Carry Nation in Crawfordsville

In 1901, Carry Nation attended Crawfordsville's Independence Day celebration. Arriving on the evening of July 3rd, the notorious Kansas Smasher gave a speech on her work with the temperance movement and toured our city before departing on July 5th.

Although no saloons were reported vandalized, Nation, with her hatchet in hand, walked the streets of Crawfordsville and shouted at citizens who had cigarettes or tobacco. She sold replica tin hatchets, newsletters, and photographs and according to local newspapers, made quite a profit.

Recently we discovered a wonderful souvenir from Carrie Nation's visit to Crawfordsville in our archives. This original photograph was taken at the local photography studio Nicholson's Sons. The photograph is now available online in our Image Database.

W.C. Murphy & Company store

Our Local History collection was recently enriched by the arrival of several interesting photographs! On the left, you can see a group of employees standing ready for customers at the W.C. Murphy & Company men's clothing store, located at 101 E. Main St. The photograph is dated 1912. Stacks of men's suits, hats, shirt collars, and other merchandise fill the store. The man with the measuring tape is likely Mr. Murphy, who was trained as a tailor. This building later served as a bank, a jewelry store, and coffee shops (you may recognize the narrow interior if you have ever been in this building, most recently known as the Patch of Blue Denim or its predecessor, Campbell's).

The exterior of the original location for W. C. Murphy & Co. men's clothing store, shown  in 1922, is even more recognizable to anyone familiar with downtown Crawfordsville. (The store was relocated to 122 S. Washington after the Crawfordsville Trust Company purchased the building in 1922.) The second floor window has a sign for Williams and Murphy Law Office stenciled on the surface, and the front of the store has a sign for the removal sale. Note the streetcar wires that crisscross the intersection.

Peacock photos now online

Thanks to a generous loan from Tom Peacock, the library now has over 100 digitized images of William "Fred" Peacock and his wife Margaret "Margie" Peacock in our collection.  We began our research on 1930s chorus girl and Hollywood film dancer Margie Murphy Peacock back in January. After marrying Darlington native Fred Peacock in the 1940s, Margie moved to Crawfordsville and resided here until her death in 1989. Fred Peacock served in the army during World War II and was a well-known dentist who practiced in Crawfordsville until his death in 1981. The collection includes head shots, modeling photos, and cast photos of Margie Peacock when she performed as Margie Murphy in the 1930s.  Also included are snapshots of Fred Peacock overseas during World War II.

You can access the Peacock collection by going to our image database and entering the following in the subject field:
Murphy, Margaret "Margie"
Peacock, Margaret "Margie"
Peacock, William Frederick "Fred"

You can also enter their names in the keyword field to browse the collection.

Display: Maurine Dallas Watkins

A display honoring the life and work of Maurine Dallas Watkins, author of Chicago, is now up on the second floor of the library.  Before her career as a playwright and screenwriter, Watkins was a Crawfordsville resident and a 1914 graduate of Crawfordsville High School. Featured in the display are photographs, programs, news articles, yearbooks, and much more.

CDPL has a photo of Watkins with the Sunshine Society at the 1914 County Fair.  You can see it here!

We also have Douglas Perry's latest book on Watkins and the writing of Chicago.

If you would like more information about Maurine Watkins in Crawfordsville, please contact the Reference/Local History Department  at 765.362.2242 ext 117 or ref@cdpl.lib.in.us.

New Richmond School, 1914

Donations to our collection are always welcome, and it is not uncommon for us to receive items that add great value to our collection -- your county's heritage. We recently received a large panoramic photograph of a large group of school children, teachers, and drivers standing in front of the New Richmond School building in 1914. Some school hacks (Coal Creek Township Schools) are parked in the background. The school was on East Washington Street, next to the New Richmond Christian Church. Although both these buildings are gone today, we intend to save the image for future generations.

Scanning this panoramic photograph for our image database proved to be a challenge because the image was over 2.5 feet long and some 10 inches tall. We had to scan it in five sections and then "stitch" together the sections to make one image. Using Windows 7 with its Live Photo Gallery made this once difficult chore very easy because Photo Gallery has a feature that can recognize overlapping images in order to make one image out of it. All five sections blended well with one another except for the first section on the left -- Photo Gallery could not recognize that section as part of the panoramic photo because we simply could not seem to scan it at the same size as the other four sections (so we finally ended up attaching that section manually, as is obvious). But at least for now we are able to share with the community a photo that few have seen before.

Are you curious to see a few more images we have, taken of the same building around the same time? You can find several on our image database, including:

• New Richmond School
• New Richmond Christian Church

Janet Lambert photos

Daughter of author Janet Lambert donates family photographs to library collection

Jeanne Ann Vanderhoef, daughter of Kent and Janet (Maude Snyder) Lambert, has allowed the library to copy Lambert family photographs that have been added to the library's image database, available online. Mrs. Vanderhoef's mother, Janet Lambert, the author of 54 books for teen girls, began her writing career in 1941 with Star Spangled Summer and wrote her last book, Here's Marny, in 1969. Janet Lambert was born Maude Snyder in Crawfordsville, on December 17, 1893. Mrs. Vanderhoef's father, Kent Lambert, was a World War I veteran who retired as post commander of Fort Jay on Governor's Island, New York after 34 years of duty. The photograph shown here is the wedding photograph of Kent and Janet Lambert, taken on New Year's Day, 1918. Other distinguished Lambert family members include Mrs. Vanderhoef's uncle, Ward "Piggie" Lambert, coach of the Purdue University men's basketball team for 29 seasons, and her aunt, Eleanor Lambert, promoter of American fashion design and developer of the International Best Dressed List. Thank you to Mrs. Vanderhoef for her generous contribution, which supports the library's research on Crawfordsville's famous former residents.

Local History databases

Did you realize that you can do a lot of local history and genealogy research before coming to the library? You may want to become familiar with the numerous databases we offer to help you with your work -- and these are often the first sources for us to try when you request help.

For example, did you know that we have a listing of cemetery tombstone readings from the early days of the county up to recent times? Try our Cemeteries of Montgomery County database.

Need to find an obituary, marriage announcment, birth announcement, or any other vital statistics information from local newspapers? We have the Vital Statistics database that is an index of newspapers from the early 1830s to the present day.

These are just two of the more than one dozen databases we have for you that you can access anytime from our Local History page. To find out more, watch a short video on our database offerings:

Watch a 4-minute video on our Local History databases!