The Second Continental Congress formally voted for independence from Britain on July 2, 1776 while meeting in Philadephia. On July 4, 1776 it adopted the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. The declaration was read to communities and celebrations were held. In subsequent years people celebrated the act of independence on July 2, an…
History
1950 Census Records Coming Soon!
After a 72 year waiting period, the personal records from the 1950 Census will be made available online to researchers by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on April 1, 2022. The records will also be available at the major genealogy online resources including Ancestry.com, Family Search, and My Heritage. The National Archives' 1950…
Preservation Week 2021
An initiative of Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures which is a division of the American Library Association, Preservation Week (April 25-May 1, 2021) highlights what libraries and individuals can do to preserve our personal and shared collections. The American Library Association webpage for this event guidelines for how to preserve items in personal collections (photographs, audio…
Pandemic Moments 2020 Project Update
A few months ago the Mount Prospect Historical Society along with the Mount Prospect Public Library launched a community history project focused on the experiences of residents during this pandemic. To see what kinds of things can be included check out two of the submissions. One is from a furloughed soccer player while the other…
2020 Pandemic Moments History Project
The Mount Prospect Historical Society in partnership with the Mount Prospect Public Library has launched a new community project. Residents and others affiliated with Mount Prospect are asked to share photos and videos and to write essays, impressions and even poems to help others among us put this experience into a larger context and provide…
National Geographic History
National Geographic History magazine is coming to our subscription of the National Geographic Virtual Library which contains every page of every issue ever of National Geographic & National Geographic Travel. As of the time of publishing this blog post, History is not yet part of the browse function but will show up in search results.…
Free Photo Colorization from MyHeritage
Would you like see your family's black and white photographs in a new light? You may want to look into a service offered by the genealogy online resource MyHeritage. The company revolutionized the world of online genealogy web sites recently when the company announced that anyone could upload black-and-white photographs to MyHeritage.com and then the…
Historical Newspapers
Something you might wonder about when staying safe inside is how people rose to meet other challenges in history. A good way to find out is through historical newspapers. In these you will be able to find headlines, articles, pictures, opinions and the even the weather report at that time. Here are Mount Prospect Public…
Getting History Right: Mayflower’s 400th and Your Own Family Story
Thanksgiving Day, 2019 marks the start of the 400th annual celebration of the landing of the Mayflower ship at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The celebration committee is working hard to look beyond the myth of Thanksgiving and colonial experiences to better tell the stories of the women of the Mayflower and the Native American tribes which lived…
Mount Prospect in the Illinois Digital Archives
This website hosted by the Illinois State Library offers images and descriptions of historical items in libraries and museums across the state of Illinois. Mount Prospect’s history is represented by three collections. The items included in these collections are primarily from the collections of the Mount Prospect Historical Society and the Mount Prospect Public Library. Dimensions…
