PARIS, ILLINOIS ROCKS!

My Civil War Era novel, TO LIVE A PATRIOT, begins and ends in Paris, Illinois. And almost exactly a year ago–June 20th, 2024–my research trip for TO LIVE A PATRIOT began there as well.

The trip to Paris was a highlight of my summer and came up in a conversation with a colleague last August. Over our lunch break during institute days full of icebreakers and meetings, he asked: “So, did you finally finish your book this summer?”

“Still working on it, always revising. This summer, I did a big research trip, starting in Paris, Illinois.” 

“Paris, WHAT?! Where is Paris, Illinois?” 

“It's two hundred miles south of Chicago, about an hour from Champaign-Urbana. My Civil War grandfather is buried there, and I paid my respects before continuing my journey south.” 

“Paris sounds like a sad little town in the middle of nowhere,” he added.

“Oh no, it’s a great historic town full of truly good people. I have several cousins who still live in Edgar County.”

“Isn't that MAGA country? How many good people could there be?” 

His question hit me like a punch to the gut. At the time I shrugged it off and changed the topic. But he was right, Edgar County is deeply "red;" the current president won 75% of the popular vote there in 2024. A county full of Lincoln Republicans in the mid 19th century had become a county dominated by MAGA Republicans in the 21st. Last summer I could see MAGA flags and yard signs on dozens and dozens of residences and barns (it was an election year, after all.) And perhaps it is the question of the decade: How can so many “good” people vote for a liar and a racist, a convicted felon, and one who is also an adjudicated rapist? How could they elect a demagogue?

But Paris is so much more than just “MAGA Country.” And my favorite memories of Paris come from a very different era, well over a decade before the current president became a household name.

As a child in the early 1970s, Paris, Illinois, was a magical place. Although today a few buildings around the historic square have been torn down and there are some abandoned factories and boarded-up homes, Paris still resembles the fictional town of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show. Some people in Paris even spoke just like Andy Griffith. As a child I noticed my Paris cousins did speak a little differently and uncles sprinkled their sentences with an occasional “I reckon.” My Aunt Carolyn, who had the sweetest speaking AND singing voice you would ever hear, often added "bless your little heart" when she observed anyone being kind or thoughtful. Even as a grown man I loved to hear this directed my way, it always made my heart soar. Aunt Carolyn passed in 2015. I miss her, and I will never forget her beautiful voice.

Growing up my father did not ordinarily speak with a Paris accent but he would sometimes “code switch” when trying to win jobs for his engineering firm in the Quad Cities. This occurred as late as the 1990s and early 2000s. If he wanted to pour on the good ole country boy charm, he would speak slower, add a little twang, and pepper his sentences with “I reckon” and “pertineer.” I guess it worked, he had a lot of success.

In the 1970s EVERYONE in Paris was happy to see me and my family. For example, I remember attending a wedding reception at my Uncle Joe’s brick farmhouse in the summer of 1974, about 10 miles northwest of Paris. As all thirteen of us—Mom, Dad, and eleven kids from age two to sixteen —arrived, one of

my cousins enthusiastically shouted: “The Doaks are here!” I don’t remember who welcomed us so warmly but his surname had to be either Curl, Bouslog, Harmon, Roush, Kenney, or MaGill. I was only five. I didn’t even know what a rock star was, but I sure felt like one. Later at that same reception, my Uncle Ed saw me and my sister Margaret eating wedding cake on small paper plates and enjoying fruit punch as we sat on the front steps of the house. He smiled as he approached us and said: “You two look just like those cute kids in that band-aid commercial.”  Margaret and I gave each other a funny look. No one had ever called us “cute” before. Maybe her, but not me. And definitely not the two of us together. Now I was a cute rock star!

We always split our time in Paris between my Grandma Curl’s farm, ten miles northwest of Paris in Buck Township, and my Grandma Doak’s farm, 2 miles south of Paris in Symmes Township. The geography was strikingly different; the land in Buck Township was flat as a pancake, with rich, black soil. Symmes Township had rolling hills and soil that was perhaps not as rich. In TO LIVE A PATRIOT, John W.N. Doak’s farm is two miles west of Paris with soil and topography similar to the Curl farm in Buck Township. (The location is actually backed up with family history and land ownership records from 1860.)

At my Grandma Doak’s farm in Symmes Township, we spent a lot of time with our Webb, Griffin, and occasionally, our Pantle cousins. The farm and house had one foot firmly rooted in the 19th century; that is how my Grandpa Doak (1901-1972) preferred it. There was no indoor plumbing until about 1973, and I remember using an outhouse when we visited. I also remember having “pony rides” as an older cousin—usually Mary or Ed Webb—would walk us around the house (pictured below) on horseback. We also swam in a pond across the road which was refreshing on hot days but also very muddy. (I didn't mind the mud.) Grandma Doak also had a chicken coop and a large red barn behind the house. In my earliest memories, they also had about a half dozen pigs fenced perhaps twenty yards from the back/side door which was on the right side of the house below. Best of all, my Grandma Doak always had lots of vanilla ice cream and Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

Pictured at the top is the house of my Doak grandparents. The house still stands, but when I was a child, the front porch was not enclosed. It also had a red barn to the right and rear of the home, and the pig pen would have been just to the right of the home. The pond is pretty much exactly as I remember, except that the land surrounding it was not neatly kept in the 1970s. I remember we had to make our way through tall thorny plants (raspberries?) to get to the pond.

We often stayed in the town of Paris during our summer visits and thoroughly enjoyed spending time with our Harmon and Roush cousins. We essentially grew up together. And from an early age, I became familiar with some real Paris magic: Twin Lakes Park. Not only did the park have two nice lakes, but they had an amusement park with bumper cars, a ferris wheel, a roller coaster, and a carousel/merry-go-round! Sure, the rides were designed for small children, but the whole park seemed like it was straight out of Mary Poppins. My hometown of Rock Island (population 50,000 ) was over five times bigger than Paris, but we had nothing like Twin Lakes Park. 

In the summer of 2024, cousin Mary Webb and I spent an afternoon together looking for John W.N. Doak and the life he had in Paris in the 1850s and 1860s. Stops included lunch in Paris, the Link Art Gallery, the Edgar County Historical Society, and Edgar Cemetery.

Photos below are from the Edgar County Historical Society. The John Deere Steel Plow and the buckboard wagon below both date to the mid-19th century. Similar tools would have been a part of the daily lives of John W.N. Doak, his brother Will, mother Martha, and sweetheart Emily Jane Guthrie. The steel plow is an often underrated invention that enabled farmers in the 19th century, including women like Martha Payne Doak and Emily Jane Guthrie, to more successfully plow the thick black gummy soil of eastern Illinois while so many men were off fighting in the Civil War. 

School bells like the one below were a daily part of Emily Jane Guthrie Doak’s life as a teacher in one room school houses, both during and after the Civil War. The sound from such a bell could carry up to 2 miles. In TO LIVE A PATRIOT a school bell similar to the one below served as an alarm system on a terrible and tragic night.

Sleigh Ride! Below Mary Webb poses with a sleigh, very similar to the one Emily Jane Guthrie and John W.N. Doak would have used on their first "date" in January of 1861. This looks like a two person sleigh, but I am sure young people could manage to squeeze in four for a double date!

The Alexander House.  Below is the Link Art Gallery, 132 South Central Avenue, Paris, IL, also known as the Alexander House, built in 1828. A lot of history and lore is connected to this house. Both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas visited this home. James M. Alexander, the abolitionist chaplain of the 66th Illinois, superintendent of the Corinth Contraband Camp, and Colonel of the 1st Alabama of African Descent, is more than likely a member of this Alexander family. I am confident that John W.N. Doak would recognize this historic and stately home. Mary Webb can be seen to the left of the entrance. 

The Grave and Tombstone of John W.N. Doak. “We found him!” Mary Webb and the author pose next to the grave of John W.N. Doak.  Martha Payne Doak, his mother, is buried to his right. Other Doaks buried nearby include Emily Jane Guthrie Doak (1838-1917), her son John William Doak (1866-1922), his wife Nelle Mae McCarty Doak (1870-1951), their son and my grandfather Samuel Doak (1901-1972), and his wife, my grandmother Minnie Smith Doak (1907-1991).

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June 20th, 2024, was a great day. We went looking for for the past--for family history--and we found it.

Paris Illinois, rocks! If you don't believe me, check out the attached video by country music star and Paris native Brett Eldredge! (My father says he knew the Eldredge family; Brett, his parents and grandparents were residents of Symmes Township, south of Paris, and neighbors to the Doaks!)