The Brown County Historical Society was founded in 1957, met in the new Art Gallery, and on Monday, Sept. 16 of that year, elected Karl S. Ehrnschwender as its first president and Eudora Kelley as vice president. The Historical Society appointed its first archivist in 1972, but until fundraising and volunteer work enabled the construction of an archive room in 1981, records were stored in boxes in the Society’ s office and the archivist’ s home attic and guest room.
talking too loudly near where the services were taking place. A polling inspector had run afoul of the law for looking into a ballot box to see how someone voted.
“ You never know what you’ re going to find,” Ottenweller said.
Dunn said many people mistakenly believe that they can access almost any old record on the Internet, but she estimates that only about 10 % of historical records are available online. That means for most records— those that survive, anyway— people have to come to the History Center to find the physical record.
The organization housed its collections for many years in a former bowling alley building on SR 135 north of town, and in the Traditional Arts building at the site of the current History Center. The quest for a better building began in earnest at the early part of the millennium, said Robert Coulter, another Historical Society volunteer, former archivist, and member of the building committee.
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