Tara McClellan McAndrew

When Springfield Mayor Mike Houston announced in July that he would hold regular open office hours, he was in good company. In 1860, after he became president-elect, Abraham Lincoln did the same, but his experience with Springfield office hours was quite different from Houston’s. The mayor says he began the practice because “the average person […]

Some people think there’s a lot of crud in the Statehouse. For more than 50 years, there was. From at least 1917 to 1970, the Illinois Department of Public Health’s (DPH) main diagnostic lab was housed there. Its staff examined saliva, blood and bodily excretions for contagious diseases. Today, it’s hard to believe that such […]

Until the mid-1850s or so, much of Springfield was a mud bog. For decades our dirt streets were filled with trash and mud, and in summer, pools of rainwater stagnated on the streets and combined with refuse from roaming livestock to make the place smelly as well. Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that some Springfieldians […]

It was the summer of 1896 or 1897 and the Baltimore Orioles were playing an exhibition match in Springfield against a local baseball team. “It wasn’t that unusual for a major league team to stop off for an exhibition game,” says Don Doxsie, sports editor for the Quad-City Times. “Teams traveling from Chicago to St. […]

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Sangamon County Historical Society is having an author of books about early American history, including one about our area, come to Springfield and speak on April 26. Dr. John Mack Faragher, an American history professor at Yale University, wrote the award-winning Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (published […]

In the middle 1800s, animal control in Springfield, like much of America, was an oxymoron. Cows, hogs and especially dogs roamed the streets and wreaked a variety of havoc, from destroying sidewalks and fences to hurting people. Unfortunately, those injuries could be fatal. Rabid dogs weren’t uncommon then and, with no rabies vaccine for animals […]

Eighty-two years ago, Chicago mobsters were lying low in Springfield, escaping fallout from the brutal St. Valentine’s Day massacre gang slaying in their hometown. Or maybe they weren’t. It depends on whom you believe. On Feb. 14, 1929, four men, some dressed as Chicago cops, stormed a north side garage near Lincoln Park which was […]

Not all Lincoln museums are alike. Compare, for example, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) in Springfield and the Lincoln Heritage Museum in Lincoln.While the ALPLM uses state-of-the-art technology and recreated, life-size scenes from Lincoln’s life to tell his story, the much smaller Lincoln Heritage Museum at Lincoln College relies on artifacts to […]

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…The children were nestled, all snug in their bedsWhile visions of cockroaches danced in their heads… Sound like the Addams Family version of Clement C. Moore’s famous poem? It’s easy to picture macabre little Wednesday Addams licking her […]

If we could go back 100 years to Thanksgiving in 1910, we might be surprised at the similarities and differences. As usual, the president gave a Thanksgiving proclamation. President William H. Taft expressed gratitude that America continued “to be at peace with the rest of the world.” The U.S. had never known a World War […]

You can’t help but wonder what Abraham Lincoln would have thought if he’d witnessed the public auction here of two slave girls in July, 1827. Even though the event occurred 10 years before Lincoln came to Springfield, its repercussions would affect him many years later. It’s hard to imagine a slave auction being held in […]

We may be the land of Lincoln and prairies, but at one time we were the land of pottery, too. Greene County is celebrating that fact during its Greene County Days next weekend. Illinois was a major player in the country’s ceramic industry, according to archaeologist Floyd Mansberger with Springfield’s Fever River Research. (His article, […]