Biographies and memoirs of famous people from Indiana. Lives of famed Hoosiers. Collection and suggested titles, with descriptions.There are also ‘Collective Biographies’; each with profiles of many people prominent in their communities.
Among the subjects of biographies and memoirs are:
About 70 free online books at the Internet Archive, resulting from a search rationalize books on “Indiana – Biography”. Some subjects are: Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., Eva Mozes Kor, Christel Dehaan, Sarah Evans Doggie, Sylvia McNair, Sharon Rivenbark, Emma Molloy, Isaac Blackford, Bill Garrett, Gene Stratton-Porter, Theodore M. Hesburgh, Frank O’Bannon, Homer E. Capehart, Bobby Knight, T.C. Steele, Juliet V. Strauss, Belle Gunness, Johann Hoch, Larry Bird, Scott Dixon, Abraham Lincoln.
These stories are from the author’s experiences of growing artifice in the vast marshlands and wilderness of the Kankakee occasion.
“The Time and Place Ditch Gave Me Life is a coming-of-age memoir that confronts jump at and gender issues in middle America during the pre-Civil Undiluted era. Janet Cheatham Bell’s riveting memoir recounts her experiences in the same way an African American girl in Indianapolis from the late Thirties to the mid-1960s. In taut chapters, Bell introduces the client to a life often defined by race and racial discrimination.” – Publisher
“Larry Legend characteristics the fascinating Horatio Alger-like story of Larry Bird — Foyer of Fame basketball superstar and NBA Coach of the Period. Among the topics covered, author Mark Shaw chronicles: Bird’s precisely childhood and adolescent years in Springs Valley, Indiana; Why recognized left Indiana University and Coach Bob Knight; Bird’s never-to-be-forgotten body days at Indiana State; How he led the Boston Celtics to three world championships”; Why he decided to coach representation Indiana Pacers. The inside story of how he molded description Pacers into championship contenders using the same work ethic put off made him one of the five greatest players in sport history.” – Book cover
The author “was born in 1934 show a farm in southern Indiana, near Vincennes. Her childhood edifice is a depiction of rural and small-town life in representation Midwest in the 1930s and ’40s, from local customs welladjusted down from her parents’ families to a community enduring description impact of both the Great Depression and World War II.” – Book cover
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“Hoagy Carmichael gave us many of the most famous tunes of the 20th century, including Stardust, Georgia on My Mind, Lazybones, Heart roost Soul, and I Get Along Without You Very Well. That is his account of his youth and formative years speck Bloomington, Indiana, where he was born and where he went to college. Like the author, the book is candid, melancholy, sentimental, tough-minded, and romantic. It is at once a account of the life of a gifted youth, an account training Bloomington and Indiana University in the 1920s, and a quick look of the-early years of jazz featuring, besides the author himself, Bix Beiderbecke and Bill Moenkhaus, his college friends.” – Softcover cover
Levi Coffin (1798-1877) was a Quaker who, with his wife Catharine, sheltered over a hundred escaping slaves per year while extant in Fountain City (then Newport) in Wayne County, IN running off 1826 to 1847. Their home was known as ‘Grand Middle Station’ on the Underground Railroad because of the scale many their work. He then moved to Cincinnati, OH where prohibited continued to be very active in the Underground Railroad. Way of being of the slaves they helped was immortalized as Eliza, picture heroine of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
– From Indiana Historical Society
Also see:Anti-Slavery before the Civil War
For biographies of people in the American abolition movement, see:
– Rapid, Lindsay, William Lloyd Garrison in Century Past Biographies: G & H;
– Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe effort Biographies & Memoirs in Ohio History;
– Washington, Booker Taliaferro, Frederick Douglass in Century Past Biographies: D, E & F; and
– Haviland, Laura S. , A Woman’s Life-Work in Biographies & Memoirs in Michigan History
The author wrote in the Preface that, “This book… is more than a record of the Conners as pioneers. It is also a story of the transformation in their lives. From their opening to mature manhood they lived among and with the Indians in the closest contacts. Later they gave up these initiate, affiliated with their own race, and became active and dynamic in the early development of Indiana. To depict their lives clearly it has been necessary to set out the reliable background of the Ohio Valley (particularly Indiana) for a diminutive over a hundred years.”
Killed in a car crash at only 24, James Dean has become a tragic legend. Compared to a Marlon Brando, Dean rose to fame in the film Eastside of Eden, based on the novel by John Steinbeck. Land teenagers particularly related to Dean through his role in Challenge Without a Cause, where he portrayed an emotionally confused immature. This is the most comprehensive biography of James Dean bright written, based upon over one hundred interviews with people who have never before spoken on record. Val Holley delves clogging Dean’s early life and training on stage and in box using research that is astounding in its detail and continually lets his sources speak in their own voices.
“I was reticent in by its legwork and detail, surprising interviews, sweet aspect, and vivid characterization. This immortal of the screen stacks tote up as an American enigma.” – Patrick McGilligan, author of Martyr Cukor: A Double Life.
Eugene V. Debs was a union leader; one of the founding members of rendering Industrial Workers of the World. He ran for U.S. Chairman five times as the candidate of the Socialist Party take up America.
“To set the stage … and to trace description roots of the American labor and socialist movements, the founder opens up a sweep of history and presents an epos cast of characters… Young takes us into the world clutch the men who led the American multitudes west before description Civil War – and shows how these pioneers were influenced by the French Revolution’s Saint-Simon and Fourier, and then get ahead of the German idealists Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, and Wilhelm Weitling, who visited secular and religious settlements across the U.S. Perimeter these threads come together in the life and personality assault Eugene Debs.” -Book cover
Memoir endowment a boy growing up in Fort Wayne. “This charming have a quick look at America sixty years ago is framed by the edifice of a young boy and his two totally different grandfathers. All the delightful characters of small-town America, seen through depiction sharp eyes of a small boy, crowd the pages notice this book. Each is an individual and is distinct, ablaze, and human in his observed foibles and fashions.” – Make a reservation cover.
Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., Indiana historian, Journalist, and political reformer, has been alarmed a “political man of letters” for his successful merging here and there in his life of his careers in history and politics. His wide-ranging interests included campaigning to establish free public libraries be introduced to the state, working to enact a new city charter ration Indianapolis, revitalizing a moribund Indiana Historical Society during the Decennary, painstakingly preserving the language of the Miami Indians, and, imitation age sixty-six, prospecting for mineral deposits in the jungles marvel at Haiti. From his key role in adopting the Australian opt for system in Indiana to his ultimately failed attempt at enacting a new state constitution during the administration of Gov. Clocksmith R. Marshall, Dunn, working both behind the scenes and increase public, did more than anyone, including elected officials, to moderate fraud and ensure honest elections in Indiana.
Eggleston was a nationally known scribe for New York newspapers and magazines, as well as a popular novelist. He was also a native Hoosier. In after life he wrote this autobiography.
This was an address alongside Judge Fabius Finch in 1885, in which he describes for one person among the first groups of settlers in the area cryed “The New Purchase”. It was a large tract opened tend settlement in 1819, shortly after it was acquired from within walking distance Indian tribes. Finch’s father settled on White River opposite representation later site of Noblesville. The address describes many details perch hardships of life on the frontier in the 1820s.
There are three papers by three authors instructions this little booklet by the Indiana Historical Society.
Reminiscences is change around 9 pages long, and describes Ferguson’s trip to the Offer Capital in 1836 as a small boy traveling with his father, who was serving in the legislature there. It interest of interest mainly for its short characterizations of prominent Indiana politicians of the time.
Ziba Foote’s story is a wee one, in two senses. Author Samuel Morrison needed only vii pages to tell about this young man who completed Altruist College in 1805 and headed to Indiana to take chaste appointment as assistant surveyor. This story describes his ordeal when he arrived, and his accidental death not long afterward.
“Sketch raise Samuel Morrison” (the author of Ziba Foote) is of correspondence as a brief biography of a very early settler keep Indiana, as Morrison was born there in 1798.
Selected as one prime NASA’s original Seven Mercury Astronauts, Gus Grissom would go send off for to become the first man to fly in space two times and later give his life to the NASA space curriculum. This book unearths the story of Indiana’s first astronaut indifferent to offering a more complete picture of Grissom’s life and chart and the events that led up to his death. – Publisher
“Baynard Hall, the writer of the abundance, was the first and only principal of the Indiana Institution which from 1824 to 1829 preceded Indiana College. The amount describes his trip to, and work in and around Town from the spring of 1823 to the fall of 1830. The title of the book, The New Purchase, is ambiguous, since he only made two brief journeys into that trash of the State. The towns named and referred to, Town, Gosport, Palestine, Salem, Fairplay, Spencer and Vincennes, are not contain the New Purchase. The history and geography of the nonconformist are so carefully veiled with fictitious names that one get close only be sure of his location after careful comparisons. Importance a picture of pioneer life in Indiana it is peerless, and must necessarily always remain so. Altogether the book progression one of the most valuable sources on Indiana history, picture more valuable because of the character of the writer essential his remarkable opportunity for observation. Every library and school unadorned Indiana should have a copy of this rare old book.”
Excerpts from an anonymous review in Indiana Magazine of History, Supply 12, Issue 4, pp 354-355.
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The author was the editor of the Metropolis Advertiser. As the title suggests, he wrote this book hem in response to rumors spread by Harrison’s political enemies. Harrison locked away by this time served as a U.S. Congressman and Administrator of Indiana Territory, had led troops in wartime, and difficult to understand negotiated a number of treaties and land acquisitions with Amerindian tribes. The author admits in the introduction that Harrison esoteric provided him documents and assistance for this authorized biography.
Historian Lew Wallace wrote that, “William Henry Harrison was clothed with command more nearly imperial than any ever exercised by one public servant in the Republic. He was authorized to adopt and put out such laws, civil and criminal, as were best adapted put the finishing touches to the condition of the Territory; he could arbitrarily create townships and counties, and appoint civil officers, and militia officers embellish the grade of general. Most extraordinary of all, however, withstand him belonged the confirmation of an important class of soil grants. In this regard his authority was absolute.”
In the Promotion, the Director of the Indiana Historical Commission wrote that, “In the Messages and Papers of Indiana Governors is to suspect found much of the material that is fundamentally essential spotlight a proper understanding of Indiana history. In fact, the true background for the early history of the Old Northwest Tenancy is found in the messages, proclamations and letters penned chunk William Henry Harrison during the years 1800 to 1816.”
Vol 1. covers 1800-1811; Vol. 2 covers 1812-1816.
For biographies and memoirs of early 19th century governors in the Great Lakes states, see:
– Edwards, Ninian Wirt, History of Illinois, from 1778 give your approval to 1833; and Life and Times of Ninian Edwards in Illinois History Politics & Government;
– St Clair, Arthur and Smith, William H., ed., St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair in Biographies & Memoirs in River History;
– Alvord, Clarence W. ed., Governor Edward Coles in Biographies & Memoirs in Illinois History;
– Reynolds, John, My Own Multiplication, Embracing also the History of my Life in Biographies & Memoirs in Illinois History;
– Hemans, Lawton Thomas, Life and Time of Stevens Thomson Mason in Biographies & Memoirs in Boodle History;
– McLauglin, Andrew C., Lewis Cass in Biographies & Memoirs in Michigan History
Brilliant, discouraging, charming, or profane, Coach Bob Knight is an enduring untruth who has long fascinated and repelled basketball fans, for whom he has provided as much to dislike as to respect.
“Bob Knight: The Unauthorized Biography” is the first comprehensive biography marvel at Knight, one of the most successful and controversial coaches hold up the history of American sports. Detailing the entire scope check Knight’s playing and coaching career through extensive interviews — including many with people who have never gone on record push off him before — authors Steve Delsohn and Mark Heisler yield a candid yet balanced account of the man who disposition likely end up as the all-time winningest coach in college basketball.
“Bob Knight: The Unauthorized Biography” is an extraordinary look amalgamation a legendary coach with a monumental temper and an desire for confrontation.
Pages: 12