News Progress

•January 31, 2018•

By Tara McClellan McAndrew
For the Illinois Press Association

Like so much in Illinois, the origins of its newspapers were tied to politics and patronage.

This land was a wild, largely unpopulated, western territory when its first newspaper sprang up - the single-sheet Illinois Herald, published in 1814 in Kaskaskia. Its proprietor landed the job of printing territorial and national business through his friend, the territorial governor, according to the July 1918 Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.

Some early newspapers were created to support or oppose a political candidate or issue, like the anti-slavery Edwardsville Advocate. Illinois newspapers remained political for decades in the 1800s, according to the ISHS Journal.

Publications faced many challenges: bad transportation, unreliable mail delivery and a lack of subscribers. As more settlers came to Illinois in the middle 1800s and transportation improved, newspapers fared better. The advent of railroads precipitated a newspaper boom. Read More

•January 24, 2018•

By Eden Martin
NP Guest Columnist

Editor’s Note: Former Sullivan resident and author Eden Martin has compiled a history of theaters in Sullivan. This second installment starts with the opening of the Globe Theater.

On October 23, 1909, the Decatur Daily Review reported as follows: Sullivan is to have a new up-to-date moving picture show which will be absolutely fireproof and have a raised floor with opera chairs which is something better than has ever seen here before. S.T. Herman of Monticello is the manager, and it will be known as the Globe theater and will be ready for business Saturday night in the old post office building on the south side of the square.

The new Globe apparently got off to a great start. On November 8 the Decatur newspaper reported that it “had the largest crowd at the performance Saturday night that they have had since starting their moving picture show here. At the three performances there were people standing out in the street waiting to get on the inside. S.T. Herman, the manager and owner, has put in the nicest moving picture show which has ever been in the city and deserves a good crowd. He has a raised floor and opera chairs to add to the comfort of those visiting his theater.” Read More

•January 17, 2018•

By Eric Peterson
Of the Daily Herald

As the home of Sears since the late 19th century, Illinois is the birthplace of modern retail.

Even today’s colossus, Amazon, can trace the roots of its business model to Sears’ original mail-order business that popularized the notion of buying products at home without first seeing and touching them in person.

“There were some small mail-order companies before, but Sears became the largest, the most successful, the giant,” said Libby Mahoney, senior curator of the Chicago History Museum.

And if it seems strange that such a retailer could grow strong enough to make its headquarters the tallest building in the world as Sears did in Chicago in 1973, consider today’s intense competition among cities to house Amazon’s second headquarters, she said.

It was Chicago’s central position in the nation’s railroad and highway networks that made it a better place for Richard Sears to operate the mail-order watch company he’d started in Minneapolis the previous year, 1886. Read More

•January 10, 2018•

By Eden Martin
Guest Columnist

Editor’s Note: Former Sullivan resident and retired attorney Robert Eden Martin has written a series on movie theaters in Sullivan. The series will run consecutive weeks with this as the first installment.

For more than two thousand years people have been entertained or inspired by live recitations, songs and performances of plays by actors and musicians on stage. The transition from live theater to silent moving pictures, and then to movies with sound was not instantaneous. In Sullivan it began just before the First World War.

The Titus Opera House

The Titus Opera House was for almost 40 years the most prominent place in Sullivan where plays and musical productions were staged. The opera house, built in 1871, was located at the west end of the line of buildings on the north side of the square at the corner of Harrison and Main streets.

It was described in the 1885 Combined History of Shelby and Moultrie counties (p. 182) as “fashioned after Heley’s, of Chicago .... It has a parquet and gallery, nicely frescoed ceiling, a full set of scenery, side boxes, etc. The whole building is lighted with gas, and has all the conveniences usually found in cities. The house is far ahead of the town ....” Read More

•January 3, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

When I was a youngster in days of yore, the sheriff and his wife lived above the 19th Century jail, and the better half served as the matron, preparing the same meals for the inmates downstairs as for her family.

Granted, it was a tiny county, but all jails were pretty much the same then—warehouses for detainees caught between law enforcement and their day in court, you might say.

I visited this past week with Brian Asbell, a 23-year veteran of the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office, who was recently moved up to the top job to fill a vacancy.

A county of about 200,000, Peoria has probably the biggest such operation south of I-80. Sure, the deputies patrol the rural areas and collaborate with city and state law enforcement. But the biggest job by far is operating the county jail of anywhere from 300-400 inmates on any given day. Read More