Local businesses can help historians by keeping good records. Economic interaction is a better record than personal diary entries because it reflects what is actually happening at that moment, rather than what an individual might think is happening. When researching their homes, many people want anecdotal information (”This house was on the Underground Railroad” or [...]

When it comes to business models, the simple exchange of one item for another is about as basic as it gets.  For close to a century, from around 1717 to around 1820, this kind of activity is what powered the economy of the area that would become Hamilton County.  The fur trade was the first [...]

A century ago, the town of Fishers was rocked by the involvement of some its citizens in a gruesome scandal.  The perpetrators of a rash of grave thefts had been arrested, and although the person who attracted most of the media attention was a grave robber from Indianapolis, his confession had led to a local [...]

The White River at Clare in Noblesville Township has been used as water power for industry since the first settlement of the county.  Although the construction and ownership of the first mills in the area is unclear, they were always known as the “Conner Mills”.  The first mill may have been constructed by William Foster [...]

Fodrea-Malott and their “Beetle Flyer”
Headlines about automobile companies and the passing of some older Noblesville auto-related businesses brings to mind how, a century ago, two young men tried to establish a company to manufacture automobiles here in the county.  Although not a lot of details are known, (suggested dates for the venture range from 1899 [...]

 
As you drive through the back roads of Hamilton County today, you may end up in the small hamlet of Strawtown, a pleasantly wooded part of the county.  As strange at it may seem, this was once the key transportation crossroads in the area, and travelers going to Lafayette or Fort Wayne or even Cincinnati [...]

What year was it when a key transportation corridor was created and the population of Carmel increased exponentially – 1965?  Try 1882 or 1903.  The Monon Railroad and the Interurban system both added economic vitality to the small farming community in the southern part of Hamilton County and helped to sustain growth in an otherwise [...]

David Heighway
Hamilton County Historian
 
 Although a quiet town today, Arcadia was once part of the great industrial boom of the 1890s in east central Indiana that occurred with the discovery of natural gas.  At various times, the town had a brick works, a creamery, a cheese factory, a canning factory, and, most importantly, two glass factories.  [...]

From Egbert Higbee’s flour mill to the glass and brick works that sprang up during the natural gas boom, and from Wilson’s Milk Factory to Biddle Precision Components today, the town of Sheridan has never been a stranger to business and industry. Among other things, inventor Homer K. Johnson of Sheridan filed a patent for [...]