Peoria Historical Society curator Maureen Naughtin stands with the ‘Why They Came: Celebrating Peoria County’s 200th Birthday’ is a new exhibit curated by the Peoria Historical Society at the Wheels O’ Time Museum in Dunlap.
TIM SHELLEY

Objects can’t talk, but they can still tell a lot of stories about why the people who used them to Peoria County chose to call this place home.

“Why They Came: Celebrating Peoria County’s 200th Birthday” is a new exhibit curated by the Peoria Historical Society at the Wheels O’ Time Museum in Dunlap, bringing the tales behind the artifacts to the surface just in time for the county’s bicentennial.

Maureen Naughtin, the curator of the Peoria Historical Society, wanted to highlight the diverse backgrounds of those who have lived in Peoria County over the past 200 years.

“I feel focusing on immigrants who came to Peoria County is a timely topic in today’s society, just to remind us we are all of immigrant stock and have contributed to the betterment of the community,” Naughtin said.

Before Peoria County was even founded in 1825, the French were engaged in the fur trade here, and they left behind artifacts like a copper cooking vessel unearthed in Peoria in 1882 that was lovingly restored by Capt. Henry Detweiller.

A few years after the French were expelled during the War of 1812, new settlers came to Peoria County. They included Josiah Fulton, whose signature top hat is among the artifacts donated to the Peoria Historical Society by his great-granddaughter, Vicki Howell.

Peoria County’s wealth of abundant natural resources have long drawn people to the region and served as a wellspring for new industries. Ice picks, farm saws, hatchets and wrenches were just a few of the everyday tools used by the Germans, Scottish, Irish, Scandinavians, British and French who harnessed Peoria County’s rich agricultural land and the river in the early days of European settlement.

Carbide lamps, picks, and helmets were used by the immigrants from Italy and other countries who came to mine out the coal that powered the Industrial Revolution. New waves of Irish and Swedish immigrants arrived to drive the spikes that connected Peoria County to a new network of railroads.

All of these industries were necessary ingredients that gave rise to Peoria’s famous whiskey business. Immigrants from Ireland and Germany brought know-how on distilling and brewing to Peoria, and the barrels and gauger equipment on display in “Why They Came” were just a few tools of the trade that made Peoria into the “Whiskey Capital of the World” before Prohibition.