WHEN YOU VISIT most museums, the rules are clear: Look but don’t touch, especially when the collection goes back centuries. So, imagine reading a book written 700 years ago—not a copy, but a first edition—while you hold it in your bare hands and flip through the pages. Sounds like pure fiction. What museum would allow that? The Indiana Historical Society.
“These are the most important texts in Western and in human history,” says Jody Blankenship, IHS president and CEO. “We want you to read, to hold, to photograph, and engage with them.”
Through a partnership with The Remnant Trust, the IHS acquired a 1,567-piece collection of original books, manuscripts, and scrolls. Among the rarest and oldest? A 1350 edition of the Magna Carta and several pages from a Bible dating back to 1200 A.D.
The Remnant Trust is a nonprofit founded in the early 1990s by Hoosiers John Ryan, a former Indiana University president, and Brian Bex, an entrepreneur and writer from Hagerstown. The two men initially set their sights on identifying and acquiring the 100 most important texts of Western history in philosophy, politics, ethics, religion, and economics. The collection would later expand to include world history.
The collection has had several homes over the years, including Texas Tech University most recently. When the contract there was up, The Remnant Trust opted to bring the collection home to Indiana permanently, with the IHS serving as curator.
Blankenship says The Remnant Trust’s intention from the start was to make the works accessible in a hands-on way. “The books have a history of their own that they’ve witnessed,” Blankenship says. “And to think you held something that someone potentially 100 generations prior held is amazing.”
You’ll find works by Aristotle, the first printing of the Emancipation Proclamation from 1862, Connecticut’s original copy of the U.S. Constitution, a first edition of Mary Shelly’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, and several works by Jonathan Swift from the 1700s.
While the collection is certainly of interest to historians, Blankenship says it has also caught the attention of students and families. Jennifer Tousey and her 15-year-old daughter Sage spent an afternoon paging through several books and documents from the 18th and 19th centuries. Among Sage’s favorites? The Federalist Papers and “some of Hamilton’s writings defending the Constitution,” which she studied in school. “I was basically fangirling,” Sage recalls. “I was really excited to see and touch [the documents] in person without gloves.”
Sage’s mother Jennifer does a fair amount of early American history research. She says while you can find most anything online, “There’s something extraordinary about holding a historic document. Who’s held this? Who’s turned these pages? You’re touching, feeling, smelling it. … For me, it’s palpable. It makes you feel closer to whatever you’re reading.”
There are rules for accessing the works in The Remnant Trust collection. The materials cannot be checked out. Seeing the books is by appointment only and requires filling out a form listing the items you want to view. They’re provided one at a time in the newly redone, secure and monitored, climate-controlled reading room. Visitors are allowed to bring paper and a pencil, but no pens, and purses or bags should be stowed in a locker. Patrons are also required to wash their hands prior to holding any materials. (Gloves aren’t allowed because they’re more apt to damage the centuries-old paper.)
While a few items are on display in the reading room, the bulk of the collection is kept in a specially designed secure, windowless space that is also temperature-, humidity-, and light-controlled, with a fire suppression system. In fact, just getting the books from Texas to Indianapolis was a huge production.
Blankenship says the trip here was somewhat reminiscent of Bob Irsay moving the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis under the cover of darkness in March of 1984. Blakenship explains that the books and documents were securely packed into two climate-controlled, nondescript Penske trucks for the two-day, nonstop road trip to Central Indiana, with the drivers never letting the precious cargo out of sight. How precious? Blankenship says the collection is worth “whatever the market will pay, but we estimate for insurance purposes it’s $50 million.”
Perhaps not surprising when you consider that, say, 200 years ago, “It could take nine months to make a book, and it cost as much in relative terms as a Toyota Camry today, Blankenship says. “A book was a very prized possession, and today, because they’re so easily accessible, we take it for granted.”
