Batavia Historical Society

About Us

The Batavia Historical Society is an organization dedicated to preserving, collecting, researching, and interpreting the Bataiiva and local area's historical information or items.

The mission of the Batavia Historical Society as determined in 1960 still holds true today:
-The discovery, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge about the history of Batavia Township, Kane County, Illinois.
-To collect and preserve books, pamphlets, papers, photographs, relics, and other historical objects.
-To receive by gift, grant, bequest, devise or purchase books, museums, moneys, real estate, and other property.
-To encourage the preservation of historical monuments and buildings and to suitably mark them.
-To publish historical material in newspapers, pamphlets, and books.
-To hold meetings with addresses, lectures, papers, and general discussions.
Through the cooperation of the Batavia Park District and the society, the Depot Museum is maintained where artifacts collected since 1960 are preserved, stored, and displayed. In keeping with its mission, one of the on-going projects of the society is the plaquing of buildings, dating back 100 years or more.

The society has collected many paper archives, books, and photographs that record the history of the city and its families. A major acquisition is a collection of 160 boxes of old court records from Kane County. Especially helpful to those doing family research, they have supplied answers to many elusive historical questions.

All of these documents and photographs are available for public study in the Gustafson Research Center.