Category: Uncategorized

Oliver R. Barrett was a lawyer and collector who, at the time of his death in 1950, had the largest collection of Lincoln books, manuscripts, and artifacts in the country. Born in Jacksonville, Illinois, on October 14, 1873, Barrett moved with his family moved to Pittsfield, the county seat of Pike, when he was young. There Barrett began collecting autographs of famous people. He reached out to individuals of interest, including former president Rutherford B. Hayes, by sending his autograph book in the mail and asking recipients to sign their name before sending it on to the next person listed in his book. … Read More

Eva Katharine Clapp Gibson was a writer born in Bradford, Illinois, on August 10, 1857. Gibson lived on her family’s farm for the first eleven years of her life with her parents, Henry and Ann (Ely) Clapp; when her mother passed away when Gibson was eleven, she went to live with her married sister. Gibson attended school at Amboy, Illinois, the Dover Academy, and later the Milwaukee Female College. At the age of sixteen, Gibson went to visit cities in the eastern U.S. and decided to teach school in western Massachusetts before returning to Illinois. In 1892 she married Charles Brockway Gibson, a chemist from Chicago who attended the University of Illinois, and she studied German and French literature for a year in Europe before the couple settled in Chicago.… Read More

Elizabeth Packard was a reformer in the 1860s and 1870s who advocated for the legal rights of married women and mental health patients. Born Elizabeth Parsons Ware in 1816 in Ware, Massachusetts, she married Theophilus Packard Jr., a Calvinist minister, in 1839. The couple moved to Kankakee, Illinois, and had six children together.

In 1860, Packard’s husband had her committed to the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane based on his personal observations that she seemed “slightly insane” to him. Reverend Packard’s decision to commit his wife stemmed from her expression of religious beliefs that conflicted with his own doctrine. In many states in the 1800s, a husband was legally able to institutionalize his wife, and Packard had no options to challenge his decision.… Read More

Catharine Waugh McCulloch was a lawyer, suffragist, and activist. She was born Catharine Waugh in New York in 1862, and her family later moved to Illinois, where she was raised. She graduated from the Rockford Female Seminary in 1882 where she wrote a thesis, “Woman’s Wages,” and earned both her B.A. and M.A. degrees. She went on to study at the Union College of Law in Chicago, and after she graduated, Waugh was admitted to the Illinois state bar in 1886. She searched for a position with a Chicago law firm, but she found that there were few opportunities for female lawyers, despite her skills and qualifications, so she returned to Rockford to establish a practice there.… Read More