All Stories: 449
Stories
Little Cedar Grove Baptist Church
With the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, Franklin County in the Indiana Territory was officially opened for settlement to white settlers. By 1812, the number of settlers and the increasing size of the church congregation created the need for a church.…
Scribner House
In 1813, brothers Joel, Nathaniel, and Abner Scribner arrived at the Falls of the Ohio with plans to become the founders of a new town. They planned out their settlement in the area that is today New Albany, Indiana. Their original street plans…
Thomas Downs House
Thomas Downs was a member of the General Quarter Session of the Peace, appointed by William Henry Harrison in 1801. Downs purchased lots 89 and 90, just one year after Charlestown was planned in 1809. The Downs House is thought to be one of the…
Fort Vallonia
Founded during the late-eighteenth century, Vallonia was a French-American settlement along the Muscatatuck and White Rivers. By 1810, the settlement was home to approximately ninety families in need of protection from potentially hostile natives,…
Fort Flora
During the War of 1812, some American settlers in the Indiana Territory felt threatened by nearby populations of Native Americans--whether justly or not. While many Native Americans remained neutral, there were large numbers who sided with the…
Vance-Tousey House
A soldier-turned-businessman, Samuel Vance helped open Dearborn County for settlement with his establishment of Lawrenceburg in the Indiana Territory. In 1794, Vance served with General Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Soon after the battle,…
Venoge Farmstead
In 1796, a Swiss man named Jean James Dufour immigrated to the United States with a plan to start a commercially successful winery and solve the problems plaguing American vineyards and wineries. Dufour’s first attempt at a vineyard in Kentucky…
Old Perry County Courthouse
When Spencer County was formed from parts of Perry and Warrick Counties in 1818, it was decided to move the county seat of Perry County to a more central location. The town of Rome was chosen and a new county square and courthouse were planned and…
Tippecanoe Battlefield
To resist the growing number of white settlers in the Indiana Territory, Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (“The Prophet”) formed a Confederacy of Indian nations, choosing a settlement near the junction of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers…
George Bentel House (New Harmony)
The Harmonists or Rappites, were a group of followers of George Rapp who immigrated to the United States from Germany to avoid religious persecution. The group first settled in Pennsylvania, but facing poor climate conditions for grape growing,…
Judge Jeremiah Sullivan House
From Virginia in 1816, Jeremiah Sullivan immigrated to Madison, Indiana in order to practice law. In 1818, he built a Federal style home for his family, which likewise served as his headquarters for future political appointments. Sullivan ultimately…
Earlham College Observatory
Founded by Quakers in 1847, Earlham College is a private institution in Richmond, Indiana. In 1856, the college purchased a 6.5 inch objective lens telescope from R. B. Rutherford, an American pioneer in astronomy. Five years later, the Earlham…
Manchester University
The college was originally founded by the United Brethren Church in 1860. The college was first known as the Roanoke Classical Seminary and was located in the small village of Roanoke in Huntington County, Indiana (about 20 miles east of North…
St. Mary’s of the Woods
In 1840, the Sisters of Providence, a religious order of Catholic nuns, immigrated to the United States from France. The Sisters, led by Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, came from France for the express purpose of establishing schools and orphanages in…
Evansville College
Conceived in large measure as part of a 1921 campus master plan, the three main features of the historic Evansville College campus are Administration Hall, the Circle, and the President’s House. They are now situated within the larger campus that…
DePauw University
Indiana Asbury University was granted its charter in 1837 and was the first Methodist College to be established in Indiana. Asbury quickly became a leading educational institution in the state. The name of the college was changed to DePauw…
Indiana Dental College
As the last quarter of the 19th century began, the idea of an education for all Americans was becoming a reality. Educated professionals were gaining acceptance, especially in medical fields. Medical and dental colleges sprang up with alarming…
Madame CJ Walker Building
Madame CJ Walker was the first African American woman to open the field of cosmetology as a new and lucrative industry for black Americans. Her experimentation with hair preparations for African American women eventually led to the establishment of…
Franklin College
Founded in the late 1830s, the Indiana Baptist Manual Labor Institute transitioned to being the four year liberal arts college known as Franklin College in 1844. Franklin College was the fifth college to be founded in the state of Indiana. According…
Eleutherian College
Eleutherian College was one of the first Indiana schools to admit students without regards to race or gender. Eleutherian was also the first school in Indiana to offer advanced educational opportunities to African-American students. The three-story…
Franklin County Seminary
The Franklin County Seminary opened in 1831 as part of a mandate in Indiana’s 1816 Constitution for each county to have a seminary. The concept of a publicly supported secondary educational system in the United States under a state-wide program was…
Homestead Hotel
In contrast to the opulence of both the French Lick Springs Hotel and the West Baden Springs Hotel is the more modest, mid-sized Homestead Hotel. This building, located across the street from the West Baden Springs Hotel, was built in 1913. Smaller…
West Baden Springs Hotel
The current West Baden Springs Hotel was constructed from 1901-1902, but the site was used for hotels prior to this incarnation. The earliest hotel in West Baden Springs was constructed on this site in 1845. With the arrival of the Louisville, New…
French Lick Springs Hotel
Located in the Springs Valley area of Orange County, the French Lick Springs Hotel helped make the region a destination for those in search of either mineral waters or casinos or, more likely, a combination of the two. The Springs Valley was rich…
Rockville Chautauqua Pavilion
Although built to house chautauqua events, the Rockville Chautauqua Pavilion is of a more simple form than some of the more camp and resort-like settings previously mentioned. It was built at Beechwood Park in 1913 when the Rockville Chautauqua was…
Chesterfield Spiritualist Camp
The Chesterfield Spiritualist Camp was established in 1890 outside of Anderson, Indiana. Modern spiritualism emerged in the mid-1800s and involves the science, philosophy, and religion of continuous life, based on the communication through a medium…
Fox Lake Resort
This African American resort community in northeastern Indiana was developed in 1924 when a group of Indiana businessmen decided to market the area exclusively to black families. Segregation abounded and African American families were not permitted…
Winona Lake
The Beyer brothers purchased a large parcel of land in 1886 on the shores of then Eagle Lake (later renamed Winona Lake) and opened Spring Fountain Park, a summer resort and amusement park. By 1895, the Winona Assembly and Summer School Association…
Lake Maxinkuckee
Lake Maxinkuckee, Indiana’s second largest lake, became a resort community beginning in the 1870s, and the area continues to be a summer vacation spot today. After the Civil War, industrialization led to more populated cities, and as cities became…
Fountain Park Chautauqua
The Fountain Park Chautauqua was created in 1895 by Remington Bank president Robert Parker. He envisioned an annual assembly to be held for people to discuss topics including religion, science, literature and the arts that was based on the…