Book explores history of early Illinois and foreign-name towns

Highland Park IL

13 February, 2021

12:59 PM

Description

A new book explores the history of more than 100 Illinois towns with foreign names, from Alhambra to Zion, along with the state’s successive capitals, to weave a largely unsuspected tapestry of early Illinois. “Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Illinois was a place where women and men tamed the wilderness and gave their new towns big names, out of hope, hubris, and may­be even denial, but also a place where Indigenous removal, slavery and lynchings were more commonplace than we’d think in the Land of Lincoln,” said Laurent Pernot, a Highland Park resident and author of There and Here: Small Illinois Towns with Big Names. “This book is a detour to Illinois towns like Athens, Cairo, Paris and Warsaw, but also a detour to a history not many suspect, from being the Mormon capital to the fact Illinois started off far more Scottish, German or Kentuckian than we knew.” Area town portraits include Glencoe, Lake Zurich, Palatine, Elgin, Frankfort and Geneva. Pernot also writes about his own hometowns’ origins, including Highland Park. The e-book ($14.99) is available on Google books and amazon.com and pre-orders for the print version ($24.99) can be placed at www.laurentpernotbooks.com. Like Antioch or Waterloo, the towns’ famous names honor settlers’ places of origin, or mythical or biblical locales. Some, like Argyle and Norway, once served as the main entry point for thousands of immigrants from those spots. “Laurent Pernot’s beautiful book unlocks the history and mysteries behind the names of many Illinois towns,” said Jan Kostner, former director of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism. “There and Here is a wonderful exploration of the Land of Lincoln, giving readers many reasons to get off the highway and explore our state.” The book also explores the various capitals, formal or not, that have been seated in Illinois, some before the arrival of settlers, including the Indigenous civilization at Cahokia Mounds, the French Fort de Chartres, Mormon Nauvoo, as well as Illinois' own Atlantis, Kaskaskia, the state's first capital that was swallowed up by the Mississippi. “Names such as Alhambra, Denmark, Liverpool, Palestine, Teheran, and Versailles may claim inherently that the newly named places were joining those of the old world on an at least symbolically equal footing,” said Leo Schelbert, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Switzerland Abroad. “The book’s texts and pictures also point to racial conquest by encirclement, by destruction of indigenous patterns, by expulsion, and by the creative replacement of an ancient native world by an exclusive establishment of neo-European cultural ways.” Pernot hails from France, and moved to the United States in 1988. He has worked as a reporter, public affairs consultant and college administrator. He also is the author of Before the Ivy: The Cubs’ Golden Years in Pre-Wrigley Chicago and Fernand: A French Family in War. Before the Ivy was described as “a glorious book” in Illinois Times and “a well written and entertaining read” in the Journal of Sport History. These books also can be purchased via www.laurentpernotbooks.com.