[HOME] [HISTORY INDEX] [CHURCH] [FAMILY] [STATE INDEX]©

revised 9-16-2003

ILLINOIS

    Illinois is deemed the transportation center of the United States.  It was visited by French explorers in the late sixteen hundreds.  Many of the early hunters and explorers and those who passed through in times of war, returned to this area later to farm.  Illinois has deep rich soil and many rivers and streams, which made it ideal for settlement.

    The first part of the area to be settled by permanent settlers (other than the Indians) came from North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky.  They also came from the east from Maryland and Pennsylvania.   Settlers began to arrive in the northern portion of Illinois about 1825.  They generally came from the New England states.  As industrial growth began in Illinois, European emigrants flocked there by the thousands every month.  These furnished the man-power for the factories and industrial plants that sprung up along Lake Michigan. They came from Ireland, the south European countries,  and Germany, followed closely behind by the Poles, Italians, Swedes and Russians.

    Illinois was part of the Northwest Territory which the United States obtained from Great Britain after the Revolutionary War.  It had been ceded by France in 1763 and became part of the United States in 1783.  It was organized as American Territory in 1787 and included the land north and west of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi, and south of Canada.  Illinois became the third of five territories and other states were formed from that area.  Illinois became a territory in its own right in 1898 and our twenty-first state in 1818.

[HOME] [HISTORY INDEX] [CHURCH] [FAMILY] [STATE INDEX]©

    Viki Mouse