It might be hard to believe – but for the first 67 years of it's history, Urbana did not have a fire department.

That changed in 1900, when William H. Roughton organized a volunteer fire department, the town’s first.

Two collections have recently been processed by Archives staff and are now available for researchers.

Born in 1782, John W. Vance spent his youth in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio. As youngster he and his brother, Joseph Colville Vance, chopped and delivered wood to stoke the fires of the salt works near their home. Later, they bought a team of oxen to haul salt to pioneer families in the Kentucky wilderness. This enterprise grew into a salt distribution company based in Urbana, Ohio.

Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was this Sunday and next Monday is President’s Day, the national observance of Lincoln and George Washington’s births. Lincoln spent his early law career on the eighth judicial circuit, travelling with other lawyers and judges to try cases put before the court.

Transcripts of The Urbana Free Library Local History Roundtable discussions

While spending time with your family over the holidays, chances are you heard stories about the “good old days” from your grandparents, aunts or uncles, or parents. Perhaps you can’t get enough of these reminiscences. If that’s the case, check out the Champaign County Historical Archives collection of over 250 oral histories.

Champaign-Urbana is no stranger to the entertainment industry: it is the boyhood home of Roger Ebert; the birthplace of music group REO Speedwagon and super-villain computer HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and was recently the filming site of a Danny Glover movie. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, Champaign-Urbana’s biggest stars were Charles (known professionally as “Chic”) and Virginia Sale, who grew up on Main Street in Urbana.

In 1870, 18-year-old Albert Eisner immigrated to the United States from his home in Hungary. Upon his arrival in New York City, he was robbed of his last $20, and so he began work, first at a tailor’s shop and eventually at a dry goods store. During the next 45 years of his life, he would make his way west, settling finally in Champaign, Illinois, where he would launch the multi-generational business that would become one of the largest food sellers in central Illinois.

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, spiritualism, the belief that the dead could communicate with the living, especially through a medium, gained popularity and renown. It was a movement that garnered ardent enthusiasm from its followers, including author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and psychologist William James, among others; and was lambasted by its detractors, such as novelist Mark Twain and magician Harry Houdini.

A sharped eyed staff member spied this image from our collections: 

Apparently, sightings of unexplained phenomena and Unidentified Flying Objects are not uncommon here, as this June 6, 1969 article from the front page of the Urbana Courier relates.