Shipshewana Walldogs, Part Ten: J. E. Sunthimer Co.

The Shipshewana Walldogs put a mural on the front of the Wolfe Building on Depot Street that honors an early Shipshewana merchant, J.E. Sunthimer – purveyor, according to the mural, of “dry goods, clothing, boots & shoes, hats & caps, queensware, and groceries.”  But who was J.E. Sunthimer, and what is queensware?

First, the easy question:  Queensware, according to the Oxford Dictionary Online is “a type of fine, cream-colored Wedgwood pottery developed in the mid-18^th century and named in honor of Queen Charlotte (wife of George III), who had been presented with a set in 1765.”

As for J.E.—his name was Joseph E. Sunthimer, and he was born in the Shipshewana area in 1863.  I found some details on ancestry.com and in an excerpt from the book “Descendants of Bishop Christian Yoder Sr.”

In 1884 Joseph married Ida May Stutzman from nearby Elkhart County.  Joseph must have been a responsible young man; according to ancestry.com, by 1889 he was appointed the postmaster of tiny Pashan, Indiana—until that post office was closed two years later. 

After their marriage, Joe and Ida had taken over the general store in Pashan from Ida’s parents.  But then, according to the Yoder book, “Joe soon recognized better prospects in the new village of Shipshewana, which was being laid out along the Pumpkin Vine Railroad, hardly two miles away.  He soon moved to the main corner on the Summey side of the town and established the well-known store which sold ‘everything’ for more than a generation.”  (Back then, Abraham Summey and Hezekiah Davis had competing villages on each side of the main road—a story for another day.) 

Joe and Ida thrived in the town that was later known as Shipshewana.  In the 1900 census he is listed as a “merchant,” and he and Ida have been married sixteen years, and they have nine children under the age of fifteen.  (The Pashan cemetery has a small grave for an “Ida May Sunthimer, 1883-1884”—could that have been their first child?  Ida doesn’t say so, stating to the census taker that she has had “nine children, nine still living.”)

By 1910 the Sunthimers have had four more children, and Joseph, age 46, is listed as a “merchant—general store.”  They live in a fine home on Middlebury Street, and their oldest son, Ira, is a clerk at the family store.  The two oldest daughters, Clara and Maud, are high school teachers. 

Joseph ran his store only six more years before dying in his early fifties in 1916.  The author of the Yoder book says this:  “When Joe died of food poisoning, it was a blow to the whole town…  I attended the funeral and I remember how surprised I was that it should have been held in the Forks Church.  I had no idea Joe was that connected…  It was the first time I ever heard of ‘mourning veils,’ which were worn by the mother and the ‘stylish daughters.’”  The book History of Northeast Indiana, written in 1920, says that at the time of Joe’s death, he owned a store in Topeka, one at Milford, and a farm in the country.  It also says that Joe attended the “normal school” (teacher’s college) at Lagrange, and that he taught school for five years before going into the retail business in the 1890s.

The 1920 census finds Joseph’s widowed wife Ida, age 52, carrying on with the store.  She has four children still at home, ages eleven to twenty two, but none work at the store.  By the 1930 census Ida is retired and lives alone in Elkhart, Indiana.  She died in 1952 and is buried with her husband at Forest Grove Cemetery in Middlebury.

Shipshewana Walldogs, Part Six: The Bank of Shipshwana

The Bank of Shipshewana mural is wedged between two windows, on the Hostetler Drug Store building on Main Street.  It pictures two men, identified as “Levi Miller, Cashier” and “Hewlitt Davis, President” and over their heads, “1904—Bank of Shipshewana.”

Hewlitt Davis was born in 1871.  He was the son of Shipshewana founder Hezekiah Davis, who is the subject of another Walldogs mural and another blog.  According to Ira Ford’s 1920 book The History of Northeast Indiana, at that time Hewlitt was president of the Farmers State Bank of Shipshewana and he was “a worthy representative of this sturdy old [Davis] stock.”

According to the book, Hewlitt finished high school and then attended business college in Toledo, Ohio.  Being the youngest of Hezekiah’s seven children, and Hezekiah having died in 1891, Hewlitt returned home to live with his widowed mother, Sarah Reynolds Davis.  Sarah ran the Bank of Shipshewana, organized by her late husband, with herself as president and her son as cashier, where Hewlitt remained until 1907. 

In 1907 the Bank of Shipshewana was reorganized and renamed the Farmer’s State Bank of Shipshewana, and Hewlitt at last had his own bank.  Through the years of his banking career, he also farmed 800 acres in the vicinity (Newbury Township), where he raised stock.

The 1910 census bears this out.  Hewlitt lives with his widowed mother in an expensive home on Morton Street.  Hewlitt is 38 and still unmarried, and his occupation is listed as “banker and farmer.”  As the youngest son, his mother must have remained his responsibility, even after he founded his own bank.

“Few banks,” said The History of Northeast Indiana, “have ever met with so many misfortunes…  It has been robbed four times…  In November 1897, when the safe was ruined and the contents all taken…  In 1905, when they did not try the safe and got only the change found within the vault…  In June 1916, the safe was not disturbed but they secured $1,100 in postage stamps in the vault…  August 26, 1919, when they made an attempt on the safe and ruined it, but were unable to get inside, but did get $200 in War Savings Stamps in the vault…        While the institution was yet the Bank of Shipshewana in July 1902, the bank was burned.”

In 1911 Hewlitt married Carrie Rogers.  The 1920 census shows them living with their daughter Sarah and son Herbert on Talmadge Street, and his occupation is “bank president.”  By the 1930 census, Hewlitt is 58 and has no occupation listed—he had retired.  (His next door neighbor is the wealthy Edward Wolfe, who I wrote about in another post.)  Perhaps his health was failing, as he died in 1935.  He was buried in Keightley Cemetery, where his wife Carrie joined him, but not before outliving him by 35 years.

And what of Levi Miller, the other man pictured in the mural?  According to The History of Northeast Indiana, he was from an old Shipshewana family whose Mennonite great-grandfather Christian Miller came from Germany to Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, and had over 700 American descendants by 1920.  Levi studied business at Valparaiso University and then in 1901 became assistant cashier of the Bank of Shipshewana.  The history section of the Shipshewana website says that until then, the bank was open only once in a while—but after Mr. Miller was hired, it was open every day.  When it was reorganized in 1907, Levi was promoted to cashier and in 1920 was “the genial and efficient man with whom most of the patrons have done business ever since.”

Shipshewana Walldogs, Part Four: The Davis Hotel

This Walldogs mural is found, appropriately enough, on an exterior wall of the Davis Mercantile Building.  The old building, which included the Davis Hotel and the Davis Mercantile, burned down in 2004 and was replaced by the new Davis Mercantile, part of which is seen here.

More about the Davis Mercantile can be found here:  

Shipshewana Walldogs, Part Three: Hezekiah Davis

One of the sixteen Walldog murals in Shipshewana depicts Hezekiah Davis.  The mural is found downtown in Morton Alley.  Who was Hezekiah Davis?  The name “Davis” seems to be everywhere in the town, even today.

The mural itself gives us some clues.  He was born in 1825 and died in 1891.  It says, “He ran the first reaper, harvester, binder, and feed mill in Newberry (sp) Township.  He owned a large farm and orchard.  Then sold the latest buggies, wagons, & farm equipment from his hardware store.”  But Hezekiah’s influence was so much more than that.

According to the 1920 book The History of Northeast Indiana, Hezekiah came to Lagrange County, Indiana with his parents when he was twelve.  He bought a farm there in 1851, and by the time of his death forty years later, he owned 1,400 acres of farmland.  He founded the town of Shipshewana in 1888.  In 1889 he founded the Bank of Shipshewana, which he ran until his death two years later.  (After that time, his wife Sarah ran it with son Hewlitt, until Hewlitt reorganized it in 1907 as the Farmer’s State Bank.)  He was also a county commissioner and built two churches.  It was said that “The principles of the Republican party found a strong advocate in Hezekiah Davis.”

The abovementioned book said that “He became a man of importance not just because of [his] business capacity, but on account of his sterling traits of character, which led him to use his wealth in furthering many worthy enterprises, and when bearing the responsibilities of public office, to labor conscientiously for the public welfare.” 

In the 1870 census, Hezekiah is 44 and lives with his wife and five children.  He is listed as a farmer.  Hezekiah’s land is valued at $58,750—an incredible amount of money in those days, and equivalent to around $1,066,000 of farmland in today’s dollars.

But Hezekiah was human, too, as evidenced by information found on the Shipshewana town website (www.shipshewana.org).  In the early days of the Shipshewana area’s settlement, Hezekiah owned all the land on the east side of what is now State Road 5, for a mile and a half from north to south.  His rival, Abraham Summey, owned the land across State Road 5 on the west side, from north and south for a mile. 

Both Summey and Davis wanted to found a town and begin to sell lots.  But the two men argued about where the main road should be, so Summey began laying out a town on the west side, and Davis laid out a town on the east side, in one of his 40-acre fields.

Summey’s first buildings were built along State Road 5, facing east.  But Davis, who named his town “Davis Town,” left a 150-foot wide strip of land vacant on his side of State Road 5, and he allowed nothing to be built there—thus creating a wide “no man’s land” between the two competing towns.  After the death of Davis in 1891, according to the website, the wide strip of land between the two towns was laid out in lots and sold at auction, and thus the feud ended.

Hezekiah Davis married Sarah Reynolds in 1851 and they had seven children.  Hezekiah died when the youngest, Hewlitt, was only six years old.  Hezekiah and Sarah are buried at Keightley Cemetery.