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808 W. Washington Street — organized 1867 as the Northern Indiana Historical Society
The institution: The History Museum began in 1867 as the Northern Indiana Historical Society, in rooms at the county courthouse — the second oldest historical society in Indiana — and stands today at 808 West Washington Street, in and beside the Oliver Mansion, Copshaholm. Its archives are served through the Bendix Reading Room and the Vincent Bendix Research Library, covering local and Native American history, the Oliver family, area business and civic groups, and the collection the museum is nationally known for. Research access runs by request — the museum's registrar handles artifact and archival research applications, with weeks allowed for processing — which makes this archive a correspondence archive for a remote build, and its published collection pages the working surface.
The League collection: the museum holds the national collection of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — more than 2,000 items: photographs, programs, film footage, scrapbooks, equipment — placed there by the League's Players Association as the collection of record, and the institutional backstop of this history's Blue Sox file. It must not be merged, here or anywhere, with the Hesburgh Libraries' separate AAGPBL manuscript collection (below): two homes, two collections, one league. The build's experience: the museum is the authority this history deferred to in a live conflict — where the Businesses file had the Bass-Oreno company's acquirer as "Kuntz" and the museum's record gave "Hennings," the museum governs, and this history follows the museum. Its Singer series, ending at 500 in July 1945, likewise set the printed size of that firm's closing in the Businesses file, absence and all.
Sources:
- The History Museum's own site and visitor record — the 1867 organization, the second-oldest standing, the AAGPBL repository, the Bendix Reading Room and Vincent Bendix Research Library.
- The museum's artifact research request form (Northern Indiana Historical Society; registrar; 3–4 weeks processing).