Category Archives: Indiana Division

A map of the Wabash and Erie Canal from the Ohio state line to Terre Haute

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In its collections, the Indiana State Library has a map of the Wabash and Erie Canal from the Ohio state line to Terre Haute. The library’s copy of this map is a reproduction made in the 1920s from the original map held at the Library of Congress. The map shows the route of the Wabash and Erie Canal from the Ohio state line to Terre Haute. The base map is compiled from surveys done by the Federal Government in the early 1800s.

The canal ran through the wilderness of a largely unsettled part of Indiana. The canal period was crucial to the development and colonization of Indiana, especially to remote parts of the state north of Indianapolis. Ultimately, the Wabash and Erie Canal would connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River in Evansville.

We realize the map is not beautiful, but take a moment to examine the digitized map closely. The canal period coincides with Indian removal in the state. Clearly mapped are the reserve lands set aside for the Miami during the removal of Indians from the state – Jean Baptiste de Richardville, Little Turtle, Godfroy. Most of the reserve lands shown on these maps can be found in the treaty made at St. Mary’s with the Miami, Oct. 6, 1818 and a treaty signed at the Mississinewa in 1826.

By 1840, all this granted land was recollected, and tribes moved west.

Learn more about the Wabash and Erie Canal from the Indiana Historical Bureau’s “The Indiana Historian: Canal Mania in Indiana.” Especially interesting is an account of early travel along the canal recorded in J. Richard Beste’s published travel book, “The Wabash; or, Adventures of an English gentleman’s family in the interior of America” (London, Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, 1855). They take off from Terre Haute on Aug. 12, 1851. Available in full text from the Library of Congress, beginning on page 191 of Volume 2.

Click here to view a hi-res version of the map of the Wabash and Erie Canal from the Ohio state line to Terre Haute, and visit the Indiana State Library Map Collection to examine maps, county atlases, plats maps and other land descriptions.

This post was written by Monique Howell, Indiana Collection supervisor.

This woman’s work

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It is easy to forget that women’s rights and suffrage efforts in the U.S. began much earlier than most of us realize. One such intrepid pioneer for women’s rights was the indomitable May Wright Sewall. Although born in Wisconsin, she and her husband moved to Indiana in the early 1870s. She was well-known around the state for being a proponent for equal and better-quality education for women. She later established the Indianapolis Classical School for Girls, which became a prestigious preparatory school.

May Wright Sewall, standing at the left end, and a group of women at Mount Vernon in Virginia. from the Indiana State Library’s Digital Collections.

Sewall believed women should have lives outside the home that included educational and cultural opportunities. She was a founder and first president of the Indiana Woman’s Club, which was founded in 1888. Sewall was instrumental in establishing the Indianapolis Propylaeum, which was a house built specifically for the cultural and educational edification of women’s clubs, including the Indiana Woman’s Club. A patron of the arts throughout her life, she was an officer in the Art Association in Indianapolis and was instrumental in helping establish the John Herron School of Art. Sewall was also a nationally known suffragist, and from 1899-1904, she was president of the International Council of Women.

In 1881, Sewall started writing a bi-weekly column in the early iteration of the Indianapolis Times. The column’s title was Woman’s Work. In the first article, which ran on Oct. 29, 1881, she states the reasons for the existence of the column and her goals in creating it. She notes that often, women’s names were not mentioned in newspapers or indeed in public unless they were the subject of a scandal or had died. She hoped that through her column, she could bring the importance of women’s “invisible” work in and outside the home to the forefront of the public’s attention.

This blog post was written by Leigh Anne Johnson, Indiana Division newspaper librarian, Indiana State Library. For more information, contact the Indiana Division at 317-232-3670 or via  “Ask-A-Librarian.”

Post road map of Indiana, 1904

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Two regular questions that come across the reference desk can be answered using post office resources. The first common question is about a place name. The researcher may have a reference to a place, but that “place” is not a city or town. We often discover it’s a post office name. The Indiana State Library has a card file of post offices in Indiana. The card contains details including date the post office opened and when it may have been discontinued. These post office cards were used in making the handy reference book “From Needmore to Prosperity: Hoosier Place Names in Folklore and History” (Baker, 1995). Perhaps your library has this book.

The other request is to locate a modern address when all they know is the rural route, which is often the only detail a county farm directory would have listed. This is much more difficult to answer. There are a couple maps we can use to help find the mail route, but not the exact home. We have two sets of Post Office department maps by county, we have a set from about 1910 and another set from about 1940. The State Library has made the set from 1910 available online here. Additionally, a 1904 statewide post route map of Indiana is available online here.

The 1904 post route map is nice because one can get a larger picture of the mail system than the county maps offer. The map shows post offices, mail routes and frequency of service. According to this map, most post offices and rural routes were getting mail up to six times a week; however, some little hamlets got mail only three times a week. Mail routes were added from year to year. Using a searchable newspaper database, one may be able to find detailed route descriptions. Take for example the Salem Democrat in 1903. They published the postmasters’ detailed reporting of how many houses are on the route, how many people are served and the length of the route. Here is an example of how Rural Route 11 out of Pekin is described.

Visit the USPS website for more history about rural routes. The development of the postal system is interesting and gives context to rural life and road improvements. Rural mail delivery was thought to help keep young people on the farm since they could receive reading materials and catalogs, perhaps diminishing the appeal of town.  Additionally, rural postal routes are credited with road development throughout the nation. This article from the Fort Wayne News makes sure to lay the blame for lack of mail service on the road supervisor. Once the roads are improved, mail service will resume.

Finally, for the adventurous researcher, National Archives holds the records from the Post Office Department. Among the records are correspondence, reports and supporting documents regarding proposed rural route establishments and changes, filed by state and county. These unique tools will offer researchers geographic information for years to come.

This post was written by Monique Howell, Indiana Collection supervisor.

Introducing the born-digital Indiana state documents collection

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Archive-It is a web archiving service that the Indiana State Library first started using in the spring of 2020 to collect online publications from Indiana state agencies. Archive-It is built at the Internet Archive, the digital library that is also the home of the Wayback Machine, where old websites are saved. For organizations that wish to save selective online content and create curated collections, Archive-It provides the tools necessary to capture, store and access.

The Indiana State Library collects printed publications from state agencies, but until recently we did not have a good solution for capturing and preserving online versions. Working from a priority list of Indiana state agencies and their web pages with known born-digital publications, we created the separate collections. Then test crawls were done to see if the Archive-It web crawler captured the desired content and linked documents. Test crawls are an opportunity to make sure the web page will play back correctly in the Wayback archive and that the amount of data collected stays within our subscription’s allocation.

Once the Indiana State Library Archive-It collections hold content, metadata is added for specific web pages, continuing publications or specific reports. For example, in December 2020, the Final Report of the Next Level Teacher Compensation Commission was issued online. A copy of this born-digital report resides in the collection Governor, Indiana. The screenshots below show the steps to access the report at the Wayback archive.

Click the “Captured 2 times” link

Click one of the date links

Access the full PDF of the report

For our new online state documents collection, we’ve been able to capture many state agency web pages and their linked publications. This is a continual work-in-progress as content is regularly captured through new crawls of the web pages. As this collection grows, we hope that these reports, brochures, newsletters, maps, fact sheets and online content will complement our historical collections of printed Indiana state documents.

This blog post was written by Indiana Division librarian and state documents coordinator Andrea Glenn. For more information, contact the Indiana Division at 317-232-3670 or “Ask-A-Librarian.”

The No-Tobacco Journal

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One might have the impression that smoking was without objection in the 1920s and 1930s. Movies showed stars smoking constantly, advertisements in newspapers had “doctors” recommending brands of cigarettes. It seems you could smoke just about anywhere. However, the No-Tobacco League of America was active throughout this time, pushing back against the smoking habit through a lens of health and moral objection.

Indiana even had a short-lived era of cigarette prohibition. From 1905-1909 it was unlawful to sell, buy or possess cigarettes. Senate Bill 51 was approved on Feb. 28, 1905. The law reads in part, “It shall be unlawful for any person … to manufacture, sell, exchange, barter, dispose of or give away … cigarettes” or any papers intended to be used to roll tobacco.

The law was in place until 1909, when it was amended. The new law narrowed the prohibition of cigarette sales and use to just minors. Currently, Indiana and federal law have the age set at 21.

Luther H. Higley began publishing the No-Tobacco Journal in Butler, Indiana in January 1918 for the No-Tobacco League of America. Higley was the owner and operator of the Butler Record, a local newspaper. He had an established career as a printer and publisher. Higley also had an affiliation with the Methodist Church in Butler and published the Epworth League Quarterly which had national circulation.

Highlights from the No-Tobacco Journal include cartoons, snarky digs at smokers, religious and moral appeals and more than a few photos to Charles Lindberg. The No-Tobacco League appealed to churches, Sunday school groups and church gatherings; much like the Temperance Movement it was as much a moral appeal as for one’s health; if not more moral than health.

The No-Tobacco League of America also published the Prohibition Defender and No-Tobacco Journal in 1931. It was designed especially for Sunday schools. The first issue had Charles Lindbergh on the cover saying, “I do not drink.” In 1934 the No-Tobacco League began publishing the Clean Life Educator, opposing drink and smoke. Again, Charles Lindbergh graced the cover of the third issue, “A young American at his best” it says under his photo.

The publication eventually moved from Higley’s publishing house in Butler to the Free Methodist Publishing House at Winona Lake. Winona Lake was the resort home to many religious revivals and retreats.

World No Tobacco Day was created in 1987 by the Member States of the World Health Organization to draw attention to preventable disease and death caused by smoking. World No Tobacco Day is May 31.

More information on Indiana’s tobacco cessation programs can be found here.

This post was written by Monique Howell, Indiana Collection supervisor.

From our shelves to your computer screen, part two

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“Thank you so much! This is so amazing! I appreciate you so much!,” responded a patron about an item in our digital collections here at the Indiana State Library.

Our digital collections have grown over the past few years to include more and more from our fragile, rare and vast collections. In a previous blog post, we talked about selecting materials and here, in this second part, we’ll show you how materials make it into the collections.

Once we’ve selected materials to add, we evaluate them by asking some questions. Is this fragile? Does it need some conservation work? Or is it ready to go and if so, how do we digitize it? For example, some of our maps need to be cleaned or repaired before being scanned or photographed to get the best quality image for you to see.

It may also go to our catalogers to make sure the bibliographic record is correct and up to date. Once their work is done, the materials come back to the digitization coordinator and are prepared to be scanned. We have a workflow that includes naming the item for the image files, deciding how and what scanner to use and keeping a record of everything we scan.

Here are some photographs of materials and collections after they have been prepped and are waiting to be scanned.

Here at the Library, we have our own equipment for scanning materials.

First, we have our Epson flatbed scanner. It is our workhorse for many items that are small than 11”x17”. We can do pamphlets, photographs and letters, to name a few, on this scanner.

We’ve done a lot of materials on this scanner, including almost all of our Civilian Conservation Corps newsletters found here.

We also have two larger scanners we refer to as the Bookeyes, which is their official name by the manufacturer. These are used for bound periodicals, broadsides and newspapers. For example, we’ve used these to scan many of our items in the Company Employee Newsletter collection.

For maps and broadsides, we use our Pro Scanner. We feed encapsulated items through this scanner and it often requires having two people when working with fragile items. Many of our maps are encapsulated, meaning that they are sandwiched between sheets of Mylar, making them easier to handle.

After we make the scans, we upload them into our digital content management system called ContentDM, a well-known entity in the digitization world. It is in this program that you get to see our digital collections.

This year, we’ll be adding more materials to our county collection in the Indiana Historic Print Collection as well as a great new collection called Open Space, Historic Places: Parks, Memorials, and Landmarks. We hope to launch that collection this summer. We just keep adding more great materials to our collections. Keep checking back – you never know what we’ve found and added.

This post was written by Christopher Marshall, digital collections coordinator for the Indiana Division at the Indiana State Library.

From our shelves to your computer screen, part one

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“I want to find out more about the Indiana Council of Defense. What do you have in your collections?”

This is a typical reference question that we get here at the Indiana State Library. In response, we search our catalog to see what we have in our collection. We provide a list of items for patrons to browse and ultimately choose what they want to see. We then retrieve the materials for the patron to view and eventually they get re-shelved.

However, times are changing. Over the past decade, digital versions of those materials have populated the internet. Libraries, museums and historical societies of all sizes across the globe are making their collections available online. Here at the Indiana State Library, our digital collections also continue to grow.

But how? How do materials make it to our digital collections? Let’s look at how that happens by looking at the first part of the process.

Our first step is selection. Or, in other words, choosing what gets digitized. We are often looking for materials that we think patrons might use. This can be hard to determine since, like our collections, research is vast and covers a variety of topics. But, we have some guidelines that help us.

First, what happened on this date? Which historical event anniversaries or bicentennials are coming up? For example, it’s been one hundred years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment. We have recently added over 100 items to our digital collections pertaining to the Suffrage Movement.

Another example relating to anniversaries is the upcoming bicentennial of the founding of Indianapolis. We scoured our collections for materials about the centennial to see how the city celebrated. Here’s a program detailing the pageant they had a century ago:

Another aspect of selection is condition. As materials age, they become brittle, making them fragile. For example, the anniversary of World War I was the perfect time to harvest materials from our collections to scan for researchers and students in order to help them find primary sources created during the war years. Sometimes these materials are printed on cheap paper and that paper was not meant to last long.

Here’s an example of a letter. You can see that it has yellowed over the years and part of it is breaking off:

Maps are another example of materials that are hard to handle. We have a large map collection, some of which require conservation work due to their age and condition. This one is very hard to physically handle, making it a perfect map to digitize.

We also look at requests from our patrons, as well as our community. Back to our question at the top of this blog post, we have lots of materials about the Indiana Defense Council that were created during World War I. In this case, we can refer the patron to our digital collections.

Among the materials, we have a 1917 report from the Indiana State Council of Defense. This would also be a great time to revisit the physical collections to see what else we can digitize.

As for the community, IUPUI has a School of Philanthropy. There are numerous materials about local charities in our pamphlet collections. We hope that the students at the school will find those materials helpful, so we make them available in our collection for them to research. Here’s an example from our Charitable Organizations and Philanthropy digital collection:

One last point that we look at is inclusion. Indiana has 92 counties, and we want to make sure that all 92 are represented. We recently added materials from about 15 counties that had very little representation in our digital collections. Here is an example from Brown County. It’s not only about inviting people to visit Brown County, but also in very fragile condition.

Selecting materials is easy when you have a vast collection like we do at the Indiana State Library. But, it’s also hard to do with so many awesome materials to choose from!

This post was written by Christopher Marshall, digital collections coordinator for the Indiana Division at the Indiana State Library.

Newly-digitized images from the Genealogy Division

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Working at home during the pandemic has changed the way we approach our daily tasks. While we can’t do some things that we can do on-site from home, there are still a lot of projects that can be completed. Fortunately, I was able to upload several digitized images from multiple collections in our holdings during this time. Below are some of the images from two of the collections.

Vesper Cook grew up as Dorothy Vesper Wilkinson in Peru, Indiana. She was the curator of the Miami County Museum for 20 years and wrote some local and family histories. Her collection contains some of her research along with numerous photographs.

The photographs are of not only her immediate family, but also of her extended family as well as several her mother’s friends as teens and young adults.

Katherine Parrish was born in Indianapolis in 1921. She attended Shortridge High School and Butler University. She later married Milton Mondor. Her father was John P. Parrish, an architect who help design buildings at Stout Field along with several other buildings around Indianapolis, while her mother grew up in the area known as Nora.

The Mondor Collection has numerous family photographs, both intimate as well as staged. Most of them are of her immediate family but her parents’ extended family is also represented in the collection.

There are also photographs of John P. Parrish’s social life and his career as an architect. There are photographs of buildings around Broad Ripple and Washington Township as well as the hanger and administration building at Stout Field. He also sent many postcards home with images of the Murat Gun Club at Shiners conventions in the 1920s.

To view more digital images from the Genealogy Division check out our Digital Collections page.

Blog written by Sarah Pfundstein, genealogy librarian, Indiana State Library. For more information, contact the Indiana State Library at 317-232-3689 or “Ask-A-Librarian.”

‘Return to the Future: Your 2020 Census’

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It seems like years have passed since we starting preparing for the 2020 census at libraries across the state! Since then, the nation has experienced many ups and downs. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 census has continued to make headlines. In March, the Census Bureau had delayed field operations for the census until a new schedule was finalized. Data collection for the 2020 census is final on Sept.30, so now is the time to encourage the public to complete it if they haven’t already done so. Patrons can go online, call 844-330-2020 or mail back the form they received in the mail in order to complete the census. For patrons who speak languages other than English, see the responding by phone section on the census page. Census workers are now going door-to-door across the nation, making phone calls and sending email to those who haven’t responded. The goal is to get every single person counted by the deadline.

Because libraries have not been open, we’ve experienced a gap in our ability to promote the 2020 census. As we return to serving the public, libraries that are open by appointment can welcome patrons to answer the census at their library. Libraries not yet open can still create displays, offer handouts during curbside service and hang signs to encourage patrons to answer the 2020 census now. Libraries remain an essential part of the effort to notify the public that there is only one month left to finish this momentous task! We still have at least 20% of Hoosiers to count in September. Hoosiers depend on this once-in-a-decade count to shape the future of our legislative representation, public services and fiscal planning for all Indiana neighborhoods. The people won’t be counted one-by-one again until 2030.

For the past two years, 2020 census supporters have used creative strategies for reminding the public to answer the census. In Circle Pines, Minnesota, a city councilman dressed up as Census Man to bring attention to the importance of the 2020 census for apportionment. Not to be topped, the Chicago mayor announced last month that the Census Cowboy would arrive on horseback to help out in neighborhoods with low counts. It’s here that people will most need the public services funded using census counts. Here in Indiana, people can use our Race for a Complete Count graphics to view the progress of different areas of the state. If response rates aren’t measuring up in your part of Indiana, it’s not too late to make a difference. Our goal is to remind people as much as possible during this last month. Our Census in Indiana website is full of ideas and resources.

The new 2020 census deadline, while extended due to COVID-19, is still very tight. We need to amplify our message even louder for communities with low counts. We’ll share additional tools and tips on Sept. 1 at 2 p.m. in our webinar, “Return to the Future: Your 2020 Census.” Register for the webinar here. You can help census response in your community by requesting a partnership specialist from the Census Bureau to set up a mobile questionnaire assistance event. Census workers will set up socially-distanced tables for online response to the census on site. Contact the Indiana State Data Center for details.

This blog post by Katie Springer, reference librarian. For more information, contact the Reference and Government Services Division at 317-232-3678 or submit an Ask-A-Librarian request.

Wander Indiana – Let your wanderin’ spirit come on thru

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The Wander Indiana tourism campaign debuted in January of 1982 with a shoestring budget of $384,000. That year, Lt. Gov. John Mutz and the Tourism Development Division of the Indiana Department of Commerce unveiled the stylized “Wander Indiana” logo. Also released was The Wander Book, an informational guide for travelers looking for mini-vacation ideas around the Hoosier State. The guide included a form to order Wander Ware branded merchandise and souvenirs such as caps, t-shirts, coffee mugs, glasses, Fun Flyer discs and luggage.

Wander Book, 1982 edition.

Wander Wear, 1982.

In search of a theme song, the Tourism Development Division turned to the Ernie Maresca song “The Wanderer.” However, they were unable to acquire the licensing rights. Subsequently, the need for a theme led to a July 1982 call-out to songwriters for an original song. With no prize money at stake, the winner – out of 81 entries – was announced in September. Earmark, a musical production company in Indianapolis, won the contest and the bragging rights with their song based on the “Wander Indiana” campaign. With a brand new jingle, radio promotions became possible.

As the campaign rolled on, merchandise continued to be a popular means of promotion. In March of 1983, state Sen. William Dunbar introduced House Bill 1751 (P.L. 22-1983), which created a Tourism Marketing Fund. There was a desire for the Tourism Development Division to “buy Indiana” produced items, citing as an example, that the souvenir mugs were made in England. Additional items were available for purchase according to the 1986 Wander Book.

Wander Wear, 1986.

While the “Wander Indiana” campaign initially aimed to promote in-state tourism with its billboards, brochures, merchandise and a tourism hotline, the 1984 marketing phase featured television ads broadcast in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. A driverless classic car mysteriously rolls along Indiana’s backroads and highways. The 1950 Studebaker Champion, dubbed “Wanderer,” was the star in the television ads. There were 30 and 60 second versions of the commercial. The 1982 theme song had been modified, but similarities remained. The below video clip was transferred from VHS to DVD and posted on Indiana State Library’s YouTube channel. It shows a snippet of the television ad campaign.

Wander Book, 1986 edition.

The 1984, the “Wander Indiana” campaign also reached motorists by way of new license plates. In a pre-specialty plate era, with few license plate choices, the slogan “Wander Indiana” on everyone’s bumpers evoked many opinions. Critics did not like the red, yellow, green and white colors. The word Wander at the top was prominent while Indiana was less noticeable at the bottom. Detractors wondered if there was a state called “Wander.” After its three-year run was concluded, the “Wander Indiana” license plate was retired and replaced in January of 1987 with “Back Home Again.”

While the Bureau of Motor Vehicles was done with “Wander Indiana,” the Tourism Development Division continued the marketing campaign for two more years. Incrementally, Indiana raised its national and world reputation by hosting the 1987 Pan American Games and 1988 U.S. Olympic trials. The red Studebaker Champ made its rounds to special events such as Hoosier Celebration ’88. With the change of administrations in 1989, “Come on IN” replaced the “Wander Indiana” campaign. Overall the seven-year run of “Wander Indiana” was deemed a successful marketing campaign, and it laid the groundwork for subsequent tourism promotion efforts with even more funding. Quirky or nostalgic, “Wander Indiana” has its place in Hoosier history.

This blog post was written by Indiana Division Librarian Andrea Glenn. For more information, contact the Indiana Division at 317-232-3670 or “Ask-A-Librarian.”