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Hoosier Hannah takes us on a tour of Plainfield, her home town in Hendricks Country, Indiana. Once home to the Miami, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes, we see how Quakers moved in from North Carolina to settle and farm in the area. We see the traditional Old Settlers Picnic, the Keeley Institute, and enjoy Plainfield's tree-canopied streets.
I am taking you through the middle of the State of Indiana on The Old National Road, Highway 40. This time we are visiting my home town; Plainfield, Indiana, Hendricks County. We are fifteen miles west of Indianapolis. I get nostalgic about Plainfield, as I moved here when I married and have raised my three children here. I can look out my front door and almost see them waiting for the school bus on an Autumn day or whizzing past the house waving at me from their bicycles and calling, "Watch me, Mom!" In 1820 settlers built cabins on White Lick Creek south of the area that would become Plainfield. White Lick Creek runs through the heart of Plainfield to the north and south. At that time the area abounded with Native Americans of the Miami, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes. As more covered wagons of settlers came, the Indians were forced farther west toward Illinois. Among the settlers who came to cultivate the rich farmland were Quakers from North Carolina. Their Quaker Yearly Meeting House is located in Plainfield, which gained civic status in 1839 after Elias Hadley and Levi Jessup laid out the town. There are several Society of Friends meeting houses around Plainfield. The town's athletic teams are named "The Plainfield Quakers!" The Interurban ran through Plainfield. 350 trains a day left Indianapolis to almost every major city and town in Indiana. The Interurban was an electric railcar built for passenger service between cities and rural towns. It had its own right-of-way in the rural areas. In 1918 The Indianapolis Traction Terminal handled 7.5 million passengers back in 1918 before the automobile became popular. With the price of gasoline being over $3.00 a gal, a form of cheap transportation is badly needed again. Plainfield is the former home of the Keeley Institute where people came to "take the cure!" One of the first detoxification centers in the United States was located in Plainfield. It was established in 1891 by Dr. Keeley, who was one of the first physicians to view alcoholism as a disease. An immigrant from Kings County, Ireland, he specialized in the cure of alcoholism and drug addiction, founding his first institute at Dwight, Illinois in 1880.
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