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Conner Prairie Traditional Crafts: Preservation and Reproduction

The preservation and continuation of traditional crafts and their skills are important to American culture. The Conner Prairie craft collection is usually limited to museum guests, scholars, and other specialized researchers. By digitizing the collection and making it widely accessible o the internet these historic artifacts and the important story they tell will be available to a mass audience, including teachers and students. This collection consists of Conner Prairie traditional crafts featuring pottery, armsmaking, and blacksmithing.

Conner Prairie Transferware Collection

Transferware was an 18th-century English innovation in ceramic decoration in which copper-plate engravings were "transferred" to items via a "tissue." No longer was it necessary to laboriously hand-decorate ceramics like tableware, basins or tiles. This early form of mass production was an immediate success and demand grew over the early nineteenth century. Manufacturers like Spode and Wedgewood found eager markets for their deocorative, durable goods, particularly in the United States.

Indiana Farm Security Administration Photographs

The U.S. Farm Security Administration took 678 photographs with captions in Indiana from 1935 to 1943. These photos cover the Ohio River flood (1937), resettlement communities of Decatur Homesteads and Wabash and Deshee Farms (1938), and U. S. Army Chaplain School at Fort Ben Harrison (1943). Most of the photos are primarily concerned with rural and traditional agricultural life. There are very few industrial shots and no photos of major industries. The only major city in Indiana photographed was Indianapolis, including photos around Monument Circle, the Greyhound Bus Station, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

British Studies Monitor

Digital scans of the publication, "British Studies Monitor." The collection runs from 1970 to 1979.

Historic Indiana Maps

Maps are often beautiful illustrations of our history, the human-environmental interaction, and natural features of our state and its communities. Maps record settlement patterns, political boundaries, transportation routes, and land ownership. Maps contain invaluable information for historians, genealogists, and citizens. The resources in this collection are historical maps of Indiana, its counties and cities, from the collections at Indiana University. Efforts were made to represent various areas of our state, but selection was based on G. K. Hall and Co.'s Checklist of Printed Maps of the Middle West to 1900 Volume 3 covering the state of Indiana.

Crispus Attucks Museum

Crispus Attucks was Indianapolis' first segregated high school built for African-Americans in 1927. It was named after Crispus Attucks, a black man who was the first American to die in the Boston Massacre in 1770, a precursor to the American Revolutionary War. In 1986, the school converted from a high school to junior high school. This digital collection captures the history of the high school through its yearbooks (1928-1986), newspapers, and graduation programs. Special thanks to the Crispus Attucks Museum and its Board of Advisors for permission to digitize their valuable collection of historical documents. Special thanks to the Crispus Attucks Museum and its Board of Advisors for permission to digitize their valuable collection of historical documents.

WANTED: Missing Crispus Attucks High School Yearbooks
YEARS: 1930, 1980
Please help IU Indianapolis University Library complete the Digital Crispus Attucks Yearbooks collection.
Contact Information : digsvcs@iu.edu

Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives

The Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives was created to collect, conserve, preserve, and promote the use of records that document the architecture, engineering, and arts associated with the built environment of Columbus, Indiana and Bartholomew County. The archives' collection includes materials on both Historical and Modernist projects, including many of the 60 plus designs by world famous architects of the last half century that are located in Bartholomew County.

Civil War: Governor Morton Telegraph Books and Slips

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Indiana Governor Oliver P.Morton's staff recorded thousands of the governor's incoming andoutgoing telegrams in small, bound books. The governor and his staffcommunicated by telegraph with the highest and most prominentgovernment and military leaders in the North, including PresidentAbraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Researchers willfind many uses of these messages. Historians studying politics andmilitary planning at the highest levels of federal and state governmentduring the Civil War will find many important communications. Personsstudying the organization and actions of Indiana volunteer regimentsand batteries will gain useful insights. Biographers, local historians,and genealogists will all learn much from consulting these records.

Indiana Landmarks Wilbur D. Peat

Wilbur Peat served as director of the John Herron Art Museum in Indianapolis from 1929-1965. During that time he authored Indiana Houses of the Nineteenth Century, a seminal work on residential architectural styles. Indiana Landmarks holds much of Peat’s architectural collection. Among the items is a set of articles by Agnes McCulloch Hanna who wrote a column on Indiana architecture for the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News. Contained within the collection are copies of Hanna’s articles from 1928-1952.

Conner Prairie Rural History Project

The Conner Prairie Rural History Project (2001-2003) was an effort to capture the fast disappearing rural landscape and heritage of Hamilton County, Indiana.  Funded by the Legacy Fund of Hamilton County, the project conducted over 125 oral histories with farmers, business leaders, and local citizens who shared their memories of the county’s rural past.  In addition, diaries, letters and photos documenting that heritage were collected and digitized for posterity.