Brown County Booster

~by Mark Blackwell

A booster is a person or group who promotes a town, city, or area in order to improve public perception. One way to create boosters of a place is for the elected officials to establish a visitors bureau. Another way is for somebody to take an interest in a place, develop a genuine affection for it, and then take it upon themselves to publicize the virtues of said place.

Boosterism has been with us, practically, since the dawn of time. It probably got started right after the second village was established. I can see it now, “Come on over to New Ur, the rocking chair of Mesopotamia,” or, “Your gonna love Babylon! We’re building a tower and the sky’s the limit.”

One of the peaks of boosterism in this country was during the 1920s.

In 1922, Sinclair Lewis published his novel, Babbitt. It’s about a businessman, George Babbitt, although disillusioned by his rather mediocre life, goes through the motions of conforming to and even “boostering” the small-town ethos in Zenith, a fictional midwestern town.

Boosterism can sometimes reinforce egocentric tendencies, but it can also advance culture and enhance the environment of a place when it is done out of love with benevolence to better the lives of the inhabitants of a particular place.

Boosters often agitate for better schools, parks, and libraries. These civic-minded citizens look around and point out the unique virtues of their areas and strive to present them to the public.

For Brown County in the 1920s, that person was Mabel E. Sturtevant.

I first ran across Mabel in a reproduction of a 1920s Brown County travel brochure entitled, Picturesque Brown County Indiana; General Guide to Points of Interest; Six Side Trips; Thirteen Outlined Routes Over Graveled Roads; 24 Represented Views; Road Map, published by The Indiana League of Counties (January 1, 1925) Mabel E. Sturtevant for The Indiana League of Counties.

It is a dandy little guidebook consisting of 60 pages, 24 of them illustrated with photographs and a bonus map of the county. Putting it together was no small undertaking, and from what I can tell Ms. Sturtevant did it mostly herself.

The “side trips” and the “thirteen outlined routes” had to have been traveled firsthand and that was no small venture in 1925. The roads were deeply rutted and full of potholes in dry weather and very close to impassable in rain or snow. Outside of Nashville there were very few opportunities for gasoline or mechanical assistance.

The “AAA” did not exist and there were darned few roadside amenities. But according to the travel guide, “Here one meets the hills-people in their homely surroundings and sociable moods. Into these unpretentious log homes of plain, simple, hospitable people those who approach in the right spirit are welcomed.”

The next time I came across Ms. Sturtevant was when I discovered the first 1929 issue of the Hoosier Magazine. She wrote articles for and edited that issue dedicated to Brown County.

She also wrote a book of Native American folklore entitled Tepee Smoke and Hill Haze.

But beyond these accomplishments Mabel E. Sturtevant remains a mystery.

I have done a reasonable search for Ms. Sturtevant’s biography with little success. I have not even been able to locate a birth record or an obituary for her.

Perhaps this is a case where her works must speak for her life, and she will live on in Brown County history as one of its earliest and most ardent boosters.