Drown’s Peoria city directory of 1844

This is an updated reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in Nov. 2013, before the launch of this weblog.

Drown’s Peoria city directory of 1844

By Jared Olar
Library Assistant

While the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room collection primarily includes publications and documents pertaining to Pekin and Tazewell County, the collection also encompasses various items related to Illinois history and a broader genealogical interest, as well as reference materials, books and other documents that pertain to the history of nearby communities.

One of those books is a facsimile reprint of a fascinating relic of Peoria’s past – none other than Peoria’s very first city directory, “The Peoria Directory for 1844,” compiled and published by Simeon DeWitt Drown, town surveyor for Peoria.

Drown’s book usually would be of interest to students of the history of the city and county of Peoria, but as a contemporary document and record of one of central Illinois’ largest and most important community, it also would make interesting reading for anyone with central Illinois roots or who might simply be curious to glimpse everyday life and business in the Midwest or Illinois during the middle of the nineteenth century. It would be another 17 years after the publication of Drown’s directory before Pekin’s first city directory would be published.

As Peoria’s town surveyor, Drown was a natural choice for author and editor of a city directory. His skills as a printer, engraver and mapmaker also suited him to the task he had assumed. He came to Peoria from New York in 1838, and in January 1844 his residence and place of work were in a house at the southeast corner of Franklin and Adams streets.

In those days, Peoria was still a small settlement, especially by modern standards – Drown’s personal census counted only 1,619 people, almost all of them living and working in an area close to the river bounded by Liberty, Perry and Green streets.

However, the small city was then a boom town, and Drown noted (boasted?) in his preface that “during the last year, . . . upwards of fifty buildings were erected, and nearly all of a permanent material, — brick or stone.” For those reasons, Drown said, “Peoria ought now to be the seat of government of the state,” mentioning that there had recently been efforts in the Illinois General Assembly to fix the state capital at Peoria. Drown thought his town would make an idea capital since it was almost as centrally located as Springfield and, Drown predicted, would soon surpass Springfield in population.

Besides the compilation of residents, businessmen and professions that were the chief reason such old directories were prepared, Drown also collected and wrote essays for his directory on Peoria’s history. Peoria shares its earliest historical roots with Tazewell County and the cities and villages of Pekin, Creve Coeur and East Peoria which line the Illinois River nearby. Thus, in Drown’s directory, his “History of the Town Down to the Present Time” naturally commences with the adventures of the French explorers Marquette, Joliet and La Salle.

Drown’s historical sketch includes lengthy excerpts from the journals and recollections of the early French explorers, and Drown also reproduced two early maps of the area of Lake Pimiteoui (Peoria Lake) showing the ephemeral Fort Crevecoeur. One of the maps Drown identified as “a fac simile of Hennepin’s map so far as it describes this region of country,” while the other is a facsimile of a map of our area from Daniel Coxe’s 1722 volume, “Coxe’s Carolana,” based on memoirs of Dr. Daniel Coxe, an English physician who made his own explorations of the Illinois River around 1698.

On page 20 of his 1844 Peoria City Directory, Simeon DeWitt Drown reproduced a facsimile of Father Louis Hennepin’s 1698 map of the Illinois Country, indicating the site of Fort Crevecoeur in the future Tazewell County.

This woodcut is an illustration of the account of the Indian tribes of Illinois in Drown’s 1844 Peoria City Directory.

#1844-peoria-city-directory, #dr-daniel-coxe, #drowns-directory, #father-louis-hennepin, #fort-crevecoeur, #pimiteoui, #preblog-columns, #simeon-dewitt-drown, #springfield

The French settlement of Peoria Lake

By Jared L. Olar
Library assistant

French colonists were the first Europeans to settle in the Illinois Country – including the future Tazewell and Peoria counties. The Illinois Country passed from French to British control in 1763, and then to American control in 1783. However, as we have seen in our review of the early history of our state, regardless of which national government claimed the lands of the future state of Illinois, they remained a sparsely populated area, inhabited chiefly by Native American tribes and relatively small groups of French colonists.

During the Revolutionary War, Britain’s attention was fixed upon its rebellious colonists in eastern North America, which gave George Rogers Clark of Virginia the opportunity he needed to capture the Illinois Country for his home state in 1778-1779 – with the help of Indian tribes and French colonists.

It was against the background of Clark’s Illinois Campaign that a group of French colonists and fur traders in 1778 established a village on the west shore of Peoria Lake – the area of the broadening of the Illinois River known to the native tribes as Pimiteoui. The village was located about where an Indian village had been in the days of Marquette and La Salle and afterwards. The site had also been the location of a French fort named Fort St. Louis du Pimiteoui, built by Henry Tonti in 1691, but a French presence was not continuous from Tonti’s day until Clark’s Illinois Campaign. The village of 1778 was the predecessor of the present city of Peoria.

Charles C. Chapman’s 1879 “History of Tazewell County,” page 193, briefly tells the story of this village in these words:

“The next attempt to settle this section of Illinois [after La Salle’s expedition] was made at the upper end of Peoria lake in 1778. The country in the vicinity of this lake was called by the Indians Pim-i-te-wi, that is, a place where there are many fat beasts. Here the town of Laville de Meillet, named after its founder, was started. Within the next twenty years, however, the town was moved down to the lower end of the lake to the present site of Peoria. In 1812 the town was destroyed and the inhabitants carried away by Captain Craig. In 1813 Fort Clark was erected there by Illinois troops engaged in the war of 1812. Five years later it was destroyed by fire.”

The French predecessor of the city of Peoria is more accurately spelled “La Ville de Maillet,” meaning “Maillet’s village.” According to Peoria Historical Society records, the town’s founder was a French trader named Robert Maillet, who built a cabin for himself and his family near the outlet of Peoria Lake in 1761. The small village that grew up around Maillet’s cabin moved upriver to the future site of Peoria in 1778, growing to become a town and flourishing as a trading link between Canada and the French settlements on the Mississippi until the War of 1812. During that war, the town was destroyed in an attack that American militia forces of the Illinois Territory launched against the Indian tribes around Peoria Lake. Although the townsfolk were U.S. citizens, they were taken prisoner and carried off to southern Illinois – but a few returned after the War of 1812.

Shown is an artist’s conception of La Ville de Maillet, predecessor of the city of Peoria, as it may have appeared on the eve of its wanton destruction by Illinois Territorial militia during the War of 1812. Tazewell County’s first permanent settlers of European descent included refugees from the sack of La Ville de Maillet. ILLUSTRATION BY KAY MARSHALL-SMART COURTESY OF THE PEORIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Nehemiah Matson’s 1882 book “Pioneers of Illinois” includes the following eyewitness descriptions of La Ville de Maillet:

“In 1820 Hypolite Maillet, in his sworn testimony before Edward Cole, register of title land-office at Edwardsville, in relation to French claims, said that he was forty-five years old, and born in a stockade fort which stood near the southern extremity of Peoria Lake. In the winter of 1788 a party of Indians came to Peoria to trade, and, in accordance with their former practice, took quarters in the fort, but getting on a drunken spree they burned it down. In the spring of 1819, [when] Americans commenced a settlement here at Peoria, the outlines of the old French fort were plain to be seen on the high ground near the lake, and a short distance above the present site of the Chicago and Rock Island depot. . . .

“According to the statements of Antoine Des Champs, Thomas Forsyth, and others, who had long been residents of Peoria previous to its destruction in 1812, we infer that the town contained a large population . . . The town was built along the beach of the lake, and to each house was attached an outlet for a garden, which extended back on the prairie.

“The houses were all constructed of wood, one story high, with porches on two sides, and located in a garden surrounded with fruit and flowers. Some of the dwellings were built of hewed timbers set upright, and the space between the posts filled in with stone and mortar, while others were built of hewed logs notched together after the style of a pioneer’s cabin. The floors were laid with puncheons, and the chimney built with mud and sticks. When Colonel Clark took possession of Illinois in 1778 he sent three soldiers, accompanied by two Frenchmen, in a canoe to Peoria to notify the people that they were no longer under British rule but citizens of the United States.

“Among these soldiers was a man named Nicholas Smith, a resident of Bourbon county, Kentucky, and whose son, Joseph Smith (Dod Joe), was among the first American settlers of Peoria . . . Mr. Smith said Peoria at the time of his visit was a large town, built along the beach of the lake, with narrow, unpaved streets, and houses constructed of wood. Back of the town were gardens, stock-yards, barns, etc., and among these was a wine-press, with a large cellar or under-ground vault for storing wine. There was a church with a large wooden cross raised above the roof, and with gilt lettering over the door. There was an unoccupied fort on the bank of the lake, and close by it a wind-mill for grinding grain. The town contained six stores or places of trade, all of which were well filled with goods for the Indian market.”

The destruction of La Ville de Maillet was not the end of early French settlement in our area, for several of the French former inhabitants of La Ville de Maillet returned to Peoria Lake after the war, setting up a trading post and small settlement near the Illinois River in what was to become Tazewell County.

Next week we will review the story of that French trading post.

#dod-joe-joseph-smith, #antoine-des-champs, #capt-thomas-craig, #george-rogers-clark, #henri-de-tonti, #hypolite-maillet, #illinois-bicentennial, #la-ville-de-maillet, #nicholas-smith, #opa-post, #peoria, #pimiteoui, #robert-maillet, #thomas-forsyth

Illinois as the French found it

By Jared Olar
Library assistant

As Illinois’ yearlong bicentennial celebrations commence this weekend, starting with this installment of “From the History Room” and continuing through the coming year we will direct a spotlight upon the history of our state, with a special focus on connections between Illinois’ early history and the history of Tazewell County and Pekin.

The official logo of the Illinois Bicentennial was officially unveiled at the Old State Capitol in Springfield on Jan. 12 of this year.

The best place to begin the story of our state is at the beginning – not Dec. 3, 1818, when Illinois became a state, but in the 1600s, with the arrival of French explorers. The kingdom of France had laid claim to large parts of Canada and the lands through which the Mississippi River and its tributaries flowed, and in the latter decades of the 17th century the French began to explore Illinois – a country of wild and unbroken forests and prairies, before roads, dams, levees, cities, and powerlines.

But, as we recalled last week, it was not an uninhabited land.

Our state’s name, “Illinois,” is a French word. It comes from the name of the people living here when the French first began to explore this part of the world. The people were called the Illiniwek or Illini, also called the Inoka, who were a confederation of 12 or 13 Native American tribes who lived in an area of the Upper Mississippi River valley reaching from Iowa to Lake Michigan and as far south as Arkansas.

When the French first encountered the Native Americans here, the Illiniwek confederation’s member tribes included the Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Michigamea, Moingwena, Coiracoentanon, Chinkoa, Espeminkia, Chepoussa, Maroa, and Tapourara. The names of the first three listed tribes are probably better remembered than the others. It is from the Kaskaskia tribe in southern Illinois that Illinois’ first capital, Kaskaskia in Randolph County, got its name. The name of the Cahokia tribe is remembered today because of the famous Cahokia Mounds in St. Clair County, which are the remains of a Native American city that existed from about A.D. 600 to 1400. The people of Cahokia Mounds were no doubt ancestors of or related to the Illiniwek tribes. The city and county of Peoria were named for the Peoria tribe, which lived along the west shores of the Illinois River at Lake Pimiteoui (Peoria Lake).

Map from Robert E. Warren’s “Illinois Indians in the Illinois Country”

When French explorers and fur traders encountered the Illiniwek in the 1600s, they decided to call their land by the French term Pays de Illinois (land of the Illinois, or the Illinois Country). The French also sometimes referred to the Illinois Country as la Haute-Louisiane (Upper Louisiana).

The names of the first French explorers of the Illinois Country are well known: Marquette and Jolliet, La Salle and Tonti. In 1673 and 1674, Father Jacques Marquette, a Catholic Jesuit priest, and Louis Jolliet explored the Illinois River and Mississippi River down to the Arkansas River. The city of Marquette Heights in Tazewell County and the Hotel Pere Marquette in Peoria are named after Father Marquette (Pere in French means “Father”).

Some years later, on Jan. 15, 1680, two French explorers name René-Robert Cavelier, who had the French aristocratic title of Sieur de La Salle, and his companion Henri de Tonti established a small, short-lived outpost named Fort de Crèvecoeur or Fort Crèvecouer near the southeast shore of Peoria Lake in Pekin Township, in or near modern Creve Coeur or East Peoria.

The arrival of the Europeans caused catastrophic disruptions in the way of life of the Native Americans. The Europeans unwittingly brought diseases that wiped out many Indian tribes, including most of the Illiniwek tribes. Off to the east, European newcomers pushed native tribes west in search of new hunting grounds, leading to war between tribes in competition for the same lands. But by the mid-1700s, European diseases and war with the expanding Iroquois League had reduced the Illiniwek to only five tribes: the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Peoria, and Tamaroa.

Next week we’ll recall the confusingly named French and Indian War.

#cahokia, #father-jacques-marquette, #fort-crevecoeur, #henri-de-tonti, #illiniwek-confederation, #illinois-bicentennial, #inoka, #iroquois-league, #kaskaskia, #la-salle, #louis-jolliet, #peoria-tribe, #pimiteoui, #rene-robert-cavelier, #tazewell-county-native-tribes