Remember When
Remember When.
What a place was. What it became. Who remembers it. What is there today.
A place can hold more than one story.
Photos, buildings, businesses, traditions, and the memories attached to them.
Then
An old photo, business, building use, tradition, or remembered moment.
Voices
Neighbors add memories in their own words.
Change
What happened to the place, and what people wondered along the way.
Now
The current place and the stories connected to it today.
The Herald
Same corner: North Main Street, then and now
Different Batesville North Main Street — then and now
Community histories
The whole story, as neighbors remember it.
French's Meat Market
Batesville's deer-processing headquarters, lost to fire on March 6, 2019 — and the future home of the Kid's Discovery Factory.
Before it was Weiler's Hobo Hut, it was the Hum-Dinger
One Batesville drive-in, four names, and a whole lot of Saturday nights.
The Oldenburg Convent Wall & the Pigeon-Powered Smokestack
Coal-fired boilers, a wall around the convent grounds, and what lives in the smokestack now.
The Hillindale Crossing
Batesville's long history with the train that always seems to wait until you're 50 yards away.
Laurel & the Long Branch
A small town understood through the people who lived it — the Long Branch, Haspin Acres, and the old high school.
“Every Good Citizen Should Buy, Build, Believe in Batesville.”
A 1927 Historical Center find — and the families still living it.
Dave Krause
Lifelong Batesville guy. Firefighter. The kind of person who simply shows up.
Same Corner, Different Batesville
North Main Street, then and now — and everything the old photo still remembers.
Before it was the Ward School, it was the East Side Grade School
A circa-1916 schoolhouse, one beloved kindergarten teacher, and a whole town's worth of five-year-olds.
When I-74 Came Through Batesville
A 1962 aerial, fourteen acres of one family's farm, and the four-way stop that used to be there.
The View from the Smokestack
A 1912 photograph, a power plant that lit the town, and the neighbors who caught the direction wrong.
Same Street: East George Street
One downtown block, a hundred years apart — and the store names a whole town still remembers.
Batesville's Furniture Makers
Union Furniture on West George Street, the Casket Company on South Street, and the factories that made Batesville a furniture town.
Batesville on the Move
From Oberting’s race track to four lanes on Highway 46 — the roads, bridges, and rail crossings that moved Batesville.
Batesville’s Storefronts
The shops, saloons, stables, and storefronts of downtown Batesville — the businesses the old photographs remember.
Batesville's Old Water Tower
The tower Darrick grew up looking at, taken down piece by piece on April 15, 2024 — photographed by his mom, Wanda Cox, from her backyard.
Batesville's Memorials
Every memorial in Batesville, walked in one morning by Darrick Cox and his son Cameron on Veterans Day 2026.
Climbing the Batesville Water Tower
Darrick Cox climbs 150 feet up the downtown Batesville water tower — the ascent, the view from the top, and the story in his own words. Three towers, two days: the climb, the I-74 tower from the inside, and the 1981 tower seen from home.
Batesville's Newspapers
From the Prairie Farmer to the Herald-Tribune — the town's papers, told by the papers themselves.
Margaret Mary Hospital
The hospital on the hill — ninety beds, twenty bassinets, and a chapel built for a golden anniversary.
Postcards from Batesville
The town as it sold itself by mail — bird's-eye views, greetings, Hillcrest, and a lodge nobody has named yet.
Batesville's Schools
The public school, the high school, and a grade school — postcards from before the consolidations.