This is the Historic Knightstown Inc. web site.
Our mission is to actively preserve the history of this community. We urge searching our own backyards for items and stories that are so relevant to our humble beginnings. Our organization was initially started to preserve the identity of Century Old Homes. We were also actively involved in preserving the present Knightstown Academy and the Hoosier Gym, both Indiana Landmarks.
The Historic Knightstown Inc. Museum houses and displays items and memorabilia that reflect historical events of the past and the present.
Monthly meetings are conducted and several programs are
presented by authors, artists, guest speakers, historians, and preservationists.
This is the HKI Museum on the west side of the Public Square.
This is the Sesquicentennial year of the American Civil War. To commemorate the occasion a section has been added to this site which attempts to describe the contributions and sacrifices of the Knightstown citizenry during that great struggle. A large percentage of the military age men of our town volunteered to serve in the Union forces and many suffered wounds and many died.
To go to any of the pages in the section about Knightstown in the Civil War click on the picture or the appropriate link on the right side of this page.
Here’s a gallery of pictures taken at the HKI Museum.
The Digital Archive Project
Historic Knightstown Inc. (HKI) is engaged in an on-going project to create a digital archive which will prolong, via digital technology, the life of historical documents, photographs, memorabilia and relics. Experts agree that there are few practical preservation methods for paper documents, such as deeds, maps, yearbooks, photos, etc. Time, light and the very materials on which historical documents are printed contribute to natural decay. In short, such items have a limited lifetime and essentially disintegrate over time.
However, by acting quickly and with the right tools, historians can produce digital duplicates of these important and valuable items for the education and enjoyment of current and future generations. This project aims to establish a secondary or “backup” version of HKI’s museum collection. This will also allow museum curators to produce at least a limited facsimile in the event of a catastrophe, such as fire, tornado, etc.
The goal of HKI’s digital archiving project is to digitally archive, via scanning and photography, the entire contents of the HKI museum. Ideally, all historical documents and photographs win be digitally scanned and stored on archive quality digital video discs or DVDs. Likewise, historical artifacts and other memorabilia will be digitally photographed for DVD storage. Archive quality CDs and DVDs have a lifetime guarantee and, if properly cared for, will maintain data perpetually.
Anyone with an interest in Knightstown and/or Henry County history will be served by this project. The nature of the digital records produced will ensure that important facets of Town history are not only modernized in terms of information storage and retrieval. but also more portable. With the advent of the Internet, it is also possible that this project will enable HKI staff members to share the Town’s history with students in China or Australia, for example. Therefore, the geographic area to be served by this project is potentially boundless. By nature, digital data gels nicely with the World Wide Web, making it possible to share the project’s results with countless individuals at home and abroad. Although it’s likely that more people will have access to the Town’s history once completed, it is difficult to determine the precise number of people who will be served by HKI’s digital archiving project Certainly, current historians will enjoy the comfort of knowing that such a vital collection is preserved, for all practical purposes. in perpetuity, using modern technology. It’s also safe to say that students and historians in the future will take advantage of these digital records by sheer virtue of their contemporary convenience and computerized accessibility. This is of particular importance given the aforementioned natural decay and catastrophe issues. The museum’s documents will only last so long. Digital documents will be available to people for a very long time.
Click to:
Go back to the top
or Go to the next page
This site was created for Historic Knightstown Inc by HKI member Ed Knight.
Here’s my email address:
simman@charter.net
