During the bicentennial year of McDonough County, I will be writing a monthly column for the Community Brief that looks into the experience of residents here through the generations. WIU Senior Archivist Kathy Nichols, the founder and leader of Macomb’s “Local History Day” for students, will illustrate those with drawings and photographs from the hundreds of thousands available in the WIU Malpass Library regional archives collection. These dozen articles will appear in chronological order, conveying many of the remarkable cultural changes that have occurred over the years. This initial one reflects life on the raw frontier.
The beginning of McDonough County came along in the later 1820s, when Illinois was still a thinly settled, mostly unorganized, wild state, 221 miles wide and 381 miles long, that featured a mix of prairies and woodlands, as well as helpful rivers. It had been occupied by some Indian tribes for thousands of years (since about 8,000 B.C.)—as well as by some French settlers near the Illinois and Mississippi rivers since the later 1600s and a small number of British settlers since the 1700s.
Statehood in 1818 had encouraged American settlement, but another factor had come after the War of 1812 ended in 1815: the federal government established The Military Tract, a 3,500,000-acre section of western Illinois, to provide land grants for war veterans who applied for the 160-acre sections.
That brought more former soldiers to western Illinois, but some of them quickly sold their land (valued at $1.25 an acre) to investors in the East—who then promoted those properties, which encouraged other settlers to come. McDonough County—named for Commodore Thomas McDonough, a noted War of 1812 leader—would develop in the center of that area, and the county seat of Macomb—named for General Alexander Macomb, also a celebrated leader in that war—later promoted itself as “The Hub of the Military Tract.” Those leaders have a monument in Chandler Park, and portraits of them are also located in the City Council Chamber of the Macomb City Hall.
Several counties in southern Illinois were created before statehood, but the number increased after 1818. One dramatic year was 1825, when no less than ten counties were established in western Illinois. Among other things, that shows the impact of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers on travel, shipping, and settlement. And McDonough County was added on January 25, 1826—the 45th county in a state that would eventually have 102.
