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History Reference Center
Full-text articles to support research in history and genealogy and lesson plans to support student learning.
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"Although Illinois saw no dramatic witch trials, witchcraft has been a part of Illinois history and culture from French exploration to the present day. On the Illinois frontier, pioneers pressed silver dimes into musket balls to ward off witches, while farmers dutifully erected fence posts according to the phases of the moon. In 1904, the quiet town of Quincy was shocked to learn of Bessie Bement's suicide, after the young woman sought help from a...
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Did you know that Chicago was named for a wild onion? Or that the only president born in Illinois was Ronald Reagan? Or that the Ferris Wheel, processed cheese, the game of softball, the fly swatter, and the automatic dishwasher were all invented by Illinoisans? You'll find these stories and hundreds more in Roadside History of Illinois, an entertaining and revealing tour of the Prairie State's historical places.
Native Illinoisan Stan Banash describes...
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During a visit to her grandparents' Illinois farm in 1944, ten-year-old Molly tries to prove the innocence of a German-American neighbor whom the FBI suspects of smuggling anti-American propaganda. Includes historical notes about life on the home front in World War II.
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Public funds spent on jets and horses. Shoeboxes stuffed with embezzled cash. Ghost payrolls and incarcerated ex-governors. Illinois' culture of "Where's mine?" and the public apathy it engenders has made our state and local politics a disgrace. In this book, veteran political observers Thomas J. Gradel and Dick Simpson take aim at business-as-usual. Naming names, the authors lead readers through a gallery of rogues and rotten apples to illustrate...
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As the war continues into May 1945, eleven-year-old Molly finds herself pulled in many different directions trying to cope with her troubled father's return from war, the abrupt resignation of her favorite Red Cross volunteer, a scrap-paper drive, and a mysterious neighborhood prowler.
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When an orphaned girl from a neighboring town is found murdered and suspicion falls on her aunt, store owner Joshua Speed makes it his mission to clear the name of his former paramour. He needs the legal expertise of his new friend, Springfield lawyer Abraham Lincoln. As more bodies are discovered and the investigation starts to come apart at the seams, there's one question on everyone's lips: does Lincoln have what it takes to crack his first murder...
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The Dixie Highway, once a main thoroughfare from Chicago to Miami, was part of an improved network of roads traversing the landscape of 10 states. A product of the Good Roads Movement of the early 20th century, construction on the highway in Illinois took place from 1916 to 1921. When completed in 1921, the Dixie Highway was the longest continuous paved road in the state. It ran through parts of Cook, Will, Kankakee, Iroquois, and Vermilion Counties,
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Blends interpretive essays with primary source documents (diaries, letters, travelogues, official documents and messages, newspaper reports, oral interviews) to provide a firsthand, widely varying, and distinctly human portrait of events and trends that shaped the lives of everyday Americans. Covers Father Marquette's accounts to pioneer life, to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the "Gilded Age", the prohibition era, the Great Depression, and the period...
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"Like Golden Hill, Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, and like Golden Hill it has a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot set within a fully imagined world. Only this world is full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly heroic proportions, and a troubled soul to fall in love with. One snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner...
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To book a ride on the "World's Shortest Airline" or learn aerial stunts from the redheaded widow of Lawrence Avenue, you've got to go through the airports buried beneath the housing developments and shopping malls of Chicagoland. Many of these airports sprang up after World War I, when training killed more pilots than combat, and the aviation pioneers who developed Chicago's flying fields played a critical role in getting the nation ready to dare...
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