The town of Odon is seeking a historical marker for a century old limestone statue of Abraham Lincoln, and that's where IU art history students come in.
Their work has uncovered lost records of the sculptor and reconnected some of his descendants.
Ira A. Correll gifted the statue to Odon, his hometown, in 1922, Odon Town Council Vice President Susie Roach said.
“He was a very, very talented man, and at one point he made the decision in 1921 that he wanted to give something back to the community that he was born in, and he decided that he would give us a sculpture, and then he decided that it would be of an old settler, and he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln,” Roach said.
For the celebration in 2022 of the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the statue, the city of Odon applied for a historical marker for the statue but it wasn’t approved. They were denied a second time in 2023. This was due to the application having information on the historical value of Lincoln, rather than Correll, Roach said.
After that there was a seminar in town hosted by the Purdue Extension Office, which partnered with Indiana University’s Center for Rural Engagement, she said. The Center for Rural Engagement asked the city what they needed help with and Roach told them they could help the city get a historical marker for the statue. From there the center contacted IU art history associate professor Melody Deusner to see if she had a class that would be able to find history on Correll. Deusner did and the research started in fall of 2025 and lasted through spring of 2026 with Deusner and a student intern from the fall’s class.
“This was a course of about 20 undergrads and five graduate students, an intensive writing course on American art from 1865 to 1945 so 1922 fit right in there,” Deusner said.
A historical marker may only include about three sentences, but the application is several pages of documentation to provide proof for what’s being stated, Deusner said. The application will be sent to Odon officials soon for submission, although a town council member said there isn't concern about being denied again.
The students started from scratch. There was no scholarly research done on Correll, she said. The students visited the statue and visited the Daviess County Museum, which had a few drawings of Correll’s that were donated by one of his descendants.
When Correll died he had a studio in Austin, Texas, with art, letters, journals and drawings, including preparatory designs, Deusner said. Most of them were not labelled or dated.
It was common for Indiana limestone sculptors, like Correll, to not sign their work. The Lincoln statue was one of the few signed. The students continued their research through historical newspapers such as the Odon Journal and several papers from other Indiana cities such as Washington and Bedford, and archived interviews of Correll.
“Once we had his name and we knew what newspapers to look in there were literally hundreds of hits from the 1890s all the way up through he was still active when he died in the 1960s of newspaper articles that were documenting where he was sending work,” Deusner said.
They were able to match some of his drawings to works of Correll’s, such as a sculpture on the Masonic Temple in Detroit, Michigan.
In all this research one of Deusner’s students found the great-great granddaughter of Correll through ancestry.com. Debbie Pike has known she’s been related to Correll since childhood.
“My great grandmother, his daughter, actually drove me and my brothers to Odon to see the Lincoln statue when I was single-digit age,” Pike said.
She has been doing her own research on him in hopes to make a book. She’s already made two coffee table books filled with Correll’s works she’s found through her travels.
About 25 years ago Pike’s brother was gifted a tote box through a distant cousin filled with sketches, photos, postcards and a journal of Correll’s. Several years later in 2018 Pike decided to sort through it.
“I just started compiling everything that was in there, and included in that was this journal that was from the 1930s and 40s, and I found pages that Ira had started listing some of his works, and so I just started making new lists,” Pike said. “So this was an entry from 1949 and so I basically read this and started listing more items and started planning trips.”
Pike has been able to submit works of Correll’s to the Smithsonian adding to the list of 12 items they already had. Additionally, two of the 12 items in the list were designated as possibly Correll’s and Pike was able to provide a newspaper article to officially verify one of the two possible items.
She’s traveled to different cities in Indiana and to other states such as Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Arizona to see Correll’s work. For example, she’s visited lion sculptures on Butt Memorial Bridge in Augusta, Ga., the Roy Cashion monument in Hennessey, Okla. and “Last Supper” sculptures in Houston and Texarkana, Texas. In May Pike found tree stump headstones in Indiana that Correll made and a crucifix in a cemetery in Champaign, Ill. The crucifix, the Fiedler monument, is one of the items Pike has submitted to the Smithsonian.
Pike has an excel spreadsheet containing over 90 items. She said Correll did work in all 48 states that existed when he was living and there’s likely hundreds if not thousands of pieces in total.
“He was born in 1873. I have a lamb in my possession that he carved in 1882 at the age of nine, so he was carving from 1882 in some fashion until he died in 1964 and so that's a long vast history,” Pike said.
Pike and Deusner have been able to combine their research.
In April the class had a presentation in Odon of the work they found on Correll. It brought together several of the artist’s relatives. Pike said she knew most of them by name. She either never met them before or the last time she saw them is when she was a child.
“I did meet about five new cousins that day that I had never met before, which was awesome,” Pike said.
The goal is to get the historical marker by August in time for Odon’s Old Settlers festival. The plan is to also add about four educational panels around the statue for people to be able to read about the history of Correll and the history behind his sculpting of the Lincoln statue.
The research on Correll is not finished. Deusner said the next step will be creating a website for there to be a permanent way to document and know about Correll’s work from across the country. She said she is in discussion with IU’s Center of Excellence for Women and Technology about it. Currently Deusner has created a Google Map as the placeholder for it.
She will be on research leave this fall but plans to include a project-base component related to Correll in spring 2027.
“This is something that he did and learned very, very young age, and I think that it's a proof that basically these things need to be maintained and kept, and history kept of all of them,” Roach said.
