Irvington

Indiana · United States · Church

A house on the circle, added onto until it became a church. Irvington has a darker claim on the record than the one usually told about it.

Irvington was founded in the 1800s and is now a neighbourhood of Indianapolis, laid out with curving streets around a central circle.

The church on that circle began as a house and was built onto over the years.

The story told locally is that a slave owner lived there, with the people he held.

That cannot be right as stated. Indiana entered the Union as a free state in 1816 and slavery was never lawful here, though the state passed some of the harshest laws in the north against Black settlers, and free Black families in Indiana lived under constant threat of being seized and sold south.

Irvington's actual claim on the record is worse and is documented. In 1894 the murderer H H Holmes killed a child in a rented house in this neighbourhood, and the discovery of the body here was part of what unravelled him.

The circle and the streets around it are residential and the church is in use.

FAQ

Where is Irvington located?

Irvington is in Indiana, United States.

Image: Nyttend / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons