Seventeen display rooms of Fulton County Living:

• Art, music, and entertainment - includes King's Jesters, Elmo Lincoln (the first Tarzan), Fulton Co. Players, and more.
• Old-time kitchen, dining room, parlor, and bedroom - all furnished in 1910- 1935 style.
• Scouts and toys - dolls by Ruby Dawson, Scout collections from Glendola Alber and Don Fites.
• Health Services - Woodlawn Hospital, horse and buggy doctors, eye doctors, dentists, and the Red Cross.
• Indians - Potawatomi Trail of Death, Chief White Eagle and Ervin Stuntz collections.
• Transportation - railroads, highways, and airplanes.
• Old-time general store & clothing displays in A. B. Shore Clothing Store cases.
• Old-time barn - loft, chick incubator, tools, model round barns.
• Schools and sports - Rochester College, one-room schools, Fulton County elementary and high schools.
• Military - Civil War, Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Viet Nam, Persian Gulf and all wars memorabilia.
• Clubs and recreation - Lake Manitou, Appaloosa Pony Assn., fishing lures, Cracker Jack prizes, quilts, 4-H, and vintage cameras.
• Merchants and industry - retail stores, factories, businesses, telephones, hotels, Chester White Swine Association
• Churches - histories and souvenir plates of county churches, Bibles from 1834 on, altar, pew, organs.
• Circus - Cole Bros.-Clyde Beatty Circus (had winter headquarters here from 1934-1940), high-wire bicycle act of Willie and Clara Lamberti, and ladder of Johnny "Laddie" Zoppe, much more.

Fulton County Museum - Built in 1987-88. Barnhart Gallery features special exhibits. The Gift Shop sells books about local history and Indians, Indian crafts, jewelry, pottery, paper dolls, and old-time toys. Open Mon.-Sat. 9 am -5 p.m. Closed holidays. Free admission. Donations welcome.

Round Barn Museum - built in 1924. Moved and restored in 1990-91. Farm machinery and antique tool displays include buggy, covered wagon, 1912 Lincoln truck, horse-drawn reaper, sheller, milk cans, horse and cow stalls, etc. Open Mon.-Sat. 9 am - 5 p.m. May - September. Closed holidays.

Tetzlaff Reference Room

The Tetzlaff Reference Room has been growing! Recent donations of Civil War books from Jack K. Overmyer, and genealogy reference books of Maryland, Delaware and other states from Wendell Tombaugh, both of Rochester, are now ready for you to use. The Ogle Collection is now in the Secretary's Office on shelves as it outgrew its former space. It contains genealogy reference books about Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and heraldry from James Donalson, St. Augustine Beach, Florida. These valuable additions are also ready for you to use.

The Tetzlaff Reference Room is at the north end of the Fulton County Museum, a section added in 2001, created with funds donated to FCHS from Ruth and Alice Tetzlaff estates. This Reference Room is open whenever the museum is open: Monday - Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed holidays. The Tetzlaff Reference Room is 64 feet x 16 1/2 feet. Its collections are not just for genealogy but for local research into all subjects relating to Fulton County.

Features and special collections:

- Fulton County newspapers 1858-present, includes 190 volumes of Rochester newspapers donated from the Fulton County Court House. Unbound volumes include Rochester, Kewanna and Fulton newspapers that were microfilmed in 1979.

- Files of obituaries from Rochester newspapers 1944-85 and in books up to the present - these were donated by Judge Wendell Tombaugh, plus copies of the many books he wrote and published and bound himself. These books include indexes of Rochester newspapers, Fulton County cemetery inscriptions, marriage and birth records, censuses, obituaries, Rochester School Enumerations 1896-1925, Handbook of 23 volumes, family histories, etc. Also cemetery inscriptions from parts of Miami and Marshall counties. Tombaugh's obituaries are on the Fulton County Library's web page but are divided into years so you have to know which year a person died and wait about five minutes for that volume to come up. Judge Tombaugh gave FCHS permission to print out each year's obituaries and put them in ring-binder notebooks.

• Civil War and Military History - A collection of Civil War history and of the nation's other military history, containing 183 volumes, is available for in-house use. The gift of Jack K. Overmyer, first FCHS president and a published Civil War author, the collection is arranged in 21 categories that include Abraham Lincoln, war histories, biographies, battle, Indiana in the war and videos.
• Ogle/Ogles Family Association library, such as The Ogle Genealogist and many books from Alice Ogle estate - she had a large collection of genealogy indexes and histories from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee and other states where many Ogles settled. Wayne Ogle, James Donalson, Shirley Ogle Willard and other O/OFA members have donated books, pamphlets, histories, etc.
• National Round Barn Center of Information with pictures and stories about round and many-sided barns from all over the U.S., Canada and England.
• Indian Awareness Center/ Potawatomi Trail of Death Association collection of tribal newspapers and newsletters from related groups, plus much genealogical material, including family histories compiled by Potawatomi who had ancestors on the 1838 Trail of Death from Indiana to Kansas. This is the official repository for the Trail of Death Regional Historic Trail - pictures of each historical marker, news clippings, diary, microfilm print-outs, etc.
• Collection of news clippings on history of Fulton County, including people, buildings, clubs past and present that volunteers have been clipping from newspapers for over 20 years. The Rochester Sentinel gives Shirley Willard copies each week to clip for local history. South Bend Tribunes were brought from the Rochester library. Other members bring in articles from Logansport Pharos Tribune. Many people mail and bring in articles they think should be kept. You are invited to send in articles too. This collection is in 16 file cabinets.

- Schools - past and present, yearbooks: nearly complete set of Rochester High School, various years of Columbia Elementary, Riddle Elementary, Kewanna, Leiters Ford, Akron, Tippecanoe Valley, Caston, Fulton, Grass Creek, Richland Center, Tiosa. College catalogs, yearbooks, and alumni records from Rochester College 1895-1912 are kept here. Many old school textbooks are from one-room schools. Some township trustee school records from Richland and Union townships are located here.

• Genealogy societies newsletters from many Indiana counties, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and some from California, Oregon, Missouri, etc.

- Fulton County authors - books, magazine and newspaper articles written by residents of Fulton County, Indiana.

- FCHS publications: Quarterlies include 72 issues 1964-90, 5 issues of Fulton County Images 1991-2000, FCHS Newsletter - Scrapbooks, Fulton County Folk Finders, Indian Awareness Center Newsletters, Potawatomi Trail of Death Assn. Newsletters, annual FCHS reports, Fulton County Folks vol. 1 and 2, Civil War Soldiers of Fulton County, reprints of 1883 Atlas, and Home Folks.

• Rochester city directories, telephone books, ledgers of old businesses.
• Fulton County Court House books and execution records no longer needed by court house but good for genealogy research. Many have been indexed on cards by Joan Ginther, a museum volunteer.
• Old reference books and histories no longer kept by modern libraries, such as encyclopedia from early 1900, 1800s dictionaries and Bibles, much more..
• World War II - John Tombaugh's collection of 700 books, and his computer with history and information he organized in it. This is a new collection donated in 2008.

This is a Reference Room, not a lending library. All materials must be used on the premises. A copying machine is available.

Today's libraries update their materials and get rid of old books no longer used. The Tetzlaff Reference Room will keep old books whether they are used by researchers or not. It keeps only books that are relevant to Fulton County history and its residents and material that refers to life in the Midwest which is like life here in Fulton County. These books include transportation, tools, fashion, foods and cooking, medical - nearly every aspect of life here in the Midwestern USA.

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