|
Ephraim Dukes founded the town of Greencastle in 1821, reportedly naming it after Greencastle, Pa. The town was chartered in 1822 and has been the Putnam County seat since 1823. The original land and land donated in 1825 by Dukes' son-in-law, John Wesley Clark, is where most of Greencastle stands today. Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) was founded in the 1830s, and the town has grown
|
 The city also features one of only two WW II German Buzz
Bombs — the forerunner of the Japanese kamikaze — in the U.S. The other is in
storage at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
It
came into the Navy's possession during the war and was shipped to a naval base
in Virginia. After the war, members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1550 in
Greencastle, asked the government for the buzz bomb to make a war memorial. That
required legislation being passed in both houses of the U.S. Congress.
The
first nose on the bomb was a garbage can cover. Because the nose was a fuse, it
wasn't shipped. However, another bomb was acquired and a new nose was
fabricated. Today, the monument stands on the downtown square.
|
|
Dillinger was an Indiana farmboy who became one of the nation's most notorious criminals in history. Dillinger began robbing banks in New Carlisle, Ohio, to get money to bankroll planned jailbreaks for several of his acquaintances.
A bank in Danville, Ind., was next, but it was in Greencastle that Dillinger got the biggest payday of his criminal career, $75,000.
In 1934, Dillinger was attending a movie in Chicago at the Biograph Theater. As he left the theater, he was gunned down in a hail of bullets delivered by federal agents working for J. Edgar Hoover. Legend has it that the "feds" were tipped off by his female friend, Anna Sage, the famous "Lady in Red," whose outfit helped the feds identify Dillinger outside the theater.
Even in death, Dillinger continued to captivate the nation's attention and imagination. There
are those who offer convincing evidence that the man killed in Chicago was not Dillinger. But while there is disagreement there, it is certain that Dillinger made himself one of the most famous criminals in history.
|
|
|
Eli
Lillys' first pharmaceutical store was in Greencastle. Lilly's contributions to
the pharmaceutical field are well known, and the name remains engrained in
everyday society because of the Lilly Foundation. In Greencastle, there is the
Lilly Center, a great facility for athletics named in his honor on the DePauw
University campus.
|
|
|
Also known as Seller's Cave, it is actually a network of underground caverns that are beneath the DePauw University campus. The caves were discovered in the 1800s. During the Civil War, they were closed off and served as a link to the Underground Railroad, which was used by slaves seeking freedom in the North.
|
|
|
 Members of the famous pioneer's family are buried in the
Boone-Hutcheson Cemetery. Susan Boone Rissler (Daniel's sister), Phebe Rissler
Boone (Squire Boone's wife), and Daniel's wife, Malinda, are all interred
there.
|
|
|
Pearl Bryan's headless body was found Feb. 1, 1886, by a schoolboy
in a field not far from Fort Thomas, Ky. Bryan, then 23 years old, was the
daughter of a Greencastle farmer. The two men who decapitated her were caught
and hanged in 1897, but Pearl's head was never found.
The
legend is that if you place six pennies heads down on her headstone during a
full moon, the next day when you return the pennies will be heads up.
In
fact, so many people visited the grave that eventually the headstone was turned
upside down to hide it, but people still found it and left the
pennies.
|
|
|
History & Lore 
