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(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Pittsfield where the Pike County Historical Society operates three really fine museums, the Military Heritage Museum, the All Wars Museum and the History Museum that's over in the old East School.

But we came to the All Wars Museum several years ago when it had first opened, and it was impressive, but now they have a new curator and they have renovated the museum, and it's a great place to visit.

Come on in.

Bob Norris, it's been years since we were here, and I was impressed the first time we were here, but you weren't the curator back then, I don't think.

You're the curator now, and you've made some real changes to the All Wars Museum, haven't you?

- We have.

I've been a curator here for a year in February.

The ladies that were curators before me had done a wonderful job putting things together, and the first curator we had, there are still items and displays here that still have her touch.

- Oh, it's terrific.

It's better now though.

It's better because it's been given, there's been some new energy infused into the project.

- It has, yes.

Yes, sir.

- We're gonna do sort of a year by year deal here.

I want to start here because this map from the late 1818 I think shows Pike County up here, and a lot of that was devoted to military, to the soldiers from the War of 1812.

- That's correct.

- Now there was settlement here, but not very much in 1818.

- Those men were awarded a 160 acre land patent, as it was called.

Many of them were already established in other states.

They didn't want to move, so they sold their land patents and there were people that were buying those and a huge land speculation movement started up with the land in the state of Illinois.

- As we look at this, I'm assuming, I think the present Pike County is probably right about in this area here, don't you think?

- Right, yeah.

Kind of coming around here, but you're correct.

It's in that area.

- Yeah, but look how big Pike County was at the time.

- Actually Pike County, when it was actually named a few years later, would go all the way up following the Illinois River then go over to the Indiana border, following Lake McCoe, up around Lake Michigan to the Wisconsin border and then follow Mississippi down.

So we always like to say that Chicago was the littlest biggest city in Pike County.

- [Mark] Things have sure changed, haven't they?

- Yes, they have.

- Okay, we're entering the Civil War era now and really have some swords here, some drawings of some of the commanders, and of course, there's your major generals of the United States Army with some of the enlisted men behind them, I think.

- That was one of the things that we have changed.

In many of the other displays you will see that we have artifacts pertaining to the United States and the ally troops' enemies, and we didn't have anything in our Civil War collection that represented the Confederacy, so we've slowly placed a few things that at least get the conversation started.

- And this flag is really precious.

This is on loan to you, or is it on loan?

- Yes, it's on permanent loan from the Nancy Ross Chapter of the Daughters of American Revolution.

This flag was made by local ladies, wives, sisters whose brothers and men that had been recruited from their area that went on to become Company H of the 73rd Regiment Illinois Volunteers.

This flag was hand sewn.

Some machine sewing is present on it and it was sent, given and presented to these men before they went to Camp Butler in Springfield.

The unique thing about the flag, one of the things I'll tell you very quickly, those stars are on the other side also in the same application, but when you hold this to the light, there is no shadowing from either side.

They're sewn directly, perfectly to match the other side.

There's a lot of love and dedication and workmanship on this flag.

- I'm standing next to a uniform that I understand was found under sort of dubious circumstances.

- Yes, we had a building here that was three stories that was built by Joseph Merrick Bush, who was Chief Editor and Owner of the Pike County Democrat for many decades.

In the, I think early 70s, early 60s or late 60s, the owner of the building decided to lose the third story, and then a local gentleman very active in our Pike County history, Warren Winston, was over there looking and in some of the construction debris he found this coat, and the gentleman's name that it belonged to, his last name was Meserve and it's in the sleeve.

- Well that's how you know, okay.

- Right, this is what would be referred to as a Union greatcoat.

It was issued to the soldiers when cold weather.

- And the whole uniform was there?

You saw a little bit of it at a time or just the coat?

- No sir, just the coat, and then we've added this.

- Look at the condition it's in, though.

You're lucky it's still in one piece.

- [Bob] Very much so.

It's got some damage.

- Over here we see that these are what would've been issued to your normal Civil War soldier, arms and bullets.

- Well, it tells the history of the Civil War soldier, his muskets, rifle muskets, what kind of rounds he was issued, what did they look like, the anatomy of how they were made in the arsenals, and a lot of this work during the war was done by women.

- [Mark] And more of that down here, too.

- [Bob] These are just everyday things.

- [Mark] Everyday things that you would've had to haul around with you, and if you were gonna have any kind of life, you had to have a plate and silverware and knives and canteens.

- [Bob] Yeah, and if you take a look at that image there, it gives you an idea how many of these things were presented, worn on the body of the soldier.

- [Mark] You know, you brought this up earlier and I was not aware of the Sultana and the fact of what a disaster this was, but if you can look at the photograph up here of the Sultana and see how it was loaded with passengers.

Where was this boat supposed to go?

- Well, it was going north to, most of those men were from Ohio, Indiana, other states.

There were no Illinois soldiers on there.

They had left Vicksburg and it came up to Cairo a couple of days before, but we do have a connection.

That photograph was taken, it's the last known photo of the Sultana.

You can see the huge amount of people on there, and those are all Union soldiers.

There are POWs that had been released from Andersonville and Cahaba Prison Camp in Alabama.

There's so many on there, almost 2,200, that when the photograph was taken, they rushed to the bank side where the photographer was and they almost capsized the boat.

- It ended up sinking, of course.

- [Bob] On April 27th at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, about seven miles above Memphis, Tennessee, one of the boilers exploded, and of course that's a chain reaction.

There was four tubular boilers that powered the ship, and the total loss was right around 1,200.

- Oh my goodness, which makes it probably the worst water disaster in history.

- Yes, it is still considered the the worst maritime disaster in American waters, and it wasn't, I may add, it wasn't really covered very well in the newspapers because Lincoln was shot on April the 14th, and you can't find anything about the disaster until you go back into the paper like 6, 7, 8 pages.

- Now here's an Illinois man right here who was responsible I think for founding of the Grand Army of the Republic.

- [Bob] That is correct.

- [Mark] Stevenson.

- [Bob] Yes.

- [Mark] Was he from around here?

- He was from the Petersburg area.

He was a surgeon in the 14th Illinois Infantry.

He was honorably discharged in 1864, went back to the Petersburg area, picked up his practice, and he was always concerned and asked the question of what was going to happen to the Union soldier.

Was he gonna fade into history and be forgotten?

And it was just something that he was very concerned about.

So him and some other veterans worked together, they wrote a constitution and different things and started this group, which became known as the Grand Army of the Republic.

And the first lodge, as they were called, was Indicator, and that's because Mr. Stevenson and one of the people that were getting this started knew a print shop indicator that was all ran by Union veterans.

So when they took the material up there, these gentlemen started reading as they were working on it and they were like, where do we sign up?

So the first camp was Indicator in April of 1866.

- And this was the first service-oriented group for veterans.

- Yes.

It became very popular, very heavily populated here in the Midwest, but there were camps or lodges in every state, even in some southern states, and it grew to become one of the first and largest lobbyist grouping in our early American history.

They were very political in nature.

A lot of people don't know that one of their main rules in the drawing up that Mr. Stevenson drew up about this was that their main purpose was to help the orphans and the widows.

- [Mark] Okay Bob, World War I, and you're very fortunate to have this coat and I guess the whole uniform donated.

- Yes, that is correct.

It is an original that came from the family donated it, and it's a great example of what the World War I soldier would have worn.

Everything is wool.

Wool has made up uniforms for many, many centuries.

The thing about wool is it will not burn, so back when we were using some real primitive weapons, it will not burn, it'll smolder.

Because it's a natural animal fiber, it does have.

- You can get it wet.

- Yeah, you can get it wet.

- But boy, is it hot.

- Yes, yes.

- In the winter it's great, but in the summer, whoa.

And this is a good picture too, 'cause these are all Pike County men, World War I.

That's really good.

That'd be fun to be able to try to identify all of them.

Looks like most of them are identified already.

That's very nice.

And then again, as we work our way down the line there, is there any of these rifles we should see?

- Well, the standard rifle of the United States troops in World War I was the model 1903 Springfield rifle.

- [Mark] That's the one on the bottom, right?

- [Bob] Yes, and it is a single shot bolt action.

It had an internal magazine that you loaded with a stripper clip that held the cartridges and put down in.

- [Mark] Here's a good look at the difference in the headwear, the helmets.

Here's the German helmet, and that's I think the American helmet, and then the American, again, a wool hat.

- [Bob] That's the M1917.

The center one is the model 1917.

- [Mark] And then this is a kind of a precious deal here, isn't it, and you can see that it was well made.

- Yes, a unique story.

A gentleman that was from Pike County, World War II, he's fighting in France.

They entered a home there and these were taken for war trophies, which was common then.

And this one is pretty much just a plain, well-made German non-commissioned sword, no decoration, just a well-made sword, 'cause it would've been in action.

This one is a German diplomatic corps sword, and you will notice all of the decoration and work on this.

When we talk about diplomatic corps, it's basically what we would call today ambassador, you know, German ambassador to, and this was their formal sword.

When they were in a formal function, they wear the white leather scabbard.

This is very rare to find a sword and a scabbard together like that.

This is a Pike County World War II soldier, Navy.

His name is Kenneth Otto.

That's his photo in uniform.

The ship that's up top is the vessel that he was attached to at the time of Pearl Harbor.

The ship was at Pearl Harbor.

It's the USS Case that he served on, so he is considered a Pearl Harbor survivor.

He became a member and was very active in the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

Those are some of the medals and medallions.

The little journal there is his notes at times when he was in the military in World War II.

- [Mark] Oh, that's priceless to have that.

- [Bob] The little sign back there was put on the back of his wheelchair when he was living in a retirement home, and it stayed on his wheelchair until the time of his death.

- That's really precious stuff to have.

Here's another one that was, see the Japanese flag up there that I'm looking at?

That was captured by one of our local guys, wasn't it?

- [Bob] Yes, Joseph Orell from Griggsville captured that on the Island of Le Shima, and that photo there is actually him posing with the flag during the time.

- [Mark] He's from Griggsville.

- [Bob] Yes.

- [Mark] And here's another local fellow here.

- [Bob] Yes, this is a photo of Lieutenant Ivan Shadle, and he was from the Pittsfield area and serving in World War II, South Pacific.

He was hit with Japanese gunfire in the leg and then he was sent to a hospital that the United States had, and while he was healing he had a visitor and the lady there that appears to be in a uniform and cap, that's the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

- [Mark] I'll be darned, it is.

You can sure tell.

- [Bob] And she toured the South Pacific and then she wrote an article for the Lady's Home Journal, and this photo was the feature of the article.

- Hmm, that's wonderful.

Look at this, this tells a story too.

Here's the Pike County Republican.

Germany smashed on to Tokyo.

These were high times between April and August that summer.

High times.

And you know, we were talking about that flag.

Actually, there's an attachment there to Ernie Pyle.

- The typewriter belonged to Frank Hagen.

He was local, but the island of Le Shima where Joseph Orell captured that Japanese flag is also the island that the famous World War II journalist Ernie Pyle was killed and first buried there, later moved to a national cemetery in Hawaii.

So there is connection.

- Well, let's move on to Vietnam.

This is still a very painful memory for people because there's so many people that are still alive who were there, and their families of course remember their presence there.

But this is really a sweet display because you have a lot of available, people are around to donate, to make these things available for you.

I'm particularly interested in this lowest rifle here on the left, because there's a real story there.

- [Bob] Right, that is a Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle.

It's made in Russia.

And during the Vietnam war, a local gentleman, his platoon was pinned down by some North Vietnamese snipers that were up in trees, and he disposed of one of them, and then after the area was clear, he went over and found this rifle in the hands of that dead soldier.

And then through the red tape of the War Department, they issued him a certificate that would allow him to bring this home.

- [Mark] And that's what we see right here.

- It's a certificate of a trophy of war, and the gentleman, when he donated this, he told us the story that when he brought this back with him, he landed in Los Angeles and went through the Los Angeles airport carrying this rifle, and that's a stark contrast to the culture of today.

- Wouldn't happen today.

- No.

- I find it interesting too, all three of those rifles are Russian made, and they were all in the hands of the Viet Cong.

- Yes, and then every rifle in here, very quickly, every rifle in here, what you will find is that other countries may have copied it.

There was also what they call variants, whereas down through the evolution of the gun, certain things would be changed or altered.

- [Mark] And let's move over here, because what we do here is pay respects to so many people lost their lives in Vietnam, and many of them were local.

- [Bob] Right.

- [Bob] These are portraits, hand-painted portraits of the 10 soldiers who lost their lives in Vietnam.

It has their name, their rank and the town here in Pike County that they were from.

This display is what we refer to as a remembrance display.

It allows people to stop and look and think about the one aspect of war that we don't always think about, and that's the loss of life, the sacrifice.

As Lincoln said, gave their last full measure.

- [Mark] And you had a local artist was able to take the photographs and make these portraits.

- [Bob] Yes, Mr. Wagner from Nebo.

- [Mark] Good for him.

Richard Michel, you're a Navy veteran.

What kind of ship are we looking at here?

- [Richard] This is a destroyer, the USS Forrest Sherman.

- [Mark] You served on a destroyer, didn't you?

- [Richard] Yes, I did.

This was a little bit newer than the one I was on.

- [Mark] Generally, what was the purpose of a destroyer?

- [Richard] Destroyers were basically a support ship.

If you have an aircraft carrier go out, you'll have either a destroyer or a cruiser with it just as protection.

- So I guess they're kind of fast?

- Yeah, you have to be to keep up with an aircraft carrier.

I think the top speed was 32 knots.

- Actually, you have a picture of the one you served on.

Come on over.

You were in Vietnam.

You were on this very ship, weren't you?

What was your job?

- I was an electrician's mate on that.

That was the USS Robert K. Huntington DD-781.

It was commissioned right at the end of World War II, did not fire its guns during World War II, yet it was in Tokyo Bay with the Missouri at the signing of the peace treaty.

- [Mark] In fact, by the time you boarded it for your tour in Vietnam, you were on it the first time it did fire its guns in war time, didn't you?

- [Robert] Yes.

- [Mark] What was that like?

- [Robert] Noisy.

- Noisy.

You had to make sure that, you and your crew had to make sure that all of the, these things are highly electronic.

All that stuff has to work together, I guess.

- Yes, we actually had an analog computer with a gyrocompass in it to assist in the gunfire.

- Is that right?

- Yeah.

Right up here was the gunfire director.

There was a gentleman in there that would take information that was passed to us, feed that in through to the computer, and then the elevation and declination was fed to the guns.

- Now in this firing in Vietnam, were you also under fire?

Were you being fired at while you were?

- Luckily, no.

We were anchored 600 yards off the coast.

To the best of my knowledge, we were just north of the city of Hue.

We got there just after the Tet Offensive, and our main reason there was gunfire support and harassment fire.

We fired three rounds every hour on the hour.

- Just to let them know that you're there and don't mess with us, is that right?

- Well, I don't know if they were harassing them or us, because I slept just below a gun mount.

- Didn't sleep very well, I bet.

- I was lucky if I got three hours of sleep a day.

- We got a picture of you.

You look pretty well rested here.

This is you right as you're taking off for your tour duty to Vietnam.

- [Richard] That photo was taken in San Diego by my uncle.

He ran the base newspaper in San Diego.

- And as we look at this wall of pictures here, these are all local folks from Pike County who served in all the manner of wars and all through the decades and decades of male, female, overseas, not overseas.

Just everybody who served, and the museum's full of them.

I mean, and it's not only this wall, but the museum's full of these folks that served in this variety of wars.

Richard, let's go back over here and look at some of these pictures, because I find it fascinating, since you were on board a ship very much like this one, how all these pictures figured into your lifestyle.

Of course you probably didn't have digs like this where you were, did you?

- [Richard] Oh, no.

We slept three high.

- [Mark] Did you really?

- [Richard] Yeah.

- A bunk bed, three high.

Where were you?

You were probably down at the bottom?

I mean, down at the bottom of the ship?

- Oh yeah.

My berthing space was just below gun mount three.

- [Mark] Okay, I see the gun mount.

- So you can tell there wasn't a whole lot of room there.

- And then I find this interesting too, because this is the captain's state room, right?

- Captain's state room.

- [Mark] And then right behind it is an area where he has a cot or something there that adjoins the bridge so he can be really close to the action if he needs to get on the bridge.

- [Richard] Right, that was the sea cabin, is what it was called.

- [Mark] And then over here, this is a picture of the bridge too, and that would've been where the captain piloted the ship.

- [Richard] That was the captain's chair.

This reddish-looking photo, it was CIC, combat information center.

That was just behind the bridge.

- Well, I want to thank you, Richard, and Bob and everybody involved in this effort, because this is a cool place.

- That's kind of why I got involved.

- Yeah, and I understand you're a carpenter, good enough carpenter to make the picture frames and some of the cabinetry around here.

- Well, not the cabinetry, but the picture frames mostly.

But yeah, if they come up with an idea, I'll say well, let me work on it.

- Well Richard, thank you.

- All right, thank you.

- The All Wars Museum in Pittsfield is open during fair months, during spring, summer and fall, Saturday and Sundays noon to four.

But if you want to make an appointment for a group to come in some other time, you're welcome to do that.

We'll put some information on the screen so you know how to contact them.

With another Illinois story in Pittsfield, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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