Albion, Indiana

All Photographs Copyright © 2011 by Robert E Pence

Albion, Indiana (population approximately 2,300) is the county seat of Noble County (population approximately 46,000).
It is located in Northern Indiana, about 35 miles northwest of Fort Wayne. The town is organized around the courthouse square.

If you always lived in the city and bought meat at a supermarket just as you needed it, or if you didn't grow up in the country
before large home freezers became commonplace, you might not know about locker plants.

Farmers usually got their meat by butchering their own livestock. The earliest preservation methods included things like
salting, drying, smoking, packing in lard, etc. When mechanical refrigeration came along, it was clearly a better method
for preserving meat but many farmers didn't have electric power, and large freezers were generally too expensive and
complicated for the average homeowner.

Many grocers and butchers operated freezers with individual, lockable
storage bins that could be rented. Farmers could slaughter an animal, cut
up and package the meat, and then store it in a locker and pick up what
they needed on trips to the store. Sometimes a couple of families in town
might go together and buy an animal and have it slaughtered, and then rent
lockers to store it.

The locker plants that I was familiar with as a boy didn't do slaughtering on
site; you slaughtered your cow or steer or pig, processed the meat, and took
it to the locker plant, or you could take your animal to a fellow who did
custom butchering, and he'd do the whole job for a fee. This business did
the whole thing on site. The crate-like wooden structure is the chute where
they killed the animals, and the gallows-like beam is where they'd hang them
up by their hind legs to bleed and gut them.

Oh. Sorry. I didn't realize you were snacking on a burger while you viewed
these pictures and read the narrative.

Noble County was organized in 1836. The present courthouse was designed
by E.O. Fallis & Co. and cost $101,604. It was completed in 1889.

The unusual clock faces are part of the original design; they're shown in
a construction photograph hanging in one of the courthouse hallways.

The building has been updated to accommodate present-day needs. The work was done with sensitivity to its historic
character, and maintenance is impeccable. It appears to be in very solid condition.

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