Lookout Lodge is Point of Interest   By Diana Vice  A life-long resident of Lafayette, Vice is Honorary Regent and Historian for the General de Lafayette Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. She also serves as co-chair for the America 250 Committee for Tippecanoe County. She can be reached at dvice1960@gmail.com. Did you know that there was an old Potawatomie Trail along the Wabash River in West Lafayette known as Tecumseh’s Trail? Those who are familiar with local history are likely aware of this; however, many of the details about the surrounding area have been forgotten. The path was part of an old Indian trail that led from Vincennes to Detroit.   A study into the life of a local judge and old Civil War Colonel, Richard P. DeHart, has uncovered some interesting facts that will make traveling around the area as it stands today more fascinating.   A famous point of local interest in the early part of the 20 th century was a log house built ...

  Joe Egan, Jr. in front of Carmen's Grocery Store, Wabash Avenue in Lafayette, IN Joseph Egan, Jr.,was six years old when his father was tragically killed in a train accident in 1901.  The son of an Irish immigrant, he was forced to navigate life without a father for most of his life.  The loss of his father forced the Irish family into poverty.   Many unemployed workers found relief through a federal program, known as the Works Project Administration (WPA), during the Great Depression years.   Joseph Egan, Jr., found relief through this program and went to work building the golf course at Purdue University. While riding on the back of a truck in 1939, he lost his footing and fell, breaking his neck in the process.  Egan died six days later at St. Elizabeth Hospital, leaving a widow and three children.  One of those children was this writer's grandmother, Lorraine Egan Hanthorn.  She was twenty years old and a mother to two small child...

Gish-Rogers Historic House Now 180 Years Old   Journal & Courier (Lafayette, Indiana) November 5, 1955, by Mrs. Otto C. Baker     This stately, old, red brick, two-story early Victorian house, built so many years ago in the little village of Linnwood before it was annexed by Lafayette in 1882, stands today as a gentle reminder of the gracious living of some of our forefathers. It is known to many as the Gish-Rogers-Leiter home at Twelfth & Roberts Street.     Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Gish, born in Botecourt County, Va., came to Lafayette in 1829, making their home in a log cabin situated on the "old packet landing lot" at Second and Ferry Streets. In 1832, they purchased 40 acres of land in the Linnwood addition (a portion of which is now Greenbush Cemetery and the other the Gish addition. Before a suitable home could be built, Mr. Gish died in 1833, and it was not until 1844 that his widow built the house at Twelfth and Roberts Streets. Here, too, lived a da...

 The Weekly Journal (Lafayette, Indiana) - Fri, Apr 24, 1863 Conductor Rides Hand Car to Lafayette to Get Rescue Train  The train due from New Albany at this city on Saturday evening at 9 P.M., did not arrive until Sunday morning in consequence of an accident at Cherry Grove, five miles north of Crawfordsville. The switch at that place had been so arranged, whether by accident or design is not known, as to run the train off the track. The train was nearly two hours behind time, the night very dark and a frightful storm raging at the time, and but for the fact that the engineer was unable with the green wood he happened to have to make as fast time as he desired, we should have had to record a dreadful accident. As it was no person was hurt. The locomotive and tender ran off the track and were turned over in the mud and a portion of the track torn up. The passengers were compelled to remain all night in the cars while the conductor went to LaFayette in a hand car, got another t...

Intense Excitement in the East End of the City Over an Alleged Apparition Supposed to be the Disembodied Spirit of Jacob Archibald    From the  Journal and Courier  (Lafayette, Indiana) - Monday June 7, 1886   There is no little excitement in the vicinity of Sixteenth and Hartford Street crossing, and large crowds congregate there nightly to gaze at the "Haunted House," from 9 o'clock until midnight, which is the time his Ghostship is supposed to walk and to listen with blanched faces and hair standing on end to the blood curdling stories told by those who claim the honor of seeing the ghost and whose veracity is undoubted by the terrified listeners.       The reporter joined the throng last night to get the share of the horror and took his place among the awed bystanders. After several preliminary alarms occasioned by the small boy's circus son, "Here he Comes," a light was seen in one of the windows. At first it was dim and rather uncertain...