The Marshall County Historical Society is sponsoring a Brown Bag Lunch & Lecture Event on Friday, June 21st, from Noon – 1:00 p.m. at the Culver-Union Township Public Library at 107 North Main Street in Culver. This special encore presentation is in partnership with the Culver Historical Society and the library.
The Very Reverand John Houghton, Ph.D., will present “Daniel McDonald, Al Toner, and the Vandalia Railroad.”
Best known for sponsoring the Chief Menominee statue and for writing two early histories of Marshall County, Daniel McDonald was a child pioneer, newspaper editor, and politician. It is said that he had his finger in every pie, including a hunting and fishing club and lodge placed strategically on the north bluff of Lake Maxinkuckee.
Albert Toner owned a bank, hotel, opera house, livery stable, and mill in Kewanna, as well as three blocks of its downtown. Like McDonald, he served in the state legislature. Lucerne, in Cass County, was briefly named “Altoner,” in honor of Toner’s work to route the Terre Haute and Logansport Railway through the village.
In 1882 and 1883, these two local “big shots” worked together to bring the Terre Haute and Logansport (later the Vandalia) Railroad through Marmont, now Culver, and on through Plymouth to South Bend.
Dean emeritus of the Alumni Chapel of The Hill School, Pottstown, PA, Houghton has been speaking and writing about Culver history since 1974, and his fantasy novel trilogy, The Thaumaturge of Annandale, is set in a fictional version of the town, founded by his family in 1844. He has represented his four-times-great uncle, John Houghton, and Bishop Simon Bruté in MCHS Ghost Walks, and spoke at a Brown Bag last year on “Alexis Menominee, Benjamin Marie Petit and the French Mission to the Potawatomi.” A life member of the MCHS, a serving board member, and a life member of the Society of Indiana Pioneers, he serves on the board of the Wythougan Preservation Council and is vice president of the Culver Historical Society. Dean Houghton is a 1971 graduate of CMA and holds degrees from Harvard, IU, Yale, and Notre Dame. He and his dog, Beda, live in the house he grew up in, on Houghton Street in Culver.
Pack a lunch and join us as Houghton tells the real story behind the collaboration that changed both Culver and Plymouth forever. For more information, please call 574-936-2306.
