A Victorian Christmas tree greets Edinburgh High School senior Jennifer Simpson in the entryway of Dennis and Jane Edwards’ home in 1988.
Daily Journal Archive Photo
News from around Johnson County as reported on Dec. 15 in the pages of the Daily Journal and the Franklin Evening Star from the last 110 years.
On this day in 1988, the main story in the Daily Journal was about how the ghost of Christmas past was haunting an Edinburgh home.
“The ghost of Christmas past is haunting Edinburgh in a friendly sort of way,” the story began.
Edinburgh High School’s English Department was conducting a Charles Dickens Week, and one of the highlights came a day prior when students visited the stately brick home of Dennis and Jane Edwards to see how Christmas was celebrated in Queen Victoria’s time.
“It seems like in Victorian times, it was the more the better,” Jane Edwards, one of the home’s owners, told a group of seniors. “‘More was the definite word then.”
She held open a book to a two-page black-and-white photo of Queen Victoria’s sitting room.
“Queen Victoria had the greatest influence on us here in America,” Edwards said. “As you notice, she had even more furniture and bric-a-brac than I do.”
The Edwards had restored their brick home on the Pleasant Street hill next to Holy Trinity Catholic Church to the way it likely looked in the 19th century. The Italianate mansion was built in the 1870s by A.C. Thompson, who was an Edinburgh banker.
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Other memorable Johnson County stories from this day
2021
Two Indianapolis men discussed their good instincts after saving a young woman whose car was sinking into a Bargersville drainage pond.
1997
Residents in Franklin’s Canary Creek subdivision were opposing the rezoning of land for a new movie theater.
1967
Motorists traveling on State Road 135 near the County Line Road intersection had to do a double take due to a misspelling on a traffic sign. The sign said motorists were leaving Johnston County, not Johnson County.
