The keeper of the story: a historical society of 1867

1867 - 2005

The society: South Bend began keeping its own past almost as soon as it had one. The Northern Indiana Historical Society was established in 1867, two years after the city's incorporation, and stands as the second-oldest historical society in Indiana. For most of its life it worked out of the old St. Joseph County Courthouse downtown, collecting the St. Joseph River Valley's record while the valley's industry rose and fell around it. The institution, now The History Museum, is carried at size in MUSEUMS; what belongs to CULTURE is its role: in a city whose identity was made by one factory, the society was the memory that outlasted the payroll, the place where Studebaker's city went to remember that it had been other things as well.

Copshaholm and the campus: In 1988 the society was given Copshaholm, the Oliver Mansion, the 38-room home built in 1895 for Joseph Doty Oliver of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, and in 1994 a new museum facility opened on the mansion's grounds on West Washington Street. The grounds also hold the Worker's Home, a preserved 1920s Polish-American family home, so that the plow king's mansion and a working family's house interpret the same industrial city from its two ends. The society took the name The History Museum in 2014 and American Alliance of Museums accreditation in 2015. In October 2005 the new Studebaker National Museum opened next door, sharing an entrance with The History Museum: the factory's own museum, whose record stands in the STUDEBAKER material, joined to the city's memory in one campus. The pairing is the cultural fact. South Bend put its general history and its company history in a single doorway, and visitors have walked through both ever since.

Sources:

1. Indiana State Library, ArchivesSpace record of the Northern Indiana Historical Society collection (the society established 1867; the courthouse years; the 1988 gift of Copshaholm; the new facility of 1994; the name changes to Northern Indiana Center for History and, in 2014, The History Museum; accreditation in 2015).
2. South Bend reference accounts of The History Museum (the second-oldest historical society in Indiana; the Oliver Mansion of 1895, 38 rooms, built for Joseph Doty Oliver; the Worker's Home, a 1920s Polish-American family home).
3. Hemmings, Studebaker National Museum profile (the new museum's opening of October 2005 beside the Northern Indiana Center for History, now The History Museum, sharing an entrance).