Sargent Rd.
Jacob Sargent family, early landowners
Sargent Road was named after the Sargent family, a prominent family of landowners in and around Lawrence Township. John Sargent was born in Kentucky in 1818 and moved to Marion County in 1850, where he farmed land about a mile east of Malott Park. He was married to Tabitha Jane Sowers in 1850 in Marion County. He died in 1901, and she died in 1917.
They were the parents of Jacob Sargent, who was born in Marion County in 1851. Jacob married Druzilla Harper in Marion County in 1873. He died in 1935 and his wife in 1936. All four are buried in the Ebenezer Lutheran/Fall Creek Union Cemetery at 42nd and Millersville Road in Washington Township. The family owned land throughout Lawrence Township, but John settled in the present-day area of Sargent Road. The Sargent home was located at 8420 Sargent Rd.
Jacob was the father of John Jacob Sargent, a World War I veteran who is buried at the Bacon Family Cemetery at the corner of Kessler Blvd. and Keystone Ave.
All photos courtesy of Sergio Bennett.
Do you know the history of Beville Avenue, on the near-Eastside?
I am the granddaughter of the Sargent family. Walter Sargent, John Jacob Sargent’s brother, is my grandfather. Thanks for the short history of Sargent Rd. The large farm extended over a section of land and went from Sargent Rd. area past 82nd St. where my grandfather farmed. Wonderful memories of the gentle and kind Sargent family members and farm life on the Sargent farms.
So, who can name public buildings closest to that intersection?
The neighborhood and house I grew up in, and parents still live in is on Sargent Rd. just north of 86th St. I love driving through the area in the fall with all the leaves turning colors. It is our own version of Brown County.
Is there a place to find out more about the history of this area? Is there a story about how Lantern Road got it’s name?
Was wondering if anyone knew the official address of the old Fairwood Hills Swim Club which I think was located somewhere in the 7000’s of Sargent Road ?????
The address was 7011 Sargent Road. If you go to the MapIndy website ( http://maps.indy.gov/Mapindy/ ) and type in the address, you can see aerial views of the property, going all the way back to 1937. On the right-hand side of the MapIndy page, under the heading “Streets & Aerials,” slide the horizontal bar all the way to the right, so that it is an aerial view instead of a street map. Then slide the vertical bars down to the year you want to view. The first year that a map shows the Fairwood Hills Swim Club is 1962. The last year that you can still see a swimming pool is 1993. Even on the 2015 aerial view, more than two decades later, you can still see traces of where the parking lot, pool, and tennis courts were in the past.