Christian County, Illinois
The territory that we now know as Illinois was explored first by the Spanish in the 16th century, and was then both explored and settled by the French in the 17th and 18th centuries before becoming part of the British Empire in North America after the French and Indian War (1756-1763). After the American Revolution, the triangle formed by the Ohio River, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes came to be known as the Northwest Territory. The land within this triangle was divided into territories and eventually became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin (and a part of Minnesota).
These maps show the evolution of these boundaries (all the maps are from http://www.mapofus.org):
A (Very) Little History
The first settlers of English descent moved into central Illinois (in the area that would become Christian County) in 1812, a few years before Illinois achieved statehood in 1818. The first known settlers, Michael Hanon and his son Martin, came to Illinois from Tennessee (near Nashville). After the older man’s death in 1817, Martin (as the oldest son) brought his mother and the rest of his family to Christian county in 1818. Other Hanon relatives soon joined the family in the small settlement. According to one source, History of Christian County, Illinois (1880) Martin soon married after courting a woman “from Egypt” – a local name for the area of southern Illinois near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The first “white child” was born in Christian County in 1820.
One large group of settlers – most of them connected to the Richardson family – came to Christian County, IL, from Christian County, KY, in 1829, and settled together in what came to be called the “Richardson Settlement”. In fact, many of the people who settled Christian County came from Kentucky and Tennessee, and I spent some time trying to figure out what route they followed. I think I have the answer. They used the Cumberland River to travel to the Ohio River, then went by flatboat or steamboat down the Ohio to where it intersected with the Mississippi.
Then I imagine they went by steamboat a short distance up the Mississippi River and traveled over an old Indian trail called Edwards Trace up to the middle of the state, or continued by boat to Kahokia (across the river from St. Louis) and then continued by boat up the Kaskaskia River to the same area, where Springfield was located and where the state’s settlement was focused.
After 1847, the train between St. Louis and Chicago went right through Christian County. This map shows the current route of this train and it is probably the route taken by both Edward’s Trace and the early railroad in Illinois. It is about 100 miles from St. Louis to Springfield, and that would have taken less than a day at the time most of my ancestors moved to the area permanently after the Civil War.
One event that roiled the history of this part of Illinois was the conflict that came to be known as the Black Hawk War, in 1832. This War involved a set of skirmishes between American settlers and the Native American tribes who rejected the land policy set forth in an earlier treaty between the United States Government and the Native tribes that had lived in Illinois. Although most of the skirmishes in this war occurred in Northern Illinois, the uncertainty of settlement in the entire state slowed down the rate of settlement for a few years. The end of this war in 1832 marked the end of armed skirmishes between American settlers and the Native Americans in the Old Northwest Territory. The population of Illinois grew rapidly after the cessation of hostilities.
My Ancestors in Christian County
This branch of my family tree was always on the move. They came over the Cumberland River route from Tennessee that I described above. Some of my collateral ancestors (uncles and cousins) were living in Christian County as early as 1830, and my direct ancestors traveled back and forth between Overton County, Tennessee, and Christian County several times before moving permanently to Christian County in 1868.
Here’s how that happened. When the Civil War erupted in 1861, my 3rd great-grandfather James Workman (1806-1884) and his family had apparently been “tainted” by their connection with Yankee sentiment in Illinois. I don’t have any evidence that any of my immediate family in Tennessee served on either side in the war, but I do have evidence that James served as a local justice of the peace after the war. This made him part of the Reconstruction government in the state, and put him on the wrong side of the emerging Ku Klux Klan that had its roots in Tennessee. Evidence supports the conclusion that James and his family decided that life would be healthier – and longer – if they permanently relocated to Illinois, so they did. I’ve always been kinda proud of this part of my family’s story.
I have already written about this family in this series of essays: they were in Allegany County, MD (September 1) and they were in Bourbon County, TN (September 29). They will continue their wandering ways. I’ll write about them in Logan County (Oklahoma), Wharton County (TX), Pima County (AZ), and Fairfax County (VA) later in my Thursday series of genealogy entries. There are other locations where they lived before Allegany County: Somerset County (NJ) and Kings County (Brooklyn NY). We’ll get to them later as well.