The following excerpt is from an article by Ron Wilkins, posted at the Feb. 21, 2012 edition of jconline.com:
John M. Harris spends each Tuesday and Wednesday quietly working in a small office surrounded by shelves stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes containing … well, that’s what Harris is finding out.
Outside his office, a much larger room is filled with stacks of boxes, filing cabinets and a conference table for sorting. Throughout the Frank Arganbright Genealogy and Research Center, items are in storage — items someone at some point considered historically significant.
Nestled in his small office on the second floor of the center on 10th Street across from the Moses Fowler House, Harris’ task is to computerize the Tippecanoe County Historical Association‘s hard-copy card catalogs and computerize years of donated items that escaped being enumerated or completely slipped through the cracks.
He rhetorically repeated the question to himself as he leaned forward in his chair, reaching for a 10-pound cannonball set on a table in front of him: “What is it that’s fun? Being able to handle something like this that probably goes back to the Revolution,” he answered, holding out the solid shot that was found in the area of Fort Ouiatenon.For Harris, 67, the fun is also bringing order from chaos and the chance to play history detective when he stumbles across undocumented items or some unrecognizable trinkets or artifacts.
