Illinois Frontier Town...
... where black and white Americans lived together peacefully on the antibellum Illinois frontier.

Contacts:
Philip Bradshaw, President, NPA
Griggsville, IL 62340

Carol McCartney, Secretary, NPA
E-mail: jeffm@adams.net

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The Western Frontier 1809-1865

A partial chronology of events and personalities that affected Western Illinois and Northeast Missouri during Abraham Lincoln's lifespan:

1809 — Congress organizes the Illinois Territory, with Kaskaskia the capital and Ninian Edwards as governor. Abraham Lincoln is born Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin on Nolin Creek near Hodgenville, Kentucky, a son of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

1811 — New Madrid (Mo.) earthquake, largest in U.S. history, damages Southern Illinois.

1812 — New Madrid tremors reoccur. After action by Congress, President Madison declares war on Great Britain.

1814 — First newspaper, the Illinois Herald, is published at Kaskaskia. In September, Major Zachery Taylor establishes Fort Edwards at Spunky Point, later to be called Warsaw, overlooking the Mississippi River across from the mouth of the Des Moines River. On December 24, Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812.

1816 — The Thomas Lincoln family moves to Perry County, Indiana; first bank in Illinois, at Shawneetown, is chartered by the territorial legislature; Fort Armstrong is built at Rock Island.

1817 — War of 1812 veterans begin receiving 160-acre land warrants in the Illinois Military Tract, the region between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Frank McWorter, a slave hiring his own time from his Pulaski County, Kentucky, owner, buys the freedom of his wife, Lucy.

1818 — Illinois becomes the 21st state, with Kaskaskia the capital and Shadrach Bond the first governor. The state’s population is 34,620. Nancy Hanks Lincoln dies in Indiana of “milk sickness.”

1819 — Illinois Legislature passes the Illinois Black Code, also known as the Black Laws. Frank McWorter buys his own freedom and continues commercial farming, saltpeter manufacture and other entrepreneurial activities in frontier Kentucky for the next decade.

1821 — Pike County is established; encompasses all of Illinois north of the Illinois River. Following “Missouri Compromise” of 1820, Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave state.

1822 — John Wood, a surveyor from New York State and a future governor of Illinois, builds first cabin at what will become the city of Quincy.

1824 — Illinois voters defeat a constitutional convention call to permit slavery in the state.

1825 — Adams County is formed out of Pike County, and Pike becomes its present size.

1829 — Dr. David Nelson, a native of Tennessee who served as a surgeon in the War of 1812, arrives in Marion County, Mo., and founds a manual labor college at Greenfields. Nelson, an abolitionist, gave up medicine for the Presbyterian ministry, and was ordained in 1825 at Rogersville, Tennessee.

1830 — Frank McWorter arrives in Illinois from Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln, now 21, arrives in Logan County, Illinois, with his father Thomas and stepmother Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln. The Rev. Asa Turner, a member of the “Yale (Theological Seminary) Band” pledged to missionary work in the Illinois wilderness, arrives in Quincy from Templeton, Massachusetts.

1831 — Frank McWorter settles in Hadley Township in Pike County. Abraham Lincoln leaves his parents in Coles County, hires on to take a flat boat of produce to New Orleans, then settles in New Salem.

1832 — Lincoln runs for the Illinois Legislature and loses. Black Hawk War takes place with John Wood, Orville Hickman Browning and others serving.

1833 — Dr. Richard Eells of Connecticut settles in Quincy to establish a medical practice, quickly acquires abolitionist sympathies.

1834 — Lincoln is elected to the Illinois Legislature and begins the study of law; gunsmith Jonathan Browning, inventor of repeating rifles and father of John Moses Browning, settles in Adams County. An Association of Congregational Churches is formed in Quincy in the home of the Rev. Asa Turner in support of the abolitionist movement.

1835 — In June, Eells buys the lot on which the house stands now under restoration (at 415 Jersey); in November of this year, Jane Clemens gives birth to a son in Florida, Mo., that she and husband John Clemens name Samuel.

1836 — Frank McWorter records the plat of a town in Hadley Township that he names New Philadelphia; Lincoln is re-elected to the Legislature.

1837 — Now admitted to the Illinois bar, Lincoln moves to Springfield and begins the practice of law.

1838 — Dr. David Nelson purchases land in Melrose Township, Adams County, for a residence and school (the first Mission Institute). In Salem, Ind., on October, Helen Leonard Hay, wife of Dr. Charles Hay, gave birth to a son, John Milton Hay.

1839 — The Latter-day Saints flee Missouri to encamp in John’s Square in Quincy, the John Clemens family moves from Florida to Hannibal, and Springfield becomes the capital of Illinois.

1840 — The Latter-day Saints are established in the city they call Nauvoo; Mission Institute No. 2 is established in the vicinity of 25th and Maine in Quincy.

1841 — Financially ruined “through securities which he signed for friends,” Dr. Charles Hay moves his family from Indiana to Warsaw, Illinois. John Milton Hay, now 3, begins schooling in the “little brick schoolhouse” on Warsaw’s Fourth Street.

1842 — Doctor Eells attempts to get a Missouri slave named Charlie to Mission Institute No. 2 , but his buggy is pursued and he is arrested hours later on a charge of harboring a fugitive slave; in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd; Jonathan Browning, having earlier become a Latter-day Saint, moves to Nauvoo and builds a two-story brick residence and gun shop (now a museum)

1843 — In the spring of this year, Dr. Eells is fined $400 by Judge Stephen A. Douglas, and later in the year the chapel at Mission Institute No. 2 is burned by a pro-slavery mob from Palmyra, Mo. Mary Todd Lincoln gives birth to a son, Robert.

1844 — John Clemens builds the Hill Street house in Hannibal that we now know as the Mark Twain boyhood home. Lincoln buys and occupies the only house he ever owns at Eighth and Jackson in Springfield. In February, the Illinois Supreme Court upholds the circuit court judgment against Dr. Eells and in this same month Eells is selected as the Liberty Party’s presidential candidate. On June 27, Joseph Smith, the Latter-day Saints’ prophet, and his brother, Hyrum Smith, are assassinated in the Carthage jail. The abolitionist leader, Dr. David
Nelson, dies on October 17 at Oakland, his farm east of Quincy.

1852 — In its December term, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the 1844 decision of the Illinois Supreme Court against Dr. Eells. The Eells estate was represented before the high court by Salmon P. Chase, with George C. Dixon filing a written brief.

1853 — Young Samuel Clemens leaves Hannibal for New York City; the first state fair is held in Springfield; the General Assembly enacts the Black Exclusion Act, another law intended to prevent free blacks from settling in Illinois. John Hay enters Brown University.

1854 — Frank McWorter dies at New Philadelphia at the age of 77. Augustus Tolton is born to Peter Paul and Martha Jane Tolton on April 1 in Ralls County, Mo., the property of slave owner Steven Elliott.

1855 — Illinois General Assembly adopts a free public school system.

1858 — In the fall of this year, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas and Republican (and former Whig) Abraham Lincoln hold public debates in Quincy and six other Illinois cities in campaigning for election to the U.S. Senate; Douglas is elected. John Hay is graduated from Brown University and returns to Pittsfield where he works in John Nicolay’s newspaper office until taking up the study of law in his uncle Milton Hay’s office in Springfield

1860 — Republican Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States, defeating three other candidates.

1861 — On Feb. 4, John Hay is admitted to the Illinois bar and a week later goes to Washington with President-elect Lincoln as an assistant private secretary. Martha Tolton takes Augustus, 7, his older brother and two younger sisters and flees Missouri across the Mississippi River. The family takes refuge in Quincy and Augustus attends Catholic schools. (Fr. Augustus Tolton is ordained on April 24, 1886, as the first known and recognized black priest in the United States. He dies in Chicago of heat stroke on July 9, 1897, and is buried in Quincy.)

1865 — Lincoln is assassinated in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Springfield. Illinois General Assembly repeals the state’s Black Laws against black settlement and becomes the first state legislature to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. John Hay becomes secretary of the U.S. Legation at Paris (and subsequently serves as secretary of State under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt).