A terrific day!! Pam and I managed to find the gym in the bottom of the Illini Union building - no towels but lots of sweat. We have hoofed our way - the long/wrong way every time we wanted to find a new building on campus (we have a map but are both spacially challenged). We managed to find Davenport hall - now home to geography, not agriculture. We found Mumford Hall, the new Ag. building (1925) and found GG Davenport's giant portrait in the Dean's office as looking much better than everyone else's. :-)
We had a grand time in the Archives of the university library. Brian, the librarian, was wonderful. Pulled boxes of materials. We read through endless speeches and monographs. Found photos, an old receipt (recipe) book of Ester Sutton Davenport from, 1830 (Eugene Davenport's mother), some interesting tidbits of information AND a letter from 1858 from Abraham Lincoln talking about his initial debate with Stephen Douglas. The letter was written to J. O. Cunningham, Esq who then gave it to GG Davenport. We let the archivist know that there was a genuine A. Lincoln signature in box #1. Too bad we can't take it to the Antiques Roadshow.
Tomorrow - on to boxes 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 - hope to be on the road to Lafayette, IN by 1pm!
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