257. RANDOLPH COUNTY TRIVIA.

April, 1915.  Winchester's First Outdoor Theatre.

View in 2025 of where the Airdome was located in Winchester, a parking lot on the north side of Haines store.

  The Kelly Amusement Co. will open their new airdome north of the Journal newspaper building on N. Meridian st. No expense has been spared to make this a comfortable outdoors motion picture theatre. Easy seats have been arranged for the seating of over 200 people without the least crowding. A fine new projector has been purchased and the screen is of the latest pattern. The front of the theatre building has been attractively deorated. In fact the place is in keeping with any theatre except the ceiling which is the sky. Only high grade pictures will be shown and the patronage merited will doubtless be accorded the enterprising managers. The company will continue to operate the Cozy theatre.

 Smallpox In Winchester. (1903)

Medical Exhibit in The Annex at RCHS Museum.

 Luther Shetterly, one of six other victims, died of smallpox on January 21, 1903. He was a contractor in Winchester and had built the Friends Church on E. Washington, the 3 story brick Redmen's Lodge at 115 N. Main street and the Knights of Pythias building at the corner of Washington and N. Main where the China House restaurant is located today, 2025. He was building the county infirmary, across from the 4-H grounds, when he died.

Shetterly's death certificate. 

April, 1947. Georgetown Remembered, by Mrs. Rosa Craig Worth, of Selma.

Situated one mile south of Farmland on the Winchester-Windsor pike was the village of Georgetown, platted in 1835 on land owned by George McNeece. At one time there were six dwellings there, also a tavern or hotel, a doctor's office, a general store, a blacksmith shop and a toll gate. For probably two or more decades this village had a lucrative business catering to the emigrants using this road.

  In early spring hundreds of mover's wagons with their livestock traveled this road, some caravans not stopping, others pausing long enough for some repairs at the blacksmith shop and some loaves of bread and again some would stop for a few days on account of sickness or to rest their jaded teams and foot sore cattle.

  Always on Sunday there would several emigrant wagons under the trees along White River for very few of these caravans traveled on the Sabbath day. Usually there were religious services of some kind.

  Sometimes these emigrant trains consisted of half a dozen or so wagons, then again there would be as many as twenty-five or thirty wagons, several fitted for comfortable traveling and others loaded with feed for the horses and cattle and others with farming implements, tools of all kinds, seeds, such as corn, oats, potatoes, etc. There would be coops of chickens, ducks and geese. The sheep and cattle were driven but the hogs were hauled.

  The tavern or hotel was for several years under the management of Henry Huffman. Dr. Keener was the physician, as history records it, but much of the time there were two doctors.

  The blacksmith shop was a busy place. Many times the smithy and his helpers worked all night setting tires, welding chains and shoeing horses so that the caravan could hurry on.

  At daylight there would be the smell of wood smoke, meat cooking and coffee boiling. Soon the teams would be harnessed, wagons loaded and the emigrant train would be on its way. For some reason they usually sang when they began the days journey and many times their voices would be heard long after they would be lost to sight in the morning fog along Cabin Creek.

  Many times whole families from grandparents to tiniest of grandchildren, uncles, aunts, cousins and many neighbors were going west where land was cheap and easily tended, glad to leave their small rocky farms in the eastern hills not realizing how terrible droughts, prairie fires and grass hoppers could be, but the new countries were settled with brave pioneers like these.

  As these people made good, so, soon there were great droves of cattle being driven east to market sometimes hundreds of them passing Georgetown in one day. These hoofs churning the wet roads into knee-deep mire in early spring and in dry weather great clouds of dust followed along the way.

  Many discouraged homesick people came, caravans of them, with gaunt teams of oxen or horses, going back east to their old homes, hungry for the wooded hills, the sight of old neighbors and a good cold drink from the well at home.

  When the Bee-Line railroad was put through in 1853 it was a bitter disappointment to the people of Maxville, Georgetown and Windsor that it bypassed. Each year there were fewer caravans with their outfits moving west and fewer droves of cattle, hogs and sheep being driven to eastern markets. Every year more and more traveled by rail and livestock was freighted to their destination, so at last Georgetown was no more. Probably the toll gate was the last to go and it has been gone for sixty or seventy years.

1916, Winchester Journal.   Lazy Husband Law.

The RC Courthouse, from "Tucker History" in 1882. 

  It is going to be tough going in the future for men convicted in the Randolph County Circuit Court on charges of of non-support of his wife and minor children or minor children in case of divorce, if an Indiana law which is called to attention is invoked.

  This law, passed by the General Assembly in 1916, provides that in the case of a man convicted of non-support, he may be fined in any sum not over $500. to which a sentence in the workhouse or county jail may be included. Also he may be given a sentence in the workhouse and under the Act the court can at its discretion, turn the defendant over to the Sheriff with instructions to put him at labor on the county roads.

  The law provides that the Board of Commissioners and the County Superintendent of roads shall make provisions for such labor that is to be done by the prisoner. The defendant is allowed $1 per day for each day of his work sentence, this money going toward the support of his wife and minor children or minor children in case of divorce.

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Would you like a book to learn more about local history? 

Randolph County, Indiana 1818-1990

Commonly referred to as "The Red History Book"

Compiled by the Randolph County Historical Society, 1991, Second reprint 2003.

To obtain your own copy of "The Red History Book" stop in at The RCHS Museum Shop. 

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