Shown here is an old printed copy of the first four of Major Gen. Gordon Granger’s five “General Orders” implementing martial law in Texas following Texas’ surrender after the end of the Civil War. General Order No. 3, issued 19 June 1865, in Galveston, Texas, proclaimed “all slaves are free” and that they had “absolute equality” with their former owners. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
For those who were unable to attend Pekin’s first-ever Juneteenth celebration at the Pekin Public Library that was co-sponsored earlier this month by the Pekin YWCA Coalition for Equality along with the library, below is a link to the program presented by Jared Olar, the library’s local history specialist, telling the stories of four Pekin men — Pvt. William Henry Costley, Cpl. William Henry Ashby, Sgt. Marshall Ashby, and Cpl. Nathan Ashby — who served in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War and were eyewitnesses of the first Juneteenth in 1865. (Besides Pekin’s four Juneteenth eyewitnesses, a fifth Tazewell County volunteer for the Colored Troops, Thomas Marcellus Tumbleson of Elm Grove Township, was also present at the first Juneteenth.)
Before the Juneteenth program, Jared Olar was interviewed by WCBU Peoria Public Radio News Director Tim Shelley about the same subject. Quotes from that interview are included in the following WCBU news report at their website. Twenty-minutes of the interview aired on WCBU during the local news half-hour on Friday at 6 p.m. (the eve of Juneteenth) in the middle of the “All Things Considered” broadcast. Audio of the entire 45-minute interview is linked on the WCBU website immediately below this article:
After a hiatus of about a year, the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce resumed its popular “Business After Hours” events on Thursday evening, April 8, 2021, when leaders of local business and community life attended a social gathering in the second-floor Community Room of the Pekin Public Library. Pekin Public Library Director Jeff Brooks took the occasion of its hosting “Business After Hours” to display a large number of its mementos and artifacts which illustrated the Pekin Public Library’s vital place in Pekin’s community life reaching back to 1866, when the prominent ladies of Pekin society organized the Ladies Library Association of Pekin, forerunner of the Pekin Public Library. The library’s local historian and researcher on staff, Jared Olar, also spoke for about 25 minutes, giving an overview of the library’s history from 1866 to the present. Throughout the event, a video highlighting the library’s history, prepared by Emily Lambe, public information and programming manager, was played.
“Business After Hours” at the Pekin Public Library is just one of the ways the library has been celebrating the 125th anniversary of the library’s existence (counting from February 1896, when the Pekin Library Association became a department of Pekin city government). Additional events will appear on the library’s program calendar throughout 2021.
Below are photographs from the April 8 “Business After Hours,” all taken by director Jeff Brooks.
Pekin Public Library’s local history specialist Jared Olar, who oversees the library’s Local History collection, spoke for about 25 minutes giving an overview of the history of the library from 1866 to the present.Among the mementos exhibited at Business After Hours on April 8 were photographs of Miss Mary Gaither, Andrew Carnegie, and George Herget, and copies of Carnegie’s and Herget’s letters to Miss Gaither. These photos and letters, which tell of the preparations to build a Carnegie library in Pekin, were preserved in the 1902 Carnegie library cornerstone time capsule.Among the items displayed during Business After Hours at the Pekin Public Library on April 8 were surviving blueprints of the 1902 Carnegie library, along with catalogues of the materials that were held by the Ladies Library Association and the Pekin Library Association, predecessors of the Pekin Public Library.The library artifacts exhibited during Business After Hours included the charter of incorporation granted to the Pekin Library Association in April of 1883. The charter was preserved in the 1902 library cornerstone time capsule.This metal container is the 1902 time capsule that held many of the artifacts and mementos that were displayed when the library hosted the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce’s Business After Hours on Thursday evening, April 8, 2021. The 1902 time capsule was enclosed in the cornerstone of the Pekin Carnegie library, and was opened May 31, 1973, prior to the demolition of the Carnegie library.On one end of the exhibit at Business After Hours were two of the library board’s old official seal stamps.Donna the Kangaroo, an orange plastic children’s rocking chair in the shape of a beloved character of an older generation of Australian children’s literature, is well-remembered by Pekinites for her many years in the Pekin Public Library’s Youth Services Department. Donna usually is kept safely in storage these days, but she came out the greet the attendees of the Pekin Chamber of Commerce’s Business After Hours on the library’s second floor Thursday evening, April 8, 2021. As part of the library’s 125th anniversary celebrations this year, the library will provide opportunities for photographs with Donna at 5 p.m. Tuesday, June 22, and again at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 26.
From the History Room 