At the Indiana Historical Society (IHS), we recently added some new items from the Frances O. Patterson Papers (M0470) to the African American History Digital Collection. This collection of family papers and photographs was originally donated to the Indiana Historical Society during the Black Women in the Middle West project in the 1980s. It records […]
We’ve kicked off our new Indianapolis bicentennial exhibit, You Are There 1920: Celebrate Indianapolis with a four-part program series on the history of redlining. Redlining is the discriminatory practice in which banks, mortgage lenders, and insurance companies refused or limited loans, mortgages, and insurance within specific geographic areas, particularly in older and city center neighborhoods, to Black […]
Part of my job as a catalog librarian involves tackling backlogged items. Bringing them out of the shadows and making them accessible to the public is always rewarding. I recently discovered an intriguing accession from 1958: a collection of mid- to late 19th century printed materials that belonged to Ephraim George Squier. Many were authored […]
Butler University. Anyone who has spent any time in Indianapolis has heard about this wonderful educational establishment. Its christening name in 1850 was the North Western Christian University. Ovid Butler donated twenty acres of his own land downtown for the site of the university. Years before any of these events, around 1823, Ovid Butler was […]
I remember playing catch with my mother, not my father. My father, Gabriel Fraire, taught me plenty about sports. In the early 1960’s he ran the Biddy Basketball program for youth in Gary, Indiana, was President of the Elks Little League baseball organization, and coach of numerous youth teams. He was also a Boy Scout […]
Our digital collections have a new look! In early September our digital collection database, powered by OCLC’s CONTENTdm, underwent an upgrade to its user experience. Some of the improvements include enhanced viewing of images, more customization options such as maps, simplified display of information and much more. The look of our CONTENTdm site may have […]
Two years ago, the Indiana Historical Society received an unusual and distinctly unsettling gift. The real story would count among my favorites for compelling, compassionate reasons and among my bleakest for the all-too-obviously unresolved hurt and human degradation linked to its history. At the core of the acquisition: a travel document, legally required for an […]
What do hot air balloons, elephants and lawyers have to do with the fight for female suffrage in Indiana? They were all creative ways used by various suffragists to advertise their platform and spread their message demanding equal voting rights. On November 6, 1894, Helen M. Gougar attempted to vote in Lafayette, Indiana rebelling against the Indiana State Constitution that forbid […]
Ever wanted to party like a suffragist? Well, now’s your chance. In the years leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, suffragists found all types of ways to spread their message and fight for the right to vote. In June of 1912, they found a social way to give their cause a boost […]
If you are one of the nearly 4,000 readers of the Indiana Historical Society’s award-winning journal The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, you may already be familiar with a stunning four-part series by A. Andrew Olson III, “The 1818 Saint Marys Treaties.” Stunning is not too strong a word for Olson’s work, published from the Fall/Winter 2017 […]
