Staff Reports
The Joseph Hart Chapter of the Daughters of American Revolution awarded Kimberly Ray with the DAR Community Service Award on Nov. 17 during the Bartholomew County Genealogical Society meeting.
The award recognizes her efforts to preserve local history.
She has spent many hours creating the new Yellow Trail Research Center, which is connected with the Yellow Trail Museum. The museum tells the history of Hope and the surrounding area in Flat Rock and Hawcreek Townships.
Coordinating several volunteers, Ray led the organization of the many documents and photos at the museum, rescuing many moldy, smelly documents to enable the community and visitors to do family and history research.
Ray also actively pursued the digitization of many records to share the information more broadly, with a Scan-a-thon on June 9 to scan the Moravian church records through 1900.
She also serves on the board of the Bartholomew County Genealogical Society, where she has been the editor of the quarterly newsletter, Ancestors, for more than a decade.
Ray has published a book about the Haw Creek Baptist Church and its cemetery, and was a driving force behind a book compiled by the Bartholomew County Genealogical Society on the veterans of the War of 1812 who lived and died in Bartholomew County.
She is currently leading a project with other Bartholomew County Genealogical Society members to write a book about the founders of Hope, who migrated from North Carolina to Indiana.
