Water-pumping windmills forerunner to wind turbines

By Bill Kemp. Published on February 26, 2017.
Today’s larger wind farms can include hundreds of 280-feet tall turbines and cover thousands of acres, generating enough megawatts to p...

Museum’s newly acquired Lincoln letter window into legal career

By Bill Kemp. Published on February 17, 2019.
The McLean County Museum of History, as part of its Presidents Day activities on Monday, will have on public display its recently acqui...

Harvey Hogg early martyr to Union cause

By Bill Kemp. Published on August 18, 2019.
The Civil War was a brutal, decidedly unromantic slog. By its cruel end, as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee’s armies blackened the V...

Phoenix Hall site of Lincoln’s last speech in Bloomington

By Bill Kemp. Published on November 17, 2019.
On April 10, 1860, five-and-a-half weeks before accepting the Republican nomination for president, Abraham Lincoln was in Bloomington t...

Undertaker’s invoice window into Bloomington’s rich past

By Bill Kemp. Published on February 9, 2020.
As a not-for-profit institution, the McLean County Museum of History depends on the generosity of the public to “grow” its object and a...

For pioneers, river crossings sometimes matter of life and death

By Bill Kemp. Published on March 21, 2021.
Of all the hardships faced by pioneers, the danger of crossing swollen rivers and creeks is one of the more difficult for present-day f...