We operate two museum buildings and a research library. Available Resources include: Birth, wedding, anniversary files, family histories, military histories of Bureau County residents, local history books, The  H.W. Immke Photography Collection 1868-1923, Bill Lamb Collection 1937-2013

Current Exhibit: Portraits 

Opens Saturday, March 1 through July 26 (Museum hours: 12-5pm on Friday and Saturday or by appointment)

The Bureau County History Center invites the public to attend its first exhibit of 2025: Portraits! We’ve opened our archives and chosen images that have rarely been seen, or in many cases, have never been on display. Every image features a Bureau County citizen or local artist.

Come learn these individuals’ interesting and varied stories of life in early Bureau County through to present day. Paintings are paired with items the subjects treasured, created, or used in life, adding a personalizing touch to who these individuals were. In the case of Wright Seaman, Princeton’s first fire chief, the fire department’s first minutes book solemnly memorializing his death at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, or Judge George W. Stipp, the relatively unknown man who spoke following Abraham Lincoln in Bryant Woods in 1856, in dual wedding portraits with his wife, Louisa, alongside his gold-tipped cane.

The exhibit is an intimate look at the variety of individuals who have impacted Bureau County in numerous ways – from farming, road building, teaching, soldiering, and more – whose memory was preserved in a timeless portrait. The exhibit will open Saturday, March 1 and will run through Saturday, July 26, 2025.

Coming Fall 2025: H.W. Immke Exhibit