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.