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The presence of humans in the Illinois Country goes back at least 12,000 years, and some archaeologists would push that envelope even further into the past. We find footprints of prehistoric peoples all over the landscape of the Prairie State, and we have ample evidence of their physical presence in cultural artifacts found in museums and historical society collections from Galena to Golconda, Chicago to Cairo. In this issue of Illinois Heritage, our goal is to shine a spotlight on the people who called Illinois home before Europeans arrived on America’s shores.

We also profile southern Illinois historian John Allen and visit the sites of three new historical markers around the state.

Be safe, share your Heritage, and, if you are able, make a donation to the Society in support of our annual appeal. As always, thanks for your membership in the ISHS. With your help, we do great deeds.

As a special feature to the annual conference of the Illinois Association of Museums in 2019, we are looking for museum media features which are used in an exhibit/gallery setting to be celebrated by museum professionals at the historic Normal Theater.  Features will be selected for screening by a jury of museum professionals from the Illinois Association of Museums and shown at the Normal Theater, 209 West North Street, Normal, IL on November 19, 2019 during the conference.
 

The Illinois State Historical Society celebrates its 120th birthday on May 19. The organization has seen a lot of history unfold in those years––two world wars, women’s suffrage, several pandemics, and more technological, social, and cultural changes than our fore-fathers and mothers could ever have imagined. 

In this issue of Illinois Heritage we look at several fascinating people, places, and events in our state’s past that will stir your imagination and, perhaps, inspire you to visit your local library. While you’re there, ask if your library is a member of the ISHS, or if it subscribes to our publications. If they do not subscribe, encourage them to call us at 217-525-2781. We would love to have them share the resources of the Society with their readers. 

Thanks for your support––all of you––for helping us do the work of recording and interpreting our Prairie State history.

Share your Heritage. Know your past.

The year was 1869. In New York City, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Ulysses S. Grant was sworn in as the nation’s 18th president. The transcontinental railroad was completed with a golden spike in Promontory, Utah. Overseas, Egypt’s new Suez Canal linked the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. And here in Illinois, Cyrus Thomas was charged by the first Board of Trustees of the fledgling Southern Illinois Normal University (SINU)—(now Southern Illinois University Carbondale) to organize a university museum.
 

Volume 111, No. 1-2 is our second consecutive double-issue commemorates Illinois’ 200th anniversary of state­hood. For those of us laboring in the historical profession and cognate fields—academically affiliated scholars and their students, unaffiliated scholars and researchers, public historians, museum professionals, archi­vists and librarians, and the like—anniversaries are moments to reflect upon disciplinary practice. They are, in other words, splendid occasions to reckon with the past, take stock of the present, and imagine the future. The last two major anniversaries of Illinois statehood—the centennial and sesquicentennial—produced landmark works of state history that collectively established the main contours of scholarship on the Prairie State well into the twentieth century. (These works, and our intellectual debts to them, are identified in the articles that follow.) The current issue of the Journal, “Illinois History: A Bicentennial Appraisal,” is offered in the same spirit. We seek to highlight the connections between the past—the history of this land called Illinois; the present—the current state of professional history about this land; and the future—how we might fruit­fully reframe and re-present this land’s history moving forward.

The first six essays offer insightful sur­veys of recent trends in historical scholarship on Illinois from the colonial era to the very recent past. The historiographical essays mark the most important developments in historical scholarship on Illinois over the last thirty years or so, a necessary first-step in generating new research agendas and ultimately new narratives. The final two essays examine the practice of public history in Illinois, as it stands today. The cautionary les­sons learned from museum professionals and other practitioners of pub­lic history—declining public investments, conflicting political agendas, the growing role of local initiative, and most crucially, greater reliance on private resources—should alert us all to the need for an historical practice that informs, connects, and enriches diverse audiences and stakeholders.