The following history on the English family by Carl L. Boyd was sold by the Senior Class of Lexington High
School, presumably sometime in the 1950s

The Compiled History of the English Family

In the honorable ancestry of the English family, we will use William Hayden English as the medium.

His great great grandfather was James English, a son of Thomas English. James came to America about 1700, locating near Laurel, Delaware. The line of descent is carried through his son James, the latter’s son Elisha English to Elisha Gale, who was the father of William H. English. Elisha English was a native of Delaware and married Sarah Wharton, a native of the same state and a daughter of Captain Revel Wharton, who commanded an American Privateer during the Revolution, was captured in action, and died on board an English prison ship. Elisha and Sarah Wharton English removed to Kentucky in 1792, and in 1830, late in life, went to Greene County, Illinois, where they lived among their children All their fourteen children grew up and married and had children of their own before this venerable couple died, at which time their descendants numbered about 200.

The Englishton Park Estate owes its beginning to Maj. Elisha Gale English who bought the original tract and established his home there in the early part of the nineteenth century. He left his father’s home (May, Elisha English) in Kentucky at the age of 19 and settled at Lexington, Indiana, later marrying a local girl by the name of Mahala Eastin whose brother-in-law possessed the first deed ever recorded in Scott County. She was a native of Kentucky, one of seventeen children of Lieut. Philip and Sarah (Smith) Eastin. Her ancestry is a notable one. She was a direct descendent of Louis DuBois, the Hugenot patentee and colonist of the Kingston and New Palz districts in the State of New Palz districts in the State of New York. Another ancestor was Jost Hite, who established the first settlement west of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, where he received from King George II, a grant of more than 100,000 acres of land upon which he located the colony of fellow German emigrants from the province of Alsace. Of this branch of the family William H. English was in the fifth generation from Col. John Hite, who served as an officer in the colonial forces prior to the revolution. After the Declaration of Independence he became a member of the first Board of Justices of Frederick County, Virginia, and administered the oath of allegiance to the other members. Lieut. Philip Eastin, father of Mahala Eastin, was an officer in the Fourth and Eighth Virginia Regiments in the Revolution, serving until the end of the war. His wife’s father, Capt. Charles Smith, saw service as an officer under George Washington, then a colonel, in the French and Indiana wars, and was severely wounded at the battle of Great Meadows.

Maj. Elisha Gale English had an important part in the making of the early history of Indiana, and his name was known and respected over a wide territory. He served the people of Scott County, as sheriff, as far back as 1828, then 29 years old, and was repeatedly their representative in the State legislature. He was many years a senator from the counties of Scott and Jackson, and also from the counties of Scott and Clark.

He was a member of the legislature as far back as 1832, when that body met in the old court house of Marion county. He was in the journey across the dark river, "full of years and full of honors." He was among the last of the survivors of the giants of those early days.

He continued as a representative of the people, either in the senate or the house, with a few brief intervals, to sometime about the year 1867 - the long period of thirty-five years – about which time he became vice-president of the street railway company and director in the First National Bank of Indianapolis, which positions he held at the time of his death. He was at one time United States marshal for the district of Indiana, and in that capacity superintended the taking of the census of the State in 1860.

He was a vigorous, long-lived race, his father and mother dying in extreme old age, after living together as man and wife sixty years, and rearing fourteen children, all of whom lived to be married men and women, with children, before there was a single death in the family. He shared the same vigorous constitution, and was an active, robust, energetic man to near the time of his death, which occurred in the fall of 1874 in the seventy-seventh year of his age, not from breaking down of the constitution, but from a hemorrhage resulting from a surgical operation. He was very fond of active outdoor life, and when over seventy-five years of age he made two trips on horseback all the way from his old home near the Ohio River, to Indianapolis, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, just for the fun of the thing, as he said and to show the boys what an old man could do.

To be well born has always been accounted a blessing, and that was the first distinction of William Hayden English. At his father’s home near Lexington, Scott County, Indiana, he first saw the light of day August 27, 1822. The development of his early character was formulated by many influences, perhaps least of which were the primitive district schools he attended. Still more important were the rugged ideals upheld at home by his honored father and gentle minded mother, and the various men of prominence in that section of Indiana whom as a boy he heard discussed the various questions of the day. Besides the public schools, he attended for three years Hanover College. After leaving college he acquired a few law books, and showed such powers of concentrated study and assimilation that at the age of eighteen proved himself eligible under the strict examination then required and was admitted to the bar with the privilege of practicing in the Circuit Court. Soon afterward he applied to the Supreme Court for examination, and was admitted to practice before that tribunal. For a short time he was associated in his profession with the famous Joseph G. Marshall. His ambitions were always in the line of politics. Before he was of age he was chosen a delegate from Scott County to the Democratic State Convention which nominated Gen. T. A. Howard for governor. He rode to the capital city on horseback. When Tyler became president, Mr. English was made postmaster of his home town of Lexington, then the county seat of Scott County. In 1843 he was chosen principal clerk of the Lower House of the Legislature.

In the Constitutional Convention of October, 1850, Mr. English was elected secretary, and later was delegated to supervise the publication of the Constitution, the Journals and Addresses.

William H. English was elected to Congress from his Indiana district in October, 1852. Thus his service as a national legislator began with the administration of President Pierce. Of the Thirty-third Congress, which ended in 1854, Mr. English was the last survivor of the two senators and eleven members of the House constituting the Indiana delegation. It was during that session that the famous Kansas-Nebraska bill was introduced into the House. Mr. English was a member of the committee on territories, to which this bill was referred. During the Civil War, Mr. English declined a great deal from politics because he was sadly depressed at heart. He denounced secession from the beginning and exerted every possible measure to induce Southern members to abandon it. Speaking for his own constituents in Indiana he asserted that they would "march under the flag and keep step to the music of the Union."

He was one of the men who brought about the organization and incorporation of the First National Bank of Indianapolis in 1863. Soon afterward his business interests caused him to remove from Scott County to Indianapolis. He was president of the First National Bank fourteen years, and during that time its capital stock was increased to a million dollars. On July 25,1877, he resigned the presidency of the bank, sold his stock in the street railway, and at the time of his death did not own a dollar’s worth of stock in any corporation. His fortune was represented by many judicious investments in real estate not only in Indianapolis but elsewhere.

In the evening of his life Mr. English took up literary work, and he filled his days with continuous and arduous devotion to the tasks of historical compilation. He wrote a comprehensive history of the conquest of the Northwest, and one of the best of the older histories of Indiana, characterized specially by its title page. These works were not completed according to his plans at the time of his death, as he contemplated additional volumes. The History of the Conquest of the Northwest Territory is in two volumes of 1,200 pages. He pays a high tribute to the early pioneers in this valuable work. He imhabed a spirit of admiration for the early settlers while living in Scott county, and spent over $50,000 in collecting information for his history. He was one of the most enthusiastic members of the Indiana Historical Society, and was its president when he died, and by his will he left a substantial sum to carry on the society’s work.

Between 1870 and 1900, Indianians were candidates for President and Vice President in five national elections. Thomas A. Hendricks was the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 1876 and in 1884 he was elected as Grover Cleveland’s running mate. In 1880, William H. English was the candidate for Vice President with Hancock for President. Benjamin Harrison, a Republican was elected President in 1888, but he was defeated for re-election in 1892 by Grover Cleveland.

In 1847, while serving as a clerk in the treasury department at Washington, Mr. English married Miss Emma Mardulis Jackson, of Virginia. She died in 1877. They had two children, a son, William E., and a daughter, Rosalind. Rosalind became the wife of Dr. Willoughby Walling, a prominent physician and surgeon of Chicago, and at one time United States Consul at Edinburgh, Scotland. The two grandsons of William H. English, William English Walling, and Willoughby George Walling, have attained no small measure of distinction, especially the former, a prominent settlement worker, a leader in the socialist party, and a student, writer, and lecturer on many phases of sociology and of Russian affairs, in which country he spent a long period of residence. The other grandson, Willoughby G., was a Chicago banker and well known business man, and was one of the leading officials in the Red Cross organization of the United States.

The nomination for the vice presidency came through the efforts of party leaders who knew the man’s sterling worth and ability. If circumstances had encouraged his continuance in public life he undoubtedly would have gained very high rank, but the disruption of his party and the new alignments produced by the Civil War caused him to prefer a business life.

He amassed quite a fortune by purchasing depreciated bonds issued by Texas as a sovereign government, which subsequently appreciated in value and left him a rich man. The first street car line in Indianapolis was established by him along with other important things he did for the city of Indianapolis.

William H. English had in him the elements that make men successful in the highest degree. It was a career of such well rounded activities and interests that came to a close in the seventy-fourth year of life, on February 7, 1896.

It was to the memory of this distinguished Indianian that a well known street – English Avenue – in Indianapolis was dedicated and his name is also borne by the town of English, the county seat of Crawford County. There are bronze statues of him at English and also at Scottsburg, the county seat of his native county. Many of the nation’s greatest men, including President Grover Cleveland, paid their expressions of tribute and respect to his memory at the time of his death. His body, at the request of the governor, laid in state at the Indiana capital before being laid to rest beside the remains of his wife in Crown Hill cemetery.

Born to wealth and high social position, William Eastin English has proved in every relationship of his career thoroughly worthy of his opportunities and honors.

Born at the old family home, Englishton Park, in Scott County, Indiana, William Eastin English lived there during his early boyhood years, attending in the meantime both private and public schools. After the family went to Indianapolis he completed his education at Northwestern Christian University, now Butler College, and later graduated from the University Law School. After being in the firm by the name of English & Wilson, he gave up law and spent about three years abroad, visiting every country in Europe, from Norway to Greece, and also extending his travels and observations around the Mediterranean, in the Holy Land, Egypt, and North Africa. He owned the English Block, one half built by his father years ago and the other half by himself in 1898, and one of the landmarks of the Indianapolis business district. The English block includes both English’s Opera House and the Hotel English.

Politics has afforded an outlet for some of the most intense activities of his career. He grew up with a firm allegiance to his father’s party and was one of the prominent democrats of Indiana until the great division in that party in 1896. Since then his affiliations have been as a Republican.

Mr. English was a delegate to the Chicago National Democratic Convention of 1892, and in his speech favoring the nomination of Grover Cleveland for president was one of the happiest conceived and best received speeches of the convention. In the National Democratic Convention at Chicago in 1896 he was again a delegate from the Seventh Indiana District. When William J. Bryan was acclaimed the leader of the democratic party Mr. English refused issues, etc., and took no active part in the campaign that followed. In the McKinley and Roosevelt campaign of 1900, he was one of the most popular figures and speakers in all republican gatherings and exercised a great influence in behalf of those candidates throughout the State of Indiana. He accompanied Mr. Roosevelt on his tour of the state. Again in 1904 he canvassed Indiana from one end to the other in behalf of Mr. Roosevelt and his fellow townsmen and neighbor, Charles W. Fairbanks, again accompanying the vice president’s special train over the state. His services as a campaigner were again in demand during 1908, in which year he accompanied President Taft on his speaking tour of the state and was also on the special train of Senator Beveridge and that of James E. Watson, the republican candidate for governor. Mr. English was a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Chicago in 1912.

In 1908 he received 13,000 out of the 16,000 votes cast at the republican county primaries for the office of state senator, and at the general election, ran far ahead of the defeated party ticket. In 1910, again a nominee of the unsuccessful party for state senator, he received the highest vote cast at the primary election of any candidate on the entire republican ticket.

In 1916 he was again nominated unanimously as a candidate for state senator by the republicans of Marion, Hendricks, and Hamilton counties. After a strenuous speaking campaign he was elected by a overwhelming majority of votes, being ahead of his general ticket in each of the three counties.

He was one of the recognized leaders of the Senate during the session of 1917, and was the author of numerous important measures introduced into that body or enacted into law at that session.

Mr. English made a notable record in the Spanish-American War. Soon after the outbreak of that war, notwithstanding his large business interests and other home duties, he was offered appointment by President McKinley as paymaster in the army, with the rank of major, but he declined this in order that he might secure service at the front. May 17, 1898, President McKinley appointed him to the rank of captain of United States Volunteers in the quartermaster’s department. Again he made an urgent personal request for service that would put him on the firing line, and on June 10, 1898, he was assigned to duty as an aide upon the personal staff of Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler, commanding the cavalry division. In that capacity he served throughout the Santiago campaign. He was one of the first soldiers to embark for Cuba, and had the distinguished honor of being the only Indiana volunteer in General Shafter’s entire army. In the bombardment of El Paso hill during the battle of July 1^st before Santiago he was disabled by his horse rearing and falling backward upon with and upon him as the result of a wound from a shrapnel shell. The horse’s shoulder was wounded, several men were killed nearby, and Col. Theodore Roosevelt sustained a slight wound from the same shell. Captain English was crushed beneath the falling horse and was found to be dangerously injured internally. Other complications developed, and the army surgeon soon ordered his immediate removal from Cuba. A short time before he left the island the home newspapers in Indianapolis bulletined his death. After several weeks of suffering and gradual recovery he returned to Indianapolis, where he was given a remarkable demonstration of welcome and personal esteem. As a result of his injury and continued illness Captain English was given an extended sick leave, and was granted his honorable discharge on December 31, 1898. He declined to accept any pay for his services from the government.

Captain English made his permanent home and legal residence at the Hotel English, Indianapolis, where he resided in a handsome apartment of eleven rooms with his only child, his daughter Miss Rosalind English. They spent a great deal of time, however, at their beautiful country residence "Englishton Park," the ancestral home in Scott County, Indiana, which has successively sheltered five generations of the English family, and which comprises some 800 acres within its boundaries.

When William E. English came in possession of the Estate at his father’s death, he decided upon an enlargement and enhancement of the estate by acquiring more land and improving the various buildings. The estate was increased to approximately 800 acres, and farming on a large scale was carried on for several years. The home was remodeled into a twenty-three room Mt. Vernon style mansion, with six bathrooms, an observatory, a spacious porch, a number of restful living rooms, and exquisite bedrooms. A barn of concrete-steel construction, costing $75,000 was erected in 1914, in 100 days, by a large group of laborers, which provided spacious quarters for work animals, as well as a modern dairy. Hewn posts from Grandfather English’s barn were preserved and used in the new barn. A private lighting system, with park lights appropriately located, was installed. Mr. English had his own electrician, Mr. Francis who died in 1947, lived in one of the many tenant houses on the farm and is also where his wife lives today. A 300,000 gallon artificial lake, together with a pump and pump-house, a 15,000 gallon reservoir on a forty foot tower and a lawn watering system, were also provided.

Mrs. Wm. E. English was a landscape gardener of rare ability, and it is due principally to her interest and planning that the present Englishton Park is adorned with the plantings that have transformed it into a place of rare beauty. Practically all of the landscaping as well as the general improvements in buildings and stone fences, has been made since 1910. The rockery near the old spring, the lily pond, the tea houses, the pergola, the pine forest, the maples, the formal garden, and the well lighted concrete tennis court, were planned and executed under the personal direction of Mrs. English. The lawn is one of the best in this section of Indiana, and the variety of plantings is probably unsurpassed in the Hoosier State.

"Rosebud Cottage" the early playtime home of Rosalind Orr English, and daughter of Capt. And Mrs. Wm. E. English, who was killed in an automobile accident in 1925, is very attractive. (Note: According to Cory Walker, Rosalind died December 22, 1924 near Greencastle, Indiana coming from seeing friends in Terre Haute, Indiana.) Rosalind Orr English was married to a very rich man. This marriage was very pleasing to the English family. Later she obtained a divorce from him. Then she fell in love with one of the ushers at the English Opera House. Soon she decided to get married. Just before they were to be married, they both were out driving when the fatal accident occurred.

The dog cemetery, containing the remains of favorite pets of the English is unique. Probably still more unusual is the grave and monument of "Santiago", Capt. English’s war horse, which was shot from beneath his master in the famous charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. After the war was over this noble animal, crippled for life, was given every attention needed for equine comfort until his death at the age of thirty years. Nearby is a simple cottage used by Mrs. English’s grandparents in their declining years. It, too, is modern in every respect. Now it is used by tenants, Wilsons.

Capt. English was an ardent sportsman and enjoyed hunting immensely. The yards and kennels where his valuable dogs were kept bear mute testimony to this fact. A mounting block near the barn, a spring of cold, pure water, giant elms and walnuts, a spaciousness and quiet that are ever refreshing, are among the charms that endear Englishton Park the visitor regardless of class or distinction.

The major portion of the English Block was built in 1880 by William H. English and the southern section was added in 1897 by his son, Capt. William E. English.

The lobby; the ladies writing room with its maze of ornate wooden lattice-work; the open parlor, marble-pillared, deep in a well several stories high, fancy balconies and a skylight above in the English hotel, were described as Indianapolis’s own little Waldorf-Astoria.

Before the English hotel was built on the northwest quarter of the circle, there was this little church, the Second Presbyterian, where Mr. Henry Ward Beecher was pastor from May, 1839, to September, 1847, when he went on to Brooklyn and world-wide fame, where he came out against slavery. And when the Hotel English was built, a brick wall of the church, with its stained glass windows, became part of it.

Off the mezzanine there are the windows – five of them – and the old brick wall of the church. This room can be used as a chapel or an assembly. It was visited by guests at the hotel who recalled that they were married in the little church many years ago.

Since there were 250 rooms in the hotel, it was said that the bellhops were given a compass to get to the rooms in the more remote sections of the three floors. Even the guests were often given guides.

As late as between the years 1865 and 1870, William H. English purchased the entire block for the total amount of $83,777.

In March of 1880 William H. English announced his intention of erecting a first-class theater. At that time there were two "legitimate" theaters in Indianapolis, the Grand and the Park, both under the control of Dickson & Talbott, pioneer theatrical impresarios in the city. For some reason, or no reason, the announcement by Mr. English was received with little enthusiasm by the local press, but he persisted, and on Sept. 27, 1880, English’s Opera House was opened, the play being "Hamlet," with the great tragedian Lawrence Barrett in the title role.

The ‘80s and ‘90s saw perhaps the greatest parade of the great through the old stage door, and what variety there was in that impressive pageant! One week, Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry would regale the local citizenry with matchless Shakespearean delineations – and the next week Buffalo Bill would appear. One week, "Ben Hur" – and the next week, "The Black Crook." The immortal Sarah Bernhart – and the next week "Uncle Tom’s Cabin." The fates seemed to shuffle the theatrical deck thoroughly to provide entertainment to please all mortals. Old-time theater-goers will recall that for many years the State Fair week attraction at English’s was either "Ben Hur" or "Hanlon’s Superba," both especially appealing to the farmer visitors here for the agricultural exhibit.

For nearly 70 years it stood as a sign that Indianapolis was a good place to live, the home of prosperous and cultured people who had the taste, means, and opportunity to enjoy the amenities.

The English play bills announced such memorable events as W. E. Sheridan in "King Lear" and "Othello," Thomas W. Keen in "Richard III," Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in "The Merchant of Venice," Margaret Mather in "Romeo and Juliet," William Gillette in "The Secretary," Mille Rhea in "Much Ado About Nothing." Helen Madjeska in "Macbeth," Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliot in "Caesar and Cleopatra," Donald Brian and Fritzi Scheff in "The Merry Widow," and Ethel Barrymore in "Alice Sit by the Fire."

The stars of today began to rise in the 1920s and 1930s as old stars disappeared one by one.

Helen Hayes became a great lady of the stage in "Mary of Scotland."

A younger Barrymore, Diana, daughter of John, who had played many times at the English, came forward to carry on the family name, if not the old tradition, in "Rebecca."

The English’s last seasons were good ones for an era in which play-going had ceased to be a widely cultivated habit. If the account of these years is sketchy and incomplete, the reason is that a book would be needed to do it full justice – and available records are not as ample as they should be.

The last two attractions were "Lady Windermere’s Fan" in April 1948 and the final performance of "Blossom Time" the night of May 1, 1948.

Rosalind English would have parties in the upstairs of the English hotel which took in several classes at her school and were almost past belief exciting. The little girls couldn’t imagine anything more glamorous than actually living in a hotel right downtown on the Circle – and above all, a hotel with an opera house in it! It always took a long time to get over such metropolitan atmosphere and to become contented again with one’s own plain unexciting domestic surroundings.

Capt. William E. English died from a long period of poor health in 1926. His will specified that the hotel site be used to build a "William E. English Charitable Home" to house offices of local charitables, without charge. Also, the Scott county farm was to be devoted to caring for children from Marion and Scott counties and be named the "Rosalind English Home," in memory of his daughter.

The mortgage on the English block, which was once around $500,000, had been reduced to $160,000 at present and informed persons expect the property to be in the clear by the end of 1946.

In 1948 the William E. English Foundation Building sold the entire English Block to the J. C. Penny Co. Thus the money from this sale made it possible to carry out at least some of the will’s charity provisions.

On December 16, 1952 the non-governmental agencies of Indianapolis and Marion County, those dealing with health and welfare, formerly scattered over the city, moved into their new $1,500,000 headquarters on North Alabama Street.

This building will house 18 private organizations, including Community Chest, local headquarters of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and the various health organizations, including polio. It is the largest building of its kind in any city in the United States and was made possible by the will of the late William E. English.

Mrs. English died shortly after the death of William E., while resting in Florida.

This ended the line of the English family. Since 1700, the name of English has been outstanding in American history and will be remembered in time to come.

By Carl L. Boyd

Sold by the senior class of Lexington Public High School.

Note: Information for this article was obtained from numerous places. Mainly Indiana State Library, newspaper items, and personal testimonies.

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