Peoria, Illinois

“ In 1788 or 1789 the first house was built on the present site of Peoria and by the close of the century the inhabitants of the old town, because of its more healthful location, moved to the new village of Peoria, which at first was called La Ville de Maillet, in honor of a French Canadian who commanded a company of volunteers in the War of the Revolution. Later the name was changed to its present form. At the opening of the War of 1812-15, the French inhabitants were charged with having aroused the Indians against the Americans in Illinois. ”

“ In 1900 and in 1905 Peoria ranked second among the cities of Illinois in the value of its manufactures. The invested capital amounted in 1905 to $22,243,821, and the factory products were valued at $60,920,411. The principal industry is the manufacture of distilled liquors, which were valued in 1905 at $42,170,815. ”

“ He removed to Peoria, Illinois, and when the Civil War began enlisted as a private and served until peace was established, when he returned to a position as a clerk in the Peoria post-office. He afterwards became a proofreader on the Peoria Transcript, and later night editor of the same paper. Here he began to develop a remarkable talent which attracted the attention of the newspaper fraternity and was offered a position on the Burlington Hawkeye. ”

“ Other important manufactures are agricultural implements ($2,309,962) , slaughter-house and meat-packing products ($1,480,398) , glucose, cooperage ($1,287,742) , malt liquors ($887,570) , foundry and machine-shop products, strawboard, automobiles, brick and stone, and flour and grist mill products. Peoria is also an important shipping point for grain and coal.
Peoria was named from one of the five tribes of the Illinois Indians. In 1680 La Salle, the explorer, built Fort Crèvecœur, on the lake shore bluffs, opposite the present city ”

“ You remember that though the sky was bright overhead—as bright as it can be in Pittsburg—on the morning that we were married, when we took the train in the evening it was snowing hard. Before morning the train was delayed by the snow. We worried along, however, and the next evening arrived at Peoria, Illinois. Here an old friend of my husband (is not that word husband lovely?) your husband and father's, with his wife met us at the depot and we had to go home with them and stay two days. ”

“ It crosses the South west corner of the township, and is one of the most important roads in it. It is commonly called the Peoria road, and is a much frequented thoroughfare. All the overland travel toward the West passes this way. It was on this road that Peter McCullough kept his "way-side inn." Until the building of the I., B. & W. Railroad, in 1870, a regular line of coaches was run across the country from Bloomington west. This road is kept in good repair, and, as it passes obliquely west and north, it furnishes the shortest route to points off in that direction. ”

“ There are 43 miles of paved streets (principally brick and asphalt) , 50 miles of street railways, 75 miles of sewers, and a well-conducted system of parks and drives, the public park system comprising about 350 acres and including Glen Oak and Bradley parks. A soldiers' monument is among the attractions of the city, as is also a wagon bridge across the Illinois River. The city hall and court-house are handsome buildings. ”

“ Beginning in a public highway at Peoria and running along such highway in a general southerly and southeasterly direction to Pana, affording Peoria, Pekin, Green Valley, Mason City, Greenview, Athens, Springfield, Pana and the intervening communities reasonable connections with each other. ”

“ There are no large towns in Illinois, but quite a number of flourishing villages. Danville, near the eastern line of the State, is quite a flourishing town; and here the land office for the northern section is kept. It is one hundred and thirty miles south of Chicago, and it is supposed, that the office will shortly be removed to that place. Springfield, situated on a branch of the Sangamon river, is near the centre of the State, and is a large, flourishing village. It is sixty miles south of Peoria, about thirty east of the Illinois river ”

“ From Indianapolis, Hampton, Danville, New Winchester, Bainbridge, Portland Mills, Rockville, Armiesburg, Montezuma, to the State line between Indiana and Illinois, in the direction of Springfield, Illinois. From Peoria, in the county of Peoria, via Mount Hawley, Wyoming, Toulon, Wethersfield, Geneseo, Sharon, Crandall’s Ferry, to Albany, in the county of Whiteside. From Peoria, in the county of Peoria, via Mount Hawley, Wyoming, Toulon, Wethersfield, Geneseo, Sharon, Crandall’s Ferry, Parker’s Grove, Otter creek, and Johnson’s creek, to Savannah, in the county of Carroll. ”

“ Congress, with the view of ascertaining the extent of the injury and the names of the sufferers, on the 15th May, 1820, passed an act, 'that every person, or the legal representatives of every person, who claims a lot or lots in the village of Peoria, in the State of Illinois, shall, on or before the first day of October next, deliver to the register of the land office for the district of Edwardsville a notice in writing of his or her claim ”

“ There had been much experience in learning to live with the harsh elements of nature and with the native inhabitants. The particular settlement called Mount Carroll to which Frances and Cinderella were invited to come was on the stage route from Galena, the oldest town in northern Illinois, to Peoria to the southwest by way of Dixon's Ferry. ”

“ In returning to the United States, one of the missionaries, Jason Lee, undertook a tour through the border states of the West, lecturing and raising funds for his work. In the autumn of 1838 he stopped at the Illinois town of Peoria, where his glowing descriptions of the land whence he came produced an impression sufficiently lasting to result in the organization of an emigration society, which prepared to set forth for this land of promise early the following spring. ”

“ Peoria leads in the industry, and is the largest producer of fine high wines in the United States. The glucose plants of the State make thirty-five distinct products directly from corn, and consume 20 per cent. of the corn crop of the State. Chicago has become an important centre for the manufacture of men's and women's factory-made clothing as well as of boots and shoes, and has a very large printing and publishing business. The manufacture of electrical apparatus and supplies, although almost wholly the development of the last decade, has become an industry of first rank. ”

“ Then they were forcibly removed from it and their village destroyed by a Captain Craig, of the Illinois militia, on the ground, it was said, that himself and his company had been fired upon in the night by Indians, while at anchor in their boats before the village, with whom Craig suspected the villagers to be on too intimate and friendly terms. Craig and his company were in the service of the United States. The inhabitants of Peoria settled there without any grant or permission from any Government. Each person took such a portion of unoccupied land as he wished to occupy and cultivate ”

“ There are five French villages, and three villages of the natives within a space of twenty-five leagues, situate between the Mississippi and another river called (Kaskaskia) . In the French villages are, perhaps, eleven hundred whites, three hundred blacks, and sixty red slaves or savages. The three Illinois towns do not contain more than eight hundred souls, all told.' This estimate does not include the scattered French settlers or traders north of Peoria, nor on the Wabash. ”

“ Yates is a full Congressional township, the Toledo, Peoria & Warsaw Railway running across its northern tier, upon which is Weston, the only post office in the township; the soil is rich and deep, capable of a wealth of production far beyond anything yet accomplished; free from township debt; settled with sober, industrious, economical people, giving a large place in their minds to religious and educational improvement ”

“ In 1856 Brother Mills took a transfer to the Peoria Conference, now Central Illinois, and in 1864, on account of blindness, was compelled to take a superannuation. At this writing he is residing at Oconomowoc, but, on invitation, often goes abroad to assist the brethren in their work. He is a grand, good man, and his labors are always appreciated.
The next charge visited was Hart Prairie. This Circuit had once formed a part of the old Troy charge of the early times, but, after undergoing various changes, it was now a charge by itself. It had a small Church and a most interesting congregation. ”

“ Where the Peoria road crosses Sugar Creek they have an iron bridge.
Schools The citizens of Twin Grove and Dry Grove suffered all the inconveniences usually experienced by the original inhabitants of any country. The few who dwelt within convenient distances of one another were not, at first, sufficiently numerous to support a school. So far as can now be ascertained, the first school taught in the township was held in a log cabin on the farm that Jacob Hinshaw bought of Abraham Carlock, when Hinshaw first carne to the settlement. ”

“ The government is vested in a mayor, elected every two years, a council, and in administrative officials who are all, with the exception of the treasurer, city clerk, city attorney, and police magistrate—these being chosen by popular vote—nominated by the executive, subject to the consent of the council. Peoria spends annually in maintenance and operation about $610,000 the principal items being $234,000 for schools, $80,000 for the fire department, $80,000 for the police department, and $37,000 for municipal lighting. ”

“ Lydia Bradley in 1897, endowed with $2,000,000 by her and affiliated with Chicago University. Peoria manufactures whiskey, agricultural implements, automobiles, wire fences and other products. It has several meatpacking houses, and takes first rank in its distillery products. Its distilleries number ten and consume 60,000 bushels of corn daily. Peoria is per capita the richest city in the United States. Population 66,950. ”

“ No one can be surprised if our feelings prompt us to speak pretty highly of our native home, Illinois, the great fertile prairie valley between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, like a choice gem placed between the more hilly states on the East and the West. Illinois, the second and soon to be the first agricultural state in the Union; destined by her Creator to do a worthy share in feeding the world. Her merits and her charms have drawn on the intelligence and industry of every nation upon the globe.
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Pioneer Work. ”

“ Illinois is where things grow; the corn, the wheat, the hay, the oats, the fruit, the vegetables, the horses, the cattle, the hogs; the eggs don’t grow on bushes in Illinois, but they come as near to it as they do in any other State. And not only these things, which have been mentioned, grow in Illinois, but brains grow in Illinois too; and if they are about to be bothered to find a man who is smart enough for President, tell them not to be uneasy, that Illinois can furnish five hundred, if that many were needed. Yes, Illinois is where things grow. ”

“ IN traveling over the great fertile prairie State of Illinois, and viewing its many railroads, its many beautiful cities and towns, its school houses, its churches, its broad fields of waving grain, its orchards bending under their load of golden fruit, its vast population of industrious and intelligent citizens, its mills, and its factories, one can hardly realize that nearly all of this great improvement has been made in the last sixty years, but such is the case. ”

“ No State of the American union has a history of more intense interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time when Illinois forest and prairie were the house and hunting-ground of the red men, and his frail bark the only craft known to its rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the domination of civilized men I would speak. ”

“ He was returning from Vandalia, Illinois, then the capital, and his first term in the state legislature, to the backwoods village of New Salem that had been his home for four years. The last twenty miles of the journey, from the town of Springfield, he made on a hired horse. The landscape through which he rode that April morning still holds its enchantment; the swift, bright river still winds in and out among the wooded hills, for the best farming lands lie back of the gravelly bluffs, on the black loam prairie. But three-quarters of a century ago central Illinois was an almost primeval world. ”

“ Nor can it be forgotten that the deed of cession by which Illinois became part and parcel of the general Government, bears—as commissioners upon the part of Virginia—the honored names of Arthur Lee, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson. Is it to be wondered at, that a magnificent Illinois building adorns the grounds of the Jamestown Exposition,—and that Illinois hearts everywhere beat in unison with yours in the celebration of one of the epoch-marking days of all the ages? ”

“ Autumn came upon the land and through the fallen leaves along the shore the young Indians passed back and forth among the villages on the Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt farther up the river, the Peorias learned that Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper village, and that the black robe had promised to come again and preach to them. Moreover, when they left this village, one of the chiefs of the nation, with a band of his own men, went with them up the river, across the portage, and as far as the Lake of the Illinois—as they then called Lake Michigan. ”