Evansville, Indiana

“ Indiana shows many pretty villages, embowered among her trees, or scattered along her sloping banks, and we have to-day passed Troy, Evansville, Rockport, Rome, Fredonia, Manchport, while the other{224} side, Westport is quite a conspicuous and pleasing town, situated upon a high bluff, its houses perched like eagles nests, upon the high points of the cliff, while the brick court-house stands upon the bank beneath. ”

“ No reasonable person will fail to admit this. A civil war gives a horrible license to bad men; and God forbid that our land should ever be blighted by another.
Gambling was not allowed on board the Nightingale, but there was a good deal of euchre-playing, for amusement, during the voyage. At Evansville, Indiana, a flourishing town of eight thousand inhabitants, we landed for half-an-hour, and, while there, several passengers came aboard; among them was a well-dressed young man, with what I considered a bad countenance. ”

“ I answered, “all my life I’ve been thinking of making a return trip to Indiana and writing a book about it. I was born in Terre Haute, down in the southwest there below you, and I was brought up in Sullivan and Evansville in the southern part of the state and in Warsaw up north. Agree to take me to all those places after we get there, and I’ll go. What’s more, you can illustrate the book if you will.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Warsaw is only about two hours north of our place. Terre Haute is seventyfive miles away. Evansville is a hundred and fifty. ”

“ This being one of a series of three hundred bonds of like tenor and date issued by the city of Evansville, in payment of a subscription to the Evansville, Henderson and Nashville Railroad Company, made in pursuance of an act of the legislature of the state of Indiana and ordinances of the city council of said city, passed in pursuance thereof. The city of Evansville hereby waives all benefit from valuation or appraisement laws. ”

“ Soon, the puffing craft debouched upon the Ohio, and, quickly overtaking us, passed down toward Evansville.
Green River Towhead, two miles below, claimed us for the night. There is a shanty, midway on the island, and at the lower end the landing of a railway-transfer. We have our camp at the upper end, in a bed of spotless white sand, thick grown to dwarf willows. Entangled drift-wood lies about in monster heaps, lodged in depressions of the land, or against stout tree-trunks; a low bar of gravel connects our home with Green River Island, lying close against the Indiana bank ”

“ In the larger cities, as Indianapolis, Evansville, and Fort Wayne, the Germans had an important part from the beginning, and the Irish were well distributed; but before the Scandinavians and Slavs had begun to seek homes in America, the land values in Indiana had so appreciated that this class of immigrants could find no footing. ”

“ INDIANA, Vanderburgh County, Evansville, Auto Hotel Building (Downtown Evansville MRA) , 111—115 SE 3rd St. (04/06/84)
INDIANA, Vanderburgh County, Evansville, Barrett’s Britz Building (Downtown Evansville MRA) , 415 Main St. (04/06/84)
INDIANA, Vanderburgh County, Evansville, Conner’s Bookstore (Dallas Music) (Downtown Evansville MRA) , 611—613 Main St. (04/06/84)
INDIANA, Vanderburgh County, Evansville, Fellwock Garage (Glass Specialty Company) (Downtown Evansville MRA) , 315 Court St. ”

“ INDIANA, Vanderburgh County, Evansville, Richardt House (Downtown Evansville Historic District) , 213 NW 5th St. 07/16/86)
Multiple Resource Areas are identified by MRA
Thematic Resources are identified by TR
NHL designates a National Historic Landmark
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105) . ”

“ Indiana.In Indiana.—From Lawrenceburg, by Georgetown, Harrison, New Trenton, Brookville, to return by the mouth of Big Cedar, Solomon Allen’s and Cambridge, to Lawrenceburg, in place of the present route. From Indianapolis, by Greencastle, in Putnam, and Rockville, in Parke, to Newport, in Vermillion. From Princeton to Mount Carmel, Illinois. From Evansville to Mount Vernon. From Danville, by Crawfordsville, to Fountain Courthouse. From Crawfordsville, to Tippecanoe Courthouse. From Rockville, in the county of Parke, by Fountain Courthouse, to Tippecanoe Courthouse. ”

“ The most important manufacturing centres are Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Evansville, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Anderson, Hammond, Richmond, Muncie, Michigan City and Elwood, each having a gross annual product of more than $6,000,000. ”

“ It was a cheering spectacle. I respect all people who love flowers. It seems to me one of the preliminary, initiative steps in a love and understanding of beauty. Evansville came nearer at a surprising rate. I began to brush up my local geography and list in my mind the things I must see—the houses in which we had lived, the church and school which I was made to attend, the Ohio River, at the foot of Main Street—where once in January, playing with some boys, I fell into the river, knocked off a floating gangway, and came desperately near being swept away by the ice. ”

“ EVANSVILLE But I cannot possibly hope to convey the delicious sting life had in it for me at this time as a spectacle, a dream, something in which to bathe and be enfolded, as only youth and love know life. Not Evansville alone but life itself was beautiful—the sky, the trees, the sun, the visible scene. People hurrying to and fro or idling in the shade, the sound of church bells, of whistles, a wide stretch of common. ”

“ A MINSTREL BROTHER But we didn’t reach Evansville, for all our declaration and pretence of our need. A delightful run along a delightful road, overhung with trees (and now that we were out of the valley between the two rivers, cut between high banks of tree shaded earth) , brought us to Princeton, a town so bright and clean looking that we were persuaded, almost against our wishes, to pass the night here. Some towns have just so much personality. They speak to you of pleasant homes and pleasant people—a genial atmosphere. ”

“ Indianapolis is only twenty years old, having been, upon its site, a dense forest in 1820; now it has several public buildings, churches, schools, court-house, etc., and two thousand inhabitants. The amount of tolls taken upon the canals and railroads of Indiana amount to twenty-eight thousand five hundred dollars. Salt of a very fine kind is made in Fountain county. Its population is six hundred and eighty-three thousand three hundred and fourteen. ”

“ ILLINOIS, Cook County, Evanston, Stoneleigh Manor (Surburban Apartment Buildings in Evanston TR) , 904—906 Michigan Ave., 227—229 Main St. (03/15/84)
ILLINOIS, Cook County, Evanston, Tudor Manor (Surburban Apartment Buildings in Evanston TR) , 524 Sheridan Sq. (03/15/84)
ILLINOIS, Cook County, Evanston, Westminster (Surburban Apartment Buildings in Evanston TR) , 632—640 Hinman Ave. (03/15/84)
INDIANA, Marion County, Indianapolis, Administration Building, Indiana Central University, Otterbein and Hanna Ave. ”

“ Think of a long, smooth red brick road stretching out before you mile after mile, the blue waters of Lake Erie to your right, with its waves, ships and gulls; a flat, Holland-like farming land to your left, with occasional small white towns, factory centers, and then field upon field of hay, corn, cabbages, wheat, potatoes—mile after mile and mile after mile.
Ohio is too flat. It hasn’t the rural innocence and unsophistication which Indiana seems still to retain, nor yet the characteristics of a thoroughgoing manufacturing world. ”

“ Numbers of Germans, French, and Irish, are scattered in the towns, and over the country, carrying on the business of bakers, grocers, store, grog shops, and tavern keepers. In time, these people will become steady from necessity, and consequently prosperous. The number of the inhabitants of Indiana amounts to 215,000. Its admission into the Union as a sovereign state, dates from the year 1815 to 1816; its constitution differs in some points from that of Ohio, and its governor is elected for the term of three years. ”

“ Since then, the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and the long strip of country known as the Territory of Wisconsin, have been carved out of it. Indiana, which numbers but twenty years since the commencement of her political existence, contains a population of six hundred thousand, equal to the population of Massachusetts, a State of two hundred years’ duration. In age she is an infant; in strength and resources a giant. Her appearance indicates the 402 full vigor of maturity, while, measured by her years, she is yet in the cradle. ”

“ What a glorious casket! Away with the cane! The pallor of his countenance is a part of the uncanny mockery of the night. There is no better speaker on the floor of the Senate. His thoughts flow fresh, clear, sparkling, like water from a hill-side spring. It is true, Indiana is a benighted State, morally defective, as seen by her divorces; her territory swampy, with fever and ague a yearly crop. But which is the best harvest a State can yield? Why men, to be sure, and when this fact is considered Indiana need not feel ashamed of herself. ”

“ The centre of population in the United States, which lay just east of Baltimore in the first decade of the century, moved gradually westward, until, in the last decade, it lay in Indiana at a point sixty-five miles south of Indianapolis.
The older Indiana towns enjoyed in their beginnings all the benefits that may be bestowed upon new communities by a people of good social antecedents. Many of these towns have lost their prestige, owing to changed political or commercial [11] conditions; the departed glory of some of them is only a tradition among the elders ”

“ From Chicago, or Colorado, or San Francisco one may expect a giant labor war or social upheaval of any kind; from Boston or Pennsylvania or New Mexico new religious movements may come—and have; New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois can and have contributed vast political upheavals. This is even true of Ohio, its next door neighbor.
But Indiana lies in between all this—simple, unpretentious, not indifferent but quiescent,—a happy land of farms and simple industries which can scarcely be said to have worked any harm to any man. ”

“ It rises in the State of Ohio, flows across Indiana, and, turning southward, makes for a long distance the Illinois boundary. Its chief city is Terre Haute, the "High Ground," about seventy miles west of Indianapolis, another prominent railroad centre, having forty-five thousand people, with extensive manufactures. It is surrounded by valuable coal-fields, is built upon an elevated plateau, and, like all these prairie cities, is noted for its many broad and well-shaded streets. ”

“ They explained it patiently to Ross and the doctor.
“The pattern emerged clearly in the twentieth century. Swarming slums abrawl with children, children, children everywhere. Walk down a Chicago Southside street, and walk away with the dazed impression that all the world was pregnant. Walk through pretty, pleasant Evanston, and find the impression wrong. Those who lived in Evanston were reasonable people. They waited and thought. Being reasonable, they saved and planned. Being reasonable, they resorted to gadgets or chemicals or continence. ”

“ To this migration and to a liberal provision for popular education Indiana owes a great improvement in the average intelligence of her people. As early as 1880, I believe, the State had come to rank with some of the New England States in the matter of literacy.
The folk-speech of the Ohio River country has many features in common with that of the eastern Middle States, while it received but little from the dignified eighteenth-century English of eastern Virginia. There are distinct traces of the North-Irish in the idioms and in the peculiar pronunciations. ”

“ Which one of them will seek her out first tonight, do you suppose—the lawyer, the doctor, or the storekeeper?
How good it all tasted after New York! And what a spell it cast. I can scarcely make you understand, I fear. Indiana is a world all unto itself, and this extreme western portion of Ohio is a part of it, not by official, but rather by natural arrangement. The air felt different—the sky and trees and streets here were sweeter. They really were. The intervening years frizzled away and once more I saw myself quite clearly in this region, with the ideas and moods of my youth still dominant. ”

“ Midsummer was a beautiful but, to Marjorie Hale, almost a strange season in Evanston; for the women and children of fashionable Evanston long ago have affected the summer hegira to other, and not always cooler places. They merely "shut" their homes, if they can afford it, leaving a servant or two to keep up the house and lawn; or they rent their abodes, furnished, to women and children from other cities who look upon the comfortable, modern little city on the shore of the great lake as a most desirable summer resort. ”

“ As already indicated, country life at the West and Southwest has not varied widely in different communities. The same social conditions and peculiarities of speech have been observable in many regions deriving population from common sources; but the type found in the Ohio Valley was best defined in Indiana, and it has gained its greatest fame through the interpretations of Edward Eggleston and James Whitcomb Riley. ”

“ The Cumnock School of Oratory, at Evanston, also co-operates with the university. By the charter of the university the sale of intoxicating liquors is forbidden within 4 m. of the university campus. The manufacturing importance of the city is slight, but is rapidly increasing. The principal manufactures are wrought iron and steel pipe, bakers’ machinery and bricks. In 1905 the value of the factory products was $2,550,529, being an increase of 207.3% since 1900. In Evanston are the publishing offices of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. ”