Hello! I am Jamie Poorman, the Head Librarian at Marshall Public Library and I am looking forward to sharing with you the stories of some of the communities that have existed in Clark County throughout it’s history.
The research for this program was funded through the Illinois Humanities and their Activate History micro-grant program which is intended to place a spotlight on stories, archives and collections across the state. The research was conducted using resources at Marshall Public Library and the Clark County Historical Society. Both are wonderful assets to our community and offer many clues to our county’s rich and intriguing history.
Here are a few updates to the presentation:
1. There was another store in Clarksville that operated after the Fox/Claypool store burned in 1961. I will update with details as research progresses.
2. The post office at Oilfield was discontinued in 1931 per official post office records; the office closed and the last letter was mailed in May 1932.
The photo identified as the Oilfield General Store is not actually the same building as the Butternut School that is now the Oilfield Store restaurant. That was a second store, perhaps the Watts store, across the road.
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If you have any questions or additional information, please reach out to me at jpoorman@marshallplib.com
Hello! I am Jamie Poorman, the Head Librarian at Marshall Public Library and I am looking forward to sharing with you the stories of some of the communities that have existed in Clark County throughout its history. The research for this program was funded through the Illinois Humanities and their Activate
History micro-grant program which is intended to place a spotlight on stories, archives and collections across the state. The research for this program was conducted using resources at Marshall Public Library and the Clark County Historical Society. Both are wonderful assets to our community and offer many clues to our county s rich
And intriguing history. In order to understand communities and settlement patterns, it is important to take a look back at the history and settlement of an area. We ll take a brief look at the history of Illinois settlement then dig into Clark County.
After George Rogers Clark captured the British strongholds at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, Virginia claimed Illinois as a county in 1778. Because the large region was difficult to govern, Virginia ceded the county of Illinois to the federal government in 1784. In 1787, the federal government included Illinois in the Northwest Ordinance that included Ohio,
Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The region was initially ruled by General Arthur St. Clair, for whom the county was named, whose capital was in what is now Ohio. In other words, throughout much of the 1790s, Illinois was a forgotten and forsaken place governmentally. Illinois became a part of the Indiana Territory in 1801.
Although fewer than two thousand European Americans lived in Illinois in 1800, settlers soon began to arrive from the mountainous regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. In the familiar terrain of Illinoi, settlers found abundant lumber, fish, and game, and good soil for crops.
Illinois became a separate territory in 1809 as settlers sought more control over their own affairs. Statehood was granted on December 3, 1818. On April 18, 1818, President James Monroe signed into law legislation known as the Enabling Act, which laid out the requirements for Illinois to become a state.
One of the requirements was that Illinois needed at least 40,000 inhabitants and so a census was required. Illinois’ territorial delegate to Congress, Nathanial Pope, was able to strike out a provision in the act that would have had the census conducted under the direction of the federal government.
The census completed by the territorial government showed Illinois had a population of 40,258, just enough to qualify for statehood. After statehood, the federal government issued a report that stated Illinois probably had a population of only 34,620 when it was admitted to the union.
Kaskaskia seems like an odd choice for the state capitol given it s far western and southern location. When the Illinois Territory was created and included Wisconsin, Kaskaskia was the territorial capital, the residence of the governor and secretary, and the meeting place of the territorial
Legislature, all symbolic of Kaskaskia s general revival, but progress was temporarily checked in the disastrous year of 1811. The Great Comet of 1811, large, bright, and long-lasting, was widely believed to have foretold the disasters that subsequently engulfed Kaskaskia that year: a flood ravaged crops,
A tornado leveled part of the town, and then, in late 1811 and early 1812, the fearsome New Madrid earthquakes damaged much of what was left. So Kaskaskia served as state capitol from 1818 to 1820 when it was moved to Vandalia.
The settlement of Kaskaskia is a typical example of pioneer immigration and settlement across Illinois. Settled first by Native Americans and then missionaries and French trappers, along the river the main means for transportation for goods and people at the time.
As we go through the settlement maps and creation of counties in Illinois, note that Illinois was essentially settled from the bottom up from South to North as settlers came UP the rivers. We see this trend continue as settlers arrive from the eastern United States into Illinois
Settlement first from the south, along the rivers. Clark County was established on March 22, 1819 the 16th county in the state. The county originally extended all the way to the Wisconsin border. These county boundaries changed quickly over the next few years.
In 1821, Clark County was made smaller by the addition of Pike County to the north. In 1823, borders changes when Edgar County was created. In 1831, Clark reached its current size with the creation of Coles County. Illinois reached its present county configuration in 1859 with the addition of Douglas and Ford Counties.
So, what brought emigrants to Illinois and, specifically, Clark County? The federal government was short on cash to pay veterans of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, but what they had was land. Former soldiers were given bounty land warrants that could be redeemed for land in the territories.
Also, in 1800, the Harrison Act allowed the purchase of public lands on credit. This was in effect until the Land Act of 1820 which eliminated the credit but lowered the coast from $2 and acre to $1.25 and reduced minimum parcel size from a full section of 640 acres to just 80 acres.
The river system, specifically the Wabash River as the county s eastern border, encouraged travel to the area. This is one of the earliest land applications that I found online for Clark County through the Bureau of Land Management s records.
On December 20, 1817 David Hogue Indiana purchased land in Section 21 of York township. This document was filed at the land office in Vincennes, Indiana. James Monroe, the 5th President of the United States, took office 4 March 1817, following James Madison.
Apparently the updated paperwork hadn t made it out to the territories yet. . . So they just scribbled out Madison s name and wrote Monroe s. A land office was opened in Palestine, Illinois in 1820 and served until 1855. With that, let s dig into the communities of Clark County.
The Oxford dictionary defines the term community as a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common or as a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.
This is a good description for the places that we are going to take a look at today. I use the term communities because there were a variety of settlements some official towns and villages, some post offices, some Census Designated Places , settlements around railroad stations, and some that were simply rural neighborhoods.
I began my research with a few resources the United States Postal Service records which identified 48 locations in the county that had post offices at one time or another. Many post offices were opened in the 1870s, and many closed in the early 1900s after Rural
Free Delivery was introduced and they could be added to routes of larger towns. Before that, people living in rural areas had to pick up mail themselves at sometimes distant post offices or pay private carriers for delivery. The proposal to offer free rural delivery was not universally embraced.
Private carriers and local shopkeepers feared a loss of business. Only 5 communities in Clark County currently have post offices Marshall, Martinsville, Casey, West Union, and Westfield. I began my research with Post Office Records at Marshall Public Library. There are hundreds of rolls of microfilmed records from the post office that have been
Digitized by the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Last year, library staff printed all the applications and maps for Clark County and created a new resource for our Genealogy & Local History Collection. These records contain a lot of information about the site locations of the post offices
Including distances from other offices, the nearest railroads and rivers, the size of a village or population served, and the name of the individual applying to be the postmaster. A report was filed when a new post office was to be established, and updated periodically over the years when requested by post office s topographer.
In the beginning, the U.S. Post Office Department had no official mapmaker and purchased its maps from commercial firms or private individuals. The first Topographer of the Post Office was appointed in 1837 and he began preparing maps for postal officials’ use.
The reports of site locations provided data that the Topographer used in preparing these maps. The post office was very important to communities. When a post office closed it was often simultaneous with a community s decline. The Post Office Department issued its first postage stamps on July 1, 1847.
Previously, letters were taken to a Post Office, where the postmaster would note the postage in the upper right corner. The postage rate was based on the number of sheets in the letter and the distance it would travel. Postage could be paid in advance by the writer, collected from the addressee on delivery,
Or paid partially in advance and partially upon delivery. In the photo, you can see where the postmaster noted that the sender Paid 5. There are also initials under the Paid note on the lower left corner. Some postmasters served only a few months, while others served decades. Most were men, but some were women.
It was a political appointment and a position of trusts. The postmaster handled money and was counted upon for honest opinions by other federal agencies. For example, postmasters were often contacted by the Pension Office processing Civil War Pension Claims and asked to provide information about the honesty or physical condition of a claimant.
This example pictured is not local, it is from Hartland, Michigan but the postmaster says that the applicant, applying for her deceased son s pension, was NOT dependent upon her son for support that in fact her son depended on her. Appointments were made by the Firs Assistant Postmaster.
But those who made more than $1,000 per year had to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate. The postmaster s salary was determined as a percentage of the postage sold per quarter. The chart here shows a sample of annual salaries for postmaster from 1869.
Henry Hoesman at Brown s Mill was paid $5, while the position at Marshall paid $531. The second source I consulted is a book called Illinois Place Names. This work was published in 1969 by the Illinois State Historical Society and used a variety of resources including maps, historical encyclopedias and railroad records.
This work identified 84 place names in Clark County. Additional communities were also identified in the digital newspaper archives of Marshall Public Library, in the county history books that have been published over the years, and on various state and county maps.
The beginnings of many towns in Illinois are connected with river exploration, Native American trade, Native American villages; and with quests for new land and resources. They are identified with stagecoach routes, canals, and railroads. This 1833 New Map of Illinois highlights proposed canals and roads along the stage and steam boat routes.
Interesting to note the only community shown in Clark County is Darwin. My first thought was that perhaps the map only showed county seats, but York and Palestine are both featured in Crawford County. Before we talk about Darwin though, let s look at Aurora, the first county seat of Clark
County, when the county also included the current counties of Coles, Cumberland and Edgar. The village was laid out by order of the Illinois State Legislature to be the county seat of Clark County in 1819; 220 acres was set aside on a bluff overlooking the Wabash River thought
To have the finest landing on the Wabash, which in that day was navigable all the year . The first sale of town lots took place August 5, 1819. Thirty-seven lots were sold, ranging in price from seventeen to three hundred dollars.
Dr. Septer Patrick, who moved to Illinois from New York, bought the first lot. The village had several businesses, one of which was the building of flat boats to ship commodities to New Orleans. About 1822 Dr. Patrick and his brother Charles built a large log building at Aurora for a distillery.
The distillery had a capacity of about two barrels whiskey per day, and operated for about seven years. Silas Hoskins owned a tavern in Aurora, approved by the commissioner s court in March 1820. The license cost him two dollars per year.
The commissioner s also set his rates 12 cents for one night’s lodging, per man, 25 cents per meal, 12 cents for feeding one horse corn, 37 cents for hay and oats, 75 cents for of pint of rum, wine or brandy. The new government used an existing building for their court house.
It was later used by Judge Stockwell as a corncrib and then a stable. A two-story log jail was built for a cost of $713. The top floor was for debtors. They also erected a whipping post and a pen for stray animals.
The law of the time said any stray livestock must be brought to the county seat during the next round of court after the animal was found. If it was not claimed and ownership proved, it went to auction. If no one bid, it then became the property of the finder.
Aurora served as the county seat until 1823, when it was moved to Darwin. After the county seat was moved to Darwin the area was referred to as Aurora Bend. The people who had purchased lots in Aurora were offered lots in Darwin at a reduced price.
The first US census for Clark County was taken by Charles Patrick in 1820. He recorded 931 inhabitants in the county . . .930 whites and 1 slave, a female under the age of 10. I wish I could provide more information about this young girl, but I haven t found any more information.
Although Illinois entered the union as a free state, the State Constitution of 1818 had a loophole that allowed slave owners to keep their slaves as legally indentured servants, even if that service was forced and not willing. Dr. Patrick also laid out the village of Sterling, a precursor to Darwin.
Dr. Patrick named Darwin after Robert Darwin, an English medical doctor and father of Charles Darwin. A quick note about the map that will be used for many of the comminities…. this map, from about 1890, shows railroad routes through ClarK County. The numbers (most with fractions) indicate distances. The bold numbers represent population.
-1, like Snyer, Dolson, Melrose, indicate less that one thousand. Martinsville, with 1, had about a thousand reseidents, and Marshall at 2.1 had about twenty one hundred. Now, let s take a look at Darwin. By an act of the Legislature, approved January 21, 1833, the county seat was ordered to be
Moved to Darwin, also known as McClure’s Bluff. John McClure kept a ferry there and donated the land to build a courthouse. The post office at Darwin was establisehd in Aug 1820 as Clark Courthouse. The name was changed to Darwin in 1836; the post office was discontinued in 1931.
Here is the plat of Darwin in 1892. The green shading shows the original town while the pink and yellow show two later additions. The first lots were sold in August of 1823 and cost $30 to $111. For five years after Darwin became the county seat, lots were worth more than those in Chicago.
This community was the center of trade for places as far away as Danville and Charleston. Businesses included a tannery, distillery, sawmill, gristmill, blacksmith and several stores. The thriving community saw a quick decline, however, with the building of the National Road and the railroads.
One of the industries at Darwin was building flat bottom boats. These ranged in size from 15 to 20 feet wide and 55 to 75 feet long, and could carry 2,000 to 5,000 pounds of grain. Because they depended on the river current for power, they only made the trip one way,
Then were sold off down south for $50 to $75. The operators then took a steamboat or train back home. Pictured is a pearl and mussel hunting camp along the Wabash River near Cayuga, Indiana. Many people in Clark County also took advantage of the profitable mussels in the river in
The late 1800s and early 1900s. The mussel shells were sold for making buttons and shipped to factories in Terre Haute and Vincennes. News snippets like these appeared often in the historic newspapers from the turn of the century.
In 1906, the mussel diggers of the county sold all their shells for a fair price of $20 per ton. And in 1915 Ben Foster found a pearl worth about $2,000 at York. The York Post Office was originally established in Crawford County in 1820, changed to Clark County in 1861. It closed in 1931.
The community is said to be named after New York, as that s where many of the early settlers came from. The plat of York shows the original town, right along the river, in yellow, and the addition in pink. York s heyday really came in the golden age of steamboats, before the Civil War.
Steamboats running up and down the river ferried goods between the river towns of the North and South. The wharf was a busy place with two large 3-story warehouses where the boats loaded and unloaded their cargo. There were several general stores, packing houses, a plow maker, cooper shops, wagon
And buggy shop, blacksmith, two livery stables, four hotels, 3 churches, a grist mill, sawmill, and drugstore. There were also a couple of doctor s offices and an undertaker. Pictured here is a canning factory in the 1900s. Heading out of the wharf, towards Terre Haute, ships would pass over the shipwrecked remains
Of the Reindeer and the Phoenix. The Reindeer was reported to have valuable cargo 20 barrels of whiskey that would be mighty mellow with age now according to a memoir written by York resident Howard Jackson in 1951. York began to decline after 1875 when the Paris-Vincennes Railroad was built about 1
To the west of town. It has been said that York would have been a larger town than Terre Haute. The town of West York, just over the county line in Crawford County, was founded on the railway and soon grew at the expense of Old York.
Heading out of the wharf, towards Terre Haute, ships would pass over the shipwrecked remains of the Reindeer and the Phoenix. The Reindeer was reported to have valuable cargo 20 barrels of whiskey that would be mighty mellow with age now according to a memoir written by York resident Howard Jackson in 1951.
York began to decline after 1875 when the Paris-Vincennes Railroad was built about 1 to the west of town. It has been said that York would have been a larger town than Terre Haute. The town of West York, just over the county line in Crawford County, was founded on the
Railway and soon grew at the expense of Old York. This community has also been plagued by natural disasters tornados and floods. The 1907 tornado claimed 2 lives and destroyed about 2/3 of the buildings in the community.
Incredibly, the roof was torn off of the canning factory we saw earlier, but the cans on the second floor were not disturbed. Here is a photo from the 1913 flood, often reported to be one of the worst to hit the area. The little boat in the middle is christened Titanic 2.
This photo feature York during a flood in 1939. This is Downtown York, Looking East. Also from the 1939 flood, here we see Mrs. Whitman, scrubbing the porch of her home. More communities were founded as roads inland from the rivers were built.
The Old York Trail was probably a buffalo trail first, then definitely a Native American Trail, then a pioneer trail bringing settlers to Central Illinois. Later the trail was used to transport farm produce to the Wabash River for transport
To be sold as well as purchasing supplies from the thriving city of York on the Wabash River. It crossed through Crawford, Clark, and Coles Counties. Abraham Lincoln s family traveled along the trail, or at least part of it, on their emigration journey.
Pictured is Carolyn Stephens, a board member of the Clark County Historical Society, who spearheaded a project to map the trail and collect stories of those who lived and travelled along it. One of the early, and important, settlements along the York Trail was Melrose.
A post office was established here in 1835 and operated until July 1877. It was discontinued for a few months, but reestablished in late October 1877 and continued until 1931. The town of Melrose was plated March 19, 1841. The location of the post office was about two miles west along the section line from
The current location of the community of Melrose, at the home of Nathan Wells. Here we see Melrose in 1892. The village had a school, church, saw mill, a second mill, doctor s office, harness shop, blacksmith shop, and several stores.
The Rowe brothers had a flour mill in Melrose for a time, which they moved to Martinsville in the 1890s. Bachelorsville is another early community along the York Trail, that was in Clark County for a short time.
It was the first Post Office & polling place in what is now Coles County on the Coach Road from Paris to Vandalia, but was first recorded in Clark County as a post office on May 14, 1830. The was seven months before Coles County was created.
Guilford Dudley and his brother James, from New Hampshire, were two out of three bachelors responsible for the establishment of Bachelorsville, Illinois, in 1825. As its name implied, its first settlers were all single men. Guilford Dudley opened a store where he sold cakes and pies, leading to the nickname Pie Town .
It is said that when they raised their first barn, they christened it The bachelor s delight, and the pride of the fair. The building of the National Road provided another transportation route for travelers instead of the rivers, and provided another opportunity for communities to develop.
A post office was established in this community in 1842 as Lodi. The name was changed to Clark CentRE, with and RE at the end, in 1857 and then changed to the current spelling in 1893. the post office was discontinued in 1904, reestablished in 1906, then permanently discontinued in 1907.
The 1892 plat map refers to the community as Auburn but notes it is served by the Clark Center Post office. The map shows a blacksmith shop, church, and a few stores. Auburn Township was established in 1859 with parts Dolson, Marshall, Martinsville, and Anderson townships to place it in the middle of the county.
The village itself predates the township with the first settler on record being Jonathan Rathbone, from New England, who built a cabin in 1833 where the church later stood. In 1836 RB McGowan, from Kentucky, erected a hewn log cabin and hung out a sign on which a deer was painted.
It was a great site, right along the National Road, and so the Old Buck Inn & Tavern did a good business. A written history of the early settlement of Auburn by Della Payne reports that the first school was taught by a man named Robert Rankin in 1838, in a little log cabin west
Of the village. Mr. Rankin is reported to have been illiterate and addicted to gambling, ruling his school by brute strength Over the years, there was talk of moving the Clark County Courthouse to Auburn, in the center of the county, but it was voted against twice and the courthouse remains in Marshall.
After the courthouse fire in 1902, a gentleman from Auburn, Andy Lowery, helped to clean up the charred remains of the structure. He loaded it into his wagon and hauled it to Auburn where he built a home on a high hill overlooking Big Creek.
The foundation was built from blocks of the foundation of the courthouse. And there were also three stained glass windows that he reused in the home. A letter to the editor of the Marshall Independent in 1990 shared this information and these photos.
It also reported that the home had been occupied until recent years but was standing empty at that time. It has since been torn down. Although the photos are blurry, you can see the beautiful carvings in the foundation of
The house along with a photo of one of the blocks in the collection of the Clark County Historical Society. The letter to the editor was concluded by saying Auburn might have lost the election but some of the courthouse did get out here!
Another community that grew up along the National Road was Brown s Mill. I did not locate it on any map but postal records show that it was located in Section 1 of Wabash Township, which places the community right near Armstrong Church. The post office opened in 1866 and closed in February 1870.
In 1869, Brown s Mill was one of only 10 communities in the county to have an agent for the Marshall Herald, collecting subscriptions and advertisements for the newspaper. Many of the men listed here also served as postmasters in their communities. Here is an early photo of the National Road, near Livingston.
The village was laid out by Robert Ferguson in 1830 on land purchased from the federal government. Robert and his brother James emigrated from Indiana about 1829, drawn by the promise of prosperity along the National Road. James was a miller, Robert a tanner. They were also distiller, farmers, and merchants.
Early businesses in the community included a hotel built by David Wyrick, a grocery, a tavern and a stagecoach shop. Robert Ferguson built a two-story building where he sold leather goods from his tannery. A Post Office operated at Livingston from 1832 until 1903.
Its name was change to Cohn in 1880 and later changed back to Livingston. The 1892 plat refers to this community as Cohn but notes that it was platted as Livingston. The only building identified is the school on the north side of the village.
The village was very active though and had a flour mill, sawmill, church, school, hotel, grocery, blacksmith shop, tannery, doctor s office, brick yard, and pottery. Here is an example of pottery from the Livingston Pottery. It is signed O. Wilson & Co, Livingston, Illinois. Orrin L. Wilson was born 1828 in New York.
He appears in the 1870 Illinois census as a potter at Livingston, Clark County, Illinois, by 1880 he and his family had moved to Casey. An interesting note about Livingston Cemetery. These stones, just south of the church along the fence row, belong to members of the Ferguson family, the founders of Livingston.
The stones are carved from Livingston Limestone, taken from the bluff at the cemetery. Livingston Limestone, first found here in Clark County, extends into Vermilion, Edgar, and eastern Coles Counties, where it has been extensively quarried. This particular type of headstone, called a necked discoid, has been the subject of
An extensive study by Mike McNerney, a retired archeologist from Southern Illinois. In his book A Shape in Space and Time, McNerney writes The Livingston Cemetery is very important in several ways. Our marker is associated with a milling and distilling family, commercially cut and engraved,
[and] two sons of Robert Ferguson went into the monument business. It is almost the summary of the study in one cemetery. Livingston was twice hit by devastating tornadoes. Once during the Civil War and one in May of 1917. Pictured here are the remains of the hotel.
Here are a few more photos of the tornado damage. Most of the businesses and 17 homes were destroyed. The last covered bridge in Clark County stood over Big Creek at Livingston. It was damaged in the 1917 tornado. Although the bridge was rebuilt, the cover was not.
The impact of transportation on communities wasn t limited to determining their locations, but often determines their eventual fates. Livingston was to be on the railroad, but then it was moved a few miles north of the town. This, coupled with the tornado damage of 1917, brought an the end of the community s prosperity.
Dennison was platted as another of Clark County s railroad towns. The post office was established there in 1870. The community was also known as Mudsock due to it muddy main street. It was founded by Lyman Booth of Marshall and said to be named after a sawmill operator
Whose mill was located there before the railroad came through. Lyman Booth and Robert Dulaney, also from Marshall, built a factory in Dennison to make wagon wheel spokes and other wooden wagon parts that employed 50 people! This factory operated for five years, before moving to Kentucky.
The plat from 1892 shows a school and a church. Other buildings are not identified. The post office at Dennison held out longer than any of the other communities featured tonight. It just closed in 1992. In the 1980s, the office served 250 people; 30 with post office boxes.
At closing, only about 15 people had boxes. McKeen lies about 6 miles northeast of Marshall along the Vandalia-Pennsylvania Railroad. The village was platted in 1870 three men Francis Jones, Volney Chapin, and Fred Elmdorf who build a steam powered lumber mill to make staves the curved wooden boards used to make barrels.
A post office was established at McKeen on August 26, 1870 and discontinued on May 14, 1906. The town was named for William Riley McKeen of Terre Haute. McKeen was a prominent Banker and director of several railroads in Indiana. He also served as president of the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad.
In July 1870, about the time the town was being laid out and a post office established, this railroad corporation also took control of the Vandalia Line which ran through Clark County and on which the community was built. In this 1892 plat of McKeen, only the post office is identified.
It is interesting to note that three of the streets are named for the founders Jones, Elmendorf, and Chapin. Their barrel factory employed 100 people. Pictured here is the store of Carter See. In 1910, Carter was the railroad agent, storekeeper and postmaster, as well as a farmer. This is an unidentified store in McKeen.
And the Baptist Church at McKeen. Ernst is another railroad town, along the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis railroad line. Ernst was founded in 1883 by Ernst Ruhl. Mr. Ruhl owned the land on both sides of the railroad track and he built a new building to house a store and a post office.
Ruhl was an old civil engineer, working on railroads all across the United States. While working on the old Wabash Valley Railroad, he purchased the farm that he later made his permanent home. He says he is making kindling of his goods boxes, determined to move no more. The application for post office was rejected.
. . The original name Darwin Crossing was not distinct enough. So, Ernst Ruhl named his post office, at his store, just 12 feet off the railroad track ERNST. The big news of the day from Ernst on July 5, 1900 was that Joe Mitchell went down to
Ernst on the train last Thursday and thence to John Mitchell s on his bicycle to spend a few days. He made the run from Ernst to Darwin, nearly 5 miles, in less than half an hour.
Joe was just 16 years old; his father had passed away in May and he was going to visit his Uncle John. 2 miles south of Ernst, just east of route 1 on the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad was the community of Hatton.
A Post office was established at Hatton on Mar. 7, 1882. It was named by Postmaster John Milton Hollenbeck for Assistant Postmaster-General McHatton. It was discontinued April 2, 1906. This location seems to be referred to as Snyder and Hatton interchangeably. It seems that the official post office name was Hatton.
Snyder Creek flowed just south of the community, and the church was called Snyder. This is a map of Hatton from 1892. It was situated right on the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad. The log cabin that sits near the Marshall Fire Station and acts as our Visitor s Center
Was relocated from near Snyder. It was first moved to the east side of Marshall, along Archer Avenue, then donated to the City and moved to its current location in 1994. The cabin was built, it s believed, in the 1840s. Alonzo and Minnie Walls purchased it and 20 acres of land in 1917.
Alonzo had previously owned a store in Snyder, and then built a small porch onto his home where he operated a small store and gas station just north of Snyder, at the crossroads of Route 1 and Darwin Ferry Road. When the Walls lived in the home, it did not resemble a log cabin.
There had been additions made and the logs were covered with yellow poplar siding. Alonzo was also the community s Zanol Salesman, traveling door to door to sell food products and household goods. Walnut Prairie is located just south of Hatton, also along the railroad.
The area was first settled in 1817 and named by early residents for the walnut trees that lined the prairie, covering 4 sections of Darwin Township. Reuben Crow experimented with cultivating cotton on the nearby Union Prairie and later on Walnut Prairie with some success.
The soil was good for the crop, but the climate was not. Mr. Crow built what was perhaps the first cotton gin north of the Ohio River. A Post office was established at Walnut Prairie on March 24, 1875.
At the time, it was recorded that there was no village but the office would serve a rural population of 800. The plat is from 1892, and while no businesses are identified, we can see that there was indeed a village there at that time. The post office was discontinued in1923.
Adenmoor station was located along the railroad route between Marshall and Clark Center. Now, we don t have photos of many of these early communities, but here is a picture of Aden Moore! Aden was actually owned the store in Auburn and was the postmaster of the Clark Center post office.
He would ride a bike to the train station to pick up the mail and take it back to his store. It was reported that there was miscommunication with the railroad office and the station came to be called Adenmoore. It was still referred to by that name in the 1950s!
Aden died in 1909 at the age of 48 leaving behind 10 children 6 of them still at home! Adenmoor wasn t the only community named for a local resident. Loop Hill was the name originally submitted for this community, but the application was
Rejected and sent back for a name that would distinguish it from any other community in the state. The applicant for post master of that location, Amos Beltz, just named it Beltz. Similarly, Lindsey was named for Zachary Taylor Lindsey, the post master.
A post office was active from March 31, 1894 to March 31, 1903. Aucker was named after the maiden name of the POSTMISTRESS Louisa Aucker Baker. It was located about 3 miles west of Walnut Prairie and 4 miles northeast of Melrose.
This post office operated for only a short time from November 1881 to sometime in 1882. The postal service record is unreadable. There was no village at this location, but the post office served about 100 people. Louisa J. Aucker was born in 1839 and attended Westfield College.
She was a teacher for several years, and married Henry Baker in 1862, when he was on furlough from the Civil War. He owned a store in Melrose that was very successful. The store burnt in the 1880s; then the family moved to Mississippi in 1890.
Henry died in Mississippi in 1910 and was brought back to Clark County for burial. Louisa moved to Arkansas and lived with one of her daughters; then she too was brought home for burial when she passed away in 1923.
Henry was the postmaster for Darien, another location we ll look at, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Another place with an interesting name is Allright. I ve heard the story a few times, and it was recorded in an Oral History Interview with
Carroll Kannemacher, that the residents in the rural neighborhood came together to choose a name for their community. One representative was sent to the courthouse to register the name, but he was so nervous that he just kept saying Allright, Allright. So that was the recorded name for the community.
A post office was established here in 1892 and discontinued in 1908. Pictured is the Allright Grocery store when owned by Ferry and Edna Kannmacher, who purchased it in 1915. The store had been built about 1909. Looking closely at the left had corner of the porch, notice the missing porch post taken
Out by a delivery truck that kept hitting it. Many area residents frequented the store to hear the news and to visit with neighbors. Goods could be purchased with cash or bartered for live poultry, eggs, cream, hides, and rabbits. Poultry, rabbits and eggs were taken to Cunningham s Poultry house in Martinsville, the cream
Shipped by rail to Peoria Creamery, and hides shipped by rail to the highest bidder. Bakery bread was sent out by the mail every day. The Kannmachers sold the store in 1930, and it burnt down in 1943. The building and stock were a total loss.
Castle Fin, in Douglas Township, was founded in 1848 by Robert Wilson. He named the town after his home in Ireland. Lots originally sold for $25 each, shown in pink on this 1892 map. An addition, shown in yellow, was made 1854.
The town had a blacksmith shop, shoe shop, grocery, dry goods store, a doctor, and a justice of the peace. Robert Wilson s home was used as a hotel. Land was set aside for a church and cemetery, but it was never built. A visiting priest would hold services at Wilson s home.
There was even a village singer who could sing for hours without repeating a song. The story is told that he was once sent to jail for a minor offense but didn t stay long the sheriff couldn t stand his constant singing.
This photo, found in the Douglas Township binder in the library s collection, is identified as Hiram Wilson s store in Castle Fin on the 4th of July. This photo, found in the Douglas Township binder in the library s collection, is identified
As Hiram Wilson s store in Castle Fin on the 4th of July. The poor condition of the roads in the area and the village s distance from a railroad led to the decline of the town. Pictured is a WPA, Works Progress Administration, crew in the 1930s working on the road to Castle Finn.
Originally referred to as Moonshine Prairie and said to be named for the dew on the prairie when early settlers first arrived. The original Moonshine store was in the front room of a house owned by William “Billy St. Martz, a veteran of the Civil War, located on the south side of the road.
It also served as the first local post-office. Sylvester Crandall would bring the mail from Martinsville once a week by horse cart or buggy. A grocery store was built across the road in the late 1800s. to the north of the present store which was built about 1912.
It was converted in 1982 to the Moonshine Store Restaurant. A few news bits from Moonshine in the 1870s. First, from the Marshall Weekly Messenger in December 1873 comes a notice that Mr. A Gray informs us the he purchased of W.H. Bennett of Moonshine Prairie, one day last week a
Hog that weight 666 pounds. Who can beat that? And from the Clark County Herald in April 1876, an outbreak of small box and moonshine. The current Moonshine store was built in 1912 by the Deverick brothers. The store has long been an important part of life for Moonshiners.
At Christmas time they used to host a community party, with a Christmas tree, popcorn, and treats from Santa and Mrs. Claus. In the 1920s, teenagers would meet at the store on Saturday night to play games. Raymond and Enid Misner owned the store from the 1960s until 1982, as the rural community was changing.
Many farmers began meeting at the store at lunchtime since their wives had begun working away from home. Enid began frying hamburgers for the customers and quickly gained a reputation for having the best burgers. Soon, the demand for lunch was greater than that of her grocery business. And thus the famous Moonburger was born.
Hogue-town, or Hog-town as I ve also heard it called, is, as one newspaper article described it, hardly more than a stone’s throw away from the community of Moonshine. About 1913, Roscoe and Letha Deverick sold the Moonshine Store and just west to the village
Of Hoguetown There, about 20 homes existed, occupied by oil field employees working for such companies as the old Ohio Oil Company, today known as Marathon. In 1931, Roscoe purchased the Hoguetown General Store. The Hoguetown store is pictured here.
The top photo is refered to as the old Hoguetown store and the bottom picture as the last Hoguetown store. Ohio Oil Company worker Raymond Williams, from Crawford County, stands in front of oil tanks near Hoguetown in 1934. In an interview to Tales from the General Store, Thornton Stephens said he learned how
To make chairs, and their bottoms, from his uncle who had worked in a chair factory near Hoguetown. Thornton was 93 years old at the time of the interview, and was born in 1901 in Crawford County. The post office at Oilfield was established in 1896 and operated until 1931.
The town sprang up almost overnight with the discovery of oil, first in the 1860s and let in the late 1800s. Before the post office was established, the community was known as Oil City, as were many similar settlements at the time.
It said that there were so many flares that it looked like daylight all the time. The town had several general stores and a rail line. This sketch of the history of the discovery well of Oilfield was made by Lee Newlin, a talented artist and historian for the area.
He notes that two test wells proved unsuccessful on this particular site in 1866 and then in the 1880s, but a well drilled in 1904 was successful. The Oil City Hotel was a 27 room establishment whose ledger recorded the names of many famous guests including Ulysses S. Grant, author Charles Dickins, philanthropist and businessman
Diamond Jim Brady and his companion, actress Lillian Russell. Local lore tells that John D. Rockefeller spent $1 million dollars for a field at Oil Field. The Butternut or Oilfield School was built in 1866, during the community s first boom. The wooden frame building was replaced in 1924.
It was taken down, board by board, and moved just a short distance away. It then became a general store. In 1963, the building was again in danger of being torn down when it was found to be in the way of an expansion of Route 49.
Elbert Enis purchased it and moved it with a semi and flatbed trailer. It was then reopened as a store, then used for storage by the family. It was reopened in 2007 as a restaurant. If you haven t had a chance to visit this little gem, make sure to check them out.
The village of Clarksville was laid out in 1851 by a gentleman named George Lee. Most settlers came from Kentucky and Ohio. The town plat shows a wagon shop, several stores, a mill, doctor s office, and blacksmith shop. In the 1880s, there was a shoe shop, harness shop, and about 20 families.
The 1883 History of Clark County states that the first home was built in 1851 by John Myers, who also owned the shoe shop, The history also states that Reason Beadle erected a store building shortly after the town was laid out, which he stocked with a general assortment of merchandise.
Reason Beadle, however, was born about 1837 so he would have only been 13 or 14 years olds when the village was founded. The 1860 census lists his occupation as Farmer. In 1870, however, he is a dry goods merchant with an estate value of $2,500.
The store was sold several times; Emil Fox purchased it in 1924 and ran it for 34 years before he sold it to Raymond Claypool. It burned down two years later in 1961. The Millhouse blacksmith shop was a large, two story brick building.
The lower floor was used for the blacksmith business while the upstairs was a large meeting room used by many of the community s organizations. To the east was the Baker family s grocery store, also 2 stories, with the family s home upstairs.
The road between the businesses was often used for entertainment including boxing matches. Cleone was a small Crossroad village lade out in 1846 by Burns Harlan, a son of Jacob Harlan who was an early settler of the county and the first postmaster at Darwin. . Burns served in the Mexican American War in
The 1840s and lost a leg at the battle of Vera Cruz. He was living in Washington, D.C. at the time of his death in 1914 at the age of 90. The Washington newspaper proclaimed him the oldest veteran of the Mexican War.
Burns was married three times and father 17 children, with a unique system for naming them. Since the name of his first wife, American, began with A, and his with B, they named their first child Curtis, with a C. They had seven children before his wife s death, named with
Letters C to I. He and his second wife, Margaret, had 10 children named from N to W. The first name of the fifth child, G, is not known as it was born about 1856 and died before the 1860 census. The community was first named Centerville but was known as Gnawbone.
The residents seems thrilled to receive the new name, Cleone, when the post office was established in 1886. The next few sketches were made by Lee Newlin. This features Hammond & Best General Store, circa 1907. Clark Hammond opened a store on the East side of the road in Cleone in 1851 after returning
Home from a trip west to California during the Gold Rush. Clark s family had emigrated to the area from Vermont in 1836, when he was just a boy. By 1846, both his mother and father had passed away. Clark and his younger brother, Frederick, headed west to California for the Gold Rush,
Staying for a couple of years. The 1850 census shows them near Placerville, California mining gold, earning about $1 per day. At the time of his death in 1915, it was reported that Clark was one of the wealthiest men in the county, with over 2,000 acres of land.
He had also helped found the former Martinsville State Bank. A log church was built in the community and known as Gnawbone Church. Ki Tomlinson owned a restaurant from 1896 to 1907 with a menu of beans, chili, crackers, bologna and orange bitters.
Prior to the restaurant, in the 1890s, Ki operated a saw mill in Cleone The locations listed here had post offices and sometimes a village for a time; in my research I found communities such as these referred to as Crossroads Communities. I thought that was such a fitting description for many of them.
They served rural communities ranging from just a few families to more than 800 people. Often these post offices were located in a small general store in the area. Margaretta was located east of Westfield on what is now the Lincoln Heritage Trail, It was named for Margaret, wife of the Postmaster, William B. Marrs.
A post office was established at Margaretta June 16, 1840. Its name was changed to Richwood on August 27, 1861. It was discontinued on June 26, 1863. An historical marker was placed at the site of the Margaretta Post Office by the Clark County Historical Society and the Illinois State Historical Society in 1965.
It is in the process of being repainted and replaced this spring. The community of Oak Point lies south of Casey, in Johnson Township. David Baughman came to Clark County in 1844, almost immediately after his marriage to Lucy Buck. He purchased land in Johnson Township and immediately began building a cabin.
In 1847, David made one hundred and ten thousand bricks that he used the following year to build a large home built that he lived in for the rest of his life. In 1852, he set up a small store on his farm.
He established a post office there in 1861 and served as the postmaster there for nearly forty-one years until the post office was discontinued in 1902. The closing of his post office was even reported in a Chicago newspapers, as it was estimated that he was the longest serving postmaster in US history.
Moriah was a small settlement near Oak Point that had a post office from 1893 to 1915. The first postal report stated that there was no village, but that office served about 200 rural residents. A small village was established, though, during the oil boom of the early 1900s.
Pictured are the original Moriah log church and the school. This photo shows the community of Moriah about 1905. The front of the little log church can barely be seen on the left hand side of the photo. For a time, the little community was really a busy place.
A new hotel was built in 1907 and celebrated with a huge New Year s Day Dinner. And so bountiful was the dinner that after all were served these was more than two loves and five fishes left according to the Clark County Herald.
The application for a post office at Weaver was originally submitted under the name Sears. Like Loop Hill that become Beltz and Darwin Crossing that became Ernst, the application was returned for a more unique name. The Weaver Store was on the National Road about five miles east of Marshall.
The original building operated in the early 1900s as a Phillips 66 gas station and Hays Freightline truck stop. Trucks stopped at the station all hours of the night, waking up the attendant to pump gas. The attendant received 3 cents per gallon for pumping.
The building on the left was a blacksmith shop at one time. About 1936 an addition was put on the gas station and served as a general store. The building was torn down in 1978. There are some communities that I really only find mentioned in the newspapers.
They don t seem to have been platted as town or had a post office, but often had roads named after them and are still neighborhoods today. Places like Stringtown, Spiketown, and Bullskin. The first mention that I found of Stringtown was in the 1904 Marshall newspaper.
This snippet, from 1941 proudly proclaims that Stringtown is still on the map! The funny thing is . . . I was unable to locate it on any maps! The 1910 Clark County Plat Map shows the Stringtown School just east of Marshall, along the National
Road and in the 1950s the area is shown with a series of shaded dots that usually indicates a town. But no town name is listed, as it is for Marshall and Livingston on this map. Sometimes the small dots are used to indicate small plots of land that cannot be divided
And identified on a plat map. A few more tidbits from Stringtown the school had only 5 pupils in 1942. The school is still standing and is now a private residence, just off of old Route 40. And each spring the return of the Stringtown Frog Band was often reported in the newspapers.
One of the surprising things that I found while researching this presentation is that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, one thing that bonded many of these communities together was baseball. Many of these communities had baseball teams and their games were reported in the newspapers each week during the summer months.
This photo is actually a bit of a mystery. .. it was shared with us last summer and had been found in Texas, in a recliner chair that belong to Doc Williams, the veterinarian who served our area for many years. Cleone was well known for their baseball club, and apparently played very well.
Games were played all across the county at little places like Lindsey, with spectators traveling to see their team play. Even the community of Marvin, which had the shortest lived post office that I found just 2 months from July 9 1875 to September 17 of that same year had a baseball club.
One last stop on our journey through the history of Clark County s communities . . . Darien. Darien was one of my favorite places to research. I had never heard of this little community in Orange Township before and first found it in the post office records.
The site report for Darien, from 1865, did not ask about the existence of a town or the population served. I never found it on any of the maps that I consulted. It did have a faithful report in the local newspapers, with their correspondent providing updates nearly weekly.
I assumed, then, that it was simply the location of a post office and not a real town. Near the end of my research, when I was actually finishing up the visual presentation, I noticed a book on the library s shelf that I had missed before, an acquisition from the former Clark
County Genealogical Library in the summer of 2023, labeled Melrose Township. Then, a smaller label below, Darien I pulled it off the shelf and couldn t believe what I had found . . . The very first page was a history of Darien, and gave a location at the joining point of
Section 3 6 in Martinsville Township, Section 31 in Anderson Township, Section 6 of Melrose Township, and Section 1 of Orange Township. This map, from 1892, shows a church at that location but does not show a village. Here is an plat of Darien as laid out in 1854.
Much of the history of Darien was found in an abstract for the land that the town was laid out on and later purchased by John Weir. In the 1980s, the Clark County Historical Society and the Illinois State Historical Society held a campaign to gather information about this community.
Lot 4, at the corner of North and Dolson Streets was the location of the school while the church was just up the road in lot 1. Also in lot 1 was the post office. The mail was delivered by a post rider from Marshall once or twice a week.
This entry in an 1869 issue of the Marshall Messenger places Darien in the directory with Terre Haute, Darwin, and Casey and advertises the services of a physician and surgeon. The history in the binder at the library says So the town of Darien was born November 21, 1853 and died March 22, 1895.
Its death seems to have been an ennoble death having been sold off. This entry from the Darien Scraps weekly newspaper report in the 1880s seems to foretell the downfall after the sale of the land . . . Darien is only known by name as the town site is
Now being turned into gardens and fields. A memory of the village, recorded by resident Jesse Davis, recalls several stores, a school, a church, a grist mill, and a brick yard which provide the brick for St. Paul and Wesley Chapel Churches. Pictured here are a home in Darien, about 1920.
And the Darien Store with a gas pump in the 1930s. An historical marker was placed noting the location of the village. The photo, a scan of an old Polaroid, is blurry and difficult to read but it says Original Site of the Town of Darien.
There are dates at the bottom, but they are too blurry to read. The couple in the photo are Jesse and Edith Davis. These final discoveries that I made about a village, that I didn t know existed even after many hours of researching our county s history, was surprising to me and really
Reminded me just how important it is to record our history. We are always accepting new donations for the genealogical and historical collections at the library and at the county historical society s museum. If you have any stories, any information, photos, family or community history that you
Would like to share, please let us know. Thank you. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at jpoorman@marshallplib.com