Population-1815 Welcome back to Small Town Saturday! This week, we’ll be looking at Farmer City Illinois. Farmer City, a small town in DeWitt County Illinois, had a complicated early life. The first town in the area was founded by a man by the name of Dennis Hurley, who arrived in 1830. He named the area “Hurley’s Grove,” though this name would not last long. Hurley would severely injure himself with the ramrod of his gun shortly after settling in the region. He was followed by Nathan Clearwater and Richard Kirby, with 9 families living in the area by 1835. Map of Santa Anna Township in 1875 ..read more

In March of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill establishing the National Asylum (later renamed National Home) of Disabled Volunteer Soldiers into legislation, just three months before his assassination. Due to the severe impact of the Civil War, the idea of homes for disabled veterans had begun gaining favor in Congress. The war had a severe impact on the population of young men in the United States, with approximately two percent of the US population losing their lives and thousands of soldiers returning home injured. Joseph Gurney Cannon portrait by Hartsook Photo, 1915 After the ..read more

After a few short years of hiatus, #SmallTownSaturday is back! This month, we are looking at the town of Princeton in Bureau County, Illinois. The county was established in 1837, with Princeton as the county seat. Figure 1: Bird’s eye view of the city of Princeton, Bureau County, Illinois circa 1870s Princeton was formed in the early 1830s as a transplant colony for the Hampshire Colony Congregational Church of Northampton, Massachusetts. It became a stop of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad in the 1850s and began expanding quickly. Abraham Lincoln himself stopped in Princeton in 18 ..read more

The exhibit, as displayed in the IHLC Reading Room, Main Library 324. The 19th century was a period of substantial party instability in American politics. New parties emerged, vanished, merged, and succeeded, altering the shape of the American political discourse. The Illinois Historical and Lincoln Collections has a special pop-up exhibit on display that highlights some of these political parties. Drawing on several of our archival collections and cataloged material, the exhibit contains pamphlets, election tickets, broadsides and other items produced by the parties of the 19th centu ..read more

postcard king Bernhardt Wall was an American illustrator and lithographer. He was born in 1872 in Buffalo, New York, to German parents who had recently emigrated to the United States. Sometime before 1893, Wall moved to New York City, where he briefly studied at Art Students League before pursuing a career as a commercial lithographer. While in New York City, Wall also worked as a watchmaker and photographer. During the Spanish-American War, Wall enlisted in the New York Volunteer Infantry. After the war, Wall lived and worked in New York City, where he designed postcards that were popular for ..read more

The Establishment of Camp Butler On April 15, 1861, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, sent a telegram to Illinois Governor Richard Yates reading: “Call made on you by to-nights mail, for six regiments of militia, for immediate service.” The Civil War had begun, and the State of Illinois was responsible for organizing men to fight in the Union army. At the time, there were no organized militias within Illinois, and the state’s government began planning military training camps. On August 2, 1861, the State of Illinois announced the construction of a Union army camp about six mil ..read more

In the initial decades after its founding in 1909, the Illinois Historical Survey (now part of the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections) focused on research and collecting documents to support the publication of a multi-volume state history as well as an edited series of documents. The Survey obtained copies of archival materials from both North America and Europe. The IHLC currently holds dozens of boxes and reels of microfilm of documents from these early collecting initiatives, including 16 cubic feet and 25 reels of microfilm from French Archives and Depositories (MS 023). The project ..read more

  This month IHLC opens its newest exhibit, Constructing Utopias: Examining Communitarianism Efforts in America, 1825-1940, which explores the promotion and study of communitarian colonies in America through research collections and personal papers at IHLC. This exhibit was originally set for installation in March 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic responses and library closings, the exhibit materials have been patiently waiting in crates in the IHLC vault. We are excited to have this exhibit finally installed and available available for viewing during our open reading room hours, Monda ..read more

On May 4, 1865, the body of Abraham Lincoln arrived at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. His coffin was placed in the cemetery’s receiving vault along with the coffin of his son, Willie, who had died three years earlier. In the days following, the National Lincoln Monument Association was founded by then Governor Richard J. Oglesby to construct a memorial that would honor the memory of the fallen president. Funds were raised across the country to support the cost of the memorial. Because construction would take six years, a temporary vault was built, and Lincoln’s body was placed th ..read more

It’s been approximately one year since the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections (IHLC) unit of the University of Illinois Library began collecting evidence of Illinoisans’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many libraries, archives, museums, and special collections across the country and around the world, the IHLC invited Illinoisans throughout the state to share a variety of materials. These contributions could take many forms, such as emails, typed or handwritten journal or diary entries, photographs, screenshots of social media posts, video and audio recordings, digita ..read more