Will Higgins

will.higgins@indystar.com

People are stunned after an odd, iconic statue that has stood in a remote corner of Brown County since before the Civil War was desecrated.

Carved from sandstone by an early Indiana settler named Henry Cross and known as Stone Head, the statue was erected to give travelers directions. Carved onto its 2-foot-tall base were directions to nearby towns. On top of the base was a likeness of a human head.

The head was lopped off some time during the first week of November. Not only that, it is missing.

"It is so very sad to lose the Stone Head," said Alice Lorenz, a longtime county resident and local historical society official who during the 1970s and 1980s owned the statue and the land around it.

Said Don Ford, a local musician and longtime resident: "I'm concerned about old things in the county. That's just ridiculous people would steal that head."

Stone Head has met with foul play before, Lorenz said. In 1974 the entire piece, the base and the head, came up missing, Police found it four months later in an apartment in Indianapolis. Two teenagers were using it as a hat rack, according to a story published in the Brown County Democrat.

When the statue was returned to Brown County, the local historical society, counting itself lucky, proposed to move Stone Head to the safety of Nashville, the county seat. "The next time the statue might not come back, or it might be broken," George Kissling, the group's president, told The Indianapolis Star.

A replica was made. The plan, Lorenz said, was to put the replica at the original, remote location and put the original in a museum in Nashville. "But people said, 'No, it should be where it always was,'" Lorenz said.

The Stone Head's decapitation is one of three recent acts of vandalism in Brown County that police are investigating.

On Oct. 17 a covered bridge built outside Bean Blossom in 1880 was marked up with graffiti. "SW & CW 4 EVA," a person or persons scrawled on it with white paint. County officials quickly painted over the sweet if ill-placed sentiment.

On Nov. 12, some far more threatening graffiti appeared on the walls of St. David's Episcopal Church, also in Bean Blossom: a swastika, "Heil Trump" and an unprintable anti-gay slur.

The Brown County Sheriff's Department is investigating all three incidents, Chief Deputy Brad Stogsdill said. "People are trying to make more out of this than there is," he said. "I think it's three separate incidents."

There have been no arrests.

Call IndyStar reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter: @WillRHiggins.

A vote for change: Denim is now OK