When visitors enter the Indiana State Museum they will see immediately to the left the reconstructed facsimile of the three-story red brick façade of the Oscar C. McCulloch School No. 5. Decorated with ornate terra cotta columns in blue and white, two similarly colored terra cotta medallions flank the doorway – one the eastern hemisphere, the other the western hemisphere. Interspaced across the top terra cotta border are nine other medallions representing justice, education, industry, agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries, game, and highways which “are a source of interest and joy.” School No. 5 once stood a few hundred feet east of the museum and served the children – Slovenian, Romanian, Greek, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Hungarian, Roma, Chinese, Italian, Polish, Russian, Mexican, German, Austrian, and Jewish – of the “foreign district” of Indianapolis.
Since the early days of settlement, Indianapolis has been a destination for immigrants. Scottish born Alexander Ralston platted the city’s mile square, and fellow Scot Thomas McQuat purchased several lots in the initial sale. The first Irishman, Richard Good was soon joined by fellow countryman and cabinetmaker Samuel Duke. Another Indianapolis pioneer was the city’s first watchmaker Humphrey Griffith, a native of Wales. This handful of foreign-born residents would quickly be joined by others seeking their opportunities in a new land.
The building of the National Road through Indiana in the late 1820s provided employment options to foreign-born workers, particularly the Irish. Depending on the job, a worker could make as much as $1 (2024: $30) a day, but most Irish laborers were lucky to earn $6 (2024: $179) a month. A decade later, the Irish were joined by a few German immigrants in the construction of the Central Canal, with pay ranging from 50¢ (2024: $14) a day to $1 (2024: $28) a day for skilled labor which was similar to factory wages. The collapse of canal building following the Panic of 1837 left many of these immigrants impoverished and living in poorer districts of Indianapolis.
Among the early immigrants from the German states were Prussian contractor Christian Frederick Rasener and purveyor of fine gifts Charles Mayer, a native of Württemberg. They settled in Indianapolis several years before the great migration of people came to America from the German states following autocratic regimes violently suppressing the democratic and liberal Revolutions of 1848-49. The Indianapolis share of immigrants as shown in the 1850 United States federal census was 1,045 persons of German ancestry (802 German-born and 243 of German parentage) representing 12.9 percent of the city’s population. Bavarian jeweler Charlie Lauer and Hessian saddle and harness dealer John Hereth were two of the arrivals in the early 1850s.
Also at this time, Polish-born Alexander Franco and Moses Woolf, a native of England, became the first Jewish immigrants to settle in Indianapolis where they became fabric merchants and tailors. They were soon followed by tailor Max Dernham, from the German state of Baden, who founded with clothier John Gramling, a Catholic from the German state of Bavaria, Eagle Clothing Co in 1853. The company eventually passed to Leopold Strauss, a Jew who had immigrated from the German state of Nassau, and it became L. Strauss & Co. Over the ensuing years, Jewish merchants came to dominate the city’s clothing and tailoring businesses with H. P. Wasson & Co, William H. Block Co, and Kahn Tailoring Co among the most prominent establishments of the twentieth century. Jewish immigrants also became involved in other enterprises when brothers Joseph and Morris Solomon, of London, England, made their way to the Hoosier capital in 1860 as cigarmakers and later established the first pawnshop in Indiana.
By 1850, the Irish community of Indianapolis, augmented by fellow countrymen fleeing Ireland to escape the ravages of the potato famine, constituted the second largest immigrant group in the city behind the Germans. Most made their home east of the Mile Square in a neighborhood that became known as Irish Hill. While Irish laborers were vital in building roads, canals, and railroads, their Catholic religion, intemperance, and public fighting was disliked by some native-born citizens who in the 1850s became the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movement Know Nothings.
The Civil War provided an opportunity for German and Irish immigrants to show their devotion to the United States. Organized in 1861, the 32nd Indiana Infantry Regiment (1st German Regiment) and the 35th Indiana Infantry Regiment (1st Irish Regiment) heroically fought in numerous battles and along with thousands of other ethnic brothers “gave of themselves in full measure to prove themselves worthy of citizenship.”
German immigrants were more diverse than the Irish. They were Protestant and Catholic and maintained their regional German state cultural loyalties even after the proclamation of the German Empire in 1871. The neighborhood bounded by New York, East, Market, and Noble (College Av) was once known as Germantown and the near southside of the city had a significant German presence well into the twentieth century. Germans became an integral part of Indianapolis commerce following the Civil War with the establishment of the Clemens Vonnegut hardware business, the Henry Schnull wholesale grocery, the Peter Lieber brewery, the Hermann Lieber art supplies and framing emporium, the John Ott furniture manufacturing, the George Meyer tobacconist, and other wholesale and retail concerns. Protestant Germans not only were prominent in the business community, but they also influenced the cultural development of the city.
Since the bigoted Know Nothing era, immigrants of the Catholic faith had to contend with a fervent anti-Catholic bias. The Irish as a group faced severe discrimination particularly in employment. “No Irish Need Apply” was common signage in the windows of businesses and in newspaper employment advertisements. Despite these challenges, the Irish became an influence in local Democratic Party politics with Thomas Taggart, who had immigrated from County Monaghan, being elected mayor of Indianapolis in 1895 after serving eight years as Marion County clerk. Taggart’s business interest included the city’s Grand and Denison Hotels and French Lick Springs Hotel in Orange County, Indiana. A significant Irish business interest in Indianapolis was the meat packing firm Kingan & Co which Belfast native Samuel Kingan opened during the Civil War.
While the foreign born in nineteenth century Indianapolis were primarily immigrants from Germany and Ireland, a small number of people from other parts of the world also made their way to the Hoosier capital to make a new home. In the twentieth century and beyond, the city would become an international community as new residents seeking the age-old dreams and opportunities that prior immigrants sought were welcomed from every continent and the Pacific Islands.
