While working on our houses and buildings index (coming soon!), volunteer Lee Ehman came across this curious article published June 9, 1910 in an unspecified local newspaper: “A large Plymouth Rock hen escaped from a coop in a local grocery yesterday, mounted to the third story of the court house and laid an egg at […]
Sarah Parke Morrison , the first female to attend classes and graduate from Indiana University, was born September 7, 1833, in Salem, Washington County, Indiana, the eldest child of John I. and Catherine (Morris) Morrison. The above photo is Morrison c. 1869 (From the collection of the IU Archives Photograph Collection. Used with permission.)
John came to Washington County in 1820, at the age of 18, and was hired to teach at the Salem Grammar School. He left for a time to complete a degree at Miami University in Ohio, then returned to Salem and opened the Washington County Seminary for Men. Sometime later, along with his wife, he opened the Salem Female Seminary.
[…]
While working a Research Library shift I took a telephone inquiry about this question. Initially poking around the library’s vertical and family files, I found nothing. Bobby, a reference librarian at the Monroe County Public Library, steered me to their “highways and roads” vertical files and I found a page copied from the Monroe County Family Heritage 1987 book, detailing Theodore (Pete) Ellis’s life.
From 1921 Pete’s parents, Robert and Nora, operated greenhouses in the 1200 block of E 2nd St, with nine buildings plus the family home, all of which were destroyed by fire in 1935. They also established a retail flower shop at 304 E 5th St.
[…]
Join us November 7th from 10am-3pm for a free genealogy seminar in the education room! Allison Deprey Singleton from the Indiana Historical Society will be leading a genealogy seminar that has something for genealogists of all skill levels. Guests can choose to attend all of the following sessions or individual sessions: 10am-11am: Start With What […]
Ever wonder how many cows your great great grandfather owned? Did they raise apples or potatoes? Did they manage the local mill and employ workers? Maybe grandma ran the local hattery? Ancestry.com and many other resources provide the “manuscript” census schedules for use with family history but most have not digitized and made available the hand-written schedules from the “non-population” census surveys. These schedules collected, frequently by the same census taker, collected data on industrial, agricultural, and social development. As early as 1810 the nation was interested in manufacturing establishments, but not until 1840 were printed schedules, entitled “Schedules of Mines, Agriculture, Commerce, Manufacturers, etc.” used, and not until 1850 was the statistical methodology considered successful.
[…]
One of the earliest and most requested items we have at the Monroe County History Center’s Research Library is entitled “A New Gazetteer Map of Monroe County, Indiana” dated 1856. We link to a few of our favorite maps on our web page, but there are a couple of other online sources for early Indiana and Bloomington and Monroe County maps.
Indiana Historic Maps includes more than 1200 scanned maps from Indiana, including more than 43 from Bloomington/Monroe County. Most date before 1923 so copyright is not a question, but other maps in the public domain are included when possible. Like the 1856 map mentioned above, there are maps from 1920 (Van Buskirk), 1930 (Clevenger), and 1950 (Stapleton) that indicate land owners or cadastral maps. One of my favorite maps of A Road Map of Monroe County by the Indiana Geological Survey dates to 1906 before roads were “numbered”. Another is the Detail Geological Map of the Vicinity of Bloomington, Indiana dated 1896 showing Hunter Valley.
[…]
In the newspaper collection at the MCHC Research Library, we have numerous issues of The Optimist, the newspaper of Bloomington High School (later Bloomington High School South). The paper according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomington_High_School_South began in 1911. Our holdings appear to be the most complete with scattered issues from 1923 through 2009 (see Index for specific holdings). According to WorldCat, two other libraries have some holdings:
I did not verify whether a complete run exists at MCCSC (Phone: 812-330-7700).
[…]
Bloomington draws people from many places. One longtime resident who began life not far from here in Columbus, Indiana was Bessie Lynn Hufford, wife of IU Physics Professor Dr. Mason Edward Hufford (1882-1975). Among Mrs. Hufford’s interests were gardening and genealogy. Her persistent search for her ancestors resulted in reams of correspondence with people around the country, and she saved all of her records. The collection was donated to the MCHC in 2000, but for many years remained in storage. It was recently sorted and a few items were placed in the Lynn file in our Family Files. Close relatives were mostly from Bartholomew and Lawrence Counties, so the bulk of the items were sent to the historical societies in Columbus and Bedford. Family names she was researching included Childs, (Chiles), Dixon, Edwards, Eversole, Hufford, Jackson, King, Kinnett, McCoy, Warnick, and Waters.
[…]
June is Limestone Month in Monroe County Indiana and what an excellent time to remind everyone of the magnificent contributions the limestone industry has made to our county. For a list of events, see this calendar.
The MCHC Cemetery Committee is hosting two events:
Stone at White Oak Cemetery
[…]
This index, compiled by Lee Ehman, contains all of the original sales of Monroe County land from U.S. Land Offices during the 1800’s. It was compiled from the searchable online database maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This index augments information from the Research Library’s index of Monroe County land records from Deed […]
