Motorcar travel through Illinois on the Pontiac Trail, before Route 66.

In the first decades of the 20th century, most people who traveled long distances, such as from Chicago to Joliet, Bloomington, Springfield, or St. Louis, did so via the railroads. Travel by water was also possible, but mainly used for shipping cargo rather than passengers use. Roads were mainly used for local travel within municipalities, or in rural areas to travel from farms to the nearest rail depot or commercial harbor.

The main thoroughfare in Illinois was an unpaved road between Chicago and St. Louis. Following a northeast-southwest direction, this road was known by many names; Burlington Way, East St. Louis-Springfield-Chicago Trail, Mississippi Valley Highway, Greater Sheridan Road, and Lone Star Route. 

This trail had been officially christened and opened to travel as the "Pontiac Trail" in 1914. The name plates (signs) marking the course of the Pontiac Trail, the connecting highway between Chicago and St. Louis, were placed in position on the guide posts which were erected at intervals of a mile along this highway by the Goodrich Tire Co., showing the mileage to Chicago and St. Louis, and the nearest local towns.

These name plates bear, in addition to the name, “Pontiac Trail,” the full-length figure of an Indian upholding a map of the State of Illinois. 

The significance will be grasped at once, for this trail inevitably became Illinois Route 4, the great thoroughfare of the State, connecting as it does, its largest city with the metropolis of its western border, and passing through its capital as well as many other prosperous cities and villages, and the heart of the corn belt.

The appropriateness of the Indian figure to the name is likewise at once apparent, and for this great highway the name is doubly significant, for the famous chief whose name it bears, in the later years of his life, often crossed its course, since near its southern terminus he spent his last years and met his death, and his name was commemorated by the christening of one of the prettiest, and most prosperous and energetic of the many towns, through which the trail will pass.

These name plates were paid for and put up at the expense of the business men of the city of Pontiac, who are appreciative of the compliment paid their city by the naming of the trail, and who are also appreciative of the benefit their town will derive from being on the line of this splendid highway.

The naming of the trail after Pontiac, the great Indian, who was able by his genius and the power of his personality its midst and almost encircling the grounds of its famous Chautauqua, probably second in importance only to the parent institution in New York. Pontiac is primarily a city of homes and has infinite attractions as a residence town, although it also is celebrated for its shoes and is the site of the Illinois State Reformatory.

From Pontiac the trail pursues its way through the world’s garden to Chenoa, just across the line in McLean County, where it intersects another newly named and established road, “The Corn Belt Route,” from Logansport, Indiana, to Peoria.

Beyond Chenoa the trail passes between beautiful waving fields of oats and corn, through the prosperous agricultural towns of Lexington and Towanda, to Normal and Bloomington, contiguous cities, the former the seat of two State institutions, the Illinois Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home and the Illinois State Normal University, the latter especially, with its wide and beautifully shaded campus, being well worth visiting.

Bloomington is the queen of the corn belt. Devastated by a great fire on June 12, 1900, which burned over 10 acres of its business district, including the courthouse, with a loss of more that $2,000,000, the city has come to regard the fire as its greatest blessing, and today, its business district is devoid of those ramshackle, prehistoric structures which disfigure most cities, and Bloomington has no competition in the matter of looks among cities even twice its size.

At Bloomington are located the great car shops of the Alton Railroad, and here also is the Illinois Wesleyan University, a Methodist school of importance. Bloomington, with the adjoining town of Normal, also boasts many beautiful residences, miles of perfect pavement and some beautiful parks, and is well worthy of a special visit, and a day or two’s stopover by the motoring tourist.

Leaving Bloomington, the trail still continues through the heart of the corn belt, and a short distance south passes through the famous Funk farms near Funk’s Grove, with their thousands of acres of perfectly tilled land and model farm buildings and farm methods. Pioneers in progressive farming, the Funk family were also early and firm believers in good roads, and they did all the road work in their township at actual cost, making use of their farm tractors for the purpose.

Still southwestward, the trail takes its way through McLean, and Atlanta, and Lawndale to Lincoln, county seat of Logan County and an important railroad center, having important mining interests. Lincoln also has the State School and Colony, an institution for the feeble-minded, and the Illinois State Odd Fellow’ Orphans’ Home, a Presbyterian College, and it also has a Chautauqua, situated near the trail, and about two miles southwest of the city.

After Lincoln, the next large town on the trail is Springfield, the State capital, whose historic associations with the personality of Lincoln are too well known to need enlargement. His homestead and his grave are here, and the streets he walked in life, and here came at one time or another every conspicuous figure in the public life of Illinois. Here are the State House and many other public buildings, and here is located the State Fair, past whose grounds the trail enters Springfield, also passing the huge plant of the Illinois Watch Co.

At Springfield the trail is crossed by the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway {{PP-OO begun early in 1912 the route went from New York City to Los Angeles. PP-OO has fallen into obscurity, virtually unknown even to residents of the cities and towns along the old route.}}, and here another interchange of travel was thought to eventually be developed.

From Springfield, still in the main following the Alton Railroad, the trail leads to the historic old town of Carlinville, capital of Macoupin County, named after a former governor. From Springfield, south, fields of corn and oats have largely given place to wheat, and the towers of coal mines frequently break the horizon, for here the trail passes through an important coal-producing region, and here it has reached the ancient hunting grounds of the chief whose name it bears.

From Carlinville the road bears nearly due south, and at the important mining and manufacturing town of Collinsville, turns nearly west into East St. Louis and across the Mississippi to its destination.

The shortest route for motor travel between Chicago and St. Louis, with so many large and important towns on its course, and intersecting, as it does, so many important east and west thoroughfares, its rapid development as a highway is easily forecasted. It was a well-cared for highway, and following, as it does, State aid roads every inch of its length, its permanent improvement was rapid. The trail followed stone roads the entire distance from Chicago to Morris, a distance of about 60 miles, and at Morris there are about 2 ½ miles of concrete road. South of Pontiac, there are 5 miles of asphalt, stone and concrete road, and about 4 miles of concrete and crushed stone through Funk’s Grove. At Lincoln there are 2 ½ miles of concrete road, and at Springfield 3 or 4 miles of the same.

It was planned to form the Pontiac Trail Association, with a vice president in each township and an officer in each county through which the trail passes, for the purpose of improving the dirt roads along the route, and of hastening the coming of a permanent highway.

The Goodrich Tire Co., in addition to erecting the guideposts, prepared a road log of the route, copies of which can be obtained from the garages at the towns along the road, and from the superintendents of highways of the counties through which it passes.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

An odd detail on a map suggests Chicago may have once been home to an ancient effigy mound.

Effigy mounds {{Ancient Illinois Indian Mounds - A Technical Examination.}} are sacred burial places built by Indians between 800 and 1000 A.D. They are large earthworks made from soil, usually about 3 to 7 feet high, that form shapes that can be seen from overhead. Some look like bears, others resemble lizards or turtles.

Map of American Indian trails and villages of Chicago, and of Cook, DuPage and Will counties in 1804 was drawn by Albert F. Scharf, 1900, a surveyor and cartographer who took an interest in Chicago’s 19th-century geography.
Click for a High Resolution Map

We'll look for evidence that a lizard-shaped effigy mound actually existed in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, who built it, and why it disappeared. It turns out the answers to these questions illustrate how racism among early archaeologists prevented them from getting to the bottom of the effigies’ origins.

Scharf’s map shows a reptilian-shaped mound, called the “Effigy Mound Lizard,” located in the area now known as the Lakeview neighborhood. Effigy mounds are large earthworks made from soil, usually about 3 to 7 feet high, that form shapes that can be seen from overhead. 

Archeologists haven’t confirmed the existence of the effigy mound in Lakeview, but there is some archival evidence of its location. 

The Scharf map reconstructed a landscape that had been vastly transformed from an area with a few villages and trails to a major city with several outlying suburbs and roads. Scharf relied on accounts from Chicagoans old enough to remember the area before 1833.

His source for the location of the lizard effigy mound was likely an artist and amateur archaeologist named Carl Dilg, who was obsessed with Chicago’s archaeological history and on a personal quest to document the archaic sites of Chicago. As he wrote in a private letter, Dilg wanted to make sure Chicago’s history was not “smothered and killed.”

Dilg’s map shows a lizard-shaped mound on the block bounded by Oakdale Avenue, Sheffield Avenue, Wellington Avenue, and Mildred Avenue (formerly “May Street”), oriented from north to south, in the western third of the block.

The Chicago History Museum (formerly the Chicago Historical Society) has a large collection of Dilg’s papers, including notes he made from dozens of excursions to archaeological sites around Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s. They contain multiple references to a mound in Lakeview, which he referred to as a “lizard” or as a “serpent.” Dilg made several sketches of artifacts found near the mound as well as a map of the area now known as Lakeview, showing the exact location of the mound, which you can see in his map.

In Dilg's sketch of the side profile of the lizard mound,
he compares it to another archaeological site in California.

But Dilg didn’t include a precise description of the mound’s length, width, or makeup.

Still, there seems to be significant circumstantial evidence that he’d actually seen it. For one, his depiction of the mound shows the head facing south and tail facing north, as though the creature was walking south. This is consistent with other water spirit effigies that archaeologists have found in places like Wisconsin. Dilg’s sketches and notes also show the lizard-shaped mound had another round-shaped mound built adjacent or directly on the “lizard.” This is consistent with Potawatomi burial practice: The Potawatomi typically constructed conical burial mounds on the site of older effigy mounds. Finally, effigy mounds have been documented as close to Chicago as Aurora, so it’s possible effigy builders’ could have made it to Chicago.

But we know that there’s no lizard mound in Lakeview today, so if it did exist, then what happened to it?

About 15 years after Dilg made his sketches, Charles Brown, a distinguished archaeologist from Wisconsin, visited Chicago to review Dilg’s extensive work. Brown wrote about Dilg’s observations, including one sentence about the Lakeview effigy mound:

“A ‘lizard mound’ of doubtful origin was located on Oakdale Avenue and Wellington Street, under the present elevated station,” Brown wrote.

Brown’s notes suggest there was some kind of mound that was probably destroyed by the construction of the elevated train line that eventually became the Chicago Transit Authority’s Brown Line. His use of the phrase “of doubtful origin” suggests Brown, a leading expert on effigy mounds at the time, doubted the mound in Lakeview was a true effigy mound like those 800- to 1,200-year-old mounds in Wisconsin.

But archaeologist Amy Rosebrough says Brown has “been known to be wrong.” Brown’s doubt may simply reflect his own disdain at Dilg’s amateur approach to archaeology or his belief that Chicago was not part of the effigy mound builders’ territory, Rosebrough says.

Without a more complete record, Rosebrough and other archaeologists are not able to verify if Lakeview’s mound was an authentic effigy mound or merely a lump of earth that Dilg’s romantic imagination transformed into an ancient sculpture.

If we assume Dilg was correct and the Lakeview mound was in fact the same kind of effigy mound found in Wisconsin, that raises another important question that scholars and archaeologists have been asking for 200 years: Who built it?

Early American archaeologists believed the mounds may have been built by a mysterious “lost race” of “mound builders,” sometimes thought to be an earlier Native American civilization connected to Mayan, Aztec, or Incan cultures. Some have theorized the mound builders weren’t indigenous to the Americas, but instead were a lost tribe of Israel {{Is a Native American tribe one of the Lost Tribes of Israel?}} or a travelling culture, like the Phoenicians or Egyptians.

These hypotheses, which range from unlikely to absurd, reveal a bias common among white Americans in the 19th century: They didn’t believe contemporary groups like the Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi, or Ojibwe, who all lived in areas with effigy mounds, were sophisticated enough to build them.

Richard C Taylor, a writer who travelled through Wisconsin in the 1830s, was typical of the time. He wrote:

“But to a far different race, assuredly, and to a far different period, must we look when seeking to trace the authors of these singular mounds. … But who were they who left almost imperishable memorials on the soil, attesting to the superiority of their race?”

This prejudice made archaeologists slow to accept the idea that these mounds were built by the ancestors of the Indians who lived near the mounds. But eventually, beginning in the early 1900s, American archaeologists began a more deliberate effort to talk with Native Americans about effigy mounds. Charles Brown and Paul Radin, two Wisconsin based archaeologists, documented extensive conversations with Ho-Chunk people (then known as the Winnebago tribe).

The current consensus among archaeologists is that the mounds were built by several tribes or groups who might have been closely related and treated mound building as a ceremony. Archaeologists believe the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin are one of several tribal groups descended from people who built effigy mounds, including the Iowa and Winnebago of Nebraska.

Over the years, the Ho-Chunk have claimed to be the descendants of effigy mound builders. In an interview with the Portage Daily Register in 2016, Bill Quackenbush, the cultural resources officer for the Ho-Chunk, said he prefers not to explain the significance of the mounds to outsiders. He said people should try to appreciate the mounds rather than analyze and understand their exact meaning.  

Digging into effigy mounds was a popular pastime during the late 19th century.

“The culture that we live in today and society 100 years ago, they tried to do that,” he said. “They dug through them, they took screens out there, they shook the dirt and looked for every little piece of information they could. They couldn't find what they were trying to get. They had a preconceived notion in their heads already.”

So early settlers destroyed hundreds if not thousands of ancient sculptures, along with the historical record. They plowed under mounds to farm the land or levelled them and built homes on the sites. In some cases, early settlers claimed to have asked local Native Americans about the origins of the mounds without receiving a clear answer.

John Low, a Potawatomi Indian and professor of American Indian studies, says he’s suspicious of these accounts given that they took place during a power struggle over land.

“The natives may have said that because they aren’t going to share with people, who they regard as the enemy, the specialness they know about a site.” Or, Low suggests, the white settlers may have displayed selective memory.

“We may have been written out of the narrative,” he says. “If the knowledge the natives have about these sites had been transcribed, gosh, that sounds like the natives have more of a claim, and it sounds icky to walk them out to Kansas or Oklahoma.”

By the late 1800s, when Indians were no longer seen as a threat to westward expansion, white Americans became interested in many aspects of their culture, including effigy mounds. But that interest was not necessarily respectful, especially considering mounds often contain human remains. Archaeologists felt free to dig through burial sites and take home human remains for display. Amy Rosebrough describes the popular pastime of “mounding”:

“You take a family out on a picnic and give the kids a shovel and bucket, and they would dig into a mound and see what was there.”

Unless we find new evidence in an archive somewhere (perhaps missing pages from Carl Dilg’s manuscript), the “lizard effigy” of Lakeview will remain a mystery. That’s because so much of the historical record was lost when the mounds were destroyed, says scholar and Potawatomi Indian John Low. As a Native American, he feels like the destruction of the mounds represents a desecration and willful disrespect of his culture. But he also sees a universal human tragedy.

“It’s something we should all feel sad about when they’re lost,” he says. “Like when the acropolis is lost. Or the pyramids. Or stonehenge is lost. These too are part of the human record of achievement. What a shame.”

WBEZ
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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ADDITIONAL READING:
Ancient and Frontier Fortifications in Illinois.
Ancient Chicago Indian Mounds.
Ancient Illinois Indian Mounds - A Technical Examination.
Is a Native American tribe one of the Lost Tribes of Israel?

Charles Dadant, Bee-Culturist and the Story of the American Bee Journal (est.1861) in Hamilton, Illinois.

Charles Dadant, was born in 1817 in Vaux-Sous-Aubigny, a small village in eastern France, the second of seven children born to a small village doctor. He became interested in bees as he helped a neighboring priest remove honey from straw skeps at the early age of 12. Disillusioned with the business possibilities in France, he decided to accept an invitation of an old friend Mr. Marlot, then of Basco, Illinois, to come grow Champagne grapes and raise bees. In 1863, at the age of 46, he emigrated from France to America and settled in Hamilton, Illinois.

Charles Dadant

The growing of grapes here did not prove to be lucrative so he abandoned them in favor of honey bees. By the end of the Civil War, Charles had nine colonies of honeybees, and traveled with his young son, Camille Pierre Dadant across the Mississippi River to sell honey and beeswax in a neighboring town. His interest in making quality candles grew from his love and knowledge of beekeeping.

Charles was once the largest producer of extracted honey in America as well as one of the first to import queen bees from Italy on a large scale as he was unhappy with the common black or German bees he found here. He began a series of experiments on the size of hives and wrote a great deal on the large hive that appeared in both American and European journals.

In 1872 he was offered the editorship of the American Bee Journal, but refused because of his unfamiliarity with the English language. He learned to read the New York Tribune by digging at the words one at a time with a pocket dictionary so that he could then translate it back into French for his wife. Charles was a dreamer, a man with ideas and determination. He was the experimenter who became more widely known abroad than in his adopted country.

When his father wrote home to France that he had settled on a 40 acre farm north of Hamilton that he had purchased from Mr. Marlot, the rest of the family packed their trunks and started for the unknown land that Camille had only dreamed of. Camille was only 12 years old when his father brought the family to America. When he first saw the Mississippi he couldn’t believe how magnificent it was in its beauty, almost equal to a lake. He described living in the small log house that his father had built as the happiest time in his life.

Learning to read at the age of 4, Camille was more practical than Charles and was given the responsibility of carrying the purse strings at a very young age – he was the business man of the two. He built the business around his father’s knowledge and became a beekeeping leader. Every improvement and change for the better was made due to their own efforts and appreciated because of this. He would joke of a European business man and a little boy digging out oak trees and using a brush scythe to mow down all the hazel brush. The concept of a plow (pulling on the handles to go down and pressing down to bring it out of the dirt) went against all of his notions of mechanics. It was necessary for him to devote himself to the family farm and the sale of his father’s honey and farm products.

In 1871 when his father suffered from an asthma attack, it became necessary for him to take over the families 70 hives as well. Because there was no bridge across the Mississippi at this time, it was necessary for him to get up by 4:30 in order for him to get himself and goods to the ferry by 6:15. He considered himself lucky for many years that he was small because Captain Van Dyke never charged him for the ferry. He knew he was a grownup for the first time when the Captain held out his hand for a dime. He learned at a young age not to spend his money on candy or other desirable frivolities as it would be like throwing his money in the Mississippi for him and his family. He always got a good price for his wares when he sold them as he was a firm believer that “it pays to furnish good goods”.

In 1875 Camille married Marie Marinelli and took her to the same log cabin his father had taken his family to. In 1878, they began manufacturing foundation for their own use and later, for sale. As the business grew, they improved upon manufacturing methods and helped to finance the invention of the Weed sheeting machine, still in use today. In 1885, the revision of Langstroth’s, “The Hive and the Honey Bee” (PDF) was entrusted to them and four revisions appeared under their names from 1889 to 1899. Charles translated it into French and later it was translated into Italian, Russian, Spanish and Polish. Charles died in 1902 and Camille proceeded to produce four revisions of the book himself. In 1904, Camille retired and built a home in Hamilton on what is now North 7th street overlooking the Mississippi.

In his retirement he became a community leader helping to establish banks, the library, and was one of five to bring about the building of the dam between Hamilton and Keokuk. On his retirement, as he watched his three sons take over the business he stated; “So we have reared a family of beekeepers. Now they can speak for themselves and we can take a back seat and watch them work.” 

In 1912 however, his love of the honey bee beckoned to him once again. He assumed publishing of the American Bee Journal which has been published in Hamilton ever since. His goal was that the journal be the “finest publication on bees and beekeeping in the world.” Camille Dadant passed away in 1938.

Dadant and Sons is still in business with the sixth generation in control.

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The Story of the American Bee Journal, since 1912.

The story of the American Bee Journal, its origin, and Samuel Wagner, the first editor, must be closely associated with the Rev. L.L. Langstroth. In 1851, Langstroth had invented his movable-frame hive. In September 1851, a few weeks after a call on Langstroth, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Frederick Berg, pastor of a church in Philadelphia, visited Wagner and told him about this extraordinary beekeeper and his movable-frame hive and his beekeeping methods. They agreed that Wagner should go and see for himself, but it was not until August 1852, almost a year later, that he was able to do so.

  

After visiting Langstroth's apiary and seeing his hive, Wagner made a decision at a sacrifice to himself. He had corresponded with Dzierzon, discoverer of parthenogenesis, proponent of a practical system of beekeeping and author of a book entitled Rational Beekeeping. He had received permission to translate the book into English to be published for the improvement of American beekeeping. Wagner had made the translation, but it was never published. Recognizing the Langstroth movable frame hive as superior, he decided to encourage Langstroth to write a book instead; for his part, he would place all his store of information at Langstroth's service.

Langstroth quickly prepared the copy for the first edition of his book with the assistance of his wife, and Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee, A Bee-Keeper's Manual appeared in May of 1853.

Inasmuch as there were already two bee journals published in Germany, Langstroth made this prediction: "There is now a prospect that a Bee Journal will before long be established in this country. Such a publication has long been needed. Properly conducted, it will have a most powerful influence in disseminating information, awakening enthusiasm, and guarding the public against the miserable impositions to which it has so long been subjected."

Wagner established the American Bee Journal and its first issue appeared in January 1861, and from the start he had Langstroth as a contributor as well as an advisor. But after one year of publication, the Civil War resulted in the suspension of its publication until July 1866, when it was resumed.

To quote from Pellett's History of American Beekeeping, "The history of the American Bee Journal has been the history of the rise of beekeeping, and the one is inseparably linked to that of the other. Before this first copy of the first bee magazine in the English language appeared, there were few of the implements now in common use among beekeepers. Conventions of beemen had not been held, a practical smoker had not yet been invented, queen excluders were unknown, comb foundation was still to be perfected, the extractor had not come into use, nor had commercial queen rearing been suggested.

The early volumes of the Journal contain the names of many men of worldwide reputation in the beekeeping world. From the start, Langstroth was a contributor, but to mention a few of the others we would include Henry Alley, Adam Grimm, Moses Quinby, Elisha Gallup, Charles Dadant, Baron von Berlepsch and Dzierzon. Charles Dadant made his first contributions in November 1867, introducing himself as a newcomer from France. From then until his death in 1902, his name frequently appears as a writer in its pages.

For a long time, much space was devoted to the discussion of patent hives, and hundreds of different kinds received attention. In one year, 1869, more than 60 patents were recorded on hives and appliances, which gives one an understanding of the public interest in beekeeping at that time. Charles Dadant's defense of the Langstroth patented beehive, which appeared in the Journal, had an important place in the final judgment which awarded credit to the frail minister who profited little from his effort.

In the 1870's, a number of other bee publications were started, some of which continued publication for a time. Most made their beginnings after that of Wagner in 1872. The American Bee Journal was continued by Wagner's son with the assistance of Langstroth, who may have done most of the editorial work until January, 1873, when the Rev. W. F. Clarke became editor and owner. When Samuel Wagner resumed publication of the Journal after the Civil War, it was published in Washington, D.C., but when Clarke assumed its management, he moved the Journal to Chicago, Illinois.

Clarke's connection with the Journal was short - in July of 1874, Thomas G. Newman purchased the American Bee Journal. Thomas G. Newman continued as editor and publisher until April 1892, when George W. York joined the staff and the masthead of that issue lists Newman as editor and York as assistant editor. The announcement of the sale of the Journal to George W. York appears in the June 1897 issue and the masthead reads: "Published weekly by George W. York & Co."

York continued editing and publishing the American Bee Journal as a weekly. In the May 1912 issue, is published a letter, dated April 1, 1912 and signed by George W. York, that announced he had sold the American Bee Journal and his business to Camille Pierre Dadant, Hamilton, Illinois. The masthead reads: "CamilleDadant, Editor; Dr. C.C. Miller, Associate Editor." Thus the American Bee Journal was moved to Hamilton where it has been published ever since. In 1916 Camille Pierre Dadant hired Frank C. Pellett as staff correspondent. Pellett later was to be designated field editor, associate editor and editor.

M.G. Dadant, returning from college at the University of Illinois, joined the staff of the Journal in October 1918, and his name appears in that issue as business manager. A title he was to hold until the death of his father, Camille Pierre Dadant. About the same time, G.H. Cale, Sr., was employed to take care of the Dadant apiaries, and his name first appears in the October 1928 issue of the Journal as an associate editor, and later he became designated editor on the death of Camille Pierre Dadant in 1938.

During the 1940s through the 1960s, Journal editors and associate editors included M.G. Dadant, Frank C. Pellett, J.C. Dadant, Roy A. Grout and Adelaide Fraser. In 1965, Vern Sisson came on board, first as an assistant editor and later as editor during the early 1970s. Others assisting with the Journal during the early 1970s included Dale Maki and Jim Sheetz. Bill Carlile, long-time columnist and Dadant beekeeper, also assisted in editorship duties during the 1970s. In 1974, Joe Graham was hired as editor and he has continued in this position until the present day.

Camille Pierre Dadant had earlier written, "I want the American Bee Journal to be the finest publication about bees and beekeeping in the world." We, the editors who are continuing its publication, have this as our goal and guiding light.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.