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A project is underway to collect or borrow and electronically scan and make searchable many books, booklets, articles, and unpublished histories of towns, townships, schools, businesses, roads, railroads, clubs, churches, cemeteries, school yearbooks, land transfer records, telephone and other directories, maps and atlases, and church and club cookbooks. Handwritten records of the Carroll County Old Settlers Association and other rare materials supplement more standard printed or typed sources. This, along with the Carroll County Newspaper Archive will provide a “complete” source for local history research. It will also provide photographs not available in the online CCHS Photo Archive.

Q&A with Legacy Project Coordinator Bonnie Maxwell

What do you consider the key accomplishment related to your Legacy Project?

• Bringing together a very large collection of local history and primary source material in digital format to facilitate, in conjunction with the local newspaper digital archive, a comprehensive source for historical research. The collection includes over 12,000 pages of books (church, school, county, township, town, club, cemetery, and other histories) and cookbooks, 7,000 pages from 68 telephone directories, 85,000 property transfer records, and many maps. In addition, thousands of pages of school yearbooks have been scanned.

Describe a highlight or most memorable moment related to your Legacy Project.

• So far the most rewarding aspect of this project is that it has already provided invaluable information for the compilation of several local history books. While preservation and access are the main goals, images of one old church cookbook and a town history were used to reprint the books as fundraisers. An 1874 county atlas with ownership plat maps and an oversized 1882 county history were also professionally scanned and reprinted for sale as fundraisers.

How/where are you preserving information and artifacts related to your Legacy Project?

• At first the collection will be made available at the Delphi Opera House Gerard Archives Room but after a year or so will be made available for free on the Internet, via a website similar to the newspaper collection--after some fundraising has been done.

Total number of volunteers who participated.

• About 10

Carroll County Digital History Collection - Volunteers

• Bonnie Maxwell
• Toby Armstrong
• Kelly Curie and Delphi Public Library
• Melissa Bishop and Flora-Monroe Township Public Library
• Anita Werling and Delphi Preservation Society
• Sandy Flora and Carroll County Abstract and Title Company
• Numerous private lenders of documents for scanning

Project Details

• Organization: Heartland Heritage, Inc.
• County: Carroll
• Contact: Bonnie Maxwell, 765-564-2169, b_maxwell@frontier.com   
• Type: Non-Profit
• Project Number: IBC-HC-482