Transcript for Episode 4 of the 2024 season of Talking Hoosier History
Written by Emily McGuire and voiced by Justin Clark. Produced by A.J. Chrapliwy.
On the night of September 9th, 1903, Fred Rohrer, editor of the temperance paper the Berne Witness, settled peacefully into bed, tucked away on the second floor of his house with his wife and children. It had been a long day. Rohrer had spent the afternoon in Decatur, Indiana, appealing to the Decatur’s commissioners’ courts to deny liquor licenses to potential saloon owners in Berne. He had spent the entire summer biking back and forth between Berne and Decatur, making the 24-mile round trip for the Temperance cause.
That night, shortly after the clock struck midnight, Rohrer’s wife, Emma, awoke to a scratching noise coming from the first floor of the house. She rose from bed to investigate and finding nothing out of the ordinary, she made her way back upstairs. Surely, it was her imagination, she thought to herself. Twenty minutes later, however, Rohrer awoke to two heavy explosions in his home. As Rohrer and his family slept on the second floor, someone slipped one stick of dynamite through a downstairs window and another under his front porch. But this attack was no surprise. Fred Rohrer had been a target since the conception of his newspaper in 1896.
I’m Justin Clark, and this is Talking Hoosier History.
In the early nineteenth century, Indiana and other states across the Midwest saw the arrival of Mennonites, who immigrated from northeast Switzerland and Germany. Their religious beliefs stemmed from the Anabaptist Movement, whose roots could be traced back to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. A range of societal, political, and economic changes prompted their exodus from the homeland, such as the Napoleonic Wars, poor harvests, and mandatory military service. As more Mennonite families praised the religious and social freedoms on the American frontier to their families back home, extended kin soon followed. The network of chain migration resulted in the creation of small, German speaking settlements across the Midwest landscape, as Swiss Mennonites made the U.S. their new home.
This was the case for sixteen-year-old Fred Rohrer, who emigrated from Berne, Switzerland to Sonneberg, Ohio, in the spring in 1883 with his parents and thirteen siblings. Three years later, the Rohrer family made their way to Berne, Indiana, named after their original hometown. Incorporated in 1887, a year after the Rohrers arrival, the family arrived at a pivotal time in the town’s history. Rumblings of the Temperance Movement gripped the leaders of the freshly established city. As many secular organizations linked alcohol consumption to moral and economic problems of the time, the push to abolish alcohol began to influence religious and political ideologies in the United States.
Methodist groups served as the bedrock of early temperance activism, and soon more religious groups followed. The first major temperance group in Indiana appeared in 1826 with the formation of the American Temperance Society. However, it was not until 1828 that activism surrounding temperance intensified in the state. Between 1830 and 1850, temperance organizers helped pass nearly 125 laws throughout the state that bolstered temperance by regulating liquor prices and the amount sold.
His religious beliefs quickly spurred him to join the fight against liquor consumption. A key component to that was his establishment of the Berne Witness newspaper in 1896. After purchasing an old Washington hand press and equipment from the Decatur Press and Decatur Democrat offices, Rohrer published his first issue on September 3.
He wrote to his readers:
“The intent of this paper is to make people happy. Happiness is a duty of men, it is next to godliness and cleanliness.”
Soon recognized as a Temperance paper, the Berne Witness began as a weekly, garnering circulation of about 700 by the turn of the century, as the city boasted a population of just a little over 1,000 individuals. That same year, Rohrer incorporated a supplement to the Witness in the German language, reflecting the steady growth of the Mennonite population. While Berne’s status as a respectable Hoosier town grew, the discovery of oil just a few miles outside of Berne’s city limits in 1902 threatened the population’s solitude. Transient single, working-class men, alongside prominent oil men seeking a fortune, flooded the local population. As a result, concerns over vice-related activities, like drinking, gambling, and sex work, skyrocketed. Many prominent Berne leaders believed this was the perfect opportunity to enforce liquor laws before the town, and its problems, became any bigger.
As a leading supporter of Prohibition, as well as an active voice within the Christian Temperance Society of Berne (CTSB), Rohrer’s role in establishing the city as a dry town is highlighted in the Berne Witness. Tales of his protests, his successes and failures, and his dedication to upholding his religious beliefs are woven throughout nearly twenty years of publication. His influence in the CTSB allowed Rohrer to use his paper to establish a fluid connection between Temperance activists and the larger community. Rohrer and the Witness played a crucial role in converting Berne into a dry town. It frequently reported updates on local Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s meetings, changes in Indiana’s liquor laws and liquor license requirements, and even grassroots efforts on getting the city to become “dry.” In September of 1904, the Berne Witness posted a notice on a local ‘Anti-Saloon’ day, while boasting to its readers regarding the success that Temperance leaders had in ridding their town of alcohol.
“Next Sunday will be another anti-saloon day in Berne,” the paper read, “Rev. John F. Lewis, on of the field secretaries of the Indiana Anti-Saloon league, will be here to speak at the Evangelical church in the morning and at the Mennonite church in the evening…This is the first summer that Berne has been without a legalized saloon and even the saloon advocates admit and proclaim that it has been the most prosperous in the history of Berne.” More importantly, the Berne Witness became a weapon that enabled Rohrer to call out local authorities and saloon owners for their illegal activities. As his paper grew in popularity and readership, Rohrer became a local legend – but his fame also made him the main target for retaliation.
In September 1902, Rohrer met with several other men to discuss the “enforcement of the local option provision” brought on by the state’s Nicholson Law. The law required a two-year waiting period between liquor license applications and their issuance. Additionally, the law allowed for remonstrances – or public votes and petitions – for the denial of any liquor license. The CTSB was quick to form petitions against every saloon in Berne. Rohrer, also a member of Indiana’s Anti-Saloon League, commented on the remonstrances in the Witness in 1902, saying that Christian patriotic forces in Indiana were attempting to solve the saloon question by eradicating saloons all together. “The saloon must go,” he wrote, “Remonstrances have been circulated and a great majority of the names of voters have been secured.” Initially, these remonstrances were successful. The Witness reported on December 5 that two saloons – one owned by Jacob Brennaman and the other by Jacob Hunsicker – officially closed, with another to cease in March of 1903.
However, the celebration of these closures prompted complaints from others. Though the Berne Witness gave Rohrer unfettered access to disseminating his opinion, it also opened the door to violent retribution by saloon owners and liquor drinkers. By the start of 1903, tensions escalated between saloon owners and Rohrer. Early in January, Rohrer posted a notice on the front page of the Witness, incentivizing the community through monetary payment to report liquor violations and sign their public petitions. This plan, however, failed, and remonstrances were ignored. The board of commissioners approved liquor licenses for several men across town, directly violating the Nicholson Law. The CTSB complained to city officials, but they were forced to take their grievances to the circuit court in Decatur, Indiana.
Rohrer spent the summer of 1903 biking ten miles to bring Berne locals’ petitions to court. However, Rohrer experienced little success. On June 4, the Democrat newspaperclaimed that the City of Berne, despite protests, was still “wet,” as the commissioners court granted a license to John Reineker to operate a saloon in town. Rohrer’s remonstrance against Reineker had been declared insufficient due to his lack of an attorney. A month later, the Democrat claimed that Rohrer was still busy in the auditor’s office, where he filed remonstrances containing 396 local signatures “against the granting of license to sell liquors to J. M. Ersham, William Sheets and Sammuel L. Kuntz.”
Tensions between Rohrer, Berne’s saloon owners, and local anti-Temperance supporters peaked by September. In the middle of the night on September 10th, someone managed to slip dynamite into the first level of Rohrer’s home, under his porch. Despite no one being harmed, the explosions destroyed half of the structure. Rohrer described the wreckage in the Berne Witness a few days later:
We looked out the windows in the kitchen and dining room and then came into the sitting room, just beneath the bed room we were all sleeping in. The moon was shining in through a large hole in the wall where the front door used to be, and through two other large holes where windows were missing. A few shreds of the curtains left hanging from the top were wafted in by the south wind and made a spectral noise and together with the debris of broken pieces of glass and dishes and furniture lying topsy-turvy gave the room a ghastly appearance.
Local carpenters were quick to start repairs on Rohrer’s home the following morning. News of the attack spread across the Midwest, with articles on the murder attempt appearing in the Indianapolis News, the Kentucky Post, and even the Salt Lake Herald. But many, especially Rohrer, were not surprised. He wrote in the Berne Witness, “As had been stated in Friday’s issue and in other papers, the attack was not unexpected to us…Every night as we went to bed last week, I told my wife to be prepared for almost anything.” It was later reported that the special grand jury tasked with investigating the incident failed to bring any indictments in the case, and no one was charged.
Women within the CTSB began surveilling Rohrer’s home shortly after the attack. The Plymouth Tribune reported that five women, armed with their husbands’ revolvers, kept guard to ensure that Rohrer could rest peacefully. In fact, their continued support encouraged him to move forward with his work. Threats of violence and death to his family would not halt Rohrer’s dedication to the Temperance cause. He told his readers in the Berne Witness several days later:
“The result of the week’s work is, one saloon is closed, and the liquor element preached such a powerful temperance sermon that its effect is worth more than a hundred times the cost. Who says God is not in this movement! Have more faith in God and less fear of men and be ready to make a sacrifice for a good cause and the liquor traffic in Berne will surely die.”
On September 11th, the morning after the bombing, Rohrer biked back to Decatur to approach the commissioners’ court with a remonstrance against Joseph Hocker, a Monroe resident who was seeking to apply for a liquor license in Berne. The Berne Witness stated that Rohrer also brought thirty-three cases of law violations to a grand jury against Berne saloonkeepers, claiming that the attack on his house was “very naturally connected” with the saloon fight in town. A grand jury convened and handed down six indictments and saloonkeepers had to pay a minimum fine. On November 18th, sixty suspected patrons of Berne’s saloons received subpoenas to appear before the court to testify.
Enraged by the indictment, a mob targeting Rohrer formed the following day. First, resident Louis Sprunger approached Rohrer in the Berne Witness offices, challenging him to a fight out on the street, which Rohrer refused. Later that evening, Sprunger followed him into the post office, where Sprunger attacked him. Two female workers came to Rohrer’s defense, tackling Sprunger and forcing the man to leave. After retreating to the safety of the Witness offices, the president of the town council, Abe Boegly, attempted to drag Rohrer out but failed to get him on the street. Instead, Boegly decided to give Rohrer a “beating” until the local marshal arrived at the scene to break up the fight. As Rohrer was taken to safety, a mob – consisting of saloonkeepers and other locals – gathered nosily outside of the Witness offices to determine the extent of Boegly’s assault.
The Indianapolis News covered the incident and stated that Rohrer was advised by the local sheriff to temporarily leave Berne out of fear of more violence. He found asylum in Decatur, where he released a statement that he “proposes to continue the fight against the saloon until his enemies kill him.” Rohrer did not return home until a week later, and on December 4, the Kansas Prohibitionist reported that Rohrer began arming his home and offices with revolvers and shotguns. His wife, who refused to leave her husband’s side, began practicing with the weapons to protect the home. The increased violence in the town, however, forced saloonkeepers to come to a compromise with Rohrer and the CTSB. On December 18, the Berne Witness reported that John Reineke, J. M. Ehrsam and Samuel L. Kuntz offered a compromise – the saloonkeepers would go out of business on April 1,1904, provided they were dismissed on paying the costs of their current indictment charges.
As compromises were deliberated, Rohrer released another statement on Christmas Eve, declaring that he would not concede despite his friends fearing that he would be murdered. It was clear that Rohrer would not back down, no matter how much violence saloonkeepers and liquor supporters inflicted on him. On December 29, the Indianapolis Journal reported that “after one of the bitterest anti-saloon battles in the history of the State,” saloon owners Reineke, Ehrsam, and Kuntz agreed to close their doors on the grounds that within a few days Rohrer would drop his cases against the men regarding various liquor violations. As the City of Berne approached the new year, it seemed that the liquor fight was finally coming a peaceful end.
Ultimately, 1903 proved to be the most defining year for Rohrer’s activism and for the temperance battle in the City of Berne. Over the next three years, Rohrer and the Witness reported the continued forced closures of Berne’s saloons and liquor law violators. However, the election of Governor James Franklin Hanly – a staunch supporter of Prohibition – in 1904 brought an end to the violence that accompanied Rohrer’s fight. Governor Hanly’s involvement in the Temperance Movement solidified the ban of alcohol at the highest state level with the Moore Amendment, which enacted a county option law regarding the ban of alcoholic beverages. The local liquor fight officially ended in 1907, when the city rejoiced over the last quantities of alcohol being carried into the street and drained. Berne was officially a dry town and remained that way until the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1932.
Want to learn more about Fred Rohrer and the Berne Witness? Check out our blog post “The Saloon Must Go:” Fred Rohrer, the Berne Witness and the Fight for Temperance in Berne, Indiana” by IHB historian Emily McGuire.
Historical markers are also a great way to learn more about Indiana’s publishing history, such as our marker on the demise of German newspapers in Indiana. German-language newspapers thrived as Germans became Indiana’s largest immigrant population by 1850. The Täglicher Telegraph und Tribüne in Indianapolis was among over 175 German-language newspapers published in Indiana from 1843-1920. These newspapers were important vehicles for readers in integrating and maintaining their cultural identities with American values. However, U.S. entry into WWI in 1917 created suspicion and antipathy toward German-American schools, churches, clubs and newspapers. Several of these Indiana newspapers, which had tried to present balanced war coverage, closed by 1918. This included the Täglicher Telegraph und Tribüne and papers in Berne, South Bend, Logansport, Evansville, and Terre Haute. You can learn more about this marker and many others at our website, in.gov/history.
This episode was written by Emily McGuire and produced by A. J. Chrapliwy. Find a transcript and show notes for this and all our episodes at podcast.history.in.gov. And remember to subscribe, rate, and review Talking Hoosier History wherever you get your podcasts. Once again, I’m Justin Clark, and this has been Talking Hoosier History. Thanks for listening!
