PIONEERS OF THE PAST _#31 Women of the 1840s records Part 2 Last week’s Pioneers of the Past introduced nine notable women found in the early records of McDonough County. Each was listed either as the head of household in the 1840 U.S. Federal Census or as a taxpayer in the county’s 1840 tax records….

Usually in Pioneers of the Past, I focus on an individual or family who settled in McDonough County during the 1830s and 1840s. Most often, that individual is a man. But this article—and the next three—will be different. This time, the focus is on the women. These were women who came to McDonough County as…

John Logan was born in Virginia in 1793, only 17 years after the Declaration of Independence. George Washington was president, and the United States was still a young nation. During his lifetime, he would witness enormous changes in America. Shortly after John’s birth, Samuel and Ann Wylie Logan left Virginia with their newborn son, two…

The story of William and Mary Keaton Pringle might have been lost to time if it weren’t for two very di erent discoveries. The first was the 1878 History ofMcDonough County, Illinois, by S. J. Clarke, which included the recollectionsof their daughter, Martha Pringle Russell. The second came more than 125years later, when archaeologists uncovered…

When Caswell Russell and his brother-in-law, William Pennington, came toMcDonough County, there were probably fewer than 20 families living here.Only two settlements, Job and Carter, had been established. There were nopublic roads, and Macomb would not be laid out for another three years. Caswell Russell was born in Hardin County, Tennessee, in 1801. He wasorphaned…

Born in 1823 in Frederick County, Maryland, John Gibbs entered the world inone of the state’s wealthiest and most productive agricultural regions. Hisearly years were shaped by a young nation filled with optimism following theWar of 1812. While Maryland remained a slave state, much of FrederickCounty was made up of prosperous farms, mills, and small…

In the northwest corner of McDonough County, along LaHarpe Creek, sitsLiberty Cemetery in Blandinsville Township. More than 200 people are buriedthere, including twenty-five pioneers who were born before 1800 in states andterritories outside Illinois. Among them is one of only four knownRevolutionary War soldiers buried in McDonough County—Lamech Blandin,Jr. Lamech was born in Massachusetts in…

Nursery, was John Davis’ contribution to the farm. The 1860 and 1870 censuses show John and Sarah Horrabin Davis and children living on the Horrabin place. Humphrey Horrabin’s age kept him from fighting in the Civil War, but he firmly sided with the Union. In 1868, he received the Republican nomination for Representative to the…

Farmers were among the first pioneers to settle in McDonough County, andmerchants soon followed. One of the earliest and most successful wasNathaniel Park Tinsley, better known throughout the county as N. P. Tinsley.N. P. was born in Virginia in 1810, the fifth child of David and Mahalia CoxTinsley. Sometime after the birth of their sixth…

Vandiver Banks was among the earliest of settlers of what would be called Rock Creek Township – later changed to Hire Township. His first name is sometimes written as Vandever. Banks located there in 1836 what later would be the south-west quarter of section 30 and immediately erected a house thereon, and soon afterward purchased…