The Owensboro Messenger, July 3, 1935

Article was typed as it was worded in the newspaper.

Lincoln Village at Rockport To Be Dedicated Thursday

Rockport, Ind., July 2.—Dedication of the "Lincoln Pioneer Village" here July 4, is expected to draw a large crowd to this city so closely associated with the youthful years of Abraham Lincoln. A replica of the usual frontier settlement, a cluster of log huts, has been built on a part of the old fair grounds. Four acres, set apart for the Lincoln village, are enclosed in a high stockade, patterned after the defensive methods of the early settlers to ward off Indian attacks.

George Honig, Rockport sculptor and Lincoln historian, was the designer of and director in the construction of the village. He has given to the project his time since the first of the year. The labor has been furnished by the local relief office. With the exception of an 85-year-old log house donated by Henry Hock the cabins are made of logs cut in nearby woodlands and hauled to the site. The Hoch house was torn down and reerected within the stockade, a two-story log house of the style much used in pioneer days.

Among the houses reproduced are the village store, church, school house, homes of pioneers, and the program for next Thursday includes the occupation of each unit by persons chosen especially for their parts. Some of those are descendants of the pioneers who settled in what is now Spencer county coincident with the migration of the Lincolns and other Kentucky families more than a century ago.

Mrs. Bess V. Ehrmann, president of the Spencer County Historical society, which is sponsoring the project, will be chairman at the afternoon exercises to begin at 2:30. A parade to form down town at 10 o’clock will open the dedication day program. The McGuffey club will meet at 1 o’clock under direction of J. Roy Strickland, Owensville business man and newspaper columnist, outside the school house under a brush arbor.

Invitations have been sent to Govs. Paul V. McNutt, Indiana; Ruby Laffoon, Kentucky; Henry Horner, Illinois, and to Indiana’s United States Senators Sherman Minton and Frederick Van Nuys, and Congressman John W. Boehne, of this district. The village will be formally dedicated by Honig, the sculptor and builder.