While growing into womanhood, Indiana admired her father, Elijah Fletcher, more than
anyone else. Very early she fell under his influence and tried to emulate him in all
things. Her father was a bright, strong-minded, just, determined, educated, and ambitious
man, but his early background was marginal at best. One of fifteen children of a poor
Ludlow, Vermont, farming family, Elijah learned the work ethic early. He realized at a
young age that education was the only way out of a poverty-plagued background. He went
from the village school in Ludlow to Middlebury College at age sixteen and worked his way
through. By his final year, he saw that education was to be his future, so he transferred
to the nearby University of Vermont where he earned a teaching degree. Middlebury did not
offer one. The field of education was thereafter of lifelong interest to Elijah. He was
eventually enormously successful in business, publishing, farming, investing, and land
speculation, and he saw to it that his four children had the best educations that he could
provide for them in their formative years.
Elijah's two sons were both graduates of Yale University. Sidney later became a medical
doctor; Lucian a lawyer. Indiana and Elizabeth both graduated from Georgetown Visitation
Convent in Washington, D.C. with honors. Elijah called it the 'nunnery,' but it was
considered the best school for girls in the east in the 1840s. The Fletchers were not
Catholic, but they placed education above formal religion. They were staunch Episcopalians
and supported their churches of St. Paul's in Lynchburg in Ascension in Amherst.
Indiana was not happy at the convent school, but she studied hard and years later she told
Elizabeth Payne, "The Catholics tried to proselyte me but they failed. I did not like
their ways, and I oppose their methods."
The nuns were especially strict at Georgetown, and Indiana's small rebellions caused her
extra hardship, work and some demerits. For quite some time after she entered the school
in 1840, she was grievously homesick and wrote home complaining and miserable. Her
father's answer from Lynchburg was, "You have greater opportunities than you could
possibly have here and you know how anxious your brothers are that you should be a learned
and accomplished lady. Cheer up and do not despond. Commence your studies in good earnest
and at the end of six months, if you say that you are not satisfied, I will come and see
you." She obviously settled down so as not to disappoint her father.
Indiana's most serious infraction in the eyes of the nuns was the use of the Episcopal
Prayer Book rather than the Catholic. She was discovered using her own book at service.
The nuns felt this tantamount to insurrection. Indiana survived to graduate with honors.
Her grades are still on file at Georgetown University as well as her courses of study.
It is recorded that she took courses in history, botany, chemistry, philosophy,
mathematics, astronomy, French, Latin, English composition and grammar, as well as harp,
oil painting, and tapestry. Her Ticket of Merit in Bookkeeping undoubtedly served her well
in later years as her bookkeeping and records of financial transactions were in excellent
shape before her death.
At this period in 19th-century America, when the majority of women received little or no
education, this background would have set Indiana apart from most of her female
contemporaries as well as male. This is no doubt the reason that she "loved New York
above all places," a statement that she made in writing to her friend Elizabeth Payne
in 1898. She had many intellectually stimulating contacts there.
Indiana and her sister Elizabeth spent several winters with the Kirkland family in New
York before the Civil War. The family was the center of a prominent literary circle.
Caroline M. Stansbury Kirkland was an authoress of some renown in her day, and her home
was the gathering place for the New York literati. Mrs. Kirkland's two daughters became
good friends of the Fletcher sisters. During the Civil War, Indiana managed to get letters
through the lines to Elizabeth "Lizzie" Kirkland, Caroline's daughter in
Danville, Illinois. Letters were sent through the lines under flags of truce, and it was
in this manner that Indiana was also able to stay in touch with her uncle Calvin Fletcher
in Indianapolis.
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