By RAY ADLER
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My Great-Grandfather Baltzell was a strong influence on my life, even though I only knew him a short time when I was very young.
He had been president of the Indiana Sheep Association and at one point took about 300 of his prize sheep to Europe. One of the buyers was a member of the Royal family. Grandpa apparently had a meal in the palace and encountered a boiled egg in an upright holder. He asked if the Royals wanted to see how Hoosiers ate their boiled eggs. Receiving a positive response, he took the egg out of the holder, cracked and peeled it. The family story stopped at that point. I never did learn how he actually ate it.
He later served as County Auditor. Grandmother worked in the office and helped lay out some of the early roads. She was an IU graduate, but I don’t think her father ever went to school. When I served as Hamilton County attorney, an issue came up about Macadam roads, and I couldn’t tell exactly the meaning of the statute. Grandma was in her late 90s and not clear on current events, but gave a very helpful explanation of her roadwork activities in the auditor’s office which clarified the issue. (Macadam is a type of road construction, pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam around 1820, in which crushed stone is placed in shallow, convex layers and compacted thoroughly. A binding layer of stone dust (crushed stone from the original material) may form; it may also, after rolling, be covered with a cement or bituminous binder to keep dust and stones together. The method simplified what had been considered state-of-the-art at that point.)
It has been said it is not what we don’t know that hurts us, it is what we know that just isn’t true. That can be said of Hamilton County roads. Originally, roads were created whenever the public used a path for 20 years or more. A 1980s statute removed the duty of the County to accept publicly used roads. Some roads are owned outright by the County; some merely have a right-of-way existing to the edge of the pavement. Some roads are privately owned by a homeowners association while other roads are one-rod wide on either side of the centerline. Prior law required the road to straddle property lines, but that is not always the case now.
Great-Grandfather had the opportunity to buy a farm that my wife and I now own for $5 per acre. He turned it down as overpriced. Later, my father paid $45.50 an acre for some of it and $245.50 for the rest. It may have increased in value because great-grandfather had been hired to hand dig a drainage ditch across the farm.
The farm next door sold when I was in high school. Dad asked if I thought farm ground could ever get more than $600 per acre, the then-unheard of asking price. Large parcels in this county have brought as much as $60,000 per acre. What will my great-grandchildren have to pay?
Educational material and not legal advice, written by the team at Adler attorneys. Email andrea@noblesvilleattorney.com with questions or comments.