The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-10-15
ANTI-SALOON RECORD.
Hendricks County Went Thirty-Nine
Years without "a GrOg shop.
Martinsville Republican.

| At the last session of the County Com
missioners' court IN Hendricks county APP
pieationss for saloon licenses Were pre-
granted. For thirty-nine years and over
! that county has been without saloons and
| the granting of licenses has caused some
saloon for the Danville Republican. We
present the article
| Washngtons birthday in Danville in 1853.
There was considerable drinking and men
rode through the muddy streets in the rain,
swearing and whooping like Indians on the
war path. The Belvedere saloon, located
on Main street opposite the present loca-
| ton of the Republican office, was the only
| licensed saloon in the county, and 1T did
| q wide open business and was the mead
quarters of a gang of fellows who that
| day laid their patriotism and manhood on
| the altar of BacchuS ana dehed the town;
| One garrulous face maker, whose bloated
| cheeks rose and fell like a blacksmith S
| bellows being worked in the interest of a
| heavy heat, declared that the temperance
| question in Hendricks county had reached
| crisis; that the time had arrived when
saloon, and to demonstrate he had the
| courage of his convictions he offered to
| fight any temperance man in town who
| dared to open his mouth
1T is true a crisis had arrived but the
| free whisky orator little dreamed as he
| rode to his home near Brownsburg over
| that evening that he had taken his last
| drink over the bar of the Belvedere, or that
| he would live long and die sober of old age
without seeing another licensed saloon in
Hendricks county. But it all came to pass.
"A few minutes before midnight of that
day a mob of Danville Academy students
reinforced by town boys lined up in front
of the Belvedere. Lights were burning in
the saloon. The bartenders were on guard
with shotguns. The 'bombardment opened
with a battering ram charge which shivered
the front door into pieces, and stones de-
molshed the entire front of the building
A detachment in the alley threw cordwood
through the side windows, bringing ruin tC
the decanters, glasses and other fixtures
covering up the bartenders, who We're
crouched under the counter with wreckage
and cordwood.
when their work was completed the
crowd broke and fled in every direction un-
der cover of the darkness The proprietor
Of the saloon came out of his house near by
and fired a double barreled shotgun into the
alley, but as luck would have it, none OF
the boys We're there, and he succeeded only
loon gang went to the academy and stoned
the building, breaking out $50 worth OF
glass and doing much other damage.
Next day large posters We're circulated
with the headline, Whisky or No Whisky,
and calling upon the citizens to meet it In
the courtroom. Everybody attended the
neutrality-suspicious., lawyers, doctors, rioters
and all. Speeches We're made by Colonel
Nave, Peter S. Kennedy and many others,
denouncing both whisky and mob Violence.
A committee of citizens was appointed and
instructed to visit the proprietor of the Bel
Vedere and request him to go out of the
liquor business The result was he promised
to close his place and he kept his word.
1.-THE temperance banner hoisted that day
bore the inscription, 'Thirty-nine years with
out licensed saloon, until it was dragged
in the mud by the Brownsburg applicants.