Visiting the Joseph Moore Museum at Richmond Indiana

Visiting the Joseph Moore Museum at Richmond Indiana
Today we visit the Joseph Moore Museum in Richmond, Indiana.
From the Book
East Central Indiana Day Trips

Transcript:

Greetings, today we visit the Joseph Moore Museum in Richmond, Indiana.

The museum began as the collection of a teacher at the Friends Boarding School in Richmond, Indiana, Joseph Moore.
Joseph Moore (February 29, 1832 – July 09, 1905)
The son of John Parker and Martha Cadwalader Moore, Joseph was native to Washington County, Indiana. After completing his elementary school education, he attended the Friends Boarding School in Richmond, Indiana 1853. He would serve as an assistant teacher while attending the school. After graduating he worked as a teacher in various schools until 1859, when he enrolled at Harvard. He graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor of Science degree.
He married Deborah Ann Stanton of Springboro, Ohio. She passed away in 1864 after giving birth to a son. A Quaker, Moore taught at Earlham College, which had formerly been The Friends Boarding School in Richmond. He took a job as the Superintendent of education for the Baltimore Association of Friends in 1865. He married Mary Thorne of Selma, Ohio in 1872. The couple had 4 children. He stayed in that position until 1868, when he returned to Richmond as the president of Earlham College from 1868 to 1882. He went to North Carolina to serve at the New Garden Boarding School, from 1883 to 1888. He returned to Richmond where he taught science for the remainder of his life. He was an avid collector of specimens that he used to aid his teaching. He stored his collection in a cabinet, however the college built Lindley Hall in 1887 and the collection was moved there, as it had grown quite large. In 1887 a wing in the lower floor became the museum where he displayed and stored his collection. In 1889 he acquired a giant beaver skeleton, a mummy named Ta’an and
the skeleton of a local circus elephant named “Tippo Sahib” that had gone mad and needed to be killed. Sometime during this period, he also received the skeleton of a mastodon found in Randolph County. Moore passed away in 1905.
After Moore’s death, Allan D. Hole became curator.
Lindley Hall caught fire on October 23, 1924. The fire consumed the building, however students and staff managed to save 75% of the collection, though Tippo Sahib was destroyed.
The museum employs a large number of students to serve as staff.
The collection currently includes thousands of objects from around the world. These include a predatory dinosaur, Babylonian tablets, Roman lamps bird, mammal and reptile specimens. The mammoth, giant beaver and the mummy are still on display.

The episode is based upon my book, East Central Indiana Day Trips , available on the web site, http://www.mossyfeetbooks.com. The book is the fifth book in the 9 volume Road Trip Indiana Series. The books include all the historical markers, as of 2022, in Indiana with the text and back story. The books also include a nearly complete listing of virtually every tourism destination in the state. The destinations include parks, museums, drive in theaters, bowling alleys, wineries and much, much more. Much of the book is also based on one of my other books, A Short History of Basketball – Indiana Edition. I encourage you to visit the web site and subscribe to it. If you like what I am doing, please purchase a book, as it helps fund my work.
You can find my books locally at the at the Romweber Marketplace in downtown Batesville, Indiana.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast and thank you for listening.

One Hall of Fame Court
New Castle, IN 47362
(765) 529-1891
info@hoopshall.com
https://www.hoopshall.com/

Joseph Moore Museum
Earlham College
801 National Road West
Richmond, IN 47374-4095

josephmooremuseum@earlham.edu