Finding out murder story facts with a little help from my friends

Joey Bennett photo - A park now bordered by a white picket fence on West National Avenue was the scene of a controversial murder in Brazil in 1919 at the former Schultz-Weinland drug store.

We hope you enjoy the seven-part series which begins today on the murder of Dr. Lewis L. Williams.

It has been an interesting run to get to this point, and finding out the information has been a satisfying process.

Our good friends at the Clay County Genealogical Society had not written about this topic before, and when I was contacted by Jane Green late last year I was immediately interested.

As with most things these days, the wheels of journalistic justice did note spin as fast as I hoped.

Jane and I eventually got together on the project, and we decided that the original document was too long for one edition of the newspaper so it was broken into seven parts.

The Clay County Genealogical Society folks were beneficial in providing photos, old newspaper articles (which you will see over the next several weeks) and specific information on the murder site.

When the address was located in a City Directory from era as 116 W. National Avenue, I was immediately curious about that location.

What is it now? Can I even figure out the exact spot?

As the photo accompanying this column indicates, the site of the former Schultz-Weinland drug store is now a small park near the corner of National Avenue and Meridian Street.

From my deliveries in the Clay County Summer Youth Food program, as well as other encounters, I quickly learned that the addresses in Brazil are not necessarily consistent or logical (in some cases).

In Terre Haute, for example, odd-numbered buildings are always on the north or west sides of streets. Building numbers for east-west streets start at First Street by the Wabash River and continue eastward. (No one knows why there are roads like 13 1/2 Street; it’s not a perfect system.)

House numbers start at zero on U.S. 40 (Wabash Avenue) and go upward in either direction. Finding addresses is not too difficult.

Brazil seems to have no such order to its street addresses, however. A recent conversation on this topic indicated that some buildings on “West National Avenue” are further east than some called “East National Avenue.”

We’re probably going to have to live with it, since the expense and trouble of changing it to be more orderly and predictable is not worth it.

Any way, to make sure I stopped in to see my fellow Rotary member Chris Rodgers at his CPA office located at 112 W. National Avenue.

They were quickly able to tell me from a computer search that I was on the right track, and helped point me to the exact spot.

No plaque marks the location, and maybe one doesn’t need to be there. It was not necessarily a thing to brag about, but may be a good teaching moment.

My hope by presenting this story is that teachers at appropriate grade levels will have their students read it and make comparisons to today.

While it would seem like a lot would have changed, there are more parallels than I imagined.

As the story progresses over the next six Fridays, one of the obstacles that will be faced is similar to the COVID situation we endure today.

From the “it’s a small world department,” author Jane Green related to me that her parents grew up in Fontanet — a small burg in Vigo County most famous for its bean dinner every summer.

She was quite intrigued to find out that the phone interview being conducted with her in Maryland was taking place from that exact location where I have lived for the past nine years. We enjoyed talking about local landmarks and the cemetery near my home where she has family at rest and my cousin .

We hope you enjoy the series.