Author Archives: Charlie McAtee

The Legacy of Figueroa Printers, Indiana’s First Spanish Language Newspaper

The early Mexican communities of the 1920s in Indiana Harbor (East Chicago) and Gary were socially active and culturally vibrant. Early laborers came to Northwest Indiana and Chicago around 1918, recruited as foreign laborers to work in war-relief-related industries during World War I via Departmental Order No. 52461/202. The 1920s saw an increase in arrivals […]

Santa is Coming to Town

Visitors to the Indiana Historical Society November through early January each year, have no choice but to get into the Christmas spirit. There are Christmas trees everywhere thanks to our wonderful Festival of Trees. Our library likes to add a little holiday flair to our case exhibits as well. This year, I decided to focus […]

Pistol Packin’ Pastor: Part 2

This is Part 2 of the story of Wilbur Gibbons. To read part 1, click here. On Wilbur Gibbons’ 1918 draft registration card, he listed himself as a minister. Although he had been ordained in the Presbyterian church under the pretense that he would be working among the Apache in Arizona, he and his family […]

Pistol Packin’ Pastor: Part I

Figuratively speaking, the landscape of historical collections is strewn with Rabbit-Holes. Like Alice in Wonderland, if you choose one and jump down it, you never know when or where you’ll end up. Or who you’ll meet. As a processing archivist, I’m often the first to discover a particular hole and begin to map it out. […]

Are We Related?: Belcher

Welcome to the second installment of my Are We Related series. You can view the first blog about the Herndon family here. In this series, I am looking at surnames in the IHS collection and determining if a shared surname in my own line has any known ties. When I began working at the Indiana […]

Indiana Historical Society Announces Annual Award Honorees

The Indiana Historical Society (IHS) is proud to announce its Annual Award Winners for 2023. Each year, these awards recognize outstanding individuals and organizations whose efforts have enriched the lives of others by conveying awareness and appreciation of Indiana’s history on local, regional and statewide levels. “These individuals and organizations have led and inspired so […]

National History Day Announces Rural and Urban Outreach Program Supported by the Bezos Family Foundation

National History Day® (NHD) is proud to announce the first phase of its Inclusive History Initiative (IHI), funded by a grant from the Bezos Family Foundation. This initiative is a series of programs and publications that promote diversity, equity, access and inclusion within the NHD network and organization. Inclusive history refers not only to a […]