We will now proceed to detail such facts in respect to the first settlement of Will County as have escaped oblivion, and have been collected from the memories of early settlers and from public records. In so doing, we shall of course repeat much of what was embodied in “Forty Years Ago.” At the time … Read more
Father Walker and Walkers Grove History of Will County, Illinois Wm. LeBaron, Jr., & Co. 1878 It was one of these Methodist missionaries who became the first settler within the present bounds of Will County. This was the Rev. Jesse Walker a native of the State of Virginia, born in 1766, twenty-five years before the … Read more
Florence township was set off from Wilmington in 1851. Previous to that time it was known only as Starrs Grove. In fact up to about that time there were few settlements in the township except in and around the little grove of a few acres in the northwest corner of the township. The first of … Read more
This was one of the earliest settled of the towns in the county. The township was largely covered with timber, and that proved as great an attraction to the pioneer in Frankfort, as it did in the other parts of the county, for it was a fixed fact that the pioneer would build his cabin … Read more
This township is in the extreme northern part of the county, and was organized as a township in 1850, under the law of 1849, relating to the organization of townships. Originally with Wheatland it formed the DuPage precinct when the county was formed in 1836, and was one of the precincts of Cook County, previous … Read more
Custer township was organized, as such and under that name in 1886, but it was settled long before when it was a part of Reed township,—in fact, there were inhabitants in what is now Custer township before there was in Reed township, as now organized. The whole township of Reed and Custer was organized in … Read more
When the county was organized in 1836, what is now Crete and Monee were joined together as one voting precinct, and called Thorn Creek precinct. But in 1850, when the towns in the county were organized under the new state constitution, they were separated and the township of Crete was organized as a voting precinct, … Read more
The township of Channahon is located in the southwest part of the county bordering on Grundy county and is known on the map of the county as town 34, range 9 east of the third principal meridian. The township is well watered, having the DesPlaines and DuPage rivers passing through it. They meet a short … Read more
Will county extends from the Indiana state line on the east to Grundy and Kendall counties on the west, and from Kankakee county on the south to Cook on the north, and contains twenty-four townships, nineteen of which are full townships of thirty-six sections each; two townships, Crete and Washington, have more than that number … Read more
In our history of the Northwest Territory we have alluded very briefly to this most intrepid and distinguished explorer, in whose honor our flourishing city was named, and who as the leader in the great expedition with Father Marquette, 1673, was the discoverer of not only the Mississippi river, in its entirety, but also was … Read more