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Finding Aids

Detailed inventories of archival collections in the Museum, organized alphabetically and able to be filtered by topic, from the 1820s to the present.

Show all 674 items

Baseball
A column in the October 20, 1857, issue of the Pantagraph suggested that it would be a goo...
Beel, Floyd E.—World War II Army Air Force Service
Floyd Everett Beel was born to Leown Iri and Emma Jane Calvert Beel in Decatur, IL, on Feb...
Behr, Lincoln A. Theater Program
Lincoln A. Behr was born in Bloomington June 18, 1896.  Behr enjoyed going to the theater ...
Beich Collection
Born in Wehlau, East Prussia in 1864, Paul Frank Beich received his early education at Cul...
Benjamin Farm Collection
This collection of farm management materials is from Kenneth and Paul Benjamin who farmed ...
Bent, Horatio C.
Horatio C. Bent was born June 24, 1881 to Horatio G. and Adah Crist Bent. Bent Elementary ...
Beyond Normal Films
The collection includes some newspaper clippings from 1996 through 2018 about the organiza...
Bieber Family / General Telephone Company
The Schwiemann family is traced from 1878 to Charles Schwiemann’s death in 1945, and is li...
Biederman Correspondence
Originally from Altenberg, Saxony, Germany, (Christian) Philipp Biederman (18 Jan 1814- Ap...
Blooming Grove Ladies Aid
Founded on Jan. 17, 1916, at the Blooming Grove Christian Church, the Blooming Grove Ladie...
Bloomingdale School (Randolph Township)
Bloomingdale School began in 1856 when a roughly built house was located at the southwest ...
Bloomington Band Association
This collection contains correspondence, meeting minutes, membership lists, and legal docu...
Bloomington Business and Professional Women’s Club Collection
During World War I, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker sent out an urgent call to make women...
Bloomington Cemetery Association
The Bloomington Cemetery Association (BCA) was a private stock corporation that operated t...
Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts (BCPA)
The Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts (BCPA) occupies a site built in 1921 to hou...
Bloomington Chapter Sweet Adelines
The Bloomington Chapter of Sweet Adelines joined Sweet Adelines International in 1952 and ...
Bloomington Club
The Bloomington Club was formed on September 13, 1886. The Club was the idea of a young la...
Bloomington Education Association Collection
The Bloomington Education Association was organized in June 1967 with nearly half of Distr...
Bloomington Fire Collection
Just after midnight on June 19, 1900, a great fire began sweeping through much of the city...
Bloomington Fire Department Collection
This collection consists of photocopied newspaper articles, a few original artifacts, and ...
Bloomington Gold (Corvette Show)
In 1973, the first Bloomington Corvette Corral event took place.  By 1977, the Bloomington...
Bloomington High School
This collection contains ephemera, newspaper clippings, course guides, handbooks, and prog...
Bloomington High School Class Reunion
This collection contains reunion programs and alumni lists for classes of 1930, 1936, 1937...
Bloomington History Club
The History Club of Bloomington was founded in 1880 as a group of women who would meet mon...
Bloomington Methodist Congregations
This collection contains a variety of histories of early Methodism in Bloomington.  The fo...
Bloomington Municipal Collection
The City of Bloomington was incorporated in 1950. The first mayor was David L. Perry, and ...
Bloomington Public Library Time Capsule 1977
In August 1977, Withers / Bloomington Public Library staff sealed a time capsule at the ne...
Bloomington Public Schools
The collection includes sorority histories, anniversary programs, bylaws, membership bookl...
Bloomington Rotary Club
The Bloomington Rotary Club was organized in 1915.  From the beginning, the Rotary Club me...
Bloomington School District 87
Bloomington School District began on February 17, 1857, with “An Act to Establish and Regu...
Bloomington Sesquicentennial
Bloomington celebrated its 150th birthday with a free, family-friendly downtown festival o...
Bloomington Trades and Labor Assembly
Bloomington labor unions banded together on October 18, 1891, to establish the Bloomington...
Bloomington-Normal Adult Education
The Adult Education program in Bloomington-Normal had its origins in 1935 and the New Deal...
Bloomington-Normal Black History Project
In 1970 Marge Smith and others began to organize local African Americans to discuss their ...
Bloomington-Normal Garden Club
The Bloomington-Normal Garden Club was formed in 1931, originally part of the Art Associat...
Bloomington-Normal Junior Women’s Club
Women’s Clubs began to form in 1890 when the General Federation of Women’s Clubs organized...
Bloomington-Normal Symphony
The Bloomington-Normal Symphony Orchestra collection consists of six boxes.  The material ...
Bloomington-Normal Women’s Golf Association
After a hiatus from 1968 to 1974, the Bloomington-Normal Women’s Golf Association returned...
Bloomington, Illinois Aviation 1920, 1930, 1940
Aviation buff Marion McClure donated these materials which he used in compiling a 1998 boo...
Blotters Collection
Before the age of the ballpoint pen, Americans wrote with fountain pens dipped in ink. In ...