Sullivan County, Indiana History Museum

Sullivan County, Indiana History Museum An array of historical artifacts, family histories, displays and a museum setting research facility

Owned & operated by the Sullivan County Public Library, Sullivan, Indiana

Come to the museum to register to race today!
09/02/2026

Come to the museum to register to race today!

September is here! The Corn Festival is fast approaching, that means Bed Racing and Book Sale! There is still time to re...
09/01/2026

September is here! The Corn Festival is fast approaching, that means Bed Racing and Book Sale! There is still time to register for the Bed Race! If you need to register but can't get in during regular business hours please message us or call we will be happy to accommodate.

Can you help us? The museum has many unknown pictures. Do you know any of these people? If you have information about th...
09/01/2026

Can you help us? The museum has many unknown pictures. Do you know any of these people? If you have information about the pictures below please contact us! Identified photos will be added to the museum catalog for research

08/29/2026

This week in history...

August 24th-
79 CE: Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash.
1814: British forces captured Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812 and burned the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

August 25th-
1916: President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service.
1944: Allied forces liberated Paris after four years of N**i occupation.
2012: NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially entered interstellar space.

August 26th-
1346: The English army defeated the French in the Battle of Crécy during the Hundred Years' War.
1920: The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was certified, securing women's right to vote and establishing Women's Equality Day.
1958: Indianapolis police investigated a timed dynamite explosion that heavily damaged the home of a union official while no one was inside IMPD News.

August 27th-
1871: Legendary American novelist and journalist Theodore Dreiser, famous for major literary classics like Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana.
1896: The Anglo-Zanzibar War began and ended in just 38 to 45 minutes, making it the shortest recorded war in history.

August 28th-
1955: Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, a tragedy that became a major catalyst for the civil rights movement.
1963: Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech to a crowd of over 250,000 people during the March on Washington.

August 29th-
1862: The 88th Indiana Volunteer Infantry was officially mustered into service for the Union Army during the American Civil War.
1949: The Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, code-named "First Lightning," in Kazakhstan.
1966: The Beatles performed their final commercial live concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

August 30th-
1862: The Second Battle of Bull Run ended in a decisive Confederate victory over Union forces in Manassas, Virginia.
1963: The Moscow–Washington hotline was established to allow direct communication between the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union.
1967: Thurgood Marshall was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first African American Supreme Court Justice.

Did you guess our Friday snippet?An antique painted lamp!
08/29/2026

Did you guess our Friday snippet?

An antique painted lamp!

Play a game with us! Every Friday we will be posting a snippet of an object right here in the museum. Leave a guess in t...
08/28/2026

Play a game with us! Every Friday we will be posting a snippet of an object right here in the museum. Leave a guess in the comments and we will reveal the object at 8pm Friday night.

Register today! We can't wait to see you there!
08/28/2026

Register today! We can't wait to see you there!

08/27/2026

Welcome back to fun facts with Finch! This week I have decided to regale you all with how we decided to bring back the infamous Sullivan County Bed Race! While a little bit of a loophole, I still consider this a fun fact because it's, well, factual. Plus it serves to spread the word about it! Before you continue reading, if you are confused about what a bed race is exactly, feel free to look at either our pinned post about registration or the video I made about it! Without further ado, let's take a look back to last September…

I don’t remember the exact day or the exact time, but I do remember what we were doing. It was one of those days where Katiesha and I were upstairs in the collections room sorting through boxes that haven’t been fully organized yet. It was when we were sorting through one of these boxes of assorted knick-knacks we found a trophy. Upon first glance, we figured it would be for a children’s sports league or a local sports team. It was a standard enough looking trophy, multi-layered and golden with the year 1980 boldly displayed on the second layer. Reading the description, however, we were taken aback. It read ‘2nd Place Sullivan Jaycees Bed Race’. I was immediately perplexed. I had never heard the two words ‘bed’ and ‘race’ put together in a sentence like that before unless it was me racing to go to bed after a long day. After maybe a minute of sharing speculative guesses as to what it could mean, we finally googled it and in that moment our world got larger.

Upon that fateful search, my phone was flooded with videos of people racing beds on wheels against other beds on wheels in the most unique of circumstances. Some videos showed the competition as a relay race, others as pure speed fueled sprints, a select few even took place in the elements. Now, I don’t remember which of us said this, but either I or Katiesha boldly asserted that we could totally do that. I am sure this was meant with brief bafflement before silent contemplation. It was no time at all before we were planning the logistics of such a task. The rest of the work day was spent downstairs huddled around a piece of paper onto which we were spilling our brainstorming. By the end of the day, we were determined to make it happen and as soon as we got the approval, we could not be stopped.

There were many other obstacles and detours taken to get to where we are now but those stories are long and winding and a little bit boring so I will leave it at this for today! I hope you enjoyed and if this post piques your interest, our bedrace will take place before the opening of cornfest on September 16th from 6 to 7 in front of city hall! I hope to see you all there watching or maybe even participating. Have a great weekend!🔥🛏

We would like to take a minute to thank our prize sponsors for the 2026 Bed Race!1st place - Sponsored by the Sullivan R...
08/27/2026

We would like to take a minute to thank our prize sponsors for the 2026 Bed Race!
1st place - Sponsored by the Sullivan Rotary Club
2nd place - Sponsored by Sullivan Baeslers
3rd place - Sponsored by the Sullivan County Chamber of Commerce

We could not do this without you, Thank you!

Can you help us? The museum has many unknown pictures. Do you know any of these people? If you have information about th...
08/25/2026

Can you help us? The museum has many unknown pictures. Do you know any of these people? If you have information about the pictures below please contact us! Identified photos will be added to the museum catalog for research.

Address

10 S. Court St
Sullivan, IN
47882

Opening Hours

Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm

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