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Wylie House Museum is extremely fortunate to have many Wylie family artifacts in addition to other period antiques. IU student interns, graduate assistants, and volunteers, mostly from the Department of Information and Library Science, have helped us catalog, document and house these collections and we are grateful for their eager and enthusiastic help. We encourage them and other IU students and faculty to study our collections and use them in their research projects and teaching. When IU classes visit the museum, we often pull out materials that are not otherwise on display which will help us meet the specific learning objectives of each class. The Wylie familiy archival materials are a wonderful and accessible teaching tool for primary source competency and research skills. Instructors and researchers are encouraged to contact Wylie House Museum to explore the collections' potential.

The Wylie Family

Wylie House was inhabited by Wylies for nearly 80 years. Andrew Wylie built the house in 1835 and lived there with his wife Margaret and ten of their twelve children. Theophilus A. Wylie and his family lived in the house from 1859 until 1913. The descendants of both President Andrew Wylie (1789-1851) and his cousin, IU professor Theophilus Wylie (1810-1895), have been generous in donating furniture, glassware, china, paintings, photographs, textiles, and thousands of family letters and documents. These materials help us to tell the story of the Wylie families and early Bloomington and IU history and add a special touch to the house. 

Thanks to the Morton C. Bradley, Jr.  bequest and another gift from a descendant of Andrew Wylie, we have an archival collection of family correspondence, photographs, and ephemera. The letters are being transcribed, finding aids are available, and some of the letters have been digitized and are available to view at Archives Online at Indiana University through the IU Digital Library Program. The personal and professional papers of both Andrew and Theophilus Wylie are held at the Indiana University Archives, and are available to researchers by appointment.

Housed in the Morton C. Bradley, Jr. Education Center, next door to the Wylie House Museum, is a collection of books owned by Theophilus A. Wylie and his extended family. We have furnished one room on the second floor with these books and furniture that belonged to the family. While the books have been cataloged using our museum collection software, they are not yet in IUCAT. Many of the books are in somewhat fragile condition and need conservation work performed on them but are available on-site to interested researchers.

 

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