Read time: 6 min.

October will turn out to be the showstopper of 2023: the new Frasier revival debuts on the twelfth, albums by blink-182 and the Rolling Stones follow on October 20, and the next mainline Super Mario game drops the same day! I’m stoked, but I’m more excited about what happened a week ago: I was elected to the Delaware County Historical Society board.

I’ve spent a big chunk of my life in and around the Delaware County Historical Society. I ate my first gas station cheeseburger there as a kid and tagged along when my mom and grandma donated their time. I’ve volunteered for the last five years. Two months ago, I was named editor of its newsletter, The Society Quarterly. 

I was happy to work on the quarterly bulletin, but making the board is a real honor. I’m a fourth-generation volunteer and member of DCHS: my great-grandparents, Rosemary and Homer Holloway, were tireless advocates for the organization after interest waned and membership floundered following the retirement of longtime president Dick Greene. In fact, “Mamaw” Holloway was president in 1982 when Mary Elizabeth Youse Maxon granted the society its current property.

I first visited the Historical Society when I was ten, back when the organization was still known as the Delaware County Historical Alliance. My parents were out of town for the weekend, and I tagged along with Grandma for a Saturday morning of volunteering. On our way, we stopped at the Village Pantry on West Jackson just outside downtown. Grandma let me pick out something for lunch later, and I chose a microwaveable cheeseburger.

The story of thawing out a frozen burger with my car’s windshield defroster notwithstanding, the love affair I established on my first trip to the historical society spans more than cheap cheeseburgers. After Grandma and I arrived, I busied myself with a copy of Muncie Indiana in Vintage Postcards by Milton Masing and Jeff Koenker. The book featured golden-age postcards of the Magic City, and I was blown away by what used to exist there!

I badgered Grandma to copy a few pages so I could draw them later. I was particularly taken by the grandeur of the old Lincoln Elementary School. I couldn’t believe it when she told me she’d been a visiting teacher there in the 1970s! Grandma drove me past what was left of the building on the way home, and a local history fan was born.

It wasn’t long before I connected with the Historical Society again. Grandma was building a curriculum packet for fourth graders studying Indiana history. It included a complete set of township maps she hand-drew from an old atlas and marked cultural features like schoolhouses, cemeteries, round barns, and pioneer hotels. Grandma was completing it just as my mom came home from Japan.

Mom was part of the Toyota International Teacher Program, and my parents bought a Sony DF Mavic digital camera that saved photos onto floppy disks in preparation for her trip. After she returned, Mom and Grandma drove around the county to find as many of the old schoolhouses on the map as they could. I tagged along, and that schoolhouse hunt impacted me deeply. 

Later, I decided to recreate the trip and find all of Delaware County’s old schoolhouses. I researched and wrote about them. Eventually, I made it to every county courthouse in Indiana. Later, I turned my attention to flowing artesian wells.

Five or six years ago, I tried to crowdsource information about a well near I-69. A DCHS board member hit me up. Not only did he know about the well, but he knew of a second one hidden nearby! He offered to drive me past it and give me a tour of the western Delaware County area he remembered from his youth. I took him up, and after a few hours of driving and hanging out, he suggested that he thought I’d make a good board member.

I hadn’t thought about it until then, but the idea had a lot of appeal and I started volunteering more. Since then, I’ve manned the DCHS resource center, participated in presentations and roundtable discussions, curated an exhibit with artifacts from Delaware County’s old courthouse, and staffed booths at fairs and festivals. I started this blog, and got to know most of the board along the way.

I post something relevant to the Muncie area at least once a week. I always cite my sources, and I think my research and writing are parpt of what prompted the society to ask me to take over the newsletter. I strive to write varied content here, and that wide lens is what makes The Society Quarterly so valuable: my first issue featured a strong slate of contributors who wrote articles about diverse topics like notable Ball State women, Dairy Isle ice cream stands, Guthrie Park, the Bee Line, and lion statues on East Main Street. I wrote about Union Township’s old Poor schoolhouse.

Working with passionate local historians in the newsletter was inspiring. I attended my first board meeting as its editor in August as the society was trying to fill several vacancies. My name got floated to the nominating committee, and I became one of three new members at the annual meeting.

I’m excited to carry on my family’s long tradition of service as a DCHS board member, but I’m thrilled to help the society achieve its goals of sharing the narrative of Delaware County’s history through compelling, research-driven, inclusive content. I already have a couple elaborate projects in mind to spearhead, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.