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News Release

Last modified: Wednesday, March 25, 2009

State history journal peers into the history of the Hoosier Cabinet

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 25, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The March 2009 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History leads with an article by Bloomington writer and cabinetmaker Nancy Hiller on the history of the Hoosier Cabinet. Hiller places the national success of the free-standing kitchen cabinets, hugely popular from the 1910s to the 1930s, within the context of the scientific homemaking movement and the rise of product marketing and sales techniques.

With ads that told rural housewives that "A kitchen without a cabinet is like a farm without a plow," Indiana firms including the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. and the McDougall Co. sold millions of step-saving, work-reducing cabinets to women all over the country. Hiller's article is based upon a chapter of her new book from Indiana University Press.

The issue also includes the 1863 Civil War diary of Indiana soldier William H. Carroll. Carroll enrolled in the 24th Indiana Regiment in July 1861and, despite injuries in battle, fought until May 1865. The article reproduces his pocket diary from the year 1863 and includes a fascinating account of the days leading up to and including the surrender of Vicksburg. Carroll recounts, among other incidents, the Battle of Grand Gulf, the Battle of Champion Hill (where he was wounded "in the rist & face"), and the siege of Vicksburg.

The diary was owned by members of the Carroll family and has now been donated, along with other documents and family photographs, to the Lilly Library at IU Bloomington by Frank Carroll of Custer, S.D.

The Indiana Magazine of History is published quarterly by the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington, in cooperation with the Indiana Historical Society. The magazine's Web site can be found at www.indiana.edu/~imaghist. For general information on the articles, contact the editorial office at 812-855-4139.

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