Being Lucky: Reminiscences and Reflections

1. Growing Up in Jamestown and the County Seat

[I] 000 Growing Up in Jamestown and the County Seat I'M A fifth-generation Hoosier, a native of a small town. Jamestown , founded in 1832, was and still is a typical agricultural trading center located in Boone County about halfway between Indianapolis and Crawfordsville. Indiana at the time of my birth was mainly an agricultural state with Indianapolis its governmental, commercial, and financial hub. Within two decades, however, Indianapolis became the national center of the automotive industry, its lead closely followed by the development of component-parts manufacturing plants in the whole of the central part of the state-in Kokomo, Anderson, Marion, Richmond, and elsewhere. Thus central Indiana grew highly industrialized and dependent upon the motor industry, symbolically celebrated in the gala week of the Indianapolis 500. It was the thrust of the steel and refining industries that turned the northern part of the state into a great industrial complex in the first quarter of the century, while in southern Indiana, along the Ohio River, agriculture remained a major economic and social factor even though furniture manufacturing and shipbuilding brought national awareness of that part of the state. In my little town a flour mill, a tile factory, and a grain elevator were the sole industries, and the important business establishments were blacksmiths' shops, general stores, wagon repair shops, and hardware stores. Roads were so poor that a country hotel, the Phoenix , still flourished. The community had to be largely self-sustaining and also had to satisfy the needs of farmers living within horseback and wagon distance. The time, between the Civil War and World War I, was one of [3] 4 PREPARATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY relative stability and calm, giving no inkling of the great wars yet to come in this century. People still believed in the inevitability of progress and firmly upheld the Puritan ethic of hard work and thrift. It was prior to the rapid rise of the evangelical sects so visible now, and church life in Jamestown still centered in two denominational groups, the Methodists and the Campbellites. Between the two there was considerable debate as to which offered the better and surer route to heaven. My dear grandmother, who believed devoutly in the Methodist route, beginning with baptism by sprinkling rather than immersion, had grave doubts about the inevitability of salvation for the Campbellites. Both the Methodists and the Campbellites regularly sponsored series of meetings under evangelistic leadership at which the town drunkards and other malefactors, real or fancied, were received at the altar to repent their sins in public, much to everyone's righteous satisfaction. Supplementing the churches in their role as social and ritual centers were the lodges. The Oddfellows, the Knights of Pythias , the Modern Woodmen, the Red Men, and Masons, the Eastern Star, the Rebeccas were all very active and absorbed a not inconsiderable amount of the time, effort, and thought of good, responsible citizens. In fact, these fraternal groups wielded political as well as social influence in the community. Despite the primitive roads, Jamestown was not isolated. Both passenger and freight trains of the Peoria division of the Big Four made a station stop there and helped make the town a good trading center. Telephones were not as yet common enough to provide a communications network, but there was a weekly newspaper of fifty years' standing that was a reliable source of local information and of little else. Mail came by train and news traveled by telegraph line, courtesy of the telegrapher posted at each station. Residents of Jamestown were dependent upon the professional services of men and women based in the town. There were six doctors , several lawyers, and a dentist or two. Along with these esteemed citizens, the oldest descendants of the town's settlers were also held in special respect, as were the Civil War pensioners. In this rather complacent community with its bustling weekday activity and important social and church life there lived two people of central importance to my story. Following a brief courtship, Joseph Granville Wells and Anna Bernice Harting were married on June 26, 1901, in a very simple Growing Up 5 ceremony conducted by the Methodist minister in the parsonage at Jamestown. They chose not to invite any guests and departed immediately by train for Buffalo and Niagara Falls on their honeymoon . Such an extensive honeymoon, although popular in that day, I am sure must have been the...