Monday, March 1, 2021

My Photographs and Story about the Lincoln Funeral Reenactment on May 2, 2015, in Springfield, Illinois.


I attended the Lincoln Funeral reenactment in Springfield, Illinois on May 2, 2015. The funeral reenactment began with the amazing replica of the funeral train hearse car with a replica of President Lincoln's coffin, and an exact replica of the original horse-drawn hearse.
The Staab Family Livery of Springfield, Illinois, in association with the lead builder and recreation craftsman Jack G. Feather, of the Tombstone Hearse Company in Tombstone, AZ. Feather had gathered historians and expert craftsmen to recreate this historic vehicle. It was the centerpiece of the 150th Anniversary commemoration of Abraham Lincoln’s entombment and celebration of his life and legacy.
I was given a VIP pass by Dr. Samuel Wheeler, the Director of Research and Collections for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation in Springfield, and later the Illinois State Historian.
I was given this brass 1865-2015 Lincoln 150 Year Funeral Reenactment, Lapel Pin.
Arriving early, I was able to gain entry to the staging area allowing me to take some photographs away from the gathering crowds.
In order to be historically accurate, all military participants will be in Union uniforms. Reenactors from the Confederate States may attend but they were asked to come as Union soldiers or to portray civilians. Special permission was needed to portray any historical person. There must have been at least 10,000 people, both reenactors, and civilians. 
I spoke with photographer Robert Taunt, a historical reenactor from La Crosse, Wisconsin, representing the Mathew Brady Photographic Studio. He was using an authentic 1860s stereo camera to document the funeral procession, along with the modern 3-D camera on the tripod. I gave him my business card to send me some of the photos he took.
Robert Taunt shooting stereo photographs that produce stereoscopic view cards. Stereograph photography became extremely popular in the 1850s. Cameras and view cards were sold commercially in the thousands. Their popularity waned slightly in the 1880s but commercial companies such as Underwood & Underwood repopularised them in the 1890s.













Abraham Lincoln Springfield Funeral Stereograph. A very rare stereoview on an orange mount, identified as "Funeral of Lincoln at Springfield Ill." The image shows the coffin being carried in a six-horse wagon, surrounded by a cordon of soldiers on May 2, 1865. Soldiers with rifles line the parade route, keeping spectators back. Flags are furled or flown at half-staff, while people stand on roof-tops to get a better view of the procession. Lincoln was buried on May 3rd.
















A young boy volunteers as a street sweeper, following horses in the precession.
Copyright © 2015, Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

Sunday, February 28, 2021

The Prehistoric Old Stone Fort, Saline County, Illinois.

The Stone Forts of Illinois.
One of the unique prehistoric phenomena of Southern Illinois is the ruins of stone walls which have traditionally been known as "stone forts." They appear in the rough east-west alignment across the hill country and appear to form a broken chain between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. These ruins have similar geographic site characteristics. They are generally located on bluffs, which are often finger-like promontories of land with steep cliffs on three sides and a gradual incline on the fourth. It was across these inclines leading to the top of the bluff that these stone walls are most generally located, hence the theory of a pound or game trap, has been advanced.

Many of the walls have long been torn down and removed for building purposes. Early settlers, in most instances, removed the better slab-like stones for building foundations, leaving only the rubble. These early white pioneers saw the walls and thought of them in terms of their own experiences, particularly from the standpoint of defense against the Indians. Though they called them stone forts, these sites would be very poor places to carry on prolonged fights.

If a small band took refuge behind the wall, they might be pushed over the cliff by a larger attacking force. Or a larger force could lay siege to the place, and the band would be cut off from both food and water and soon starve to death. Although they called them "forts," many people did not accept such a theory, and speculation continued.

Archaeologists believe that particularly in Ohio, the Hopewellian Indians probably were responsible for some of the walls, but the identity is not known. These walls represent a major accomplishment for a people who had only primitive digging implements and methods of carrying or moving heavy stones. These unknown builders piled rock completely across summits, leaving inside enclosures sometimes as large as 50 acres, depending upon the size of the bluff.
The Old Stone Fort in Southern Illinois lies between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.




Another fort built almost exactly as the Makanda Fort is the fort that lies southwest of Carrier Mills in Saline County. The old fort site is found four miles east of the present town of Stonefort in Williamson County and seven miles east of Creal Springs, Illinois. Its area is almost the same as Makanda's Fort and research into the Archivo General de Indias at Seville, Spain (the repository of extremely valuable archival documents illustrating the history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas) shows that such a fort was spoken of by DeSoto in 1542. 


This old fort is on top of a hill, which is almost inaccessible. The walls are constructed of large stones and the whole reminds one of the ruins of a once well-constructed fortification. It has gone to ruin more or less within the past one or two years. The first house in the vicinity was one built in 1831 by J. Robinson. The village of Stonefort is situated atop a ridge that rises above the South Fork Saline River valley to the north and the Little Saline River valley to the south. The village of Stonefort was established in late 1858 and was originally located about a mile to the southeast, near the edge of the bluff. There were houses there earlier. 
Some scholarly visitor named the ruins Cyclop Walls, but most people simply call it old Stone Fort.


When the Cairo and Vincennes Railroad was completed through the area in the 1870s, Stonefort's public buildings were dismantled and moved to the village's present location, which was adjacent to the railroad tracks. The former site of the village is now listed as "Oldtown" on maps which is 1.8 miles northwest of Stonefort.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Saturday, February 27, 2021

The Prehistoric Makanda Stone Fort, Jackson County, Illinois.

The Stone Forts of Illinois.
One of the unique prehistoric phenomena of Southern Illinois is the ruins of stone walls which have traditionally been known as "stone forts." They appear in the rough east-west alignment across the hill country and appear to form a broken chain between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. These ruins have similar geographic site characteristics. They are generally located on bluffs, which are often finger-like promontories of land with steep cliffs on three sides and a gradual incline on the fourth. It was across these inclines leading to the top of the bluff that these stone walls are most generally located, hence the theory of a pound or game trap, has been advanced.

Many of the walls have long been torn down and removed for building purposes. Early settlers, in most instances, removed the better slab-like stones for building foundations, leaving only the rubble. These early white pioneers saw the walls and thought of them in terms of their own experiences, particularly from the standpoint of defense against the Indians. Though they called them stone forts, these sites would be very poor places to carry on prolonged fights.

If a small band took refuge behind the wall, they might be pushed over the cliff by a larger attacking force. Or a larger force could lay siege to the place, and the band would be cut off from both food and water and soon starve to death. Although they called them "forts," many people did not accept such a theory, and speculation continued.

Archaeologists believe that particularly in Ohio, the Hopewellian Indians probably were responsible for some of the walls, but the identity is not known. These walls represent a major accomplishment for a people who had only primitive digging implements and methods of carrying or moving heavy stones. These unknown builders piled rock completely across summits, leaving inside enclosures sometimes as large as 50 acres, depending upon the size of the bluff.
The Makanda Township Stone Fort in Southern Illinois lies between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.











The Makanda Stone Fort is a quarter of a mile northeast of the village of Makanda, Jackson County, Illinois, and is a part of Giant City State Park.

About 1000 years ago, when Indian cultures were enjoying the area’s abundant resources (water, wildlife, nuts, berries, and roots) in the Shawnee National Forest, a stone fort was found. It is thought to have been built during the Late Woodland Period (1000 BC - 1000 AD), probably between 600 to 900 AD. 
A Shawnee National Forest Overlook.
These prehistoric forts were constructed on a raised mass of land known as a promontory (a point of high land that juts out into a large body of water), while some others were built on hilltops that provided an excellent overlook giving them a vantage point to see for miles across Illinois' premier forest.

The massive stone wall was at one time 285 feet long, six feet high, and nine feet thick on 1.4 acres of land. The appearance of a “stone fort” or stone wall located in Giant City State Park, which is part of the Shawnee National Forest, sits atop a sloped ridge
There are actually about ten of these old structures in the southern Illinois area, and they are believed to have been either a military fortification as a meeting place or a ceremonial temple.

Most of these sites were not habitation sites (villages) in the usual sense. There was only a modest amount of artifacts, which is common among places of sporadic use for short periods of time. Debris found on this site includes sherds of grit or grog-tempered cord-marked pottery and stone tools, like projectile points. Many Late Woodland tribes lived in large, intensively occupied villages located near major rivers and streams such as Cahokia and East St. Louis. They had a mixed economy of hunting, gathering, and cultivated a series of native plants like barley, sumpweed, maygrass, and squash.
For years archaeologists have wondered about the stone fort’s usage. Some say that these were “sacred spaces” reserved for periodic activity. Archaeological digs have located items that prove that the Indians of Southern Illinois were part of an extensive trading network. They believe the trading network followed the trails in Southern Illinois that became the early pioneer roads centuries later. Archaeologists suggest the possibility that stone forts were designated areas where different tribes or sub-tribes could meet, socialize, and trade on neutral ground.

The original wall was dismantled by European settlers, who used the stones in order to build their own structures; the stone base is all that remains of the original wall. It was reconstructed in 1934 by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) workforce gathered the scattered stone and rebuilt the wall in its original location, but has since fallen into ruins again.
The location of this wall leads one to believe it was built for a fortification of some kind and as the building must have required a great deal of time and labor. It was surely built for more than just temporary use. The distance to the edge of the bluff in front is over 500 feet, thus affording room for quite a party taking refuge therein. The bluffs that form three sides of the enclosures are unscalable without the use of ropes and ladders except in two places, and these are easily protected from above for they are just narrow crevices up which one could, with difficulty, climb and then only by the aid of the jagged edges of the protruding rocks. One man could lie behind boulders at either place and easily protect it against a number of his enemies with crude stone-age weapons, traces of which were found everywhere in the vicinity and all through this section. Several pieces of flint and arrowheads have been picked up on the top of the bluff. 

Another reason for believing that this fortification was built as a defense against tribesmen is that it is at the upper end of the valley where the opposite bluff is not over 200 yards distant, and is higher, though not so precipitous. From this bluff, one with a rifle could easily shoot into the fort, but with bows and arrows, very little damage could be done. In fact, it is by far the best location in the valley. Water is easily accessible and flows from a little stream within 100 feet of the cliff where it is scalable and at several places in the brooks are springs. 

Ancient features more closely related to a seasonal hunting camp where hunters would take advantage of game resources, then move on.

Other theories included the notion it was actually early European explorers, such as DeSoto, who created the rock fortresses while making inroads to conquer the land. No such evidence of European construction exists, of course.

The oldest settlers in Jackson County say that the area was covered with bushes when they first came here. No one knows the early history of the fort as a certainty and there is little likelihood of it ever coming to light. Parts of the wall of this fort were standing as late as 1870 and were torn down by a Doctor CalIon in hunting for relics. None were found which is more strong evidence that the fort was built by someone other than Indians. George W. Owens, still living in 1931, who came to Makanda in 1862, tells of a small, one-pounder cannon that was found in the wall of the old fort. It was used in Fourth-of-July celebrations around Makanda for 50 years and finally sold to a junk dealer. The French Lieutenant Aubrey, passed this way from Kaskaskia in 1720 with 30 French and 300 Indians on his way to Fort Massac on the Ohio River to thwart the English, who were reported to be on their way down the Ohio River toward Kaskaskia. Aubrey had three brass cannons of this description. This may have been one of them. 
The first professional archaeological investigation of the fort site was conducted in 1956 by archaeologists from Southern Illinois University. An explanation for the large hole in the front of the wall is unknown, although it most likely represents the work of treasure hunters. The hole was there when the site was officially recorded as an archaeological site in 1956.
In the fall of 2000, archaeologists from Southern Illinois University Carbondale conducted an investigation of the Stone Fort site. Of the 153 shovel tests executed south of the wall, all were positive for prehistoric artifacts. This led the scientists to nominate Giant City’s Stone Fort for the National Register of Historic Places. The Giant City Stone Fort Site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 9, 2002
The Stone Fort Trail in Giant City State Park is a little-known path that leads to some truly intriguing ruins. It is less than half a mile in length and is a loop trail.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.