Blog post by Grace Donahue On May 20, 1925, local auto mechanic and wrestler, Daniel Arwine “Reckless” Honeycutt Jr. was murdered. And the cause? A simple dispute over a car. Honeycutt Jr. had gone to the home of William Holder, whom he had recently sold a car to. Only Holder had not been keeping up […]
Blog by Rod Spaw In Drawer 3, Unit N of Hallway Storage on the third floor of the Monroe County History Center is a scarred and scuffed piece of bamboo measuring 9 ¼ inches long by 1 ¼ inches in diameter. If not for the paper label glued to it, the hollow tube might be […]
Blog post by Rod Spaw Viewing events through a political or ideological lens did not start with the internet, Fox News or MSNBC. It was not uncommon, in fact, for newspapers throughout much of U.S. history to rely on political patronage for their success. Even when the advertising model of business took over in the […]
Blog by Rod Spaw Author Theodore Dreiser had not seen Bloomington in 25 years when he arrived on Aug. 26, 1915. It was his 44th birthday, and the writer of “Sister Carrie” and other novels was on a two-week tour of his native Indiana by automobile. His means of conveyance was a brand new, 60-horsepower Pathfinder […]
Blog post by Randi Richardson Nancy Streets wasn’t just an ordinary somebody. Her father was a dentist in South Bend and she attended South Bend schools along with her two older brothers. Following her graduation, she enrolled as a freshman at IU-Bloomington and joined a sorority. In 1958, as a beautiful sophomore majoring in Speech […]
Blog post by Randi Richardson On a moonlit night, under a star-studded sky, a melancholy, young man sat on the spooning wall situated on the south side of campus along Third Street. It was late summer before the students returned to campus for the fall semester of 1927. All was quiet as he pondered his […]
Blog post by Randi Richardson Mention the name Boxman around Bloomington today and most people will conjure up an image and, perhaps, a memory of Player’s Pub on South Walnut, a dilapidated property the owner would like to raze against the wishes of the Bloomington Historical Preservation Commission. Many people from Monroe County have either […]
Blog post by Randi Richardson Family reunions bring families together with bountiful tables and information to share. On August 28, 1921, descendants of George and Elizabeth “Betsy” (Smith) Skirvin got together for a family reunion in a shady grove about four and a half miles east of Bloomington. George and Betsy reportedly settled that part […]
Blog post by Randi Richardson Tony, a slave from Kentucky sometime in the years before the Civil War, escaped from his master and made his way north. He got as far as Monroe County before he was captured on a Saturday night by the Corsaws who were prominent among Bloomington slave catchers. The following morning […]
Blog post by Randi Richardson If you are lucky enough to have an ancestor that left behind an oral interview, you may find the material both interesting and enlightening. Consider, for example, the oral interview of Alva Botkin (variously spelled Botkins, Bodkin and Bodkins) on file at the research library in the Monroe County History […]