INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The histories of Indiana's early African-American settlements have gone online as part of a project that ties together decades of research.

The Indiana Historical Society's new online resource documents 61 early farming settlements that black settlers had founded by 1870 in 43 Indiana counties. It also includes a state map with links to information on early blacks in all 92 Indiana's counties.

The Indianapolis-based society worked with several individuals, groups and communities to identify the farming communities that once dotted Indiana's landscape.

The society says popular understanding of Indiana's black history focuses on post-Civil War migration to some of the state's cities, but fails to spotlight the stories of free blacks and formerly enslaved people who settled in Indiana much earlier.