HANCOCK COUNTY — She found a document, a piece of rare history, by accident. But Bridget Cook Jones knew the paperwork was important as soon as she read the names on the mortgage deed.
Jones, a board member and former president of the Hancock County Historical Society, had stumbled upon a real gem: evidence that the grandparents of the notorious 1930s bank robber, John Dillinger, were from Cumberland.
The find, which Jones discovered on e-Bay, appears to confirm what she and other historians had thought for some time. As history goes, it’s probably more footnote than highlight. But to Jones, it’s a fascinating detail that fills in a blank space of infamous lore surrounding Dillinger, who became Public Enemy No. 1 during a spree of daring bank robberies throughout the Midwest before he was gunned down by G-Men in July 1934 in an alley outside a Chicago theater.
Jones, who frequently gives presentations on local history, had already made progress on research she was doing on Dillinger’s ties to Hancock County. She was casually looking online recently for old documents about history from area communities when she saw two names she recognized on an old mortgage record being offered for sale: Francis H. Lancaster and Adaline Lancaster.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryWhile the names might not have meant anything to someone without a flair for Indiana historical trivia, Jones knew she’d found a golden nugget because the names were a direct link to Dillinger.
“I’d always heard rumors Dillinger’s grandparents had connections here in Hancock County, but you just never know, so I started looking into it thinking maybe there is a grain of truth to it,” Jones said.
She bought the document for less than $20, she said, pretty sure the seller had no idea of their real worth.
Jones first started digging into Dillinger’s family tree a few years ago and found his paternal grandfather, Mathias Dillinger, moved to Hancock County from Germany and married a woman named Mary Brown, a Hancock County woman, in 1863.
She also found out Dillinger’s maternal grandmother, Adaline Snider, who also was from Hancock County, married a man named Francis H. Lancaster. Jones also had discovered Dillinger’s dad, John Wilson Dillinger, was born in Hancock County in 1864; and his mother, Mary Ellen Lancaster, was born in nearby Cumberland in 1870.
“I started looking into all of this because people in Indiana have an interest in Dillinger, and it’s important to know and understand where he came from,” Jones said.
When Jones saw the listings for Francis H. Lancaster and his wife, Adaline, Dillinger’s maternal grandparents, she knew exactly who they were and how they were connected to the Dillinger name, thanks to her studies.
“I think people view history as dry and uninteresting, but that changes when you start seeing names showing that the person was actually here,” Jones said.
She feels 100 percent confident in saying both sets of Dillinger’s grandparents are from the area and that his parents have ties direct ties to Hancock County and Cumberland.
The old paperwork she found, a mortgage property deed, is for Lot No. 3 and Lot No. 6 in Block No. 3 in the town of Cumberland.
Cumberland historian Joni Curtis was also excited when she learned what Jones had found: an important piece of history, a piece of paper any historian would love to have.
“That’s a good find,” Curtis said, noting how finding historical documents with meaning is tough to do nowadays.
As the older population dies, a lot of the stories they know about, including those about people like Dillinger, are dying with them, and without good documentation to capture moments in time like Jones did, they could be lost forever, Curtis said.
“Without documents, it can be hard to separate fantasy from reality,” Curtis said.
And plenty of fantasy surrounds the Dillinger legend. Romanticized as a dashing figure — he robbed banks at the height of the Depression, which made for sensational headlines — he twice escaped from jails and had an uncanny ability to evade capture. Fast getaway cars helped. So did lack of coordination among police agencies. When he was finally shot to death by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago on a steamy night in July 1934, many people swore the victim was an impostor and that Dillinger had escaped. As late as the 1960s, speculation held that Dillinger was still alive.
Names like Ana Sage, who betrayed Dillinger to authorities; and Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who pursued him, became fixtures in popular culture.
And now, according to Cook’s research and her discovery, all those ties trace back to Hancock County and Cumberland.
The mortgage document she found shows Francis H. and Adaline Lancaster were to pay $126.90 to purchase three lots from John E. Whisler. The transaction was recorded June 18, 1878. Francis signed his name. Adaline could not write, Cook said, and only made a mark to represent her name.
Curtis believes the property was located on Main Street, according to an old fire map. Today, lots No. 3 and No. 6 in Block No. 3 in Cumberland are parcels occupied by the Retulled Boutique, located at 11623 East Washington Street in the heart of Cumberland.
Is the Retulled Boutique old enough to be the house the Lancasters lived in? That’s something Jones said she does not yet know.
Jones said records show Francis and Adaline Lancaster, Dillinger’s maternal grandparents, gave birth to Dillinger’s mother in Cumberland.
Jones was ecstatic she found a piece of paperwork showing Dillinger’s maternal grandparents lived there, confirming another local connection to the Dillinger family, she said.
The Lancasters married in Hancock County in 1849 and had several children, Jones said. They were both present first in Center Township, Marion County in 1850, and then in Cumberland in the census records for 1860, 1870, and 1880, Jones said in a report she wrote on her findings.
Dillinger’s mother married his father in Irvington in 1887. They had two children: Audrey, born in 1889, and John, born on June 22, 1903. Dillinger’s mother never recovered from his birth, and died Feb. 2, 1907, Jones said.
Jones hopes her finding is another step in keeping history straight. Many people think Dillinger was a native of Mooresville, she said, because that’s where his father and stepmother were living at the time he began his life of crime. However, Dillinger was raised in Indianapolis. The family moved to Mooresville when Dillinger was 18. Within five years, Dillinger would be in prison for a botched grocery store robbery and plotting revenge against the criminal justice system.
As far as Dillinger’s other connections to the county, Jones said legend has it that he used a house in southeastern Hancock County as a hideout. There are also rumors he frequented a speakeasy near Fortville. Jones said she has not been able to verify any of those claims yet. But, rest assured, she’s hoping to.
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John Dillinger was released from prison in 1933 after serving time for robbery. His career grew to legendary proportions in the decades after his death, but his timeline of crime actually spans only about a year. Here’s a look at key dates:
July 17, 1933: Dillinger robs the Commercial Bank in Daleville, his first bank robbery. The take was $3,500. The building stood vacant in the Delaware County town for many years until it was torn down a decade ago.
Jan. 15, 1934: During a bank heist in East Chicago that netted the Dillinger gang $20,000, a police officer is slain. Dillinger is charged with murder.
Jan. 23, 1934: Dillinger is arrested in Arizona and is extradited to Indiana. Held in the Crown Point Jail, he carves a gun out of a piece of wood using razor blades and bluffs his way out of jail with a hostage at “gunpoint” and into a getaway car. It is the second time he has escaped custody in less than a year.
April 20, 1934: Holed up at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, Dillinger and a group of notorious gunmen – Babyface Nelson among them – exchange gunfire with FBI agents in a shootout that leaves two dead and four people injured. Dillinger escapes.
July 22, 1934: With a $10,000 bounty put in place by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Dillinger tries to lay low in Chicago. He doesn’t know that a friend, Ana Sage, has betrayed him to the FBI. She leads him into a trap outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, where agents gun him down in an alley.
Sources: www.crimemuseum.org; wikipedia
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