When Marilyn Robinson was a new volunteer at Batavia’s Depot Museum, she was troubled that 3rd graders in the community had so much difficulty completing their local history assignments.
“Their parents would always come into the museum and look up information (for them), and I thought we should do more to help,” she says. The children had considerable difficulty finding information they needed because it was not consolidated into one source.
She decided she would give the them a break, and in 1989 she wrote a history of Batavia for 3rd graders titled “Little Town in a Big Woods.”
She completed the 140-page paperback in nine months and included information about the major families in Batavia’s history, the industry that has grown there and important institutions, such as churches and schools.
“I talked to older people, and then verified what they told me in the records,” she says. “I looked up the official histories we have on file and checked documents such as newspapers to see if the facts were correct.”
She has become prominent in the lives of Batavia’s 3rd graders, who must explore the community’s history as part of their studies. She talks to about 425 pupils a year from 14 classes in Batavia’s four elementary schools.
Robinson also visits their classrooms to talk about the city, and sometimes she takes the pupils on a bus tour of Batavia.
“She tells them how she did her research and explains that just because you heard somebody say something, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily so,” says Ellen Hadzima, a 3rd-grade teacher at Gustafson Elementary School.
“She tells the students how she has had to check on facts by looking up references in official records. This lets them know what an author does, what a researcher does, and that’s good for them to hear.”
The Batavia Historical Society operates the Depot Museum, at 155 Houston St., which is owned by the Batavia Park District. The society built an exhibit in the basement that is based on some of the information in the book. The exhibit contains artifacts from Batavia’s past.
“When she comes to our classroom, she usually sits in a rocking chair in one corner,” Hadzima says. “The students aren’t necessarily very close to her when she starts talking, but as she continues to tell the stories about the community, they are drawn closer, and pretty soon, they’re sitting right next to her.
“I think what attracts them the most is her personal warmth,” she adds.
The 3rd graders’ study of local history includes a number of projects. Because windmills, which were once a standard on the farms of the Midwest, were produced in Batavia, some students make model windmills.
Others prepare crossword puzzles based on words and names important in the city’s past, or dress in period costumes to portray characters they have learned about for a class open-house.
“I think what really makes it special is that they get so excited,” Hadzima says.
Robinson gets equally excited about her work with the children, and she enjoys hearing their questions. They frequently ask questions about how the Indians lived and how long it took her to write the book.
“They’re interested in the pioneers-and also in the Indians. I think it’s sometimes surprising for them to learn about the tools the Indians had and how skillful they were in getting food,” she says.
“I enjoy seeing the students around town,” she adds. “Sometimes when I shop, they’ll recognize me and say hello.”
Once, when she was at a school, she heard a commotion behind her. She turned around and encountered a gathering of students she had spoken to earlier that year. “They were happy to see me again.”
Carla Hill, who is museum director for the park district, says that Robinson’s success comes from her “laid-back style.”
“She’s not pretentious at all, and I think that helps her in her work with the children,” she says.
Robinson grew up in Downstate El Paso, near Bloomington, and received a bachelor’s degree in business education in 1960 from Illinois State University, Normal. She taught high-school business in Tower Hill (near Decatur) and then in Cornell (near Pontiac). In 1965 she came to Batavia High School to teach business.
During the summers, she studied business at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb and received a master’s degree in business education in 1966.
She retired from her position at Batavia in 1988.
“I think I got interested in history because of an interest I’ve had in genealogy,” she says. She has traced some of her family back to the 18th Century.
She joined the historical society in 1988 and has served as vice president since 1989. She also volunteers as a guide at the museum once a month.
“What has always fascinated me about history is the people,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to know what the people (in the past) were doing.”
The museum occupies a 19th Century depot that was moved in 1973 from a site near Webster and Van Buren Streets to a park with a small pond, now called Depot Pond. The museum is an unofficial depository for histories of Kane County families and communities, furnishings, pictures and other artifacts relevant to Batavia’s past.
A historical incident that usually intrigues students was the confinement of Mary Todd Lincoln in a Batavia sanitarium for six months during the 1870s when it was determined that she was insane.
The limestone building, at 333 S. Jefferson St., was built as a private school and has been used as a nursing home and a residence for unwed mothers. It is being converted into apartments.
A bed and night stand with a tiny Bible from her room in the sanitarium are part of the museum’s collection.
“We really don’t know why she was (thought) to be insane,” Robinson says. “One theory is that it may have been political. We just don’t know.”
Mary Todd Lincoln was moved to her sister’s home in Springfield where she died in the early 1880s.
The Lincoln room is on the first floor; the floor is receiving turn-of-the-century furniture being donated by a prominent Batavia family. The furniture will be arranged in an exhibit.
On the second floor is a collection of historical records.
The basement exhibit that complements Robinson’s book was mounted in 1990 and, like the book, is titled “Little Town in a Big Woods.”
Big Woods was the early name for Batavia, she says.
Settlers started coming to the area in the 1830s, and by the 1850s families from the East had established businesses. With the coming of the railroad, the community flourished. Besides the windmill factory, the community also had a paper-bag factory, and a wagon maker. The factories depended on the Fox River to generate power for the water-driven turbines that powered their operations.
In the exhibit, photographs and equipment tell the stories of powerful manufacturing concerns from years gone by and the people who made them work.
“Many of the immigrants who came to work at the plants were from Sweden,” Robinson says. Some of their trunks and household items, such as lamps and clothing, are part of the exhibit.
The exhibit also contains a display of Native American artifacts, pottery fragments and eating utensils unearthed at a pioneer cabin site to the east of town.
Robinson often assists adults with historical research in society files or at the Kane County Courthouse in Geneva.
“Last year I took part in a project I really enjoyed,” she says. “In order to raise money for the potter’s field at one of the cemeteries, a group in town decided to put on a cemetery walk in which they portrayed the characters of some of the early people who are buried there.
“I wrote the five (character) parts, including that of Sarah Houston, who came here with her grandchildren in 1835. I had to look up land records about her because very little was known about her.”
Robinson learned that she was 85 when she came to the community from the East Coast with two grandsons, Joel and Joseph McKee, who became early businessmen. Joel McKee opened the first general store in Batavia, and his brother was a land owner and speculator. Houston Street is named for the woman’s family. McKee Street is named for the grandsons.
The cemetery tour, for which she will write the parts, will be repeated in October with another set of pioneers, she says.
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The Depot Museum is open at no charge 2 to 4 p.m. daily except Tuesday and Thursday March through November. For more information on the Batavia Historical Society and the Depot Museum, call Carla Hill at 789-5235.
