Rev. Moses M. Porter, who for 50 plus years was pastor of the Second Baptist Church, was during his lifetime one of the best known blacks in Bloomington. He was the best known preacher this town ever had, according to Howard “Doc” Lewis in a newspaper article from the Bloomington Sunday Tribune and Star Courier
Blog post by Randi Richardson The Grant Street Inn at 310 N. Grant Street, Bloomington, Indiana, wasn’t always an inn. And it wasn’t always on Grant Street. It is a house with an interesting history wrapped around the various people who lived there and some interesting events. It isn’t quite certain when the house was built. Originally
Blog post by Randi Richardson Tim Rea, a resident of Evansville, Indiana, stopped by the Monroe County History Center a few weeks ago after learning that his mother, Mary (Steen) Rea, had been featured in one of the History Center’s blogs. He was eager to learn whatever he could about the Roxy Theatre which was at the
Blog post by Randi Richardson I met Charles Gromer at the Monroe County History Center garage sale in June 2019. He was thumbing through a thick stack of orphan photographs, those pictures abandoned by their families without identification. “It’s sad,” I said “to see photos of people discarded without identification and separated from the families
Blog post by Randi Richardson There once was a funeral home in downtown Ellettsville. If you didn’t live in Ellettsville during the 1940s and 50s, you probably have no memory of it. In the span of history, it existed only briefly. The two-story building at 112 N. Sale Street is believed to have been built
Blog post by Randi Richardson Every year at the MCHC annual garage sale I find, without much effort, an artifact or two from Bloomington. This year it was a large, framed picture of the Showers Furniture Factory taken sometime in the 1930s, a June 1929 diploma from Bloomington High School made out to Lucille (variously
Blog post by Randi Richardson Two men with deep roots in Monroe County served as governor of Indiana. Paris Chipman Dunning was one of those two. He came to Bloomington with his mother when he was quite a young man and studied law under Gen. Howard and James A. Whitcomb. He obtained his law degree
Blog post by Randi Richardson Lots of people from Monroe County had kin that lived in Brown County located adjacent to Monroe County on the east. Some of those kin may be among those noted in the June 2019 issue of the Brown County Journal dedicated exclusively to hucksters—the vehicle operators and the families and communities they
Blog post by Randi Richardson A number of Revolutionary War veterans are buried in Monroe County including Joseph Henderson and his wife, Elizabeth, in the White Oak Cemetery. On May 11, 2019, the Daniel Guthrie SAR Chapter of Bedford and the Bloomington DAR Chapter co-hosted a grave marking and re-dedication ceremony at Henderson’s gravesite. April
Blog post by Rod Spaw Memories fade, but photographs remember. That makes visual images important resources for exploring the past. Photos can raise questions, provide clarity or suggest additional avenues for discovery. New to the Monroe History Center’s collection of research tools is an index of photo studios that operated in Bloomington between 1892 and
Blog post by Randi Richardson This sketch accompanied the circus announcement published in the Bloomington Evening World on July 26, 1924. The caption under the sketch noted that the “biggest lion is the one that tried to kill the trainer and the smallest lion is the one that saved its master’s life.” It was additionally
Blog post by Randi Richardson Bloomington’s “new” high school, the one at Second and Walnut, was dedicated in late 1914. By 1928, the school had a new song, “The Bloomington High School Song.” It was sung to the tune of the Washington and Lee Swing. The composer of the song was Mary Steen, the daughter of
Blog post by Randi Richardson After shooting and killing Elzie Easton and gunning down his companion, James Douglass, on Christmas Eve, 1889, George Buskirk, the saloon keeper, escaped through a rear door and headed east to the home of his mother. He reportedly gave some thought, initially, to turning himself in to the sheriff, or
Blog post by Randi Richardson William John Allen was born September 8, 1836 in Putnam County, Indiana, and came to Monroe County with his parents, John W. and Fanny (Clark) Allen, when he was only three months old. After completing his education in the common schools of the county he took a college preparatory
Hello, my name is Eva Ladd and I’m currently an intern at the Monroe County History Center (MCHC) from Bloomington High School North through my Service Learning Program. I have a general interest in history, specifically the 1960’s, with the Civil Rights movement being one of my favorite topics. My Service Learning class required me