Illinois Heritage

Mark your calendars! The Illinois State Historical Society will host its 124th Annual Meeting this year at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield on April 29, 2023. At this time, the ISHS will recognize the ISHS's "Best of Illinois History" award recipients for 2023. Twenty-nine remarkable nominees will be honored and awarded for their outstanding achievements and publications on Illinois history.

In recognition of Carthage’s 175th anniversary, we invite you to join in celebrating an essential part of the College’s history — the Carthage Illinois Campus (1870-1964) and all of those who attended there — with the installation of an Illinois State Historical Society marker on the original site in Carthage, Illinois.

Please join the La Salle County Historical Society, the Mendota Museum and Historical Society, the Village of Troy Grove, the William G. Pomeroy Foundation and the Illinois State Historical Society Historical at the formal ISHS historical marker dedication for Prudence Crandall a courageous woman who fought racial bigotry in New England and then moved for refuge to La Salle County.

The ISHS is joining with the Madison County Historical Society and the St. Clair County Historical Society to present a Cemetery Preservation Workshop.

The ISHS produced video The Mysterious Bard of Sangamo, won a birth at the 30th annual Molly Schlich Independent International Film Festival, sponsored by the Springfield Art Association. The video is based on a two-act play written by ISHS director John Hallwas, and starring Victor Holstein, a Chicago-based actor, as poet John Hancock, whose residency in the “Sangamo Country” inspired more than 70 poems.