Retired teacher builds miniature version of Indiana town

SCOTT, Ind. (AP) - Using little more than a bit of balsa wood, a couple sheets of plywood, paint, glue and an eye for detail, Murlyn Myers has re-created 175 years of LaGrange County history.

A retired high school math teacher, Myers has built a near-perfect miniature replica of the LaGrange County village of Scott. More than 80 buildings in total - houses, barns, schools, churches and stores - provide a snapshot of Scott in its heyday, from the mid-1800s through the early 1900s.

Even more amazing, Myers designed the display so it can be folded up neatly and carried by hand, making it possible for Myers to share his village with local historical societies, school organizations and those interested in seeing it.

It's been a hit.

"People see this and they love it," Myers said.

A lifelong resident of rural Scott, Myers built his tiny village as a tribute of sorts to his mother's love of Scott and its history. In 1978, Myers said, his mother, Blanche, got a bad case of cabin fever after being snowbound by the historic blizzard that year, so she decided to write a book about Scott and its history. It took her two years to complete, but Blanche Myers finished what she started.

Fast forward more than 20 years, when Blanche's life was nearing its end. Murlyn became her caretaker, helping her through both Parkinson's disease and dementia. Murlyn recalled the dementia made caring for his mother sometimes difficult, but he discovered that talking to her about her book, and about Scott and its history, seemed to help calm her down.

To help illustrate their conversations, Myers started sketching the town's aging buildings to show his mother, much to her delight. Later, he started crafting small balsa wood models of those same houses. Little by little, Blanche told her son everything she could recall about those homes and their inhabitants.

Blanche died in 2006, and the small balsa wood models of Scott's earliest homes were put away in a box that sat in Murlyn's basement. Two years later, on a cold winter day, Myers decided to go ahead and build the entire village.

"I have a picture in here. It was taken from the tower of the Scott School, and it shows this half of the town, so I know it's accurate because I have the photo to prove it. It was taken in 1900," Myers said. "Using her book as reference, and doing a little research, I just decided I'm going to build the village, so I started, laid it out, and built everything."

Founded as Van Buren, Scott later changed its name at the insistence of the Post Office.

"The problem was, they had two Van Burens in the state, and the postmaster said one day, 'We've got to change your name,'" Myers said. "And I've never been able to find out why they chose Scott. Using a little artist's prerogative, I tell people the postmaster must have been a little hard of hearing, and when he told people you're gonna have to change your town's name, someone else must have said, 'Oh, great Scott,' and the postmaster said, 'Oh, Scott - that works.' "

Surprisingly, the now almost-lost cluster of homes was once a LaGrange County economic giant, Myers said. After a sawmill opened in 1833, a grist mill followed, and after that, a lumber mill and a cooper's factory. At its peak, more than 15,000 barrels of flour were ground in Scott and shipped east.

As the town grew, the one thing local farmers didn't want was a railroad cutting across their fields, so twice - once in 1830s and again in the 1860s - they stopped the railroad from coming to Scott, which later proved to be a mistake. One railroad went nine miles to the north to White Pigeon, Michigan, and the second went south, giving Shipshewana the economic boost it needed to prosper.

Scott's fortunes started to dwindle after the turn of the century when its mills shut down, but it still proved an ideal place for a kid to grow up, Myers said.

Murlyn graduated from Scott High School in 1951 and went on to earn bachelor and master's degrees in education. The town, however, continued to retreat into the history books. The school closed, the businesses disappeared and before long, Scott was just a sleepy, little village along the banks of the Pigeon River.

But the Scott of old still lives in Murlyn's model, and continues to be a hit with everyone who knows a bit about Scott's history.

"People love it. They look at it and tell me, 'I lived there,' " Myers said. "I can't believe how popular this thing is. And it just started out as a way to pacify my mother."

Ironically, the one house that's not in Myers' miniature village is his own family farmstead. His ancestors arrived in the area in the early 1830s as some of the county's earliest inhabitants, and they picked a spot about a mile east of Scott.

"But I went 12 years in that building," he said, using his pointer to touch the top of the model of the old Scott School. "This is my town."

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Source: The (Kendallville) News Sun, http://bit.ly/1S7jg8e

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Information from: The News-Sun, http://www.kpcnews.com