Genealogy Club Annual Dinner & Meeting

The Genealogy Club's Annual Dinner and Meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 11, 2012. Dinner will be at 6:00 p.m. followed by a meeting at 7:00 p.m. in the Donnelley Room of the Crawfordsville District Public Library. The meeting will include a presentation by Surveyor Jim Swift that is entitled

"Stone Hunter, Washington, Jefferson, & Me."

No charge for the speaker and meeting, but reservations are REQUIRED for the dinner. Please R.S.V. P. before Friday, September 7, 2012. For reservations, call Mike Mitchell (765-362-0467), Dellie Craig (765-362-2242, Ext 118), or the Library's Reference Desk (362-2242, ext 117). Payment of $12.00 for the meal must be made by Monday, September 10, 2012. VISITORS ALWAYS WELCOME. For more information, please contact Dellie Craig from 9 am-5 pm or email gen@cdpl.lib.in.us.

Voices from the Past

We have recently uncovered some voices from the past!

The 1959 and the 1960 Crawfordsville High School Athenian yearbooks both included a small record, called a Talking Page, in the back. On these platters was recorded memories of the school year! Each side is about seven-minutes long and contains interviews, music, announcements, and more.

Take a step back in time and listen to these long-forgotten recordings!

Sometimes the quality of the recording is a little poor -- some of the recording seems to have been made "live" (such as at a football game or in the high school auditorium). But often a voice from the past will come through as if it were recorded just yesterday.

Go to: CHS Talking Pages

Spirit Photographs at the Library!

Spirit photography began in 1861 when Boston engraver William Mumler found ghostly images of his deceased cousin in photographs. The spirits reached Crawfordsville in 1869 when photographer A.D. Willis discovered to his dismay that spirits were clouding pictures he was taking. By the late 1880s the craze had mostly died down, but the library has recently discovered that spirit photography was still around well into the twentieth century.
The first picture is William and Bessie May Woodworth. Bessie was born in Crawfordsville in 1885; she married William in 1909. William eventually became the president of the Indiana State Association of Spiritualists. The family moved to Cook County, Illinois, where Bessie was a minister of the Psychic Science Spiritualist Church when she died in 1944. The image that appears next to William in this photo is believed by the family to be William and Bessie's child; the only surviving child mentioned in Bessie's obituary is an adopted son, Leonard Finch.
The next photo is of Benjamin and Dollie Clark (or to be more accurate, Myrtle Dollie Bright Shultz Clark). Dollie and Bessie were sisters, daughters of Cecil and Rachel Redenbaugh Bright. Dollie was married for the first time in 1909 to James Shultz, waiter at a cafe. Dollie had only just met James when they went together to the Tannenbaum clothing store and ran into Dollie's ex-beau of four years, Chick Holland. Words were exchanged, with Holland ultimately daring the new couple to get married. They were agreeable; James and Chick went to the courthouse and got the license. Dollie signed and the couple were married that night--probably not exactly what Chick intended! Sadly, the marriage only lasted about 13 years before Dollie filed for divorce, charging cruel and inhuman treatment and desertion. By 1930, Dollie had married Benjamin F. Clark, a pastor of a spiritualist church in Indianapolis. Dollie was killed in a car accident in 1953. The face on Benjamin's pants leg is believed to be Dollie's mother, Rachel Redenbaugh, who died in 1918. The other two spirits in the photograph are unknown.
Read more about spiritualism and spirit photography in Hidden History of Montgomery County, Indiana, available at the library, or see more photos of Dollie and Bessie on our image database!