Angola: pioneers, progress and passionate beliefs

By CINDY BEVINGTON

ANGOLA - In the year1838, they said it was a name fit only for a dog.

When Thomas Gale told some friends in Ohio that he intended to start a town in Steuben County, Ind., and name it Angola, they asked him what kind of a name was that for a town.

Angola? the history books say the friends said. Surely, you wouldn't name a town Angola. A dog, yes, but a town - who would do that to a town?

But Gale was adamant. Angola it was going to be, he insisted. And, he predicted, it would be a town of progress, a town where pioneers would plat the prairies into city blocks and where those city blocks would provide a foundation for a bustling town that would live far into the future.

Whether his friends scoffed at this idea, of creating a futuristic boom town in an area that was then known as the United States' far frontier, history books don't say.

What they do say is that Gale had his work cut out for him: Pleasant Township, where Angola was to be built, was full of water, a mass of lakes and swamps thought to be mostly uninhabitable except to mosquitoes and other water-loving pests.

In fact, the early historians said, whoever thought of naming Pleasant Township pleasant must have had a great sense of humor: when surveyors laid out the township, "scarcely a mile of line was run on which they did not encounter lake, marsh or swamp."

Undaunted, Gale hooked up with a man named Cornelius Gilmore and set about building the town of his dreams in this neophyte county, clearing the forests and draining the swamps.

* * *

The controversy over Gale's dream of building a town with a name fit only for a dog was small potatoes, compared to the controversy he stirred up seemingly everywhere he went, even before he came to Steuben County.

Born in New York, Gale grew up in Ohio, then moved to Mongo before coming to Steuben County. He was an old-line Whig and an outspoken abolitionist who was among the first to advocate the anti-slavery movement in Steuben County.

He later joined the Free Soil Party, participating in rousing debates with fellow abolitionists in the county, such as Orland's Capt. Samuel Barry, against pro-slavery factions. His passion for freedom for slaves was so great, history books say, that he helped the anti-slavery movement in any way he could, including keeping an underground railroad station in Angola.

Although Gale married a Quaker, he didn't belong to a church, himself. Instead, he was an outspoken supporter of Spiritualism, a popular 19th century religion that believed in expression of the spirit, communication with the dead and free love - and, yes, says a Notre Dame theologist of today, free love then "most likely" meant the same thing it means today.

Interestingly, Spiritualists were not anti-Christian: although seances were popular with Spiritualists, their communication with the dead was through Jesus.

It is apparent that Gale's religious beliefs must have bothered more than a few locals in ways that would indicate they preferred this part of his life being lost to history: although the county's fathers and historians were careful to record the tiniest details about the city's founding in both books and newspaper accounts, many simply ignored any mention of Gale's renegade religion.

Diligent record-keepers of today who dig deep enough, however, will learn the saucy truth about Gale - although, in one account, an author tattling on Gale carefully refers to him as "Msr. G."

Gale's desire to establish a town, these buried history reports say, was based on his desire for religious freedom. Unsuccessfully, he had attempted to build a town in Ohio where he could practice his religion freely before coming to Steuben County.

He even had started to build a different "Angola" - called Julius - about four miles west of where Angola is today before he gave it up to team up with Gilmore.

At that time, Gale's religion was more than just a subject of controversy; rather, it could be said it was the center of consternation for all Christianity.

After founding the town, Gale opened his home to various religious organizations, allowing all to speak their faiths. In return, he expected these folks to allow him to discuss his Spiritualist beliefs openly and without judgment.

Gale was against bigotry, ignorance and "false theology." He denounced aristocracies and privileged classes, tyrannies and oppression. He supported free-thinking, free democracy and free discussion.

He did not believe that God would punish something He had created, Gale told those who would listen. He also was a pacifist who did not believe in killing for any reason, or in capital punishment.

Because of these beliefs, he later stirred up an angry protest when he hired a defense attorney for the county's first murderer - with the sole intention of preventing capital punishment from occurring in the town of his creation.

Gale's practice of his religion drew others to Angola with similar beliefs, including song-writer Stephen Foster, who also made an appearance in Orland to speak on Spiritualism and against slavery.

Opponents to Gale's beliefs called him and his fellow spiritualists "infidels" and shook their heads in shame and disbelief that such sin existed in this tiny town.

According to the book "Hoosier Faiths," Gale's beliefs forever put Steuben County and Angola in the pages of religious annals, if not in regular history books: "Presbyterian missionary Almon Martin said in 1852 that Angola should really be called 'Satan's Seat' since it was notable for Sabbath breaking and intemperance and its most influential men were either skeptics or infidels," the book relates.

Another historian went so far as to call Angola the "hot-bed of infidelity and vice," claiming that "as late as 1865, it is probable that nine-tenths of the population were Spiritualists given to free-love."

Considering the storm Gale incited wherever he went, it is no surprise, then, that by naming his new town Angola he caused controversy with more people than just those who thought the name fitted a dog.

For some, the name hinted of connotations far worse than the dog image: Historians say the town was named after Angola, N.Y. - located in the same county where Gale was born - and that that Angola was named after Angola, Africa.

No one will ever know whether choosing this name for his town was a clever way for Gale to make Angola a beacon for the anti-slavery, Underground Railroad movement.

What is known, though, and published in a 1900 edition of the Steuben Republican, is that the name's link to Africa was so abhorrent to at least one person - a Dr. LaDue - that LaDue painted a building he owned black, in protest.

On a different note, Gale's establishing the town as the county seat was a center of controversy, too: some critics went so far to accuse him of running for a Senate seat prior to building the town, just so he could wrangle his way into state politics - the same politics that later allowed him to have the bottom two townships in the county dropped, thus moving the center of the county from the proposed Steubenville seat to Angola.

When Gale and Gilmore offered to donate both the land and the money for a new courthouse in Angola, the county seat was sealed - and Gale became an associate judge for the county.

* * *

Only a dozen or so families had preceded Gale to Pleasant Township, setting up log homes, living in the most rudimentary of accommodations.

Early pioneers described their housing as small cabins, some no larger than one room, 14 feet by 14 feet, with as many as 22 adults and children living in that one room for several months.

By the time Gale and Gilmore finished laying out the town's plats establishing Angola as a town, the locals were ready to make the boom happen.

Gale built Angola's first frame building and opened its first store, a dry goods mercantile. The same year, a man named Darius Orton provided another "service" to Angolans - the town's first saloon.

Other merchants followed, offering a wide array of goods and services, from barbershops to blacksmithing to dressmaking. Hotels and restaurants popped up, too, adding buildings around the town's perimeters, stretching it little by little, fulfilling Gale's dream.

The early pioneers were as concerned about progress as Angola's citizens are today. They not only wanted to build nice homes and flourishing businesses, but they also wanted amenities that many of us consider "modern."

Sidewalks, albeit wooden rather than today's concrete, were tops on Angola's early builders' lists. They also wanted water and sewer service, although in a slightly different form that what modern folks take for granted.

A well-maintained town pump for fresh water was a priority, as well as providing water lines as soon as such an amenity was feasible.

Private entrepreneurs installed a general water system in 1893; the town's first sewers were dug at the intersection of Maumee and Broad streets in 1898.

Angola's fathers and citizens had the public's health and safety in mind, too, when they created ordinances restricting livestock within the town's limits and set up designated hitching posts and racks for horses in front of buildings.

While door-to-door garbage collection didn't begin until 1931, street paving began in 1912, and the wooden sidewalks gave way to concrete.

By 1885, aside from dozens of Victorian-style homes that had sprung up and down its streets, Angola had more than 40 types of businesses, including two hotels and restaurants, as well as merchants selling dry goods, groceries, harnesses, wagons, carriages, meat, jewelry, agricultural implements, furniture and shoes.

The town boasted a milliner, several dressmakers, a creamery, a print shop and a photographer. Manufacturers making sewing machines, clothing, pumps and woolens also had established themselves, along with a grist mill, a planing mill, a tin shop and tradesmen offering carpentry and plumbing.

Angola Brick & Tile Co. was a noticeable presence, too, as the town's largest business, employing the majority of people in Angola right through the mid-20th century.

Also by 1885, the town had five saloons.

* * *

The early ripples of the industrial revolution brought a railroad through Angola in 1870, thanks to another well-known Angola city father, Dr. James McConnell, who used all his influence to accomplish the deed. The railroad, with its depot and Angola stop located on West Maumee Street near downtown, encouraged all kinds of growth - and not just the type that came to make the town a homestead.

Some folks were just passing through, such as P.T. Barnum with his circus. Barnum liked to stop and water his elephants in Crooked Lake, much to the delight of area children, as well as adults who had rarely or never laid eyes on exotic animals.

Barnum often remarked that, of all the places he'd visited around the world, Angola was the prettiest.

By the time the town was celebrating its 100th birthday, tourists, too, had long made the town and its surrounding lakes an attraction, thanks not only to the railroad, but also to the two major roads that intersected Angola - now known as U.S. 20 and State Road 127.

In fact, an original settler's grandson, William Justus Butler, mentioned the "lake people coming and changing our way of life" in a speech at an annual reunion celebrating the pioneers' settlement.

"They had to be met at the train in Angola with enough rigs to transport a large quantity of luggage," Butler related. "As many as five rigs made a trip in one day.

"(The tourists) came up to the farm for milk and eggs and garden produce. We built a large ice house and cut ice from the lake, which we delivered to them all summer.

"And still, more and more of them came," Butler said. "The advent of the automobile brought them in from a greater distance. Now, where the Indians once paddled their silent canoes, water craft of every description dart here and there across the water."

These tourists were not just run-of-the-mill, every-day people, either. While many families from Fort Wayne and surrounding cities and counties made summer homes on Steuben County lakes, so did a countless number of other people - celebrities who came from places like Hollywood, Calif., and New York City.

The celebrities flocked to the major lakes - James, Crooked and Clear Lake - as well as the smaller, more out-of-the way ones.

As a hideaway for the rich and famous, Steuben County was a popular destination for Fort Wayne-born movie star Carole Lombard and her husband, Clark Gable.

Gable and Lombard liked to relax on the shores of Lake-of-the-Woods at her parents' cottage. It is said that Lombard so much loved to eat at Bassett's Restaurant in Angola that the star had her own booth permanently reserved, so it always would be available.

Joan Crawford and Kathryn Hepburn visited here, too. Hepburn, it seems, loved eating at Bassett's as much as Lombard, even allowing her photograph to be taken while eating there.

Even gangster John Dillinger found his way here, shooting up a bank in Ashley, while legend has it that he hid not far from Gable and Lombard at Lake-of-the-Woods.

At Fox Lake, home to one of only two "colored" resorts in the nation during segregation, famous black musicians, stars and athletes frequently checked in at the Fox Lake Hotel. Lena Horne, Duke Ellington and prize fighter Joe Louis are just three of the dozens of black celebrities who called Fox Lake a favorite recreational respite.

In the 1940s Buck Lake Ranch opened, quickly gaining fame as "Indiana's Little Nashville," attracting rock 'n' roll and country music stars that are so famous today it seems impossible that such an impressive bunch once came to Angola.

Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and even a young, just-starting-out Elvis Presley are just a few of the dozens of stars that once stood on Buck Lake's wooden stage in front of snow-cone-eating crowds.

In a resurrection of itself under new ownership years later, Buck Lake put Angola back on the map with more famous performers, including the country band Alabama, which on two separate occasions filled the hillsides with more than 10,000 fans.

* * *

While Gale's intentions were to turn a rugged country into a booming town, the fact remains that, while the town did grow into Gale's dream, agriculture steadfastly refused to be shoved out as one of Steuben County's main businesses.

Farmers in the early days cleared the land for their own needs, then cleared more land to grow and sell everything from apples to pears to corn to soybeans and wheat at market.

Back then, as today, agriculture grew and flourished as a business right alongside retailers and industries.

Gale's own son-in-law, Alanson W. Hendry - who, it is no surprise, also came to be known as an abolitionist - helped found the forerunner of today's 4-H Club in Steuben County.

Hendry, along with George W. O'Connell, Baldwin Crosswait, George Harding and J.O. Rose, formed the Agricultural Society, an organization that prospered with membership and held fairs every year.

The original fairgrounds were located on Maumee Street until the railroad moved in, forcing its move to where the 4-H grounds are today.

The fairs drew huge crowds and were spectacular events for the era. In 1882, the Society sold 10,000 tickets for the event, which featured 492 exhibits, including horses, cattle, sheep, hogs and poultry. It even boasted a race track for horses.

More than 7,000 people were reported to have attended the fair on a single day!

* * *

At a meeting of the old settlers in Angola 50 years after its founding, A.W. Hendry stood on a podium and remarked on Angola's "spirit of progress," saying, "The early settlers of this county little knew what were to be the results of their labor, nor how long it would take to reap a glorious harvest from the seed of their sowing.

"A half-century only has passed and some of them are here today to behold the result. All their labors in those early days were the necessary precursors of what we have around us today.

"Every tree cut down, every acre of land cleared, every swamp drained, every stone removed, every fruit tree planted, every bushel of grain sowed, reaped and marketed, every fence and building erected - indeed, every stroke of work done was a step taken in the grand march of improvement that has turned the wilderness into a land of fruitful fields and comfortable homes."

* * *

Today, nearly 162 years after its founding, Gale's boom-town dream city is home to hundreds of businesses and industry. More than 900 businesses have set up shop throughout the county, and a plethora of professions are represented, from high-tech jobs to factory positions to retail.

Area industries make a variety of goods, from wheels and wheel caps to bumpers, locks and, in Fremont, even Big Mac buns for McDonald's Corp.

More than 100 restaurants have settled in the Angola area, as have dozens of specialty shops selling such things as antiques and collectibles, ice cream and chocolates.

More than 100 businesses capitalize solely on recreation, offering services or goods related to boating, swimming, skiing and other summer and winter recreational activities.

Industrial parks are full, with more industries and businesses daily considering a move here. And, while the town's livelihood doesn't totally depend on tourists, the tourism industry still is big business.

The growth and prosperity in Angola haven't gone unnoticed: one of the fastest growing cities in the state, it was recognized about two years ago by Money Magazine as being one of the best places in the nation to live.

With two more major roads now crisscrossing the county - the Indiana Toll Road and Interstate 69 - the words of William Justus Butler from earlier in the century seem even more apropos: More and more people and businesses just keep coming to the area, increasing the city's economy and fulfilling Gale's vision.

"Our local economy is doing well and business is booming," said Angola Area Chamber of Commerce president Barb DeCaire. "The changes in Angola in the last decade alone have been astronomical."