By Beth Clark
The faded State Farm Insurance signs seem garish and out of place plastered to the windows of the stately brick structure that has stood on the corner of 116th and Jaycee streets in downtown Fishers since 1884. The brick building in the heart of town, first a store, then an American Legion post, now an insurance agency, has a rich history more closely aligned with the field of insurance than one might think.
The building was commissioned in 1884 by Samuel L. Trittipo to house his general store. Trittipo was a shopkeeper in the little town north of Fishers called New Britton and was the town’s postmaster. Capitalizing on the success of the railway and the expansion of Fishers, known then as Fisher’s Switch, he moved a stop south and built a store closer to the rail line. His son Albert succeeded him in the business, also assuming the title of Postmaster of Fishers in 1913.
The Trittipo store was a lucrative business for many years, owing to the tenacious and “spirited” nature of the family. The patriarch, Samuel Sr., moved his wife and eight children from West Virginia to Hamilton County in 1840. Samuel L. was orphaned at a young age and his brother John Wesley was apparently no role model; John was killed early in life in a fight at a party near Fortville.
No stranger to conflict, Samuel L. appears in Indiana court cases, one from 1900 in which he contests the installation of a much-needed public drain near his store and another from 1901 in which he appeals a ruling in the dissolution of partnership suit against his own son Albert. Even Albert’s brother Vora, who owned a pool hall next to the tracks, may have been a target of someone’s wrath; dynamite was tossed through a window of his business after the establishment had closed for the night.
The spirit of congenial brotherhood figured more fully in the activities of the upstairs tenant of Samuel L.’s store, Fishers Lodge No. 440 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Fishers’ IOOF was founded in 1874 as a chapter of the benevolent fraternal service organization derived from the British Oddfellows of the 18th century. A very early photograph of the store from 1894 clearly shows a stone marker at the top of the building engraved with the letters IOOF to designate the lodge. The order purchased the second story of the building around the turn of the century for $900.
Hamilton County Historian David Heighway has written on the history of local fraternal societies like the IOOF 440. Interestingly, he notes that members would have carried life insurance through their lodges. Like good neighbors, IOOF lodge members cared for their community through service and for each other through insurance.
