From the Files of the Kosciusko County Historical Society

Editor’s note: This is a retrospective article that runs a few times a month on InkFreeNews.

Information for this retrospective series is courtesy of the Kosciusko County Historical Society.

September 1992 — With the addition of more than 30 inmates to the population of the Kosciusko County Jail Wednesday, Sheriff Al Rovenstine said, “We’re past crowded.”

Thirty-six people were arrested and booked into the jail early Wednesday morning following a drug bust by area law enforcement agencies that netted suspects from Kosciusko, Noble and Elkhart counties.

Fifteen of those arrested were released from custody after posting bond.

The jail has an official capacity of 65 and, as of this morning, 108 inmates are being housed and fed there. Another 29 people, who are part of the county’s work release program, are required to have meals furnished by the jail. Overcrowding has been an ongoing problem at the jail since 1989.

Sept. 11, 1969 — Underground newspapers are expected to hit Kosciusko County schools at the beginning of this term. Last year, SDS and SDA (radical student groups) literature was found in possession of one WCHS youngster hooked on drugs. 

Declaration was that radical movements, through underground “newspapers,” would move from colleges down into high schools. This week, a scurrilous sheet called “Hydrogen Revolution” was passed out at Wawasee High School. It was an anti-establishment affair, mimeographed outside school, but distributed by students. Wawasee authorities promise prompt action if students are caught distributing any more, but similar publications are expected to break out in other schools as subversive anti-establishment agitation begins in high schools.

1828 — Thomas Thomas, grandfather of Creed Thomas, of Winona Lake, came to Indiana in 1828 and was the county’s first clerk. When Thomas came to Indiana, he lived in Elkhart County, which at that time included Kosciusko, then a township. He moved to Warsaw with his son, Charles W. Thomas, father of Creed Thomas, local insurance man, in 1861 and died in 1886. He was the county’s last veteran of the War of 1812.

– Compiled by InkFreeNews reporter Lasca Randels