32nd annual Sampler Lecture Series begins March 5
As Illinois marks its bicentennial this year with predictable programs about Carl Sandburg and Abraham Lincoln, Norm Moline gravitated toward another subject: transportation.
"I've loved transportation from the very beginning," said Moline, a retired Augustana College geography professor. "The first geography class I took was the geography of transportation. That's when I found out there is a field called geography of transportation. And my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago was about mobility in a small town and the arrival of the automobile - the first 30 years. I've been interested in it my whole life."
Moline will present "Binding Our State Together: 200 Years of Canals, Railroads, Postal Services and Roads" at 3 p.m. Monday, March 5, at the McHenry County Historical Society Museum, 6422 Main St. in Union.
It is the first of four programs presented as part of the society's 32nd annual Sampler Lecture Series.
Illinois, like most places, sought to connect with others through modes of transportation and communication for cultural, economic and political reasons, Moline said. After the state was created in 1818, private companies worked to bind different regions together through infrastructure. They turned our state from merely a designated area on a map into a more unified functional territory and contributed to our character and identity, he said.
"A lot of our history has been about the building of connections," Moline said. "If you want to go anywhere west or northwest, you have to somehow slide around the Great Lakes."
Moline pointed out that it was that easy portage - from the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River, and westward to the Illinois and eventually the Mississippi rivers - that made Chicago a commercial hub. Later, railroads added to it - a legacy that continues to this day, despite the demise of passenger service.
"At one point there were more stations in McHenry County than all of the Amtrak stops in the state of Illinois," Moline said. "There are a lot of fun things to find out."
Beginning in the 1840s, the arrival and rapid expansion of railroad, including the nationally significant Illinois Central and numerous regional lines, gave us one of the densest networks in any state in the nation. The evolution of postal connections also was important, Moline said, as was the Good Roads movement.
"I hope people develop an appreciation for the connections that we had - and still have - that are amazingly complete," Moline said. "We've had a dense network of rail and hard-surface rods for much of our history."
Other upcoming Sampler lectures are:
• 7 p.m. Monday, March 19, - "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," presented by Rochelle Pennington, a historical researcher from Kewaskum, Wisconsin, and author of 10 books, including "The Historic Christmas Tree Ship: The Story of Captain Santa." No other Great Lakes shipwreck is better known than the Edmund Fitzgerald, which remains the largest shipwreck on the Great Lakes and among its most enticing mysteries. She disappeared into a stormy Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, when wind gusts peaked at nearly 100 miles an hour and waves reached the height of three-story buildings. Pennington delves into the various theories and opposing views of dive detectives, who still are trying to determine what circumstances led to the deaths of 29 crewmen.
• 3 p.m. Monday, April 2, - "From Our Own Back Yard: A Woman Empowered," presented by Craig Pfannkuche, a retired history teacher and genealogical researcher from Wonder Lake. McHenry County was the home of a goodly number of women who made a difference in American history. One of them was Lillian Donovan, a Harvard resident who befriended Franklin Delano Roosevelt and later was appointed as a federal revenue collector in Chicago when Roosevelt became president in 1933. Learn about this woman and her connection to one of the world's most influential leaders.
• 7 p.m. Monday, April 16, - "How Corn Changed itself and Then Changed Everything Else," presented by Cynthia Clampitt, an author and food historian from Palatine. About 10,000 years ago, a weedy grass growing in Mexico that possessed a strange trait known as a "jumping gene" transformed itself into a larger and more useful plant: the cereal grass that we would come to know as maize and then as corn. Illinois is second only to Iowa as an American corn-growing state. And McHenry County outpaces all other collar counties in corn production. Illinois and corn are inexorably linked, yet few realize its historic impact and why it remains so vital today.
All programs are at the society museum, 6422 Main St. in Union. Series tickets are $35, $30 for society members. A $10 donation is requested for individual programs. The Moline and Clampitt programs are made possible through a grant from Illinois Humanities.
For information or to buy tickets, call (815) 923-2267 or visit www.gothistory.org.