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1946 to the 2010s
A children's museum became, almost by accident, one of the city's two archives. Begun for schoolchildren, the Lindahl museum "expanded to include materials that are available to genealogists searching for people in this area," and its holdings, as the genealogical society's account enumerates them, were the working record of the city's own schooling: the Mishawaka Public School Records beginning with the year 1887 and continuing through 1914; a relatively complete record — photographs and addresses through 1960 — of Mishawaka High School's class of 1920, a class that gathered more often than most; a 1911 map and an atlas of St. Joseph County of 1942; and a run of the Red Ball, the magazine the Ball Band Company published for its employees, from 1947 through 1965. In 1993 the South Bend–Mishawaka Convention and Visitors Bureau named the museum the Hidden Treasure of St. Joseph County.
The archive was being made findable in its last documented decades: Marker and Minnix were entering records into a computer system and building an inventory database, though the staff was too limited to carry out research requests — a researcher made an appointment and looked at the files in person. This history's Libraries file gives the public library the title of the city's archive of first resort for its newspaper film; the Lindahl held the parallel archive, the schools' own paper, and the two together were the city's documentary memory for as long as both stood open.
Principal sources
- South Bend Area Genealogical Society, "Hannah Lindahl Museum" — the holdings enumerated; the 1993 Hidden Treasure designation; the inventory-database work.
- The Clio, entry 22458 — the museum as repository for local genealogical data, school records from 1887.
- This build's Libraries pass — the public library's holdings, for the parallel.