PRINCETON — “Journey Stories,” a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition, will open at the Princeton Public Library on Nov. 18 and continue through Dec. 29. The Princeton library was chosen by the Illinois Humanities Council as one of six sites in Illinois to host the exhibition.

“Journey Stories” looks at the flow of American history from the viewpoint of mobility: Of our right to move about as we please, to pull up stakes, and all the human experiences that go with it. Through engaging images, audio and artifacts, the exhibit will explore the stories of people leaving behind everything – voluntarily or involuntarily – to reach a new life in a new place. The exhibit will also examine the intersection between modes of travel and Americans’ desire to feel free to move through the accounts of individuals and families relocating in search of fortune, their own homestead, or employment; the harrowing journeys of Africans and Native Americans forced to move; and, of course, fun and frolic on the open road.

“You have to look in the diaries, the entries, interview people, look at old accounts, and get the flavor of what it was like to be mobile,” said William Withuhn, the curator of the exhibit and curator of transportation for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “We are a nation of immigrants; we are a nation of people who were here already, who were very mobile. Some of us came in chains; some of us came dreaming of something better. And focusing on that, rather than just the history of a place, but indeed, how people got there; I think is actually a fundamental part of the American story.”