Читать книгу More Haunted Hoosier Trails - Wanda Lou Willis - Страница 17

THIS COUNTY, HOME of Indiana Wesleyan and Taylor Universities, was founded in 1831 and named for Kentuckians Samuel and Moses Grant, who were killed by Indians in 1789. The same year that the county was founded, the newly platted city of Marion was chosen as the county seat. The city was named for General Francis Marion, a cavalry officer in the Revolutionary War. The county seat was propelled into an industrial boomtown nearly overnight with the discovery of natural gas in 1887.

Marion became known for its iron foundries, paper and glass factories, and manufacturing of auto parts. From 1945 to 1952, Marion made another mark on the automotive industry by manufacturing America’s first compact car, the Crosley.

In 1920, The Wesleyan Methodist Church chartered Ma-rion College. Its name was changed to Indiana Wesleyan University in 1988.

Also notorious in Grant County is the annual Easter pa-geant. Each spring since 1937, except during World War II, thousands of local volunteers have presented the pageant in the Marion Coliseum. The production portrays the last week of Christ’s life in pantomime and music.

One of the county’s most significant locations is a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Marion’s residential area, Shady Hills. Its front resembles a tepee. Of historic significance in Grant County is the Miami Indian Cemetery, located on County Route 600-North. The hilltop cemetery was once part of a 6,400-acre Indian Reservation. Since burials were not a part of the Indian traditions, the tombstones at the hilltop cemetery indicate that the Indians buried there were Christians.

Taylor University was originally the Fort Wayne Female College founded by Methodists in 1846. It became Fort Wayne College (co-educational) in 1855. The Upland Land Company offered the school ten thousand dollars and ten acres of land if it would move from Fort Wayne to Grant County. The school accepted the offer and moved to Upland, and in 1890 it was renamed Taylor University in honor of Methodist-Episcopal missionary and bishop, William Taylor.

The town of Matthews was named for Claude Matthews, Indiana governor (1893–1897) and major stockholder in the Matthews Land Company, which founded the town during the natural gas boom. The town seemed to mushroom overnight, hosting numerous industries hoping to profit from the natural gas discovery, and soon became known as the “Wonder City.” So enticing was the metropolis that the Indianapolis professional baseball team of the Western Association relocated there in 1901. Matthews’s prosperity and growth ended when the gas supply dwindled.

The town of Fairmount, settled primarily by Quakers, was platted in 1850 and originally named Pucker. The name was changed to Fairmount when a citizen visited Philadelphia and returned with glowing reports of the magnificence of Fairmount Park. The town incorporated in 1870.

From 1874 and well into the twentieth century, Fairmont County citizens were successful in their fight against the establishment of saloons in their town. If threats by the vigilantes weren’t successful, the dynamiting of saloons usually worked.

Fairmount boosters have made some unsubstantiated claims of greatness for their community, such as, that Fairmount was the home of the Eskimo Pie and the first auto was built by Orlie Scott. On his test drive, Scott wrecked the car, then sold it to Elwood Haynes, who re-stored it, added a brake, and in 1894 made the first successful gas powered “horseless carriage” trial run on Pumpkinvine Pike near Kokomo.

The town has gained national recognition as the home of actor James Dean, who grew up near Fairmount on a farm belonging to his aunt and uncle. In a 1949 statewide drama contest, he was judged the best actor in Indiana. Soon afterward he left for Hollywood, where he made three pictures before his untimely death in 1955 at the age of twenty-four.

Other notables from Grant County are James Davis, creator of the comic strip Garfield; Thomas R. Marshall, Indiana governor and U.S. Vice President; George W. Steel, Sr., first Oklahoma governor; Kennesaw Mountain Landis, baseball commissioner; Marie Webster, quilt designer and author; Mary Jane Ward, author of Snake Pit; Caleb B. Smith, Lincoln’s secretary of the interior; and Bishop and Milton Wright, parents of Orville and Wilbur Wright.