Excerpts from letter written by Edgar Inman addressed to his niece,
Catherine Inman Heironimus, Daughter of Otis Inman

Dear Catherine, Roy and family:

...l have old time photos of my grandparents on both sides of my family, the Inmans and the Bakers. We are descended from John. He is buried in the Indian Creek Cemetery. He and his brother came to Territory of Indiana in 1813. They came from either North or South Carolina....Other persons and families came from the Carolinas, some of them settling in the same locality, namely Indian Creek Locality....My grandfather, "Billy" Baker, was a pioneer preacher of the Primitive Baptist Church, later turning over to the Baptist Missionary Church....He traveled all over southern Indiana as a circuit rider preacher. He raised his family in Lawrence County, the Indian Springs locality. The families coming from southern states passed up settling in the White river bottoms lands, near Williams, Indiana, because the river bottoms were too swampy so they looked for a place to settle, up some tributary of the White River, selecting the Indian Creek tributary which was much more deep and abounding than it is now. So many of the people now and in the past, of Indian Creek localities, were distantly related as so many of them came from same localities from the Carolinas.

My daughter Mildred and her husband have lived in the south for years, the last few years in Atlanta, Georgia...Mildred traveled all over the southern states representing a school book publishing company in New York....She told me that she has been in every county seat in South Carolina...and that the woods are full of Inmans in South Carolina, some not too high class and some very high class, especially over in Atlanta. The Inmans back before the Civil War helped to plan and build Atlanta....There are schools, churches, streets and boulevards and a shopping center named Inman in Atlanta. One of the very biggest colonial estates in Atlanta was owned by an Inman family...a vast estate with large and far reaching landscaped grounds....

One of the old time Inmans that my father told us children about was Eph Inman. Raised as a hillbilly, he went to Indiana University carrying a jug of whiskey and wearing cowhide boots. That is all true because a noted doctor in Indianapolis told Ray and Maysie that he was the roommate of Eph at that time. Later he became one of the most noted criminal lawyers in the State of Indiana. I knew his brother-in-law in Bloomington, much older than I was at that time..

A pair of German brothers, jewelers in Bloomington years ago, knew Ray and me. When either of us were in the store, they would mention the "old Inman Steamship Line" plying between Germany and the U. S....In years past...l have noted that Inmans coming to this country, more of them came from England than from Germany....

Your father Otis died while I was in France during the first World War. I did not know of it until arriving back in U.S. within the following month. I know the history from Brother Ray of the terrible flu sickness of your Dad and Mother in Terre Haute. Ray did everything he possibly could do to save the life of Otis. Brother Oscar and Ola also went to Terre Haute, both of them coming down with the flu after arriving....Ray scoured the country trying to find a nurse to go to the assistance of your parents. Your wonderful relative, Miss Nancy Fry, was then in charge of the Bloomington Hospital and being so terribly busy with the flu epidemic, did not know that Ray was looking for a nurse. She said afterwards, "Oh, if I had only known. I would have dropped everything and gone there." Ray told me that in the condition Otis was in that he did not have a chance to get well. Your mother and Harry were being cared for other than with Otis. Best they could do in those terrible times....


Submitted by Gene Inman