The state of Illinois has had many masters. In 1682, so the records tell us, it was farmed out to Robert LaSalle for "one fifth of the crop," and he governed it from Starved Rock. In 1690 the lease reverted to LaSalle's lieutenant, Tonti, and a partner named La Forest. In 1693 the latter sold half his rights to Michael Acau for $1200 worth of beaver fur, delivered at "Chicagou." Acau was a son-in-law of the chief of the Kaskaskias. In 1712, by the favor of the king of France, the wealthy Crozat succeeded to the western monopoly. He was followed in 1717 by Renault, under the famous charter of John Law and the Mississippi Scheme. The seat of government was changed from LaSalle county to Randolph county, and the new fort in honor of the charter was named Fort Chartres. The state became a district of Louisiana. From 1759 it became a part of Canada. The transfer was formally made and the census taken in 1764. Laclede had built a log trading post across the river from Cahokia, naming it St.Louis, and a number of French families fleeing from British rule in Illinois settled around him. That is how St. Louis started as a village and not as a mere trading post.

It was while we were a part of Canada, in 1769, that the chief Pontiac while drunk was killed in Cahokia, and the Starved Rock tragedy that followed was one incident in the furious revenge that was taken for his death. What a story it would be if all was recorded and all records, had been kept! And-at the bottom was the trader's whisky.

The first American settlers with families came in 1781, from Virginia and Kentucky, and it came about through an episode in the revolutionary war. Col. George Rogers Clarke was authorized by the Virginia legislature to lead an expedition against the British forts in Illinois, and he set out with 153 men, all he had been able to secure. Floating down the Ohio river to the old site of Fort Massac, he sank his barges in the mouth of a creek and set out for Kaskaskia, a hundred miles away. Their route lay through Johnson, Union and Jackson counties, and on July 3, 1778, they camped at the mouth of the Kaskaskia river, where Chester penitentiary now stands. A marble monument marks the spot. That night they marched up the north bank of the river and surprised Fort Gage, while part of the force crossed the river at the ferry and captured Kaskaskia. So much for promptness of

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decision and quickness of movement! Cahokia and Vincennes surrendered in their turn. When the British commander at Detroit heard of the surrender of Vincennes he sent and retook it, intending to proceed to the Illinois country in the spring. That delay was his undoing. Col. Clarke gathered 170 men and again marched on Vincennes, and again captured it by surprise. That winter journey of 200 miles, fording creeks, wading swamps, rafting swollen rivers, sleeping on the ground, subsisting on pioneer soldier's rations of dried meat and parched corn, was perhaps the most desperate march of the revolutionary war. The commandant was sent a prisoner-of-war to Virginia, and the garrison was paroled and allowed to return to Detroit. The state of Virginia assumed control of the conquered territory, but in 1784 ceded it to the United States. By the famous "Ordinance of 1787" Illinois was a part of the Northwest Territory, and sent delegates to the territorial legislature at Gainesville, O[hio]. Gen. St. Clair was the first governor, and in 1790 organized St. Clair county, naming it after himself. In 1800 we were a part of Indiana Territory; and in 1809 became a territory in our own right, with the seat of government at Kaskaskia.

We come now to the American settlers. Some of them were Clarke's soldiers, and were so well pleased with the country that they returned in 1781 and settled here. They settled on the Mississippi river bottom and the adjoining upland, in what is now Monroe and St. Claire counties. The Monroe county settlement they called New Design -- a name which has become famous in Illinois Baptist annals.

Among those who came at that time were Shadrach Bond, Larkin Rutherford, .James Moore, James Garrison, Robert Kidd, James Piggott, John Doyle, Robert Whitehead, [and] Mr. Bowen. Mr. Moore was the leader of this colony, and settled with part of them at New Design. Others settled on the bottom; in what is now the township of Harrisonville, and it was called from them the American Bottom. Mr. Piggott built a blockhouse, known as Piggott's Fort, as a defense against the Indians. Mr. Bond was known as Judge Bond; his nephew became the first governor of the state of Illinois. The colony was one of weight and respectability, not adventurers but home seekers. Yet none of them were professing christians, except Mrs. Bond who had belonged to a Presbyterian church!

It was to most of them a new and strange world into which they had come. The French settlements represented a civilization as old as their own, but different. The Frenchman yoked his cattle by the

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horns, scratched his ground with an iron pointed stick, and rode in a cart without tires. His hat was a colored handkerchief; his coat a cape and white blanket, with a hood for cold weather. This was his capot or "cappo," and cost $5.50 each at Gratiot's store in Cahokia. Linen shirts, $2.00. The year the Americans came Gratiot married Victoria Choteau, and moved his store to St. Louis. They were the grandparents of Mrs. E. B. Washburn.

Indians were as numerous as the French, and gave more trouble. The Frenchman and the Indian got along together fairly well, but the American and the Indian never could agree. After 1781 new settlers came in every year. By 1784 there were fifty American families in the settlements in Monroe and Randolph counties. Some, as John Edgar, were fugitives. He was a British officer in the revolutionary war but his sympathies were with the colonists, and he fled to save his life. He opened a store and a land office in Kaskaskia and in a few years was the richest man in the territory. It was at his house that Lafayette was entertained in 1825. Edgar county was named after him, in 1823. But a more important event was the opening of the first elementary school, in 1783, in an abandoned log cabin at New Design. It was taught by John Seeley. The benches were round logs, and a log was taken out of one side of the building to admit light; yet the coming of that humble school was the token of the coming of a new empire. The settlement might have consisted only of scattered cabins whose occupants were struggling for their daily bread, the bulk of the nation far away on the eastern ocean, but the schoolhouse showed the relation between the settlement and the nation. All honor to Schoolmaster Seeley's log school!
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[Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 18-19. -- jrd]

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