Something not widely discussed (due to the nightmares it invokes on those that remember) is the plague of the dreaded “drop peacocks” that infested the Fort Wayne area during the mid 1980’s. These creatures, believed now to have been the result of an odd retro-virus, had re-activated prehistoric DNA akin to that of dinosaurs.
The infected peacocks would sit in trees and wait for prey (which, unfortunately tended to be human photographers trying to get a picture of a pretty bird) then drop on the prey and use their beaks and claws to rend flesh. A great peacock hunt was undertaken by the local and federal governments which eliminated all wild peacocks in the area and there has been no sign of the virus anywhere in the world since.
Currently, all peacocks at the Children’s Zoo (reintroduced there in 1991) are tested monthly for any sign of disease.
Filed by Field Reporter Kent: Read his blog here.
Shown here: Augustus McGursky, recognized by many as the father of modern cornhole.
Born in 1885 in the steamy swamps of the Florida keys, McGursky (nicknamed “McGurk” by his largely illiterate group of grade-school classmates) stopped going to school after the third-grade to work at his parents’ swamp-gas refinery1. His parents also hired day-laborers, and a regular group of Native American workers from the Chocktaw Tribe taught him a game they’ve played for generations: maize hole.
McGursky discovered a natural aptitude for the game. It wasn’t until adulthood and he moved to Huntington Indiana in 1910 that he considered the potential for playing it at large.
One day he set up the maize hole markers, as usual, which were made out of tree bark. He started assembling his throwing bags — large leaves wrapped in twine and filled with kernels of maize (corn). While he was practicing his throw, a traveling anvil salesman named Chuck Crowley2 came through on his way west toward Peoria, IL. While riding his horse and cart down the street in front of the field where McGursky was throwing, his interest was piqued, and he stopped to see what was happening.
McGursky was only too pleased to show him what he was doing — how to score points by hitting the treebark with your throwing bag.
Crowley, a gaming man himself, instantly saw potential for this. After riding off to Peoria and then on his way back east, he stopped at the Wayne Knitting Mill in Fort Wayne, IN to request a few scraps of burlap (the Fort Wayne Historical Society still has bills of sale on display from Wayne Textiles) He rode down to a woodworking shop, presented plans to a carpenter whose name is now lost to the annals of history, and emerged with two planks, elevated on one end with a folding stand. And, of course, a hole in the top-center.
It was late September in 1910, which is the beginning of the anvil off-season, so Crowley had some time to kill. He rode down to Huntington to find McGursky and show him what he developed. McGursky was, of course, thrilled. The two of them started making plans to develop a scoring system. Players would take turns throwing sacks, McGursky said. They need to reach 21 points without going over, or they reset their points back to 15. If a player gets a sack on the board, it’s one point. If it goes through the hole, it’s worth three.
Legend has it that this is when McGursky uttered his famous pragmatic motto that encapsulates the fundamental scoring strategy of cornhole: “If you can’t get three points, at least get one point.”
Flash forward forty years: It’s 1950 in post-war America. McGursky’s passion for this game, renamed “cornhole” to appeal to the masses, caught on, with thirty leagues spread within five conferences across the US. The ACL (American Cornhole League) headquarters in Huntington, IN is led by McGurksky, the league’s Commissioner. Crowley served as the first Commissioner, but died in office after two years. His prized decorative gold-plated anvil fell on his head when he was polishing it.
McGursky, now 65 years old, was still the undisputed Cornhole champion. He retired from professional cornhole for several years to compete in the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, the first and only time he traveled abroad. After taking home the gold, he added it to his collection of 8 different championship wins.
Because of his excellent health, driving passion, and ever-active mind, McGurky lived until he was 96, passing away in October of 1981 while raking leaves outside his family home on the northeast side of Huntington. He lived to see his first great-granddaughter born, Augustina Charlene McGursky (named for her great grandfather and his business partner, Chuck). At 30 years old, she will be competing in the 2012 Olympics in London, and is expected to take home the gold medal in Cornhole, adding to her great-grandfather’s legacy.)
McGursky’s legend lives on. This image, taken a year before his death, is displayed along with his famous motto outside the ACL headquarters. It can also be found as a poster in the bedrooms of countless aspiring cornhole athletes.
1 Swamp Gas refineries were a short-lived industry spawned through the advent of the methane-powered horseless carriage. Due to volatility of methane and the lack of marketing savvy on the part of Everglades Autonomous Carriage Company, who pioneered the methane carriage, it soon lost out to petroleum-based gasoline. The swamp-gas refinery market soon followed.
2 Crowley is a legend in his own right — the character Charlie Cowell, an anvil salesman, from Wilson and Lacey’s “The Music Man” was an homage to Crowley, who is said to have been able to cover twenty states in a week with more than 30 anvils in tow.
Many people don’t know that Cornhole originated from Northeast Indiana. Here is the story of its founder and legendary player, Augustus McGursky.
It’s a common mistake, that the building behind the statue of Father Agatho was built in 1933, for it looks just like it. The water filtration plant that stands there now was actually built as a replica of the Great Chapel of the River, built two years prior on the personal whim of Bishop Anthony Runemiller (who is the subject of a whole ‘nother story). Though it withstood the terrible tornado that destroyed the statue, Bishop Anthony was killed while walking out of the chapel at precisely the wrong moment, and was carried off by the twister.
He stipulated in his will that the chapel be torn down upon his death, anticipating a long life. However, the chapel was leveled, and the land sat empty.
In 1933, when building the structure that still stands today, no money was available for an architect, and the design of the Chapel was beloved by Fort Wayne residents, so they adapted the design.
Pictured above: Bishop Anthony Runemiller, a year before his death.
The last known photo of the Statue of Father Agatho the River-Minded. Taken in 1924, at the confluence of the Maumee River and the Saints Mary and Joseph downtown Fort Wayne. Photographer unknown.
Father Agatho, Father of the Rivers, was a Jesuit Catholic priest who traveled to the frontier town of Fort Wayne in the mid-1820s to convert the natives. Having grown up in England near the River Thames, Agatho felt a deep spiritual connection with rivers, citing it as a holy union of nature and man, through its ability to provide active transport.
As he set east from Buffalo, NY in late winter of 1823, he was taken captive by the Miami tribe in what is now central Ohio. After living among a group of Miami for six months, Father Agatho, who had a penchant for languages, learned how to speak with them. He told them about Jesus Christ, provided oral accounts of stories from the Bible, and about his connections with the rivers. While the Christian mythology never stuck with the Miami, the love of rivers did.
The Miami took him upstream to the confluence of three rivers in what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was so overcome by joy at being at the “center of the Most Holy of Places east of the Mighty Atlantic” (according an account in his journals), that he fell to the ground, overcome.
Eyewitness accounts from the Miami tribe say that Father Agatho then stood at the confluence, and named the rivers: Two rivers, flowing from the north and the south, he named after Mary, mother of Jesus, and Joseph, her husband. In honor of the people who took him to this holy place, he named the river they flowed into the Maumee (a mis-pronunciation of “Miami”, for they had no written translation until decades later).
This statue was erected in the late-1800s by the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend to honor Father Agatho. Though he was denied sainthood by the Holy See multiple times, the Church authorized a bronze statue in his honor. Though there are trees blocking the river now, when it was erected, there was only a clear view of the river. Merchants and fur-traders boating up the Maumee are said to have used it as a navigation point in their travels to Toledo, hundreds of miles down the Maumee.
In the spring of 1925, a torrential rain and F5-classified tonado ripped the statue from its foundation as it passed through the city, killing hundreds and leaving a clear path of destruction in its wake. Though it was never to be found, in 1957, Vilma Grilbert of New Haven, IN (a neighboring community of Fort Wayne) claimed to have found the index finger of his extended right hand buried in her yard, as she was digging a flower garden. Its identity was never verified, as the original casting and plans for the statue were lost decades before.
Dan Greeley, a Fort Wayne historian, has collected accounts of the statue’s disappearance. One local church published a prayer to Father Agatho:
Oh holy man who was taken unto the rivers,
Watch over us and give God counsul.
The rains and the winds that are His Will,
Our very existence can give and take.Amen.
The Flood of 67
Ask any old-timers about the time the Maumee River flooded in May of 1967 and many will just shake their head and tell you you’re crazy.
A few others will shake their middle finger at you and tell you to mind your own business.
It began innocently enough.
May 1st Elvis married Priscilla in Vegas and broke the hearts of millions of teenagers around the world including a few thousand in our Summit City.
However what was not expected was the effect of so many broken hearts flushing their Elvis memorabilia into the cities sewer system would have.
Slowly but surely the water levels of the Maumee River started to rise until the Mayor’s office and City Council issued an emergency proclamation to the citizens to stopping abusing their toilets and only put approved bio-degradable materials down their bathroom commodes.
Mayor Zeis made several guest appearances on the Bob Sievers morning radio show on WOWO, pleading for the madness to stop, but it wasn’t until Bob pledged to stop playing any more Elvis records that the improper disposal stopped.
By then, the damage was done.
During June and July the shores of the Maumee River looked like the Atlantic coast, just a little less salty. Finally on August 14th with the assistance of city engineers, Fort Wayne Firefighter Harvey Cox figured out a way to back flush and drain the river to normal levels.
On September 26, 1967, the Mayor thanked Harvey Cox by naming him an Honorary Fire Chief in a ceremony at the Coliseum, Click here for picture.
The Great Lincoln Tower
A story of intrigue, obsession, and the remains of the nation’s 16th president
Built in 1918 and, at the time, the tallest building in the western hemisphere, the Lincoln Tower’s construction was commissioned by Robert Lincoln, the oldest son of Abraham, the 16th president of the United States. He built it as a memorial of his father, and like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, as a tomb.
Legend has it that there are miles of catacombs that extend hundreds of feet beneath and several city blocks out from the Great Lincoln Tower, and it is adorned with Masonry symbols put there by the stonemasons who built it. Not much is known about the full extent of the tunnels’ reach, and only one map is known to exist, which is in possession of ARCH, a local historical preservation organization that has a secret pact never to reveal it to the public. Rumors have it that the tunnels have many access points throughout downtown Fort Wayne and surrounding buildings. The stonemasons who built the Tower were responsible for 95% of the construction of other downtown buildings as well, and may have connected the tunnels to as many as 35 other businesses.
Whether or not Abraham Lincoln is actually buried at the Great Lincoln Tower cannot be confirmed, but historians do know that Robert Lincoln’s head was cyrogenically frozen and placed in a capsule at the top of the building. You can see it in this photo, directly underneath the flag.
This photo was taken in 1934 by Virgil B. Esterhaus, a conspiracy theorist and amateur photographer. At that time, the Tower still employed a series of secret police that roamed the tunnels and upheld Mason law, feared even by the Fort Wayne Police Department. Minutes after this photo was taken, Esterhaus claims, black-clad men emerged from behind a tree on East Berry Street, knocked him unconscious, and took his camera. Only through his own paranoia and cunning did he replace the film with a empty roll and stash the old roll in a secret compartment in his artificial leg (which he lost while in the intelligence service during the Great War).
This photo is housed in the collection of Emma Esterhaus, great grand-niece and only surviving kin of Virgil Esterhaus. The Great Lincoln Tower is in no way affiliated with the Lincoln Bank Tower, a building with a similar name and a much more boring history.
To submit your own photo and story to Fake Fort Wayne, visit the Submit page.
Yep. A fake history of Fort Wayne. For real.
Deep beneath terra firma, in the bowels of the Allen County Courthouse, we find the secret to Fort Wayne’s general reluctance to embrace and accept change. The ‘Change Detection and Abolishment Framework’ (CDAF). Designed and built by Hicksville, Ohio Amish visionary Hiram Stoltzfus, the CDF was brought on-line in 1908 with the sole purpose of thwarting any and all attempts at meaningful, progressive change. Though many doubt it’s efficacy, life-long Fort Wayne residents can attest that it does indeed function as designed. But HOW does it work? To quote Allen County Republican Chair Marty Whitebread (whose party is responsible for maintaining and calibrating the CDAF), “We really have no idea how it works. We don’t really think too much about it actually. Like I always say, if it aint broke - don’t go trying to fix it and stuff!” Despite Mr. Whitebread’s reluctance to divulge any clues on CDAF operation, many theories have been postulated throughout the years. Some say it works by introducing some form of change aversion liquid into the city’s water supply at the treatment plan on Spy Run Avenue, others believe it produces low frequency soundwaves projected through thousands of hidden speakers throughout the city, and still others will insist it regulates and injects change aversion gases via the air ducts in Georgetown Mall, government buildings, and Chinese buffet restaurants. I have seen the machine in action myself as I took this photo, and while I can not unequivocally testify to it’s ability to in fact, prevent change. I can report that it makes extremely cool beeping, whirring, buzzing, and hissing noises.
A statue of Albert J. Sickafoose, founder of the Fort Wayne Freemasons. Due to his obsession with secrets and conspiracies, not much is known about Sickafoose. He was believed to have died sometime between 1895 and 1942, and lived either on W. Berry Street in the historic West Central neighborhood, or in the newly constructed Canterbury Green apartment complex. His daughter, Samantha, survives him, and heads up the Sickafoose Foundation for the Minor Arts, a charitable fund supporting drum circles and body modification art.
The St. Mary’s River, circa 1926. Originally named the Mary’s River, this was the first body of water to be canonized in Indiana.
