Praise for Lincoln's Bloomington

“Lincoln’s Bloomington” is both a surprise and a joy to use. Who knew that a digital cemetery tour of an Illinois town, other than Springfield, could yield such fascinating people and such understanding of Lincoln’s worlds in his home state? The mixture of technology, local history, actors engaged in reenactment, and real substantive political and social history is marvelous in its whole. Megan VanGorder has developed a very deft touch in combining all these elements of the past, including insightful uses of a local museum. This should make students see all kinds of rich connections between the virtual and the real. It should also make students in Bloomington and all around Illinois understand that the flat prairie they live on is historic ground where all manner of intriguing people lived – and so many of them knew and influenced Lincoln. (David W. Blight, Yale University)
Megan VanGorder’s Lincoln’s Bloomington, uses primary sources and Google Maps to enhance and deepen visitor’s interactions with living history practitioners in Bloomington, IL. This is an innovative blending of the virtual and actual, meant to complement an existing program and it does so very well. This is an innovative blending of the virtual and actual, meant to complement an existing program and it does so very well. Visitors become enmeshed in the world that Lincoln encountered during the 1850s, and again in 1862. This site does an especially good job of integrating women’s voices and lives into the story of Lincoln. (Anne Sarah Rubin, University of Maryland/Baltimore)
“Everyone knows that Lincoln lived and worked in Springfield, but VanGorder’s site reminds us that his strongest base of support was Bloomington. Effectively framed as a cemetery tour, ‘Lincoln’s Bloomington’ reveals the remarkable number of close Lincoln associates who resided there and in the process show us how local history can inform national history.” (James Oakes, City University of New York)

About the Project

This website was created for the class "Understanding Lincoln" through Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. When challenged to create a multimedia project that incorporated Lincoln, I wanted to create a resource that would showcase central Illinois' local connection with Lincoln while highlighting the educational programs that currently exist through the McLean County Museum of History.

The project is planned to be utilized by the museum as an online enrichment tool for their Cemetery Walk program. The Cemetery Walk is an experience in which community members and students go to Evergreen Cemetery and interact with actors who portray a local figure. The walk is a way to excite the community about local history and participate in the learning process.

In the future, the museum may integrate the website into their own resource and expand the learning modules to include other eras of American history. To date, the modules created focus on Bloomington citizens who have been featured on the Cemetery Walk and have a direct connection to the Abraham Lincoln story.

About the Project Creator

Megan VanGorder teaches American History at Olympia Middle School in Stanford, Illinois. Through the Gilder Lehrman online courses, Megan has also completed a website that serves a both a Slave Narrative Anthology, a geographical representation of selected slave narratives, and a composite timeline of state by state abolition and emancipation.

About Guy Fraker, lawyer and author