INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY • SPRING/SUMMER 2013 • $5 THE HOOSIER GENEALOGIST IN THIS ISSUE: INDIANA’S TEACHERS AND COMMON SCHOOLS A ROAD MAP FOR LAND RESEARCH INDIANA’S HISTORIC NEWSPAPERS BECOME A MEMBER AND GET CONNECTIONS DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR Indiana Experience THE HOOSIER GENEALOGIST IndIana HIstorIcal socIety • sprIng/summer 2013 • Vol. 53, Issue 1 Since 1830, the Indiana Historical Administration John A. Herbst • President and CEO Society has been Indiana’s Storyteller™, Stephen L. Cox • Executive Vice President Jeff Matsuoka • Vice President, Business and Operations connecting people to the past by col- Andrew Halter • Vice President, Development and Membership lecting, preserving, interpreting, and Jeanne Scheets • Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations disseminating the state’s history. A non- Board of Trustees Jerry d. semler Janis B. Funk profit membership organization, the IHS Chair gary Hentschel susan r. Jones-Huffine Catherine Kennedy also publishes books and periodicals; First Vice Chair Katharine M. Kruse michael a. Blickman Daniel M. Lechleiter sponsors teacher workshops; provides Second Vice Chair James H. madison Charles A. Liles Edward S. Matthews youth, adult, and family programming; Treasurer Craig M. McKee patricia d. curran James W. merritt Jr. provides support and assistance to local Secretary James t. morris thomas g. Hoback Michael B. Murphy museums and historical groups; and Immediate Past Chair samuel l. odle Nancy Ayres ersal ozdemir maintains the nation’s premier research William e. Bartelt Margaret Cole Russell Frank M. Basile William n. salin sr. library and archives on the history of Joseph E. Costanza robert e. sexton, dds Indiana and the Old Northwest. William Brent eckhart Joseph A. Slash David S. Evans Denny Sponsel richard d. Feldman, md lu carole West Wanda y. Fortune ISTOCKPHOTO.COM Family historians seek connections The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections On the cover M. Teresa Baer • Managing Editor between themselves and their ancestors. rachel m. popma • Contract Editor Buffalo created some of the first roads in THG: Connections weaves richly colored Chelsea Sutton • Contract Editor Christina R. Bunting • Contract Editor Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. historic threads with rare source Callie McCune • Intern, IHS Press Kimberly e. Hunter • Intern, IHS Press Page 35 material, family records, and expert Kathleen M. Breen • Contributing Editor ray e. Boomhower • Contributing Editor guidance to connect readers with their stacy simmer • Art Direction and Design ancestors’ lives. cory Wright • Page Layout Susan Sutton • Photography Coordinator David H. Turk • Photographer printing partners • Printer Advisory Board Wanda y. Fortune, Co-Chair, Indianapolis curt B. Witcher, Co-Chair, Fort Wayne c. lloyd Hosman, Knightstown sharon Howell, Greenwood patricia K. Johnson, Elkhart The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections (ISSN 1054-2175) is published biannually and distributed as a benefit of membership by the Indiana Historical Society Press; editorial and executive offices, 450 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3269. Membership categories include student $20, Senior $40, Individual/Organization $50, Household $65, and Sustaining $100. Non-Profit U.S. postage paid at Indianapolis, Indiana; Permit Number 3864. Literary con- tributions: Guidelines containing information for contributions are available upon request or on the Indiana Historical Society website, www.indianahistory.org. THG: Connections accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts submitted without return postage. The Press will refer requests from other publishers to the author. ©2013 Indiana Historical Society Press. All rights reserved. Printed on acid- free paper in the United States of America. Postmaster: Please send address changes to The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections, Indiana Historical Society Press, Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center, 450 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3269. The Indiana Historical Society library is an associate member of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. eugene and marilyn glick Indiana History center 450 West ohio street Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3269 www.indianahistory.org phone: (317) 232-1882 Fax: (317) 233-0857 Contents THE HOOSIER GENEALOGIST: CONNECTIONS SPRING/SUMMER 2013, VOLUME 53, ISSUE 1 Features 4 “Our Own Educated Sons and Daughters” Indiana’s teachers and common schools in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century BY GENEIL BREEZE 4 12 The Courthouse a road map for land research, part 1 the Functions and records of county offices prescribe successful research methodologies BY KEVIN COMBS 4 Departments Regional Sources and Stories NORTHERN INDIANA 15 6 23 Court Papers abstracts of legal documents for allen, Fulton, grant, Howard, Jasper, miami, noble, Wabash, Wells, and White counties in the Barnes manuscripts collection, 1854–1920 BY WENDY L. ADAMS AND KIMBERLY E. HUNTER CENTRAL INDIANA 29 Community News 23 marriages from putnam county newspapers part 2: July through december 1881 BY RUTH DORREL AND CHRISTINA R. BUNTING SOUTHERN INDIANA 35 One Path West the Buffalo trace from the Falls of the ohio to Vincennes, Indiana BY ELIZABETH FLYNN Genealogy Across Indiana From the Collections 41 Hoosier Baptists 57 Indiana’s Historic Newspapers part 3: missionary associations, 1823–present Access Indiana’s Newspapers through a Installment 3: coffee creek association, abbot–Knox collaborative project by the Indiana BY TIMOTHY MOHON Historical Society and Newspaper Archive BY SUZANNE HAHN Family Records 62 Notices 50 Marie Ester Brandt’s Diaries Indiana Historical society programs, around a Hanover, Indiana, resident Writes about Family, Indiana, national news, and Books received War, and life in the mid-nineteenth century BY CALLIE MCCUNE AND CHELSEA SUTTON 32 35 50 “Our Own Educated Sons and Daughters” Indiana’s Teachers and Common Schools in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century GE EN IL BREEZE I have [accepted?] Mr Vernon’s proposition to become a teacher—I synonymous with ignorance. In 1833 Caleb Mills came to Indiana waited some time thinking to receive your advice on the subject— to teach at the newly formed Wabash having intimated in a former letter to you that Mr Vernon wished me Manual Labor College and Teachers’ to teach—I fully expected your answere before this—but receiving Seminary (now Wabash College). The twenty-seven-year-old Mills was born none I made my own arrangement wiht [sic] him and agreed to begin in New Hampshire and graduated from operations next Monday.1 Dartmouth College and Andover Theo- logical Seminary in Massachusetts. Mills brought his new bride, Sarah (Marshall) Thus writes Aurora Koehler (1846– in education by requiring the General Mills, and his New England ideals about 1928) in a letter to her mother dated Assembly to organize a “‘system of education to the still untamed Indiana April 11, 1867, as she embarks on her education, ascending in a regular grada- frontier.4 more than thirty-year teaching career tion, from township schools to a state What Mills observed while teaching that began in the small country schools university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, at Wabash prompted him to present of Jefferson County, Indiana, and which and equally open to all,’” it qualified this a series of six addresses to the Indiana ultimately led her to the plains of South lofty goal with the critical phrase “‘as State Legislature. Originally published Dakota. The next year, her younger sister soon as circumstances will permit.’”2 in the Indiana State Journal, spanning Septima Koehler (1848–1918) follows in The earliest Indiana settlers un- the years 1846–1852, he signed the Aurora’s footsteps and secures a posi- derstandably focused their energies addresses “One of the People.” In his tion for herself in a large school in North almost entirely on the physical struggles articles Mills decried the alarming state Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana. inherent to living in a wilderness. Keep- of public education in Indiana. In 1840 The story of public education in ing a roof over their heads, clothes on one-seventh of Indiana’s adult popula- Indiana and of the men and women their backs, and food in their bellies tion was illiterate. By 1850 the illiteracy who taught in its schools is complex and while avoiding conflict with the Native rate had increased to one in five. Indiana colorful, full of fits and starts, exciting Americans who already inhabited the had fallen behind surrounding states. For leaps forward and frustrating setbacks. area garnered top priority. The land was instance, in Ohio one in every eighteen The Koehler sisters are just two of the sparsely settled, with towns and neigh- adults was illiterate; and in Michigan many whose lives illustrate the issues borhoods few and far between. In the only one in forty-four adults was illiterate.5 and challenges that faced early Indiana early days, education was seen by many In his six addresses, Mills proposed teachers and students alike. Hoosiers as the family’s or the church’s a system of improvement, including In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 responsibility; the schools that did exist raising money for schools through taxes; the U.S. Congress had designated that were decentralized and disorganized. improving the training, supervision, and the proceeds from section sixteen of At the same time, Indiana’s legislature working conditions of teachers; pro- every congressional township be used largely ignored educational issues until viding proper textbooks