December 6, 2021
#374

Thank you, Barbara Schock, for sharing your delightful tales of Sandburg and 19th century Galesburg & American history.

Dedication of the Soldier's Monument, Hope Cemetery, October 7, 1896.

Galesburg's Monuments

By Barbara Schock

Every community has a unique character because of its location, the people who chose to settle in the town, the structures built there and the chain of events which occurred over time.

Galesburg has many plaques, memorials and monuments which commemorate its citizens, schools, churches and industries. Since 1896, more than a hundred have been dedicated.

The first monument was raised on October 7, 1896. The members of the Grand Army of the Republic, veterans of the Civil War, were determined to develop some form of recognition for the men who had served. John H. Finley, President of Knox College, heard of the effort and decided a recognition of the school would be complimentary. The veterans raised money for the column and statue while Finley arranged for Robert Todd Lincoln to be the speaker of the day.

A very large crowd attended the dedication of the monument in Hope Cemetery. Unfortunately, the statue of a soldier did not arrive in time to be placed on the tall pedestal. Mr. Lincoln gave his speech and the crowd departed. A week later, the figure of the soldier was placed on the pedestal. The old soldiers and the school children of the city dedicated it. There are some two thousand similar soldier statues that have been placed in communities across the country.

Some years later, the GAR dedicated a second monument: an eighteenth century French cannon, on Lincoln’s birthday. It had been one of sixty-seven captured during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The federal government distributed the obsolete cannons across the country. A carriage of granite was created by a local stonemason to support the seven-foot-long barrel. It now stands on the lawn of the Knox County Courthouse.

On May 22, 1906, the members of the Woman’s Relief Corps composed of wives and daughters of the veterans dedicated a life-size statue to Mary A. “Mother” Bickerdyke, a resident of Galesburg who volunteered to serve as a nurse during the Civil War. The ladies were fortunate to receive $5,000 from the Illinois Legislature to pay for the creation of the bronze monument.

In 1911, Dr. Richard I. Law, a member of the GAR, commissioned a bronze tablet of the entire text of the “Gettysburg Address” by President Abraham Lincoln. It stands on the grounds of the Galesburg Public Library.

The campus of Knox College has many markers commemorating early buildings as well as fragments from buildings on the campus of Lombard College. Old Main, one of the original buildings of the college, exhibits quotations from the Lincoln-Douglas Debate. The flag pole in front of the building is dedicated to students who served in World War I.

As a boy, Carl Sandburg walked across the Knox College campus to his job delivering milk. He often stopped to read the quotations from the debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

In 1937, Galesburg celebrated the centennial of its founding. A number of markers were placed to identify the original boundaries of the town, to recognize the pioneers for whom downtown streets were named and to identify the locations of several important buildings in the founding of the city.

Every community has a unique character because of its location, the people who chose to reside there, the structures erected there and the chain of events which occurred over time. Local landmarks are just as important as state or national, and just as irreplaceable. They tell stories of the history that preceded our own time.