"Pioneer Life in Illinois" by F. M. Perryman explores life in Illinois from many points of view. As the author himself has been born and brought up in Illinois, there is a nativity and originality to his work. Taking place near the turn of the century, much of Illinois was relatively barren, leaving many residents to be resourceful and live off the land. Though the state is now much different, remnants of pioneer life still remain.
Christiana and John Tillson moved from Massachusetts to central Illinois in 1822. Upon arriving in Montgomery County near what would soon be Hillsboro, they set up a general store and real estate business and began to raise a family. A half century later, in 1870, Christiana Tillson wrote about her early days in Illinois in a memoir published by R. R. Donnelley in 1919. The Tillsons lived quite ordinary lives in extraordinary times, notes Kay J. Carr, introducing this edition. They moved west and prospered in the land business at a time when America was being transformed from a rural, agricultural country into an urban, industrial nation. Their views and sensibilities, Carr says, might seem strange to us, but they were entirely normal to people in the early nineteenth century. Thus Tillson's memoir provides fascinating but believable snapshots of ordinary nineteenth-century American life.
ASettler's Year provides a rare colorful glimpse into the hard and hearty lives of the early immigrants dreaming of, searching for, and creating new homes in the upper Midwest, a history captured in photographs taken by Loyd Heath at the Old World Wisconsin living history museum and poignant essays by historian and top-selling historical fiction author Kathleen Ernst.
This book traces the business career of Jacob Bunn. A New Jersey-born farmer who ventured west to Illinois in the mid 19th century and had his hand in a wide variety of business enterprises, ranging from a grocery business, coal, iron, sugar beets, railroads, banks, newspapers, and timepieces, he helped make Illinois a center of innovative industry. Bunn was involved in the making of Lincoln as President, in the success of the Illinois Watch Company, and set the stage for Illinois-based companies like the Sangamo Electric Co., well-known into recent times around the world. His real legacy, according to this young scholar, is his legacy of integrity and his honorable behavior when faced with bank failure in the Panic of 1873. Read of a time when industrial pioneers were settling a frontier. Jacob Bunn's life has had a global impact. He left companies and a legacy, and should serve as a model for the contemporary business world.
This book gathers drawings, engravings, photographs, maps, and other illustrations to inspire imaginations young and old to envision the history of Illinois in all its depth and breadth. Gerald A. Danzer distills the story of Illinois from these visual artifacts, exploring the state's history from its earliest peoples and their encounters with European settlers, through territorial struggles and the strife of the Civil War, and into the modern era of industry and urbanization.
Follows the development of a rural Illinois community from its origins near the beginning of the nineteenth century, looks at community activity, and tells the stories of ordinary pioneers
Wilhelm Wagner (1803-1877), son of Peter Wagner, was born in Dürkheim, Germany. He married Friedericke Odenwald (1812-1893). They had nine children. They emigrated and settled in Illinois. His brother, Julius Wagner (1816-1903) married Emilie M. Schneider (1820-1896). They had seven children. They emigrated and settled in Texas.
"As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River. McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler's son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent figure in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as trees of a size never imagined, floods, fires, wolves, bears, even an earthquake, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough's subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them. Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments."--Dust jacket.
