By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD This article ran in the February 5, 2025, edition of the Brookville American, and will appear in Forgotten Franklin County V. 7 which is slated to be ready in November of this year. In the Forgotten Franklin County column of September 11, 2019, I briefly discussed one of my favorite mid-20th-century modern homes, the Lustron house. They were a prefabricated home,…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD This article ran in the July 17, 2024, edition of the Brookville American and in Volume 6 of Forgotten Franklin County. Edwin May was an architect. Primarily based in Indianapolis, May was one of the most prominent first-generation architects working in the Hoosier state. Why is he important to Franklin County? Because his career as an architect is believed to have…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD This article ran in the August 12 and 19, 2026, editions of the Brookville American and will appear in Forgotten Franklin County V. 7, which is slated to be ready in November of this year.  “Life in Brookville”…that was the name of the movie. Yes, a movie made in Brookville – a candid film of all local scenes featuring all local…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD This article ran in the April 6, 2023, edition of the Brookville American and in Volume 4 of Forgotten Franklin County. Practically everyone in Brookville has heard the story of Phoebe Meeks. To a few readers, her story may be new. She is famous. Not for doing anything fabulous or inventing anything unusual, but for doing something life-changing. An event that…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD “This is the day of the camera. The click of the picture-making machine has become one of the biggest noises of the age. Yet, it was only sixty-eight years ago that the world first learned of the marvelous discovery of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. It was a year later in 1840 that the first sunlight picture of a human face…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD When I write something for the Forgotten Franklin County page, I am always fearful that what I contribute is old news to everyone. I always wonder how I can write something that people will not already know. Fortunately, so many of you have commented that you never heard about some of the people and places  I have written about, so…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD Nice surprises happen on a regular basis at the History Department of the Franklin County Public Library District. In August of 2019, I had a phone call from a man in Florida. He straightaway asked, “What do you know about W.S. Baker?” It was like the final question in a game show that I could bet my entire winnings on,…

By Julie Schlesselman, Local History & Genealogy Department Manager, FCPLD Did you ever see this plaque on the front of Knecht’s Interiors at 766 Main Street and wonder what it was all about? A land office was a location established by the United States Government from which to sell territorial and treaty lands opened to the public. And one was established in Franklin County only nine years after it became…