Indiana History
Indiana history materials at the Lilly Library offer many paths for the curious Hoosier.
You can peruse printed accounts by early visitors to Indiana, publications and manuscripts concerning the Harmony society and the community established at New Harmony in the early nineteenth century by Robert Owen, as well as business, political, and family papers.
Business records include the papers of long-running firms like the Howard Ship Yards and Dock Company and the Cannelton Cotton Mill, businesses founded in the middle of the nineteenth century that continued well into the twentieth, as well as the papers of businessman Edward A. Rumely. Among the papers relating to Indiana politics are those of attorney John B. Niles, Governor Samuel M. Ralston, and WPA State Administrator John K. Jennings.
Images of early Indiana are found in the Lefevre Cranstone wash drawings executed in 1859 and 1860. The Frank Hohenberger photograph collection records daily life in southern Indiana during the first half of the twentieth century.
Photographer and newspaperman Frank Hohenberger spent forty-seven years recording the life, customs, and scenes of the hills of Brown County, Indiana.
Letters, legal and business records, diaries, and church records. Civil War diaries and a history of brewing in Indiana. We've got lots to explore, and much of the collection has been digitized.
Hoosier attorney and businessman Wendell L. Willkie ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. He lost that race, but rose to prominence as an informal envoy of FDR and a proponent of international engagement and civil rights.
