George Washington Lienesch Collection of Political Ephemera and Other Materials, circa 1880-1893

This collection 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, was the son of George Philip Lienesch and Mary Ann Thomas. He was active in choral groups, sang in a male quartet, and participated in local operettas and dramas as a young adult and was a member of the Shiloh Valley Grange. He married Louise Mary Fischer in 1896 and lived on a farm near Shiloh and O'Fallon in St. Clair County.

This collection reveals Lienesch's avid interest in politics and contains 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.

Lienesch's granddaughter, Josephine F. Moeller of Chicago, Illinois, donated the collection to the Illinois Historical Survey, the predecessor of the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections, in 1989.