Saturday, August 19th, The LaSalle County Genealogy Guild will meet at 1pm at the Guild Library, 115 Glover Street in Ottawa. The speaker will be Robert Glaser. He will be speaking about a book he has written “A Fire Straw in Bureau County.” The Forgotten Utopian Dream of LaMoille’s Rosemont Domain is the unique story of a proposed Utopian community in Illinois in 1843. This book represents the only comprehensive research study of this overlooked event in our state and regional history. The proposed community would have been part of an elaborate socio-economic movement intended to be a viable alternative to the emerging system of industrial-capitalism in the early nineteenth century. A Fire of Straw in Bureau County offers us the opportunity to revisit a time and dream that impacted those currents of change. With a Masters degree from Illinois State University, Bob Glaser taught social studies at Walnut High School for over thirty years. The LaMoille research developed from his work with the historic Galena Trail and Coach Road from Peoria to Galena, Illinois. He and his wife live in Walnut, Illinois.
