Roots

(click image for full-size)

My mother's side of the family has quite a long and colorful history in Urbana.  I keep learning more about them every year, thanks to amazing online newspaper archives made available by the Urbana Free Library and the University of Illinois Library.  The News-Gazette local history highlights are interesting, too - my Aunt called a few years ago and told me to check out this one, which talks about my great-grandfather Thomas Fitzsimmons selling produce at the market in 1912.

Ad from July 17, 1936 issue of
the Daily Illini.
(Image courtesy of the UI Library
Digital Newspaper Collection) 

One of his sons, my great-uncle Bernard "Bunny" Fitzsimmons later opened Bunny's Tavern in downtown Urbana in 1936. Uncle Bunny retired in 1972 and sold the bar, and died in 1990.

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Here's a find from the Champaign County Historical Archives at the Urbana Free Library.  My grandfather William H. Grant (who married Bunny's sister and started a family in 1921 at the age of 48) was superintendent of Urbana Parks for 40 years, retiring in 1949.