Digitized Content of the George Washington Lienesch Collection of Political Ephemera and Other Materials | Illinois History and Lincoln Collections

The digitized content of the George Washington Lienesch Collection of Political Ephemera and Other Materials consists of political ephemera including trade cards and ballots, as well as various other printed ephemera from the 1880s and 1890s collected by George W. Lienesch, a farmer in St. Clair County, Illinois.

George Washington Lienesch (1866-1922) of St. Clair County, Illinois, participated in music and theater groups as a young adult and was a member of the Shiloh Valley Grange. He lived on a farm near Shiloh and O'Fallon in St. Clair County.

The digitized content includes political ephemera Lienesch collected, including election ballots for various parties and newspaper clippings from the 1884 and 1888 elections as well as cards of the candidates. The collection also contains an 1886 almanac advertising the "Seven Barks" patent medicine, several humorous broadsides, and two postcards from the 1893 World's Fair.

The George Washington Lienesch Collection of Political Ephemera and Other Items was completely digitized in 2017. Items are available online at the University of Illinois Digital Library. A preservation copy of the items is available to IHLC and digital preservation staff at the Library Digital Repository: https://medusa.library.illinois.edu/collections/1073.