Local History & Genealogy

Take a historic excursion across a state that is often mistaken as the home of grain and corn production, and little more. Countless manufacturing centers in northern Indiana strengthened the economic fabric of Hoosier land. The railroads that criss-crossed northern Indiana were instrumental in populating the small towns and larger cities by employing thousands over the course of many years. Through photographs of depots, freight houses, and other railroad structures, long demolished yet an integral part of community development, Railroad Depots of Northern Indiana reviews the history of the cities and towns that used the rail to transport raw materials and finished manufactured products across the state to markets such as Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. This book also tells the story of a short line railroad and the commodities it has transported for the past century, as well as the longest-existing interurban, still operating just south of Lake Michigan, the resilient South Shore Line.

Beginning with the first Indiana canal effort in 1804, this narrative deals with the half century of canal agitation in the valleys of the Wabash and Whitewater rivers. The rising tide of enthusiasm for internal improvements reached flood stage in the mammoth system legislation of 1836, which provided for a network of canals throughout the state, several turnpikes and even a few railroads. The Wabash and Earie Canal was eventually completed to Evansville, and for a brief period flourished as a busy carrier of agriculture and industrial products. The White-water Canal also had its useful moments in a checkered career. However, Indiana went bankrupt before the canals were completed, faced with such a heavy debt that for some years the state floundered in a financial morass. Affected by the vagaries of natural forces, the perversities of human nature, and the competition of early railroads, the rise, and fall of these two waterways and the ineffective Central Canal are chartered in this carefully researched and documented history. Men political and otherwise --governors, legislators, canal officials, citizens with vested interests, and articulate voters--who were involved with the improvements mania are brought to life with all their colorful idiosyncrasies. The youthful, over-confident mood of Indiana at the time, especially in the canal towns exhilarated by internal improvements that were supposed to bring progress and prosperity, is captured in this engaging, anecdotal chronicle.

Early in the 20th century, the mighty interurban provided a link from Indianapolis to nearly every city and village in existence. For little more than five or ten cents, a passenger could journey to Anderson, Franklin, Martinsville, Richmond, or Muncie, and all of the stops along the way. Its hundreds of miles of track provided the Hoosier state with the first mass transit system in history. At its zenith, the Indianapolis Traction Terminal became one of the busiest interurban stations in the world, handling 100,000 cars and over a million passengers annually.Like other titles in Arcadia's Images of Rail series, this book helps preserve an important chapter in our nation's rail history, illustrating how it shaped our landscape, aided our expansion, and accelerated our progress.

The lives and works of Otto Stark, Theodore C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams, William Forsyth, and Richard B. Gruelle.

Over the last 185 the Indiana Historical Society has added cartographic gems to its collection. The scope of the maps maintained by the Society ranges from several Old World views of the North America to more contemporary views of Indiana counties and towns. While the focus of the map collection is broad geographically, its core subject is Indiana and the documentation of the states evolving history. Two introductory essays by noted cartographers relate the history of mapmaking from the early days of maps in America to the present as well as the history of maps in the state. Approximately one hundred maps from the Society's collection are highlighted with brief essays on each.

The bicentennial of Indiana’s statehood in 2016 is the perfect time for Hoosiers of all stripes to hit the road and visit sites that speak to the nineteenth state’s character. In her book, Andrea Neal has selected the top 100 events/historical figures in Indiana history, some well-known like George Rogers Clark, and others obscured by time or memory such as the visit of Marquis de Lafayette to southern Indiana.

These highly readable essays and photographs that accompany them feature a tourist site or landmark that in some way brings the subject to life. This will enable interested Hoosiers to travel the entire state to experience history at firsthand. Related activities and sites  include nature hikes, museums, markers, monuments, and memorials. The sites appear in chronological order, beginning with the impact of the Ice Age on Indiana and ending with the legacy of the bicentennial itself.

The book is a pictorial book of southern Indiana. It is collection of historical photographs.

Now That Time Has Had Its Say tells the story of the Indiana Central Canal, from the time when horses and flatboats carried freight and passengers down its length, to today, when museums, office buildings, and condominiums are being built along its banks. The book is the product of more than two years of research by J. Darrell Bakken, retired vice-president of engineering of the Indianapolis Water Company, who worked in previously untapped archives, discovering documents and never-before published photographs which helped yield the history of the twenty-five mile canal.This technical history begins in 1835, when Indiana caught 'canal fever' and began a multi-million dollar project to build a network of canals to transport passengers and freight throughout the state. One section of that project, the Indiana Central Canal, started in northern Marion County in Broad Ripple, continued through the city of Indianapolis, and ended in Johnson County, near the town of Waverly. For more than forty years the canal was a failure both practically and financially. Finally in 1881 the canal became part of the new Indianapolis Water Company, and from then until the current day it has been an important part of the history of the city of Indianapolis.The latter part of the book documents the impact of community leaders such as General Thomas A. Morris, F. A. W. Davis, Hugh M. K. Landon, Clarence H. Geist, and Thomas W. Moses, and reveals how, from the 1970s onward, the downtown canal became a driving force in the transformation of Indianapolis into one of America's most livable cities.

Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous community study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors initiated this project to reveal the unrecorded historical and contemporary life of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. As a collaboration of community and campus, this book recounts the early efforts of Hurley Goodall to develop a community history and archive that told the story of the African American community, and rectify the representation of small town America as exclusively white. The authors designed and implemented a collaborative ethnographic field project that involved intensive interviews, research, and writing between community organizations, local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. This book is a unique model for collaborative research, easily accessible to students. It will be a valuable resource for instructors in anthropology, creative writing, sociology, community research, and African American studies.

One of the most dramatic eras in Indiana history, the natural gas boom in the east central region transformed a mostly agricultural area into a major industrial center. The discovery of natural gas created major cities in the place of county seat towns, boomtowns where there had been villages, and factories towering over former farm land. The impact of the boom lived on even after gas itself failed. Through a collection of vintage images, authors James A. Glass and David G. Kohrman provide an overview of the boom era and its legacy in the four county seats of the gas belt: Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo, and Marion, as well as smaller communities such as Elwood, Fairmount, and Gas City.