This column appeared in the April 2010 issue.
In Greenfield, at the corner of State Road 9 and Highway 40 (where the Hancock County Bank now stands) once stood Gooding’s Tavern. The tavern served as an inn (or hotel) for travelers on the old National Road. Over the decades, the inn grew into a fine hotel that became famous as the last stopover for weary travelers on their way to Indianapolis. Gooding’s quickly became a popular place for visiting politicians to stay and gather as its prominent second story porch extended out over the road, making it ideally suited for candidates to speak to the large crowds that would naturally gather there. Legend states that President Martin Van Buren stayed overnight here while on a tour of the area that would lead to the funding of the National Road. It was during this trip that Van Buren’s carriage flipped over on the rough hewn road, spilling the President out into the mud, causing him to realize that the nation needed a better way to travel this area.
President William Henry Harrison, Vice-President Richard M. Johnson and Presidential Candidate Henry Clay all stayed at the inn. Congressman, 1852 Vice-Presidential Candidate and Irvington resident George Washington Julian was frequent at Gooding’s. Local lore claims that famed Civil War abolitionist John Brown stayed there as did Booker T. Washington in 1914, and Helen Keller in 1915. The hotel stood here for nearly a 150 years, hosting many types of businesses and all of Greenfield’s most prominent citizens during its lifetime. However, one of my personal Hoosier heroes is perhaps the single man most associated with the old corner today.
Attached to the bottom floor of Gooding’s Tavern was a barber shop owned and operated by Greenfield’s most prominent African-American citizen, George Levi Knox. Knox began life as a Tennessee slave, born in 1841. He escaped his southern master and fled north, arriving in antebellum Greenfield with only the clothes on his back. Ever the entrepreneur, George Knox encountered an unknown town resident and offered to give him a shave. He told the stranger, “If you don’t like the shave, you don’t have to pay for it. If you like the shave, pay me what you think it’s worth.”
George produced a small homemade burlap sack from his pocket along with a straight razor. He poured water into a tin cup and sprinkled in a powdery mixture from the burlap sack, broke a small leaf covered limb off of a nearby tree and began to gently wipe the mixture onto this stranger’s face. As it lay on the man’s face, George’s magic homemade shaving cream bubbled and tingled as George simply stood by watching for a few moments before proceeding with the shave. George wielded his finely sharpened blade with a surgeon’s touch and in just a few moments, the amazed man arose, rubbed his jowls and generously proclaiming that he’d never had a finer shave. This man, whose name is lost to Hancock County history forever, gratefully paid George Knox 40 cents and walked away, exclaiming the virtues of the magic shaver. Keep in mind during the antebellum era in Greenfield, a loaf of bread sold for a penny. George Knox parlayed that initial 40 cent investment into a booming business as a Greenfield barber and embarked on a journey that would lead him down the road to lasting fame and fortune.
Strangely enough, George Knox only cut and shaved the heads of white men, refusing to work on his fellow citizens of color. George Knox and his barber shop became a fixture on this prominent corner. He was a Republican in a county full of Democrats, which was risky because Greenfield was the birthplace of the Democratic Rooster symbol and Gooding’s Tavern was once owned by the man the rooster was named after, Joseph Chapman. Many of the county’s Democratic speakers would use the hotel’s balcony to broadcast speeches to the large crowds gathered outside of George’s barber shop. During these speeches, Knox would playfully yell out debate questions to participants and spectators of the opposition party. These impromptu debates became high entertainment for the citizens of Greenfield and often gave more insight into campaign issues than the speeches themselves.
George Knox was one of the first to employ future Poet James Whitcomb Riley by paying the teenager to paint shaving mugs for his shop during the era when Riley was unknown and broke. On the night of June 25, 1875 an unspeakable crime resulting in the lynching of a young 24-year-old black man named Billy Kemmer occurred on the outskirts of Greenfield that so shocked the community that most of its thriving African-American community fled in protest and fear. It’s interesting to note that before Billy’s lynching, Greenfield had a thriving black community. After his murder, nearly 7,500 members of the black community left Hancock County, never to return. Some say that Poet James Whitcomb Riley was an unwitting witness to the crime and it’s well known that he wrote a few newspaper articles condemning the murder afterwards. George Knox and his friend, James Whitcomb Riley would leave Greenfield shortly afterwards for Indianapolis.
George Knox relocated to Indianapolis, where he opened up a string of successful barber shops. In 1882, Knox purchased the city’s first black owned newspaper, “The Indianapolis World,” renaming it “The Indianapolis Freeman” and published it until his death in 1927. George Knox was the wealthiest African-American male in Indianapolis during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Freeman was founded at least in part due to the dissatisfaction with the party of Abraham Lincoln, as Knox felt that blacks had not been given a voice within the Republican Party in Indiana. In the 1890s the paper was billed as “the Harper’s Weekly of the Colored Race.”
In 1895, Knox wrote the book, “Life as I Remember It: As a Slave and a Freeman in 1895” and owned the Negro League baseball team known as the “Indianapolis ABC’s” which were named for their sponsor, “The American Brewing Company.” George Knox died in 1927 and is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery. Knox’s son, George L. Knox, II was a Tuskegee Airman who presided over the 1944 Freeman Field Mutiny court martial and later made the Air Force his career. His grandson, George Levi Knox III was born September 6, 1943 in Indianapolis, Indiana and is a retired vice president of corporate affairs for the Phillip Morris Company.
Both the tavern and George Knox’s barber shop have been gone for nearly a century now, but since the time of Knox’s death in 1927, several people have encountered the ghost of old George Knox. Over the years, witnesses have claimed to see the shadowy figure of a grey haired, moustached African-American man walking south on the sidewalks that border Indiana State Road 9 towards what once was the center of the black community where Knox owned a house. The unique thing about the ghost of George Knox is that he’s never been encountered on the same side of the street as the witness. He appears with a street separating him from all he encounters and has been known to stop and acknowledge the casual gazes by the earthly pedestrians with the tip of his hat or by flashing a friendly smile from underneath his bushy grey mustache.
The sightings always happen at dusk or in the early morning hours and the figure does not avoid the gaze of confused onlookers that he passes along his familiar route home. Quite the contrary, the ghost of George Knox seems to welcome the encounters. After all, George is simply making the same friendly gesture to a fellow traveler passing by as he did for decades on his way to or from his beloved barber shop. The only difference is that George Knox has been dead for nearly 75 years.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on facebook.
