On June 9 join IHS Membership and Local History Services staff for an exciting day-trip to Spring Grove in Cincinnati, Ohio, one of the Midwest’s oldest historic cemeteries!
Founded in 1845, Spring Grove boasts over 400 acres of beautifully maintained gardens and cemetery spaces. The tour group will be treated to an in-depth, one hour walking tour by Spring Grove’s chief horticulturalist. The trip will include stops at two additional cemeteries in Indiana for brief walking tours.
Indiana cemetery experts Jeannie Regan-Dinius of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Sheila Riley of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis will accompany the group and make presentations throughout the day. Lunch, snacks and transportation via coach will be provided.
Space is limited, so register now! To secure your spot, please contact Jennifer Hiatt at (317) 234-2670 or jhiatt@indianahistory.org. The registration fee is $40 for IHS members and $60 for non-members (includes Individual membership).
Please note: for the purposes of the walking tours, guests should be able to stand and walk for up to an hour at a time.
Today, we bring you one of Sylvia Henricks' "Remembrances." You can read more of Sylvia's columns weekly in The Franklin Township Informer, or in her book From The Ash Grove (available directly from the FTHS, and via the web site).
Beech Grove, our neighbor community to the north west, is the subject of a new book. being sold by the Beech Grove Library. Produced by Arcadia Publishing, as one of their Images of America Series, the 127 page book is well-written, interesting and full of new and old black and white photographs. Eleven of the photos are of postcards from the collection of our own society member, Joe Seiter. The text is written by Jim Hillman and John Murphy, “with the Beech Grove Public Library.”
The Foreword by former Beech Grove Mayor Donald Joe Wright gives an overview of the earliest days of the area, when the prominent families were the Churchmans, McGregors, Boltons and Cottmans. The Churchman property was then in Franklin Township, and George Cottman, who became a historian, wrote at one time of attending school at “No.9,” the one-room Franklin Township district school known as Poplar Grove.
In 1904 construction began on a large repair facility by the Big Four Railroad (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St.Louis Railway). Beech Grove as a town also had its beginning, at first only four homes and two businesses. But as the repair facility for engines and passenger cars grew, so did the town. Beech Grove was incorporated in 1906. The Shops were completed in 1908.. “Of the original 2400 acres the railroad had acquired, 640 acres were reserved for the Shops and rail operations, and the balance formed the original land for the town itself,” the authors wrote.
The name of the facility has changed over the years. In 1923 it took the name of its parent Company, the New York Central Shops. During World War II, it had its busiest years with 5000 men and women employed, but after the war railroad traffic declined, and in 1968 the NYC Railroad merged with Penn Central, and the facility became the Penn Central Shops.
The Federal Government created the Amtrak passenger rail system, which used the repair facilities of the Penn Central Shops in1975. In 1986 Amtrak took control of the facility, renaming it Amtrak Shops.
The attractive paperback, which sells for $23.50 at the Beech Grove Library also records the growth of Beech Grove, its businesses, schools, homes and celebrations. Beech Grove opted, in 1970, not to join UNIGOV, the county-wide consolidation with Indianapolis, and maintains its own government and municipal services. The Society has added a copy of the book to our collection of local histories, and you may look at it at our Meeting House.
Brenda Lempp of Madison, Wisconsin, has been writing poetry, she says, since she was 13 year old. She was born and grew up in Acton, the third oldest of Clifford and Betty Kight’s nine children. Now married to her high school pen-pal from Germany, Steffan , who is a mathematics professor at UW-Madison, she is the mother of three children, and has recently published her second collection of poems about her childhood.
Brenda and I became acquainted several years ago when she worked for the Informer. After graduating from Franklin Central, she attended Franklin College, earning a degree in journalism. Brenda has worked for newspapers in Indiana, Florida, and Illinois. She has also taught, substituted, supervised a school lunch room, volunteered in school libraries, edited school yearbooks, and “clowned around as Buzzy the Clown with Happy’s Clown Club.”
Poetry has always been a big part of her life, she admits. She has led a poetry group for 20 years, and is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Regional Writers’ Association and. She published her first chapbook, Yellow Smiles, in 2000, and her poems have appeared in several publications.
Last year she produced her second book, Collecting Memories, Childhood Poems, dedicating it to her parents. So large a family provided Brenda with countless images and memories of the life they shared in Acton., images of home-made fun and happy times.
Brenda signed and sent two copies of her latest book, one for the Historical Society and one to me. In a note she said that she recently shared in a reading for the Wisconsin Festival of Poets. “I dedicated my reading to Mildred Mahler, and I read two of her poems,” Brenda wrote, “and several from my chapbook.” (Mrs. Mahler, named by some “Acton’s Poet Laureate” wrote many poems from which Olga Woolman and I chose some for a Township Historical Society’s publication, Apron Pocket Poems, printed in 1980.)
Collecting Memories contains 41 of Brenda’s poems, with the title poem on the back cover.
Being a poet, is a meaningful part of her life, Brenda Kight Lempp says, although she admits “I sometimes am too busy to write.” “But,” she adds, “I can’t stop writing.”
Brenda’s first chapbook, Yellow Smiles, Family Poems, about her three children, Kiki, Kari, and Kevin, was published in 2000. Her latest book, Collecting Memories was completed last year. Both books are in the Township Historical Society’s collection of local authors.
In Collecting Memories, Brenda writes about her own childhood in Acton where she grew up, one of nine children of Clifford and the late Betty Kight. She dedicated the book to her parents. Her poems reflect a happy, if sometimes crowded household, family fun, and many of the small-town pleasures of life in Acton.
The first one in the book is “Mom’s Favorites.”
I miss my childhood days(three holiday meals omitted)
when mom cooked peppery sausage, biscuits and gravy,
or hot French toast topped with grape jelly.
For a snack after school,
we loved hot buttered sugar and cinnamon toast,
Those cold Indiana winters were warm
with Mom’s special home-canned vegetable soup.
For dinner, cornbread crumbled with white navy beans
or garden green beans cooked with potatoes and ham.
And oh, I could never resist smothered liver
or a rhubarb crisp cooked in Mom’s old iron skillet.
When I get homesick, there’s nothing
like cooking Mom’s favorites,
Just the smell of a bacon and egg sandwich at breakfast
takes me back home.
Sometimes I look back,/ and I see the little girl/sitting by the lamp.
I hear the refrigerator murmur,/ the clock tick on the wall.
I feel the thirst for knowledge/ and the flow of words on paper.
Years later,/ I still want that corner in my life.
There is my special place/ the lamp warmed me/ the bench hugged me
The clock listened to me, / the refrigerator soothed me,/And words flowed from my pen.
Sages say that “time flies when you’re having fun,” and Franklin Township Historical Society has been having fun for 35 years! Our members and the community continue to astound us with their interest, their support, and their contributions in keeping and documenting the history of Franklin Township. Our Meeting House has welcomed over 200 guests during 2010, including Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Franklin Township 4-H club members, the 1960 graduating class of Franklin Township High School, and numerous visitors during Open Hours. Special activities during Open Hours were quite successful: two croquet tournaments, a cat demonstration, a post card exchange and tours of Big Run Cemetery.
Community participation efforts included our input in the planning of an Indy Parks recreation area near the Wanamaker Post Office, providing input for a proposed Historic Michigan Road Byway and judging student projects for National History Day. Presentations informing local groups about our historical society were given to the Four Corners Home Ec Club, Franklin Township Chamber of Commerce, Perry Township Historical Society, and Marion County Home Economics group. We provided an exhibit for the Wanamaker Branch Public Library and participated in the second annual Genealogy Fair at the Indiana State Library.
We continue to receive inquiries via the internet and our webmaster, Alena Van Arendonk, has moved us into the 21st century with the addition of Facebook!
We continue to send quarterly newsletters to our members, have monthly board meetings, and have nearly completed a data base of our possessions. There are some new exhibits in the display cases at the Meeting House, some newly organized and indexed scrapbooks making them more user-friendly for our visitors and many new gifts received during the year from the community and our members. This year has been another opportunity for Franklin Township Historical Society to be the recipient of an Eagle Scout project. Josh Armentrout recently completed his project, which includes a lighted sign that once served to provide information about Big Run Baptist Church. We can now post information about upcoming events on our new sign and our American flag is lighted at dark.
Diana Stevenson, president
November 4, 2010
