Last Saturday, Ball State's football team beat the University of New Hampshire 34-29 in the home opener at Scheumann Stadium. It was the first of five home games this season.
I love when the Cardinals play at home, especially on Saturdays. Those days bring a festive air to Muncie's west side unlike anything else. Much of game day activity, including tailgating, takes place near the intersection of Bethel and Tillotson avenues on the city's northwest side.
You wouldn't know it today, but this busy crossroads was once a hamlet named Andersonville. I'm not sure why, but most modern maps put Andersonville at the wrong place -- about a half-mile northwest of Tillotson at the messy intersection of Bethel Avenue, McGalliard Road and Chadam, Timber and Clara lanes. But historically, Andersonville sat where Tillotson once terminated at Bethel Avenue.
Farmers were the first non-Native American residents of this area, mostly arriving between 1830 and 1850. Andersonville's true origins lie with one such family, that of Isaac and Mary Phillips.
In 1850, the Phillipses settled on a 120-acre farm southwest of what is now Tillotson and Bethel. They likely reached their new home via the Richmond & Delphi Road, a dirt- and wood-planked thoroughfare built by the state in the 1830s. Today, the road's path in Delaware County follows U.S. 35 southeast of Muncie and along Bethel Avenue northwest out of town.
A schoolhouse was established on Phillips Farm sometime in the mid-19th century. It was known officially as Center Township School District No. 3, but most locals called it Phillips School. It sat a bit west of the intersection, near where Acapulco Mexican Restaurant is today.
In 1869, the Muncie & Bethel Turnpike Co. paved the Richmond & Delphi Road between Wheeling Avenue and the village of Bethel in Harrison Township. The new highway was made of macadamized stone (packed gravel), which allowed horses to go fast and wagons to transport heavy loads efficiently.
After natural gas was discovered near Eaton in 1886, landowners across Delaware County began prospecting for it. Successful wells often brought in factories, followed by housing and commercial developers. In 1889, for example, the Delaware County Land Improvement Company platted a new development named "West Side" about a mile south of Phillips Farm.
West Side's western boundary was Tillotson Avenue. The original road was a single dirt lane running north-south between the White River and what is now Riverside Avenue.
Sadly, Mary Phillips didn't live to see the gas boom, West Side or Tillotson. She died in 1881, followed by Isaac in 1892. The farm went to their daughter, Alice, and her husband, Nathan Anderson. A year later, Tillotson Avenue was extended north from Riverside to Bethel Turnpike, where it formed a T-intersection.
Then in March of 1896, the Andersons announced plans for a new village on their property. The Muncie Daily Herald reported that "Andersonville will be the name of the new town ... named for Nathan Anderson, a well known farmer who possesses quite a bit of land."
The couple planned for "a number of residences" and a large brick factory. Nathan hired Decker and Sons to drill two gas wells.
Although one well proved successful, the brick factory was never built. Some houses did go up along the west side of Tillotson, but not much else. Nathan opened a general store and grocery near where the Marathon station is today. Phillips School No. 3 remained until the First World War.
The area around Andersonville stayed as farmland well into the 20th century. After Alice's death in 1919, Nathan sold the property to Carl Kitselman, a steel-wire industrialist and former roller-skate tycoon. In the 1940s, the Andersonville grocery and service station gave way to the Kozee Corner Grocery, which was later replaced in the 1960s by Jerry Runyon's Stadium Marathon.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Andersonville was probably best known for horse breeding. Across Bethel Pike, where Ball State's stadium, ball fields, parking lots and Alumni Center stand today, once sprawled a horse farm named Whitney Stables. Proprietor Robert Whitney raised American Standardbred horses there through the Great Depression and Second World War.
Another horse farm named Orchard Lawn was south of Whitney Stables across Bethel. The property was owned by Agnes and William H. Ball Sr., the latter a son of glass baron William C. Ball. Like their northern neighbor, the couple raised Standardbred horses. In the 1930s, the Orchard Lawn Riding Club met frequently on the property to play polo. The farm also housed a dairy creamery.
In 1947, the Balls contracted with Whitney to run a joint horse-breeding operation, effectively combining Whitney Stables with Orchard Lawn. The venture was short-lived, however, and by the mid 1950s, Orchard Lawn had been platted into lots and sold for housing: today's Orchard Lawn neighborhood.
Whitney Stables remained a going concern into the 1950s, but the property was sold to Clarence and Mary Benadum. Clarence was a well-known and flamboyant criminal attorney and one-time Delaware County prosecutor.
The Benadums sold the 138-acre farm to Ball State Teachers College in 1956. The school experienced enormous growth after the Second World War and expanded north from the original campus to meet the need.
The land beyond Bethel Pike at Andersonville was renamed Benadum Acres and left undeveloped for a few years. Administrators had planned to build housing on the site, but by the early 1960s, chose instead to relocate some athletic fields there. Ball State's football and baseball teams had outgrown the old turf on University Avenue.
Ground was broken for the new football stadium in December 1965. The structure was designed by Walter W. Scholer, a Lafayette architect and specialist in college buildings. In addition to Scheumann Stadium, Scholer's firm designed many of Ball State's post-war structures, including Bracken Library, Emens Auditorium, Cooper Science, Teachers College and several dorms.
The stadium underwent major renovations in the Aughts. It was officially renamed the John B. and June M. Scheumann Stadium in 2005 after the couple donated to support the effort.
Andersonville's other businesses and buildings came and went over the years. Munsonians of a certain age might also remember Tony's Locker Room on Bethel, west of the gas station. Thai Smile 2's delicious food has been a staple in my house for over a decade. Ball State's Alumni Center across the street was completed in 1997. Shebek Stadium, where the Cards play baseball, opened in 1971. It received major upgrades about 10 years ago.
The old Andersonville hamlet may be long forgotten today, but it isn't abandoned. The sound of horse hooves and wagons have given way to thousands of cars daily and to Munsonians cheering on for a Cardinal victory.
Chris Flook is a Delaware County Historical Society historian and senior lecturer of Media at Ball State University.