Department added a theater major to the curriculum.
As the theater activity picked up in the Umble Center, the students began noticing strange occurrences. In the beginning, little was mentioned, but then the students began talking among themselves, comparing notes. Eventually, the stories became known throughout the campus and gained the attention of English professor and folklore researcher Ervin Beck. During interviews, Beck gathered numerous stories—stories that students believed proved the Umble Center was haunted.
The ghosts manifest themselves through mysterious happenings. Often the ghosts appear to manipulate the electrical switches. Students would turn the lights out as they left rooms, only to discover that they were mysteriously turned back on later. In other instances, if a light was left on in a room, when the student returned, it would be turned off.
Some of the students also reported objects being moved, or even knocked or thrown down. The noise from this activity was frightening and lent credence to the belief that there might be a ghost floating around.
But these weren’t the only noises heard by individuals in the building. There were other sounds that, try as they might, those who’ve heard them could not describe them other than to say, “They’re eerie.” Many believe that these occurrences are evidence that the ghost of John Umble haunts the Umble Center.
The Weeping Tombstone
November 1903. Most areas were experiencing single-digit temperatures. It was bitterly cold. The ground was frozen. These were the conditions mourners coped with as they laid Irwin Yoder to rest in Union Center Cemetery. A young man just twenty-three years old—his dreams and promises of a happy and prosperous future ended.
The epitaph chosen was a fond farewell for those who knew and loved him:
Farewell. Dear Friends, From Thee I Am Gone.
My Sufferings Now Are O’er. My Friends Who Knew
and Loved Me Will Know Me Here No More.
The tombstone bore a photograph of the young man. A transparent cover protected his image from the weather—but not from vicious vandals. Irwin Yoder’s rest was disturbed. His picture was struck with something hard enough to break the seal. The mystery of why or who would do such a terrible thing has never been solved.
Sometime after the vandalism, visitors to the site noticed a dark, tear-shaped stain on Yoder’s cheek. An Elkhart Truth reporter wrote in 1984, “If you look closely, you can see the darkening under Yoder’s photograph. Some say it’s just moisture. But others say the desecration of his grave marker caused Yoder to weep.”
Irwin Yoder’s Weeping Tombstone is well known throughout the community. Many who never knew him now pay him a visit and wonder: Could it be a tear? A ghostly tear from beyond the grave?
Visit Irwin Yoder in the Union Center Cemetery located at the intersection of County Road 11 and County Road 50 near Nappanee, and decide for yourself.
GRANT COUNTY
Marion became known for its iron foundries, paper and glass factories, and manufacturing of auto parts. From 1945 to 1952, Marion made another mark on the automotive industry by manufacturing America’s first compact car, the Crosley.
In 1920, The Wesleyan Methodist Church chartered Ma-rion College. Its name was changed to Indiana Wesleyan University in 1988.
Also notorious in Grant County is the annual Easter pa-geant. Each spring since 1937, except during World War II, thousands of local volunteers have presented the pageant in the Marion Coliseum. The production portrays the last week of Christ’s life in pantomime and music.
One of the county’s most significant locations is a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Marion’s residential area, Shady Hills. Its front resembles a tepee. Of historic significance in Grant County is the Miami Indian Cemetery, located on County Route 600-North. The hilltop cemetery was once part of a 6,400-acre Indian Reservation. Since burials were not a part of the Indian traditions, the tombstones at the hilltop cemetery indicate that the Indians buried there were Christians.
Taylor University was originally the Fort Wayne Female College founded by Methodists in 1846. It became Fort Wayne College (co-educational) in 1855. The Upland Land Company offered the school ten thousand dollars and ten acres of land if it would move from Fort Wayne to Grant County. The school accepted the offer and moved to Upland, and in 1890 it was renamed Taylor University in honor of Methodist-Episcopal missionary and bishop, William Taylor.
The town of Matthews was named for Claude Matthews, Indiana governor (1893–1897) and major stockholder in the Matthews Land Company, which founded the town during the natural gas boom. The town seemed to mushroom overnight, hosting numerous industries hoping to profit from the natural gas discovery, and soon became known as the “Wonder City.” So enticing was the metropolis that the Indianapolis professional baseball team of the Western Association relocated there in 1901. Matthews’s prosperity and growth ended when the gas supply dwindled.
The town of Fairmount, settled primarily by Quakers, was platted in 1850 and originally named Pucker. The name was changed to Fairmount when a citizen visited Philadelphia and returned with glowing reports of the magnificence of Fairmount Park. The town incorporated in 1870.
From 1874 and well into the twentieth century, Fairmont County citizens were successful in their fight against the establishment of saloons in their town. If threats by the vigilantes weren’t successful, the dynamiting of saloons usually worked.
Fairmount boosters have made some unsubstantiated claims of greatness for their community, such as, that Fairmount was the home of the Eskimo Pie and the first auto was built by Orlie Scott. On his test drive, Scott wrecked the car, then sold it to Elwood Haynes, who re-stored it, added a brake, and in 1894 made the first successful gas powered “horseless carriage” trial run on Pumpkinvine Pike near Kokomo.
The town has gained national recognition as the home of actor James Dean, who grew up near Fairmount on a farm belonging to his aunt and uncle. In a 1949 statewide drama contest, he was judged the best actor in Indiana. Soon afterward he left for Hollywood, where he made three pictures before his untimely death in 1955 at the age of twenty-four.
Other notables from Grant County are James Davis, creator of the comic strip Garfield; Thomas R. Marshall, Indiana governor and U.S. Vice President; George W. Steel, Sr., first Oklahoma governor; Kennesaw Mountain Landis, baseball commissioner; Marie Webster, quilt designer and author; Mary Jane Ward, author of Snake Pit; Caleb B. Smith, Lincoln’s secretary of the interior; and Bishop and Milton Wright, parents of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Israel Jenkins House
