Books published by publisher Oregon Historical Society

Volume 2 includes records from monthly Society of Friends (Quakers) meetings in Wayne County, Indiana, not covered in volume 1, as well as records from Salem and Silvercreek/Salem meetings in Union County. Important Quaker materials such as meeting minutes, birth and death records, marriage records, removal certificates, and disownments are included.

This historical fiction novel is told in two voices: Sarah and Joseph.Sarah Sutton and brothers Gabe and Joseph Elliott grew up together in 1860s rural Indianapolis. As teenagers, the brothers vie for Sarah s attention, but their attempts are disrupted when they both enlist in the Union army. Sarah also joins the war effort when she follows her father, a surgeon, to tend wounded soldiers in a regimental hospital. At the close of the war, the childhood friends unite on the Sultana, a steamboat returning thousands of Union soldiers home from the South. Tragedy strikes when the boilers explode, and the fiery vessel sinks in the Mississippi River. Will the three survive?

FACES OF CHRISTMAS PAST is an engaging, middle-aged look at the perils of Christmas, our own self-imposed burdens of ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas Xerox), and the more unsettling fact that successive Christmases, more even than New Year’s, mark the passing of our life from childhood to death. "Old Christmas card photos show us how we’ve aged," says author Bill Holm, "reminding us that, though time may curve in Einstein’s physics, in our small life it is a straight line to white hair and bifocals." Holm also reminds us of the great consoling ritual of music, so rich and full of feeling at Christmas. Our best defense against age and death may be singing, he says, so we’d better open our mouths with courage and spirit to let the songs come.

Based on three decades of extensive field work and exhaustive research in manuscript and published sources, Berndt Kuhn chronicles more than a century of conflict between Native Americans, Anglos, and Mexicans in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The nearly 4,000 entries in this meticulous compendium provide essential information on combatants, casualties, and locations of battles, skirmishes, and raids, along with the relevant sources for further research. Maps and tables chart the ebb and flow of warfare and tally the cost in lives and property. A comprehensive bibliography enhances the value of this seminal work for scholars and beginning researchers.

At the age of fourteen, a young man in Waveland, Indiana, had taken over the family farm after the death of his father. Now responsible for taking care of his widowed mother and supporting his four brothers, he took up the reins on the plow to begin preparing the field for planting. Family legend has it that the young farmer, Theodore Clement Steele, tied colored ribbons to the handles of the plow so that he could watch the ribbons in the wind and the effect that they had on the [surrounding] colors. Recognizing Steele s passion for art, his mother supported his choice to make his living as an artist. He realized he had chosen a difficult path, writing in his journal: To do this requires a systematic devotion to the one object of my life, the bending of all things to the one. And this presupposes a clear understanding of the main object or purpose, so clear that there will be no mistaking it for a moment. Written by author and art historian Rachel Berenson Perry, Paint and Canvas: A Life of T. C. Steele, the eighth volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press s youth biography series, traces the path of Steele s career as an artist from his early studies in Germany to his determination to paint what he knew best, the Indiana landscape. Steele, along with fellow artists William Forsyth, Otto Stark, Richard Gruelle, and J. Ottis Adams, became a member of the renowned Hoosier Group and became a leader in the development of Midwestern art. In addition to creating artwork, Steele wrote and gave lectures, served on numerous art juries to select paintings and prizes for national and international exhibitions, and helped organize pioneering art associations and societies. Though known today primarily for his landscapes, Steele was an accomplished and sought-after portrait artist. By the time of his death, he had painted many of Indiana s most prominent citizens, including President Benjamin Harrison, Vice President Charles Fairbanks, Colonel Eli Lilly, James Whitcomb Riley, Catherine Merrill, William Lowe Bryan, and Lyman S. Ayres, among others. In 1907 Steele and his second wife, Selma Neubacher, moved to Brown County, where they built their home, dubbed The House of the Singing Winds for the aural treats produced as the wind blew through the wire of the screened porches surrounding the house. From 1907 to 1921 the Steeles spent the spring season at their Brown County property and wintered in Indianapolis. In 1922 Steele became artist in residence and an honorary professor at Indiana University.

Famed Indiana author Booth Tarkington once took on the task of naming three of Indianapolis's most outstanding citizens. Two of the three he named--former president Benjamin Harrison and legendary poet James Whitcomb Riley--were well-known people. The third, however, was someone whose memorable accomplishments have become lost to history--educator, woman's rights pioneer, and peace activist May Wright Sewall. Written by award-winning author and historian Ray E. Boomhower, Fighting for Equality: A Life of May Wright Sewall, a biography aimed at young readers, showcases Sewall's important contributions to the history of Indianapolis, Indiana, the United States, and the world. A woman who had the "organizing touch," Sewall helped to establish such Indianapolis institutions as the Girls' Classical School, the Indianapolis Woman's Club, the Contemporary Club, the Art Association of Indianapolis (today known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art), and the Indianapolis Propylaeum. Sewall also worked tirelessly on behalf of rights for women in the United States--and around the globe--during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She served as a valuable ally to such national suffrage leaders as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and gave the woman's movement a worldwide focus through her pioneering involvement with the American National Council of Women and the International Council of Women. After working on behalf of peace as a delegate on millionaire automaker Henry Ford's failed Peace Trip in 1915, Sewall shocked her friends by releasing a book telling of her communications beyond the grave with her deceased husband, Theodore Sewall. She related her remarkable experiences with spiritualism in her book Neither Dead nor Sleeping, published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis in 1920 just a few months before Sewall's own death.