JOE ARMSTRONG, retired resident of Bedford, was at one time one of the largest individual land owners in Southern Indiana. Most of his large holdings have been sold and he is now satisfied with the ownership of a small tract of a hundred acres near Bedford, land covering valuable stone deposits in this famous limestone district.

Mr. Armstrong was born April 24, 1854, near Springville, Indiana. His birthplace was his father's farm. He was a son of Ari and Mary (Short) Armstrong. The Short family was an old and prominent one. John Short was a soldier of the Revolution, enlisting as a private in August, 1776, at first under Capt. William Nail and later under Captain McCutcheon. On November 12, 1832, he was awarded a pension for his Revolutionary services. John Short had the following children: Wesley, born December 20, 1780, Sarah, September 15, 1782, William, October 9, 1784, John, November 11, 1786, Thomas, June 6, 1789, Samuel, March 13, 1792, Reuben, October 15, 1794, Ezekiel, December 12, 1797, and Hansford, July 12, 1800. Of these children John, or Jack, Short married Avy Owens, and by this union there were eleven children: Washington, born December 3, 1808, Nancy, April 12, 1810, Samuel, July 14, 1812, Polly, February 15, 1814, Wesley, May 10, 1816, Martin O., May 12, 1820, Jeal, September 15, 1822, Hansford, January 14, 1825, Maurel, March 12, 1827, Hubbard, September 12, 1828, and Hugh L., May 28, 1832.

Ari Armstrong was born November 4, 1814, and died November 29, 2905. His son, Joe Armstrong, grew up at Springville, attended the old academy there, later the Beaty School, where he completed the common branches of learning, and was also in a private school and had a course in the Normal School at Bedford. At the age of eighteen he took up teaching and taught two terms at Goose Creek and one tern in Perry Township. Mr. Armstrong when twenty-one years of age made his first important investment as a land owner. He paid nine thousand dollars for 411 acres, at that time considered a very high price. In his investments he showed a great deal of wisdom and foresight, and from the proceeds from his energetic business career he steadily invested his surplus in land until he had accumulated about two thousand acres. Part of this land was in Texas and he had about 400 acres in the cotton belt. His son Dennis had charge of the southern plantation. On his Indiana lands and even on part of his Texas properties he carried on stock raising, and that was a business that supplied him a large part of his competence.

Mr. Armstrong has been retired for the past twenty years. He married, September 27, 1877, Miss Lizzie Oliphant. To their union were born seven children. The oldest, May, is the widow of Charles Moore and has four children, named George, Joseph, Milfred and Virginia. The oldest son, Dennis, married Luela Rush, and they had five children: Joyce, Rush, Ruth, Lois and Joe, the latter of whom is deceased. Lydia married Elijah McKnight. Cleo married Stanley Frazier and has four children, Eureta, Elizabeth, Robert and David. Ruth Armstrong is the widow of Quincy Rainbolt, and their two children are Richard and Elizabeth. Blain married Mary Holmes, and they have three children, Louise, Stewart and Freeland. Felix, the youngest, married Eula Rush and has two sons, Don and Harry.

Mr. Joe Armstrong on December 27, 1893, married Fannie Culmer, daughter of William and Susanna (Catherwood) Culmer. William Culmer was born at Canterbury, County Kent, England, in 1822, was brought to America when a child by his parents, Stephen and Sarah (Knight) Culmer, first living near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and bout 1846 came to Indiana and settled three miles north of Springville. By his second marriage Mr. Joe Armstrong has three children: Shirley, an A. B. and M. D. graduate of the University of Indiana and now a member of the faculty of Ohio State University; Spain, who married Mary Duncan, and their children are Mary J., Robert S., Helen E. and Phyllis; and the youngest is Helen Armstrong, who completed her education here, and is now engaged in welfare work at Columbus, Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong are members of the Christian Church.

INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931


ELMER R. CONNER has lived practically all his life in close touch with the stone industry of Southern Indiana. As soon as his education was over he went into the quarried and mills, and has had a working experience that has taken him throughout this district and over the country at large. Mr. Conner is now superintendent of the Black Diamond plant of the Indiana Limestone Company at Bedford.

He was born on a farm in Monroe County, near Bloomington, in 1888, son of Tarence and Nancy (Hanson) Conner, and grandson of Alexander and Eliza (Pope) Conner. His grandfather was a Virginian, went to Kentucky and from there to Indiana, and became a large land owner and farmer in Monroe County. He and his wife are buried in a cemetery about fifteen miles from Bloomington. Tarence Conner was also a farmer, but has spent half a century in touch with the practical workings of the stone business as quarryman and in other interests. He is now living retired at the age of seventy, and his wife is sixty-seven. They have had seven children: Ida, wife of William Smallwood; Janie, widow of Max Neskie; Chessie, wife of Charles Neskie; Elmer R.; Russell, who marrie Naomi DeFord; Ivy, wife of Riley Mansfield; and one that died in infancy.

Elmer R. Conner attended the Patton school near his home in Monroe County, and received most of his schooling at Oolitic, where he finished high school and at the age of eighteen began learning the trade of planer-man in the Hoosier Mill. He was there two years, then worked with the Reed-Powers Mill at Bedford, was with the Strubble Mill and four years with the Shea and Donnelly organization. For a short time he was at Louisville and as a stone cutter did work at Detroit and other places. However, most of his time has been spent in more or less executive duties in connection with various mills, being planer foremand in the Donato, Shea & Donnelly, McMillan mills. He was made superintendent of the Black Diamond Mill in 1926, just before the general merger that resulted in the organization of the Indiana Limestone Company.

Mr. Conner married, February 4, 1904, Miss Edith Miller, of Springville, Indiana, daughter of James and Eliza (Ford) Miller, her father deceased, and her mother is still living. Her father is buried in the Christian Cemetery at Springville. Mr. and Mrs. Conner have two children, Robert D., a graduate of DePauw University, and Helen, wife of Gayle Gabbert. Mr. and Mrs. Gabbert have a daughter, Mary Margaret. Mr. Conner was for two years a deacon in the Baptist Church and is member of the Industrial Club of Bedford.

INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931


MISS GENEVIEVE MACDONALD WILLIAMS. Enjoying innumerable benefits and advantages, the opening months of 1922 found the pleasant little City of Huntingburg, Indiana, still lacking a civic enterprise greatly desired by her resident scholars and her intelligent and progressive people generally, a public library. Nine years finds this lack remedied, and perhpas to no one is more credit due for the initial planning than to Miss Genevieve Williams, the present librarian. Miss Williams is a highly educated, cultured lady, an experienced teacher familiar with the world's best literature, and for a considerable period she spared no effort in furthering the founding of the public library in her native city. She is not only librarian, but is also a member of the library board, offices of responsibility which she has filled with marked efficiency since the library was founded, April 24, 1922. An indication of her good management is shown in the aroused and continued civic interest and in the increase and value of the books secured by purchase and otherwise.

Miss Genevieve Williams was born at Huntingburg, a daughter of Dr. Gershom P. and Alice (Macdonald) Williams, the latter of whom was born in Pennsylvania. The former was for many years one of the prominent physicians and surgeons of Huntingburg, but died in 1904. Mrs. Williams survived her husband until 1914, and then she, too, passed away. Five children were born to them, one of whom died in infancy, the others being: Grace, who married James O. Chaille, has three children, and they all reside at Fort Branch, Indiana, where Mrs. Chaille is on the library board; Frank, who resides at Louisville, Kentucky, married Lona Kaegin, and they have two children; Ross, who resides at Princeton, Indiana, is married and has two children; and Genevieve.

Her early education acquired in the common and high schools of Huntingburg, Miss Williams subsequently attended DePauw University and the Indiana State Normal School, after which she taught school at Huntingburg for ten years, and, although all admit that she is the ideal librarian she is missed in her former occupation, for she was one of the best beloved educators of Dubois County.

The following history of the library was taken from the 1928 Industrial and Trade Edition of one of the local newspapers:

"Among her civic enterprises Huntingburg is justly proud of her public library.

"In the spring of 1922 several progressive and public-spirited citizens, realizing the need and advantages of a public library, started a movement to found one. A solicitation was made to secure enough cash subscriptions to raise the amount necessary to get legal enactment for the founding of a library. The people responded splendidly and the necessary subscriptions were secured. The list was promptly filed with the county clerk and the following persons were appointed as the library board by the circuit judge, the City Council and the city board of education: Miss Genevieve Williams, Louis Wagner, J. W. Finke, Mrs. Louis Lukemeyer, J. V. Stimson, Mrs. Ed Dufendach and W. E. Menke.

"The newly appointed board took their oath of office April 23, 1922. The founding of the library was publicly celebrated in a meeting of citizens held in the City Hall Sunday afternoon, April 30, of that year, at which W. J. Hamilton, state secretary and organizer of the Public Library Board of Indiana, was the speaker. The new board immediately took up the preliminary work of establishing the library. Two rooms were secured in the old Phoenix Hotel Building, which have since been the home of the institution. Joseph W. Schwartz, the proprietor, was kind enough to donate three month's rental to help the young enterprise. Miss Genevieve Williams, who had taken an active part in the movement to found a library, was chosen as librarian, a position for which she was exceptionally well fitted by reason of her many years of experience in the study and teaching of literature in the local high schools.

"The next problem confronting the board was the ways and means of securing books, as there were as yet no funds from taxation. Accordingly the board planned to solve the problem by means of a book shower. A call was issued for all citizens who had any books in their homes which they would be willing to donate to the library to do so. The work of collecting books was also taken up by the schools, churches and other organizations. In the upper grades and high school competition between the various classes proved a stimulant to the movement, and in the lower classes the movement took the form of a competitive penny shower. Through the schools alone 756 books were contributed and many others through the churches, clubs and individuals. Arrangements were also made to take advantage of the service of the state traveling library, whereby a collection of books can be borrowed from the state library for a definite period. The library opened to the public June 29.

"From the start the young institution prospered and a great deal of interest was manifested in it, especially by the younger folk. A report of the librarian showed that the library consisted of 1,700 books, 300 of which were loanded from the state library commission. One hundred and twenty new books had been purchased by the board, including the 1922 edition of the America Encyclopedia.

"At the present time there are 3,900 books in the library, 100 of which are borrowed from the Indiana state library commission."

The increase in the number of books, while gratifying, in no way expresses what has been accomplished by this library. In having free access to good literature many youthful minds have been expanded, potentialities have been developed into actualities, and countless hours have been spent in pleasant occupation in this library that might otherwise have been wasted or have been harmfully employed. The general cultural outlook of Huntingburg has been broadened, the people are better informed, and the school encouraged since the public library of the city was opened.

INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931


WILL F. WHITE has been a member of the Muncie bar since 1900. His name has been associated with a number of civic and public matters in his home city, but doubtless his outstanding service has been as a member of the Muncie Board of Education, of which he is president.

Mr. White was born in Saginaw County, Michigan, and he has the greater interest in the magnificent educational program of Muncie because during his own early years he had to start work without completing even a common school education, making up for his deficiencies long after he had become self supporting. He was born February 6, 1871, son of Andrew and Margaret (Previard) White. His father, a native of New Brunswick, Canada, spent all his active life in the lumber industry, being an all around woodsman and in later years a logging contractor. When a young man he went to Saginaw, and was with several of the great lumber firms operating in that section of Northern Michigan. He died in 1898. His wife, Margaret Previard, was born in Ireland and was taken to New Brunswick when a child. She passed away in 1876. Will F. White was one of a family of five sons and three daughters: Mina, James, Catherine (deceased), Lester, Ida, Nettie, Will F. and Elizabeth.

Will F. White attended school in Saginaw County only until he was eleven years of age. He went to work in lumber mills, also did farm labor, and when nineteen years of age, in 1890, he enlisted in the regular army. He served his three years, his term expiring in the spring of 1893. During the rest of that year he was one of the Columbian guards at the World's Fair in Chicago, and when the Fair was over he entered Valparaiso University of Indiana, and during the next two and a half years studied hard to round out his educational equipment. While attending school he became a teacher and he was for six years a school man in Delaware County. While thus engaged he was making effective progress in his law studies and in 1900 was admitted to the bar and immediately opened an office in Muncie. He practiced alone until 1904, when he formed a partnership with Edward M. White, and in 1906 joined James Bingham and William T. Haymond. In the fall of that year Mr. Bingham was elected attorney general of Indiana. For twenty-four years Mr. White and Mr. Haymond have been associated in a partnership which is recognized as one of the strongest law firms in this section of Indiana.

Mr. White is a director of the Mutual Home & Savings Association, of the Citizens Finance Association. For eight years he served as county attorney and for six years was on the City Council. He is a former president of the Munice Chamber of Commerce, is a director of the Muncie Community Chest, and during the World war was chairman of the County Council of Defense. He is major judge advocate of the Officers Reserve Corps and in 1929 was elected to an honorary membership in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Mr. White is a former president of the Rotary Club, is a member of the Dynamo Club, and fraternally is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, both in the Lodge and Encampment, and the B. P. O. of Elks. He is a Republican and a member of the First Presbyterian Church.

He married at Valparaiso, Indiana, October 11, 1894, Miss Ida May Wirt. She attended school in Elkhart County and was a student at Valparaiso University. Her father, Cyrus Wirt, was a well to do farmer and stockman in Elkhart County. Mrs. White passed away September 8, 19195, and is buried in Beech Grove at Muncie. She was the mother of six children: Helen M., wife of Frank Sheffield, an oil operator at Houston, Texas, and has three children, Cynthia, Jean and Frank H.; Miss Lillian A., of Washington, D. C.; Walter D.; Miss Florence W., of Muncie, a teacher in the Central High School; Charles W., a law student at Indiana University; and Robert W., in the School of Journalism of Columbia University, New York City. Walter D. White, who was born August 20, 1900, attended school at Muncie, for several years was a court reporter, attended the law school of Indiana University and was admitted to the bar in 1926, since which time he has been associated with his father's law firm. He married Catherine Hedden, of Muncie, and has four children, William H., Edwin, Jane Ellen and James.

Mr. Will F. White married, June 1, 1918, Mrs. Nellie K. Bales, of Columbus, Ohio, daughter of Charles and Catherine Keener and widow of Julian Bales, formerly of Winchester, Indiana. Mrs. White attended school at Winchester. She is a member of the Presbyterian Church and the Women's Club and Y. W. C. A.

INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931


ISAIAH ESAES LAWRENCE, M. D., is one of the venerable and honored representatives of the medical profession at Columbia City, judicial center of Whitley County, where he is still engaged in active practice, though he celebrated in the summer of 1929 his eighty-fourth birthday anniversary. The Doctor has not only given distinguished service in his profession, both as practitioner and educator, but his is also the honor of having given loyal service in defense of the Union during the period of the Civil war.

Doctor Lawrence was born August 1, 1845, at the home of his parents, who were then living five miles west of Wooster in Plain Township, Wayne County, Ohio. His parents were natives of Pennsylvania, his father, John Abner Lawrence, having been born at Middletown, January 18, 1808, and went to Wayne County, Ohio, with his father's family in 1823. At the time of his death he was ninety-one years, nine months, twenty-four days old. He married, September 20, 1827, Sarah Rouch, who was born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, June 1, 1807, and came to Plain Township, Wayne County, Ohio with her parents in October, 1819. She lived to the age of eighty years, eight months, four days. Her parents were Phillip and Elizabeth Rouch. All the grandparents of Docor Lawrence were natives of Germany and were Protestants in religion. Doctor Lawrence was the eleventh child of his mother. The first born, Elizabeth, died soon after birth. The others were: Mary Ann, who married Will Mowrey; Malinda, who married Samuel Rouch; George W., who married Eve Ann Mowrey; Sarah became the wife of Joseph D. Wagner; Margaret was married to James E. Kelly; Priscilla married Austin McManus; John F. married Eliza Penland; Henry H., married Eunice Maurer; Lehannah was the wife of Elmer McManus; then came Isaiah E.; and the youngest of the family was Levi Abner, who married Catherine Bierce. Doctor Lawrence is the only survivor. Sarah was buried at Warsaw, Indiana, Margaret, at Alliance, Nebraska, Priscilla, in Michigan, Lehannah, at Wooster, Ohio, and the others are in the cemetery at Columbia City.

When Doctor Lawrence was nine or ten years of age he was sent out one day by his father to a neighbor to bring home a sum of money with which his father purposed to purchase some land in Indiana. This money comprised $1700 in gold, including two fifty-dollar pieces and the rest in tens and twenties. Doctor Lawrence's mother sewed these coins into a gusset, which fitted around his body like a vest underneath his shirt and other clothing, and he carried this on his trip by horseback to Indiana and purchased 160 acres for the son George and eighty acres for the daughter Malinda, wife of Samuel Rouch. Not long afterward the sister Mary Ann and her husband, William Mowrey, also came and acquired 160 acres, all of these being in Union Township, Whitley County. Doctor Lawrence grew up on the farm where he was born, and his advantages in the rural schools were supplemented by two years of study in Wittenberg College at Springfield, Ohio. He began the study of medicine at Wooster under Doctor Hunt and attended a medical college in Chicago one year. He was not yet sixteen when the Civil war broke out, and subsequently he enlisted in Company E, 169th ndiana Infantry, being assigned to the medical department. He was detailed at the headquarters of Gen. T. B. Vanard, who was then quartered in the old home of Gen. Robert E. Lee, across from the Potomac River from Washington. Captain Lawrence had an important part in laying out the Soldiers' Cemetery at Georgetown, D. C. For his activities he was awarded a certificate of meritorious service signed by President Lincoln.

After getting his honorable discharge at the close of the war he entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York, was graduated M. D. with the class of 1869, and then established himself in practice at Roanoke, Huntington County, Indiana. In April, 1870, he moved to Columbia City and for twenty years carried on a general practice, doing a great deal of country as well as town work, involving almost constant riding and driving.

In 1890 Doctor Lawrence moved to Chicago, and was in that city for eight years, during the first year being associated with the Mutual Medical Aid Association, one of whose sponsors was the elder Carter Harrison, then mayor, and two other well known citizens interested in the work were Oscar DeWolf and Samuel Crawford. Following that Doctor Lawrence had executive charge of the Illinois Institute of Physicians and Surgeons, and for six years was in charge of Doctor Bassett's Museum of Anatomy, a Chicago institution that contained some four hundred plaster casts exhibiting the different stages of disease in the genito-urinary organs, and the special service of the organization directed by Doctor Lawrence was in treating genito-urinary and venereal diseases. While in Chicago Doctor Lawrence was also associated with Dr. Oscar DeWolf and Dr. Frank Billings in the capacity of consulting sphysician to the various divisions of the city. All this constituted an experience that brought him in contact with the lowest elements in the social scale and enabled him to realize, as only such an experience could, the far reaching damage to society not only in a city but everywhere derived from perverted instincts. Ever since Doctor Lawrence has felt he had a great moral duty as well as a professional one to perform in using the the full power of his abilities to overcome and modify the "brute beast" element in humanity.

In 1898 he returned to Columbia City, and for more than thirty years has carried on a general practice. Through these years it has been possible for him to regard as a hobby as well as an essential part of his vocation to help educate the public to the evils of selfishness, and particularly those arising from sex desire and sex perversion. In reviewing his long life Doctor Lawrence finds satisfaction not only in work done, but in his faithfulness to some of the rules of life, most especially in insisting upon the sacredness of his word, and making good his promises verbal equally with written, even to his own loss.

Doctor Lawrence is a member of the Whitley County Medical Society, Indiana State and American Medical Associations, and is a member of the New York University Alumni.

He was twice married and on August 11, 1914 married Miss Grace Coyle. Her father was Dr. William H. Coyle, of North of Ireland ancestry, who served during the Civil war as a member of Company K, Eighty-eighth Indiana Infantry. After the war he practiced medicine many years at Aetna, Whitley County, Indiana. He died July 29, 1903. He was a faithful member of the Grand Army of the Republic, as is also Doctor Lawrence, one of the last survivors of the war.

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INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931


JOSEPH FORSYTHE. With the exception of one year, when he was identified with the Mrecantile Trust & Savings Bank of Evansville, Joseph Forsythe has been cashier of the Grandview Bank, Spencer County, since its organization, in the development of which he has played the leading role. This institution has always claimed his chief attention, but he likewise has other large and important interests of a financial and business nature, which combine to make him one of the leading men of his community, and since the start of his career he has also contributed materially to the growth and development of his native place by his support of beneficial and progressive civic movements.

Mr. Forsythe was born at Grandview, February 21, 1872, and is a son of William and Margaret C. (Anderson) Forsythe. His father, who was born, reared and educated in Kentucky, came to Indiana in boyhood and settled at Grandview, where for half a century he was the proprietor of a mercantile enterprise and one of the most substantial men of the town. He died in 1908, and his wife, a native of Indiana, passed away in 1925. There were four children in the family: Samuel, who died in 1888; Ida, who died in 1918; Joseph, of this review; and William, a resident of Spencer County.

Joseph Forsythe attended the public schools of Grandview, and pursued a course at Nelson's Business College, Cincinnati, Ohio. With this preparation for a business career he joined his father in the mercantile business, in which he remained for ten years, during which time he familiarized himself thoroughly with business and financial methods as learned behind the counter of a flourishing store in a thriving community. In 1903 he became one of the organizers of the Grandview Bank, and with the exception of the time above mentioned has been the cashier of this institution ever since. His good business methods have served to make this one of the prosperous institutions of Southern Indiana, and his well-known ability and personal integrity and probity have served to instill confidence in the patrons and to increase the bank's deposits. Mr. Forsythe is also secretary of the Grandview Building & Loan Association. He is a Republican in his political convictions but has not sought public office, and his religious affiliation is with the Lutheran Church. Fraternally he belongs to the Modern Woodsmen of America at Grandview, to the I. O. O. F. Lodge No. 300 at Grandview and to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks at Evansville. He is also secretary of the Grandview Chautauqua and a man who is interested in everything that makes for higher standards of education, morality and good citizenship.

In November, 1897, Mr. Forsythe married Miss Mamie Knight, of Grandview, daughter of William Knight, and a member of an old and honored pioneer family of Perry County. To this union there have been born three children: Harold, a graduate of Indiana University, now an investment banker in South Bend, Indiana, who married Mary R. Sargeant, of Newburg, Indiana, and had two children, who are now deceased; Mary, who married George A. Rinker, of Indianapolis, and has one child, Mary Jo, born in 1926; and William Joseph, who died on August 7, 1920.

The following information concerning the early history of these families in this section is included here for reference: Mrs. Forsythe's grandfather, J. B. Livingood, came to this country about 1850, settling at Newhope, and when Grandview was founded, in 1853, he and his family moved to the new townsite and he served as the first postmaster, having previously been postmaster at Newhope. Mrs. Forsythe's mother is of pioneer Kentucky stock from across the river near Grandview. Mr. Forsythe's mother is of Revolutionary stock, tracing the line back to a John Lamb of early days.

INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931


Deb Murray