Paula Dunn

If businesses were eligible for the Notable Nineties list, the Gatewood Vegetable Farm and Greenhouse would be a Sensational Centenarian. The four-generation family business is celebrating its 100th year in 2022, a distinction few local operations can claim. And to think, it all started in 1915 with 50 baby chicks that came shipped in an…

It’s baaack! After a two year absence because of Covid, the Herb Society of Central Indiana’s annual Spring Symposium is returning to the Hamilton County 4-H Fairgrounds on Saturday, April 9, from 9 a.m. to 2:20 p.m. To make up for the lost time, there will be presentations on the Herbs of the Year for…

Over the years I’ve run across quite a few stories in the old newspapers that deal with people discovering, or disclosing, the existence of various items of historical significance to Hamilton County — objects that, if uncovered today, would probably end up in some museum. In most cases, I don’t know what became of these…

I haven’t written anything about Arcadia for quite a while, so I was pleased when I recently ran across an item in an old Noblesville Daily Ledger that referred to the Arcadia Fiber (or “Fibre,” depending on the source) Basket Company. I’m familiar with Arcadia’s glass factory, the canning factory, and the cheese factory, but…

When I wrote about Lucy Washington a few weeks ago I noted that she was the great-great grandmother of award-winning African American author Cyrus Colter. Colter was born in Noblesville in 1910 and I’d originally planned to feature him in this week’s column, but in doing the research, I found myself getting sidetracked by his…

Sixty years ago this week, Noblesville’s homegrown department store, the Craycraft Dry Goods Co., closed its doors for good. In announcing the closing, the January 2, 1962 Noblesville Daily Ledger observed that 1962 would have been Craycraft’s 95th year in business. I’m afraid they were a little off. In digging through the old newspapers I…

I’ve got some reader feedback to catch up on! After the column about R. C. (Roland) Foland’s Polar Bear activities ran, Marilyn Conner and Larry Cloud both brought up local attorney Arvin Foland, who died just a few years ago. Marilyn wondered if the two men were related. They were — Arvin was R. C.…

Reverend Barney Stone, the longtime pastor of the First Baptist Church, may have been the best known former slave to call Noblesville home, but he certainly wasn’t the only one. In 1900 another Noblesville resident who’d been a slave, Lucy Washington, achieved a small measure of fame when various Indiana newspapers noted she was possibly…

Four years ago, when I wrote a column about the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, it just seemed like an interesting chapter in our county’s history. It never occurred to me then that a few years later we’d be dealing with our own pandemic. While there are differences between the two outbreaks, there are also…

I didn’t intend to devote two columns to Col. R. C. Foland, but while I was researching his Polar Bear activities, I noticed his auctioneering career was pretty interesting, too. He put as much energy into promoting auctions as THE way to sell real estate as he did in trying to recruit members for his…