's on North Bottom Road. By the way, I'm not
- giving you, like, ultra-specific details of where everything is.
- Because if you want to see any of these things, I can talk to you more later. But also make sure you
- have owner permission. If you're like, I would like to see the site where such and such used to be,
- just make sure you talk to the person who lives there. So this is the William McNeely Log Home from
- 1883. It is on West Williams Road. It was built by two springs, as reported. One was hard and one was
- soft. I'm not a hydrologist. I don't know.
- That is no longer standing, but this comes up later as important. The Ridge House in 1885, also Gothic
- Revival, no longer standing. It's East Sample Road. I didn't put the address on there. The Ed Elliott
- House, which is a saddlebag double pin. If it's got a chimney in the middle and it's got the symmetrical
- two front doors, two or more windows, then it's a saddlebag double pin. The two rooms are what make
- a double pin. The fact that the chimney is in the middle is what makes it a saddlebag.
- That one is no longer standing. There's the Lawson House, which is a gabled owl. This is not the best
- picture of the Lawson House, but you've been on 7th Street. You know what a gabled owl looks like. I
- don't have to worry about that. And it's circa 1890, the namesake of Lawson Road, the Lawson Farm there.
- The deck house, which I believe is probably a Queen Anne. It's got some additions on the front,
- porches there. But the shape of it looks like a Queen Anne. I might be mistaken.
- The Jones House on North Bottom Road, which is no longer standing. And then the McMillan Bridge.
- Here we go. Buckle up. I hope you got to see the covered bridge presentation. And if you didn't, I hope
- you go back and watch the covered bridge presentation because Jeremy goes into a lot of detail of our
- local covered bridges and did a lot of research on it. So this was originally Millican or Millican's
- Ford where Jacob Millican had a sawmill.
- But wagons kept getting stuck in the mud crossing Bean Blossom Creek. It's a single span bridge,
- Smith truss, 115 feet long, five foot overhang, all the bridge nerds. 12.6 feet wide, 12 feet six inches
- wide, 12 feet six inches tall, shingle roof, cut stone abutments, which are still there, and weight
- limit five tons. It was written as Milligan in the commissioner's reports.
- the county, they always spell things wrong. I say that because I'm on a county board, and we sometimes
- spell things wrong. It's McMillan in some books. So a lot of times you'll see it as the McMillan Bridge.
- And it became known as the Williams Bridge when Wayne and Ruby Williams lived south of the creek. So
- the total cost was $2,646.80. I would love to pay that price for a bridge today.
- I might not want to cross that bridge, though. I don't know. This is a very wise thing. The county paid
- for it a year later with 6% interest because they wanted to make sure the bridge was a good bridge before
- they paid for it. Sensible. Our local Joe Peden recalls the bump bump sound of hay wagons on the bridge.
- And so that's how he knew all of his hay wagons were still attached was the bump bump, bump bump, bump bump.
- And the bridge was burned by arson in June of 1976. It was our last covered bridge in Monroe County.
- So we could have been called Millikin's Ford, Indiana. Or McMillan Bridge, Indiana. Or do you know who
- Ruby Williams is? Indiana.
- So getting Modesto on the map. Modesto, Ellisville's only star route. I saw that for the first time,
- putting this together. I'd never noticed that before in there. Ellisville's only star route, something
- we can be proud of. Post office origins. So that's the house from earlier, the William McNeely house.
- And at the time, as a residence of McKamey McNeely, the McNeely name is
- popular in northern Monroe County, and Florence Gaskins. McCamey named it Twin Springs Farm because
- of those two springs, the allegedly soft water, allegedly hard water. Like I said, I'm not a hydrologist,
- so I don't know. And on April 6, 1892, McCamey McNeely was appointed the first postmaster of Modesto.
- He was unsure of what to name the post office. He obviously hadn't looked at
- some of the other things around the area to call it Millikin's Ford or anything like that. But he got
- a letter from his cousin, Cal Phipps in Modesto, California. And so there it was, the Modesto post office.
- There we go. We could have done a lot worse with names. I mean, it could have been a really lame place
- name, who knows. So we're doing OK. The post office and grocery store were in a building next to the house.
- A male was retreat from Ellisville. Oh, it got an extra L in there. Oh, that's what happens sometimes.
- It must have stuck. See, people usually do too few Ls. I'm making up for other people's. I want Ellisville
- to be on a local. Ellisville and Jiffy Treat need to be on a local spelling bee. Because if people can
- spell both those things right, Ellisville and Jiffy Treat, that's like a shibboleth. You know they've
- got their Monroe County knowledge. So male was retreat from Ellisville twice a week.
- Modesto consisted of those who came to the post office to get their mail by horseback or on foot. So
- a lot of times when we're doing a modern perspective on what Modesto is, could be, we can think about
- like, well, what would be reasonable to get to that location on foot? And this is on West Williams Road
- near, near Bottom Road. And on July 6th, 1896, Ruby Williams was born to McCamey McNeely and Florence Gaskins.
- So here's some newspaper articles about the post office. It talks about a fire, which is not mentioned
- at all later, just in this. Any of the oral history reports don't really mention it. And then also,
- Daily Mail. We upgraded to Daily Mail, which we still sometimes get today, if we're lucky. Here's some
- of the documentation about the post office, location of the post office.
- This is one from 1898, I believe. I can still read cursive. I'm old enough to be able to read cursive,
- but also my fifth grade teacher's here, so I should still be able to read cursive, right? That's like
- the test. So these are just fun documents to look at, and it's nice to see your place name written in
- somebody's very nice penmanship. This map, I'm just going to take a moment here. This is Ellisville
- written upside down.
- which is maybe less of a mistake than what I did to it. And then you see Beam Blossom Creek there. You
- see Bloomington labeled down here. So there's Washington Township. I don't know when we gave the little
- corner away to Bloomington Township, but there's a little corner that was Washington Township that's
- on the south side of Beam Blossom Creek. And at one point in time, I think we were like, yeah, it just
- makes sense. It just makes sense for Bloomington Township to have it.
- So Ruby, one of our characters here, when she was one year old, they moved to Bloomington. And Roscoe
- Gaskins became the postmaster October 21st, 1897 to April 21st, 1900, keeping the post office in the
- same location for a year before moving it down to Ruby's grandmother's farm, which is on Bottom Road
- near North Maple Grove Road or Old North Maple Grove Road, as you may know it, with the connection now
- to the covered bridge.
- On April 21st, 1900, W.E. Eddie Gaskins was appointed postmaster and kept the post office going until
- October 31st, 1903, when the rural route was established from Ellisville. Consolidation gets us most
- of the time in rural areas. McCamie McNeely built a racetrack, this is just a total aside, McCamie McNeely
- built a racetrack for the horses to the east of their home in Modesto. So off of Williams Road is a
- field that is known as racetrack field.
- and that's where McKinney McNeely would have his horses racing. There's a tragic tale I don't go into
- on here, but they had horses in a barn in town at 10th and Dunn Street, and he kept the barn locked
- so the younger son wouldn't get in there, and the barn caught on fire and the horses died, and it was
- a horrible tragic tale. Okay, so we have the post route map here.
- So you see Modesto here, and you see how it connects to Ellisville. So there's a little connection there.
- Not Dolan. Brian's Creek or Brian's Corner is like Hindustan or Hindustan, depending on your persuasion.
- You also see on here Gable and Godsey. There's a Godsey Road up there. And 1908, you see Modesto here.
- Ryan's Corner, Godsey Gable, Lemon's over here, Dolan. I like seeing they have Yoho on here. And I was
- like, oh, yeah. See? If you use a name, people know it. So 1908, Modesto's post office closed already.
- So being on the map is not contingent on having a functional post office. Don't let people tell you
- otherwise. OK. Just a little note about beekeeping.
- which is a common practice of many of our neighbors today. Ruby Williams, the one that you saw pictured
- there next to the log home, one of her summertime jobs was to sit on the side of the hill and watch
- her father's honeybees swarm. Because, as Ruby explains, the swarms would eventually leave if you didn't
- watch them and know where they ranged and take care of them. She used to get rather tired of having
- to sit out there because the bees wouldn't always swarm when Ruby thought she would like for them to.
- Those bees.
- Ola Robinson talks about working in the grocery store. This would have been the Hough Family Grocery
- Store, and it would have been roughly where Winery Drive and 37 slash 69 is today sort of the entrance
- to Oliver Winery. So she worked up there by herself, but she was scared to death to be alone, so there
- was somebody who would come and sit with her, Mr. Canada, Silas Canada,
- kept her from being so afraid. Now there's a bit of a schism in thinking because there's the you know
- Modesto by post but a very well established Simpson Chapel neighborhood identity. So a lot of times
- when we talk about it there's some overlap and some disconnect. So basically Ola Robinson came all the
- way from the Simpson Chapel neighborhood to the Modesto neighborhood when she got married.
- She does mention about medical care at the time. How I didn't pick up on the story earlier,
- I don't know. Thomas Brown, the beloved teacher, had to go to the hospital in Indianapolis for an operation,
- an appendix operation. And he came horseback over there, and they met him with a sled. I watched that
- sled come down over the hill there past my brother's mailbox, and I thought, oh, Thomas is going to
- die? Sure. We'll never see him anymore. I think I might have cried a little because he was my school
- teacher all my life.
- So well, eventually, but not from that. Yeah. No, he lived to farm and teach again. Yes. But yes, my
- personal connection to that is I had a burst appendix for five days. And I was like, why didn't I pick
- up on that story before? And then a doctor named Al Harris, during the flu epidemic,
- where Ola talks about their family having the flu for 17 days and the doctor saying that he hadn't changed
- clothes for 17 days. He'd just been going, going, going for 17 days. She talks about separate beds with
- dividers in the rooms and how neighbors would stop by and make sure they had what they needed. Neighbors
- are generally pretty good about that sort of stuff, but it sounds like a pretty awful time. That's all
- in the Modesto book, by the way, the Gene Rhodes Modesto book.
- And so here's Dova Jones, older, and talking about her wedding, which was quite the occasion. When they
- came back into town, there was a big party for them and they kept trying to go to sleep and the party
- kept getting bigger and bigger. So it was quite the hullabaloo at the Jones house. And I always love
- looking at these lists of who was present. So we have the Reverend and Mrs. A.W. Jones, John Brown and
- wife, Mrs. Joseph Jones and family.
- John and family, Leslie, Jesse, the twins, right? Ethel Jones, Homer Brown, Lorraine, Ferline,
- and Ruth Brown, Mr. and Mrs. George Huff, and family, Sarah Gaskins, and Reverend T.M. Heaton. We have
- Dova here with Lawrence, her husband, and this is taken next to the house on Bottom Road where they
- lived. There were some shenanigans that happened in Modesto.
- We could do a deeper dive later, but there were shenanigans. But just like when the National Weather
- Service says that there's a tornado warning and it will hit Modesto at 3 71 a.m. or whatever, it's just
- nice to see it in print sometimes. Just see, oh yeah, they say Modesto there. Oh look, oh that's nice.
- There was a big debate about a ditch, a drainage ditch.
- And so it's the back and forth of, are we going to build this ditch? It's going to drain thousands of
- acres as we're going to drain this ditch. Are we going to do this ditch? And it goes back and forth.
- And then Johnson Drainage Ditch will be built. That was the outcome. So there will be about 800 acres
- of land drained by the ditch. And the estimated cost will be about $5,000. Again, try to buy a ditch
- for that much today. That's a good ditching rate.
- I like this gossip section, over on the bean. They were hip even then. But they talk about the public
- ditch, the Huff store, Ruby and McCamie McNeely and A.W. Jones and Robinson Mill. They talk about who's
- sick. Let's see, Fred Brown has the measles. Otis Huff opened his general store near Simpson Chapel.
- Township trustee stuff.
- Oh, McCamie McNeely went all the way to Stanford, pretty far away, to talk about the proposed Pike Road.
- Have I been to a proposed Pike Road meeting or two? Geez. I had to do all the I-69 study period on historic
- preservation board. And then they talk about the Robinson Brothers, the Public Ditch, there we go, Church
- at Simpson Chapel, and Discussion Club. Why don't we have a discussion club anymore? OK.
- Simpson Chapel has long been a grassroots center of community. Here I say old and gray, blue and gray,
- gray and gray, that's okay. So here are Civil War veterans at Simpson Chapel Methodist Church. You'll
- notice they didn't all fight on the same planet as the war. And that's okay. Rural Midwestern life is
- all about getting along with neighbors who may have different backgrounds. We've always been an eclectic
- blend in rural Monroe County.
- Ruby here talking about Simpson Chapel. There weren't so many other activities to be interested in and
- not so many easy ways to get other places and they appreciated going to church. That was the one outlet
- they could have as their social life as well as religious life. So, Simpson Chapel played a role as
- a center of community in north central Monroe County at the time. Dova Jones talks about the old fashioned
- church where they used to have the two separate doors and the men and the women would sit on different
- sides and then they remodeled it and then the men could sit with their wives.
- or anyone they wanted to. Oh my. And then we'd have big crowds and we had, well, when I first went up
- there, I'd never been to a church where they had them kind of seats, split seats that way, benches I
- call them. We don't have a whole lot of chair variety in rural Monroe County. Ola Robinson talking about
- Simpson Chapel. I grew up in the Simpson Chapel neighborhood and I'd go to church.
- and Sunday school at Simpson Chapel Sunday morning, my grandfather to hitch up the horse and buggy and
- take me to Dolan. I had good friends down there and Sunday school in the afternoon, then back home.
- And then we'd go to church back at Simpson Chapel that night. That's the way my Sundays were when I
- was a kid, as long as I can remember. She also talks about playing the organ. Ola Robinson talks about
- playing the organ. I was just a child and my music teacher.
- and it's written as Johnny Naylor that way, but I feel like must be related to our Northern Monroe County
- Naylors. He'd call me holy. She talks about how they put the H in everything, she thought with that
- accent. But he taught her how to play well enough that she could play for his and his wife's wedding.
- So that sounds like a quick turnaround there. And she played for that and played for lots of other weddings
- for about 60 years.
- And then like all buildings tend to do at some point in time, there was a fire at Simpson Chapel. February
- 4th, 1951, Simpson Chapel, that structure I showed you earlier burned down during Sunday school. There's
- a harrowing tale here. So they got together a building committee, Leslie Jones, Ruby Williams, Lee Ridge,
- Robert Buzzard, Wayne Williams, and James Ridge. Some of those names probably look familiar to you.
- So, Simpson Chapel IV.
- So it was dedicated on October 31st, 1954. We have a couple things that are October 31st in here,
- I noticed. There's a few different things that land on that day, and I found that interesting, that
- was a recurring date. The new brick church was dedicated by Dr. W.T. Jones, district superintendent,
- conducted Russell Brown, board chairman, presented the edifice. And this is the building that still
- stands there on, what is it, 500 Simpson Chapel Road today.
- Johnson Chapel was a short-lived Presbyterian Church. Johnson Chapel was built down by the intersection
- of Bottom Road and Denny Road, which there was a lot of Johnson property down there. Presbyterian Church,
- here they talk about all the people who would attend and all the great crowds. And apparently the pews
- got stolen and that was the end of Johnson Chapel. But we know it wasn't Ruby Williams or Ola Robinson
- because she sounded kind of uncertain of what types of seating they have at churches, so I don't think
- it was her.
- Does anybody in our neighborhood have a house that just has random pews in it? And they're like, oh,
- OK. We've been hiding it for a while. Oh, the covered bridge. So Ruby talks about the covered bridge.
- It was built in 1879. She remembers her father talking about it. He worked on the bridge when he was
- 19. It's always been very near and dear to her. She tried to protect it in later years when commissioners
- talked about replacing it with a metal bridge. Have I got a story for her?
- They didn't replace it at all for about 40 years and then they replaced it with a cover bridge. But
- she kept working on that. She had heard a story from her husband about somebody who was afraid of ghosts
- and somebody coming through the bridge on a horseback had a dummy thrown down at them to scare them
- and he was frightened all the way back home. So cover bridges do sometimes harbor some shenanigans.
- Okay, modern Modesto.
- the newest old stuff. So Ruby Williams here, this is 1979, Senior Citizen of the Year. So they're, Lister
- is living on DeLappe, so if you're familiar with the area where DeLappe meets Maple Grove Road, and
- now there's the Covered Bridge right there, that's where Ruby Williams lived, and that's why some people
- called it the Williams Bridge. The McNeely House, so this is, I believe, a picture from the 70s.
- Since I used it in the promotional materials, I figured I would show it here. I almost cut it and I
- was like, oh wait, it was one that you saw in there. So that is the McNeely House you saw from before,
- just from a different angle on Bottom Road. There's the Ed Ellett House from afar in 1976 on an unpaved,
- unplowed Williams Road. As red as I remember it, so it didn't fade much between then and when I came along.
- Our schools consolidated. Washington Township was the first township to consolidate schools in the county.
- In hindsight, it might have been a little bit of a mistake, because now we don't have any schools. We
- had Washington Township Consolidated School, which I believe was 1929, first made up of four consolidated
- schools, and then they kept adding the other ones in. And it was said to be a Sears Roebuck building.
- And then they replaced it in 1967 with the modern
- Brown School that you see there. Oliver Winery. It did not look like that when it opened, but Oliver
- Winery opened in the early 70s. And we lost the bridge in 1976. So I'm going to go a little bit into
- my version of Modesto, what I've experienced.
- And it'll touch on some of the other previous points. And then we can open it up to questions, conversation,
- anything like that. So the first thing I wanted to talk about was toxic threat leads to environmental
- restoration. So I was about five years old, six years old. No incinerator. Stop toxic dump. Don't just
- drive by. Call COPA, 333-8888, I think was the number. So at one point in time, when
- When our community was looking at building a PCB incinerator on the south side of the county and a toxic
- ash dump on the north side of the county, that was out on North Bottom Road. So that very much affected
- our local community. And I believe the sequence of events was one of our neighbors, Barbara Russell,
- donated land. And it was like, well, how could they put a toxic ash dump next to this?
- Wildlife Sanctuary. And so there's the Muscatatuck Wrestle Unit out on North Bottom Road. And that was
- the beginning of wetland restoration on Bottom Road and in the Bean Blossom Bottoms. And then I believe
- Sassafras Audubon Society came along. Sycamore Land Trust came along. And then Sycamore Land Trust has
- done quite a bit on what was a former Johnson farm property, probably as well as others.
- in the bean blossom bottom. So there you see a nice, tall, skinny bird on the new boardwalk. That's
- the new one. And you see a bobcat there. So they've been doing a lot with environmental restoration.
- There's a fairly current picture of what all's going on there. There's the rustle unit there. Wait,
- no, rustle unit there. That's kind of the first part.
- And then they've got the new additions there, the Oliver property there. So it's all the bean blossom
- bottoms, low land. One of the other things you'll read about in the Modesto book is all the farm kids
- who had to help their families clear out brush and trees. And then to see it all go back to brush and
- trees is a bit odd. You do see on this a reference to the covered bridge that's right down here. Old
- Maple Grove Road.
- I will, while we're on this map, just show you a couple things. So a lot of times when you look at a
- map and you see Modesto, it'll be here at the intersection of Bottom Road and Simpson Chapel. I talked
- about a few historic properties along here. Carlton School was down here. Johnson Chapel was over here.
- And then there's some more over to this side. And this is the highway here. June 2008.
- Most of us who are in the area remember, what was it? Was it the eighth? It was a Saturday of the big
- flood in rural Monroe County. And I saw this quote from Dova Jones from 1976, where she said, oh, it
- used to get out terrible. It don't get out anymore like it used to. It's like, oh, Dova, if you would
- have seen it on June 8th or whatever, 2008, it was probably how you remember it. So she had probably
- experienced some of those big
- 100 year, maybe 1,000 year floods. I think it was about, someone correct me if I'm wrong, it was probably
- about five feet deep on Bottom Road. We did get signage. They'll steal it, people said. Yeah, they'll
- steal it. But maybe it'll take a while. It did, it took a while.
- It's all been stolen now, but it took a while. Here's Gene Rhodes, who wrote the Modesto book and rewrote
- the Modesto book, posing next to one of the signs there. I-69 has been another big topic. Here's our
- view of Sample Road pulling off the highway in 2014. 2015, when it looked like a tornado had gone through.
- I could just make all of you sit here for five years so you can get the feeling. Then 2017. Then 2025,
- this is what it looks like. So the whole highway shifted. So sometimes you can't go off what feels right
- anymore. You have to go where you're supposed to drive. So they turn the northbound lanes into the Wayport
- Road, the frontage road, and then move the whole thing over.
- and we're still waiting for it to open. I live in Dolan now, two miles east of my parents, and it was
- an 11-mile trip between our houses for years. Simpson Chapel, still very much a center of community.
- So it is now the Washington Township Community Center. Simpson Chapel attendees still have use of the building,
- for as long as they want to continue using it. But it is still functioning as a point of community for
- all of us. And there is the rebooted High Hopes 4-H club there, decorating a bulletin board in the basement.
- And then Brown School. You might have heard of Star of Indiana. So shortly after Brown School closed,
- Cook bought the building for Star of Indiana.
- It's very interesting that there's people I've never met who love Brown School as much as I love Brown
- School. There are people who have pictures. They're like, we're so happy to be back at Brown School
- for this event or this weekend. Because they were star of Indiana, then they were blast, then they've
- done reunions and things like that. So the sound in my youth was drum corps. I always heard drumming
- and xylophones and things like that. The covered bridge.
- The covered bridge was finally replaced in March of 2019. They had the ribbon cutting ceremony. It is
- the repurposed. I'm always very careful about how I say this, because I always say it in a tongue-in-cheek
- way. The repurposed Cedar Ford covered bridge parts, about 20%, very well reconstructed into a full-fledged
- covered bridge that looks exactly like the Cedar Ford covered bridge looked.
- So a lot of new parts, some old parts, but that's what we have crossing Bean Blossom Creek now on North
- Maple Grove Road. And then I wanted to point out restoration in action. We have a neighbor here, Marilyn
- Skirvin, and her son Jake working on the facade restoration of her family's home, the Amos Jones House
- there on Simpson Chapel Road, and getting it back to how it looked with a front porch.
- as it does in the black and white picture down below. And so that was during an edition that they did
- that as well, and they did such a good job that we gave them a nice BRI Preservation Award, because
- they had to do all sorts of work on the gingerbread. I know Jake had to cut out that vent to look the
- same and everything, so a lot of good work there. And overall, Modesto is doing okay. Sometimes where
- one map fails you,
- technology will make up for it. When Facebook knows you live in Modesto, you're like, oh, thank you,
- Facebook. And people will use the name for things like Fall Festival that just happened. We had a neighbor
- who had a fitness center going for a while, where it's Modesto Fitness. I was driving by the house,
- and I saw a sign that said Modesto Fitness. And I was like, whoa, wasn't expecting to see that. Gatherings,
- parties, there's the boardwalk there. Still very agricultural.
- We've got the Stone Age Institute. A necessary part of any neighborhood, honestly. If your neighborhood
- does not have a Stone Age Institute, you need to talk to whoever can start a Stone Age Institute in
- your neighborhood and see. Yeah, because I don't know what we'd do without the Stone Age Institute.
- Oliver Winery there. Yeah, if you don't have a winery in the Stone Age Institute.
- And so that's it for what I have to present to you today. Like I said, I have like nine hours worth
- of material, but I wanted to keep it brief. Thank you. Questions, comments, concerns, observations?
- Yes. So the name came from the cousin who wrote a letter from California. So the first postmaster's
- cousin lived in California, in Modesto, California.
- Mm-hmm. I'm guessing he's related to the same Ellett family, I would imagine. Yep, Jan. Oh, she's got
- it written down. Yeah. This is a great presentation. Thank you. I feel like you're a plant. Why,
- thank you, stranger, who I do not serve on a board with. OK. So speaking of that segue into, so are
- the Russells you're talking about, are they the namesakes of Russell Road?
- No, this is a wrestle. It's very close. It's R-E-S-T-L-E, wrestle. Yeah. So another question. How much
- of this area is in the historic district, the first rural historic district? Zero. Zero of it is. Zero?
- Yeah, a lot of it was in the original proposed version of Maple Grove Rural Historic District. There's
- a map in the history center in the main room downstairs.
- There's a map where you can see the original proposed Maple Grove Road. I think it's still there. Maple
- Grove Road Rural Historic District. And you see it kind of go up into this area. But ultimately, it
- didn't when they finalized it. OK. I'm letting her get away with it. Well, sometimes when archaeologists
- and anthropologists love their field very, very much,
- They dedicate their lives to it and they build a research institute. So we're very fortunate to have
- neighbors that traffic in early human civilizations and they travel all over the world and do a lot
- of their work in our neighborhood. It's not open to the public, but you can probably get an invitation
- somehow. Yeah. Star route.
- I feel like the star route was something like a satellite location or a satellite destination of the
- post office. So I feel like it would have been very common for Bloomington to have several, but we were
- the only one of Ellisville's. So, yeah. I was a child when I come to my father on Hunter. I remember
- the grocery store that I believe was at the corner of Bottom Road.
- I don't know when that closed. Do you know when Huff's grocery store would have closed at the bottom
- of Simpson Chapel and bottom? I don't have any idea when it would have closed. Do you remember what
- year you saw it open?
- Yeah. So yeah, he's thinking maybe late 50s, early 60s. Might have been a minute close. Yeah? Just related
- to what he asked, if I've said. I remember there was something there that was falling down in the early
- 60s. I remember that, too. And I can remember a sign, something I think said Modesto. Yeah. I remember
- the sign, also. Yeah. One time it was open when I was pretty young. And I have to remember even being
- in the place.
- The other thing is on those US geological survey maps, it's a Modesto quadrangle. So when you're at
- JL Waters and you're buying your maps, your topo maps, it's Modesto quadrangle. Yeah. What was the bus
- route that picked up you and your cohorts and Michael Corita? Well, Michael Corita did not ride my bus.
- I was not that lucky or devious.
- But yeah, we basically had a Williams Road to Arlington bus route. So it was a strange day when we started
- picking up the Fritz Terrace kids, because it was like an alien species. It was like, they're all standing
- together in a cluster at this corner. What are they doing? Oh, it's a bus stop. We didn't know that.
- We all got picked up at our driveways. We'd never seen that before. But yeah, it was a pretty sparse
- pop. We rode the bus for about an hour.
- Yeah. That's when they're talking about closing Steinsville School. I said, well, it'll be about an
- hour for them to get to school. And they're like, but it's so close. I'm like, it'll be about an hour.
- That's how bus routes work. Yeah. Yeah. What do you know about the Robert Johnson long cabin that's
- still extant there at the bottom of Denny's? I don't know a whole lot about it. That would probably
- be a Mike Baker question. But yeah. And I know there was the,
- There was a Sycamore Land Trust sign about Robert Johnson there on one of the viewing platforms. I don't
- know if it's still there or not. But yeah, Mike Baker would probably know more about the cabin. Yeah,
- OK. Yeah, it's there. Just somewhere else. Yeah, Dwayne. Was the Brown School namesake the longtime
- educator? Yes. Thank you for making that connection. Yes. So Brown School was Thomas L. Brown Elementary
- School. And it opened shortly after he passed away.
- and he is buried directly across the street from it. So you can stand at his grave, look at the school,
- stand at his grave, look at the school, right there. Other questions, thoughts? Coke still owns it,
- and there is a dance studio that's renting it right now. Indiana, I think it's Indiana Dance Studio.
- Had we stayed for the nine hour version,
- You are going to get all sorts of starved DNA stuff. So that'll just have to be another presentation
- sometime. But yeah, I still have a dentist appointment, so we can't do the nine-hour version. Yes, you
- over there. I just ride my bike up there all the time. And I would tell people, you go to Maple Grove
- Road, and you turn on Maple Grove Road. Because it looks like it goes. Is it Maple Grove Road or is
- it Maple Grove Road? Maple Grove Road.
- There's two. There's a north-south Maple Grove Road and an east-west Maple Grove Road. Yeah, to me it
- makes all the sense in the world. It's just how it is. Yeah, that's one of the other things. I didn't
- get quite as into it either. Cemeteries. When you get into cemeteries, there's a 1939 Cemetery Index
- and then the newer publication on cemeteries. I can't remember the
- year that I'm looking at you, because you might know off the top of your head. There was the newer cemetery
- publication made that shows pictures from the 1939 book. And that's also where you get to see what road
- names have changed, where it will be like, oh, it's there on Consolidated School Road. And it's otherwise
- known as Chambers Pike. Or it's like, oh, it's there on Bean Blossom Road, otherwise known as Bottom
- Road. So Bottom Road is one of the newer roads in the neighborhood. You would think, oh, it's there.
- It's basic. It goes along the hill.
- They didn't want to deal with all that mud. So basically, everything came in from the top and went down.
- And then eventually, they built bottom road at the bottom. We have very logical road names. It's usually
- named after the family who owned a major farm on that road. Or geography. It's at the bottom. It's bottom
- road. We try to be basic like that. Any other questions, comments, concerns?
- Any history facts you want to throw in? Something I didn't mention. That's your favorite Modesto or
- Washington township fact that you were just dying for me to say. Yeah, go for it. My great grandfather
- lived across right at Bond Road, right there on the corner, across from the building I think we can
- talk about. His last name was Chris Mann, and there were lots of Chris Manns around in that area. Yes,
- and I believe you.
- The house that I put on there is the Robinson House, 1964, had been a Wistand house as well. But yeah,
- because I saw the name Edna Wistand associated with it as well. Yeah, so a lot of Wistands. That's the
- other thing, too, is to kind of watch in family lineages, who marries who, and you sort of see names
- shift around. And then when you see a new name, you're like, oh, the daughter inherited the land, and
- that's the husband's name, or something like that.
- Sometimes we'll make sense there as well. Other questions? Facts? OK. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate
- you having me. And I enjoyed sharing this with you. And I've got eight more hours worth of material,
- so we can cover that some other time. Thank you.