Paula Dunn

While working on last week’s column, I ran across so many interesting stories about Cicero’s “lead mine” (see the last three paragraphs,) a follow-up column begged to be written. The first people to discover lead ore in this area were Native Americans. (One source mentioned the Miamis specifically, but I couldn’t verify that.) Until I…

Up for a quiz? We haven’t had one for a while. I’m calling this “Truth or Tall Tale?” I’ll give you a historical situation and you have to decide if it’s something that really happened, or a piece of fiction. Let’s see how you do. John Dillinger spent time in the old Hamilton County Jail…

I was having a hard time coming up with a topic for this week’s column that would be both appropriate to this time of year AND something I hadn’t written about before. Then I thought of the tale of Frank Hawkins at Gettysburg. The battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the Civil War, took…

Time for another reader column! Remember Dartown Road, one of the “Roads to Nowhere” I wrote about in April? Mary Reynolds, who works at the Sheridan Historical Society, emailed that Jim Pickett, the former president of the society, said the road between 246th and 256th Streets that appears as “Dartown Road” on local maps was…

The only deadly encounter on record between Native Americans and Hamilton County’s white settlers took place a little over 200 years ago in Strawtown. What sparked it wasn’t a conflict over land, however, but rather justified outrage over a murderer going unpunished. Unfortunately, the exact details of the incident were already growing murky over 100…

When I was a kid, that meant no more school until after Labor Day, fun at the Forest Park pool, movies at the ABC Drive-in . . . and a week of Girl Scout day camp! I wish I could tell you where the camp was held, but it’s been (ahem) a few years and…

You may have noticed I’ve used this column in the past to fill in some of the local minority history (African American, Jewish and Chinese) that’s missing from the county history books. I would have liked to have covered some Hispanic or Latino history as well, but the truth is, Hispanics and Latinos haven’t had…

I’ve written about Memorial Day before, but I’ve never really gotten into the earliest history of the holiday in Hamilton County. First, a little background . . . Memorial Day dates back to 1868 when General John A. Logan, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.,) an organization of Union Army veterans,…

Welcome once again to the From Time to Thyme Virtual Museum. We have some new exhibits of lost Hamilton County historical objects! Step this way to see a beaver hat made in 1806. According to the October 15, 1929, Noblesville Daily Ledger, the original owner of the hat was Samuel Carey, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker.…

One hundred years ago this week a Westfield woman secured her 15 minutes of fame — not by saving someone from a burning building or anything like that, but by baking a pie! The story actually began a few months earlier in February when Indiana Senator Harry S. New and his wife came to Noblesville…