- [Narrator] Walking through Evergreen Memorial Cemetery in Bloomington unearths the historical bones of McLean County.

Everywhere you look, there are names of residents who shaped the fabric of their time.

Two Adlais rest here.

The senior Adlai Stevenson was vice president of the United States.

Adlai II, who was actually the senior Adlai's grandson, served as governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953.

Justice David Davis served on the US Supreme Court and was instrumental in the election of Abraham Lincoln.

A tree carving marks the graveside of Old Hoss Radbourn, a baseball record holder who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.

Dorothy Gage, the little girl who was the impetus for Dorothy in the book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" also has a carved marker.

(nostalgic music) Civil rights leader Belle Blue Claxton led the effort to desegregate the beaches at Miller Park in Bloomington.

And Illinois State University Founder Jesse Fell helped to establish two counties and several towns.

(nostalgic music) Your visit with history could go on and on as you peruse the etched monuments among towering trees spread across 87 acres.

However, 20,000 years before these recent individual contributions, the last ice age was making its significant impact on Central Illinois.

As the frozen sheet receded, it left in its wake the makings of fertile soil that eventually would earn McLean County the title "The Buckle of America's Corn Belt."

- [Commentator] And it is this Titanic struggle really between ice and rock and the grinding of rock that lays this fertile debris down, this debris field.

And then through the centuries with first of forests and then grasslands creating an extremely rich soil that Euro-American farmers had made use of for two centuries now.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music) (uplifting music) (uplifting music) (uplifting music) (uplifting music) (ground crunching) - [Narrator] The land that would become McLean County is the ancestral home to numerous Native groups, the earliest being the Paleo-Indians who roamed the prairie some 12,000 years ago.

Millennia later, the Illinois Confederacy, also known as the Illiniwek made the prairies their home from Lake Michigan to as far south as Arkansas.

But their population declined due to war and disease brought by French fur traders, allowing the Kickapoo to move into some of the territory.

The Kickapoo eventually found more Europeans at their doorstep.

- In the late 1820s, this area of present day McLean County, is beginning to be inhabited by pockets of settlers.

We're on the edge of Blooming Grove, so there's about a 6,600 acre forested track and then open prairie.

- [Narrator] There were several early efforts by Native Americans to live in harmony with the new Europeans.

Members of the Kickapoo helped settler John Patton build his cabin in 1829.

Later the cabin became a polling place and is now the only early government building left standing in McLean County.

It is a rare reminder of European interactions with Native Americans.

It now sits in Keller Park in Lexington three and a half miles from its original location.

- And one group of Kickapoo, under the leadership of a man by the name of Kennekuk, who was a prophet, developed a means by which they thought that if they adopted American practices, they could stay.

So they started large field agronomy.

They started raising livestock and this kind of thing, in the American manner.

But it was not to be.

President Jackson, as a national policy, wanted to see Native Americans all moved west of the Mississippi River.

- [Narrator] While the relocation of Native Americans was one problem.

A second issue was distant local government.

- But the problem is in the late 1820s, this area is part of Tazewell County, so folks here, to obtain a marriage license, to do any legal business have to go to Mackinaw Town, which is quite a distance from here.

So the folks in this area begin to clamor for and lobby for the creation of their own county and their own county seat.

So on Christmas Day, 1830, the state legislature, which then is meeting in Vandalia, the state capitol being Vandalia, this is before Springfield, Christmas Day, December 25th, 1830, McLean County is created.

- [Narrator] McLean County was at first larger than its current boundaries.

By 1841, its current borders were set, making it the largest county in Illinois by land area.

It was named after US Senator John McLean, who died two months before the county was established.

The population had grown from about 15 settler families in 1824 to about 4,000 people in the mid 1830s.

But growing much beyond that number was restricted by the lack of transportation at the time.

- Bloomington Normal McLean County is landlocked.

The Mackinaw River has never been really navigable this far upstream.

Sugar Creek is certainly not navigable.

So unlike Peoria that has the Illinois River, Alton which has the Mississippi River, Chicago which has Lake Michigan, we are landlocked.

- Well, the means of making money was primarily exporting cattle and hogs and land speculation and then also local supply of the demands of those 4,000 people in terms of consumer goods.

And the state of Illinois, McLean County was not alone in this lack of good access to transit.

So the State of Illinois develops a massive internal improvement plan, which is to build three major railroads in Illinois.

- [Narrator] Communities lobbied for rail to come through their towns.

David Davis did so on behalf of Pekin where he lived at the time, - And he became involved with a delegation that was set to Vandalia, Illinois, which was the capital at the time, to lobby to get the railroad through Pekin.

Happened- chance- that he, at the same time was down there as Jesse Fell, who was resident of Bloomington, who was down there with the same purpose, to try and get a railroad through Bloomington.

And they all met Abraham Lincoln who was down there at the same time.

And that kind of, you know, set their lives in a trajectory with their close political affiliation and friendship with Abraham Lincoln, that their lives would remain intertwined for the rest of all of their, Lincoln's life, I should say.

- [Narrator] Jesse Fell's efforts were fruitful and two of those railroads began running rail cars through Bloomington.

- But the building of the Illinois Central Railroad south into town in the spring of 1853, and what becomes the Chicago and Alton Railroad building from Alton to Springfield to Bloomington that fall, you not only have one, but now you've got two railroads.

You're at a crossroads and people have an ability to ship and to get goods from distant places.

- [Commentator] When rail came in, it became possible to export grain.

And that's why the rail roads' function was, in many ways, it wasn't so much for moving people from city to city, of course is important, but moving commodities to market.

And McLean County, once it could do that, plugged into the international grain markets.

And there is value in heavy production of corn and wheat.

- [Commentator] It attracts of course a workforce.

Somebody's gotta build it, somebody's gotta repair the locomotive, somebody's gotta run the trains.

So Bloomington's population almost doubles in census tracked from 1850 to 1860.

- [Narrator] The Chicago & Alton established a large railroad shop on Bloomington's West Side in 1859.

Employees built and maintained locomotives and passenger and freight cars.

It was the city's largest employer for 50 years.

- [Commentator] The work people there were extremely well-trained.

They were organized under the old fashioned master-apprentice system where each trade trained its own people.

There were about 60 trades practiced there and the jobs were very high-paying.

And so it created a industrial middle class that was successful.

And that industrial middle class had money to build homes, to buy homes, to educate their children.

(lively music) - [Narrator] Education in rural areas was handled in one-room schoolhouses.

Few of them remain, but the old Rose Hills School was saved.

Originally on Hovey Road west of Normal, it was restored and moved onto the Illinois State University campus in 1962.

Lura Eyestone taught at the school and later at what was then Illinois State Normal University for 38 years, prompting the university to rename the building Eyestone School.

Its contents include McGuffey Readers, slate boards on the wooden desk and a coal stove for heat.

(lively music) The earliest lasting effort to establish an educational institution of higher learning was in 1850 when a diverse group of 30 people founded Illinois Wesleyan University.

- Well, there were two people that were involved in our founding that were kind of the leaders of this effort.

There was Charles Merriman, who at the time was editor of the Western Whig, which eventually became the Pantagraph here in town.

And the more influential figure was Reverend John Barger who was the presiding elder of the Methodist Church here in the Bloomington District.

- [Narrator] It first opened as Illinois College, but Wesleyan was added to denote its connection to the Methodist church.

Although students from all Christian denominations were invited to attend.

Shortly after the Civil War in 1867, the board of trustees voted to admit Black students.

- The board took about three days to ponder the question and reported back that they favorably viewed that as a good thing to happen.

The irony of all of this is that we don't have any evidence that the person that was of interested in applying actually enrolled at the university.

- [Narrator] An effort to admit females came later in 1869.

It was at first tabled, but a year later the board agreed to admit 22 women.

(lively music) John Wesley Powell was a Civil War veteran who became a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan in 1865.

- John Wesley Powell was a very engaging individual.

He was well liked by students and his faculty peers.

He did a lot when he was here as a faculty member, helping to develop our seal, university seal, and also our university motto, science and wisdom.

And one of the probably most remarkable things about John Wesley Powell was the fact that he started the concept of field work and taking students in the field to do science research.

- [Narrator] The first field trip with geology students was to collect rock specimens in Western territories.

Powell, who would go on to be a co-founder of the National Geographic Society, also lectured at Illinois State Normal University.

Early supporters of that school included Judge David Davis, who had moved from Pekin to Bloomington, and businessman Jesse Fell.

He called on his friend Abraham Lincoln to draw up the legal documents that guaranteed the original local funding for the university.

Classrooms in the new building in North Bloomington- to be named Normal in 1865- weren't ready when school opened in October of 1857.

- So they had to have a place to go.

And that was Major's Hall in Downtown Bloomington.

The same location- as it turned out- where Lincoln held the Lost Speech or what became known as the Lost Speech.

- [Narrator] A group of newspaper men had met at Major's Hall the previous year where Lincoln gave that speech as a member of the newly formed Republican Party.

There is no written record of it, despite the presence of newspaper men, thus the name Lost Speech.

- The platform was, and this is, I have to make this pretty clear, Lincoln was not for the abolishment of slavery because that was too radical and it wasn't gonna happen peacefully.

But people like Lincoln, the moderates in this new party felt if we can control it where it exists and stop its spread, it will slowly die a natural death without the calamity that might otherwise occur, and we're rid of slavery.

So to say that he was against abolishing it in a sudden blow doesn't mean he didn't hate slavery.

He hated the institution, but he was cautious, practical politician about how he got rid of it.

- [Narrator] The speech put Lincoln in the forefront of the Republican Party due in part to the efforts of David Davis - And Davis helped campaign for Lincoln to become president in 1860.

And initially Lincoln did not give him a patronage position, but then some positions did open up on the Supreme Court and Lincoln did include Davis as a justice during his first term.

And that is how he ended up with a position on the Supreme Court, which he held, you know, past Lincoln's death as well.

- [Narrator] Lincoln named Davis to the US Supreme Court in 1862, a position Davis held for 15 years.

He then served for six years as a US Senator.

While on the court, he had his mansion built in Bloomington.

- And of course, you know, the beautiful mansion was completed, I believe, in 1872.

And before that, there was, you know, just a wooden farmhouse structure that David and his wife Sarah and their children all lived in before they built that fine mansion, which Lincoln never would've set foot in the mansion that exists today.

- Jesse Fell was an attorney who helped Lincoln win the Republican nomination for president at the 1860 GOP Convention in Chicago.

But prior to that time, Fell sold his law business to David Davis and entered the land speculation business.

He was instrumental in establishing Illinois State Normal University.

The State Board of Education named Charles Hovey the first principal of Illinois State Normal university in 1857.

First principal is the equivalent of today's position of president.

He previously was the superintendent of Peoria schools.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hovey saw students marching in formation outside the school's administration building, training themselves for war.

- Now Hovey sees this and he thinks, well, first this war is gonna be a long war.

This is not something that's just gonna be short.

He hired a military trainer, a drill instructor to come in and train these students and he said to them, "Don't leave yet."

Some of them had already left by this point.

And he said to the rest, "Don't leave yet.

I'm going to go to Lincoln and ask him for a regiment.

And my plan is to get the regiment, come back, you graduate and we will all sign up together and I will lead you into battle."

And that's exactly what he did.

- [Narrator] Hovey resigned as university president upon his return and formed the 33rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

It was informally called the Teacher's Regiment.

He stepped aside from field duty after a shell hit him in the arm in a battle in 1863.

He did not return to the school after the war, but Hovey's sabre is stored in the University archives.

In 1959, the school named its administration building Hovey Hall.

Illinois State soon would become a center for a recently developed form of instructional methods.

- [Commentator] Herbartianism is a German form of pedagogy that was founded in the 1830s in Germany.

Charles De Garmo, De Garmo Hall, who was a student of this institution, went to Germany and received his PhD in education from Jena University and came back with this knowledge of Herbartianism, so he was the first.

Herbartianism, the idea of Herbartianism is that in order to teach a child, you can teach them how to be a moral citizen by injecting that into their different forms of study, not just language and literature is where you would expect it.

You'd see it in science and mathematics.

- A local publishing company called the Public School Publishing Company became kind of the press for this movement.

And they sold 50, 60,000 books a year advancing these principles that children learn best by observation and by talking about what they see and by writing about what they see.

- And this was the pedagogy taught at all Normal schools in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

If you went anywhere in the country for a Normal education, you were being taught Herbartianism.

And we founded that here at this institution.

And this really was the form of pedagogy taught until Dewey came along in the 1920s.

- [Narrator] Jesse Fell helped establish much more than Illinois State Normal University.

He helped start the predecessor to the Pantagraph Newspaper, DeWitt and Livingston Counties and the towns of Clinton, Dwight, Towanda, North Bloomington and Pontiac.

He was able to use his influence to thwart an effort that would have the railroad bypass Pontiac where he had land holdings.

The railroad did bypass the small community of Benjaminville and the town disappeared from the map.

All that remains is the Friends Meeting House built in 1859 where the Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, once held services.

Railroads did benefit the town of Chenoa as well as Matthew T. Scott.

The Peoria and Ocoya line crossed what would become the Chicago & Alton tracks near Scott's land.

He rented his property to tenant farmers and would then ship their grain by rail.

His house was first built in 1854 with an addition placed on the front in 1863 in the Georgian style of architecture.

Three years later, Scott's sister-in-law, Letitia Green married Adlai Stevenson I in this house.

Stevenson was born in Christian County, Kentucky, where his family grew tobacco.

- It was a couple bad years of tobacco crops, is what drove his family north here to Bloomington.

And after he, you know, had some schooling to pursue a law career- kind of started and stopped off and on- he ended up practicing law in Metamora for about 10 years where he was the district attorney on the Eighth Judicial Circuit.

And he stayed there for about 10 years where he married his wife, Letitia Green.

And then two years after they married, they ended up back in Bloomington where he continued practicing law, but also started stepping his toes in the political waters where he served in Congress for a couple terms, not consecutive.

And eventually found his way to even bigger political gains where he served as the vice president in Grover, Cleveland's second administration.

- [Narrator] He was vice president from 1893 to 1897.

He then was Democrat William Jennings Bryan's vice presidential candidate, but Bryan lost to William McKinley in the 1900 election.

The Senior Stevenson ran for governor of Illinois in 1908, but lost.

Stevenson II did win his gubernatorial effort and served as Illinois governor from 1949 to 1953.

Both Adlais are buried in Evergreen Cemetery, but Adlais II is not the senior Adlai's son.

- Which always trips up people, 'cause you'd think that Adlai II would've been his son 'cause that's what, you know, people do.

You know, junior, senior, things like that.

So Adlai II was his grandson.

Adlai I's son, Lewis Green-Stevenson was Adlai II's father.

- [Narrator] Lewis Green-Stevenson served as Illinois Secretary of State from 1914 to 1917.

He was married to Helen Davis, who was the daughter of Pantagraph publisher W. O. Davis, and the granddaughter of Jesse Fell.

(uplifting music) While Evergreen Cemetery is replete with the stories of politicians of yesteryear, a record of other disciplines can readily be found.

A tree carving marks the grave of Charles Old Old Hoss Radbourn.

He won 60 games in 1884 for the Major League Providence Grays, more than anyone during a single season.

He threw 73 complete games that year, but the workload had an impact on his arm and he never won more than 27 games in a season after that extraordinary year - [Commentator] Later in life, he pretty much had ruined his arm during his professional baseball career.

He didn't play ball for too many more years after that winning season.

He ended up back here in Bloomington and opened a bar in Billiards Hall in Downtown Bloomington.

(nostalgic music) - While not as well known as Radbourn, or the Stevensons, Belle Blue Claxton is also buried at Evergreen Cemetery.

She was at the forefront of efforts by the Black community to desegregate what were then two separate beaches at Miller Park Lake.

- [Commentator] It came to a head in 1919 and Belle wrote a letter to the Pantagraph decrying, you know, the horrible conditions that Black citizens had to, you know, endure out at Miller Park Beach.

They didn't have, you know, changing facilities.

The water was dirty, the beach was not clean.

And she said, "We as taxpayers deserve equal rights and equal access to a clean and sanitary beach.

Now her efforts and others' efforts did not desegregate the beaches.

It did clean up the Black side of the beaches, but the two beaches remained segregated for many more decades to come.

- [Narrator] There was less discrimination more than a half century earlier following the Civil War.

- [Commentator] We have, this is, you know, at the end of the war, there seems to be a different viewpoint.

There are more African Americans living here.

There's a big expansion of African Americans during the Civil War coming here and town of Normal, which is a new town, which has welcomed African American settlement.

They desegregate their schools in 1868 and then Bloomington followed suit in 1872.

- [Narrator] Education was not the only area that began to open for Blacks.

Several McLean County towns welcomed African American barbers, - Lexington, Hayworth, Lincoln, Bellflower, Atlanta, all of these towns around had Black barbers in the 1860s, '70s, some into the '80s.

Also probably there was a little push factor too, because about the time of the Civil War, Bloomington's growth is pretty great.

And German barbers entered the competition and eventually, you know, they eventually began to dominate the barbering trade in Bloomington.

- [Commentator] And so you see a different attitude about having a society in which African American people are accepted.

And so from this kind of positive piece, access to education, you start seeing the development of a Black middle class and that becomes very prosperous and very successful Black middle class by the end of the century.

And then early in the 20th century, with the Northern embracing of Jim Crow, we start seeing Black civil rights being pushed back here in McLean County and throughout Illinois.

- [Narrator] Two significant but very different events marked the end of the 19th century for McLean County.

L. Frank Baum published his book, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," in 1900.

Baum, it is said, found inspiration to name the key character in his book with the passing of his niece, Dorothy Gage.

She died at five months of age two years before the book's publication.

She became the namesake for Dorothy in Baum's book.

A second consequential event in 1900 had a more devastating impact.

An officer on patrol in the 100 block of East Monroe Street in Downtown Bloomington spotted a fire at the model laundry business.

It was 20 minutes past midnight on June 19th.

By eight in the morning, 45 buildings north and east of the courthouse were left in rubble despite assistance by fire departments from as far as Peoria and Springfield.

In a sense, it brought a close to the early days of McLean County, but opened the door to growth in a new century.

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