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...

  Lafayette Weekly Call (Lafayette, Indiana) 11 Sep 1897  LAFAYETTE  VIEWED AS SON OF FRANCE   Lafayette Described in His Relations to His Native Land.   Preface:  The following 1897 article from the Lafayette Weekly Call recalls long forgotten history of our city's namesake, the Marquis de Lafayette and the role he played in our nation's history.  Much of the article focuses on the teachings of M adame Pauline Mariotte-Davies, a popular Purdue University Professor of her time.  Dr. Mariotte-Davies gave many speeches in the Greater Lafayette area during her tenure at Purdue. About Dr. Pauline Mariotte-Davies (1849-1930) - Madame Marlotte-Davies, Ph.D., long a much-loved figure at Purdue University and community circles, died at Petoskey Michigan in 1930 at the age of 81. Madame Davies was born in the Madelene Quarter in Paris and received her primary education in a private school from which, after a competitive examination, received a schol...