Indiana Historical Society
The Indiana Historical Society is one of the United States' oldest and largest historical societies and describes itself as "Indiana's Storyteller". Housed within the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center, it is located at 450 West Ohio St. in Indianapolis, Indiana, in The Canal and White River State Park Cultural District with neighbors such as the Indiana State Museum and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. The Indiana Historical Society is the oldest state historical society west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Since 1830, the Society has been Indiana's Storyteller, connecting people to the past by collecting, preserving, interpreting, and disseminating the state's history. A private, nonprofit membership organization, the IHS maintains the nation's premier research library and archives on the history of Indiana and the Old Northwest. IHS also provides support and assistance to local museums and historical groups, publishes books and periodicals; sponsors teacher workshops; and provides youth, adult and family programming, including Indiana's participation in the National History Day Competition series. It also appoints and trains 92 county historians. The Indiana Historical Society opened a new 165,000-square-foot (15,300 m2) headquarters in downtown Indianapolis in July 1999, built on the site of the prior Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Indianapolis.
The Indiana Historical Society was started on December 11, 1830, which was the fourteenth anniversary of the statehood of Indiana (December 11, 1816). A collection of Indianapolis-area movers and shakers chose to start the society, and sought to obtain many objects relating to Indiana's history. It was to hold a "collection of all materials calculated to shed light on the natural, civil, and political history of Indiana, the promotion of useful knowledge and the friendly and profitable intercourse of such citizens of the state as are disposed to promote the aforesaid objects". To this day, the headquarters of the Indiana Historical Society has stayed within Indianapolis.
In 1831 the Society was granted a charter by the Indiana General Assembly, a charter for which the Society still exists. In the few years afterwards, two of the Society's prevalent backers died, and between its founding in 1830 and 1886, only twelve annual meetings were held to promote it. Its collections were located in the old Indiana State Bank and old Indiana State Capitol. The Society of those days was described by a historian to be "a small private club for publishing local history."
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