Do You Know Who Your Ancestors Are? Do you know a little bit about your family tree, but would like to know more? The best way to "grow" your family tree is to attend a Beginning Genealogy workshop, where you will learn about how to organize your research, and what research methods work best. The Indiana Room takes the names of people who would be interested in attending a Beginning Genealogy workshop. When enough people have expressed interest, the workshop will be scheduled. For more information, please contact us.

Upcoming Programs  Our Collection  Central Normal College
Contribute  Bibliographies  Genealogy Links  Research Requests

(Left) The original fireplace from the Carnegie library. (Right) Stained glass windows from the former Danville Methodist Episcopal Church. Both are part of the Indiana Room.

Our Collection

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The Indiana Room has many genealogy resources for Hendricks County, including: cemetery records, census records, court records, city directories, family histories, land records, newspapers, and vital records. We also have resources for various counties in Indiana (particularly Boone, Putnam, Morgan and Montgomery counties), including Quaker records and Indiana census indexes for 1820-1870, as well as 1910.

The Indiana Room is home to other materials about Indiana, including authors, biographies, cookbooks, statistics and tourism brochures. Several states are also represented, particularly the ones which people came to Indiana from (Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia).

Central Normal College

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Photos of CNC students--Scientific Class of 1881

Danville was the home of Central Normal College from 1878 to 1951 (it existed under the name Canterbury College from 1946 to 1951). CNC was one of the nation's early "normal" schools, which specialized in training teachers. The Danville Middle School sits on the site of the former college, and utilizes part of the original campus, Hargrave Hall. The Indiana Room's CNC collection contains: annual catalogs, histories, newspapers, photographs, postcards, and yearbooks, as well as assorted memorabilia.

Research Requests

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Indiana Room staff will answer (limited) genealogy research requests for individuals who are unable to visit our library. The search is limited to Hendricks County materials and indexes. Searches of Hendricks County newspapers can be done only if exact dates are provided.

The search fee is $5 per surname, which is nonrefundable. This fee covers up to 5 pages of photocopies and postage, if anything is found. Additional copies are charged at a rate of $.10 per page and postage is extra. A $5 deposit is required in order to begin research (make checks or money orders payable to Danville Public Library). All requests, save official requests from state and local government, are answered in the order in which they are received.

Telephone inquiries should be limited to general reference questions or questions that help familiarize you with the Indiana Room collection. Requests sent by fax or e-mail must include a mailing address.

Please send your requests (along with any family group sheets or other information that could help staff) to: Indiana Room, Danville Public Library, 101 S. Indiana St., Danville IN 46122).

How You Can Contribute

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The Indiana Room is always looking for donations of family group sheets, family histories, photos and other historic or genealogical materials. These can be loaned to us for copying purposes, or given to us permanently. We also accept monetary donations, to help in the purchase of materials that would otherwise be impossible.

We also need volunteers to help expand and preserve our collection. Projects include indexing, proofreading, shelf reading, and helping to answer research requests.