Tag Archives: Local History

Introducing America’s GenealogyBank

We are pleased to announce that we’ve subscribed to another terrific online genealogy resource: America’s GenealogyBank. This resource is user friendly—our staff enjoying experimenting with it!—and offers some keyword searching. Its five databases can help researchers find family members, verify … Continue reading

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New Feature: Have You Seen . . . ?

One of our ongoing projects is to scan and research each image in our photograph collections.   Most of the time, this is relatively (no pun intended) easy. The majority of our Hostetler glass negatives, for example, came with an original … Continue reading

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Early (Early) Education

The Kindergarten was developed by Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) in Blankenburg, Germany, beginning in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Germans that immigrated to the United States brought with them Froeble’s concept. The first English-speaking Kindergarten was opened by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody in … Continue reading

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Did somebody say “spring”?

Daylight Savings Time began yesterday, which means that spring is just around the corner! Are you ready for the warmer temperatures and blooming flowers? Here is an image from our photograph collection that we hope will get everyone excited about … Continue reading

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Mapping History

The City of Davenport is justifiably proud of its historic districts, which number among the oldest in Iowa.  Visitors often stop in at the library for information on the myriad houses and sites that the National Park Service has placed … Continue reading

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What’s in a Name?

It’s really fun to find your ancestors in old newspaper columns, vital records and census listings. But what happens if you cannot recognize the name of the town they lived in? If it doesn’t exist now, how can you find … Continue reading

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Many Scores to Settle

Among our collections of genealogies and local histories, death records and newspaper abstracts hides a different kind of historical resource:  Musical scores. In Special Collections, we have several catalogued scores, most of which have local connections, from Davenport by Alfred … Continue reading

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The Weekly Outlook: Charles Eugene Banks

The second issue of The Weekly Outlook newspaper, dated Saturday July 18, 1896, highlighted a large bird’s-eye view of Davenport’s Tri-city Packing and Provision Company’s plant and grounds along with information on the company’s growth since its inception in 1893. … Continue reading

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The Weekly Outlook: Davenport’s Gilded Newspaper

Once upon a gilded age in Davenport there were so many clubs and such an abundance of cultural activities and interests that a team of optimistic young writers chose to start their own publishing company, creating a twelve page weekly … Continue reading

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Introducing Footnote!

Have you tried our newest reference and genealogy database?  Footnote is a rich resource of digitized historical documents gleaned from the collections of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and other institutions. Are you writing a paper on the … Continue reading

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