Luigi Paul Balassone Sr. moved his music store to 1711 Fifth Avenue in Moline, Illinois, when his son Louie was a child. As Louie later said, “My dad had taught me practically every aria from every Italian opera.” He added, “It’s all music, whether it’s opera or jazz, and maybe you can hear a little of both in what I play.”

On June 15, 2002, at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning, a crowd gathered for “Black Heroes Carved in Stone,” a ceremony held at Chippiannock Cemetery. They had convened to honor nine black soldiers who had volunteered to fight in the Civil War. The men had lain forgotten in unmarked graves until the cemetery’s office manager discovered their story while creating digital records from handwritten ledgers.

The newly created Davenport Municipal Art Gallery opened its doors to the public in October of 1925. Fourteen thousand people – a fifth of Davenport’s population – visited the gallery on West Fifth Street near Main in its first three months. Charles August Ficke’s initial gift of 270 traditional European, Asian, and Mexican paintings to the city of Davenport created the momentum and need for a municipal gallery, one of the earliest in America.

At the crest of Brady Street Hill are monumental busts of the founder and developers of the Palmer College of Chiropractic. At their center is an imposing bronze with these words: “Dr. Daniel David Palmer, Discover and Founder, 1845-1913.”

All heads turned as Helen Van Dale, the notorious “Queen of the Looney Underworld,“ walked to the witness stand in the trial of Rock Island’s mayor, police chief, and one of John Looney’s henchmen. The charges included graft, illicit gambling, and alcohol during Prohibition.

On October 6, 1922, hundreds of baseball fans gathered around a scoreboard in the front window of the Argus in downtown Rock Island to follow the third game of the World Series. Halfway through the game, two large black cars pulled to a stop in the middle of the street. Exiting their cars, several men stood in the street to fire guns at two men who returned their fire. The fans scrambled away from the ricocheting bullets in panic. Several men were shot.

Once upon a time … Isabel Scherer enrolled as a student at the Stone City Art Colony in the depths of the Great Depression. The colony, organized by Grant Wood with two partners, offered classes and created a supportive community for artists during the summers of 1932 and 1933.

These are the first words on an historic marker at the Black Hawk Historic Site in Rock Island. "The marker states that La Main Cassee was 'a true friend of the American cause during the Revolutionary War' who confronted a British war party here in 1779. The same marker then commemorates the burning of Saukenuk by the American military in 1780."

William “Willie” Louis Sandoval was struck down by a machine gunner near the end of the Second World War. His death came after having served 151 days on the front line in Italy; after parachuting behind Nazi lines in Northern Europe. He was just 21 years old.

George Davenport traveled with an army expedition in 1816 to establish a frontier military outpost on the Mississippi River. The outpost would be built on a wooded island within several miles of Native American villages. The military estimated that 10,000 people lived these villages.

Pages