Stories by author "Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology": 180
Stories
Vincennes Fortnightly Club
The Fortnightly Club in Vincennes is an educational, social, and humanitarian club for women. Before women were allowed to vote (1917 in Indiana, 1920 nationally), clubs and organizations were the only accepted way for women to take an active role…
Mary Birdsall House
Mary Thistlewaite Birdsall was a premier suffragist and advocate of women’s right in the State of Indiana during the mid-19th century. Mary Thistlewaite married in 1848 (at the age of 19) and she and her husband, Thomas, became actively involved in…
Shirk-Edwards House
Marie Stuart Edwards, a leader in suffrage and other social movements, was born in 1880 in Lafayette. Her youth included many “firsts”. She was the first girl in Lafayette to ride a bike and the first to attend a women’s college. In 1904, she…
House Designed by Joel Roberts Ninde
Joel Roberts Ninde was a self-taught architect in Fort Wayne. Her first design was the house that she and her husband, Lee J. Ninde, lived in. She refused to live in his family home due to the dark and drafty rooms, and they could not find a home…
The Propylaeum
The Propylaeum was founded in 1888 by a group of seven Indianapolis women. The original purpose of the meeting was to find a headquarters for the Indianapolis Woman’s Club. However, the chairperson, May Wright Sewall (a nationally known educator,…
YWCA in Indiana
The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) has its roots in England as early at 1855. Two organizations, the Prayer Union and the General Female Training Institute, formed at the same time to provide a variety of services to young single women…
Booker T. Washington School
Constructed in 1905, the Booker T. Washington School served as one of two African American schools in Rush County. This two story, brick building housed grades 1-6 up until 1932, when it was closed by the local school board. The first floor of the…
Bethel AME Church (Indianapolis)
Located in what was the center of Indianapolis’ black community, the Bethel AME church is the oldest African American congregation in the state. The congregation, founded in 1836, met in a small frame house and was also known as Indianapolis…
Crispus Attucks High School
Crispus Attucks High School was built in 1927 as the city of Indianapolis’ first and only African American high school. Despite protests from the Better Indianapolis League (a civic organization of progressive black citizens), the school board…
Alexander Taylor Rankin House
This is the home of Alexander Rankin, a known abolitionist, who built the house in 1841. He lived in the house for two years while he was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. His brother was John Rankin, the most well-known conductor along…
Farmers Institute
The Farmers Institute is the main building of a small campus of Quaker buildings located in a seven acre grove near Lafayette, IN. It is a wood frame building constructed in 1851 and enhanced by Greek Revival elements. The building housed the first…
Speed Cabin
John Allen Speed, a native of Scotland, immigrated to the United States in 1821. Speed and his family moved to Crawfordsville in 1834 and bought land at the southeast corner of North and Grant Streets to build their log cabin. An ardent…
Lyles Consolidated School
Lyles Station was founded in prior to the Civil War by Joshua and Sanford Lyles, former slaves from Tennessee. Joshua Lyles returned to Tennessee and encouraged other former slaves to come join him in Indiana. Many decided to do just that, and, at…
Leora Brown School
Originally known as the Corydon Colored School, the building was constructed in 1891 as an elementary and secondary school for African Americans. It may be the oldest African American school remaining in the state of Indiana. The grade school met in…
Carnegie Center for Art and Culture
The Carnegie Center is housed in the former Carnegie Free Public Library (constructed in 1902) and is a division of the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library. Staff at the Center have developed a permanent interactive exhibit about the Underground…
Lyman & Asenath Hoyt House
The home of Lyman and Asenath Hoyt was constructed circa 1850 of Indiana limestone in the Greek Revival style. The Hoyts lived in the house with their seven children until 1857 and were active in the anti-slavery movement and the Underground…
Levi Coffin House
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965, the Levi Coffin House in Fountain City is a significant property in the Underground Railroad. Built in 1827, the two-story brick Federal style house was the home of Levi and Catharine Coffin and their…
Fort Ouiatenon
Fort Ouiatenon is a former French outpost and trading site that was built along the Wabash River and active from 1717 to 1791. Dr. Richard B. Weatherill, a popular physician in nearby Lafayette, IN, purchased the site of the fort in 1928 and had a…
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…
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…