Galesburg, IL

It's been a stopping place for Sheehans.
My sister, the family genealogist, directed my interest to Galesburg through some of her research. That is she has found documentary evidence that some of our family lived there for a time.


What follows below are some notes I have taken about the place to add to the fact that Sheehans have lived there. I've waited so long to offer these notes that I have forgotten which Sheehans were there and when they were there. 


It may have been that my great-, great- paternal grandfather was there in the mid-1800s.


Sheehans may have been a large percentage of the population. I think that census enumerators of 1850 found only 323 inhabitants in Galesburg.


Galesburg is what has been called a railroad town, and was once an important trail-head for the western frontier. Lake Storey is there.


The town has other things to recommend it. It was the place where the first anti-slavery society in Illinois was founded in 1937. It was a stop on the 'underground railroad.' In 1858 it was the site of the fifth Lincoln-Douglas debate. That debate took place on a temporary platform attatched to Knox College's old main building.


Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg.


The Marx Brothers may have first received their nicknames there at the Gaity Theater in 1914.


Below I name a few other notable inhabitants of Galesburg other than Sheehans:
~ Mother Bickerdyke, a Civil War nurse of some fame.
~ Ira Clifton Coply, founder of the Coply Press.
~ George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. inventor of the Ferris Wheel(my guess was that it was called ferris for being made of steel).
~ Ronald Reagan, 40th Pres.
~ Sewal Wirts, founder of modern population genetics.
~ Edgar Lee Masters graduated from Knox College.
~ Jack Finney, writer of "The Body Snatchers" was a Knox grad.
~ Rose Ponenzani,folk singer, and Knox grad.