In “Squabbling
over the inheritance,” I asked whether the State of Illinois, which governs
a commonwealth rich in everything except good
government, is capable of responsible stewardship of its own past.
The evidence is not encouraging. I offer the stories
recounted in “The
First Century,” an article in the Illinois State Museum’s Living
Museum in the summer/fall issue of 2002 that can be read today at http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/museummobile/pdfs/thefirstcentury.pdf
In that piece, then-director Bruce McMillan noted that the State of
Illinois commissioned
its first geological survey in 1851, appointing Joseph Granville Norwood as
state geologist. The enterprise was
provided no work space, however, so Norwood’s friend and fellow geologist David
Dale Owen agreed to share his facilities in New Harmony, Indiana. That
embarrassed Illinois officials sufficiently to order Norwood to move the
collections to Springfield – where (you guessed it) they had provided no
space either.
The specimens were stored first in the rooms of
the Supreme Court in what is today the Old State Capitol, then to the Senate
Chamber – then as now a great vacancy —
then (in 1856) to the state arsenal that then stood at 424 North Fifth
Street. The state canned its first state geologist for not having published
scholarly works based on such work, even though the arsenal space was not
heated, which had made it impossible for him to work on specimens during the
winter months.
When the Civil War began, the collection was moved
again, this time to the Masonic Hall at Fifth and Monroe in spite of warnings
that it was not fireproof. Yep — that building burned in 1871. Fortunately,
the son of the new state geologist, Amos Worthen, was sleeping in the offices
after long hours at the desk and wakened in time to rescue his father’s library
and most of the state’s collection before the flames reached the offices of the
Survey – not the first or last time that a dedicated state employee protected
the public interest in spite of their cretinous superiors.
In 1875, when the final volume of the Geological Survey of Illinois was
completed, the Illinois Legislature determined that everything worth knowing
about the geology of the State was known and eliminated the Survey’s budget.
The library and geological specimens had been moved to the basement of the
Springfield post office where, even after the Survey was disbanded, Amos
Worthen continued without pay to care for the collection.
Meanwhile another museum, this one of the state’s natural history had been
founded at Illinois State University.
In 1877 the state (under Gov. Shelby Cullom, a Springfield man) came to
its senses and established a natural history museum to house the specimens of
both the geologic survey and the natural history survey at ISU. That museum was
allocated space in the new statehouse then a-building.
McMillan tells us what happened next. Because of competition for
space, the museum was moved several times. Then,
. . . in 1887, when Worthen was out of town, Secretary of State Henry D.
Dement ordered that the museum be dismantled. Some cases were moved to a
hallway on the main floor, but most of the materials — especially the geology
collections — were dumped haphazardly in the basement of the Capitol. Worthen
was emotionally traumatized and simply lost his will to live — he died a year
later.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2014.
