Pictures of Adopted Hoosiers

Comedian Herb Shriner famously said, "I wasn't born in Indiana but I moved there as soon as I heard about it." He wasn't alone. Since its beginnings, the Hoosier State has been a destination for pioneers, settlers, refugees, migrants, escaped and manumitted slaves, industrial workers, and just plain, ordinary farmers, workers, artists, and others. Early on, people must have sensed that nothing better would await them beyond the rich and generous lands of Indiana. And so they stayed.

Johnny Appleseed was an adopted Hoosier. Born John Chapman on September 26, 1774, he was a native of Leominster, Massachusetts. Like Abraham Lincoln a generation later, he was orphaned with the death of his mother. His father remarried. Later in life, the elder Chapman pulled up stakes and moved to Ohio. Johnny had gone west before him, first to Pennsylvania, then to Ohio. It was in Ohio that John Chapman earned his nickname, Johnny Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed lived a long life. In his later days, he lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and that's where he died after reaching his allotted threescore and ten. Johnny's end came on March 18, 1845. He was buried in Fort Wayne, though no one knows exactly where.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was probably the most famous adopted Hoosier. He was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. In the fall of 1816, when Abe was just seven years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln (1778-1851), moved his young family to what was then the Indiana Territory. Not long after, on December 11, 1816, Indiana became a state. Like Johnny Appleseed before him, Abe Lincoln's mother and a younger brother died when he was young. Nancy Hanks Lincoln (1784-1818) lies buried in Indiana, near her Spencer County home. Her son said of her, "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

Abe Lincoln spent his formative years in the Hoosier State, raised there by his parents and his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln (1788-1869). In March 1830, he moved with his family to Illinois. He had just turned twenty-one. Kentucky and Illinois have their claims upon the Great Emancipator, but Indiana has its claim, too. I might be biased, but I would call it equal.

In 1964, Scholastic Books published a children's biography, Johnny Appleseed, written by Eva Moore and illustrated by Judith Ann Lawrence. Born in 1942, Eva Moore lives or has lived in Montauk, New York. Also known as J.A. Lawrence and Judy Blish, Judith Ann Lawrence is an author and an artist. She was married to the science fiction author James Blish (1921-1975). Judy has a new book out. You can find out more about it by clicking here.

In 1948, Walt Disney released Melody Time, an animated musical featuring seven short films. One of these is "The Legend of Johnny Appleseed."  I had hoped to find a Hoosier, either native or adopted, who contributed to "Johnny Appleseed," but to no avail. In any case, Simon and Schuster published a children's book adaptation in 1949. It was printed by Western Printing and Lithographing Company as one of its Little Golden Library series. The pictures were by the Walt Disney Company. (There might be a Hoosier hiding in there somewhere.) The adaptation was by Ted Parmalee, about whom I know nothing at all. 

Here's an interior illustration from Disney's Johnny Appleseed. This is romanticized of course, but not by much. If you have been in Appalachia and to the American Midwest, you might have seen scenes like this one. We had a storm just like it yesterday.

Rand McNally & Company of Chicago had its own line of children's books, including those in the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club series. Here is one called Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance, written by Frances Cavanah, illustrated by Paula Hutchison, and published in 1959. I have cleaned up the image a little, as the original I have is a little worn. I found this and the two books above on Johnny Appleseed at the local secondhand store about three weeks ago.

Frances Cavanah was a Hoosier. She was born on September 26, 1897, in Princeton, Indiana, to Rufus Oscar Cavanah and Louella "Lula" Neale Cavanah. Educated at DePauw University, she worked as an editor at Child Life magazine in Chicago. (Sometimes people come to Indiana, and sometimes they go away from it.) Frances wrote dozens of books and lived in Washington, D.C., later in life. She died in May 1982.

The illustrator, Paula A. Hutchison, was born on December 19, 1902, in Helena, Montana. She worked as a teacher, illustrator, and fine artist. She was married to Michael John McGrath (1905-?) and lived in New Jersey. She illustrated many children's books, most of which seem to be biographies and other nonfiction. Paula died on November 5, 1982.

In the fall of 1816, Thomas Lincoln moved his family from Kentucky to Indiana. Part of the reason for the move was for him to get away from some land disputes, but part was also to relocate to what would soon be a free state versus the slave state of Kentucky. Making the trip with him were his wife Nancy and their two children, Sarah and Abe. That made Abe's sister, Sarah Lincoln Grigsby (1807-1828), an adopted Hoosier, too. The illustration is from Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance.

The endpapers of Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance together make this map of Lincoln Country. Plum in the middle is an image of Pigeon Creek Farm, the place in what is now Spencer County where Abe spent his childhood years, from age seven to age twenty-one. Here he was formed and here his mother lies.

Original text copyright 2021, 2204 Terence E. Hanley

Abraham Lincoln in Indiana

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and lived as an adult in Illinois, but his formative years were spent in what is now Spencer County, Indiana. Young Abe arrived in Indiana in the autumn of 1816, not long before the territory became a state. He was then just seven years old. When he was nine, Abe's mother died of milk sickness, a mysterious disease we now know is caused when cow's milk is poisoned by white snakeroot. Abraham Lincoln of course went on to be a lawyer, a U.S. representative, and, as the first Republican president, the Great Emancipator and the savior of the Union. He wrote: "All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother--blessings on her memory." Nancy Hanks Lincoln lies buried in Hoosier soil, near her home on Little Pigeon Creek.

I recently found three books on Indiana history and Abraham Lincoln. I would like to show three illustrations from those books, each by an illustrator previously unknown to me either as an illustrator or by name. Two have birthdays coming up next month.

"A Typical Pioneer Scene" by the Brown County artist Marie Goth. Born in Indianapolis on August 15, 1887, Jessie Marie Goth was educated at Manual Training High School and the Herron School of Art in her home city. Her teachers included fellow Hoosiers William Merle Allison, Harry E. Wood, and William Merritt Chase. Marie also taught art, but she is best known for her portraits. She was in fact the first woman to paint an official portrait of an Indiana governor (Henry F. Schricker). Her younger sister Genevieve, also an artist, married an artist, Carl C. Graf. Marie Goth was otherwise connected by blood or association with artists of the Hoosier Group and among the artists' colony in Brown County, Indiana. Her longtime companion was the artist Veraldo J. Cariani (1891-1969).

The drawing here is from Historic Indiana by Julia Henderson Levering (1916). In his youth, Abraham Lincoln would have lived in a cabin like this one. He also worked on a ferry boat and a flatboat, making a trip to New Orleans in the 1820s. In 1830, he moved with his family to Illinois, leaving his Indiana home behind. By coincidence, Marie Goth lived in a log house in Brown County. She, too, fell victim to poison when she was bitten by a brown recluse spider in the autumn of 1974. In her weakened state, she fell down the steps of her home and died on January 9, 1975.

In 1927, The Indiana Lincoln Union put out a booklet called Lincoln the Hoosier, written by Charles Garrett Vannest and illustrated by a youthful Constance Forsyth. Born in Indianapolis on August 18, 1903, Constance Forsyth was the daughter of artists Alice Atkinson Forsyth and William Forsyth. Like her father, Constance was renowned as a painter and teacher. Her résumé runs to hundreds of items (education, exhibitions, prizes and honors, holdings in museums, teaching career, etc.). One highlight of her career was her assistance to Thomas Hart Benton in his completion of the murals for the Indiana Building at the Century of Progress Exposition, the Chicago World's Fair of 1933. Lincoln the Hoosier was the first of two books she illustrated, the other being The Friends by Esther Buffler (1951). Constance Forsyth died on January 22, 1987, in Austin, Texas.

This map of Lincoln home sites is in a second booklet called Abraham Lincoln: A Concise Biography, published in 1934 by the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company of Fort Wayne. The mapmaker was Noble Brainard, also of Fort Wayne. (The image reproduced in the booklet shows only part of Brainard's original design. The image above is from the Internet.)

Noble Eyck Brainard was born on September 3, 1893, in Buda, Illinois. Like Marie Goth and Constance Forsyth, he was a teacher. For a time he lived in New Mexico, but he also worked as a civil servant in the Philippines and in Fort Wayne, where he resided from the 1920s on. Brainard married Amelia Zichgraf in 1924 in Fort Wayne. The copyright date on the map above is 1933. Brainard died on October 28, 1956, and is buried in his adopted home city. For years, Fort Wayne was home to the Lincoln Museum, one of the largest collections related to Abraham Lincoln in the United States. In 2008, shortly before Abe's bicentennial, the Lincoln Financial Foundation, holder of the collection, donated it to the Indiana State Library and the Allen County Public Library.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

An Indiana Artist: Barbara Rogers Houseworth (1925-2015)

by Ann Massing

Barbara Marie Rogers Houseworth was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 11, 1925. She majored in Fine Arts at Indiana University from 1943 to 1946. Her teachers included Robert Elisha Burke (1884-1957), Harry Engel (1901-1970), Robert Laurent (1890-1970), and Steve Green (1917-1999). She married John Horace Houseworth (who was born in Elkhart, Indiana, on August 18, 1918), and they lived in Indianapolis for six years while he finished medical school, completed his internship, and then his residency. Barbara worked at L. S. Ayres doing interior window displays and showed her work in an exhibit of Indiana artists at the John Herron Art Museum. After a year in San Antonio, Texas, then another year in Aurora, Colorado, in 1954 they settled in Urbana, Illinois, where Barbara’s husband joined Carle Clinic, now Carle Foundation Hospital.

In the American Midwest of the 1950s, a woman's place was in the home, and there were few outlets for any artwork produced. So Barbara raised two daughters and was active in the local community--but continued to paint. Although she did exhibit a few times, and even sold some paintings, other than those she gave away, she usually just stuffed them into a drawer to be forgotten. She painted for herself; even her husband was not allowed to participate in her private world.  The paintings were all "experimental." She took up her materials and let go, allowing line, tone, and color to form shapes and figures. Often faces appeared on her paper; there was almost always sadness in her doleful-eyed portraits, usually of someone unknown. Sometimes they were even rather worrying. After her children had grown and left home, she shifted her main interest from painting to the collecting of antiquarian and used books.

In 1956, a neighbor, Larry Connolly, a local high school teacher of English and secretary of the National Council of Teachers of English, approached Barbara to do a map of Homer’s Odyssey for high school literature classes: a commission she launched into with enthusiasm. The amount of time, effort, and  research that she put into the work was not a financial balance, but that undoubtedly never even entered into the equation. It was a channel for her abilities and an opportunity to create something of use, and that was surely worth all she invested over several years. Further similar projects provided an opportunity to research the back streets of London, a city that had always intrigued her. From 1956 to 1966 she produced a series of maps which illustrated landmarks mentioned in books used in high school literature classes: William Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Julius Caesar, Homer’s Odyssey and  Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline, and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Barbara never threw anything away as some artists do, and the quality of her entire oeuvre is remarkable; there are no false starts. Each line she drew was vibrant, her colors alive; creative energy flowed down through her fingertips and guided her brush. Picasso-like, she always achieved an image of interest. She may not always have known what it was or why she painted what she did, but the end result was often vibrating with energy, or contained just a hint of something interesting, something "in the coming."

Flying Kites by Barbara Rogers Houseworth.  ca. 1948. Oil on canvas. Approx. 19" x 15".

The Laundry Lady by Barbara Rogers Houseworth. ca. 1949. Oil on card. Approx. 19" x 11".

A literary map of William Shakespeare’s MacBeth drawn by Barbara Rogers Houseworth. A map of Scotland locating all places mentioned in Shakespeare's play, it contains twelve line drawings illustrating important scenes. 32" x 22". Published by Educational Illustrators, 1957.

A literary map of Homer’s Odyssey--A map of the Mediterranean by Barbara Rogers Houseworth, tracing Ulysses' travels home from the Trojan War, illustrating all of his encounters, including those with Circe, the Cyclopes, and the Lotus-Eaters. 34" x 26". Published by Educational Illustrators, 1959?.

A literary map and illustrations of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities drawn by Barbara Rogers Houseworth. Line drawings highlighting the important scenes from the novel. 31" x 22". Published by Educational Illustrators, 1964?.

Update, January 24, 2015: Ann Massing, daughter of Barbara Rogers Houseworth and author of the article above, has brought out a self-published book on her mother's paintings. You can find the listing for the book at the following website:

www.blurb.com/b/5611400-indiana-born-barbara-rogers-houseworth-one-woman-s

Update, February 2, 2015: I have heard from Ann Massing, daughter of Barbara Rogers Houseworth, that her mother passed away on January 12, 2015, at age eighty-nine. I wish to express my condolences to Ms. Massing and to the Houseworth family for their loss.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Ann Massing
Images are copyrighted by the respective holders of those rights.

Marian Crane (1903-1982)

Marian Crane was born on December 19, 1903, in Crawfordsville, a small city once known as "the Athens of Indiana." Marian came from a prominent family. Her father, Benjamin Crane, was a lawyer. Her maternal grandfather, John Lyle Campbell (1827-1904), was a professor of astronomy and physics at Wabash College and according to the book Montgomery County Remembers (1976), "the man generally credited with having suggested the Centennial celebration of the United States in 1876." Marian Crane's mother was Mary F. Campbell Crane (1867-1943), a musician and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Indiana Pioneers, and the local history society.

Marian Crane married James Jamieson Paterson (1899-1972) in 1927, the same year in which he began teaching economics at Wabash College. The following year, Marian drew a map of her home city (below), emphasizing landmarks associated with the college. (Note the drawing of a young woman at the bottom center of the map. The legend reads: "To Greencastle and Bloomington and the Co-eds." For those who don't know it, Wabash was and still is an all-male college.) In 1976, the Montgomery County Historical Society and the Crawfordsville Community Bicentennial Committee published Marian's map in the book Montgomery County Remembers. An image of the map appears below. As you might guess, the map forms the endpapers of the book.

Marian Crane Paterson died in February 1982 in Philadelphia and was buried in Crawfordsville.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Robert E. Judah (1912-1991)

Robert Easton Judah was born on December 30, 1912, in Stinesville, a small town in the northwest corner of Monroe County, Indiana. That region of the state is known for its high-quality limestone, which has been used in the construction of the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, and thirty-five out of fifty state capitol buildings. It should come as no surprise that Robert E. Judah landed his first job at a local stonemill.

Judah graduated from Stinesville High School in 1931. After working in the stonemill and beginning his art education at the Kansas City Art Institute, Judah went to work for a utility company in Martinsville in 1940. He went into the U.S. Navy in 1943 and returned to his Indiana home in December 1945 after twenty-six months with the Seabees. Upon his return, Judah once again worked for a utility company, this time in Columbus, Indiana. In December 1951 he became public relations director for the Monroe County Farm Bureau Coop, then in 1952, advertising manager for Wicks Department Store in Bloomington. The following year, Judah started his own advertising business in Ellettsville, Indiana. Finally, in 1955, Judah joined the staff of the Indiana Geological Survey, a division of the Indiana Department of Conservation (now called the Department of Natural Resources) based at Indiana University in Bloomington.

As an artist and draftsman with the geological survey, Judah illustrated several booklets published by the agency, including Let's Look at Some Rocks by William J. Wayne (1958), Adventures with Fossils by Robert H. Shaver (1959), and Pages from the Geologic Past of Marion County by Wyman Harrison (1963). (Marion County is the county in which Indianapolis is located.) He also created pictures for the departmental exhibit at the Indiana State Fair and a mural at Indiana University. Incidentally, the drafting section of the Indiana Geological Survey included William H. Moran (chief draftsman), Micky P. Love (geological draftsman), and John E. Peace (senior geological draftsman). It's safe to say their workplace was one of Peace and Love.

Robert E. Judah stayed close to home and was always involved in his community. He built an art studio in Ellettsville, where he painted landscapes from photographic slides taken in his travels. He was also a cofounder of the Hoosier Hills Art Guild in Bloomington and a member of the first board of directors of the Monroe County Museum. And Judah was a member of the local school board, the local Baptist church, and a president of Community Brotherhood and the Richland-Bean Blossom Family Store. He retired from the geological survey after twenty-three years of service. In retirement he worked on a book on the stonecutting industry in Indiana. Robert Judah died on December 20, 1991, just ten days short of beginning his eightieth year on earth.

Here is Robert E. Judah's cover for Adventures with Fossils (1959). Note the very neat and distinctive signature at the bottom left.

With his work for the Indiana Geological Survey, Judah can be added to the list of Indiana artists who drew and painted dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Here's an illustration from Adventures with Fossils with a likeness of Judah's young son, now Dr. Robert E. Judah II.

Here's another illustration from Shaver's booklet showing the Hoosier State and its rock formations. Mary Chilton Gray did equivalent work with the Denver Museum of Natural History. She also painted a dinosaur mural. Other Indiana dinosaur artists have included Gray Morrow and Reed Crandall.

Here's a very small image of a mural Robert Judah painted at the Geology Library at Indiana University. I'm still on the trail of a larger image. Photograph by Dr. Robert E. Judah II.

Finally, a photograph by Dr. Judah of one of his father's paintings. If you have been to rural Indiana, you have seen places that look like this. If you're away from Indiana, you may very well long to see them again.

Update (Jan. 17, 2021): An unknown commenter below has let us know that Robert Judah also designed the Great Seal of the Town of Ellettsville. I went looking for it and found this image on the website of the Ellettsville Police Department. It's a nice design, and I hope this is the right one. Thanks, Unknown.

Thanks to Dr. Robert E. Judah II for much needed information and clarification on the life and career of his father. Thanks to Dr. Judah also for the last two images.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Katharine Gibson (1893-1960)

Katharine Gibson was not an artist but a writer of children's books. I have decided to post a biography of her because I found a book by her at a secondhand store, a book by an author I didn't know as an Indiana author. The book is called Bow Bells, a beautifully made volume illustrated by Vera Bock (1905-2006) and published in 1943. When I looked up Katharine Gibson on the Internet, I found nothing of value. Fortunately Bow Bells includes a book jacket bio. I also found her in Indiana Authors and Their Books, Ohio Authors and Their Books, and The Junior Book of Authors. This is her introduction to the Internet.

Katharine Gibson was born in Indianapolis on September 13, 1893, and grew up in a family of architects. She worked in the education department of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1916 to 1946. In 1932 she married Frank Scott Corey Wicks, a Unitarian minister. The couple traveled "a good deal, especially in England." When not traveling, they lived in Indianapolis (as of 1951). Her first book was The Golden Bird and Other Stories from 1927. Fifteen others followed, including To See the Queen (1954), illustrated by fellow Hoosier Clotilde Embree Funk (1893-1991). She also wrote fiction and non-fiction for national magazines. Katharine authored a charming autobiographical sketch in the Junior Book of Authors (1951). Indiana Authors and Their Books lists her works, the last of which was Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Stamp Book (1957). Katharine Gibson died three years after its publication, in Cleveland. Today is her birthday. Happy Birthday, Katharine Gibson!

The frontispieces of Bow Bells by Katharine Gibson, illustrated by Vera Bock.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley