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Mrs. Linda Schilling, social studies teacher at Mt. Pulaski High School, presented a report to 28 Mt. Pulaski Rotary Club members and guests at Buff’s Restaurant, yesterday. Her excellent power-point presentation and humorous talk featured an “old-west” fact-finding project that took place during the summer of 2007. This secondary school research project was funded by the Federal Grant “No Child Left Behind”. Thirty social studies teachers from 10 ROE areas of west-central Illinois participated. Western Illinois University served as the subcontracting agency for this grant –coordinating the selection of these teachers from a large pool of applications. Schilling related that the Donner Party, which originated from Springfield, Illinois, failed to make it over the mountains to California on a poorly-selected “short cut”, resulting in the loss of about half of their party of 85. She showed us a photo of a huge monument dedicated to the Donner party, located in the mountain area now called: “Donner Pass”, California. She told us that that Samuel Clemens had initially sought his fortune in gold and silver in Virginia City, Nevada. Like many others, Clemens was quickly discouraged. He soon could be found using his new pen name, Mark Twain, in newspaper reports for the town’s daily, The Territorial Enterprise. The rough and tumble wild west was no place where Clemens dared to use his real name in his honest, but earthy and detailed descriptions of the “goings-on” there. She pointed out that the miners were not usually the ones who “made their fortune” – rather it was the merchants, hotel and saloon keepers who profited. Further, Schilling discovered that the famous Virginia City Comstock Lode was one of the surprising sources of financing that the North relied upon during the latter stages of the Civil War. When the suspicious gooey mud was evaluated, it proved to contain silver ore worth over $2,000 a ton - in 1859 dollars! This high quality silver ore was recovered in quantities large enough to attract the attention of President Lincoln. Lincoln realized that this rich lode could go a long way in helping with Union expenses. On October 31, 1864, Lincoln signed a bill to make Nevada a state even though it did not go through normal territorial status nor had enough people at the present time to warrant statehood. The new state of Nevada soon returned the favor by voting for the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery – January 31, 1865. Mrs. Schilling noted that she and her teacher companions had to often separate the interesting aspects of the many “tourist traps” from their goal of discovering the truth about the old west. |
