Richmond

By Susan E. King and Thomas D. Hamm

Founded by Quakers from North Carolina more than 200 years ago, Richmond boasts a rich and colorful history. White and black migrants from older parts of the United States joined emigrants from Ireland and Germany to create a diverse, flourishing, and at times contentious community. Railroads, the Whitewater Canal, and the National Road laid the foundations for economic growth before the Civil War, and Richmond grew steadily in population and prosperity from the Civil War until the late 20th century. Local folklore claims that at one time the city had more millionaires in proportion to population than any other place in the United States. While erecting remarkable homes and buildings, founding enduring institutions like schools, churches, and museums, and supporting at one time as many as six newspapers, Richmond produced memorable and colorful characters who left their mark not just in Richmond and Indiana, but around the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439652411

Susan E. King

Susan E. King, an archivist at Richmond's Morrisson-Reeves Library, and Thomas D. Hamm, a professor of history and archivist at Earlham College, have drawn from their institutions' collections and others to create a photographic portrait of Richmond since its founding.

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INTRODUCTION

Richmond, Indiana, is many things: county seat, regional economic and health-care center, college town, and, according to a recent survey, one of the most livable small cities in Indiana. While people have lived in the area for thousands of years, our knowledge of what would become Richmond begins a little over 200 years ago.

When the first European Americans explored the Whitewater Valley in the late 18th century, they found no permanent Native American settlements; instead, the Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami peoples used the lands around what would become Richmond as hunting grounds. The first permanent settlers in what would become Wayne County were Richard Rue, George Holman, and Thomas McCoy and their families on Elkhorn Creek in the spring of 1805.

Early in 1806, Andrew Hoover (1752–1834), a Quaker originally from North Carolina then living on the Stillwater River north of Dayton, Ohio, sent his son David to follow a section line west into the Indiana Territory. When David reached the Middle Fork of the Whitewater River, he found that spring water, timber, and building rock appeared to be abundant, and the face of the country looked delightful. It was a land of promise. His reports drew other North Carolina families. In 1806, those of Jeremiah and Catherine (Morrisson) Cox and John and Letitia (Trueblood) Smith arrived. By 1809, a considerable settlement of Quakers, mostly from North Carolina, had formed, and the community became the center of a large Quaker settlement. By 1860, Richmond, Indiana, had come to rival Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a Quaker spiritual and population center. Although they were a minority of the town’s residents by the 1830s, the Friends continued to set its moral and religious tone well into the 20th century.

Most of Richmond’s early residents came from the South, predominately North Carolinians, followed by Virginians and Kentuckians. A few merchants from New York and New England were attracted by the town’s commercial possibilities, and Quakers from the Delaware Valley came to join the large Quaker settlement. African Americans, both free and fugitives from slavery, were early residents, part of a pattern of free black communities in Ohio and Indiana near Quaker settlements.

As the population grew after 1830, it became more diverse. The construction of the National Road and the Whitewater Canal in the 1830s and railroads in the 1850s attracted significant numbers of Irish and German immigrants. They added Lutheran and Roman Catholic congregations to the city’s churches and also augmented the town’s cultural diversity. Conflicts over Sabbath observance and saloons pitted many immigrants against more staid native residents.

Richmond grew steadily, both in population and geography, for 150 years. By 1900, manufacturing had become the foundation of the city’s growth and prosperity, although in the 20th century many locally owned firms gave way to national corporations. The Richmond Cracker Company, for example, became successful enough to merge into Nabisco. Richmond’s population tripled, from 2,070 to 6,608 between 1840 and 1860, and had doubled again to 12,742 by 1880. By 1920, it had doubled again, to 26,765. It peaked in 1960, when the census gave Richmond 44,419 inhabitants. It has fallen since then, to 36,812, although much of this decline reflects the development of housing subdivisions in the surrounding townships. Once a cluster of houses on the east bank of the Whitewater River, the city now stretches west of the Whitewater River to the Wayne Township line and east to the Ohio state line.

Richmond also became more diverse in the 20th century. It attracted a small population of Italian immigrants between 1900 and 1920. Large numbers of Southerners, mainly from Kentucky and Tennessee, came to look for jobs in the city’s factories from World War I until the 1960s. A local joke asked, What are the three things they teach in a Kentucky school? Reading, Writing, and Route 27 north to Richmond.

Richmond could also point with pride to the achievements of natives and residents who made good both locally and in the larger world. They include a Nobel laureate (Wendell M. Stanley), professional athletes (Lamar Lundy, Weeb Ewbank), cartoonists (Gaar Williams), pioneering feminists (Dr. Mary F. Thomas), and millionaires (Daniel G. Reid, William B. Leeds). Some were less admirable: Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones, of Jonestown notoriety, was a Richmond High School graduate.

In short, the history of Richmond is rich.

One

PIONEERS,

1806–1835

The settlement that the Quakers founded was first known as Smithsville, after John Smith, who laid out some of his land in town lots in 1816. But, as David Hoover remembered, The name not giving general satisfaction, Thomas Roberts, James Pegg, and myself were chosen to select another. Roberts proposed Waterford; Pegg, Plainfield, and I, Richmond. The last was approved by the lot-holders.

Originally, the settlement was in Dearborn County. By 1811, the population justified forming a new county, which was