The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
3 January 1961
Opening: Fred Reynolds opened the Indiana History and Genealogy Room on 3 January 1961, in a corner of the Carnegie building. The stacks were closed from the start — they still are — and Dorothy M. Lower became the room's first manager, after Cleo Goff Wilkens, who had pressed for the department, declined the post herself. The National Park Service's partner page for the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System likewise dates the Historical Genealogy Department's organization to 1961.
A national role: The department later served as the Eastern Data Center for the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, the Park Service's national database of Civil War service records, with Curt Witcher managing the Federation of Genealogical Societies' national data-entry effort for it.
Sources:
- Slater-Putt, Beyond Books (1995), ch. 3 — the 1961 opening, the closed stacks, Lower and Wilkens.
- National Park Service, Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System partner page — the department organized in 1961; the Eastern Data Center role.