The museum’s evenhandedness mirrored Fitzgerald’s extraordinary history. The town’s namesake, Philander Fitzgerald, was a Civil War drummer who later became a pension attorney and publisher of a veterans’ newspaper in Indiana. When a severe drought hit the Midwest in the early 1890s, Fitzgerald concocted a novel idea. “Why not start a soldiers’ colony in the Southland and get all those old boys away from the bitter winters and drought?” Beth Davis explained.
