~ by Julie Pearson
The picturesque little hamlet known as Story is often described as“ charming,”“ quaint,” and“ out-of-the-way.” Coming to or leaving Nashville, Story is located about ten miles south on Route 135 from where it splits off from Route 46. The road is scenic, with trees and wildflowers growing up beside fencerows.
On September 30, 1809, a treaty between Governor William Henry Harrison and the Miami tribe opened the area of the state of Indiana to settlers of European descent. Three million acres became available to newcomers by what has become known as the“ Ten O’ clock Treaty.” The treaty’ s boundary line ran from Raccoon Creek on the Wabash River to the town of Seymour and cast a shadow at 10 a. m. on September 30. Today a carved limestone monument marks in the center of the village green where the Ten O’ Clock line bisects the town of Story.
Story was named for its founder, Dr. George Story. In 1851, with the grant of a land patent from President Millard Fillmore, the physician was one of many who migrated from the high hills of southern Ohio to the Brown County of Indiana. Coming from a family of timber foresters, Dr. Story and his children built many of the structures in Story using wood from the surrounding hardwood forests. The village was a prosperous hub for the farmers nearby. Within thirty years, there were two general stores to supply staples
Looking Back at Story
Postcard of the General Store with members of the Morrison and Kelley families. photo courtesy Rick Hofstetter
and dry goods that couldn’ t be raised or made at home. Crops of wheat and corn were taken to a local mill for grinding. Timber was taken to the Story sawmill as the sound of the blacksmith striking his anvil filled the air. The blacksmith kept the plow horses shod, even as he kept the plows sharpened. In the autumn, a slaughterhouse was kept busy with killing hogs, smoke-curing hams and bacon, and providing the fat to housewives for rendering the year’ s lard and making lye soap. A nondenominational church, post office, and one-room school house anchored the community. During the early decades of the 1900s, Route 135 became one of the main highways in the township.
Children were dropped off at the Story general store, where they would catch a bus to ball games in Nashville or Van Buren. For a brief period in the 1920s, a Studebaker buggy factory occupied the General Store.
The Great Depression harshly interrupted the tranquil containment of the community around Story. All construction of new buildings stopped. From 1930 to 1940, half the population of Brown County left their homes in search of employment. Story never recovered from this loss, though the grain mill was kept busy into the 1930s providing the raw materials for the“ bathtub gin” made by some who stayed. Reforestation efforts by the federal and state governments
40 Our Brown County • July / August 2015