Contributors

Reg Ankrom of Jacksonville is the author of Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship and Stephen A. Douglas, Western Man. He is working on a third volume, Stephen A. Douglas and Union. Ankrom recently edited and contributed to Tales of John Wood and His Adams County, an anthology published by the Quincy and Adams County Historical Society to commemorate Adams County's Bicentennial year.Jenny Barker-Devine is a professor of history at Illinois College in Jacksonville. She is the author of On Behalf of the Family Farm: Iowa's Farm Women's Activism since 1945. She is also the vice president of the Illinois State Historical Society.James R Barrett is professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multi-Ethnic City (Penguin, 2012) and From the Bottom Up and Inside Out: Race, Class, and Identity in Working-Class History (Duke University Press, 2017) And the co-editor with Shel Stromquist of A David Montgomery Reader: Capitalism and Workers’ Resistance (University of Illinois Press, 2024). He coedits the book series The Working Class in American History for the University of Illinois Press.James M. Cornelius, who earned his PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was visiting assistant professor in the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections at the University of Illinois Library, Urbana, 2001–2005, and curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Presidential Library, Springfield, 2007–2018.Lincoln Dean Kershisnik Draper is a doctoral candidate in physics at the University of Utah and is a member of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory collaboration.Timothy Dean Draper is professor of history at Waubonsee Community College at Sugar Grove and is special projects editor for this journal.Wayne Duerkes is a professional historian and author with over thirty years of experience on Illinois history, with emphasis on the northern tier of the state and the Illinois & Michigan Canal. He works at Illinois Valley Community College. He is on the Board of Directors of the Illinois State Historical Society. His first monograph, concerning market development in north central Illinois in the Antebellum period, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press.James A. Edstrom is a professor of library services and history at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. His most recent publication is Avenues of Transformation: Illinois's Path from Territory to State, and he is currently working on a new biography of John Peter Altgeld.Rosemary Feurer is a professor of history at Northern Illinois University, director of the Mother Jones Heritage Project, and author of the forthcoming Mother Jones Road Tour Through Illinois Labor History. She is also working on a new biography of Mother Jones and a book manuscript titled “The Illinois Mine Wars, 1860–1940.”William Furry is the executive director of the Illinois State Historical Society and music director of Wild Columbine, a trio performing traditional folk and parlor music of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.Bucky Halker is a historian, songwriter, and folksinger with more than fifteen recordings to his credit, including “Coal,” a solo acoustic recording featuring songs by coal miners. He also produced Folksongs of Illinois, a five-CD anthology of historic recordings of Illinois folksongs.Robert E. Hartley was a newspaper journalist in Illinois from 1962 to 1978. He has written eleven published books on Illinois politics and history, and he has presented twenty-one papers at Illinois history symposia from 1983 to 2023.David Joens recently retired after twenty years as the director of the Illinois State Archives. He is the author of From Slave to State Legislator: John E. Thomas, Illinois’ First African American Lawmaker.Theodore J. Karamanski is professor emeritus at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of twelve books, including Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History (with Eileen M. McMahon) and most recently Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan.Bill Kemp has been the librarian for the nonprofit McLean County Museum of History since 2003. He also serves on the Illinois State Historical Society's Advisory Board.Elizabeth Kershisnik is a distinguished professor of chemistry at Oakton College. She has coauthored numerous articles in Illinois Heritage as well as presented on aspects of state geology, flora, and fauna at the Conference on Illinois History, the Northern Illinois Regional History Conference, and the Midwest History Association Annual Conference.Caroline Kisiel is an associate professor in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at DePaul University and an Illinois Humanities Road Scholar. She writes and teaches about slavery and abolition in early Illinois, is completing a book about the antislavery efforts of early Albion, Illinois, and recently published “On the Brink of Slavery and Freedom: Two Hundred Years After the 1823–1824 Illinois Constitutional Convention Controversy” (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Winter 2024).Cate LiaBraaten is an assistant professor of history at Austin Peay State University, where she teaches US history, American women's history and public history courses. She earned her PhD at Loyola University Chicago.Stacy Lynn is associate editor of the Jane Addams Papers. Her most recent book is Loving Lincoln: A Personal History of the Women Who Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy (SIU Press, 2025).Kristan H. McKinsey is director of the Illinois Women Artists Project, a research and documentation project based on the campus of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. She is a member of the ISHS board and chair of the publications committee.Eileen McMahon is professor emerita of history at Lewis University. She specializes in Irish American, immigration, and women's history.Dominic A. Pacyga is professor emeritus of history at Columbia College and is curator of the Packingtown Museum in Chicago. His latest book is Clout City: The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Political Machine (University of Chicago Press, 2025).Mark B. Pohlad, PhD, is associate professor of art history at DePaul University in Chicago. He is currently at work on a book for Southern Illinois University Press that examines the myriad ways Abraham Lincoln was remembered in Chicago.Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of seven poetry collections as well as the history The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago.Christine Sipula is a retired Catholic Worker. She founded Clare House of Hospitality in 1987 in Bloomington, where she ran an emergency shelter and food pantry for thirty-seven years until her retirement in 2015. In 1983, she founded Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen, which continues to offer a free lunch program at St. Mary's Church in Bloomington.Megan VanGorder is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Illinois State University.Alonzo Ward is an associate professor of history at Eastern Illinois University. He is the author of an award-winning journal article titled “‘A Revolution in Labor’: African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era.” He is currently working with a cohort of educators at the Social Studies Network on a textbook on Black history for middle schoolers.Michael Wiant is the director emeritus of the Illinois State Museum–Dickson Mounds. He is currently authoring a manuscript about an 8,500-year-old settlement at the Koster site in Greene County, Illinois.Governor John Peter Altgeld, the “Eagle Forgotten,” courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; Minnie Vautrin outside the recently constructed Ginling College in Nanking, circa 1923. Image courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society; Clyde Choate is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Harry S Truman at the White House. Photo courtesy of the National Archives (111-SC-210818); Jane Addams, founder of Chicago's Hull House, and internationally known social activist. Photograph courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.