Discover new stories about the famous characters of Springfield, Illinois, and why some of its lesser-known citizens deserve to be famous too. Learn about the first Lincoln museum and its controversial creator, the cholera epidemic that spared the town and the operators of Springfield's Underground Railroad. Unearth the mysteries of a local poet's wrenching death and "airship" sightings from the nineteenth century. From Springfield's fatal pole wars of 1844 to the invention of better dental forceps, local historian Tara McClellan McAndrew's research splices together the comic, the tragic and the completely unexpected in these chronicles from Lincoln's town.