Q&A: Meet Kelly Lippie, Tippecanoe County’s new county historian

Already deep into local history in her role as curator at Tippecanoe County Historical Association, Kelly Lippie talks about her new role: ‘Pretty much working on history all the time.’

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Q&A: MEET KELLY LIPPIE, TIPPECANOE COUNTY’S NEW COUNTY HISTORIAN

Kelly Lippie, curator of collections for the Tippecanoe County Historical Association for more than the past decade, in the past week was named the new county historian.

The volunteer role, appointed by Indiana Historical Society and the Indiana Historical Bureau, is set up to promote local history and provide a way into resources for people looking for information or doing research.

Kelly Lippie (Photo: Dave Bangert)

At TCHA, Lippie develops exhibits, processes new artifact donations and works with researchers in the library and archives at the Arganbright Center at the corner of 10th and South streets.

Question: Tell me how this appointment came about. Is it something you applied for? Something the Indiana Historical Society foisted upon you? What’s the story?

Kelly Lippie: Our most recent county historian, Quentin Robinson, was retiring after filling the role for nearly a decade. I offered to take over for him and was nominated by the Tippecanoe County Historical Association for the position. The Indiana Historical Society oversees the county historian program and consulted other local historical groups/libraries for approval of my appointment. There’s a lot of public trust placed county historians, so the Indiana Historical Society takes their appointments seriously!

Question: How will this role differ from your job as collections curator for TCHA?

Kelly Lippie: There are many things about the county historian role that I already do as curator of collections at TCHA. Most importantly, helping researchers find answers to their questions or figure out where they can go to find those answers. I will also act as a point person for the county with Indiana Historical Society and anyone else looking for local history. I am certainly open to ideas from the community on ways I can help and serve local history best.

Question: Is there a typical day in the life or week in the life of a county historian? Or is this more of an on-call role?

Kelly Lippie: The role is more on-call, but since my job is also all about county history I’m pretty much working on history all the time. I think people would be surprised how many inquiries we get and how much we are doing all the time to research topics, answer questions and take care of the county’s archives.

Question: Do you have plans or goals for the role to promote or preserve local history as you go into this new position?

Kelly Lippie: This year is Tippecanoe County’s 200th anniversary of being established. We also have some other anniversaries coming up, including the bicentennial of Dayton, Indiana, and the 100th anniversary of the founding of TCHA. I hope we can take advantage of these anniversaries to get the community interested in local history. It’s also a great time to build on what we have and know about our community. I hope I can help out local groups who are working on oral history projects, applying for historic markers, etc.

Question: You work with history every day at TCHA. What’s the best part of the job?

Kelly Lippie: We get to be detectives in our work and solve mysteries. We never know what is going to come up and what we’re going to find. As we process new donations and work through old records, we are making discoveries all the time. At TCHA, I am surrounded by an amazing group of staff and volunteers who are local history enthusiasts and make a great team of investigators.

I’m lucky that I get to have hands-on access to all of these amazing artifacts and documents that tell these stories. There’s a big responsibility to ensure that we are doing all we can to send them into the future in the best possible condition and creating ways for people to access them.

Tippecanoe County really has an amazing amount of history that is important, not just locally, but also to state and national history. We’re lucky to have great resources here in this county, in the form of TCHA, the Tippecanoe County Public Library, the West Lafayette Public Library, the Purdue Archives and all the historic sites. The city and county governments also have great amounts of documentation that people may not realize is available. That is why the county historian’s role is important – not to have all the answers, but to know where to go for them.

Question: And what’s one cool piece of local history, whether tucked in the collections or in archives, that most people don’t know?

Kelly Lippie: Something that I find interesting, and have been researching for a number of years, is the fence around the Tippecanoe Battlefield. It’s actually written into the Indiana State Constitution and the Lafayette man who designed and built it held a patent for the structure. The fence was made to withstand the freezing and thawing of Indiana soil, and it’s held up pretty well now for over 100 years. I geek out about it a little and can go on and on.

Question: What’s the best way for people interested in learning more about Tippecanoe County’s history to get involved?

Kelly Lippie: The Tippecanoe County Historical Association offers many education programs throughout the year – including the Feast of the Hunters’ Moon – that can really give you a wide variety of topics to explore. Our social media is always actively sharing posts on local history and we have a YouTube channel where you can watch old presentations we have offered in recent years. You can also become a member of the association and get access to special events and news. I’ll also do a shameless plug for our recent publication, “200 Years of Tippecanoe County: A Community Tells Its Stories,” which has 200 short stories about local history to whet your appetite.

Question: What other context should people know?

Kelly Lippie: Something exciting that I have seen in recent years, are a number of local authors and researchers uncovering the “untold” stories of Tippecanoe County. Those members of the community who have not had their history told or appreciated in the past are finally getting their flowers. It’s great to see, and I’m happy to be able to help these researchers find what they need to get these stories out there. There’s a long way to go, but I think the momentum will build.

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THIS AND THAT …

(Photo: Unseen Histories via Unsplash)

MARTIN LUTHER KING CELEBRATION AT TCPL: An annual Martin Luther King Day Celebration will be 11 a.m.-noon Monday, Jan. 19, at the Tippecanoe County Public Library, 627 South St. in Lafayette. Anne M. Edwards, a board member for the Association of Black Cultural Centers and director of the Purdue Black Cultural Center, will be the keynote speaker. The event includes a group sing and refreshments.

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