So there we go. And we will be recording this and it will be available. As soon as our volunteer gets it processed.
So let me introduce Meredith. Meredith started as a volunteer at Riches. Rock Island County.
Historical society in 2,006 at the tender age of 57. She started by learning to scan, sort and file the photograph.
Collection since then she's learned to answer research questions perform online searches and edit the newsletter she served as secretary and president of board of directors.
She taught math and algebra and middle school level, work for the Illinois State Board of Education and as a building principal for K through 5.
She lives in Cordova, Illinois and drives to riches 2 to 3 times a week. She enjoys travel either by plane, boat, train, or book.
Volunteering at the library has taught her the value of a reference library. She enjoys both the people she meets and the wonderful collection of books at the library.
That'll turn it over to you, Meredith.
Okay, thank you, Sherri. Are, are we good? Do I have to do anything?
You have to do your share share again.
Oh, my share share. Whoops.
Is it?
Yep.
Your choice.
Oh, I wasn't gonna go here yet. But. Oh. Okay, well, can everybody hear me?
Yeah.
I mean, you don't have to see me. I'll tell you what, we'll do this.
There we are.
Okay, that's good. Alright. So.
Looks good.
Okay, anyway, thank you and, I'm a little leery of this zoom thing.
I know it's been around and most of your Probably old hands at it, but. I've had a few bad experiences and I haven't gotten over it, but.
We'll see how the day goes. So Sherry alluded to that we call ourselves riches and it's our initials.
And because Rock Island County Historical Society. Is a mouthful by any measure and You know, we'd like to talk in shorthand, so we use riches without an E.
We just say riches in most conversations. So I will be talking about riches and I hope you will be hearing about riches.
So I invite you to come to Moline. We're the Rock Island County Historical Society is where riches is.
It's like keep clicking I think on this
Let me see here. I'm sorry.
Okay, well we can do it this way. Alright. Well, some were there was supposed to be a blue star.
We just did. Okay. So, is where the blue star is in Rock Island County. So we're long skinny county.
It was really after they made all these nice rectangular counties. They, had this leftover strip.
And it's bounded by the Rock River and the Mississippi River and then the bottom line, the South line.
The, actually the line where the Indian territory was. So that's the story on the shape of our county.
Where I know I will look at your map, you bet all those little jig jogs and they all go the same and it looks so nice in uniform and does my heart good.
So that was good. But I'm invite you to come to Richards. Not so much to find your family roots, but more to learn about the social and cultural temperament of the time you're researching.
If you're, but on the other hand, if your ancestor was born, married or died in Rock Island County, we can help you find the record.
Maybe because there have been fires and there have been things just at the courthouse. Things like that, but we can, we have access to those records, at least the information where you can request.
The paper copies for genealogical purposes and all of I'm sure you're all acquainted with that kind of thing.
So. We know that probably your ancestors did live or at least pass through Illinois on their way to Iowa.
Because travel remains and was very fluid between the 2 states or the territories. Depending on the time frame.
We hear riches, focus on, events, but because we are. On the border. I Iowa is over here with all this good writing in it and everything.
That's where you are. You know, the newspapers carry events from both sides of the river.
So if nothing else, we can say. You know we're pretty fluid in the transportation.
And I notice that I just did it when I say the river. The Mississippi River is the river. The Rock River is the Rock River.
So, Just bear with me and it's just one of my idiosyncrasies.
So. This is the house that our library is attached to. And I just wanted to highlight a few things.
The handout that cherry is provided with you. Which is from me. Just recap it. Tip number one, you know, it's always asked for help to navigate what we have the resources.
Because sometimes you have to know just what drawers in the card catalog to go to, you know, which one with their books, which ones are the vertical files.
So that's that's the main trick. Oh, we do have number 2, some materials are available online.
The list is incomplete because we need we've done a lot more processing. We're working at it.
It's. You know, lifetime employment for some of us. Except nobody gets paid. So even if you don't download it any information, If you review what we claim to have and I put claim to have because like, any libraries, some things tend to disappear.
And or they get misfiled. I'm quite sure we have some very important papers. Somewhere out there that everybody's lost track of but You know, I'm thinking of Beethoven Symphony or something like that.
But anyway, that would help you come prepared to make the best use of your time at riches.
I we do ask for a fee. We have a $5 day use fee. But you know, you've already, if you're not.
Exactly from here you've already paid a lot of money to get here nobody's gonna say no you can't come in you know it's and nobody will even mention it to you because you know we don't we don't talk about money like that.
There's a donation box you can use or not and it's fine. Okay, the library was built specifically for our use.
In or for our purpose in the 19 nineties. And, prior to that, the collection was housed in the basement of this house.
And you know, it was a basement. So that meant we had some tall ladies. There if you go down there today there are still there's still bias tape hanging from the pipes reminding people to duck in certain places.
So it's very dark. And the fire escape would be a cellar window that you you climbed up on a desk you pushed the window out and climb out through their window.
And I, you know, at age 75, I don't think I could do that. And I, we have volunteers well into their 90.
Thankfully we're above ground. So that's good. So prior to having this house, which was given to us by Mrs. Wyman who would be Charles Dears.
Grandpa. And they'll talk a little bit more about that. Anyway, the collection was kept in the Halbert Mansion in Rock Island because John Hubbard was very important.
Integral person in the whole mystery of the association or the society. And prior to that. Really the collection wasn't kept at all.
It was. In private homes they had a discussion and they it was the feeling in the early days like we're talking after after the Civil War.
Well, that's the purpose of the newspapers. We don't need to save that. In the next generation kind of one along with that but by the time you got to the 3rd generation there say what do we do with grandpa's stuff it's too good to throw away.
So they started collecting it and they just needed a place to put it. And eventually we ended up here.
So I polluted to someone that riches. Grew out of the group called pioneers and old settlers, which was just what the title said.
They were the pioneers and old settlers. Now I'm a little confused. Which one was came first, st the pioneers of the old sellers was pretty close to the same thing.
I imagine the pioneers were first.st And then all worked until like. The pioneers had children and so the children when they became adults and were interested just like, okay, we're paying here, we involved Settler, there was some dissension in the ranks and I you know that's part of another organizational talk not this one.
So anyway, we grew out of that group. And what it was was there was a subgroup that there were more you know, maybe scholarly oriented and they met monthly they had dinner meetings and the idea was that to present a paper some of talking about something of some historical significance.
And of course it was a men only society. But eventually they let One moment in and they let her be treasurer.
Because John Hobart was probably secretary, the secretary for over 20 years. And the secretary. To basically all of the correspondence and all of the work, the organizational.
Things and treasure paid the bill and I think the president's just kind of came in and Bang the gavel and ran the meeting.
And I don't know really. You know, I kind of wonder sometimes. So riches was incorporated as a nonprofit, 19 0 5.
Under the leadership of john howber Who in his own words He would claim and it was true. He was fortunate.
He was a lawyer. He was fortunate enough to marry the boss's daughter and he really didn't have to worry about working.
Oh, this boss's daughter was heir to. The warehouser fortune is that we she was a but they've been warehouser were lumber barons together they buried sisters And we still have.
Where is your copy paper if you look at the wrapper that your paper? Probably 8 min from the Warehouser company.
And it's still they've moved to Seattle. You'll see, area, but they started here in Cole Valley in Rock Island County.
But both John and Suzanne were very active in civil matter in civic manners.
She built the Y WCA. He did other things. I mean, it's big long list.
And we'll talk about a little bit. What they did eventually. So, this is the entrance.
2 riches. This is picture I took yesterday and I was amazed that how my iPhone made such beautiful picture.
Okay. So we have our hours are 9 to 4 Wednesday through Saturday.
And our mission is to collect preserve and share the history of Rock Island County. Well, we've done an excellent job of collecting and preserving.
And we're trying to improve our sharing by doing things like this. And we've also decided we got an infrastructure grant from the state of Illinois.
And we decided to spend that air conditioning that lovely white mansion. Which is, I mentioned, it's, it's on the same street.
Same area as the 2. Dear Houses, Butterworth Center, and then, the Dear Wyman Mansion.
They're both just across the street different directions. So you can kind of come and get a 3 for not just a 2 for.
So go back. The library, as you said, is an extension of the White House. The White House, not the White House, but a White House.
As an extension of Burton Peaks. Home and he was the 1st council general for Dering company.
And incidentally, Charles Dear's nephew. So the dear family purchased the house after Mr. Peake's death in 1964.
Gave it to riches along with $16,000 in deer stock. To upgrade and refurbish the home.
And. But it was just the house. It wasn't the library that you see here. And this is an all the library.
That's what there was a big old truck where I couldn't really get a nice picture. Without the plumbing and heating guys that are pretty in their conditioning.
So, but there was no real place for the collection other than the seller. But there were a group of dedicated ladies that kept the work going on.
Heard that, things were in. The 3rd floor actually of the Harvard Mansion. And they have retired.
They hired some retired school librarians to organize the collection. And I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.
So at any rate, skipping through the trials and tribulations of fundraising in the 19 eighties we have it's a 7,000 square foot library built with and I think this is really significant.
Significant is 70%. Private donations from membership essentially. But of course anybody who wanted to put a $10 bill in kitty, that'd be fine.
And the rest 30% was corporate money such as during company and some of the other factories there's a little more to the Quad Cities than John Dear but We kind of focus on.
We meaning public in general. So our $700,000 that was raised with interest eventually became a million and that was what was used to furnish.
The library. And you know complete the construction. So much of the furniture is used or antique everything in the house.
Was donated by members because when the house was given to us. Mr. Peaks errors and he had I think 3 living daughters by that time.
They came and rightly so took everything that they wanted out of the house. They left one very dark gloomy picture on the wall that we've had since cleaned and it's actually very nice picture.
The light fixtures in the ceiling of course remained. And they're all. Collectable, all each piece is numbered for, you know, it's just like a car engine.
This is number 3 12. And the different. Accoutrements of the house like the balustrade and .
Rail links and stuff. Those were locally made. I mean, there are a lot of artifacts that are local We, and We feel very fortunate.
Is fairly well appointed. It's not too decorator specific. And it's It's.
In furniture that's appropriate. Just time period of the house. So we feel very fortunate, truly, we do.
But in the library, We have some antique cases. And I should show you here. You can readily see.
Yeah, that's right out of some jewelry store. And it looks like we're doing a mailing that day.
But, and so I should have picked those up, but you know, or active or functional here. So what we have here in the Maroon cases.
Or the newspapers that date back to the 18 fifties. And we do change out our displays. This one in the case happens to be.
They were focused on Lincoln. There was all Lincoln collectible plates. Who knew? On top is the mailing in the newsletter.
But over in the tan section, sorry about that, but I had the kill switch on. Okay.
Obviously did not. There we go. It's the book collection over here in the, 10.
Shelving and that was secondhand from Mulling. Public library and that system is owned and operated by the city of Moline so they were upgrading their shelving and we could buy that or however we acquired it.
I'm sure. The little brown thing. Is the.
It's post office station out of a store. So, you know, that's. Really antique but that was donate by.
Friends and I really can't see What else I've mentioned in here, but. Whatever that was It was good.
Anyway. And we do use carpet squares, not that that's part of a genealogy thing, but just if you're wondering do they last, do they work?
I would say, yeah, they work very well. This is the genealogy area.
We have. I'm trying to. Let's see. Okay.
Okay, I talk about the machinery and things. And again, if you come, we'll have these boxes taken care of.
We were in the process of. Divesting some things from the shelves. And you know how it is when you take pictures you don't always never notice what's in the picture.
I was focusing on that we have computers and they're networked to a printer right there in the area.
We have microfilm microphone roles of of those same newspapers and more that are across the way. And then we have.
Family histories. If you're looking at the shelves, family histories up here. Just the tip of the iceberg on some of those.
And, readings from cemeteries. The gray volumes are the beginnings of the city directories and those start, 1,854 is our oldest one.
And then we still maintain we purchase the pole. City directory. Pretty much to present kind of depends on.
If I feel broke around, you know, at $300 a clip that's that's pretty good.
But they're good, you know excellent things that we need to have. And so you would have access to all of that.
And a lovely table to spread out and work. I think there's a map of the county underneath there under the glass.
So, you know, just reiterating here.
Yeah.
And newspaper abstracts and go on. The other part of the library are the vertical files.
And these are. These are organized by the townships within our county. There are 16 those.
And then there's Also a section for general county government. Counting things that apply to the entire county.
So we have newspaper clippings. We have original research and accounts of events. Meetings and programs and always when somebody says do we need to keep this my criteria is does it help tell the story?
Does it tell the story about Rock Island County? So there you go. We also have.
Section of answers to research questions that come in either through snail mail or by email. So we do keep track of those.
And amazingly, we have card where you can see the card catalog over there in the corner so we do try to maintain.
Those and we can not reinvent the wheel if Somebody writes says 3 times great grandfather so on so did such and such.
Do you have any information? And if we've researched that already, it should be in the card file and it should tell us where to go.
To find that. That's what any good card catalog is supposed to do. So the books are organized with the Dewey Decimal System.
Many of them came from the public libraries who were Well, they were lightening their road and some of these local research.
Or local history items came to the Historical Society so they could collect other things. And we were happy to give them a home.
That's fine. And as I mentioned, I was jumping around in my little mind, they hired.
3 was 2 retired. School librarians and then their friend who was still working at the school and they spent summers.
Organizing the book collection. And while I make fun of the guys only group, they really they were pretty selfless they donated their own libraries to start our library.
And you know, and that kind of serves a dual purpose. Got them out of their house, into somebody else's house, freed up some space, but yet they were still preserved.
And that, you know, that serves a wonderful function. We have a read. A couple little volumes like Fine by 7 things maybe.
Couple 100 pages each you know early history of of Rock Island early history of Davenport those little books were printed on like the 1818 eighties and they still talk about like Perry Street in Davenport was still was Perry Perry, no Perry with our not with the P.
It was Perry Street then and it still is now. So you really have a sense. Of what they're talking about.
And how they you know they went back to Cincinnati and they got the things that they needed and then they were they wanted to go to prairie to Shane on the river and so they were gone.
With the stage coach and it's just like. We have it so easy nowadays. You know, it just really is a wonderful collection.
The vertical files. Okay. Pattern so each of the 16 townships and the county have the same categories like they have everybody has a section for agriculture, a section for business.
Government, their history, schools, they're about. 23 different categories and you know we have a chart that helps you keep track of those and we use the same thing for the photograph collection.
Just so that we have parallel systems. You don't have to learn a whole bunch of new stuff.
I think the educational term might be transfer of learning. You can apply that or not. How are we feel about it?
But, some, townships like Moline Township or would have have several drawers.
And other townships like Cordova Township where I live has a partial drawer we share with somebody else just because There are fewer people.
So fewer things happened and the newspapers and actually the volunteers. Come more from the larger. Townships, Just for population reasons.
But the trick is to recruit people from the outlying areas because they always bring those artifacts.
Bring their weekly newspapers. And things, you know, clippings or. You know, we even go so far as.
Well, group. Like the Kiwanis clubs, the Lions Clubs, their minutes if they disband or they just need a place to store their older stuff that they're not going to reference.
Too much. We have manuscript boxes in those movable shelving. So That's, I think that's a great community service that we can.
Provide
And my brain just went to something else that would just prolong the so we don't need to go there.
At any rate, the, the collection. Was definitely the combined efforts of the early organizers.
The no women allowed guys who hired retired librarians to do the work. And they donated their personal libraries and papers that they had written because at these monthly meetings I think I mentioned it but you were supposed to you know talk about something significant.
I think kind of it devolved into 2 or 3 guys were into that and every month it was the same 3 people.
Or you know it would rotate through the same people every year. And but on the other hand a lot of other people just came.
To hear, to recap the history. And we do the much the same thing we have a friend's luncheon So that means probably people are still working don't come to this, but the rest of us do show up and it's the old.
Feed them and they will come thing. But it's some kind of a program that's related to the history of Rock Island County.
Or not maybe not directly, not always directly, but usually. But at least a tangent. Like No, you know, a special athlete.
From the or the fact that the you know, the baseball, national baseball league was really, we were part of that, that started it.
Also the NFL, we had the They were the Rock Island Independence. Just the different teams that grew up They became the staley bears.
They became the Chicago Bears. And so you've got the progression going on. Through time.
But and it was also a place. For businesses as maybe they. Became defunct, you know, to store.
Whatever personal records. And audits, although we're kind of divesting ourselves of those things because They, they take up a lot of showroom.
But some of the unique things that we have.
Oh, okay. We'll just change slides because I'm sure you're tired of looking at that one.
Okay, we have the Mayflower volumes, I think through volume 26. I know what's into the 60.
Generation of main for our families. So if you Want to research some of that's available here. I've mentioned John Hubbard and he really did come from Just a farm background.
But he managed to become a lawyer. Okay, just left me what school we went to, but he was a lawyer, very Suzanne Dinkman.
And. Really didn't have anything else to do. But he had a lot of energy and he was involved in many many civic groups.
They met at, Sunday school convention. Both of them so they're both interested in religion and education.
And. the way he spent. A lot of his time was because he did grow up in a rural setting in the my part of the county, the North part, he had access to a lot of these old-timers and they wanted to record their memories.
Before they were not accessible anymore And they also had a secretary that could transcribe those. Recording so that was and we have We have some of those.
They were when he died. They were divided between It's special collections, DAGE, at college.
Rock Island Public Library and us. So we had somebody that was doing was on a sabbatical.
She was a professor from Augustana. So she had reviewed what was at Auggie. Came here and she'd already looked and she'd also looked at what was it.
The Rock Island Library told us that she thought we had the best as far as, you know, color, told more about.
Well, the I don't know how to say the word exactly, Anyway, don't, my French teacher would appreciate that, but you know what I'm trying to say.
So. Moving along. Oops, not to that one.
We have in addition to all of the township files, then we're have another whole set of cases.
That deal with things topics, more broad topics like transportation. So that means we talk about railroads, the creation of roads, stagecoach paths, steamboats.
Airplanes, airports. Railroads being a big item, lot lot of linear feet of railroad stuff.
Other drawers would be, rivers and canals. As you've noted, home to the Mississippi flows to the north of us and the rock flows to the south.
The Hanupon canal joins into the Rock River. During the rock in the, and.
We'll just throw in the Hunter. Was kind of a prototype for the Panama Canal working with those.
The cement the type of cement that they used at the time. One thing that I thought was really interesting when I as I poured through things were would be the posters and broad sites from World War One and World War 2.
I mean, these are aboriginal. It's like, that's just crazy. Just to see and touch things from Really?
That's been a long time ago now. We have a photograph and postcard collection. We all in the area, there were companies that publish postcards and another one of John Crawford's top hobbies was to photograph you know, every Let me travel.
He photographed big trees and he traveled a lot. And but thankfully he photographed all of the country schools in the city schools.
So we have a big volume. Of black and white glossies of what all these schools look like who went there where they were located.
And the other thing you did was to photograph all the churches. So That was a lot of time and effort in that.
So. Think he always had his camera in the car. And it was rich enough to afford gas for the car.
We have a collection of maps. In the 18 forties. The Robert E. Lee.
Was part of the Corps of Engineers and we the Corps of Engineers, one of their district offices, of course, is located on Arsenal Island.
Which was originally Rocky Island. And his job was to map out and survey the rock. Yeah, the Rock Island Rapids, which start.
About where the interstate 80 bridge crosses from Illinois into Iowa. And it ends well below the centennial bridge.
That again goes for what goes from. Rock Island today. So that was that was a very treacherous part of the river.
That they had to offload. Whatever they were traveling with, port each it around. Well, that meant Wagon trains to get it there or you had to have a pilot.
And a lot of . That groups were lost in the river because This is really rocky and shallow and that's why the 1st slock in dams start here in this area to flood that, make it navigable.
We have Civil War records. The, you know, who and their rank and the battles that they're battalion or unit was involved in.
Where they were buried, those kind of things. And there are some. Local Iowa regiments listed in that book.
This is a bit great big ledger. It's all handwritten. It's almost calligraphy, beautiful handwriting, hard to read.
But then in the back it also tells the stories of like what the 109th did, you know, yeah.
They were, or whatever, you know. So it's very, very interesting in some. These would be more.
Of the generals, major generals or officers. They kind of hips a bio in the back there One lady here spent the last 10 years.
Trying to figure out. Everybody that was enlisted. From Rock Island County in the Civil War where they ended up whether it was they were buried at a battles battlefield or something like Gettysburg or if they went on to California and they You know, where they're buried.
What was the end story? So thankfully that work is done and she can. Put paid that move on.
So we have also information about Native Americans such as the sock box and the And of course, the we're the home of the Black Hawk War being home to.
Blackhawk who was not a chief. But he was a leader. Another interesting thing that I don't know if it would be Too much help to you.
We have the Gazette, Well, this is a Flemish newspaper that was printed. Between World War One, World War 2.
Because we had a big Belgian community here And I was aware of that because that would be my grandparents.
But I didn't know there's also the Gazette from Detroit. I, I had no idea.
There was a huge, There was and there are articles that went back and forth. But sometimes, the articles that would appear in the Flemish paper were also just translations of articles in the dispatch.
The dispatch published it, but they had people that were conversant. They could translate so and the pictures would be the same.
Although you know so there were some overlapping content But it was the audience was the Flemish community and actually we're located in.
Pretty much where they were. In the Polish community. And so those, you know, to me those are the unique things that we have.
The civil war items the gazette or I should mention that we have blueprints as architectural firms have.
Merged and finally retired and they have all these cases of blueprints. Well they donated So they don't need to not only blueprints, but thankfully the big cases to store them in.
Because those you know what do you do and once you roll those things up it is really hard to get them to unroll.
Except I'm sure Sherry has some. Care for that for me. But we, that's another time.
So you see pictures of our facility. Started the lift We have that's the peak house. Atkinson Peak House, Atkinson.
Was an early, what he built the original house which Really didn't look all that much like this.
Burton Peak, the 1st counsel general for Dering Company. Remodeled at 1910, it was built in the 18 eighties.
And the remodel to put in electricity and plumbing. All those good things was in 1910.
And then you can see our library entrance here at the door and the library is off screen as far offstage as they say.
The carriage house is, like a 3 bay. Garage downstairs. There's also a stall in the back.
Where, it would have been a horses. Stall or statement I guess. And upstairs is where we keep the clothing collection and Yeah, it used to be the chauffeurs.
Quarters. Because you have to remember that the people that lived in this area for the most part those these would be the people that went to Newport for the season.
They were, we don't pre-income tax. They they were extremely wealthy and even after taxes they were still extremely wealthy.
If and the way I judge that by the things that they gave. Donation sizeable donations like even though the house was was fairly run down.
For somebody to just buy it and give it and I'm sure it was a tax write off but It was nevertheless very generous.
And in fact, Mrs. Butterworth early on, like. Say in the forties offered to build a facility for the historical society, but Unfortunately.
The board didn't feel they could raise the money to do the utilities. So they declined.
And so they did several runups to try to. Acquire enough money to to build the facility and eventually they got the job done.
And so we reap that benefit and that's great. Let's see in my notes here.
You know, I've mentioned that the house is furnished with donations from members. And We do have ups the downstairs is more like a traditional.
House, you know, it's got a living room, it's got a dining room.
Butler's Pantry Kitchen. All those kind of things upstairs would be in the master bedroom.
And a nice 4 piece bathroom for the time. I mean, it's marble. It's amazing.
But we also have one of the bedrooms is the Native American room where we have Native American artifacts.
John Albert also. Made friends with the Native Americans. We used to have of the Blackhawk historic site.
And he was, well, he was instrumental in having the Powell. Getting that to give the.
Native Americans come back. But he's also very instrumental in creating Black Hawk. Then it was Black Hawk State Park.
He and his wife there was you know one of their their missions in addition to other things. There's another room that is dedicated to the military.
So All of the wars are represented. We have posters hanging on the wall that are replicas of some of these posters that are in the drawer down here.
Because I'm sitting in the library and. We start with the war of 1812, we just work our way around the room artifacts and Rock, and County's participation in.
Clear through desert storm, I think is about where we end. But including Vietnam. Your flags, their uniforms.
You know, it's I think it's an interesting display. Yeah, company there. The carriage house, upstairs, like I said, it's the clothing left.
And people. Love to donate their wedding dresses. We have wonderful collection of wedding dresses. And we have a wonderful collection of Fancy clothes like there's an outfit 2 piece dress.
That went to McKinley's inauguration. It was like the second. I think it means the second in.
Time like the 9 o'clock. In our room all instead of the 7 o'clock or maybe the 11 o'clock.
I don't know. But anyway. One day, it this is why it's so fun to be here.
You get a box of clothing and it was it was a flapper. Dress when it was the whole trousseau set and everything.
Wow, this is just crazy. And I was here when that, no. Green dress came in from McKinley's inauguration.
And it was just amazing to actually. See and touch these artifacts. You know, I think that was probably in the, I know it was in the early 19 hundreds.
That dress and so that came in It was over a hundred years old, you know, in 2,000.
After 6 because I didn't start here until 2,006. But it's the good clothes.
We don't have. The work close because you know they wore those until they were rags and they made the made a quilt out of him and we have a nice quilt collection.
They're about a hundred of those as well. And we have a military room. With all branches of the service represented.
And even some. Foreign artifacts as the soldiers would bring home, you know, kind of word trophies like.
A German helmet or a French helmet. Those things are up there too. As well. So it.
Just sort of goes on with the minutiae. And, this is not our car, but it's a members car.
3 of our volunteers and they're here to help. So I don't know if. I hope I've generated questions because.
Yeah, it's time for questions.
Okay. Thanks so much Meredith. It makes you want to come and visit. That's for sure.
Alright.
We do have one question in the chat, from Steve and he says, do you have information on the Civil War prisoner of war camp?
Oh yes we do. Yes, and I don't think it was the Anderson Bill of the North.
Yes, we do. We have. There is actually a DVD. That.
Shows you the maps and sketches that we have. The best resource for that is the historic the museum on Arsenal Island but yes we do have quite a bit of information.
We have the cemetery records. Both. The Confederate cemetery and the federal cemetery.
Who's buried there? There were The reason I can remember this, my brother was born in 1952.
There were 1,952 Confederate soldiers buried on Arsenal Island. And, I would just say.
You know, what happened there that made it bad. Was the government got in the rush to use the facility.
It wasn't. Totally weatherized. The wood was green. I mean the the sheeting for the the cabins so we speak.
And as things shrink in the winter, the cold came in. Everybody got the flu. The guys were shipped up from the south.
With maybe a blanket, maybe not a blanket. I think They did the best they could.
I would also say that we've discovered that the situation was very fluid. As far as I think it was.
A little easy to escape from that camp if you because there were a lot of southern sympathizers here or at least people that didn't support the war.
Not, you know, so let's just say it that way. People that didn't support the war as much as other people that did.
And they found ways to help people escape. So the short answer is, oh yeah, sure, we have stuff.
Okay, thanks. Bryce, go ahead and open up your mic.
Yeah, thank you. I addressed a couple in Meredith. I'll just do a morally, couple of, I will say as a prologue that we've got about I'm originally from Molane.
Oh.
I've got more generations with John Deere. Starting from 1875 and so forth. So I have a lot of it.
That's why I joined. I'm starting in my research on that. But I got 2, 2 general questions.
One, what is the best definitive history of Molane? That somebody has written or put together.
No, I've got the 1948 centennial edition of the of the dispatch and that had a lot in it but I that's 1 question my second question is where would I get an 1880 s plant map of molding that had both the old and new street addresses in it.
They changed their addresses and what the 18 eighties maybe. Something like that. And so I would like to get a hold of a plot map like that.
Then I can ask a couple of more, but. Would you take care of those 2 for me?
I will try. Those. This is little, little sketchy.
I think Moline had centennial books. You know, as they went along.
We could, you know, reference those as far as history of Moline. I know there are.
Well, but you said you had the 48, 1948 and I'm sure there's been one since.
But I could.
Okay.
I just have somebody here maybe written more of the cultural side of because Moline was quite different than Rock Island as far as the immigration was concerned and its population, just like they were both different from Davenport.
Right, right. I'd have to I'd have to research that a little bit more.
And that's the kind of history I'm in interested in too. I mean, I don't need all the technical stuff and, you know, who was.
Exactly who was mayor and how long and all that. It was just more of a I understand what your question is.
Okay.
I don't know the definite answer. And the second question, the conversion. I would go to Library of Congress maps.
And if you We have, I know what's in the front of some of the city directories when it when it's appropriate, like in the time frame that you mentioned, when they change from street to streets and avenues by numbers and we can we could send you that.
Information. It's not I mean, it's all gathered. I can have somebody, we need to have it digitally so I can email it to you.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, I'll follow up. On that. Do you mind if I ask another one or do we have other questions?
No, go ahead. Go ahead.
Martin? Has anyone done research on camels island? Campbell's Island was a very popular summer.
Places there. I have tried that I have not found a history of that I'm trying to locate.
Where being a Vista cabin was, which was my family, the Melbourne family. which married Oakley and Melvins got married.
I just wanted, do you know anything about that?
I know, you know, I drive by Camels Island every time I come to town. And, as far as, again, a definitive, I have to research if you shoot us an email, will.
Get what we have. Gladly do that for you. So. I don't know of any nice little book.
And. You see we also have in addition to all the books around the shelves and this is the special special collection.
And I tell my board members. If there would ever be a fire. Just forget the rest of it.
You grab the big book of the Civil War. And all this stuff that's in the special collection which is here in the work room that's stuff that needs to be rescued on that.
Because they are you know, the rare copies. We put things out knowing that they're going to get used.
These are the ones that are never used. We need to get those out if there's a fire.
But and I don't remember anything about Campbell's Island. Specifically in a book, but I'm I'm Very, very hopeful that we would have a history like a paper that somebody had written.
And we.
By the way, I do have one of those original little red books. With the hand drawings with the drawings of Molane from up on the bluff and so forth.
They're they're they're wonderful little books. Anyway, I've asked enough. Your mother.
Okay. Okay, thank you.
Alright, thanks. We do have a question in chat from Kevin says if I come to visit is there a non member fee for research?
Not if you come and we help you. If you email and we go back and forth they they kind of they ask for like $15 an hour, but I will promise you for your $15 you get way more than one hour's worth of research.
You know, you get whatever it takes. Actually, you just make a donation. We're not too picky about that, but We do try to honor the, work that's gone before and we do try to keep the lights on.
And that's, you know. It would be $15 probably at the very most.
Okay. I don't have any other questions in the chat. I just wanna encourage anybody that has a question.
Go ahead and open up your mic and ask Meredith directly.
Go ahead, Bryce.
Well, I'll follow up with one. You listed, and I think this will be of interest to others, a lot of the family histories.
For example, I'm interested in the Sony's family, which was closely associated with deering company.
Okay.
And, I've corresponded, my, my great aunt married a Charles Designers and so forth.
And I was just wondering if you know that that particular one is included in that collection, but I could also contact you and you could.
Check that out, for me.
Yes, I'm very confident that it's there. We At the time of the bicentennial.
They, the volunteers were researching the family histories from the pioneers and old settlers.
But then at the, that was a few years before, but the bicentennial, then we call them Bicentennial families and people could send.
They're, well, just copies of No, say, you know, it from your family Bible, there'd be a history page or, you know, it's just documentation sending you back a hundred years.
Could kind of demonstrate in. Well, those people were a little more picky than I would be about, you know, it had to be 100 continuous years direct line.
Well, I think even if you had a, that was here and it went back 100 years that worked for me.
But anyway, we have the bicentennial families we have centennial families which are just like centennial farms.
And then the old pioneers And that takes up at least. 3 drawers, you know, so and and designers There are still designers in the area and.
My father-in-law worked for Designers. Long long time ago. So yes, I'm sure that we have.
Information there. But again, just email us and we'll scan it and get it to you. Or or come in even better.
Thank you. I'm going to make a day trip over there very this summer.
Okay, do that, please.
Okay, any other questions?
Okay.
I don't see anybody jumping in. Well, thank you so much, Meredith, for taking your time today to explain to us what you have and share the wealth of the breadth of the history of the facility and what you have in your collection.
I know we're half people coming over, so. With that, I'll just let everybody go.
Have a great rest of your day. Oh, Steve's got a question. Oh, he's just clapping.
He's got the clap emoji up.
Thank you, Sherri. Oh. Oh. Okay.
Alright, thanks so much.
You're welcome. Thank you for letting me share.
Alrighty, bye everybody.
Okay.