Degree Recipient

Life Experience

John Lewis Ketcham was the son of Colonel John Ketcham, who built Ketcham’s Fort between Huff’s Fort and Fort Vallonia in what is now Jackson County, Indiana. Ketcham’s Fort was of vital importance to early settlers for security and safety. From 1813 to 1815, Colonel Ketcham served as a U.S. Mounted Ranger. He was famous among Indiana pioneers as an Indian fighter, considered a hero for his many true stories of bravery, resourcefulness, ingenuity, captivity, and suffering. He was also the founding father of Brownstown, Indiana, and an early inhabitant of Monroe County. Born in 1810, John Lewis Ketcham was only an infant during his father’s heroic military escapades.

Shortly after graduating from IU in 1833, Ketcham moved to the new state capitol of Indianapolis. Seeing public service only once as a single-term justice of the peace, he was considered influential in his era within Indiana society in his own quiet way. He remained active in Indianapolis for the rest of his life; he practiced law in association with N. B. Taylor, Lucian Barbour, D. W. Coffin, and James L. Mitchell at various times.

Ketcham was a founder of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, and co-founder and elder of the Second Presbyterian Church (New School) pastored by Henry Ward Beecher. On a Tuesday afternoon in April of 1869, Ketcham accidentally fell through the hatchway of an Indianapolis grocery store onto the floor of its cellar. Although he recovered his voice and senses, he died that same night. It was quite a shock to Indiana society. His obituary lamented that he had been “called in the vigor of matured powers, in the very prime of his usefulness.”

Marriage and Family

In 1836, Ketcham married Jane Merrill of Indianapolis. Their first child, Samuel, died by the time he was eleven. The rest of his seven children outlived him.

A grandson, Thomas Entriken Hibben, Jr., an engineer in the Bureau of Economic Warfare in World War II, designed the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial and several of the buildings on the Butler University campus. He also served as a technical adviser for U.S. government dealings with Brazil, West Germany, and the Philippines.

Another grandson, James Hibben, was chief of the chemical division of the U.S. Trade Commission. On June 14, 1959, he accidentally fell down the stairway at his home and died the next day of the resulting head injuries. He had been studying atomic radiation.

Interesting Anecdote

An 1833 IU graduate, Ketcham was the subject of much controversy in 1853. He led a successful defense of John Freeman, a prominent, Black Indianapolis businessman in a case tried under the Fugitive Slave Act. Ketcham publicly criticized the court for failing to give security to his client and for failing to let him out on bail “to prove himself to be what the law of nature designed him – a free man.” He tried to correspond by mail with Southerners who had conclusive evidence to clear Mr. Freeman, but the mail was lost or stolen. Finally, Ketcham made the long, arduous trip to Walton County, Georgia, much of it on horseback, to interview witnesses and Mr. Freeman’s former acquaintances personally. Chris Walker wrote,Ketcham helped change the views of previously uncommitted people to oppose slavery, because “in narrowly saving an innocent man’s life, they saw firsthand how the Fugitive Slave Law might be used to kidnap a free man.”

References

1. Wylie
2. Findagrave.com
3. Wikipedia
4. Indiana American 10/13/1837
5. Indianapolis Journal 04/22/1869
6. Bloomington Progress 04/28/1869
7. The Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History 1905 (Vol. 1 #4) pp. 210-211
8. The Washington Post 06/17/1959
9. Walker, Chris (2018) “The fugitive slave case of John Freeman and its influence on Indiana Politics,” Indiana Magazine of History March 2018 (Vol. 114 #1) pp. 1-38