6 reasons why Morgan County is famous
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Nestled at roughly the halfway point between Indianapolis and Bloomington is the city of Martinsville, the county seat of Morgan County. This quaint agricultural community holds a number of hidden gems in its rich history that, while familiar to locals, remain largely unknown to outsiders.
MORE: Morgan County History Museum open to the public.
Named in 1822 for Revolutionary War General Daniel Morgan, this county of roughly 70,000 people occupies a unique position in geological history. It is located at a point where the glaciers of the Ice Ace stopped moving southward, and as a result, it contains a combination of flatlands and rolling hills as well as the most diverse soil of any county in the United States.
There are a number of people, places and things that make Morgan County famous. Here are a list of six.
John Wooden
Legendary college basketball coach John Wooden spent the first eight years of his life in Hall, a few miles southwest of Monrovia, before moving to Centerton in 1918. When he was 14, he and his family moved to Martinsville, where he would lead the Artesians basketball team to three straight IHSAA State Championship games.
Wooden then went on to play for four seasons for the Purdue Boilermakers, from 1929 to 1932. He then went on to coach high school basketball in Kentucky and South Bend, Indiana, before serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
In 1946, Wooden returned to his home state and was hired to coach the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team. His tenure didn't last long; two years later, he was hired by UCLA, where he won 10 NCAA championships in a 12-year period, including a record seven in a row, as head coach for the Bruins.
Wooden left an indelible impression on Morgan County. Martinsville's high school gymnasium is named after him, and the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville renamed West Middle School after him.
Branch McCracken
It's hard to talk about John Wooden without mentioning the name Branch McCracken.
Born Emmitt B. McCracken, the fellow Morgan County native grew up in Monrovia and played basketball with Wooden during his childhood. On display at Monrovia High School is a part of a rim from an old peach basket basketball hoop that the two played on as children.
Two years older than Wooden, McCracken encountered Wooden twice in the IHSAA State Tournament, where he was knocked out by Martinsville.
McCracken went on to play for the Hoosiers for three seasons. He and Wooden played against each other twice during their college careers, with Wooden coming out on top on both occasions.
After graduating, McCracken went on to coach at Ball State University, where he stayed until 1938, when he was hired by Indiana St University. He led the team to its first NCAA Division I Championship in 1940.
Like Wooden, McCracken also served in World War II and obtained the rank of lieutenant. He later returned to his old job at IU, where he won one more championship for the Hoosiers in 1953.
Both Wooden and McCracken were inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as players in 1960.
McCracken also left a memorable impact on Morgan County and central Indiana: the high school gym at Monrovia High School is named after him, as is the basketball court at IU's Assembly Hall.
The sanitariums in Martinsville
Known today as the City of Mineral Water, Martinsville became a national destination in the late 19th century for the healing power of its mineral water sanitariums.
Mineral water was discovered in Martinsville by workers drilling for oil on the property of Sylvanus Barnard in 1887. At that point, artesian mineral water was thought to have possessed healing properties for a number of health ailments.
Barnard built Martinsville's first sanitarium in 1888, and more than ten others popped up in the ensuing decades to meet growing demand. Following the Great Depression and the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, Martinsville's draw as a resort town began to fade. The city's last spa in operation finally shut down in 1971.
In 2005, the National Register of Historic Places added the residential unit of the Martinsville Sanitarium to the National Register of Historic Places.
The goldfish capital of the world
Like its sanitariums, Martinsville's history as the goldfish capital of the world also dates back to the turn of the 20th century.
In 1899, Eugene Shireman established Grassyfork Fisheries on inherited farmland that was too damp for growing crops like corn and soybeans. His nascent goldfish hatchery would later expand to 600 ponds across 1,500 acres. He opened a display building in 1936 that became known as the Grassyfork building.
Shireman died in 1960, but Grassyfork continued as a goldfish hatchery under new owner Stanley Byram until 1970, when the farm was purchased by Ozark Fisheries.
In 2012, the original Grassyfork Fisheries building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
MORE: A rich history: Fish farming still thrives in Morgan County
Paul Hadley
In 1916, Mooresville artist Paul Hadley entered a contest to design the state flag for Indiana.
In his design for the state banner, Hadley said the torch —borrowed from the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Indianapolis and the State of Liberty — represented liberty and enlightenment, with the 13 stars in the outer circle symbolizing the 13 original colonies, and the five stars in the inner semi-circle representing the states admitted to the Union prior to Indiana.
Hadley showed interest in art at an early age before taking classes at Indianapolis High School. In 1900, he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Design in Philadelphia. While there, he designed stained-glass windows for churches. He eventually landed a job with a Chicago firm where he specialized in interior design.
Hadley returned to his home state in 1912, where he continued design work for clients while also painting watercolor landscapes for his own enjoyment.
Today, Mooresville is known as the Home of the State Flag for Hadley's contribution to Hoosier history.
John Dillinger
While the famous American gangster of the Great Depression era was born and spent most of his childhood in Indianapolis, John Dillinger's family moved to Mooresville in 1921, hoping that a more rural setting would quell the 18-year-old's appetite for fighting and petty theft.
MORE: John Dillinger's family drops latest attempt to exhume his body.
In 1923, Dillinger enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where he was a repairman assigned the battleship USS Utah; however, he deserted a few months later when his ship was docked in Boston, and was later dishonorably discharged.
Dillinger then returned to Mooresville where he attempted to settle down and start a family, but found the quiet country life did not suit him. He was convicted of assault and battery in the robbery of a local grocery store and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. He spent the next decade in Indiana State Prison, where he befriended bank robbers and learned the tricks of the criminal trade.
Upon his release from prison in 1933, Dillinger stole $10,000 from the New Carlisle National Bank in Ohio. From September of that year until July 1934, he and his gang participated in 12 separate bank robberies and three jail breaks, killing 10 men and a sheriff in the process.
While being held at the county jail in Crown Point, Indiana, Dillinger staged a successful escape, stealing a sheriff's car and driving across state lines to Illinois. He joined his girlfriend, Evelyn Frechette, in Chicago, and the pair traveled to St. Paul, where they teamed up with other gang members. The couple managed to escape the FBI's clutches in a haze of gunfire that left Dillinger wounded. They fled to Mooresville, where they stayed with his father and half-brother until his wound healed.
On July 22, 1934, the FBI received a tip that Dillinger would be attending a film screening at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. They waited outside until Dillinger exited the theatre, at which point he caught on to the stakeout. He ran down an alley but was gunned down by three FBI agents and later pronounced dead at a local hospital.
The events of that evening are said to have marked the end of the Gangster Era in the 1930s.
Contact reporter Peter Blanchard at 765-346-2942 or pblanchard@reporter-times.com. Follow him on Twitter @peterlblanchard.
This article originally appeared on The Reporter Times: Why is Morgan County famous? Here are 6 reasons
