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(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Pittsfield, at the old East School which is the headquarters of the Pike County historical society.

This old building has a very interesting history.

The architect is well known, this building has gone through since 1860 when they started building it, it's gone through a lot of different gyrations in a way.

It houses the historical collection for the county, and now it has become a tourist location.

And Earl personally, I asked you to join me out here in front so we could take a look at this beautiful building and talk a little bit about its architecture.

Because it's very interesting and there aren't many like it, are there?

- No, there's not.

- Tell us about the architect.

- Well, this is the only one.

He's John Van Osdel of Chicago.

The father of Illinois architecture is what he's called.

And the board at the time in 1861 went to visit him to get the plans for this building.

So, this is his design, it's maybe possibly the only building left of his design that's still original and unchanged.

- And this is the same architect.

Well, among other things, he did the executive mansion in Springfield.

- Yes, he did.

- And we all know that that's been changed numerous times, it seems like almost every time a new governor comes in, they want to do something to it.

- Yes.

- But this has not been changed and in fact as we look at it, it's got a classic look.

And the bell tower and it's an important factor, isn't it?

- Yes, it is.

- What happened to it?

- Well, it was just deteriorating as it takes a lot of weather up there.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so the restoration effort was done in the early 2000s which won the Driehaus Award for Excellence.

So the bell tower is now back to its original state.

The bell is in it and it works.

And the clock also will work.

- That's beautiful.

And actually getting one of those awards, that doesn't happen very often.

- No, that doesn't.

That was the Hickory Flats Group of Winchester that did that.

They did an outstanding job on it, very thorough.

So it should be there for another 150 years.

- Yeah, the building is very attractive.

You've got it in good shape now you've got it painted.

In fact, many of the windows had to be replaced.

And you're in the process of doing that now?

- Yes, we still are, still we're wrapping up the upstairs windows right now, we hope to get to the basement windows soon.

- And of course, you gotta do windows and roofs you gotta keep the water out, right?

- Yes, right after the bell tower restoration, there was a roof restoration.

So the roof, the guttering and the tower is all in good shape.

- And now you feel good about having your collection in there 'cause it can't get damaged now.

- Yes.

- About the windows, tell us how you got the money to do the windows.

- Well, we have a donor Mrs. Caroline Castile of Pittsfield here, and she was generous enough to grant us some money.

We matched what she gave us and went ahead and finished the upstairs windows.

So now we're ready to work on the basement.

- Now, you are the curator and your daughter is the president of the society, right?

- Yes, that's right.

- Okay, so as the curator, what are you hoping to do?

What are you hoping to do to the museum to make it more sensible to people who visit it?

- Well, just to be able to walk through and follow an organized path through the building and to try to keep things together.

Artifacts in one room on the same subject.

In the past they weren't necessarily together, so now we're hoping to create a display where you can get an understanding of a whole subject in one place.

- So that's what you're gonna do for us, right?

- Yes.

- Well, let's go in.

- Okay.

(both laugh) - Okay, Earl, first stop, well, this is a big room.

- Yes, it is.

- And when this was a school, what did the-- - This is a classroom.

- Oh, it's a classroom.

- This is the classroom-- - A big classroom.

- They're 29 by 42, 15 foot ceilings.

- And so this was a school originally for what?

1 through 12, grades 1 through 12.

- Yes.

- Really, so everybody in Pittsfield, and many from outside Pittsfield-- - It was a two mile radius, two mile radius that was originally built for.

- And a lot of this is still the original building, isn't it?

The floors as well, now this looks like this is in very good shape.

- This is a newer version.

- A newer one but some of them have the old 1860 floor, don't they?

- Yes, they do.

- Okay, so we would walk in here.

Here's the desk, somebody might greet you when you come in and offer to give you a tour.

- Yes.

- You might want to do it on your own.

- Right.

- And you come around here and I kind like this because you are going to have an exhibit on New Philadelphia.

And for those who don't know, this would've been the first community founded by an African-American, right?

- Yes, that's correct.

They say he platted and registered.

He had the land platted, sold the lots.

He sold the lots to get money to free his family.

He had paid for his own freedom, his wife's freedom.

And he came up here and earned more money and every time he had enough money to go back, he would go back and buy the freedom of a family member.

- Oh, my goodness.

- So it is truly an amazing story.

- It really is.

Now, you do have quite a bit of material but you have a lot more coming because there's been archeological work done out there at New Philadelphia.

And hopefully some of that will find its way back here after it's been analyzed, cleaned up and categorized and everything that archeologists do.

- Yes.

- And even the Smithsonian has some items from here.

- Yes, they do.

- That you won't get back but you might get photographs of it.

- We're gonna photographs, yes.

- This is kind of interesting 'cause if you really want to immerse yourself into a county, you go township by township.

And you've made this in a way that you can do that.

- Yeah, well, see that we have schools over here, but if you turn a page like here's Pearl township, a history, some clippings.

But each page you turn is a different township.

So there's what went on in that township.

- Kinderhook, let's see what's next.

Levy Township.

That's interesting.

Man, somebody put a lot of work into these, look at these old photographs.

And a lot of these buildings and properties wouldn't still be there.

- No, they're not, unfortunately no.

- Good stuff.

What's the seating area here for?

- This is just a display.

This is furniture from the Ross mansion.

- Oh, the Ross mansion, it's no longer there, is it?

- Right.

- But you do have some other furniture.

- Yes.

- Ross, he was a key person, wasn't he?

- Yes, he was.

- Who was Colonel William Ross?

Was he a friend of Lincoln?

- He was a friend of Lincoln.

He was one of the earliest settlers.

He founded Atlas.

Another famous quote that we like here in Pike County is that Mr. Ross told Mr. Wood, John Wood of Quincy that Quincy could not possibly succeed because it was too close to Atlas.

(Mark laughing) - Well, Atlas is sort of just a crossroads now.

- Yes, it is.

- Well, he got that one wrong.

- He did.

- And of course, Abraham Lincoln had close ties here.

He had friends but he also had acquaintances that became very crucial to his career.

- Yes, he did.

Mr. Nicolay became his secretary, also.

Mr. Hay his secretary.

And John Philbrick from Griggsville was his secretary.

- Here's Hay over here.

- Charles, I'm sorry, Charles Philbrick.

- Here's a picture of the two of them.

- That's the two.

That's Hay and Nicolay.

- And actually Nicolay was from Pike County, right?

And Hay went to school here.

And they got to know him that way.

- And Hay went to school and went on to Springfield to become a lawyer.

Nicolay followed later after a newspaper career here at Pittsfield.

- And then Lincoln must have seen something in them because not only did he bring them to Springfield but they stayed with him through his presidency, didn't they?

- Yes, they did, both of them did.

- Yeah, fascinating.

- And they wrote a biography of him afterwards.

- Yeah, and that's not all Nicolay wrote.

Nicolay was asked before Lincoln even got the nomination from the Republican party, Nicolay was asked to write about him.

- Yes, he was.

- And you happen to have at least is it a copy of that?

- No, this is the original newspaper right here.

- Okay, show it to us.

Let me get out of the way.

- Sorry.

This is the original newspaper that the editorial appeared in promoting Lincoln for president.

So this was the first time that there had been mention of Lincoln for president.

- Okay, and this is in 1859, right?

- In 1860, February 1860.

- Okay, Honorable Abraham Lincoln.

And for those who can't see that you have copied it up here to where you've got it in type.

And there's a portrait of Nicolay there in the middle, he's the one that wrote it.

- Yes.

- And so he was probably the first person to formally recommend Lincoln for the nomination.

- Yes.

- And then for those who don't know later on then, he went on to Decatur and then on to Chicago to get the statewide nomination, didn't he?

- Yes, the nomination was in Chicago.

And Colonel Ross including Pittsville friends went to Chicago and made copies of this editorial and handed it out to the delegates to make sure everybody knew who Lincoln was.

Because when they went there, Mr. Seward was the favorite to get the nomination.

So the Pike County group took this editorial and passed it around, made sure everybody knew who Lincoln was and what he stood for.

And that won him the nomination.

- Is there any indication that this appeared in any other papers?

- Yes.

Now this is the story in our 1941 newspaper.

- Are we looking at this one here?

- Yeah, according to that, they passed it around to all the Republican newspapers in the United States.

So it was circulated widely.

- Let's back up just a little bit too and we won't beat this to death, but this just gives you an idea.

If you look from left to right, it gives you an idea of the number of papers that operated in Pike County over the years.

- Yes, it does.

- And like you said, they were either, usually either Democrat or Republican papers.

But that shows you the variety of newspapers and you've got copies of all of them.

- Yes, the Free Press is the one that Mr. Nicolay owned.

- Would you point that out to us?

- Right here.

- Oh, this is Nicolay's, okay.

- This was Nicolay's paper.

If you look very carefully there in the corner it'll have his name in it.

- And that would've been before he left.

- This was in the 1850s.

He sold this paper in 1856 to go to Springfield.

So he was actually practicing law with Mr. Lincoln in his office and with John Hay in Springfield.

- Yeah, had sold his newspaper and moved on.

- He had sold it and moved out.

And when he sold it, it was changed to the journal.

So the journal is where the editorial appeared.

He came back to visit his girlfriend in Fitzfield and they went to visit the editor that had bought his paper.

- Handed him the editorial.

- No, the editor asked him, he says, "I want you to write an editorial."

So it was at the request of the new editor of the paper that he wrote the editorial.

- Got it.

- Well, Earl, of course we're in a school room but on our way up to the front of the school room I have to ask you about this wagon.

It called a dray wagon.

It would've been, I guess probably every family lived on a farm would've had to have a wagon like this to get not only to town, but to get their stuff around the farm.

How are you gonna deliver where you're gonna need to go?

And this one is kind of special because of the painting which remains on the wood panels it's really pretty surprising, isn't it?

- Yes, it is.

And even the axis are painted at the design on the axis.

So this was a very customized wagon for somebody.

- No kidding and you wouldn't really think that would stay.

I mean, you think that the mud and the rocks and everything that get thrown up would knock all that off but it remained.

- This wagon was used by a (mumbles) stable here in town.

And this would have been the delivery wagon for the store, for businesses.

Also everything came by train.

So these wagons would run back and forth from the train station up to the square, to businesses, to whatever-- - To deliver to stores or whatever.

And they would've used these trunks in many cases to deliver whatever they had to.

- Yeah, the trunks could be either delivering goods or they could be taking a trip.

The fancier chunks were probably taking a trip, and the heaviness is what also, I mean, everything was in a wooden box too.

So whatever was shipped it wasn't cardboard plastic, you had a wooden box to go on top of your freight.

- Yeah, nice.

There's no printing press that was in Paul Findley's newspaper.

He didn't use it it's too old for that but that's where it was at one time, right?

- Yes.

- Paul Findley, who would later become a Congressman and live in Jacksonville ran what paper here?

Pike Press?

- The Pike Press.

- The Pike Press.

Okay, this is where I really wanted to...

I still, I have to mention this floor because this has been tread on by so many people over so many years.

And you can see the knots stand out where the real hardwood is, the knots stand.

Everything else has been worn down.

Love this original floor.

Wow.

Okay, so these kids would come up to the blackboard and they actually had a little bench there for them to stand on so they could reach it.

- Yes.

This room would have been the first grade probably, the youngest kids would've been in this room.

So they had the bench, I believe there was a bench in this room over here too.

So these were the youngest kids down here and that would let them reach the blackboard.

- Look at this tiny little desk, that might have been a first grader right there.

It's hard to tell whether these desks came from this actual school or not, but it's very likely that they were still in here.

- Yeah, we know a couple of them didn't but the neat thing about these desks is they were in a row.

So this person was sitting here and somebody else was writing on this, their seat was here.

So you had these in a row and that's why you see all the holes on the floor.

These desks were bolted into the floor.

- Oh, they were bolted.

These maps likely were about the same age too.

I mean, this look like digital.

- Copyright on that map is 1903.

And we have five of them.

We're missing Europe and Asia but we have five.

And Warren actually found these in the building when they were cleaning it out.

- That's Warren Winston.

He's been studying history in this county forever, hasn't he?

- Yes, he has.

And this is a unique bench here because it switches.

This actually came from a church.

But they used these in one room schools too.

So you could have your lesson plan.

You didn't have to move the whole bench.

If you wanted to-- - Which way do you wanna face?

- Yeah.

So if you had a small class over here and you could flip the bench and everybody could look the same way.

- That is so inventive, that is so inventive.

Now you're gonna find you have a lot of stuff here that would've been in the family home or on the farm.

Here's an old ice box, I like this, that's a beauty.

- That's beautiful.

- Look at the condition that's in.

- Yeah, that's a beautiful box.

Here's the ice tongue that went with it to lift your ice.

This also a sign and you would hang that sign in your window with whichever size of block ice you wanted.

So when the delivery man got there he knew what to bring you.

- They still were doing that up until the 30s.

I'm old enough, I called refrigerators ice boxes when I was growing up.

I don't know if you did or not but my parents did and I kind of picked it up.

And again, more items from that would have been used in any home or business.

And you you've got your work cut out for you.

You got more labeling to do, don't you?

- Oh, yes, there's a lot of labeling to do here and a lot of learning to do because I don't know, there's a lot to learn here.

- And part of the reason is because as you were describing to me earlier, sometimes your donations will just show up.

You don't know who brought them, you don't know what they are or how old they are in many cases but they show up and they're of value, historical value.

But what do we do with this?

- Yes, there's a lot to learn.

- Emily, this case is a striking example.

I mean, when people see this they don't think that's possible.

But the man that wore these coveralls was from Pike County.

And he was said to have been the biggest man ever on the earth.

And his name was, let's see if I can find it, Robert Earl Hughes.

Is that right?

- Yes.

- Tell us about him.

- Yes, Robert Earl Hughes was the largest man to ever walk the earth.

Which it's an important distinction because he was the heaviest man to walk.

He holds the Guinness World Record for that.

And there has since been somebody heavier to live, but he was still able to walk and he did work as much as he was able to.

He lived near Fishhook, he lived very close to the county line.

But he did live in Pike County and he visited Fishhook and Bayles a lot.

And a lot of people around today still remember him.

He passed away in 1958.

- He's well known and beloved.

Ken Bradbury, the playwright from this area did a play about him not too long ago.

And people loved it and they loved it because he was able to be seen as a real human being with real feelings and with a real life and people really could relate to him, couldn't they?

Even though he had this enormous problem.

- Yes.

So something important to clarify in his story is that this was not an eating disorder or anything.

When he was a small baby, he had the whipping cough and ruptured his pituitary gland.

So his body just grew out of control.

And he worked as much as he could, he wasn't able to a lot, but he was well known throughout the entire area because he was such a friendly, lovable person.

Everybody who knew him said he was the nicest person they ever met.

And one of his favorite things to do was to sit in the back of the pickup truck and talk to people as they went in and out of the store in Fishhook.

- Another fellow that everybody knew in Pittsfield was an artist.

And they didn't all know he was an artist, they thought he was a sign painter.

But Fritz, is it Giesendorfer?

- Yes.

- Giesendorfer.

After he passed away people found out that he had a lot more going on than sign painting.

He had this enormous collection of work that he had done mostly sketches through the years.

And it was full of trunks and trunks and trunks full of stuff.

You're lucky here to have some of it to display, aren't you?

- Yes.

He did go to the Art Academy in Chicago for a very short time, but that was really his only formal art training.

Almost all of this was him practicing sign painting.

And occasionally he did do public works such as this circus advertisement.

- That's colorful, yeah.

- Yes, this is the little circus pamphlet and we can see what he practiced up here just on the same page as several other random sketches.

And this was his artwork.

Confirmed obviously, it's almost the exact same drawing, and it's amazing that he could do these.

- From 1921, he apparently drew and sketched all the time.

- Yes.

- And here's public schoolhouse in the early 1900s.

This is not the building that we're in now.

- No, it's not.

- Okay, I want to ask you some more questions.

We're gonna look at his work as we go by here.

Here's a self portrait, he was very good.

- Yes, he did several self portraits.

And what he would do that a family member has this portrait, he has the rest of his collection.

And he has this specific portrait where you can see him from the waist up and you can see that, let's see if one of these has the little pin marks.

He would pin it to a board in front of him and draw looking in the mirror.

And he has a portrait that shows that.

Actually here is one of them.

The family member has a larger one, but that is one of them.

- It's really quite good.

Okay, come this way with me because there's a lot to learn about old Pike County.

- Yes.

- I didn't know this, I bet you didn't know it until very long ago, but Pike County took up almost half the state at one time.

If you look at the red area of this map, you can see that Pike County actually included Chicago at one time.

- Yes, at the time that Pike County was established, Chicago was a small settlement of only about 60 to 70 inhabitants.

- And Pike County was everything west of the Illinois river and even north all the way to the Wisconsin line.

- Yes.

- This is the present courthouse.

We're gonna get a look at some of the older courthouses but this is a nice piece of work, somebody built this for you.

This is really nice.

- Yes, it was built by a high school teacher at Pittsfield High School.

He also directed the Theater Guild which was here from the 80s into the 90s and it was very active.

And those shows were held upstairs.

And he built this for a parade float and it got donated to our museum.

- That is nice.

And if you move back a little bit we can see there's a picture of the courthouse as it is now.

And he did a good job.

He did a good job of doing it like that.

- Yes, he did.

- Let's look at the old courthouses as they stood earlier.

This looks like it might have been the first, of course, it was a log cabin and most of them were at the time, weren't they?

- Yes, that was the one that was in our first county seat which was Coles Grove, which is now in Calhoun County.

And right after Coles Grove was the county seat it moved to Atlas.

And there are some stories about how many buildings there were in Atlas.

We haven't totally been able to prove that yet, but they may have reassembled that small building in Atlas, they might have built one just like it.

And they might have also had a small brick building that they used.

But what we do know is when the county state was moved to Pittsfield in 1833, this was the first courthouse building in Pittsfield.

And that was on the north side of the square.

It is sadly, no longer standing.

And then that was soon followed by this building, large square building that was in the middle of the public square.

And it was too small, it was not built as soundly as they needed it to be and they quickly outgrew it, they quickly needed a new one.

So it had only been standing for about 40 years before they had the need to replace it.

- Then did this get replaced by the new one that we know today?

- Yes.

It was torn down and there was a small building built next to it that they called old fireproof.

It was this tiny little brick building that they built in the yard next to this older courthouse.

- And we're looking at it.

And when the new courthouse is under construction, we're looking at the old brick building.

- Yes.

- And the records were stored there to keep them fireproof, huh?

- Yes, because the older building was, they were worried about it catching on fire, they were also worried about roof leaks.

So they kept all the most important things in old fireproof.

And that worked out well because while they were constructing the new building, they had somewhere to keep their important stuff.

- The Pike County History Museum is open spring, summer and fall, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4:00 p.m.

If you wanted to make an appointment for a group to come through, you can contact them ahead of time and they can arrange to be here.

And the admission is free, although donations are appreciated.

With another Illinois story in Pittsfield, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Woman] Illinois stories is brought to you by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)