History center tells story of county

Monroe County has endured nearly 200 years of history, and the Monroe County History Center has documentation of almost all of it. \nEstablished a century ago in 1905, the Monroe County Historical Society runs a museum, a gift shop and the Genealogy Library located on the corner of 6th and Washington Streets in a building that itself has quite a history. \nBefore it became the History Center it was the public library, and before that it was the Colored School for the children of African Americans who moved to Bloomington during the 1870s. Museum director Kari Price is the only full-time employee but is supported by a legion of dedicated \nvolunteers. \n"Our mission is to create a sense of place," said Price. "Bloomington has a transient population with the University and we provide a way for people to find out about the place they're living in."\nThat place was settled by pioneers who were attracted not only to the area's abundance of hardwood trees for lumber, but also to the salt preserves they found at Salt Creek. Since refrigeration was not available during the early 1800s, salt was needed to dry and preserve food, and according to Price was at the time almost as expensive as gold pound for pound. The Museum houses a real life-size log cabin on permanent loan from the Mathers Museum that one of those early pioneers lived in; it's one of more than 50,000 artifacts at the center. Price believes that official estimate is too conservative, though, and they really have closer to 70,000 or even 80,000 historical items such as "political buttons, photos, everything, the whole gamut," she said.\nThe History Center is a self-sustaining non-profit organization not officially connected with Monroe County, which was named after President James Monroe. It is sustained through membership donations from approximately 500 members and the time and efforts of volunteers like Liz Knapp, director of the Genealogy Library. Knapp, whose ancestor Joshua O. Howe was one of the founding fathers of Monroe County, and fellow volunteer Randy Richardson are currently busy at work doing data entry into computers and proofreading microfilm, in order to digitize the museum's extensive \ncollection. \nThey are currently seeking additional volunteers for the task. The library includes cemetery, death, census, tax, naturalization and marriage records along with family histories, maps, personal narratives, wills and general reference volumes.\nThrough their work in the Genealogy Library, both Knapp and Richardson have become experts on the history of the county and know many little known facts. For instance, they described how Bloomington nearly lost IU in the mid-1800s due to severe water shortages that led to the eventual creation of man-made Griffy Lake, Twin Lakes and Monroe Reservoir to solve the problem. The state later threatened to remove the University from Bloomington due to a vigilante-type group who partook in "white capping." This activity entailed putting a pile of white sticks and a threatening letter in the yard of anyone who the group believed was behaving inappropriately -- individuals who beat their wives and adulterers for example. It became quite personal and many people were severely beaten by the group until the governor intervened in 1911 to have Silus Adams and Toby Snoddy convicted and sent to jail for their white capping activities, and the University has safely resided in Bloomington ever since.\nKnapp notes that the library is "the ideal place to research people that have lived in Monroe County." Richardson said that they have a file of more than 73,000 clippings from Bloomington newspapers and that "you can find out things about your family that you would never know unless you read those." Those clippings detail everything from births and deaths to train wrecks, kidnappings. \n"Anything we find interesting," Knapp said. "These are things you don't find anywhere else." \nFor those people who do not have relatives from Monroe County but are still interested in genealogy and historical research, the library is where they can come for one-on-one assistance.\nFor a family project, a history research paper or just for fun, the Monroe County History Center is a vault of historical treasures that, as Museum Director Price said, "tell the story."\nIf you are interested in volunteering at the Monroe County History Center, call volunteer coordinator Lisa Simmons at (812) 332-2517. To volunteer at the Genealogy Library please e-mail Liz Knapp at genealogy@monroehistory.org. To learn more about the history of Monroe County or about the Monroe County History Center, visit http://www.monroehistory.org.