Ijams, Ethel W. Collection, circa 1745-1990

This collection contains correspondence, publications, research notes, clippings, and photographs about Bishop Hill, Illinois and Swedish-American history collected by Ethel Ijams.

Ethel W. Ijams of Champaign, Illinois, was a historian of the Swedish-American experience in Illinois. She was particularly interested in the Bishop Hill Colony, the communal settlement founded in Henry County by Eric Janson in 1846. Ijams also wrote extensively on her ancestor, Philip J. Stoneberg, an educator and early authority on Bishop Hill.

This collection consists mainly of photocopied materials relating to Stoneberg and Bishop Hill, including correspondence and published materials. The collection also includes a fragment of a 1745 German publication on Greenland; an 1821 land grant (filed in United States General Land Office Letters Patent Collection, MS 349); an 1848 Bond of Indebtedness; an 1861 letter from Illinois Governor Richard Yates to U.S. Treasurer F. E. Spinner; a U. S. Grant commemorative medallion; and three educational periodicals.

Ethel Ijams donated the collection to the Illinois History Survey, predecessor of the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections, between 1980 and 1990. The photocopies were made from originals held by Augustana College, Knox College, and the Bishop Hill Archives. In 1989, Ethel Ijams also donated an extract from manorial rolls for Tydburste Kendall, February 1601, which was transferred to the University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2005.