Violet Toph Collection
The Toph Papers
More than 6,000 pages of Ripley County family history, gathered by Miss Violet Toph in the 1930s after she retired from teaching. The papers are kept at the RCHS library in Versailles, and a full name index is online.
Looking for an ancestor?
Search the surname index to find the page numbers to request.
The collector
Who was Violet Toph?
Violet Toph was born in Springdale on December 29, 1878, the only child of Thomas Garrett and Olive (Jackson) Toph. She devoted her life to recording the history of Ripley County and its families, and after retiring from teaching she served as curator of the Ripley County Museum.
She often walked as many as twenty miles a day to follow a lead, knocking on doors to ask families about their ancestors and where they came from. She also wrote The People’s History of Ripley County.
Read her full biography →The collection
What’s in the papers
- Genealogy and family facts for hundreds of Ripley County families
- Notes from Miss Toph’s visits and interviews across the county
- Marriage records, which are also indexed online
The Toph Papers are a collection of loose, sleeved pages, not a published book. They were recently re-indexed so the index page numbers match the sleeved pages.
Order copies
How to order copies
Find the page numbers for the names you want in the Toph Papers Index.
Include payment: a $10.00 research donation plus $1.00 for each page copied, by check or money order.
Mail your request with a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE). About $1.00 in postage usually covers ten pages.
P.O. Box 525
Versailles, Indiana 47042Questions? Call (812) 689-3031 or email rchslib@gmail.com
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More from Violet Toph
Many thanks to the volunteers who extracted the names for the index, including Carol Simmons, Fran Campbell, Patti Smith and Ilona Manion.
