DeWitt Clinton was an American politician and naturalist. He served as a United States senator,as the mayor of New York City,and as the seventh governor of New York. In this last capacity,he was largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal. Clinton was a major candidate for the American presidency in the election of 1812,challenging incumbent James Madison.
Bond County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. As of the 2020 census,the population was 16,725. Its county seat is Greenville.
Greenville is a city in Bond County,Illinois,United States,51 miles (82 km) east of St. Louis. The population as of the 2020 census was 7,083,up from 7,000 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Bond County.
Waterloo is a city in and county seat of Monroe County,Illinois. The population was 9,811 at the 2010 census.
Kaskaskia is a village in Randolph County,Illinois. Having been inhabited by indigenous peoples,it was settled by France as part of the Illinois Country. It was named for the Kaskaskia people. Its population peaked at about 7,000 in the 18th century,when it was a regional center. During the American Revolutionary War,the town,which by then had become an administrative center for the British Province of Quebec,was taken by the Virginia militia during the Illinois campaign. It was designated as the county seat of Illinois County,Virginia,after which it became part of the Northwest Territory in 1787. Kaskaskia was later named as the capital of the United States' Illinois Territory,created on February 3,1809. In 1818,when Illinois became the 21st U.S. state,the town briefly served as the state's first capital until 1819,when the capital was moved to more centrally located Vandalia.
The Territory of Illinois was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 1,1809,until December 3,1818,when the southern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Illinois. Its capital was the former French village of Kaskaskia. The northern half of the territory,modern Wisconsin and parts of modern Minnesota and Michigan became part of the Territory of Michigan.
The Illinois Country —sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana —was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s in what is now the Midwestern United States. While these names generally referred to the entire Upper Mississippi River watershed,French colonial settlement was concentrated along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in what is now the U.S. states of Illinois and Missouri,with outposts in Indiana. Explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadien expedition of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette,the area was claimed by France. It was settled primarily from the Pays d'en Haut in the context of the fur trade,and in the establishment of missions by French Catholic religious orders. Over time,the fur trade took some French to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains,especially along the branches of the broad Missouri River valley. The French name,Pays des Ilinois,means "Land of the Illinois [plural]" and is a reference to the Illinois Confederation,a group of related Algonquian native peoples.
Ninian Edwards was a founding political figure of the State of Illinois. He served as the first and only governor of the Illinois Territory from 1809 to until the territory was dissolved in 1818. He was then one of the first two United States senators from the State of Illinois from 1818 to 1824,and the third Governor of Illinois from 1826 to 1830. In a time and place where personal coalitions were more influential than parties,Edwards led one of the two main factions in frontier Illinois politics.
John M. Reynolds was a United States lawyer and politician from the state of Illinois who served in all three governmental branches. One of the original four justices of the Illinois Supreme Court (1818–1825),he later won election several times to the Illinois House of Representatives and the United States House of Representatives,and as 4th Illinois Governor (1830–1834). He also took the rank of major general of the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War.
Daniel Pope Cook was a politician,lawyer and newspaper publisher from the U.S. state of Illinois. An anti-slavery advocate,he was the state's first attorney general,and then congressman. Cook County,Illinois,is named after him.
Elias Kent Kane was the first Illinois Secretary of State and a U.S. Senator from Illinois.
Pierre Menard was a fur trader and U.S. political figure. Pierre Menard was born at St. Antoine-sur-Richelieu,near Montreal,Canada,third in a family of ten children. His father was Jean Baptiste Ménard,a French soldier in the regiment of Guyenne.
Joseph Duncan was an Illinois politician. He served as the sixth Governor of Illinois from 1834 to 1838,the only Whig to ever govern the state. Before becoming governor he served four terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat.
Jesse Burgess Thomas was an American lawyer,judge and politician who served as a delegate from the Indiana Territory to the tenth Congress and later served as president of the Constitutional Convention which led to Illinois being admitted to the Union. He became one of Illinois' first two Senators,and is best known as the author of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1829 he lived the rest of his life in Ohio.
Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site is a 200-acre (0.8 km²) park near Chester,Illinois,on a blufftop overlooking the Mississippi River. It commemorates the vanished frontier town of Old Kaskaskia and the support it gave to George Rogers Clark in the American Revolution.
Nathaniel W. Pope was an American government leader in the early history of the State of Illinois. He served as the Secretary of the Illinois Territory,then as a Delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the Illinois Territory,and for over thirty years as the United States district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Illinois.
John Rice Jones was a Welsh-born,American politician,jurist,and military officer. He helped establish the territorial governments in Indiana,Illinois,and Missouri. John Rice Jones was the father of U.S. Senator George Wallace Jones from Iowa.
Raphael Widen was an Illinois pioneer and politician. He is thought to have been the first Swedish-American to reside in what would become the state of Illinois. He was first recorded in the state in 1814,when he was appointed a justice of the peace. Widen served four years in the Illinois House of Representatives and four years in the Illinois Senate.
James Thompson was an American surveyor who created the first plat of Chicago. Born in South Carolina,Thompson moved to Kaskaskia in southern Illinois as a young man and lived in the area for the rest of his life,working primarily as a surveyor. He was hired to plat settlements at the ends of the proposed Illinois and Michigan Canal in northern Illinois;he completed the plat of Chicago,the settlement at the eastern end,on August 4,1830. After completing his survey of Chicago he returned to the Kaskaskia area and declined an offer of land in Chicago in favor of a cash payment. In addition to his surveying work,he served in various positions such as probate judge,county commissioner,and officer in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War.
The Grand Lodge of Illinois,officially The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Illinois,is the premier masonic organization in the state of Illinois encompassing more than 460 lodges and 57,000 members at the end of 2018.
