Dates

• Majority of material found within 1882 - 2019

Extent

6 boxes Linear Feet (Ingleside, one of two literary organizations established in Indiana, Pennsylvania, held its first meeting on November 14, 1882. Because the earlier Shakespeare Club, founded in 1879, was limited to married couples, there was a desire for a second group that admitted single persons as well as married couples. Slightly over half of the members that first year were single or widowed. Prominent among them were Jane Leonard, Preceptress of Indiana State Normal School (ISNS); Sarah S. Sutton, widow of James Sutton and owner of Breezedale, which later belonged to Judge John Elkin and was known as Breezedale Hall; and Mary Agnes Sutton, widow of John Sutton, ISNS founder and first president of the ISNS Board of Trustees. From its beginning, the Ingleside Society has met for dinner or refreshments at the residence of its members and the reading of informative papers by members. Meetings were initially weekly, but today are monthly from October to May. The founding of literary societies such as Ingleside was common in nineteenth-century America and Britain. Indeed, Indiana would have been an unusual town if something akin to Shakespeare and Ingleside had not been formed. Similar clubs were everywhere, on college campuses, in church congregations or, as in this case, existing independently in the general community, and yet Ingleside’s membership was affiliated with many regional businesses and institutions. There was a great enthusiasm for “self-improvement” which, like sobriety, cleanliness, honesty, and diligence, was seen as a mark of middle-class respectability. ‘Respectable’ people were presumed to make a continual effort to improve their minds. To earnest participants, the effort at self-education made all the feasting and good fun uplifting rather than frivolous, since it was all for a good cause. Thus, the founding of such self-improvement societies is unexceptional; what is exceptional is that both Indiana societies continue to be active in the twenty-first century. The opening of Indiana State Normal School in 1875 was very likely the instigation for the clubs’ founding. Townspeople saw both an opportunity and obligation – an obligation to welcome the faculty into town society, and an obligation to raise the intellectual level of society. The ISNS campus itself supported two additional literary societies for students including the Erodelphian and Huyghenian, which lasted into the twentieth century when they were combined into the Leonard Literary Society, which later evolved into a dramatics club of campus. Early Ingleside presidents were Judge John P. Blair, 1882-1913; Indiana State Normal School Preceptress Jane E. Leonard, 1913-1924; John A. Scott, Esq., 1924-1936; Charles E. Rink, M.D., 1936-1949; Professor Rhodes R. Stabley, Ph.D., 1949-1958; State Senator C. Gilbert Wolfenden, 1958-1968; and IUP President William W. Hassler, 1968-1970. Among other prominent members were Governor John S. Fisher; social reformer Sue E. Williard; music composer Gladys Washburn Fisher; Maj. Gen. Paul F. Yount; founders of Kiskiminetas Springs (Kiski) School, A. W. Wilson, Jr., and R. Willis Fair; IUP presidents Z. X. Snyder, James Ament, Leroy A. King, John D. Welty, and Lawrence Pettit; and other leaders of the town’s medical, religious, legal, business, academic, cultural, and nonprofit sectors. The Ingleside Society Collection contains meeting minutes, program books, history, membership information, photographs, correspondence from members, and papers presented by members. All Ingleside Society meeting minutes from 1882 to 2000 are available in electronic format. Series List: Series I Meeting Minutes; Series II Program books; and Series III Membership information.)

Language of Materials

English