Happy Halloween!

Henry's uniform, on loan from
Children's Museum of Indianapolis

If you're handing out sweets today, make sure to stop by the Study and hand some out to us! Director Larry Paarlberg is a fan of anything dark chocolate. Associate Director/Education Erin Gobel is a York Peppermint Patty fan. Grounds Manager Deb King likes peanut butter cookies. Associate Director/Collections Amanda McGuire prefers peanut butter M&Ms and dark chocolate. I personally will take anything that has the word chocolate in it, but Kit Kat and Butterfinger are a couple of current favorites. :) (We're also frequent customers at Dari-Licious!)

In Lew's day, Halloween wasn't celebrated much outside of Irish and Scottish immigrant communities, but even in the 1860s children did play dress-up. Lew and Susan's son Henry was eight at the outbreak of the Civil War, and he had a child-sized Union uniform and kepi. We currently have the uniform on display in our Carriage House. It is on loan from the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and in less than two months, when our 2013 Generations exhibit ends, we'll be returning it to them. If you want to see it, make sure you stop in sometime between now and December 14!

Henry Lane Wallace and his Spirit Photo

The impact of the Civil War was felt in many ways. One of the more unusual was in the passion that developed for spirit photography, a process in which photographers were able to capture the image of a ghost or other spiritual entity. Photography was still a relatively new and a quickly evolving art form in the 1860s. During the War, photographer William H. Mumler was surprised when he developed one of his glass plate negatives and found a second person in the image that he took of himself. Mumler realized two things in short order. First, that the photograph resulted from a simple double exposure. Second, that there was a market for people desperate to reconnect with those who had passed on.


Mumler built a brisk business taking spirit photos including a famous image of Mary Lincoln with her martyred husband, Abraham, standing behind her. Mumler did very well until he accidently included images of people still very much alive and walking around on the streets of Boston in some of his photographs and he was exposed as a fraud. In spite of Mumler’s fall from grace spirit photography had gained traction and continued to be a much debated topic throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the most ardent supporters was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while one of the most strident critics was Harry Houdini.

Henry Lane Wallace

Henry Wallace, son of Lew Wallace, was a gifted amateur photographer and a number of the photographs we have in the collection of Lew Wallace and his grandchildren were taken by Henry. Beyond these wonderful images of the family on the grounds of the Study, we have a spirit photo in the collection. According to penciled information on the back, this photograph was taken in the office of the Blancherne apartment building in Indianapolis owned by the Wallace family. The information reads: “Spirit” photo taken by HLW who was the only person who touched the plate. Taken in Blacherne office with his own camera in presence of Jno [Jonathan] Nicholson, Nethery, and the medium Frank Foster.” In this slightly blurry photograph a woman’s head is seen floating in an upper corner.

The woman who has magically appeared, Jno Nicholson, and Nethery are not well remembered, but in certain circles Frank Foster is still known. He was a renowned spiritualist from Grand Rapids, Michigan and he had a following of believers around the turn of the 20th century. In his book, Photographing the Invisible: Practical Studies in Spirit Photography, (1911) Phil Coates cites a number of spirit photos taken by Foster as well as “spirited” stories. By 1904, Foster had been traveling the country and producing spirit photos for approximately 40 years. In the Coates book there is a lengthy interview with Judge Levi Mock of Bluffton describing his experience with Foster.

Foster was at “the Chesterfield Camp” when Judge Mock approached him for a photography session. Foster charged $2.00 for a photo. Mock first sat for the picture, then Foster put his hand on the camera, Mock placed his fingers on top of Foster’s hand on the camera and after much “quivering” an electric shock passed between them. A few days later Mock received his picture with several images of people he did not know. Mock took the photo to a Mrs. Herbine who was a gifted “slate writer” and she related to Judge Mock that his father who was in the Summerland (he had passed away) wanted Mock to return to Foster for another sitting. In this new photograph by Foster, Mock recognized four of the spirit images. With his picture in hand, Mock returned to Mrs. Herbine with a series of questions for the spirits to answer to authenticate their images. Mock prepared what he believed to be a double blind approach to garnering answers and Mrs. Herbine was able to slate write the correct answers. Case closed for Judge Mock—he was a true believer.

The date of the Wallace spirit photo is not known, but it probably dates from about 1904, the same time that Judge Mock was having his experiences with Foster. While it would be interesting to know who the mystery woman is, it is perhaps more intriguing to wonder why Henry met with Frank Foster in the first place, how they came to set up a photography session at the Blancherne, and what did Henry think of the results of this session. When it came to spirit photography did he side with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Harry Houdini? If only Mrs. Herbine was still available!

The General Lew Wallace Study & Museum celebrates and renews belief in the power of the individual spirit to affect American history and culture.

Henry Lane Wallace & His Interest in Architecture

In families certain attributes and interests often pass down through the generations. In the Wallace family a number of traits surfaced time and again including an interest in architecture. Lew is widely credited with the design and construction of his personal Study in the 1890s. What is less remembered is that his son, Henry, had a strong interest in architecture and contributed significantly a number of projects. In the 1890s, Henry worked closely with John G. Thurtle the architect who designed the Blancherne, the Wallace apartment building in Indianapolis. Henry oversaw the initial construction of the building for his father as well as the construction of a large addition and was the manager of the building for over 20 years.

Blacherne Building ca. 1915

Closer to home Henry played a critical role in saving two of Crawfordsville’s landmarks and making architectural changes that affected their presentation. After his parents’ deaths in the first decade of the 20th century, Henry inherited the family home on Wabash Avenue, the Study and its grounds. As Crawfordsville grew in the early 20th century, one of the impacts of this growth was increased interurban and rail service on the rail line adjacent to the Study grounds. In addition, Elston Avenue and Plum (Wallace Avenue) Street were developed. In 1909, in an effort to better separate the Study property from these changes, Henry contracted with the Poston Brick Company and Swan & Sons to build the brick walls on the north and west sides of the property. A couple of years later Henry contracted with John H. Warner to build the wall along the east edge of the property.

Brick wall added by Henry in 1909 seen behind Study running along
Elston Avenue and the rail line.

Pedestrian Gate at the foot of Pike Street installed by Henry.

Beyond the construction of the wall itself, Henry was also responsible for the construction of the stone and iron pedestrian gate at the foot of Pike Street and for the purchase and installation of the statue of General Wallace that stands on the west side of the Study on the site of the Ben-Hur beech tree. Henry contracted with local stone mason, Sidney Speed, to detail the stonework for each of these two impressive features. Beyond their architectural impact construction of the walls and gates may also have better protected the property from the public as the fame of Lew Wallace continued to grow. Casual visitors were wandering the property and at different times thousands of people celebrating a Wallace anniversary or Tribe of Ben-Hur meeting came to see the Study so control of access became an issue.

Bronze statue by Andrew O'Connor
with base designed by Sidney Speed.
Installed on site of the Ben-Hur
beech tree.

As part of his inheritance, Henry Wallace had also received his parents’ home on Wabash Avenue. He kept the home for many years even though his primary residence was in Indianapolis. In 1918, his youngest son, William, was killed in action in France during World War I. Perhaps it was no coincidence when Henry sold his parents’ home to the Tribe of Ben-Hur in 1919 and soon completed the final segment of the perimeter wall along the south side of the Study grounds. At the time that the family home was sold, there was some thought that the building would be preserved intact and turned into a museum celebrating the accomplishments of the Tribe of Ben-Hur with a nod to the Wallace family. For different reasons this anticipated project was never pursued.

After his work to improve the Study grounds, Henry was not done with his contributions to Crawfordsville. Henry’s grandparents’ home, the Old Elston Homestead on Pike had passed from his grandparents, Isaac and Maria Elston to his aunt Helen Elston Blair and her husband, Aaron in the 1870s. When their daughter Annie married Harry Taylor in the 1880s, both the Blairs and the Taylors moved to Indianapolis and the Old Elston Homestead was sold to another of Henry’s aunts, Mary Elston Braden and her husband Hector.

During the Braden ownership, the land surrounding the Old Elston Homestead changed. Pike Street was cut through the Elston Grove on the south side of the Homestead and a number of new homes were built along Main Street in the former front yard of the house on the north. The Bradens stopped using the original front entrance and began using a side door off of Vernon Court. Today, this door leads into the dining room of the house. Hector Braden died in 1912, and for several years the future of the Homestead was in doubt. By 1919, it was in poor repair and generally unoccupied. Annie and Harry Taylor tried to sell the house without success in an effort to distribute the estate to the surviving cousins. Looking for a fresh start, Henry Wallace and his wife Margaret purchased the house. This purchase coincided with Henry’s sale of his parents’ home and probably served as a distraction after the death of his son.

Henry put his interest in architecture to use and carried out an extensive remodeling that included reorienting the entrance of the house to the south side as it is today, adding some needed kitchen improvements to the north side and generally upgrading the house and grounds. Until their deaths in the mid-1920s, this served as Henry and Margaret’s primary home. After their passing, their surviving son, Lew Wallace, Jr. used the homestead as a summer home. When he was not in residence, Walter Elliott and Horace Harvey, who were grounds keepers and caretakers of the Wallace properties, were often in residence. This proved particularly true in the early 1930s when Lew, Jr. and his family made fewer and fewer trips down to Indiana from their home in Connecticut.

Elston Homestead ca. 1900 when the front door
opened onto Main Street, prior to the
remodeling by Henry Wallace


 


Elston Homestead during the ownership of Henry Lane Wallace
showing remodeling work underway.

In 1935, exactly 100 years after it was built, Lew, Jr. sold the home to his cousin, Isaac Elson, III. Isaac III made additional repairs and upgrades, building on the work conceived by his Uncle Henry ten years earlier. Isaac owned the homestead for almost 30 years before ownership was transferred to Wabash College.

It’s hard to imagine Crawfordsville without some of the landmarks that we enjoy today. The landscape of the community would certainly be drastically different without the contributions of two amateur architects—Lew Wallace and his son, Henry. Each in their own way built and then preserved buildings that have come to be considered the heart of this community.

Sources: “The Quilt Chronicles” by Martha Cantrell.

“Honoring a Lesser Known Wallace,” Montgomery Magazine, by S. Chandler Lighty, 2001

The General Lew Wallace Study & Museum celebrates and renews belief in the power of the individual spirit to affect American history and culture.

What's in a Name?

In honor of the Strawberry Festival on the grounds of Lane Place in Crawfordsville this weekend, we thought it would be appropriate to consider one of our many ties to the Lanes. This excerpt was brought to our attention by one of our summer interns, Kasey Greer. Lew had strong opinions and might have been an authoritative military leader, but he didn’t always get his way on the home front.

“In early 1853, Lew and Susan Wallace were in Covington, Indiana, eagerly anticipating the birth of their first child. In a letter from Lew to his brother, William, he explained what the child should not be named. Lew parodied the names of his father and brothers when he wrote:

“I think I had better right here quietly observe, that the fellow’s name shant be David, that’s too plebian – nor William, that’s very pretty for a child, but unfit for a man, nor Edward, that’s too pretty for either man or baby. I have determined that the most aristocratic and democratic, the most semantic and unpedantic the most noble, manly, appropriate and significant of all that ‘best becomes a man’ is – ‘Lew.”

“However, Lew failed to convince Susan of the name ‘that best becomes a man.’ For on February 17, 1853, Susan gave birth to a son and he was named after his uncle, Henry Lane. Another factor figuring into naming the boy is that it was a common nineteenth century practice to name a child after a military commander and Lew Wallace had served under Henry Lane during the Mexican War.”

Lighty, Chandler S. “Henry Lane Wallace Part I.” Montgomery Magazine, (Crawfordsville, IN) Oct. 2, 2001.

Member Sneak Preview Party, 3/3/10

Larry Paarlberg, Director of the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, greets guests to the Member Sneak Preview Party for the opening of the Museum's new exhibit, "Sanctuary: Preserving the Legacy of Lew Wallace."

Member Sneak Preview Party, 3/3/10, originally uploaded by WallaceStudy.