https://www.historicfcps.org/general-5-1

Historic Fall Creek, Pendleton Settlement, Pendleton, IN (2026)

09/04/2026

This grand two-story home never disappeared from Pendleton but part of it did. See if you can figure out where it stands today. More of the story soon.

08/29/2026

An old Pendleton house always gives you a story. Sometimes the ground beneath it gives you an even better one. That is what happened with 112 S. Franklin Street.

The house sits on Lot 6 of Hardin & Slack’s Addition, platted in 1889 during Pendleton’s gas-boom years. The addition was divided into 74 lots between West State and Taylor streets, stretching west toward old Mill Road and Fall Creek.

Historic preservation research dates 112 S. Franklin to about 1890 and calls it one of the addition’s earliest houses. Architecturally, it is a two-story vernacular Victorian, or Gabled-Ell, with an L-shaped plan, cross-gabled roof and tall narrow windows. Before there was a Lot 6, there was Lucinda Hardin.

Lucinda owned property that eventually became part of Hardin & Slack’s Addition. Her husband had been gone for decades, yet she remained a substantial property owner in her own right. And Lucinda had seen a lot of Pendleton history. In June 1898, the Indianapolis News reported that she was one of only four people still living who had witnessed the Pendleton ex*****ons following the Fall Creek Massacre. That same week, the Elwood Daily Record ran a piece under the headline “A Bright Mind Gone.” It called Lucinda “one of the pioneer mothers of the state” and said that until a few years earlier she had possessed an “unusually bright mind.” She was well informed on history, science and literature and interested in matters concerning the welfare of women.

By 1898, however, age had taken a sad turn. Florence Hardin petitioned the Circuit Court to have Lucinda declared of unsound mind and a guardian appointed to manage her estate.

By about 1920, Louisa Frey Gustin and her children were living on Franklin Street. Louisa was the widow of farmer David W. Gustin, who died in 1914 while the family was still living northwest of Pendleton. Louisa also brings another familiar local name into the story — Frey. Her brother Elias Frey was one of Pendleton’s early rural mail carriers and eventually became prominent nationally in the Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. Apparently, that still did not get him out of Sunday dinner at his sister’s house. In June 1928, the Times-Post reported that Louisa and her daughters entertained relatives at their Franklin Street home. Family came from Anderson, Indianapolis and even Kansas, and Elias was among those around the table.

Louisa married Andrew Skiles in 1935. When she died in 1940, the newspaper said the family had lived on Franklin Street for about twenty years. Then in 1944 we finally get the detail every property researcher loves, the lot number. The Anderson Herald recorded: Helen Gustin, et al., to Maude E. Brown, Lot 6 in Hardin and Slack’s Addition, 1. Another interest in part of Lot 6 went to Maude Brown at the same time. No, she did not buy the house for a buck. Those were almost certainly nominal amounts used in family or estate transfers.

The Brown family then leads us to Woodrow McCord, who married Eileen Brown and operated a hauling business.

So, this one magnificent house ties together Lucinda Hardin, the Gustins, the Freys, the Browns and the McCords, plus a piece of Pendleton history reaching back to the Fall Creek Massacre era. And more than 130 years later, it is still proudly standing.

We still have one stubborn piece left to find: who owned Lot 6 between 1889 and about 1920, and hopefully, who built the house. Somewhere in an old deed book, that answer is probably waiting.

Sources: Elwood Daily Record, June 10, 1898, “A Bright Mind Gone”; Indianapolis News, June 10–11, 1898, Lucinda Hardin guardianship/Fall Creek ex*****on account; Pendleton Historic District National Register documentation, 1991; historic Hardin & Slack’s Addition map; Anderson Herald, May 22, 1914, David Gustin obituary ; Times-Post, June 7, 1928, Gustin family gathering ; Times-Post, October 24, 1935, Louisa Gustin–Andrew Skiles marriage ; Times-Post, April 25, 1940, Louisa Gustin Skiles obituary ; Anderson Herald, February 8, 1944, Lot 6 transfer to Maude E. Brown ; and Times-Post, August 2, 1934, Eileen Brown–Woodrow McCord marriage .

08/27/2026

If there is one great thing about social media, it is the way history has a habit of coming out of closets, cabinets and attics.

That is exactly what happened after our post this past Tuesday about the home at 320 S. Pendleton Avenue. This morning, one of the Chapman family members met me for coffee at Falls Perk and brought along two large photo albums filled with family photographs and generations of ancestors.

Among them were several wonderful images of Melvin Chapman, the turn-of-the-century Pendleton carpenter and home builder we mentioned in the 320 S. Pendleton story. Chapman was still actively working at his trade at age 81 and was described in 1931 as probably the oldest active carpenter in Madison County. He died that year after falling from the roof of a neighbor’s porch while making repairs.

Here are a few photographs of Melvin through the years. It is always one thing to find a name in a deed, census or old newspaper. It is something entirely different when someone opens an old family album and suddenly puts a face to the story.

Thank you, Betsy, for sharing these wonderful family photographs and helping bring another piece of Pendleton history to life.

08/26/2026

UPDATE WITH WINNER. Congratulations to Briana Bennett! She had the correct answer and is our random winner. Thanks to everyone who participated.

GIVEAWAY TIME!

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these here in Pendleton, but there’s a good chance nearly every old home had one at some point.

Anyone know what this is?

One randomly selected person who answers correctly will receive a copy of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

To enter:

Follow our page (unless you are already).
Post your answer in the comments — one answer per person.
And if you know someone who loves local preservation and history, please share our page with them! Anyone in the United States is eligible to play and win!!

The contest ends Friday at 11:59 p.m.

Good luck — let’s see who knows their old-house stuff!

08/25/2026

For the better part of a week I’ve been digging deep into 320 S. Pendleton Avenue, and I finally have assembled most of this beautiful home's history. The story really starts before the house itself.

The house sits on Lot 8 of Chapman’s Addition, an addition that was already in existence by 1863, several decades before the present house was built. The Chapman name itself is worth noting. Martin Chapman Jr. was a carpenter in Pendleton, and his son Melvin Chapman followed the same trade. Melvin is remembered for building a number of fine homes in the community, and newspaper records confirm that he was still taking house building contracts in the early 1900s.

That naturally raises a question about 320 S. Pendleton. The house appears to date to about 1899-1900, when Melvin Chapman was an experienced carpenter in his late forties and very much active in Pendleton. Did he build this house? At this point, I can’t say that he did. But he was certainly in the right place, doing the right kind of work at exactly the right time. And he apparently never lost the knack or the desire to climb a ladder. In 1931, at age 81, the Anderson Herald described Chapman as probably the oldest active carpenter in Madison County. He was still working steadily at his trade when he slipped from the roof of a neighbor’s porch and was killed. So if Melvin built 320, he certainly had a long career in which to do it.

The ownership trail for the house becomes much clearer in the early twentieth century. In 1919, Ida M. Wilson transferred Lot 8 in Chapman’s Addition to Hattie B. Slaughter. Hattie later married Guy Hiday in her South Pendleton Avenue home in December 1921, and only weeks later sold the property to Lloyd Crosley. Crosley sold it in 1924 to newlyweds Howard and Ava Biddle for $3,800. Ava was well known in Pendleton musical circles, and in 1925 the local Music Study Club actually met in the house.

Howard’s career with Delco-Remy took the Biddles to Detroit in 1927, and that June they sold the house to local merchant P. S. Waters. The Waters family stayed for more than fifty years, from 1927 until about 1980. Around that time the house was purchased by Bob Post, one of today’s best-known and Pendleton residents and preservation and restoration experts. Bob spent years bringing back the historic character of the house, and in 2005 the restored home received a Historic Restoration and Preservation Award from Historic Fall Creek, Pendleton Settlement.

Architecturally, 320 S. Pendleton is a wonderful late Folk Victorian/Queen Anne transitional house, with steep cross gables, fish-scale shingles, turned porch posts, decorative spindlework and that unmistakable half-round attic window. Today it is also a key contributing property in Pendleton’s National Register historic district exactly the kind of house that gives South Pendleton Avenue so much of its character.

So this one property gives us quite a run of Pendleton history: an old Chapman Addition lot, a possible connection to one of the town’s longtime builders, Hattie Slaughter, Lloyd Crosley, Howard and Ava Biddle, more than half a century of the Waters family, and finally Bob Post and the preservation era.

The lot is older than the house. The house is older than most of us. And it is still collecting stories.

Sources:
Anderson Herald
Pendleton Times-Post Newspaper
Greenfield Daily Reporter

08/20/2026

Do you see it? One more Horseshoe Bend find (private residence) from the recent flooding.

08/16/2026

Buried for decades beneath a road washed away by this past week’s record rains and flooding, a piece of the past was uncovered yesterday on the private Horseshoe Bend property.

The object appears to be a broken ornamental cast-concrete post or architectural finial, possibly once used as part of an entrance, gate, fence, railing, or landscape feature. It has a distinctly molded form, with a tapered upper section, rounded shoulders and a decorative stepped or ringed base. The rough, aggregate-filled material appears consistent with older cast concrete rather than natural stone. Although the post is broken and heavily weathered, enough of its original shape survives to show that it was decorative rather than simply a structural piece.

What makes the discovery especially interesting is where it was found. The post was buried beneath a portion of the washed-out road leading to the residence, apparently incorporated into or covered by the roadway many years ago. The floodwaters exposed layers of the old roadbed that had likely not seen daylight in decades, bringing this piece of Horseshoe Bend’s past back to the surface.

There may be more. With portions of the roadbed now exposed, other remnants of earlier structures or improvements to the property could still be buried there.

Pendleton town officials were on site at the same time, and although we had been invited to visit and help uncover potential historical finds, we didn’t want to interfere with their work. Our town officials and employees have already spent many long hours these past few days helping those in our community who have suffered tremendous loss from the flooding.

A heartfelt thank you to all of the officials and employees of our wonderful town, and to the hundreds of volunteers who have stepped forward to help with the cleanup and recovery. Once again, Pendleton has shown what kind of community it is when neighbors need one another.

Here’s to brighter days ahead for Pendleton and all of our neighboring communities.

08/12/2026

We ended yesterday with one more familiar name from William Helvie’s western years. Buffalo Bill Cody. William said he had known William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody while serving in the West.Helvie left the Army in 1889 and came home to Madison County.

Not long after, William’s life took a much quieter turn. He met Mary A. Neff, a Pendleton girl who had been born here on Christmas Day, 1856. Her family moved to Anderson when she was about ten years old, and on June 30, 1892, she and William were married.

So while William’s Army years were behind him, his life in Madison County was really just beginning. He became a barber in Anderson, a trade he would follow for about thirty years, and he and Mary made their home there for many years.

It was during those Anderson years that another chapter from William’s western life apparently resurfaced. Years later he remembered seeing Buffalo Bill again when Cody came to Anderson. William’s memory placed the reunion around 1890, but newspaper research gives us two definite visits by Cody to Anderson during William’s post-Army years.

The first was in December 1902. The Anderson Herald announced that Buffalo Bill was coming to town as a guest of the local Order of Buffaloes and would attend a large lodge ball at the Polo Auditorium. He came back again on August 24, 1907. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World appeared at the Anderson fairgrounds for one day only, with afternoon and evening performances.

While William may have been a little off on the date when he told the story decades later, we know Buffalo Bill came to Anderson twice during Helvie’s post-soldiering years. It would have been during one of these visits that the two old western acquaintances would have re-met.

William’s story of the reunion is quite funny. At first, Cody apparently didn’t recognize him. William joked that he wasn’t doing much better recognizing Cody. Then something clicked. They remembered one another. And the two men sat down and talked about the old days in the West. Let’s think about that for a moment.Buffalo Bill Cody, one of the most recognizable men in America, sitting somewhere in Anderson talking over old times with a Madison County barber because thats what William had become.

William and Mary were building their own life here at home. After many years in Anderson, the couple moved back to Pendleton around 1913. William would serve for roughly ten years as assistant postmaster in Pendleton. The first time they appear in the Pendleton census is 1920. Their home would be on S. East Street.

She still had strong Anderson ties. Her brother, Charles H. Neff, was an executive with the Anderson Herald. She was also a Pythian Sister and associated with the Christian Missionary Society.

But changes come quick in our short time here on earth. During the fall of 1930 Mary had been ill for several weeks. On October 20, 1930, she suddenly collapsed at home. She died that morning at about 8:45. Her funeral was held at the Pendleton Christian Church, and she was buried at Huntsville Cemetery. William was now alone.

Less than two months later he stood before the Noblesville Lions Club telling those remarkable stories of his youth. A few weeks after that, the Indianapolis Star published the lengthy interview that preserved much of what we know about his western years.

William lived another twelve years. He eventually went to the Indiana Soldiers’ Home in Lafayette, where he died on February 2, 1943, at the age of 86. His Pendleton obituary remembered him as a Madison County native, longtime Anderson barber, former Pendleton assistant postmaster and an “Indian fighter.” It stated that William had served in the regular Army from 1876 until 1889 and had participated in many of the western Indian campaigns. His body was returned to Pendleton, and he was buried beside Mary at Huntsville Cemetery.

And that brings us back to the little home on S. East Street. Today the home is considered non-contributing to Pendleton’s historic district, but that designation doesn’t necessarily mean its story or even its original character is gone.

The Carpenter-style bones of the house are still there, and with the right restoration, it isn’t hard to imagine the home someday looking much more like it did in its earlier years.

Buildings change. They weather storms, tornadoes, repairs, additions, removals, modernization and, of course, generations of different owners with different ideas of what a house should be. Sometimes those changes hide what was there before. Sometimes they can be reversed.

For Historic Fall Creek, Pendleton Settlement, the story of preservation has really always been two-fold. First, there is the preservation of the buildings themselves and the protection of Pendleton’s coveted National Register designation, an important recognition for one of Indiana’s most historic towns. But just as important is the preservation of the stories of the people who called these structures home. The houses matter. So do the people. And in many ways, one without the other is only half the story.

Because preserving Pendleton is not just about saving old buildings. It is about remembering the lives that unfolded inside them.

Sources: Reference post from 8/11

08/11/2026

We have talked many times about the homes of Pendleton and the people who once lived in them. Sometimes a house that may not stand out architecturally today can still have quite a story behind it. This is the case with the presently non-contributing home on S. East Street, once occupied by William and Mary Helvie.

Before we get into William’s story, we probably need to say something about the language used in the old newspaper accounts. William was repeatedly referred to as an “Indian fighter.” Some of the words and descriptions used by William and the newspapers in the 1930s would certainly be considered insensitive by today’s standards. We are not repeating those terms to offend anyone, nor are we trying to judge people of the 1870s by the standards of 2026. History is history.

The best thing we can do is tell it as it was recorded, while understanding that we know much more today about Native American history and the events of the western Indian campaigns than was generally understood when William told his story nearly a century ago. So, with that said, let’s go back to 1876.

William E. Helvie was a Madison County boy when he went to Indianapolis that spring and decided to enlist in the United States Army. According to William, he enlisted on March 6, 1876. Before long he was headed west.

He eventually arrived at Fort D. A. Russell near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and from there remembered marching approximately 180 miles to Fort Fetterman. William served with Company F of the 14th United States Infantry and would spend the next thirteen years in the Army. And what a thirteen years they were.

More than fifty years later, William could still remember some of those marches in remarkable detail. He told of navigating by the stars and compass and remembered crossing the Tongue River nineteen times in a distance of only twenty-one miles. This was a long way from Madison County, Indiana.

William served during the western campaigns associated with General George Crook and recalled taking part in fighting connected with the Battle of the Rosebud. Now, we do have to remember that William was telling these stories more than fifty years after they happened. Some of the tribes and events he identified do not completely match what historians understand today, so we are telling this as William remembered it, rather than saying every detail was necessarily correct.

In December 1930, William was invited to speak before the Noblesville Lions Club about his experiences in the West. The Anderson Herald reported that he gave the club an account of the hardships he had experienced during those years and said his talk was unlike anything previously heard by the organization.

A little more than a month later, the Indianapolis Star came calling. On January 25, 1931, the paper ran a large feature on William under the headline: “Old Indian Fighter Recalls Western Campaigns, Details of Custer Stand.”

William talked about the Native warriors he had encountered and how differently they fought from soldiers trained in traditional military formations. He also remembered Native warriors going to great lengths to recover their dead after battles and recalled seeing bodies placed on elevated wooden platforms.

One particularly interesting part of his story concerned Black soldiers serving in the West. William said that, from what he had observed, Native warriors seemed to have considerable respect for Black soldiers because of the way they fought. Again, the newspaper used language in 1931 that we would not use today, but the story itself is an interesting glimpse into William’s memories of those years.

William also remembered the well-known western scout Frank Grouard, who worked with General Crook. But probably the most interesting part of William’s story involved George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

William said his regiment reached the area after Custer’s command had been destroyed. He remembered Curley, the Crow scout who had been with Custer’s expedition, and said he had spoken with him many times.

William also had his own explanation for what had happened to Custer. According to William, scouts attempted to estimate the number of Native warriors ahead of them by examining trails and even the amount of ground where their ponies had grazed. William remembered the estimate being about 1,200 warriors. He believed Custer moved forward expecting something close to that number. William also remembered discussion about taking artillery along but said it was decided that the guns would slow the troops in the rough country.

Then came what William called the “fatal oversight.” There were far more Native warriors gathered there than the soldiers had expected. William believed the actual number may have been closer to 5,000. Whether every number or detail William remembered was correct is something historians have debated for generations.

As interesting as all this is it really isn’t the important part of our Pendleton story. The remarkable part is that a man who would later live quietly on S. East Street had spent thirteen years in the United States Army during one of the most famous periods of western American history.

And there was still another name in William Helvie’s story. A very famous one. Buffalo Bill Cody. We’ll pick up there in our next post.

Noblesville Preservation Alliance

Sources: Anderson Herald, Indianapolis Star, Noblesville Daily News

08/08/2026

Many residents over the last century plus have cherished the beautiful Queen Anne-style home at 312 S. Broadway, including today's owners, who have done so much to retain the character that makes the house such an important part of Pendleton's historic streetscape. The home is recognized as a contributing property in the Pendleton Historic District.

But today we're going to go back in time to the early years of the 20th century, when Victor and Etta Cooper became part of Pendleton's story. And as we have discovered, their Pendleton story actually appears to have unfolded in two different chapters.

Victor M. Cooper was born October 6, 1867, near Mechanicsburg. His father, I. W. Cooper, was a Civil War veteran who lived in the Mechanicsburg community for more than sixty years. When the elder Cooper died in 1928 at the age of 85, the Anderson Herald remembered him as one of the best-known men in Henry County. He was a member of the George Rader Post of the Grand Army of the Republic at Middletown as well as the Masonic Lodge.

Victor attended Spiceland Academy and married Etta Jane Lewis on December 23, 1886. His work eventually took him into the livestock and commission business, and over the years he worked in places including Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago and Pittsburgh.

By about 1907, Victor, Etta and their daughter Margaret had settled in Pendleton. This first Pendleton period was centered on West State Street, where Victor owned a residence, and his own business, Cooper's Meat Market.

Victor didn't waste much time becoming involved in town affairs. In November 1909, the committee organizing the upcoming Pendleton Horse Show met at Cooper's meat market. When the officers were selected for the following year's show, Victor Cooper was elected president of the association.

At about the same time, Victor entered local politics. In October 1909, Republicans nominated Victor M. Cooper for the Pendleton Town Council, and he would go on to serve as president of the town board. For a man who had only been living in Pendleton for a few years, Victor Cooper had certainly become well established in the community.

Then in early 1910, another opportunity came along. Victor accepted a position as a cattleman with McCall, Newburn and Joyce of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and planned to leave Pendleton on March 1. A February 1910 newspaper account tells us that Victor had sold his West State Street residence for $3,000. The same article stated that he expected to sell his meat market as well, but importantly, it does not say the market had actually been sold at that time.

Etta and Margaret remained in Pendleton until Margaret finished the school term. The newspaper noted that the Coopers had made many friends during their roughly three years in Pendleton. Victor also resigned as president of the Horse Show Association as he prepared to leave for Pittsburgh.

At first glance, that might seem like the end of the Cooper family's Pendleton story. It wasn't. Within several years, Victor was again closely associated with Pendleton.

By 1915, he was back at the Pendleton Horse Show, but this time not as association president. He was the ringmaster. The Anderson Herald described Victor Cooper as one of the busiest men on the street, working the horse show with his long whip while the exhibitions went on around him.

It's one of those wonderful little newspaper descriptions that allows us to almost picture the scene, downtown Pendleton crowded with horses, exhibitors and spectators, and Victor Cooper right in the middle of it all. The Cooper family was again firmly connected with the area.

In 1918, their daughter Margaret Cooper had accepted a position with the Anderson schools as a Junior French instructor. The newspaper also reported that she had been offered a position teaching freshman French at Butler College.

The 1920 census places Victor and Etta Cooper on South Broadway in Pendleton. This is important because it tells us that the South Broadway residence belongs to a second chapter of the Cooper family's Pendleton years, not their original 1907-1910 stay. 1915 may have been when they moved into the house, but the 1920 census gives us a firm point in time. Their stay there appears to have been fairly short.

Sometime after the 1920 census and before the fall of 1921, Victor and Etta moved to a farm about three-fourths of a mile east of Markleville. There they lived in what the newspaper described as a handsome country home, an eight-room, two-story residence only a few years old.

Then, early on the morning of October 11, 1921, disaster struck. Victor had gotten up around five o'clock and gone to the barn to milk. Etta remained asleep inside the house. About half an hour later Victor returned and discovered the interior of the home in flames. Etta awakened upstairs to find her room filling with smoke. Unable to escape through the house, she climbed through an upstairs window and made her way onto the roof of the front porch, still in her nightclothes. A ladder was brought and she was rescued. The house could not be saved.

The entire eight-room residence burned, along with furniture, valuables and family heirlooms. The loss was estimated at approximately $10,000, almost $500,000 today, an enormous amount for the time, but the fire didn't drive the Coopers away.

During the following winter Victor and Etta traveled to Texas, where they stayed with their daughter now Mrs. Clark Duncan. When they returned to Indiana in the spring of 1922, they stayed temporarily at Mechanicsburg while Victor's father was seriously ill.

Victor then announced plans to build another house on the same Markleville property where the first home had burned. Victor remained associated with the Markleville area for the rest of his life.

He died on July 3, 1933. His funeral was held at the family home and conducted by Rev. W. R. Cady of Pendleton, and Victor was buried at Mechanicsburg. Etta, however, lived nearly another three decades.

She eventually made her home in Texas near their daughter Margaret and the Duncan family. In 1962, Etta Cooper died in Dallas at the age of 95. Her funeral was held at Restland Memorial Chapel in Dallas. Even after all those years, her death was still reported back here in Pendleton.

It's interesting how one family's story can connect so many places. Mechanicsburg. Pendleton. Pittsburgh. Pendleton again. Markleville. And eventually Texas.

Victor Cooper was a cattleman, meat-market proprietor, town official, Horse Show president, ringmaster and farmer. But perhaps one of the most tangible pieces of his story is still standing today.

The Queen Anne home at 312 S. Broadway has been home to many families over the generations, each adding another chapter to its history. For a brief period around 1920, however, Victor and Etta Cooper walked through its doors and called it home.
More than a century later, the house remains one of those places where a piece of Pendleton's history is still right there in front of us.

Sources: Anderson Herald, Pendleton Gazette, 1920 & 1930 U.S. Census

Historic Fall Creek, Pendleton Settlement

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