In August 1898 in Virden, Illinois, the Pleiades Club, a group of seven young women, threw a recipe party for Almira Henderson and Nell Furry, and it was reported in The Virden Reporter. The ladies were each presented with a book of “tried and true” recipes. The books’ covers were made of watercolor paper and designed and painted in Chicago, and each club member contributed to the recipe pages. When I came across the article, I wondered, why a recipe party? As I continued to read later issues of the Virden newspaper, I realized that these young women had approaching marriages. From the newspaper reports, I know the dates and details of their weddings.
Many other things happened in Virden during August, September, and October of 1898. A tarantula spider was found in a bunch of bananas at Lorton’s grocery store. The Illinois State Fair was deemed a success and included an Emancipation Day, which many of Virden’s Black citizens attended. People with expendable incomes went on vacations, traveling by train to California, Colorado, and the East Coast. I know what songs were played by the Virden High School Band every Saturday night on the town square. I know which students had perfect attendance at school. Virden had recently installed street-lamps (as they were called then), and some citizens complained that the evenings were noisier because of children playing under the lights. In a different article, the mayor threatened to take action against youngsters who were making a nuisance of themselves with slingshots and pellet guns. The summer was wet, the corn suffered from root rot, and apples were expensive.
But all these everyday things were overshadowed by the Battle of Virden, which occurred on October 12th. The town’s coal miners, who were employed by the Chicago Virden Coal Company, were demanding the salary rate that had been agreed to in a contract negotiated by their union the previous January. Miners from out-of-town came to Virden by the hundreds to support the Virden miners. The mine’s operator, Fred W. Lukins, locked out the miners and made plans to bring in Black miners from Alabama. He built a stockade around the mine, which became known as “Lukinsville” and hired ex-Chicago policemen and professional security guards to keep the miners out. These events leading up to the battle and the battle are detailed in Morning of a Crescent Moon.
After reading the Virden newspapers, I was surprised at how invested I became in these people’s lives. I wanted to know what had happened to them. I found myself looking up when they died in the Virden cemetery records (online) and then finding their obituaries on the microfilm at the library. I even had the Virden cemetery put missing obituaries on its website. I had heard that Fred Lukins had chosen to be buried in Virden, and I wondered why, after all that had happened. I sought out his gravesite on a cold and windy March day. I describe the scene in the Author Notes at the end of the novel. I discovered that buried not far away was his eldest son, Elmer, who died in 1918 of the Spanish flu, according to the newspaper. So much history in this town! And, it’s just one of thousands of U.S. towns.
I came away from doing this research with the conviction that the information in these newspapers needs to be accessible online to anyone doing research into family history or the town’s history. The details of so many lives are locked up in these papers. Chronicling America (https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/?loclr=blogser) has been working to digitize historically important newspapers, along with state resources, like Chronicling Illinois (https://www.chroniclingillinois.org/). But digitization costs money. In the past, grants have been available from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and under the current federal budget costs, this availability of funds may end.
The Virden papers, like many others, are not digitized and are only available to the public in two places on microfilm: the Virden Public Library and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The significant events surrounding the mine battle itself are reported in many online newspapers, but the everyday details of Virden are only in the Virden papers. I became convinced that the Virden newspapers need to be digitized.
So, I am now pursuing how to get the funds to digitize The Virden Reporter (1881–1921, the Republican newspaper), The Virden Record (1886–1921, the Democratic newspaper), and The Virden Recorder (1921+, the newspaper that resulted from merging the two). Digitizing the newspapers will make the lives of its citizens accessible, and many had noteworthy lives.
From Almira Henderson’s obituary, I learned that she was a mover and shaker, not only in the community of Virden, but also in the State of Illinois. She was a frequent visitor to the White House when President Wilson was in office. She fought for women’s suffrage and was an ardent Democrat and a supporter of FDR. I would hate to see the legacy of Virden citizens like Almira forgotten because so much of their history is in hard-to-access places.
These people and their lives became real to me. I tried to capture the spirit of Virden, Illinois, in 1898 in Morning of a Crescent Moon. I hope that the town comes alive again in its pages for readers, and I plan to continue working to get the newspaper digitized. Stay tuned.
N. J. Schrock 