History Stories 

  1. Schools
    1. Fairbury Area Country Schools
    2. Typical Design of Fairbury area Country Schools
    3. Fairbury School History
    4. Illinois State Boy's Reformatory at Pontiac
    5. Edison School Meteorite Mystery
    6. Fairbury-Cropsey School Consolidation
    7. Prairie Central School Consolidation
    8. How Fairbury-Cropsey got the nickname of Tartars
  2. Native American or Indigenous People Related Stories
    1. The History of the Kickapoo
    2. Interesting Ways History was Preserved. Includes Kickapoo information from the 1830s.
    3. Early Settlers and the Black Hawk War
    4. First Fairbury area family arrived 190 years ago.
    5. First three years very challenging to early settlers. Includes interactions with the Kickapoo.
    6. Application to add the Strevell House in Pontiac, Illinois, to the National Register of Historic Places. Includes section on Native American history in Livingston County.
    7. Fairbury's Connection to the Florida Seminole Wars. Part of the west side of Fairbury was originally owned by members of the Creek tribe from Florida.
    8. Year 2000 calendar with information about the Kickapoo and many photos of Kickapoo people.
    9. Narrative of the captivity of William Biggs among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788. One of the few written accounts of what Kickapoo life was in 1788.
  3. Parks
    1. History of Two Oldest parks (Marsh Park and The Commons)
    2. Livingston Square. Fairbury's smallest park.
    3. Historic Murals in Veteran's Memorial Park [formerly Central Park]
    4. History Of Fairbury's Sunken Park And Veteran's Memorial Parks
    5. Researching the history of Marsh Park with References. This was done in 2018 to prepare for a speech at the Park re-dedication ceremony.
    6. Speech given by Dale C. Maley on July 29, 20216, to dedicate 5 new historic murals at Central Park [now Veteran's Memorial Park].
    7. Speech given by Dale C. Maley on July 28, 2018 at the re-dedication of Marsh Park after it was refurbished in 2017.
  4.  Businesses
    1. Fairbury's Underground or Basement Businesses
    2. The Mapel Brothers
      1. Their harness shop.
      2. The Mapel Brothers Horse
    3. Zimmerman's Hardware Store
    4. Fairbury Saloonkeepers (1993 College paper by Kathy Strickland)
    5. Impact of Glaciers including the 1955 automobile tour by the State Geological Society.
    6. Honegger's
    7. Claudons
      1. Family and all their businesses.
      2. Biggest business scandal in Fairbury's history [Claudon Bank failure]
      3. Claudon House at 209 E. Elm Street in Fairbury. Later owned by Nimrod Mapel.
  5. Fairbury & Sibley Related Stories
    1. Largest Farm in the United States
    2. Largest Corn-Crib in the World
    3. Miraculous Improvement in Corn Yields
  6.  Churches
    1. Church #1
  7. Coal Mining
  8. African American Related Stories
    1. Fairbury's African American History 1857-1922
    2. Fairbury's African American History 1923-2021
    3. Interesting Civil War Veteran John Posey
    4. Tales from Graceland Cemetery
    5. Two Fairbury Citizens Reaching 117 Years of Age Created National News
    6. Underground Railroad in Livingston County by Dale C. Maley
    7. Comets of Conscious: Freedom Seekers, Abolitionists, and Leaders of the Underground Railroad in Central Illinois. Unpublished manuscript by J. William Goold, Fairbury Native.
  9. Cropsey Related Stories
    1. Colorful Founder of Cropsey [A. J. Cropsey]
    2. The Origins of the Brucker Family in Cropsey
    3. President Reagan Courted Cropsey School Teacher
    4. Cropsey Farmer Manages Technological Change [Christian Samuel Gerber]
    5. Cropsey Played an Important Role in the World War II Effort
    6. Cropsey Native Was Rhodes Scholar and World-Class Historian [Gene A. Brucker]
    7. Fairbury's First Consolidation with Cropsey
  10. Hospital
    1. 1953 Open House Brochure
    2. History of the Fairbury Hospitals
    3. History of the Taylor House Used as a Fairbury Hospital on South 5th Street
    4. Hospital proposed by Dr. Langstaff that was never built.
  11. Medical Doctors
    1. Doctor Dan Brewer
    2. The Langstaff family of Doctors.
    3. Colorful early Doctor C. B. Ostrander.
    4. Early Doctor E. F. Law
    5. Dr. Lorenzo Beach, Fairbury's shrewdest land speculator. 
  12.  Organizations
    1. Bon Ton Limits.    A drug store that sponsored a men's basketball team.
  13. People
    1. Francis Townsend - Fairbury's Most Nationally Famous Native.
    2. Fairbury Photographer Dudley Fultz
    3. Fairbury Photographer Family De Long.
    4. Fairbury Photographer E. M. Phillips
    5. Fairbury Photographer W. E. Hummel
    6. Fairbury Photographer Walter Ferguson
    7. Fairbury Photographer A. J. Swap
    8. Fairbury Photographer Watt Nakamaru
    9. Stephen Young
    10. Dr. Pendergast. He collected Native American artifacts and was a nationally known expert on Cigar Store Indians.
    11. The Harrington Family
      1. Two Irish Brothers Made Fairbury Their Home
      2. Ford & Harrington Horse Importing Firm
      3. Early Businessman And Opera House Manager J. E. Eddy. He was married to a Harrington woman.
    12. The Veatch Family
  14. Places (Buildings & Landmarks)
    1. What Happened to the Deer on Route 24?
  15. Railroad Related Stories
    1. Impact of First Railroads. Explains what life was like before the railroads arrived in the Fairbury area.
    2. Fairbury's Lost Railroad. These tracks ran from Fairbury south to Strawn.
    3. Lodemia History. Lodemia is a ghost town that was created on the Chicago & Paducah Railroad from McDowell to Fairbury.
    4. The Railroads and Fairbury by Carolyn Yoder. She wrote this paper as a student at Fairbury-Cropsey High School in 1983. It includes both railroads that were in Fairbury.
    5. History of the Chicago & Paducah Railroad from LeBaron's 1878 Livingston County history book. Dale C. Maley added some comments after the excerpt.
    6. Hinckley's Railroad Empire. A 1954 biography of Mr. Hinckley, who at one time owned the Chicago & Paducah Railroad. He was a very colorful character.
    7. Dr. Miller and His Role in Founding Fairbury, Illinois. He was involved with the new Peoria & Oquawka Railroad line that founded Fairbury in 1857.
    8. Alma Lewis James recounting of how the Peoria & Oquawka Railroad and the Chicago & Paducah Railroads came to Fairbury.  These lines were later renamed to the TP&W and the Wabash Railroads.
    9. Railroad Scheming and Trickery. Story about how the Peoria & Oquawka (later TP&W) and the Chicago & Paducah (later Wabash) first came to Fairbury, Illinois.
    10. Chicago & Paducah Railroad History. Was later renamed to the Wabash Railroad.
    11. Hobos in Fairbury during the Great Depression.
  16. Other History
    1. Life as a Kid in Fairbury in the 1960s.
  17. Future Items