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LA PORTE COUNTY

Before 1830 all of La Porte and Starke Counties were a part of the Potawatomi Nation. In 1830 all of northwestern Indiana from Elkhart County to the state line on the west was designated as St. Joseph County. Finally in 1832 an area consisting of 462 square miles was separated and a new county was created and named La Porte, meaning “the door.” The area was a natural opening through the forest, which served as a gateway to the north. In 1850 twenty sections of land were taken from St. Joseph County on the east and added to La Porte County.

The area encompassing the Sauk Trail was chosen as the location for the county seat and named La Porte, for the county. La Porte city was nicknamed “The Maple City” for the maple trees lining the streets, planted as early as the 1850s. In 1829 Mrs. Benedict, a widow, and her family were the first white settlers to come to La Porte County, locating in an area just north of present-day Westville. In 1941 the United States government constructed the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant on 13,454 acres of farmland near a town laid out in 1835. The plant employed over 20,000 workers, nearly half of them being female. Testing sites, barracks, bunkers and dormitories filled the area, which was crisscrossed with railroad tracks and highways.

Pinhook was originally called New Durham and platted in 1847 and named for Durham, New York. It was supposedly nicknamed “Pinhook” for a jog in the main road, or possibly as a scornful epithet hurled at it by the neighboring village of Flood’s Grove, two miles south.

Many small lakes dot the county, which is known for its beauty.

The Ghost of “I” Street Medical Clinic

One of the longest reported periods of hauntings in Indiana is in the town of La Porte at the corner of I and Tenth Streets.

For nearly one hundred years people connected with this land have reported experiencing hauntings. Perhaps these folktales reflect events that may even have been going on long before.

Originally the property where the medical clinic sits belonged to Dr. George L. Andrew, who moved to Indiana in 1845 and married a daughter of one of the founders of the city. Soon after the couple began the construction of a three-story mansion on what would become the corner of I and Tenth Street.

With a columned veranda and many rooms, the home was impressive. Five rooms were set aside above the kitchen for servants’ quarters. The doctor commissioned Fredrick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in New York City and a part of the Biltmore Estate, to landscape his spacious yard: Olmsted planted one of every tree native to Indiana.

When Dr. Andrew retired in 1885, the home was sold. It had gone through several owners and some remodeling, including the removal of the servants’ quarters, by the time Charles Gwynne purchased the house in 1904. The Gwynnes were the first to notice the hauntings.

The story of their forty-four-year life with a live-in ghost came mainly from Mrs. Madeline Gwynne Kinney, their daughter, who was the former curator of the La Porte County Historical Museum.

One day Madeline was cleaning a closet when she heard a sound behind her like something being dropped. Turning around she saw four coins on the floor: two pennies and two nickels, dated 1876, 1877, 1867 and 1869, respectively. Where they came from was a mystery, and still is. There were no holes or cracks in the walls. From where in the world (or out of it) had these things fallen?

The ghost first made itself known by tampering with a front doorbell which had to be twisted to produce a ring. One winter night, during a particularly fierce snowstorm, the bell began to ring incessantly. Mr. Gwynne rushed down the stairs and opened the door, thinking it was someone in need of assistance, but the porch was empty. What was even more mysterious was the fact that there were no footprints in the fresh snow.

After that experience, the ghost made certain the Gwynne family didn’t forget that this was its house, too. Frequently the family would hear footsteps going up and down the main staircase, and of course, no family member had been on the stairs at the time.

Before retiring, Mr. Gwynne would make certain that all doors and windows were securely locked. On a number of occasions the family would wake up to find the doors standing open and even some of the windows opened. Crashing sounds, like something being thrown or dropped, would shatter the stillness, but nothing was ever found broken.

Robert Zimmerman, La Porte’s Director of Redevelopment, purchased the house from the Gwynnes in 1958. His family was the last to live in the house. They were not aware that they had purchased a house complete with a live-in ghost. Shortly after moving in they began to experience unexplained disturbances.

About 2:00 AM one night, they were awakened by a crashing sound that shook the house. Immediately afterwards there was a metallic sound that Zimmerman likened to chains clanking on sheet metal, a very tinny sound that went on for nearly thirty seconds.

They searched the house but couldn’t find anything that would account for the noises. Zimmerman thought that it might have been a sonic boom and called Bunker Hill Air Force Base to see if any planes were flying in the area. He was told that because of public concerns the Air Force had curtailed flights of the B51s a month earlier.

Four months later when the daughter of the previous owner, Madeline Gwynne Kinney, asked if she could include the house in a historic home tour, she added information to Zimmerman’s tale. Mrs. Kinney told the group about the “friendly ghost” that had been a part of her family when they lived there. Afterwards the new owner asked Mrs. Kinney to describe for him some of the manifestations she had experienced.

Her family, she said, had been awakened several times during the years by a loud crashing sound followed by a metallic clanking. Though she offered no explanation, Mr. Zimmerman knew what had been behind his experience, a friendly ghost of long-standing in the residence.

Zimmerman told of the incidents his family experienced with the doorbell being rung then finding no one or even footprints on the porch.

Mrs. Kinney remarked that the same thing had happened to her family on numerous occasions.

Zimmerman’s daughter, Ginna, was in the rose garden picking flowers when she felt that someone was watching her. She turned around—there in the attic window she saw a woman staring down at her, with long black hair and puffed sleeves on a white blouse. When her father heard her scream that someone was in the attic, he rushed up the stairs, but found no one.

At least one incident with the ghost proved profitable. Mrs. Zimmerman, reading alone one night, heard the sound of coins falling to the floor and found on the floor six coins: a quarter, a nickel and four pennies all minted before 1900.

The family also experienced footsteps in the foyer, climbing the stairs and ending where there once was the door to the servant’s quarters.

The house was sold and eventually torn down to make way for the I and Tenth Streets La Porte Medical Clinic. But the site seems to have continued to harbor specters. Employees at the clinic reported lights turning on and off, doors opening and shutting, elevators operating on their own and moving shadows.

Whatever presence remained and materialized, or resonated its psychic energy, seemed to haunt the site, not the house. The Potawatomi would often set up temporary camps at the lake that had once been on the property. When the Indians were forced from the area they were marched past this lake. A young Indian maiden was supposed to have become ill, died and been buried on the grounds where the house was built. Perhaps in that incident lies the answer to the hauntings for those who believe in the supernatural.