The Champaign County Historical Archives recently finished transcribing two journals written by early Urbana resident Joseph Oscar Cunningham with the help of volunteers. The journals were donated to the Archives by the Cunningham Children’s Home after they were extraordinarily found in a Kerrville, Texas home.
Cunningham (1830-1917) was an active member of the Champaign-Urbana community and is best known for his work History of Champaign County (1905). He was the publisher of the Urbana Union newspaper and had a successful long-term law career, contributing to his appointment as a Champaign County judge in 1861. From 1867-1873, he served on the Board of Illinois Industrial University (now the University of Illinois) and advocated for it to become a land-grant institution. Friends with Abraham Lincoln, Cunningham heavily supported his political career and attended the 1856 Republican state convention in Bloomington where Lincoln gave his famous “lost speech.”
The majority of the first journal was written in 1853, when Cunningham first moved to Urbana at the age of 23. It describes his career as a teacher in Eugene, Indiana after his graduation from Union Law School in Cleveland, Ohio, and ends shortly after his move to Urbana at the recommendation of his half-brother. Of interest is his commitment to the temperance movement organization the Sons of Temperance. Cunningham describes writing opinion letters to the Eugene Register in favor of outlawing the sale of alcohol, and the journal contains clippings of these pieces in its later half. Other clippings note Cunningham’s take-over of the Urbana Union and describe Abraham Lincoln’s political career in Illinois.
Beginning of the J.O. Cunningham's first journal.
The second journal was written many years later between 1891 and 1915. In this journal, Cunningham describes attending the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Another passage details Cunningham and his wife Mary’s donation of their home to the Women’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which would later become the Cunningham Children’s Home. Many of the entries include Cunningham’s reflections on his successful career, such as in the following passage from June 18, 1893:
“It is 40 years today since I came to Urbana a youth of 22 ½ years to make my home with high hopes for the future. Now I can look back and see many mistakes, but in the dealing of fortune with me I cannot complain. I have received all I deserved and more than I expected.”
The transcriptions of these two journals are now viewable to anyone through the Local History Online catalog! Readers should note that the journals contain some passages describing the deaths of people Cunningham knew. Additionally, entries remain as accurate as possible to what is written in the journal, meaning grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes are all included. The Archives hopes these transcriptions will be helpful to those interested in researching Champaign County’s early history.
-Antonia Pecoraro Hernandez