Ernest Merritt, born in Indianapolis two weeks after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, would grow up to become the head of the physics department at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He worked closely with Edward Nichols, with whom he co-founded the important physics journal Physical Review. His biographical memoir on the National Academy of Sciences […]
A collection of materials from the Merritt family of Indianapolis, recently added to our collections, embodies the wide variety of activities in which they engaged. From early industrial success to service during the Civil War, parks, schools, women’s suffrage, elder care, and even an 8-year-old’s entrepreneurial spirit, it’s all here. George Merritt, once termed “the […]
Indianapolis of the 19th and 20th centuries never had a large enough Asian population that would lend itself to create nor sustain an ethnic commercial corridor such as a “Chinatown.” This is partly due to a series of anti-Asian laws which stymied potential growth. From 1892 through 1948, Monument Circle would host a number of […]
As we’ve explored Sylvia Dichner’s life (Part I and Part II) in Indianapolis, we have encountered the man who would become her husband, Isadore “Izzy” Weiss. While Sylvia’s story connects us to life in Indianapolis as a young working person in the Great Depression, Isadore’s life links the past with the unfortunate current events we […]
In the third and final installment of my blog series about my great-grandmother, we will explore her ethnic identity and how it has been carried into my generation. If you need to catch up on my previous blogs on this topic, you can visit Part 1 and Part 2. Whiting and other Northwest Indiana cities […]
In my first installment, I discussed Veronica Sabol Jadrnak, my great grandmother, and her ties to the Region’s (read: Northwest Indiana) industry. While these bits of history are interesting and telling, I wonder so much more about her life in the early 20th century. Why was she nearly 28 when she married (an advanced age […]
In the fifteen years plus that I have been on staff in the Indiana Historical Society, I’ve discovered one of my favorite groups to work with are genealogists. While we do have some traditional resources, such as AncestryLibrary and NewspaperArchive that assist genealogists in their quest for dates (birth, marriage, death), most of our resources […]
Bob and Luella McBride had been married two months when twenty-year-old Bob was thrust into a global war as a medic with the Seventeenth Airborne Division, including becoming part of the last-gasp German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge. Luella Hart, nineteen when she married, relied on her sisters and Bob’s parents for support […]
Many of us have experienced the joy of taking a family vacation. When I was young, my father, mother, brother and I took yearly road trips to the Florida panhandle to visit my grandparents during Spring Break. The twelve-hour car journey was never ideal, but we made the most of our time together. We listened […]
During Hispanic Heritage month, it is always important to remind people that Latino and Hispanic cultural heritage is not monolithic. When looking at the size of Latin America we see 30+ combined countries and territories. Within these countries and territories are vast differences in spoken language and cultural norms. Fundamentally speaking, no two Spanish speaking […]
