Muncie in 150

By Rick Yencer

Muncie in 150 started as a look at the communitys sesquicentennial celebrated in many ways by the summer of 2015.
The story about Middletown USA evolved into history in the making with several events that offered once in a lifetime experiences for the people and leaders of the community.
As Europeans moved to the Midwest after the 1818 Treaty of St. Marys with Native Americans, Muncie grew along the banks of the White River until railroads charted the course for trade, commerce and later industry in Indiana.
The communitys post Civil War development along with its turn of the 20th Century industrialization offered progress at every turn along with a growing higher education and health care system making it a regional center.
Many of Muncies celebrities are featured like that cat from Albany drawn by Jim Davis and his associates who are looking to China for the next market for Garfield.. Theres also the tragedy of National Football League star Dave Duerson who was an All-American and won two Super Bowls. Duerson took his life and had his brain used for research into chronic brain trauma.
Theres also some reads on whats happening in Muncie today like a no contest city election and a failing school system.
Muncie in 150 offers a view for those here and there to a community in the Midwest that always puts quality of life and place before crime and poverty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503590168

Rick Yencer

Rick Yencer is a writer, activist and now author of the new book, Muncie in 150, that chronicles the people and places of the Midwest community also known as Middletown USA. Growing up on a farm near Roll, Yencer learned how to write from mentor Ed Henderson who taught journalism in Hartford City and Muncie schools. He obtained an undergraduate degree from Ball State University and went to work for The Muncie Star and later The Star Press. Over 35 years, he wrote about government, business, crime, education and the people of Muncie and Indiana. Yencer also has been active in political, faith and environmental groups besides continuing to tell stories as he did over the last half century.

Book preview

MUNCIE IN 150

Copyright © 2015 by Rick Yencer

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015912149

ISBN:   Softcover     978-1-5035-9015-1

Hardcover   978-1-5035-9014-4

EBook         978-1-5035-9016-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/12/2015

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Contents

Prologue

Acknowledgements

The Ancestors

Our Neighborhood

Family X

Defining Women

The Big Man

The Ball State Legacy

Those Entertainers

Fat Cat of Albany

Pray and Play

Dodge City

The Night Sex Died

The Last Call

The State of Muncie

Muncie Schools 101

The Squeeze

The Brotherhood

Losing Democracy

The Future

Epilogue

The Photographer

PROLOGUE

Muncie IN 150 started as a look at the community’s sesquicentennial celebrated in many ways by the summer of 2015.

The story about Middletown USA evolved into history in the making with several events that offered once in a lifetime experiences for the people and leaders of the community.

As Europeans moved to the Midwest after the 1818 Treaty of St. Mary’s with Native Americans, Muncie grew along the banks of the White River until railroads charted the course for trade, commerce and later industry in Indiana.

The community’s post Civil War development along with its turn of the 20th Century industrialization offered progress at every turn along with a growing higher education and health care system making it a regional center.

Many of Muncie’s celebrities are featured like that cat from Albany drawn by Jim Davis and his associates who are looking to China for the next market for Garfield.. There’s also the tragedy of National Football League star Dave Duerson who was an All-American and won two Super Bowls. Duerson took his life and had his brain used for research into chronic brain trauma.

There’s also some reads on what’s happening in Muncie today like a no contest city election and a failing school system.

Muncie IN 150 offers a view for those here and there to a community in the Midwest that always puts quality of life and place before crime and poverty.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are thankful to those who preserve our past and ensure our future as public servants and those who keep our history.

Muncie IN 150 acknowledges the living history offered by the E.B. and Bertha C. Ball Center that brought Muncie’s sesquicentennial alive to so many people this spring.

And the digital media repository at Ball State University’s Bracken Library was the source for thousands of records, photographs and other information about the community.

Mayor Dennis Tyler offered plenty of venues to talk about the new direction of the Middletown USA where people work together to provide a better quality of life and place.

Retired librarian Deborah J. Ensch provided invaluable editing and spiritual support for this book.

Our blessed wife, Nancy Boyd Yencer, was an inspiration for this work as among the first Europeans who settled Indiana, a member of the first families of Virginia and related to the Bradfords who landed at Plymouth Rock. Her passing in 2014 also is remembered in history.

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THE ANCESTORS

A unique history of Muncie from the days of the first trading post and tavern to downtown and McGalliard Road today can be found among the 44,000 souls resting in Beech Grove Cemetery.

And its caretaker in 2015, Tom Schnuck, just loves to tell stories about those living and dead.

At my job, I don’t have anyone to talk to, said Schnuck.

Schnuck dropped many names one day in April to dozens who gathered at the E.B. and Bertha C. Ball Center to listen to the history of Muncie and its cemetery. Besides maintaining city burial grounds, Schnuck also is a historian and a member of Sons of the American Revolution.

Muncie history starts with the corner of Hackley and Gilbert streets where storekeeper Goldsmith C. Gilbert swindled the granddaughter of Little Turtle, Rebecca Hackley out of 672 acres of land in 1827. Schnuck used the cemetery charted in 1841 as the starting point of what would become Muncie after voters agreed they wanted a city government in 1865, at the end of the Civil War and assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. That was after an earlier election failed to incorporate the town when railroads came through the community.

Schnuck talked about Thomas Neely who started a grocery and soon moved to a blacksmith shop and became a community leader encouraging the building of a railroad between Muncie and Indianapolis to better supply raw material for his shop. He also was a county commissioner and was elected to the school board of education in 1878,

Another post Civil War businessman was James Boyce who Schnuck said left Ireland during the potato famine. In 1870, he came to Muncie and began both gas and electric utilities and built a business block in 1880 that still stands in 2015.

That Boyce Block houses the Muncie Civic Theatre and Gordy Fine Art & Framing and also is a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. Boyce then led a group of businessmen to attract the Ball Brothers to the community that started their glass manufacturing when natural gas was found in Delaware County.

Wholesale grocer and civic leader Joseph Goddard is another landmark name with the huge warehouse bearing his name found in downtown Muncie for near a century until its demolition. Goddard and his wife were Quakers and established a Friends Meeting locally in 1876, Schnuck said.

There also was Civil War surgeon William H. Kemper who founded a medical practice in Muncie after the war and served a county coroner. By 1908, Kemper published a comprehensive history of Delaware County that documents the early days of the community and industrialization with Ball Brothers, Indiana Bridge, Indiana Steel and Wire and others.

Charles Kimbrough was president of Indiana Bridge, according to Kemper’s history and he and his wife, Margaret were grandparents of author Emily Kimbrough who wrote How Dear to My Heart that was about life in early 20th Century Muncie. A historic district is named after the prominent Muncie family where the family home is located and also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Kemper history also talks about the impact Charles W. Kilgore, a lawyer and former mayor, had during the late 19th century with building a