Indiana Originals: Hoosier Heroes & Heroines

fun.

1

Creator of Abe Martin

Frank McKinney Kin Hubbard

Irvington, a planned community on Indianapolis’s east side, has been home to a number of famous Hoosiers through the years. One day in the 1910s, a camera-laden tourist was searching through the area for the home of Frank McKinney Kin Hubbard, the creator of cracker-barrel philosopher Abe Martin, whose folksy brand of humor graced the Indianapolis News’s back page for twenty-six years.

Finally finding Hubbard’s home, the visitor approached a disheveled-looking gardener working on the author’s lawn and asked him if he thought Mr. Hubbard would mind if he took a few snapshots of the house.

What if Mr. Hubbard does care? the man asked the tourist. How will he ever know?

The tourist was closer to his favorite author than he knew. The man he had questioned was Hubbard, who was involved in a few of his favorite hobbies: gardening and being mischievous. His behavior with the tourist merely reinforced a fellow News employee’s observation that Hubbard was a genial Dapper Dan with the soul of an imp.

Operating out of the fictional town of Bloom Center in Brown County, Abe Martin delighted millions of readers across the country with such sage wisdom as It’s no disgrace t’ be poor, but it might as well be, and When a feller says, ‘It hain’t th’ money, but th’ principle o’ th’ thing,’ it’s the money. Hubbard, the News noted upon its faithful worker’s death in 1930, possessed the uncanny ability of seeing life clearly, and touching it kindly in the places where it should be touched. Although biting at times, Hubbard’s humor could always be counted on to produce a laugh and leave behind no trace of bitterness.

Frank McKinney Kin Hubbard at the Indianapolis News. He told a friend he rarely had any material ahead of time, but something always show[s] up at the eleventh hour. Bass Photo Company, Indiana Historical Society.

Hubbard displayed an artistic flair at an early age. In an autobiographical sketch he provided to the News, he says that from the time he was old enough to hold a pair of scissors, he could cut from blank paper any kind of an animal with a correctness and deftness that was almost creepy. This artistic talent, however, did not translate into classroom success, as Hubbard dropped out of school in his hometown of Bellefontaine, Ohio, before the seventh grade and took a job in a paint shop. His father could not be too upset at his youngest child, as he seemed to miss his son’s presence during the day. He once complained to a teacher who made his son stay after school that if his son doesn’t get his lessons, it’s because you don’t know how to teach. Besides, the boy’s needed for errands at home.

Although he demonstrated no enthusiasm for schoolwork, Hubbard, like fellow Hoosier humorist George Ade, who figured prominently in the artist’s subsequent career, displayed a passion for the theatrical life. From his youth until his death, Hubbard dropped whatever he was doing if a circus came to town. Asked by the owner of the paint shop where he worked what he wanted to be, Hubbard had a career in mind: I want to be the sole proprietor of a good, well-painted, comprehensive, one-ring circus.

Politics, however, provided Hubbard with another livelihood. With the election of Democrat Grover Cleveland to his first term as president in 1884, Hubbard’s father was rewarded for his lifelong devotion to the Democratic Party with an appointment as postmaster. Kin clerked at the post office for a time, but it did not cure his ambition for the theatrical life. During his employment, he made trips to the South as a silhouette artist and even enrolled in the Jefferson School of Art in Detroit. That experience, however, lasted only a short time, as Hubbard complained that the school was too tame.

Hubbard’s love for the theater, however, paid off in a way that set the course for his future career. After witnessing a local performance of the Grand Bellefontaine Operatic Minstrels and Professor Tom Wright’s Operatic Solo Orchestra, Hubbard wrote to a friend in Indianapolis about the show, embellishing his remarks with some drawings. Impressed with Hubbard’s artwork, the friend showed the drawings to John H. Holliday, Indianapolis News owner and editor. The friend wrote to Hubbard and urged him to come to Indiana and try for a job with the News. Hubbard agreed, but once in the city, he sat in University Park for nearly a week before gaining enough courage to approach the newspaper for work. Finally given a job, Hubbard remembered the editor remarking as a salary was agreed upon (twelve dollars a week), I reckon you’ve got to live.

Hired in 1891, Hubbard remained at the News for three years. During that time, he produced a number of works for the newspaper but, as he remembered, was always handicapped by not knowing how to draw. I could execute rude, sketchy caricatures that were readily recognized, but I knew nothing of composition, light and shade, and perspective. Although apprehensive about his position, Hubbard enjoyed his life in Indianapolis. Given an annual pass to local theaters, he never missed a show or, when one came to town, a circus.

The end of his first stint at the News came about as the result of the hiring of a new managing editor who wanted, according to Hubbard, a real artist who could draw anything. Called upon by his boss to produce a drawing of an angel for Easter, Hubbard did not panic but hurried to the city editor, who liked the young man, and asked for his help. The sympathetic editor found an art student to furnish the needed illustration (described by Hubbard as a production that would have made a circus wagon woodcarver turn green with envy), and Hubbard’s job was saved for a time.

His days at the News, however, were numbered. Called upon to draw for the newspaper pictures of the intricately restored interiors for a number of city banks, Hubbard departed Indianapolis for the safety of the family home in Bellefontaine. During the next few years, he kept busy by again visiting the South, driving a mule team in Chattanooga, serving as a gatekeeper for a Cincinnati amusement park and working as an artist for the Cincinnati Tribune and Mansfield News. In 1899, the thirty-one-year-old Hubbard received a letter offering him a job from the Indianapolis Sun. He accepted the offer and, during the two years he worked at the Sun, really made more progress as an artist…than I had in all the years before, he said. Hubbard rejoined the News as an artist in the fall of 1901 and worked there for the rest of his life.

Upon his return to the News, Hubbard became popular for his caricatures of state political figures, particularly Indiana legislators. In working with politicians as subjects, he preferred to draw those with whiskers and hair, as caricaturing bald lawmakers was just like drawing a cocoanut. Although a collection of these drawings was published in 1903, Hubbard’s lasting fame would come not from politicians but from a rustic character who made a habit of commenting on legislators’ foibles all the way from the wild country of Brown County.

In 1904, while traveling on trains during campaign trips by Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and Republican vice presidential candidate Charles W. Fairbanks, Hubbard found that at campaign’s end he had some extra material. After first experimenting with such names as Seth Martin, Steve Martin and Abe Hulsizer, Hubbard finally hit on the right one—Abe Martin. On December 17, 1904, the Abe Martin character made his first appearance. The drawing showed a smiling, whiskered gentleman staring at a playbill featuring a scantily clad (for those days) woman. At the drawing’s bottom, the character comments: If I thought that blamed troupe done everything it has pictures fer, I’d stay over this evening and go home on the interubin. The feature, Hubbard modestly recalled years later, caused some favorable comment and it was decided to continue it.

On February 3, 1905, Hubbard moved Abe Martin to Brown County, where he remained for the rest of his career. Finding that sometimes he had things to say that Abe Martin would be unlikely to utter, Hubbard added to his cast with such delightful country neighbors as spinster Miss Fawn Lippincut, senior citizen Uncle Niles Turner, Professor Alexander Tansey, businessman Tell Binkley and many others. In naming his characters, Hubbard sometimes used the names of people he knew in Bellefontaine. He also found that Kentucky jury lists were good sources.

Hubbard’s career received a boost in 1910, again thanks to a Hoosier author. In May of that year, an article about the Abe Martin feature appeared in American magazine. The article’s author, the aforementioned Ade, lavishly praised Hubbard’s work. Before the article had appeared, Fred Kelly, a friend of Hubbard’s, had been trying to find a firm to syndicate Abe Martin nationally. Kelly was turned down by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate in New York because that agency thought Abe Martin was merely a local phenomenon. Ade’s piece changed that view in a hurry, as syndication offers poured in after its publication. Hubbard signed with the George Matthew Adams Syndicate, and Abe Martin was soon appearing in approximately two hundred cities.

On December 26, 1930, at his new North Meridian Street home, the sixty-two-year-old Hubbard died from a heart attack. Just the day before, he had told his wife and two children that it had been the happiest Christmas of his life. Tributes to Hubbard flooded the News following his death. Although touted as the humorists’ humorist by D. Laurance Chambers of Indianapolis’s Bobbs-Merrill Company, Hubbard probably would not have let the praise go to his head, preferring to remember what Abe Martin once said: Flattery won’t hurt you if you don’t swallow it.

2

Indiana’s Warmhearted Satirist

George Ade

The 1908 presidential contest pitted two would-be reformers against each other. That June, Republicans nominated William Howard Taft, groomed for the post by former president Theodore Roosevelt, in Chicago. The Democrats responded by selecting William Jennings Bryan, who would be making his third, and last, attempt for the nation’s highest office. And while Bryan was shocked by his staggering million-vote loss to Taft at the polls, perhaps the campaign’s biggest surprise came at the beginning when Taft decided to open his race for the White House in the small Indiana town of Brook.

Brook may have been a tiny dot on Indiana’s map, but it did have something other Hoosier towns did not: the spacious country estate of Indiana journalist, playwright and warmhearted satirist George Ade. Hazelden Farm was the scene of a number of large parties and celebrations in the thirty-nine years Ade resided there—enough, in fact, that Ade’s biographer recalled it being described as the amusement center of the United States. Ade himself notes in an autobiographical piece, I love to put on big parties or celebrations and see a throng of people having a good time.

Born on February 9, 1866, Ade was the second youngest of seven children raised by John and Adaline (Bush) Ade. From the time I could read, Ade remembered later in life, I had my nose in a book, and I lacked enthusiasm for manual labor. His aversion to physical work, especially his dislike for farming, troubled his father, who wondered how his son would make a living. In 1883, Ade started classes at Purdue University. His attention, however, soon focused on the Grand Opera House in Lafayette, where he became a regular patron—sometimes to the detriment of his studies. Ade noted that he was a star student as a Freshman but wobbly later on and a total loss in Mathematics. Still, while at the university he did meet and begin a lifelong friendship with Hoosier cartoonist John T. McCutcheon.

White-suited humorist George Ade (left) poses with Indiana governor Paul McNutt, circa 1930s. Indiana Historical Society, M1171.

After graduating from Purdue in 1887 with a bachelor of science degree, Ade started work as a reporter for the Lafayette Call at the princely sum of six dollars per week. Along with his low salary, Ade had to cope with a frugal editor, who, for example, liked to use old envelopes as copy paper. Ade later moved on to a job writing testimonials for a patent medicine company’s tobacco-habit cure. In recalling Ade’s work for the firm, McCutcheon noted that the cure was not a fake remedy, for it was guaranteed to cure the most persistent tobacco habit if the tobacco user followed the directions. The first direction was to discontinue the use of tobacco and then take the tablets.

By 1890, Ade had joined McCutcheon on the staff of the Chicago Morning News. Ade’s first regular assignment was a daily weather story. His big break came when the steamer Tioga exploded on the Chicago River and Ade, because no other reporters were available, rushed to the scene and produced the best account of the tragedy. His success led to his covering such important events as the heavyweight championship fight between John

L. Sullivan and James J. Gentleman Jim Corbett in New Orleans and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

In November 1893, Ade was put in charge of the regular column Stories of the Streets and of the Town, which also featured McCutcheon’s illustrations. In his writing, Ade captured life on Chicago’s bustling streets through the antics of such characters as Artie, a young office boy; Doc’ Horne, a gentlemanly liar; and Pink Marsh, a shoeshine boy in a barbershop. Ade’s column also was the birthplace of the work that made him famous—fables.

Fables in Slang, published in 1899, was an immediate hit with the public, selling sixty-nine thousand copies that year alone. These modern fables were nationally syndicated, produced as movies by the Essanay Film Company and turned into comic strips by cartoonist Art Helfant. Famed Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White was moved to write that he "would rather have written Fables in Slang than be President. Despite such lavish attention, Ade remained levelheaded, wryly noting: By a queer twist of circumstances I have become known to the general public as a ‘humorist’ and a writer of ‘slang.’ I never wanted to be a comic or tried to be one. Always I wrote for the ‘family trade’ and I used no word or phrase which might give offense to mother and the girls or a professor of English."

Ade next turned his humorist’s pen to the theater, writing his first Broadway play, The Sultan of Sulu, a comic opera about America’s activities in the Philippines, in 1902. Other hit plays soon followed, including Peggy from Paris, a musical comedy; The County Chairman, a drama about small-town politics; and his best-known play, The College Widow, a comedy about college life and football set on the Wabash College campus in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

While Ade was busy writing and traveling—frequently abroad—back home in Indiana, his brother William was acquiring on Ade’s behalf numerous acres of farmland in Newton County. In 1902, William Ade bought 417 acres near the town of Brook. Impressed by the wooded land, George Ade called on his friend Billy Mann, a Chicago architect, to design a small dwelling for him at a cost of $2,500. A suggestion here and a suggestion there later, Ade ended up with an impressive English Manor/Tudor–style home that cost him approximately $25,000.

Ade, who moved into his Hazelden Farm estate in the summer of 1904, described his home as about the size of a girl’s school, with added wings for the managers, otherwise known as employees. Included with the home and elaborate gardens were a swimming pool, a greenhouse, a barn, a caretaker’s cottage, a fuel supply house and a forty-foot-tall water tank.

Once settled into his new home, Ade wasted little time in making his neighbors feel welcome, hosting numerous parties. Along with Taft’s visit, Hazelden was the site of celebrations for the Indiana Society of Chicago, Purdue University alumni and local children. Ade also hosted a rally for Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party in 1912; a homecoming for soldiers and sailors on July 4, 1919; and a party and speech for vice presidential candidate General Charles W. Dawes in 1924.

It was McCutcheon who best captured the spirited, and crowded, times at his friend’s home:

If all the Sigma Chis, Purdue students, Indiana friends, movie stars, stage stars, political mass meetings, golf professionals and automobile clubs from Chicago, Indiana, New York and Hollywood, who have eaten the famous fried chicken at Hazelden farm, being regaled the while by the stories of one of the greatest American raconteurs, were stood in a row, the line would reach from hell to breakfast.

Ade died on May 23, 1944, in Brook after an illness of many months.

3

Lew Wallace and Ben-Hur

In an 1887 letter to his wife, Susan, famed author Lew Wallace told her that he looked to her and his bestselling novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ to keep me unforgotten after the end of life. Susan did all she could to honor her husband’s wishes. With the help of Mary Hannah Krout, a Crawfordsville writer, she completed Wallace’s unfinished autobiography and saw it through to publication. Susan had to use letters and other material to cover her husband’s life from the retreat at the Civil War Battle of Monocacy in 1864 to his death in 1905.

Although Lew Wallace had been famous enough to have several schools named in his honor in Indiana, his memory endures today thanks to Ben-Hur, a book that has never been out of print. The novel’s popularity has been helped through the years by stage and film productions. While he was still alive, Wallace received many requests to turn his bestselling work into a play. He resisted such attempts, however, fearing that no production could accurately portray Jesus Christ or the exciting chariot race.

In 1899, Wallace reached an agreement with Marc Klaw and Abraham Erlanger, owners of a theatrical syndicate, to turn his novel into a play. The men agreed that Christ would not be played by an actor but represented by a beam of light. The question of how to hold a chariot race on stage was solved by having horses run on treadmills built into the floor while the scenery moved behind them. Seeing the elaborate sets constructed for the stage version of his novel moved Wallace to exclaim, My God! Did I set all of this in motion?

Advertisement for Klaw and Erlanger’s Ben-Hur stage production at Chicago’s Illinois Theatre. Library of Congress.

The play opened on November 29, 1899, at the Broadway Theater in New York City. Although the play received mixed reviews,