Marion County, Indiana - Chapter 20: Centre Township, 1884

Although the city of Indianapolis covers but about twelve of the forty-two sections in Centre township, the history of the city is so largely that of the township that there is little to say of the latter that will not be a repetition. The settlements which have become little towns are merely the natural accretions of residence about a factory or mill, or an industry of some kind that belongs to the city, and they are really as much a part of it as the squares cornering on the Circle. What history and business they have independently can be soon told. The township was associated with Warren from its first organization, in the spring of 1822, to the 1st of May, 1826, and the records called the combination Centre- Warren township. After this separation the township and the town were one till the independent organization of the latter, Sept. 3, 1832. Then the outside area began to have a little consciousness of a legal existence. It has never had much more. The population in 1880 was five thousand five hundred and ninety-two, and is probably seven thousand now. Of this number, Brightwood contains six hundred and seventy-nine, part of Irvington eighty-nine, and Woodruif Place twenty. The population of West Indianapolis, formerly Belmont, is not stated, as the town was not organized when the census was taken. Haughsville is in Wayne township, and Brookside and Indianola belong to the city, and North Indianapolis is not organized. So there is no way to learn accurately the distribution of this outside population.

There are four divisions of the surrounding area. Washington and Meridian Streets are the dividing lines, and all inside of the city limits is taken off, leaving a rim of territory round each quarter of the city in the corners. Each of these sections is divided into two precincts for voting purposes. Each is a road district, and has its own supervisor, under the general supervision of the township trustee. There are thirteen schools in these four sections, with about thirty teachers. Two of these are colored schools, - No. 11, in the northeast, and No. 5, in the southeast. A colored class is taught in No. 10, North Indianapolis. In Nos. 7 and 4 a German school is maintained in connection with the regular schools ; that is, such portions of each school as wish to study German, or to pursue their general studies in that language, are given the services of a teacher, who separates them temporarily from the others and gives them instruction as he would do if they had a school wholly to themselves. The German language is studied by a number of the colored pupils at No. 10 and other schools. Teachers' institutes are held monthly to assist the teachers by discussions of subjects connected with their occupation.

The churches are not numerous in these outlying sections. The city is so convenient and so much more likely, as a rule, to have a more interesting class of services, that the church attendance of a considerable portion of the township is taken to the city, to the damage of the home influence and the depreciation of church property. There are two churches at Brightwood, one Catholic and one Methodist ; one in Belmont, or used to be ; and one that may be still kept up on the Shelby ville road, near the McLaughlin place, the religious training-school of Rev. Greenly H. McLaughlin, one of the few now living who can remember Indianapolis from the year it was laid out until to-day.

In the chapter on " Charities" is a statement by the township trustee of the pauper account during the first month of this year. The total payments on this account are nearly eighteen hundred dollars, or at the rate of over twenty-one thousand dollars a year. This, the trustee says, is an unfair indication. The pauper expense of January was double that of the average monthly outlay. The year's total will not reach ten thousand dollars. During the winter of 1874-75 there were eighteen hundred persons, many with families, supported by the township, and the annual outlay was four times what it is now. But that was the worst season for the extent of pauperism ever known in this country. The township trustee takes care of several abandoned or abased children in the course of the year at the different asylums.