Greencastle

Greencastle, a city and the county-seat of Putnam county, Indiana, U.S.A., about 38 m. W. by S. of Indianapolis and on the Big Walnut river. Pop. (1900) 3661; (1910) 3790. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis, the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, the Vandalia, and the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern (electric) railways. It has manufactures of some importance, including lumber, pumps, kitchen-cabinets, drag-saws, lightning-rods and tin-plate, is in the midst of a blue grass region, and is a shipping point for beef cattle. The city has a Carnegie library and is the seat of the de Pauw University (co-educational), a Methodist Episcopal institution, founded as Indiana Asbury University in 1837, and renamed in 1884 in honour of Washington Charles de Pauw (1822-1887), a successful capitalist, banker and glass manufacturer. The total gifts of Mr de Pauw and his family to the institution amount to about $600,000. Among the presidents of the university have been Bishop Matthew Simpson, Bishop Thomas Bowman (b. 1817), and Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes (b. 1866), all of the Methodist Episcopal church. The university comprises the Asbury College of Liberal Arts, a School of Music, a School of Art and an Academy, and had in 1909-1910 43 instructors, a library of 37,000 volumes, and 1017 students. Greencastle was first settled about 1820, and was chartered as a city in 1861.

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