History
An Indianapolis baker, John R. Nickum, had the building built in 1872. Nickum had the money to build the house as he had supplied the Union Army in Indianapolis with hardtack, a form of cracker despised by soldiers, during the Civil War. Nickum's daughter, Magdalena, and her husband Charles Holstein, a lawyer, would possess it when, in 1893, they invited noted poet James Whitcomb Riley to live with them. Riley had a bedroom on the second floor in this building for 23 years, helping the Holsteins with expenses.
After Riley and the Holsteins died, William Fortune bought it in 1916. He would later, presumably at the behest of Booth Tarkington, transfer ownership to the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association five years later. Due to so little time having passed from Riley's death to its preservation, most of the items of the household items of Riley's day, except for the kitchen, remain within the domicile.
Due to Riley's fame, it is the best known of the domiciles in the Lockerbie Square Historic District. The Riley Children's Foundation operates the museum. Noted items are the wicker chair which he frequently used after his stroke in 1911, and the bed on which he died on July 22, 1916.
Read more about this topic: James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)