Imagine the joy of visiting an ancestral home and discovering diaries describing your family, a town, and a country from 1913 through 1931. This Eureka! experience befell Sheryl Jones at her great-great grandparents' home in Galena, Illinois, a river port town sustained in the early 20th century by its booming lead-mining industry. The diaries were the work of young Lillian Trudgian, the editor's third cousin once removed. This edition of Lillian's Diaries: Whispers from Galena's Past is an expansive and fascinating history of the Trudgian family, their neighbors and the everyday pattern of...

World War I is over, the boys have returned home and life goes on for Lillian Trudgian and her family in Galena, Illinois. Illness, hospitalization, engagement, marriage, a big sale, all impact this family and their friends and family in Lillian's actual 1920-1925 diaries. As in the first volume of "Lillian's Diaries: Whispers From Galena's Past," hundreds of surnames are indexed in the book for genealogists researching the northern Illinois area.