Looking for Lincoln in Bloomington-Normal: A Tour Narrated by Abraham Lincoln

This tour was released on CD in 2006. The content for the audio tour was written and performed by Lincoln impersonator and Bloomington resident James Keeran with the assistance of Lincoln scholars Dr. Roger Bridges, Guy Fraker, and Museum of History library staff Bill Kemp and George Perkins. Voice engineering was done by Valerie McCance of Radio Bloomington, and musical interludes are by Emily Giesel.

We added one stop to this tour that was not part of the original tour, the Lincoln Funeral Train, audio recorded by Charlie Schlenker. That Looking for Lincoln marker was added in 2022. Thanks to Torii Moré, Norris Porter, Candace Summers for their contributions to this updated tour.

Land Acknowledgment Statement:

We want to acknowledge that the land we call McLean County is the ancestral land of many Native groups, beginning with the Paleoindians 12,000 years ago and most recently Algonquin-speaking groups, including the Kickapoo, who were forced west from this area in the 1830s. Other groups in this area include (but are not limited to) Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascouten, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Lenape, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. These lands were the traditional territory of these Native Nations before their forced removal, and these lands continue to carry the stories of these Nations and their struggles for survival and identity.

This statement was drafted in collaboration with Lester Randall, Tribal Chairman of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, and Nichole Boyd, former Director of the Native American House at UIUC.