Library of the Peoria Historical Society
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On deposit at the University since 1980, this collection contains more than ten thousand items pertaining to the history of Peoria and central Illinois. Among the holdings are: a nearly complete run of city directories beginning with 1844, most cross indexed by occupation, business, and street address; biographical dictionaries covering residents from 1880-1912; an index with abstracts for fifteen area newspapers published between 1834 and 1864; city and county maps including Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlases; and almost 100 linear feet of vertical files containing ephemera indexed by broad subjects such as family and street names and business and organization types. Holdings also include a library of publications by area authors, a reference collection of books on central Illinois history, and thousands of photographic images of early Peoria, many on glass plate negatives. |



