Randolph  County,  Indiana

Allen  Hiatt


            One of the notable institutions of Randolph county is the  James Moorman Orphans' Home, situated two miles west of Winchester in the midst of a beautiful tract of 174 acres. The institution was endowed by  James Moorman October 8, 1888, and is in charge of  Allen R. Hiatt, of Winchester. No better choice, it seems, could have been made of a superintendent, for under the fostering care of  Mr. and Mrs. Hiatt the home has become everything that such a home should be. The children are healthy and happy, and that is the best evidence of the ability and devotion of the superintendent and his wife. The little orphans under their charge are treated as carefully and tenderly as they ever treated their own children. The home has become famous throughout the state, and that which has given it its reputation is the character of the children taken from it. The labors of Mr. and Mrs. Hiatt here proceed equally from the head and heart, and that is why they are so eminently successful.
            Allen R. Hiatt, the son of  Amos and  Martha (Robertson) Hiatt, was born in Randolph county, April 30, 1860, and is therefore fifty-four years of age, just in the prime of his mature manhood. He is one of a family of seven children, the names of whom are Hannah C., the wife of  William T. Roszell, a Randolph county farmer; James C., a builder of Winchester, who married Lizzie Ferman; Charles, a Minnesota farmer, who married Mary Cox; Rosa Elmeda, the wife of  Nelson Culbertson, of Albany; Mary Elizabeth, who died at the age of eight years; our subject, Allen R.; and Ella, who died at thirty-seven. The latter was the wife of James Reitnour and left three children.
            The ancestors of the Hiatt family in Indiana were the Van Hiatts of Wales. Four brothers came together to this country and from these the present family sprang. In the course of time the Van was dropped, the name assuming the simple form of Hiatt. The name is now quite common in the nomenclature of American cognomens. Amos Hiatt, the father of the subject of this review, was born on a farm in Guilford county, North Carolina, and has been a farmer all his life. He was married twice, and by his first wife, nee Bales, he had five children-John Wesley, who died in the army; Samuel Martin, Louisa, Melissa and Evaline.
            February 10, 1883, Allen R. Hiatt was married to Emma E. Trueblood, daughter of  Jonathan Trueblood, a farmer of Blackford county. Six children were born to them, only two of whom are living. The eldest,  Edith May, married  Ottis Hoskinson, an Adams county farmer, and has one child, Helen Louise, born May 16, 1913; the son, Lawrence Douglas, born in October, 1892, is with his father on the farm. The other children died in infancy.
            Mr. Hiatt took up the business of farming equipped with a liberal education of the local schools, and this he has enlarged by application in various branches of information. Anything pertaining to the advancement or more scientific treatment of his business he is especially interested in. It is by adopting the methods of such advanced farmers as Mr. Hiatt that farming has been brought up to its present great productive capacity. He believes in the application of scientific methods, making of farming a more intellectual occupation. To him it is something of an ideal, presenting equal advantages for both mental and physical culture. Mr. Hiatt is a member of the Christian church and is a Progressive in politics. And in both church and political matters he takes a deep interest. All beneficent and charitable enterprises of the church receive his hearty approval and assistance. He is not one of those confirmed pessimists who believe that the church has lost its spirituality and has declined into a mere practical and material organization, but that it has all the vigor of its palmy days and is growing in potentiality. The Progressive movement, Mr. Hiatt considers essential to the development of political and social conditions.
Past and Present of Randolph County, Indiana, 1914.
Contributed by Gina Richardson

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