200 North Main St | Bloomington, Illinois | 309-827-0428
200 North Main St | Bloomington, Illinois | 309-827-0428
Back during the early years of the Cold War the fuselage of a U.S. Air Force B-29 Superfortress was put on display on the McLean County Courthouse Square, presumably as part of a patriotic road show to celebrate America’s technological, industrial, and military might. Air Force personnel were on hand during the June 13, 1950 stop in Bloomington to explain the bomber’s workings and answer questions.
Christmastime at the Illinois Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s School in Normal included many traditional activities, such as trimming the tree. Seen here are ISSCS students decorating a Christmas tree placed in front of the state orphanage’s Norman-style residential cottages.
Founded after World War I, American Gold Star Mothers consists of mothers who have lost a son or daughter to military service. Seen here are local Gold Star members from the Evergreen chapter in Bloomington.
Robert R. “Bob” Neal salutes a fallen veteran at Bloomington’s Park Hill Cemetery, Memorial Day 1982. Bob served in the U.S. Marine Corps and was a veteran of the Korean War.
Normal was the longtime home to the state-run orphanage known as the Illinois Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s School. “Home Kids” (as they often called themselves) attended University High School, Normal IL on the Illinois State University campus.
McLean County has long honored its war dead. In 1869, local officials saw to the erection in the center of Franklin Park a monument featuring the names of some 700 Civil War dead from McLean County.
My first day here I was given the task of making a finding aid for a nearly 100-year-old collection of World War I material, mainly books and military manuals. A finding aid is a typed inventory of the contents of an archival collection, and as such helps researchers and those interested in the collection find their way around the material.
This wine decanter originally arrived at the McLean County Museum of History as a time capsule.
What do a chicken and a high explosive artillery shell have in common? This sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke, but here in McLean County, they do in fact share something in common!
Union Army veteran Gilbert Henderson Bates sought, in his own eccentric way, to help heal the sectional wounds of fratricidal bloodletting.
About 50 members of the Grim Reapers Motorcycle Club led a funeral procession for L. Wayne Martin.
Memorial Day 1947, less than two years after the end of World War II.
In late October 1940, hundreds of local residents gathered at the McLean County Courthouse (now the McLean County Museum of History) to check their lottery numbers, which were posted on the walls of the main floor
Trench art has been created in a number of places besides battlefield trenches – army hospitals, POW camps, machine shops, and towns and villages miles away from the action. Read this post to learn about some trench art in our collection, made by military personnel from McLean County
In this Black History Month edition of our Sound Ideas recurring series "McHistory," you'll hear from a Spanish Amerian War Soldier from Bloomington who writes home from eastern Cuba.
In this episode of GLT's recurring series McHistory Morgan writes of World War Two.
Today's McHistory is about the Civil War Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, which took place December 7th, 1862.
On September 9, 1935, a U.S. Army Air Corps Keystone B-5A biplane bomber touched down at the Bloomington Municipal Airport (Central Illinois Regional Airport). Though the bomber was part of the 49th Bombardment Squadron based in Langley Field, Virginia, the nature of this visit was personal.
On October 19, 1948, the local Pearl Harbor chapter of the American War Mothers dedicated a drinking fountain to McLean County's World War II dead. The fountain is located on the east / Main Street side of the McLean County Museum of History (formerly the McLean County Courthouse).
