Chris Flook

The late Phil Ball wrote often about local history for The Star Press and seemed perennially interested in the whereabouts of lost Muncie artifacts. For instance in 2000, in his usual jocular prose, Ball wrote “I want to bring up the problem of the statue of Charles Willard...I hope most of you recall the heroic statue of this legendary Muncie pioneer was unceremoniously ripped out of its niche in the Willard Building...during demolition.”

Ball was referring to a statue that once stood in the third-story alcove of the Willard Building located at the intersection of Main and Walnut streets, approximately where the Old National Bank drive-through is today. The statue remained at this location for 75 years until its removal precisely at 1:45 p.m. on Monday, July 3, 1961.

The statue was of an early Muncie businessman, Charles Frances Willard. Willard was born on Sept. 27, 1812 in Charlestown, New Hampshire. At the age of 15, he migrated to Dayton, Ohio, and worked as a clerk for a merchant named David Stone. Stone also had a controlling stake in a general store in Muncie that was managed by Thomas Kirby. In 1831, Stone sent Willard to work with Kirby and acquire furs, ginseng and other goods that could be sent back to Dayton. After four months, Willard bought out Stone’s interest and became Kirby’s junior partner. The two operated in a brick building on the same northeast corner at Main and Walnut.

Willard later partnered with Frederick Putnam in the venture and eventually operated the store on his own. He sold the business to Moses Neely in 1848, but retained ownership of the building. Willard had eight children: Emily, Frances, Emma, George, Charles, Florence, Mary, and Rosewell. After moving to Ohio to live with his son, Charles Willard died on Nov. 30, 1871.

Willard’s family inherited the property and in 1886, his children tore down the old brick mercantile shop and built a more elaborate, three-story structure in its place. Construction was completed in 1887 and the first tenant was the Muncie Federal Savings and Loan Association.

To honor their father, the Willard family commissioned Duncan Russell to sculpt a statue of Charles to adorn the front of the building. Working from a sandstone block, Russell’s sculpture stood almost 8 feet high. The statue depicts a noble, fully bearded Charles Willard dressed in a Prince Albert coat, with his right hand on his lapel, while his left rests on a tree stump. The statue was estimated to weigh 1,600 pounds.

In 1934, ownership of the Willard Building passed to Muncie-People’s Savings and Loan Association. The association planned to replace the statue with an electronic sign, but the idea was later nixed as they believed the statue was carved into the building (it wasn’t; a simple metal dowel held it in place).

In the 1960s, the American National Bank purchased the building and hired the John Harty Wrecking Company to tear it down. Harty completed demolition in 1961 and kept the statue at his house on 16th Street. Harty once remarked to the press that Willard “will be the only statue in Shedtown.”

Then woosh, like the Ark of the Covenant, the statue of Charles Willard disappeared from history. In the 1980s, Phil Ball began writing about it and circulated the rumors that Willard was spotted in Tennessee. The topic became of interest to other Munsonians including the late Edmund F. Petty, president of Ball Stores. Perhaps channeling his inner Indiana Jones, Petty tracked down the statue at a flea market in the Volunteer State. The owner refused to part with Willard, even after Petty offered a substantial sum. Then sometime in the late 1980s, the statue of Charles Willard disappeared again.

In 2011, the whereabouts of the statue became of deep interest for one of our board members at the Delaware County Historical Society, Bob Good.

Good spent years searching for Willard and then finally, in fall of 2016, he discovered it sitting in the courtyard of the Chattanooga Choo Choo Historic Hotel and Terminal Station Museum in Tennessee! Apparently, some Chattanoogans are under a false impression that the statue is of either a Confederate general, or the executed Union Army scout and spy James J. Andrews.

The statue is neither; it’s Charles Frances Willard of Muncie, Indiana.

Visit the links below to compare the two.

Chattanooga: https://goo.gl/74vtCF

Muncie: https://goo.gl/ZuuWfa

One day, perhaps, our Southern friends will find it in their hearts to send Mr. Willard back, or in the words of Dr. Ball, “Willard’s statue…should, even at this late date, be repatriated back to its homeland, namely Muncie.”

Chris Flook is the president of the Delaware County Historical Society and is the author of "Native Americans of East-Central Indiana." For more information about the Delaware County Historical Society, visit delawarecountyhistory.org.