SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to VC History. I want to thank you for joining us. I'm Lara Conklin, and I am a member of the committee that's celebrating the 200th anniversary of Vermillion County, Illinois. And with me today is Jacqueline Woodard Smith. And Jackie is also a member of that committee and uh has just a wealth of knowledge of African American history in Vermilion County. And today I had questions. Jackie was with us once before, and she told us about a blacksmith in Ridge Farm. And we didn't have a chance to chat for very long. So Jackie's back with us today, and I have questions. I have seen um one of the one of the paintings on the wall, one of the wall dogs uh paintings that was for uh a Danville fire department that was an all-black firefighter staff. So let's talk about that. How did that happen and where was it?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Okay. Um there was an election in about 1903. Okay. And at that particular time, uh Mayor Beard uh was running against another person, and he uh talked to the black voters that if they would vote for him, he would make um concessions and allowances to create more opportunities for them, and one of them was to have them man an all-black fire station, which is fire station number two on Walnut Street.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

So um as the outcome came, the people voted for him and he kept his promise, although other opponents felt that he wouldn't, he tried to persuade the black people that you know he's not going to keep his word, but he did. And so 1903 um he appointed four members of the black community to fire station number two. And one of the first persons was uh Marshall Miller, who had previously been a police officer.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Which I thought was rather unusual.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So Marshall was his name, not his title. He wasn't he wasn't a marshal, his name was Marshall.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

His name was Marshall. He was a police officer for the Danville Police Force in 1896.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Wow, that had to be unusual.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, actually, it was two of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah, him and another guy named James uh Cunningham. So um they uh appointed at this particular time, you were appointed to the department uh by the mayor or whoever was in political office at that time. So as long as that person was in political office, you had a job. Oh, okay. So then the next term came around and another mayor went in, he may reappoint you or he may appoint someone else. So a lot of times between the 1903, when they started to 1930, when they changed ruling on um pensions, they started a civil pension in the 1930s. All that time between there, the firemen would come and they would go and they may come back.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Oh, so every time, every time there was a new mayor, they might have different different uh people who they want in place. Did they always keep it as an all-black station? It was always an all-black station. So for almost 30 years it was an all-black station?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

No, from 1903 to 1960s. 1960s, okay. Uh-huh. Even when it moved to the new station on Vermillion in Chester, it was still an all-black for probably the first five years or so, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

And then they started bringing in other um people.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Because um in the 60s they was going through civil rights and integration.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Um, from my studies, I find that the at the time there was only eight black firemen. And they were all happy with the situation the way it was.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

They didn't have any issues being in their own home. Right. Uh, they worked well with the other houses whenever they were called to fires. Uh, and you know, but I think it was more the community because the what was in the air.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Uh, you know, like, well, this is, you know, they're not going to have opportunities. Uh, but the black firemen felt that as long as they were left alone, they would have the opportunities to grow and to be promoted up the line. And uh, but I uh to me, the integrating of the firehouse kind of dampened the uh black firemen going in.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So the first one was on Walnut Street. And I'm trying to remember like between was it Clay and Woodbury, I think. Okay, so more in the area now that is behind the big four. Okay, okay. Um, so not the Renaissance area, but the more like where the so the Big Four and Rawhide and where the where the train tracks came come through. Okay. And so then the second one you said was Vermilion and Chester Street across uh Caddy Corner from St. Larman. Okay, so it was so it's very close to where the current station is now.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

No, it's that is the current station. That is the station.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Okay, okay, so that station replaced the one that was down on okay. That that's actually a uh significant change of neighborhood. Um I mean that's gosh, that's gotta be a mile away or more. Or more, yes. Yeah, okay. So did the um did they have black firefighters in any of the other houses? No. So they were confined to house number two? Well we wouldn't say confined to the confined, but that was where they were where they were. Okay, and um did that did that grow out of um, I mean, obviously the political thing, but was the location of that firehouse because there was a significant black population in that area?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

No, uh actually in that firehouse they served downtown, the north end, and all the higher end, like Maywood on the other side of Logan. They served the upper crust of Danville.

unknown 7:08

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

That's interesting. And the upper crust of Danville preferred them to come. Okay, why? Because they knew how to put the fire out without tearing the house up. Oh, well, isn't that interesting? And without tearing the house up, and they bought their what they call their bucket brigade, and they bought their brooms and mops, and when they got finished fighting a fire, they would clean up as much of the mess as they could.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Wow, that's service. Yeah. I um my daughter will be 28 next month, but when she was three months old, we had a house fire. Uh we had a fire in a chimney. And we called fire department and God bless the Kickapoo Fired fire department. They were really quick and they put out the fire, but they did. They they um they didn't necessarily clean up after themselves, but they had like things that they put down on the floor so that they wouldn't mess up all the floor getting to the part that was needing the fire put out. And so that was that was probably an early version of that of that. So I can see where that would be very much appreciated because if on top of having a piece of your house burnt down, you also had this huge mess to deal with. Well, how nice. Yes. Now, is there a reason why they were particularly neater?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Uh, I think it was just their nature. Okay. Uh, it was just something they felt that needed to be done, and they just did it.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Okay. So in the 60s, then things integrated, but I know that we have had um we have had a fire chief that was African American. Um and we've had a police chief that was African American.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

That that was what in the 70s, 80s when he became um the police chief whose name escapes me now. Carl Alexander. Yes, chief Alexander. Um, he was police chief, he was chief of police when I came to DAC in 2000. Okay. So much later. Later. But I I swear there was someone um in the fire department also.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Uh there was Norman Day, he became chief fire inspector. Okay. Um, we did have fire captains. Uh-huh. But I have not come across another fire chief.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah. I had captains. Okay. And like I said, Norman Day became chief as a fire inspector. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Well, I was thinking there was a while when Chief Alexander was over both. Maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Okay. Yeah. That he was more like a public safety director. Both. Um briefly. Um but then, of course, at DAC, um, we have a connection to one of the firefighters, Lester Potts, who's a lieutenant, I think. Um and uh so it's nice that there's that tradition continues. It continues.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

And I do believe, if I remember correctly, possibly one of his relatives had been a firefighter at one time. But he is the last of the black firefighters. Lester is.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Okay, I had not noticed that.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Yeah, uh unless they come up with some more. I have not um run across any or heard of any ones other than Lester, and he's probably close to retiring.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

He probably wanted to retire a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yeah. Uh, but I find that um the firemen they were pretty unique because they worked, you know, several days in a row, then were off. Uh, but it seemed like a lot of them had other jobs or side capabilities that they did.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Um, during their off time, one ran a service station, and um the others ran restaurants.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Uh they were politically minded, several of them ran for offices. Um so they were, you know, really ingrained and meshed into the community and tried, you know, to provide as much service as they could. Um I um my connection with it was I had an uncle who was uh fireman at number two when it was on Walnut Street. Oh wow. So from a little kid I would go there with my cousin and um it was always a good feeling in my heart when I go by there. Oh sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

But uh does the firehouse still exist? It still exists.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Okay uh is being used by uh Habitat uh Habitat Humanity.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

There they had their office there. I uh had recently went there, I guess maybe like in October, to try to get some pictures of some of the leftover uh uh original uh parts of the buildings.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Well, because I had seen like uh if you go on Fairchild and Bowman, I think there's um there's an old fire station that's uh it's that's uh Fairtown and Bowman's Germantown. Germantown. Um so I wondered if uh like the different firehouses, if the different communities that were that were moving in and making up Danville formed their own sort of probably because Germantown would have been the Lutheran area.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

So that probably you know went all the way down to Griffin Street and maybe beyond. Okay. And that area there.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Okay, so um, but yeah. So tell me about we haven't talked very much about your job at the library because you help with genealogical research, right? Yes. So what do you how do you do that? Do you do you uh cooperate with the genealogical society? Do you only look up resources that are at the library?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

At uh okay, um at the moment, as I work with the library, I used and what and all the information that I have done has been from resources from the library.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

So I've used newspapers, uh, census records, uh city directories, um files uh from the fire department or whatever. Um I have a program that I call Pardon Me Brother, where I collect information on African Americans uh throughout Vermilion County. And as I collect them, I put the pages together to create stories so I can see what people did. And that's how I'm able to uh uh um come up with how the fire department ran.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Right. So um so we talked about we talked about the blacksmith and his family in Ridge Farm. Um today the the I think of the word the the bulk, the majority of the African Americans in Vermilion County live in Danville. The majority of the majority, not all, yeah, not all. The smaller towns have quite a few, quite a few, but the majority live in, if you think about Vermilion County, you think about Danville as having the the biggest minority population of any kind. Um what about we had Tom Sweeney here last time talking about Hupston? Okay. Um like did we have African American settlers in other parts of the county early on?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Um was very early. My family came from Hupston through to Rankin.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Um they arrived there probably 18 uh 1880s.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

And um my great-great-grandfather was there with his wife. Uh they separated. He was a uh uh AME minister and he moved on, but his daughter stayed and married uh Dan Woodard, and Dan Woodard moved to Rankin and helped form Rankin. Okay. And he was a barber there until he died. Uh Hubston had quite a few black residents. Um if you know the Archie family, okay, uh, Faye Archie. Uh her family came from that, uh, her husband's family lived there for a while. And um and um they would come, they would the black people in in in the Hubston, Alvin, I found them in Rossville. I had the uh Martin Petey was listed as the first black justice of peace uh peace, and he was from Catlin. Okay, and this was about 1860, 1870s.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

So by so Civil War ends 1865. By eight late 1860s, 1870s, we have a black man who has been named a justice of the peace. So did most of the families, and you may not know this, we'll just we're just having a conversation. Um I'm assuming most of the families moved into Vermilion County after the Civil War?

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Most of them. Um I do find some that maybe came right before. Um I'm trying to distinguish between my free families and my enslaved families. Right. Because I I am finding there were free families that had moved into the area. So free families that had always been free? Mm-hmm. Or or had always been freed or were freed. Okay. Before they came this way.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Okay. And then we know that in in Ridge Farm, Abraham Smith was one of the conductors on the Underground Railroad. Did he just move people on and out, or did he move people into Vermillion County?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

I would say probably both. Okay. Because another thing I have found during my research, and but I haven't found concrete evidence of it. Um, there was an article in the newspaper that said there was an underground railroad station at the end of um Vermilion Street at the river. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Which would make sense because that's that's how folks traveled.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Traveled by the river. And if they started out at Abraham's inn Ridge Farm, they would have taken maybe a little vermilion and come up that way. Um, or whatever that river is down there. Right. I don't know which tributary that is. Um, and uh this was at a uh lumber yard at the end of Vermillion Street, and I haven't found concrete evidence of it. It was an article in the paper stating that this doctor was ran out of town because he had discouraged or um said something bad against the black people in the town and and the fact that the Underground Railroad and the people in the town at that particular time did not like what he said. Oh and ran him out of town and said he had to swim across the river to get away. But uh I keep looking to find more information. More information about to see if it actually was true being there. Right. Uh there was a prominent family, the family name was Lamb L A M M. And they had a lumber company here, and they end up going west and buying property, Timberland. And I think they even had a town in Oregon. Okay. So um, but that's all I could find on, you know, I just couldn't find no definite information on that.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

I know um this spring there was a presentation at the library. Well, it was a a a lengthy uh display, but there was there was a woman who did a presentation at the library about um the connection in Illinois to just in Illinois in general to the Underground Railroad. And mostly because of the Mississippi River, most of that activity ended up on the western side of the state. But and I was surprised to find that um even in Illinois, which we consider to be a free state, people had ownership of enslaved people, of enslaved folks. And that was called indentorship. Right. Uh-huh. Um, and that they right, so with the indentured. And and if, you know, if you had an indentured woman and she had a child, that child also indentured. And it was, you know, for a period of 30 years or whatever. So the mother might make the end of her time, but the child would still be indentured. Um with the promise of freedom at the end, maybe possibly, supposedly.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yes, and then the black laws, you know, uh, and I always wonder about the because the black laws required you to have a bond of like $500 to be in the state. And I'm wondering, you know, okay, well, a lot of the black people maybe came with a white person or a white person, put up their bond uh for them to be there. And I'm like, you know, there was quite still quite a few, so I was always wondering how that worked, you know, with the bond, you know, because everybody $500 back then was a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Oh my goodness, $500 now is a lot of money. And back then it's been I mean that's like a lifetime's earning. Right. So but all of that technically ended at the end of the Civil War. Or did indent did the indentured process still continue?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Um not quite sure. I'm thinking it might have kind of lingered on a bit longer. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Well, I know the lady who did the presentation at the library had several really good stories about. In particular, women who um maybe they were in the endangered situation and managed to make their way out. And the the the folks uh in the Quaker community were abolitionists and generally were helpful in that process.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

They were uh like the most helpful uh helping people get uh through the uh different states and uh up through the freedom.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

But again, if you think about um, you know, I've I can tell my age a little bit, I've been out of high school for 41 years. Okay. So you know, you I've made a family, whatever. Um but if you talk about black men who were on the Danville police force in the 1890s, that's you know, less than 30 years beyond the end of slavery.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Um it to me, from what I have seen, that black folks did real well at the end of slavery. Um, a lot of them came here, created businesses, uh, grew up families. And another thing that surprised me by 1900, a lot of them owned their own homes. And like today, not too much many of us really own our homes, but they own their homes and for you know long periods, and you know, brought up.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Well, I know um on a previous show I talked to um Mrs. Mervis, Sybil Mervis, and um I asked her why, you know, in Danville we had we had Mies brothers and there were a couple of others that Jules Grouse. Yeah, and um I said, you know, well, why why does it seem like there were these like clothing stores or general stores that had Jewish owners? Um or you know, her husband's business actually started out his father or maybe even grandfather was just like a kind of a junk man, you know, pick up stuff. And and she said that um Jews knew they they weren't going to be hired by anyone else, so they started their own business, um, you know, got enough money to start their own business, and then that wasn't a problem for them to be hired by someone else, and especially like the with the um with the tra not trash, but the um odds and ends guys, it was you know 50 cents and a horse, and you could do this and then take things up to Chicago to be recycled and and make money. Um, is that kind of the same situation with the black community and the way they esta came and established their businesses after the Civil War, or was they or they just really an entrepreneurial spirit?

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Um those who had specific skills and mainly barbers seemed to be the biggest um jobs.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Uh quite a few black men were barbers, and um they came and established their barbershops, and that helped bring up other ones. And um later on in the time period, they had restaurants or boarding houses.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Okay. Now this is gonna sound really bad, but were I mean I know even the end of slavery, there were still there were still racists, there were still bigots. Were white people living in their boarding houses? Or were they boarding houses for other black people? That I haven't found out yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

They were m mainly in the black areas, but Danville always has been black and white in most communities. There's not really any community that is just all strictly black, with or all well, maybe all strictly white, but not all strictly black. There's always been a white person or so that lives within the community.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Well, I know my mom, um, you know, my mom's gonna be 79 in December. And she and her brother, who's a year older than her, um, when my grandparents, when my grandfather came back from the Second World War and they had kids and they were, you know, just starting out, um they lived in Fair Oaks. Uh for years they lived in Fair Oaks.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

It seemed to me like Fair Oaks was more in the beginning. Uh they had more white people out there than they did blacks, and then later on the blacks started moving in. Um so, but Fair Oaks always was started out with a lot more white folks. Carber Park and Beelard Terrace maybe was m all black.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Being, you know, within their communities.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Well, I know they didn't move out of Fair Oaks until my great-grandmother passed, and my great-grandfather um had a home and and said, come, you know, come live with me, and they became an extended family home. Okay. Um on 7th Street. But um, but yeah, they they lived at Fair Oaks until that happened. I think my I think my mom and my uncle were still fairly young. I don't believe they had started school yet when they made that move. Okay. Um, but you know, that was and I actually know somebody who's only about six years older than me who eventually ended up living in Georgetown. But he and his family, I mean, single mom raising three kids, ended up growing up at Fair Oaks for us until she remarried.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

So So at that time, you know, they were, you know, that was 70s. Yeah, they were decent apartments, you know. It had everything that you needed. You know, a place for the kids to go out and play, you had a community. So, you know, I think, you know, in the beginning they were good places to be. You know.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

I think there's still a community. I mean, I think that's still any place where you have friends and neighbors can be a good place to be. Um that's one of the things I think my daughter misses when she has moved to a more urban setting is you know, finding that community. Right, right. Those those supportive people that you you will have a potluck with or something. So um so then when they when they formed the fire department and the the black officer left the police department, went to the fire department. Did the police department continue to have black officers? Or they did.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Okay. Not you know, not a whole lot. Uh another officer, he came in about 1910, and that was a guy named Arthur Reed, and he was there for a while.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Okay, okay. So I I think I think the thing that um well I like our conversations is to show that um at least in Vermilion County, um the the the black and white communities have been integrated to a point. I mean to a point. To a point. I I don't I when you when you say when you say 1900, you don't think about black firefighters and black police officers. You think of that as something that happened in the 70s when you know after civil rights and that was something that was made to happen. Um but it happened organically here here in the 1800s, then the civil rights team in the 18th century. Had its own influence, yeah. Um, so I I find that fascinating. Um, I you know, I find it very interesting that the uh the more um economically blessed homes appreciated having the black firehouse. Um and you know, I think we need to talk about that more and about how how the how the communities worked together and appreciated one another. Okay. Um I I just it in general, I think I think in general conversations need to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

But when I talk to other people, uh you know, in the library, I get all kinds of people coming in and they'll say, Well, I remember the fire department, you know, I live next door, and I would go over there and the men would play uh games with us, or they might feed us lunch or something like that. So uh people who were around the fire department or the firemen at that time, I think had a close or a good feeling towards them. Um like one of the older um s some of the uh later firemen who came in probably after the 50s, uh, like I said, they are all civic minded. So they would go out in the communities, they were, you know, members of either the Elks or the Masons. Uh they had a couple other social clubs, the Dad Civic Club, the tuxedo clubs, uh, that they would, you know, go out and raise money, uh maybe have scholarships, uh, little queen contests or you know, just or dances or things, you know, for the community. And a lot of the firemen were involved with these organizations and took their skills, you know, out.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Okay, so I've heard of the elks, I've heard of the Masons. What is a tuxedo club?

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Um, it was a club, I think it started maybe the late 60s, 70s, and um it was just some men. Uh and like I said, they just got together every so often or whatever. And it I don't I evidently it didn't last that long.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Lodges used to be a thing in the 60s and 70s, didn't they? I remember Fred Flintstone and his grand poopah thing. Uh-huh. Yeah, lodges were very, you know. Lodges were a big deal. Right. Men had to get away from all of us pesky women.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Well, and then the women had their little section. And then they had one for youth.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

I was part of the one of the youth uh organizations at one time, so that was kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

So I watch um Finding Your Roots with Henry Lewis Gates. Love that. Love that show. Um, but they have talked many times about how um, especially um African Americans have a really hard time tracing roots back into the early 1800s. Um, you help with genealogical research and you say you have city roles and things. Um, Illinois was more of a freed state. So uh, you know, I I when I watch and they'll do the the family background of a black star actor or someone, they'll get into you know their roots in the south and they'll just be listed as you know, Negro, male, and an age. Um do our city records and census records here in this state do they do more with an actual name? List them by names.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Okay. List them by name, whatever the census, the general census, not because when you're talking about listing them by uh uh uh sex and numbers, it was just so called the slave census. Okay, and they were you know list the owner's name, and under that owner he had this male and this male was this age and whatever. But uh here the federal federal census would list them by names. Okay. Uh if it was a census year where they took uh birth dates, okay, they would have that in there.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Okay. So if somebody wanted to start um doing some background research on their family, and they felt, you know, we we did the thing um with the 200 committee and with IGHS where they're doing the pioneer families and and I've been trying hard to get my get a couple of people in that pioneer situation.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

I got on maybe about this close to it.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

So how do you I mean if if I came to you and said, I think my family's been here that long, how do I start? What would you what would you tell me?

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Okay, I tell them start with themselves and go back as far into their family as they can.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

So they want to go back, uh, depending on what their age is now, uh, go back to their great-grandparents. Where were they in okay, our cutoff date was 1870, 1872, right around there?

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Uh, find out where they were then. Okay. And that way, uh, and if you can get that far back, uh, you might be able to get a little bit further.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

I mean, obviously you can do the um, you know, the the various services, but if you wanted to try and do it on your own.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

On your own, you would have to talk to the elders.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Uh, if there's a family Bible, and if the family bible was kept up with birth, deaths, and marriages, that would help. Um, but to do it on your own, I mean, you would still would have to access some online online service. Okay. Um, unless you want to go to every state. Right, right, okay. Or call a state or write a write them and say, hey, I think my family was here at this time. Can you, you know, look and see? Right. So, you know, um right now it's basically you really need the online service to be able to follow. When I started, um, the online services were just starting. And um, so I was at the library and I would just be going through census. Census and city directories were the best things to find. Um we happened to have at the library uh some birth records and some death records, but they only went up to like 1915.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

So, you know, if after that you you you couldn't figure out, you know, where or what time and that people were.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

I remember um when Bob Pape would keep up a list of the deaths in the area, and that that was an amazing resource.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

That is, and um we use that daily. Okay. We use it daily, and it went down one time, and we were just like what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Are they still keeping it up now that he's gone?

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Yeah. Okay. As far as I can tell, yeah. Okay, all right. Like I said, we use it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

I've looked up information about a great grandpa.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Uh determine when a person died.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

And so we can go to the newspaper now that we've got our newspapers digitized.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

It helps us go to the newspaper to get the picture.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Are your newspapers digitized? 1863. So you have digitized records of newspapers, I'm assuming commercial news.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Commercial news, um, the Daily Banner, Daily Uh Democrat, and whatever early papers we had before the commercial news. Just in Danville, though, right? Just in Danville is what we have digitized. Okay. We do have market film for Hoofston, Rankin. I think we might have a few Westville.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Um and maybe just a few other areas.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

So if you want to go through the microfish, you can still you can access some of those back uh. Yeah, we don't have a really deep of them, but we do have some. Okay. Well, that sounds great. Jackie, I love having you talk to me. Um, I love the resources at the library. I I don't, you know, we we've all gone so digital that we forget that you can just go to the library and learn things and that there are staff there that will help you if you don't know where to get started. Um thank you for satisfying my curiosity about the fire department because I have seen that painting on the side of the building. Honestly, I thought that's where the I thought that's where it was because they put it there. And so make it really look like good to know that that's not at all where it was. Um, and I I I love having you come and talk to me, and you know, we may come back again at some point because you've got all kinds of stories to tell. So I'm still digging them out.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

I'm digging them out. I'm gonna tell me the story.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

So thank you very much, and thank you for joining us uh on VC History.