General Lew Wallace Study & Museum

Did you know that he was a famous Hoosier author who wrote Ben-Hur?
Did you know that he was a Major General in the American Civil War?
Did you know that you can visit his study in Crawfordsville, Indiana?

Learn more about Lew Wallace!

You can click on the highlighted text to learn more about Lew Wallace and his many jobs and skills.

Lew Wallace was born in 1827 in Brookville, Indiana. He grew up in Covington, Crawfordsville, and Indianapolis. Lew Wallace didn’t like school very much, but he loved to read. One of his favorite activities was fishing. When he was young, he would sometime skip school to go fishing! (He got in trouble a lot.) When he was older he became an inventor. He designed a special fishing pole to use on his houseboat on the Kankakee River.

Another one of his favorite things to do was to draw. When he was ten years old, he wanted to be an artist, but he decided to become a lawyer instead. On days when he wasn’t too busy being a lawyer, he learned to play the violin.

When he was 26 years old, he married Susan Arnold Elston. Her father was Issac Elston, founder of the first bank in Crawfordsville. Susan and Lew Wallace had one son in 1853. His name was Henry Lane Wallace. Henry was named after his uncle, Henry Lane, who was a senator from Indiana during the Civil War.

When Lew Wallace was 34 years old, the Civil War began. Lew Wallace became a Major General in the Union Army (North). The most important battle he fought was the Battle of Monocacy. This battled helped stop the Confederate Army (South) from capturing Washington, D.C.

After the Civil War, Lew Wallace decided to become an author and spent more time on writing. He had been writing a book called The Fair God since he was 16 years old. It was finally published thirty years later in 1873. Next he wrote the book that made him famous all over the world: Ben-Hur. He wrote most of the story under a big beech tree behind his house. But he finished the book in a place far from his home: New Mexico.

In 1878, Lew Wallace was asked to be governor of the Territory of New Mexico. New Mexico was not even a state at this time. The area was sometimes called the Wild West because people did not obey the laws. His job was to make the area safe for the people who lived there.

In 1881, Lew Wallace became the Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Lew and Susan Wallace moved to Constantinople. The Ottoman Empire included the country of Turkey and several other countries in the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire was ruled by a sultan, which is another name for a king. Lew Wallace became good friends with Sultan Abdul Hamid II. They liked to talk about how to best fight a war.

When Lew Wallace came back to the United States in 1885, he had become rich and famous because of Ben-Hur. He stopped being a lawyer and spent his time writing and giving speeches around the country. Because he was so famous, he wanted to have a private place where he could read, write, play his violin, and practice making speeches. So he decided to build his study.

He designed the building himself so it would be just what he wanted. The Study has many special features. There are lots of bookshelves to hold his library of books. There is a big skylight that lets in lots of sunlight, but there aren’t very many windows. There used to be a moat on one side of the building where Lew Wallace would fish with his grandsons.

Lew Wallace died in 1905 when he was 77 years old. Ever since then, the Study has been a museum. If you come for a visit, you can see many of the things that belonged to Lew Wallace.

How many different jobs did Lew Wallace have? Can you name them all?
Would you like to have one of Lew Wallace’s jobs?
How would it be different to have one of his jobs today? How would it be the same?
What else would you like to know about Lew Wallace?

Definitions

Study: Wait a minute! Isn’t studying something that you do? The word study can also mean a room where you do thoughtful work, like writing and reading. A study usually has books, papers, a desk, and a comfortable place to sit and think. Do you have a room like this in your house? What do you call it?

Lawyer: A lawyer is someone who knows about the law and helps other people when they have problems or questions about the law. Sometimes a lawyer works in an office, and sometime a lawyer works in a courthouse.

Governor: a person who enforces the laws and is the leader of a territory or state.

Architect: a person who designs buildings.