Henry County Courthouse 1869 / Raintree County

Henry County Courthouse 1869, also, Raintree County. . , Henry County Courthouse 1869. The Henry County Courthouse, designed by architect Isaac Hodgson, replaced a courthouse that had burned in 1864. Featuring a mansard roof and a 110-foot clock tower, it is pictured on the inside covers of Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s iconic novel Raintree County (1848), in which Henry County is the original on which the mythical Raintree County is based. The image of the courthouse is taken from An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Henry Co. Indiana, 1875. Lockridge writes, "The clock in the Court House Tower on page five of the Raintree County Atlas is always fixed at nine-o'clock, and it is summer and the days are long." The principal character, John Wickliff Shawnessy, is based on Lockridge's maternal grandfather, John Wesley Shockley (1839-1907), long-time Henry County resident, who lived out his days with his second wife, Emma Rhoton, and three children in a small house in Straughn, Indiana, on the Great National Road., Raintree County. In Raintree County, Lockridge aspired to write the epic of the American people. He acknowledged Henry County as the real Raintree County, whose raintree symbolized the tree of life and the stubborn American idealism Lockridge found here in the heart of the Midwest. His grandfather John Shockley had been self-taught Hoosier schoolmaster and dreamer who wrote poetry, participated in the Civil War, and was married briefly to Susannah Duke of Henry County, who became the southern belle Susanna Drake of the novel, Raintree County was adapted in 1957 by MGM in a film starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Eva Marie Saint. Clift played the role of John Shawnessy, Elizabeth Taylor played Susanna Drake in her first Academy Award nomination, and Eva Marie Saint played Nell Gaither, based on Lockridge's high school sweetheart and wife, Vernice Baker.