Museum of the Grand Prairie (Tour) - Clio

Entries on This Tour

1. One-Room Schoolhouse/Hensley Town Hall

Once located in Champaign County's Hensley Township, what used to be the Hensley Town Hall has been transformed into our One-Room Schoolhouse. Thousands of schoolchildren and visitors have had the opportunity to visit this historic structure and participate in our 19th century school lessons. Go back in time and join us for this virtual tour to learn about the history of the building, stories of one-room schoolhouses in Champaign County, how education differed over 100 years ago, schoolhouse artifacts, and much more!

2. Discovering Home

The idea of home is transcendent. Though people’s homes may be very different, the basic ideas of place, purpose, family, and familiarity are the same. The place we travel away from and return to is our home. It is the place we communicate with when not there. Though very different, we can see similarities in the homes of settlers moving into Illinois from the east, and the native peoples already living here. These similarities extend all the way to the places we call home today. Visitors of all ages will explore the idea of home by discovering the homes of settlers and native peoples through interactive play and interpretation in a long-term museum exhibit space. The objective is for visitors to build connections with homes from the past; finding similarities and common elements with the places they call home today.

3. Blacksmithing on the Prairie

Come see the family Blacksmith shop, a shop begun by A.B Chesebro, in Saunemin, Illinois in 1896 and brought to the Museum of the Grand Prairie! In 1993, the museum’s staff walked into a block and frame shop that Ralph Chesebro, A.B.’s son, had walked out of for the last time in the 1930's. Oral history interviews were recorded with Ralph’s family, the shop itself was tirelessly drawn to scale, photographed and videoed; the contents of the shop have been moved; each of 5500 objects has been marked and accessioned into the museum's collections; research on the Chesebro's, Saunemin and area Blacksmiths has been conducted; and –within the walls of the museum-- the shop itself was partially reconstructed. Enjoy the interactives, see the wagon equipment, and view the tools of the Blacksmith trade in this comprehensive exhibit.

4. Champaign County’s Lincoln

The built environment that Lincoln knew in Champaign County is almost completely gone and the natural environment is vastly altered. Through our exhibit, "Champaign County's Lincoln" we recreate those places, and evoke that lost environment. Visitors will appreciate the era in which Lincoln made friends, worked and built his political career in our community! Our visitors can enter the county, the way Lincoln did, in a buggy. They can visit Kelley's tavern, have their photograph taken in Alschuler's studio, and visit the Goose Pond Church where they'll hear neighbors talking about the political issues of 1856 as they wait for Lincoln to arrive.

5. The Grand Prairie Story

"The Grand Prairie Story" is the trademark exhibit of the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Mahomet, Illinois. The exhibit narrates the long history of Champaign County from millions of years ago until the present. The exhibit details how humans continually adapted to their environment as it changed throughout history.

This Tour is a Virtual Museum or Site Tour.

Museum of the Grand Prairie

Created by Valerie Hall on July 8th 2015, 1:00:27 pm.

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Description

The Museum of the Grand Prairie collects, preserves, and interprets the natural and cultural history of Champaign County and East Central Illinois. Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 1972, the Museum of the Grand Prairie has interactive exhibits that engage visitors from ages 2 through 102! Exhibits include The Grand Prairie Story, interpreting the history of the region from the Ice Age through the present day. Champaign County's Lincoln, discussing what the region was like during the 1850s as Lincoln rode the Eighth Judicial Circuit through Champaign County. Discovering Home, an engaging and highly interactive exhibit where visitors of all ages can explore a variety of homes from a wigwam to a log cabin as well as explore ways people across our area's history have communicated with and traveled to and from their homes. Historic Hensley Town Hall that has been reconfigured as our one-room schoolhouse that also doubles as an exhibit and a space where school marms/masters conduct first-person interpretations of 19th century school lessons. Blacksmithing on the Prairie recreates the Chesebro Blacksmith Shop, formerly of Saunemin, Illinois, and tells the story of this central Illinois family as well as its experience in the Blacksmith business. Our current special exhibit is titled "A History of Healing: Infectious Diseases and Community Responses to Defeat Them." The exhibit focuses on the impact and influence of such diseases as the 1918 flu, smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, polio, typhoid, cholera, HIV, AIDS, and COVID-19. When viewing this exhibit, visitors will build an appreciation and basic understanding of the historic influences disease had over people’s lives and communities, both in central Illinois and abroad, resulting in a better understanding of how disease affects us today and informs our responses to it. In addition to examining the impact disease has had on the health and well-being of local communities, the exhibit will highlight particular instances in the past, as well as the present, where local citizens came together during previous epidemics and pandemics for the betterment of their communities.

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