June 6, 2017

The Spencer County Historical Society met on Tuesday, June 6, 2017, in the Rockport Library Genealogy Room.

The meeting was called to order by the president at 6:31 PM with 15 members present.

The minutes from the last meeting were read and approved.

The treasurer’s report was given. 

 The Society had received a donation from the U. S. Bank Employee Giving program.  After much research to find out who had given the donation, the secretary finally found out that it was from Sarah Johnson Fodge in memory of her father, Charles Guy Johnson, who died in 2014.  He was a 1970 graduate of South Spencer High School.  Sarah was a 1997 graduate of South Spencer High School. 

The Historian of the Year banquet was the next item of discussion.  The honorees this year will be Jim Haaff and Henry Ayres.  Bill Evans will be honored as Commemorative Historian.  Wayne Boultinghouse and Darrell Stephens will be the guest speakers.  The banquet will be held at the Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Chrisney, Indiana, on Saturday, September 9, 2017, at 10:00 AM.  The meal will be catered by the Cornerstone United Methodist Women.  Tickets will be $15.00 per person and should be purchased by September 2, 2017.  The president stated he had sent notification to the honorees to save that date.   

The Spencer County Bicentennial Committee has been meeting to get ideas for the upcoming celebration in 2018.  They would like to have people bring in old photos to each local library in Spencer County on a specified date to be copied and returned to the owner.  The photos would then be made into a book which would be placed in each county library.  The next meeting of the committee will be Wednesday, June 14, 2017, at 6:30 PM in the Rockport Library conference room in the basement.

Several questions were asked about the county:

            1.  What is the oldest building in Spencer County?

            2.  How many families who were here in 1818 when Spencer County was formed have descendants still living here in 2017?

A member suggested the pictures of advertisers in old high school yearbooks could possibly be used to show former businesses.  He also mentioned Rimstidt Hardware was, at one time, the largest Stihl product distributor in the state of Indiana.

A member told of the book of cartoons by Karl K. Knecht, a cartoonist from Evansville, Indiana.  He had a cartoon of the Langford cave where Langford (Lankford) lived with his family in 1808.  He was the first family to live in the present site of Rockport.  The cave is below the bluff by the Ohio River.  

A motion was made and seconded to adjourn the meeting.   The motion carried.  The meeting adjourned at 7:50 PM.

There will be no meeting in July. 

The next meeting will be August 1, 2017, at 6:30 PM in the Genealogy Room.