Hortonville Owls Strike Back
From Time to Thyme
By Paula Dunn
Although Valentine’s Day is behind us, I recently ran across a story about a Valentine’s Day wedding in the February 15, 1926 Noblesville Daily Ledger that’s just too funny/weird to hold onto until next year.
The bride, Ruby Buscher, was Noblesville’s City Clerk from 1922 to 1925, (She was the first Hamilton County woman elected to a public office!) The groom was Gurney Clark, a well known Hortonville (or just “Horton”) farmer.
Their wedding and reception, held in Noblesville’s old Christian Church (now the Adler Building,) were normal enough. It was what came afterward that made the day so memorable.
Clark happened to be a longtime member of the Owl Club, a group of young Hortonville men who liked to “show their fellow members a good time on the occasion of their marriage.”
I’d never heard of the Owl Club, so I tried to learn more about them. I wasn’t very successful.
I asked Michael Kobrowski, the Westfield Washington Historical Society museum curator and communications officer, if he’d heard of them. He hadn’t and he couldn’t find anything on the club in their collection.
When I ran a search for “Owl Club,” I discovered that’s been a surprisingly popular name for all kinds of organizations over the years. However, I found only three articles in the old Ledgers specifically about the Hortonville Owls.
My best guess is that this was one of the many local clubs that sprang up during the late 1800s and early 1900s whose main purpose was to provide an excuse for people to get together and have a good time — holding parties, playing cards, bowling, etc.
According to the Ledger, Clark had a reputation among the Owls for coming up with “pointers on the best treatment to accord bridegrooms after the wedding.” The 14 Owls attending his wedding — all of them already married — felt it was only right that Clark should get a taste of his own medicine.
Just to be safe, they took the precaution of notifying Noblesville’s chief of police of their intentions. The chief gave them his blessing to do whatever they wanted, as long as they didn’t damage property or hurt anyone.
While the wedding reception was under way, club members staked out the three entrances to the church, waiting to pounce on their victim as he left the building. (His bride was allowed to come and go freely.)
The reception happened to be followed by a church service that evening. When the Owls failed to catch Clark by the time the evening service started to wrap up, they began to suspect he might have escaped somehow, so they sent a couple of members to investigate.
As the two Owls watched the worshipers leave the auditorium, they spotted a “well-dressed” woman entering from the choir loft door.
”She wore a becoming silk dress. Her face was powdered, a band of ribbon was tied around her head, she had on a pair of glasses and her hat was so flashy that it would have attracted attention on the head of any sixteen-year-old lassie.”
The woman was surrounded by several people who appeared to be rushing her through the departing crowd.
Playing a hunch, the Owls dashed off to alert the other members. The woman barely made it off the church steps before she was grabbed and her hat was snatched away.
Voila! There was the elusive bridegroom.
The Owls were about to stuff him into a car when they were informed that they needed to stop because the bride was sick. A quick trip to visit the bride verified that she was indeed suffering from “nervous shock.”
Unwilling to cause her any more grief, the Owls released their captive, but vowed “the affair is not over yet.”
If they made good on their vow, however, it wasn’t in the newspaper.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com