Historic New Carlisle: the museum in the old café, third home of the town's memory

ORGANIZATION ACTIVE 2026 · museum at 112 East Michigan Street; director Dana Groves, as of June 2026

The town's historical society keeps its museum the way the town keeps everything — on Michigan Street: Historic New Carlisle, Inc. stands at 112 East Michigan Street, in the building the record identifies as the former Miller's Home Café. It is the organization's third home: the museum stood first in another town building, then in the Old Republic — the Jeremiah Service House of 1860, at 304 East Michigan Street, the house the town now knows best as a film location (the Specialty file's Film article) — and then at 112 East Michigan. The society's director, as the South Bend Tribune names her in June 2026, is Dana Groves; the museum's hours as listed are Tuesday through Friday 10 to 4 and Saturday 10 to 2. The program the organization describes for itself is a working society's whole calendar: walking tours, local-history exhibits, a tree-planting, an ice-cream social, an architecture-and-history camp for kids, an alumni open house, dinners and lunches, a Breakfast with Santa and a Bunny Breakfast — and, in the summer of 2025, an exhibit on the town's own Wiffle Ball championship, the society curating the game the town invented (Sports carries the game). Groves is also the author of the town's published pictorial history, the Arcadia Images of America: New Carlisle volume (ISBN 9780738577395) — the memory-keeper and the museum are the same office; the book's treatment as a book belongs to the Authors leg, and it stands here as the society's own publication. What the record reached does not carry is the society's own founding: no charter date or founding roster for Historic New Carlisle, Inc. surfaces in the sources read, and the date stands as a named gap (GAP-NC5-ART-1), its settler the organization's own records and its state nonprofit filings.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, 28 June 2026 (the museum's address and third-home course, the director named, the hours, the society's program list, the Wiffle Ball exhibit of summer 2025) — the paper of record.
2. Historic New Carlisle, Inc., the organization's own listings and descriptions, read November 2026 (the program calendar as the society states it).
4. Arcadia Publishing, Images of America: New Carlisle by Dana Groves (ISBN 9780738577395) — the volume's existence and authorship; its contents are the Authors leg's to read.