The Children the War Left Behind

Two miles south of Knightstown, on land that once held a mineral springs resort, Indiana built one of the most poignant institutions to emerge from the Civil War: a home for the children that conflict had orphaned.

The story begins with a woman named Susan Fussell. In eighteen sixty-five, while working at a military hospital in Indianapolis, she began caring for a few children whose fathers had died in Union Army service. When the war ended, the soldiers came home, but these children had no one to go home to. Fussell moved with a group of them to Knightstown Springs in Rush County soon after.

In March of eighteen sixty-seven, the State of Indiana assumed control and formalized the institution. It opened its doors to orphaned and destitute children of Union veterans, children whose fathers had been killed in the war or were too disabled to care for their families. At its peak, hundreds of children lived on the campus grounds, attending school in buildings that also housed a dairy farm, a hospital, and dormitory cottages.

As the years passed, the pool of Civil War orphans shrank. Indiana amended the law to admit children of veterans from any American war, extending the home's mission across generations of conflict, through the Spanish-American War, World War One, World War Two, Korea, and beyond. What had begun as an emergency response to one specific catastrophe became a permanent institution for children of military families in need.

The home operated for one hundred forty-four years before finally closing in two thousand nine. The campus buildings still stand just off the road, a quiet reminder that wars produce casualties long after the last shot is fired.