Shelbyville Road Farm History, part I

Today, we bring you one of Sylvia Henricks’ “Remembrances.” You can read more of Sylvia’s columns weekly in The Franklin Township Informer, or in her book From The Ash Grove (available directly from the FTHS, and via the web site).

“You can see three counties from the top of that hill,” I remember a neighbor telling me about a nearby farm. An elderly widowed farm-wife lived in the small brick house, surrounded by an assortment of aging barns and outbuildings. I live near the site, but well below the hill, and had taken a photo of the hilltop scene from the end of the lane on Shelbyville Road. It has been one of my favorite photographs.

Now, 30 years later, all is changed. The farm has been gone for a long time, and the fields around it turned into Franklin Parke Estates, with its streets winding across the one-time fields. The hilltop remains, but is now the site of two handsome homes.

The new owner of one of the houses, Scott Verbarg, having seen my photograph of “The Klasing Farm,” asked me if the Township Historical Society had any information on what is now his property. I said I’d see what I could find.

I have been able to find a few items of interest. In the Society’s publication Historic Treasures of Franklin Township (1978 ) is a paragraph on page72 by an unsigned contributor, “Klasing History.” “Christian Klasing and his wife, Sophie (Kirkoff), came to the U.S. from Germany as children near the middle of the 1800’s.

“They were married in Indianapolis and in 1884 bought their 140 acre farm located at 7245 Shelbyville Road, presently owned by Mr. and Mrs. Allen Cary. The farm was purchased for approximately $8000 from Fred (Butch) Miller who had cleared all except forty acres of the  land and built all the buildings that now stand on the farm.

“William Klasing (92) is the only living survivor of five boys and three girls in the Christian Klasing family. William owns seventy acres of the land which his mother and father bought, located at 7448 E. Southport Road.” Property lines and acreage can be seen in Section 13 on the 1889 Franklin Township map, one of the Society’s publications.

(To be continued in a future “Remembrances”)