November 10 Illinois History Minute

It’s November 10th, and commercial river traffic in Illinois got its start on this day in 1810, when William Boone and his indentured servant Peter unloaded a shipment of coal in New Orleans, which they had brought down the Mississippi River by raft from Illinois’ first commercial coal mine.

Poet Vachel Lindsay, born in Springfield on this day in 1879, was a pioneering practitioner of singing poetry, where the verses are sung or chanted, like in this poem mourning the disappearance of the buffalo:

Lindsay’s dramatic readings of his poems made him one of the most famous American poets of his day.