By ERIC C. RODENBERG
AntiqueWeek Associate Editor WHEATON, Ill. — On Sept. 18, there will be more Civil War knowledge per square foot in this town than anywhere in the world.
On that day – the 30th anniversary of Chicagoland’s National Civil War Collectors Show – there will be thousands of museum-quality Civil War artifacts, guns, cavalry swords, historical autographs and photographs, coins, books and more, according to Bob Zurko, promoter of Zurko’s Midwest Promotions.
“It’s incredible,” said Andrew Turner, publisher of Gettysburg Magazine, a semi-annual publication dedicated not only to Gettysburg, but many other facets of the Civil War. “There’s so much knowledge there. If a dealer, or a member of one of the many civil war roundtables, doesn’t know the answer, they can point you to someone who does. You can find any kind of artifact there … you’ll also find many of the top experts in the country there.”
There are more than 300 tables at the show, according to Zurko. Although a good 90 percent of the show is devoted to Civil War artifacts, don’t be surprised to find relics from the Revolutionary War and the Spanish-American War there either, Zurko said.
“It’s a special event,” said Michael Weeks, author of the The Complete Civil War Road Trip Guide, the definitive guidebook for Civil War site tourists. “I love it when I see a family and their kids coming down the aisles. The kids’ eyes just light up when they see these guns, swords and photos – they’re making a real connection to history, when they can touch these items and see up close what the Civil War was really about. It’s so much more than they get out of a textbook.”
This year even more history will be presented with the traveling Abraham Lincoln Assassination Museum. The traveling multi-media museum – encased in an 11 by 20ft tent displays 50 “running feet” of museum artifacts related to the assassination of America’s 16th president. Mourning banners shroud the outside of the tent; inside are numerous newspaper accounts, stereo-views, cabinet cards, and CDVs of Lincoln and the times.
The traveling museum is the brain child of Lansing, Mich., resident Rick Brown, who has studied this one particular point in history for the past 42 years. Stepping into the museum (free, the museum is a not-for-profit organization), the visitor sees the original sheet music played at Lincoln’s funeral. After obtaining the sheeted music, Brown went to the trouble to have an authentic reenactment Civil War brass band play the various dirges. Inside, is a panorama of accounts surrounding Lincoln’s assassination.
Not only does the traveling museum offer insights into Lincoln’s assassination, but it also clearly illustrates the difference between today’s methods of disseminating news as compared to more than 100 years ago.
“Today, if we had a presidential assassination or a major tragedy it comes out in sound bytes,” Brown said.
“Or is packaged in little scraps of information. Back then, newspapers contained a series of eyewitness accounts, which may have run 6,000 to 10,000 words, running down the paper column after column. It made the incident a little more humanizing, bringing the public into the story.”
The 62-year-old Brown began his obsession with the end of Lincoln’s life as a young man when he answered a classified in the back of a Popular Science or Popular Mechanics magazine. “It was one of the two magazines,” he said. “I was about 12 years old or so, and it was advertisement for a free catalog for old newspapers – some of them more than 100 years old.”
In short, Brown sent for the catalog; bought a newspaper – the original Philadelphia account of the April 14, 1865 assassination – and the hunt for more Lincoln assassination memorabilia began. Brown paid $3.50 for that complete, in-tact newspaper. Today, it is worth $400, he said.
Since then, Brown has amassed a huge collection of items – and facts – concerning Lincoln, and his assassination. At 1 p.m., on Sept. 18, he will be conducting an hour-long presentation, much of it related to little-known facts or minutia about Lincoln’s life.
Want to know what prop, which once belonged to Abraham Lincoln, was used in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz? Or, what famous current actor is a direct descendant of Lincoln?
You’ll have to come to the Chicagoland National Civil War Show and Sale to find out, Brown said.
For more details, call 715-526-9769 or visit www.zurkopromotions.com or www.historybuff.com online |
