February 15, 2010
Friends of the Harlan-Lincoln House to sponsor Brown Bag Lecture Series
Friends of the Harlan-Lincoln House at Iowa Wesleyan College will sponsor its annual Brown Bag Lecture Series each Tuesday at noon during the month of March. The programs will be presented in the International Room of Chadwick Library on the Iowa Wesleyan College campus. The public is invited to bring a brown bag lunch and listen to guest speakers on a variety of historical topics. The programs are offered at no charge, but free will donations will be accepted.
This year’s presentations are as follows:
March 2: Michael Zahs - Fort Madison: the “Old Fort” Revisited
Zahs, a retired history teacher, Iowa Eye to I director for Iowa Wesleyan College, and popular speaker on historical topics, has mapped graves at the original fort and has an ancestor who lived at the fort.
March 9: Rosemary Harris - Belle Babb Mansfield in Person
Harris, a retired teacher, researches and portrays historical figures. Mansfield, the first woman admitted to the bar in the United States, is Harris’s latest addition to her repertoire of notable Iowa women.
March 16: Paul C. Juhl - The Simple Gift of a Handkerchief, Treasured for Years, and Its Return to the Harlan-Lincoln House
Photo historian and author of the book The James Harlan and Robert Todd Lincoln Families’ Mount Pleasant Memories, Juhl will tell of the gift of a handkerchief embroidered “L” for Lincoln recently donated to the Harlan-Lincoln House.
March 23: Becky Wright - The Importance of Quilts and Textiles during the Civil War
Wright, a para-librarian at Mt. Pleasant Community High School, has had a lifelong interest in the Civil War, has been a quilter for 38 years, and also collects antique quilts. Along with her presentation, Wright will have a display of quilts, which includes a quilt made n 1864 by a Union soldier while recuperating from injuries received at the battle of Stones River, (Murphreesboro, TN.)
March 30: Joy Lynn Conwell – Henry Clay Dean and the Civil War: Northern Resident, Southern Sympathizer
Circulation/Special Collections Associate at Chadwick Library, Iowa Wesleyan College, Conwell has researched the eccentric Henry Clay Dean’s association with Iowa Wesleyan and Mt. Pleasant. Conwell and her research will be featured in a summer 2010 edition of the PBS series, The History Detectives.
For more information on the Series or any of the programs, contact Lynn Ellsworth, Executive Director of the Harlan-Lincoln House at 319.385.6320 or by email at iwcarch@iwc.e
