George H. Honig

George H. Honig. . , George Henry Honig was born August 3, 1874 in Rockport, Indiana. He was the son of Simon Honig and Mary Killian Honig., At the age of 14, George was a Lincoln scholar and interviewed people in the area that knew Abraham Lincoln., He was valedictorian of Rockport High School Class of 1893. He attended Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana where he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity., At age 40, he studied art in New York City where he was an assistant of Herman MacNeil, and helped work on the statue in Washington Square in New York., He was considered to be one of the leading sculptors of the Midwest. He was engaged to design statuary groups for the Evansville Coliseum. He also made an eight foot statue of a soldier for the state of Colorado with a replica of the same statue in Kansas., Mr. Honig made statuettes, portraits, crayon drawings, water and oil colors, and pencil sketches of people and places in the Evansville area. He published a book of sketches and made hundreds of historic plaques around the United States., He worked for many years to build Southern Indiana into a historical Mecca around Abraham Lincoln. One of his projects was the Lincoln Pioneer Village in Rockport, Indiana., Mr. Honig is listed in Art and Artists of Indiana, Who's Who in Evansville, Biographies of American Artists Active from 1898-1947, and Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers. In 1957, he was named the first honorary member of the Evansville College Chapter of Kappa Pl, national art fraternity., Mr. Honig died in Evansville, Indiana on May 4, 1962.