Tara McClellan McAndrew

The theories are plentiful: Abraham Lincoln was gay, or had Marfan’s syndrome, or syphilis or mercury poisoning; Mary Lincoln was insane, and on and on. But, are they true? It’s been 80 years since someone wrote a book addressing questions about Lincoln and his mental and physical health. A lot of new information and speculation […]

Corporate arrogance and malfeasance seem like modern phenomena, but they’re not. Take the story of Springfield’s 1890 “streetcar wars,” for example. Shortly after the Civil War, Springfield got its first “modern” transportation – horse-drawn trolleys. A company organized in 1861 by some local bigwigs, including several of Abraham Lincoln’s friends and peers, established a trolley […]

It’s hard to think of anything good about droughts, but they have turned up some interesting finds. On Aug. 6, the Illinois State Museum announced a new acquisition that resulted from the current dry spell – a local family gave the museum some bones they found on the Sangamon River. The bones, which were visible […]

The Civil War was only five weeks old when Col. Elmer Ellsworth, 24, was killed tearing down a Confederate flag in Virginia. As the first prominent Union casualty, he became an instant hero: newspapers around the country mourned his martyrdom and composers penned songs in his honor. His death hit Springfield and Abraham Lincoln particularly […]

It’s like a long forgotten, 80-year-old scrapbook of our city. It shows a bustling downtown crowded with men wearing fedoras and women in fur coats, a family brewery preparing for the onslaught of business after Prohibition, a swimming hole packed on a busy summer day, and many more scenes of daily life in Springfield between […]

Tax Day is just days away. Nationally, April 15 is significant because that’s the traditional day when tax returns are due. This year we get a two-day extension, to April 17. Perhaps more locally, April 15 is significant because it’s Abraham Lincoln’s death date. But the two events are related, thanks to federal legislation Lincoln […]

From Slave to State Legislator: John W.E. Thomas, Illinois’ First African American Lawmaker, by David A. Joens. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 288 pages, $34.95. In 1877, Illinois became the first state in the Midwest and only the second state in the north to send a black man to its state legislature. That man, John […]

The Springfield Illinois African-American History Foundation’s museum opens its first exhibition tonight, Feb. 23, capping 14 years of work. The exhibition will feature photographs by Eddie Winfred “Doc” Helms, a well-known Springfield African-American who was a photographer for Illinois secretaries of state for 58 years. In his spare time, Helms photographed local events, especially those […]

Springfield is known as the home of Abraham Lincoln, but a man from Lincoln’s neighborhood gets short shrift in our city’s legacy. Julius Rosenwald was born a block from Lincoln’s home in 1862 (where the Lincoln Home’s main parking lot is now) and became one of America’s greatest businessmen and philanthropists of the 20th century. […]

Since this year marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s beginning, it seems appropriate to look back at how some of those soldiers spent their holidays. We begin with the accounts of two men in the 84th Illinois Volunteer Infantry who wrote about their experiences in the fall and winter of 1863. It had been […]

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson If one acorn can create a thousand forests, Springfield’s Harriet Knudson had enough acorns in 1936 for a million forests. “There were so many that I had to put them out on the back porch. There wasn’t room for them in […]