Jazz Festival in Peru
A concert dedicated to renowned jazz saxophonist, the late Peru native Richard Quigley, will be held on Saturday, Sept. 6, and Sunday, Sept. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Peru High School auditorium.

The event is free to the public.

Quigley, creator of the Summer Jazz Series in Fort Wayne, influenced thousands of musicians over his lifetime. He played with the Stan Kenton and Ben Webster musical groups and was a mainstay of the jazz scene in Fort Wayne for over 30 years. Quigley also performed in Las Vegas. Since Quigley’s death in 2001, Tom Gustin – a fellow musician and friend – has continued to hold this annual concert in memory of Quigley.

On Saturday, a combo will feature jazz improvisation, allowing the audience to appreciate the individual sounds of the instruments. On Sunday, the concert will include big band music that blends the sounds of each instrument section. The festival includes premier musicians from North Central Indiana. Sunday’s performance will also feature several vocalists including a vocal jazz quartet. 

For more information and a complete program listing, visit the Honeywell Center Web site at http://www.honeywellcenter.org/ or call (260) 563-1102.

George R. Mather Sunday Lecture Series at the History Center in Fort Wayne
The first lecture in the 2008-2009 series, Growing Up in Indiana During the Great Depression Years, will be held on Sunday, Sept. 14, at 2 p.m.

This lecture is presented Russell A. Working, who shares his experiences of growing up during the Great Depression years. The depression brought with it a rigorous lifestyle that was enough to break a person's spirit. Working shares how he and his brothers actually found moments of humor and happiness in the midst of their most horrible family hardships.

Working was born in Toledo, Ohio, and spent most of his formative years on a farm near Twelve Mile, Ind. He graduated from Indiana University in 1951 and was immediately drafted into the Army, where he served two years. His career as an educator spanned 40 years. He has written numerous professional articles, co-authored a book A Handbook of Educational Variables, and is the author of two autobiographical books, One of Four and its sequel A Soldier’s Letters.

Subsequent lectures in this series will feature:

• G. Stanley Hood, The Political History of Allen County: How Did a Solid Democratic County Become a Solid Republican County? on Oct. 5.
• Alfred J. Zacher, Why Presidents Succeed on Nov. 2.
• Dr. Patty Martone, Fort Wayne Women Who Have Broken the Mold on Jan. 4, 2009.
• Dr. Curtis J. Jones, They, Too, Came as Pioneers: Early African-American Settlers in Northeast Indiana on Feb. 1.
• Jan Shupert-Arick, The Lincoln Highway Across Indiana on March 1.
• John D. Beatty, Mapping Fort Wayne: A History of the City in Maps on April 5.
• Dyne L. Pfeffenberger, From the Emboyd to the Embassy: A History of Fort Wayne's Opulent Showplace on May 3
• Jim Sack, World War I Repression of Fort Wayne's Germans on June 7.

All lectures in this series are free to the public, and will be held at the History Center, located at 302 E. Berry St. in Fort Wayne. Parking is free. The History Center is handicap accessible.

For more information call (260) 426-2882, or visit http://www.fwhistorycenter.com/.

Brown Bag Lunch Program at the Scott County Heritage Center
The first program will take place on Sept. 17 at noon in the Michael L. Smith room of the Scott County Heritage Center and Museum in Scottsburg.

Bob and Wilma Hollis will provide an overview of music in America, featuring familiar tunes, old favorites and maybe a few surprises. 

The program is free and open to the public. Those attending the event supply their own lunch and the museum will provide drinks and desserts.

The museum provides the Brown Bag Lunch programs September through May each year. Each month features a different speaker covering a wide variety of topics and typically lasting about an hour. The Smith Room has seating for approximately fifty guests. 

The Scott County Heritage Center and Museum is located at 1050 S. Main St. in Scottsburg.

For more information call (812) 752-1050 or visit http://www.scottcountyheritagemuseum.org/.

Museum Day in South Bend
The Center for History and Studebaker National Museum are joining with institutions across the country on Saturday, Sept. 27, to participate in Museum Day, presented by Smithsonian magazine.

Visitors who present a Museum Day Admission Card will receive free admission to the Center for History and Studebaker National Museum from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on that day.

The Museum Day Admission Card is available in the Sept. 2008 issue of Smithsonian magazine or at www.smithsonian.com/museumdaycard.

For information about the Center for History, call (574) 235-9664 or visit http://www.centerforhistory.org/.

To find out more about Studebaker National Museum, call (574) 235-9714 or visit http://www.studebakermuseum.org/.

Sammy L. Davis to Speak in Dubois County
This special Dubois County Museum dinner program will take place on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 6:30 p.m. at the Jasper Middle School.

Tickets are $25 per person and are limited to the first 500 buyers.

Sammy L. Davis is an Indiana native who earned our country’s highest military honor for his uncommon valor in a night fight in Vietnam on Nov. 18, 1967. Davis, U.S. Army retired, is a nationally-known speaker who has been delivering his stirring patriotic messages since the Vietnam War. He is a 1966 graduate of Mooresville (Ind.) High School, and one of only two living recipients of the Medal of Honor from Indiana.

Davis earned the Congressional Medal of Honor by going “above and beyond the call of duty” by saving several American soldiers’ lives and fighting off hundreds of North Vietnamese enemy troops, all with a broken back, crushed ribs and numerous dart, bullet and burn injuries.

Adding spice to Davis’ story are the tie-ins the hit movie Forrest Gump has with his saga. The actual film footage of Davis receiving the Medal of Honor from President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 was used in the movie, with the head of actor Tom Hanks superimposed over that of Davis.

He was a speaker at the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., in 1982, helped bring the living POW issue into the public’s eye when he addressed 250,000 at the National Mall in Washington in 1984, and continues to give about 300 of his inspirational speeches a year. In the past, Davis has been invited to speak at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

Tickets can be purchased at the museum, from any board member, from the Dubois County Veterans Organization, or by calling Bernie Vogler at (812) 482-2996 or Greg Eckerle at (812) 482-3866.

Grave Robbing in Indiana Presentation
This talk will take place on Thursday, Oct. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Center for History in South Bend.

By the 1700s, British medical education required dissected bodies, leading to a small industry–grave robbing. During the late 1800s, Indiana medical schools, following the same tradition, required about 150 bodies annually, which were usually purchased from grave robbers. By the early 1900s, grave robbing led to criminal trials in Indianapolis and imprisonment of several of the "merchants." An end to the "big business" of grave robbing came as a result of legislation which allowed individuals to donate their bodies to science.

Walter Daly, M.D., will explore this topic in the presentation, Grave Robbing in Indiana. He will also discuss the centuries-old practice of using the bodies of criminals and the unclaimed for the study of anatomy. Daly is a pathologist, Dean Emeritus of the IU School of Medicine and retired director of the IU Medical Center.|

This presentation is part of a series of three gallery talks related to the exhibit, R.I.P. - Victorian Mourning Customs. As part of the program, attendees may visit the exhibit before and after the talk. R.I.P. - Victorian Mourning Customs explores the extravagant funerals and prolonged periods of mourning that were essential elements of Victorian grieving. Memorial photographs, mourning garments, funeral invitations and salesmen’s sample tombstones are shown. Gallery guides will be present to answer questions.

The lecture is free with the purchase of a museum admission, which is $8 for adults, $6.50 for seniors, $5 for youth ages 6 through 17 and free for members.

Doors open at 6 p.m.

Additional presentations in the R.I.P. lecture series include Mourning: It’s a Way of Life on Oct. 16 and The History of the Coroner on Oct. 23.

For more information, call (574) 235-9664 or visit http://www.centerforhistory.org/.

Resources from the Society of Indiana Pioneers
The Society of Indiana Pioneers, which honors the memory and the work of the pioneers of the Hoosier State, is offering 30 to 45-minute presentations on the Pioneers, its purpose and accomplishments. The presentations will be especially pertinent to historical and genealogical groups.

To schedule a presentation, contact the Society of Indiana Pioneers at (317) 233-6588, or visit http://www.indianapioneers.com/. The group’s offices are located at the Indiana State Library, 140 N. Senate Ave., in Indianapolis.

Regular membership in the Society of Indiana Pioneers is open to anyone who can provide direct descent from at least one ancestor who settled in Indiana on or before Dec. 31, 1840, except for the following counties that have qualifying years as indicated: Howard, Lake, and Tipton, 1845; Starke, 1850; and Newton, 1855.

Associate membership is available to any person having an interest in early Indiana history but who has no qualifying ancestor.

Membership applications are available from Pat Jeffers, Pioneers office manager, who can be contacted at (317) 233-6588 or societyofindianapioneers@yahoo.com.

International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Laureate Series
This event will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the Frank and Katrina Basile Theater at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center.

The cost is $22 for adults, $17 for seniors and $10 for students.

Featured is Bella Hristova, 2006 laureate, with the Ronen Chamber Ensemble.

For more information on any of these events, please visit http://www.indianahistory.org/.

Indiana Through the Mapmaker’s Eye at the Warrick County Museum in Boonville
Because of the way we use them, we assume maps to be complete and accurate. No map, however, can show all aspects of reality, so the mapmaker chooses the information that will best convey his message and sometimes slants the information to serve his purposes. This exhibition examines four ways people have used maps through the years: as documentation, as tools, as political images, and as art. Some of the maps included in the display are an 1833 tourist pocket map of Indiana; a 1910 Sanborn Company fire insurance map of Bloomington; Thomas Kitchin's 1747 map of French settlements in North America; an 1881 bird's-eye view of Mount Vernon, Indiana; and a circa 1880 scale model map of the University of Notre Dame.

The Faces of Lincoln: Developing the Image at the Henry County Historical Society and Museum in New Castle
The Faces of Lincoln traveling exhibit is comprised of three independent parts, Developing the Image, Creating the Image and Idealizing the Image, each an exhibit unto itself.

This section of the exhibit takes a look at the history of photography using some of the best and most well-known images of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln’s was the first photograph of a president seen by most Americans. Before the mid-19th century, images of our presidents were created in portraits, etchings and political cartoons; these formats continued to be popular in Lincoln’s time. But recent technological breakthroughs in photography also made it possible to create a “real” image on glass or paper and copy it in large numbers. Although other presidents had been photographed, most of those images were made on daguerreotypes that were not reproducible. The common appearance of Lincoln’s homely face, with his moles, wrinkles and unmanageable hair, and new technology that could easily copy his photographs for distribution made his image a popular one with Americans. The devastating national events of the Civil War during Lincoln’s presidency were also photographed. And, in the end, Lincoln’s assassination imprinted his image on the national memory.

Indiana Cartoons and Cartoonists at the Muncie Public Library, Kennedy Branch, in Muncie
From the antics of fat-cat Garfield to the cracker-barrel philosophy of Brown County savant Abe Martin, the many creations of Hoosier cartoonists are highlighted in this colorful exhibit. The exhibition also explores the amusing goings-on of characters from comic strips such as "Chic" Jackson's "Roger Bean," which featured the lives of a typical Hoosier family, to the editorial musings of Pulitzer Prize-winning artist John T. McCutcheon, a fierce opponent of America's entry into World War II.

These traveling exhibits are on loan from the Indiana Historical Society. For more information about the IHS traveling exhibit program, go to www.indianahistory.org/LHS and click on "Traveling Exhibition".

NHCOLL-L Mailing List for Discussion of Natural History Collections
The list is a result of the joint annual meeting held in 1994 by the Association for Systematic Collections and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and a project to improve the policies and practices of natural history collections sponsored by a grant to ASC from the Institute of Museum Services.

NHCOLL-L gives those working with these collections a place to discuss the issues they have in common, such as administration, collections care, computerization, conservation, and management. Both policy and practical discussions are appropriate.

To sign up for NHCOLL-L, visit http://www.peabody.yale.edu/databases/db_nhcollfaqs.html.

For further information on natural history collections care and management visit ASC at http://www.ascoll.org/ or SPNHC at http://www.spnhc.org/.

Historic Preservation Learning Portal
This portal allows you to search for information on historic preservation Web sites.

Find information on:

• Laws and regulations
• Policies
• Articles and literature
• News
• Case studies and best practices
• Colleagues with specific expertise
• Training and education opportunities

To visit the portal go to http://www.historicpreservation.gov/NPS_Portal/user/home/home.jsp.

Searchable Databases on the Indiana Genealogical Society Web Site for Members
The Indiana Genealogical Society recently added its own collection of searchable databases to its Web site.

These databases allow you to search for your Indiana connections from home, and are available to IGS members as a benefit of membership. The databases are searchable by first and last name, and include the ability to search by Soundex.

The databases cover everything from military records (Civil War, Mexican War and Spanish-American War) to church records and records for various schools (including Indiana University). If you are not an IGS member and want a glimpse of what you are missing, there are also a few databases that are open to the public.  You can then purchase a membership online or through the mail. IGS will be adding more databases over the months and years to come.  

To access the databases visit http://www.indgensoc.org/membersonly/.