Ira A. Correll (1873-1964) was born near Clarksburg, Indiana (later renamed Odon), the oldest child of George and Rachel (Wallick) Correll. From an early age Ira displayed a gift for sculpting. At age 10 he gathered chunks of sandstone from the family farm and carved intricate small angels. His father liked what he saw and sold them for $35 each.
George Correll established the Odon Monument business in response to a growing demand for elaborate, sculpted grave monuments to memorialize departed family members. For the next 30 years, George and Ira Correll worked together in the grave monument business.
An early sculpture by Ira Correll is the limestone, grave statue of Anise E. Hart, the only child of James F. Hart and Alice G. (Dixon) Hart, who died in 1909 at age 11 of typhoid fever. Mr. & Mrs. Hart showed Ira a small photograph of Anise and asked if he could carve her likeness. Ira created a clay model of Anise that was so realistic the parents wept when they saw it. He then carved her limestone statue that stands atop the Hart family monument at St. Peter Cemetery in Montgomery, Indiana.
Ira Correll and Bertha (Ragle) Correll (1871-1949) were married in 1892. They moved with their family to Bedford, Indiana in 1914 where the limestone industry was booming. Ira became superintendent at the Indiana Limestone Company. Ira’s son, Ross Michael Correll (1896-1985), after the move to Bedford, began working as a sculptor. Ira’s friends and neighbors in his hometown were aware of Ira’s growing reputation as a noted sculptor. He was commissioned to carve the Abraham Lincoln statue for the City Park in Odon that was dedicated in 1922.
When the Depression hit in the early 1930s, the limestone mills in Bedford shut down. Both Ira and Ross Correll moved in 1934 with their families to Austin, Texas where their sculpting careers blossomed. In 1935 they were commissioned to carve the Lord’s Last Supper for the Forest Park Cemetery in Houston, Texas. Shortly thereafter Ira and Ross sculpted the San Jacinto Monument in Houston honoring the pioneers that settled Texas. Ira Correll carved the statue of Stephan Austin at the Texas Statehouse in Austin.
In 1949 Ira and Ross Correll embarked on their most ambitious joint project when they were hired to design and carve limestone panels for the outside of the proposed Tidwell Bible Building at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Each one-ton panel was to depict an event from the Old or New Testament. Ira and Ross Correll sculpted 37 panels for the Tidwell Bible Building that was completed in 1954.
Ira Correll became a nationally renowned sculptor. His works in limestone, marble, wood, and bronze can been seen on buildings across the country, including the Sterling Library at Yale University, the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., the capital building in Oklahoma City, and the Masonic Temple in Detroit.
When starting a new project, Ira would first draw detailed depictions of the figures he intended to create and used these drawings as templates for the sculptures he carved. Ira Correll was a skilled artist. Not only are his sculptures magnificent, but his drawings are beautiful pieces of art.
In 2024 Susan Smale, the great granddaughter of Ira and Bertha Correll, donated to the Daviess County Museum a large collection of photographs and documents about the Correll, Ragle and Wallick families from Odon and Ira Correll’s sculpting career. Included were scores of Ira Correll’s drawings from his many sculpting projects. Below are four of his drawings.
The rest of Ira’s superb drawings, and the other photos and documents in the Ira and Bertha Correll collection, can be viewed in the Research Room at the Daviess County Museum or online at daviesscounty.pastperfectonline.com.
This article was written by Bruce Smith, a member of the Daviess County Historian Team.
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