The Retreat T17
One and a half miles north is The Retreat, home to three distinguished generations of the Parker family. Thomas Parker, a general in the War of 1812, constructed this imposing Federal-style house in 1799. Richard Parker, his nephew, was a U.S. senator, justice of the state Supreme Court of Appeals, and jury member at the trial of Aaron Burr. His son, Richard Elliot Parker, served in the U.S. House of Representatives and presided as a federal judge at the trial of John Brown. During the Civil War, the Battle of Cool Spring was fought near The Retreat on 18 July 1864.

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Stacy's Tavern IL72
Moses Stacy, soldier in the War of 1812, arrived here in 1835. This inn, built in 1846 and his second home, was a half way stop for between Chicago and the Fox River Valley and a probable stage stop for Rockford - Galena coaches. For many years the village was called 'Stacy's Corners.'

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Shabbona IL69
In the early 1800's Shabbona was a principal chief of the Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Chippewa group of tribes which banded together to form 'The Three Fires.' Shabbona camped briefly in a large grove one-half mile south of here. He fought with the British in the War of 1812 and later helped the settlers of northern Illinois by warning of Indian uprisings during the Winnebago outbreak. In the Black Hawk War, Shabbona alerted pioneers to impending Indian raids and offered to lead an attack against the Sauk and Fox Tribes.

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Fort La Motte IL60

About 1812, the settlers in this area built Fort LaMotte for protection from hostile Indians. The pioneers farmed the adjoining land but stayed within easy reach of the protective walls. After the War of 1812 the Indian threat diminished and the inhabitants of the fort became the nucleus of Palestine.

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Burial Site of Josette Beaubien IL48
Josette Beaubien, a survivor of the Fort Dearborn Massacre, was buried here in 1845. She was married to Jean Baptiste Beaubien, one of Chicago's first settlers. Her brother was Claude LaFramboise, a chief of the Potawatomie Indians. Chief Alexander Robinson and Claude LaFramboise, local Native Americans, were rewarded with large tracts of land after the War of 1812. These properties composed much of Franklin Park and Schiller Park. Eventually this site was sold to the Schultz family. The original plot survey details this burial site. It is approximately twenty-feet square and additional graves are present.

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Mt. Sterling, Illinois IL14

In 1824 Cornelius Vandeventer, a native of Ohio, became the first permanent settler in this area. Additional pioneers came over the next few years from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. In 1829 Alexander Curry purchased a claim on the site of the future Mt. Sterling. Curry and his family laid out the town in 1834. At that time, this area formed the southern part of Schuyler County. Two years later, attempts were made to move the county seat from Rushville to a location nearer to the center of the county. When these failed Brown County, named after General Jacob Brown, a veteran of the War of 1812, was created on February 1, 1839. Mt. Sterling was named the county seat the same year it was on a major route of the western migration beginning in 1849 with the discovery of gold in California.

James Washington Singleton came to this area from Virginia around 1834 and lived in Mt. Sterling until 1854 when he moved to Quincy. A doctor, lawyer, and later a railroad executive, he became a Brigadier General in the Illinois militia and served in the Mormon War of 1844. He was also a delegate to two Illinois State Constitutional Conventions, a member of the Illinois Legislature, and a member of the U.S. Congress. Stephen A. Douglas held court in Mt. Sterling in 1841-1843 while Circuit Court Judge Abraham Lincoln spoke here on October 19, 1858 while campaigning for the office of U.S. Senator.

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Welcome to Illinois IL13
WELCOME TO ILLINOIS

In 1673 Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette explored the Illinois country for France. By the 1763 treaty ending the French and Indian War, this area passed to England. During the American Revolution, George Rogers Clark's men captured it for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Illinois was later governed as part of the Northwest Territory, Indiana Territory, and the Illinois Territory. In 1818, Illinois entered the Union as the twenty-first state.

Permanent American settlers began arriving at the state's southwestern tip in 1805. Earthquakes rocked the Mississippi Valley in 1811, bringing refugees here in search of new homesites. After the War of 1812, another wave of settlers came, some bringing slaves. The newcomers raised cotton, flax, and tobacco. Later, they raised corn and wheat.

Northeast of here, at Jonesboro, Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen A. Douglas during the 1858 Senatorial campaign. During the Civil War, Cairo served as a major staging base where men and supplies were assembled before departing for the war zones. Mound City on the Ohio River was the principal depot for the Western River Fleet. Nearby is Thebes, once a bustling river port. The town declined when railroads replaced the steamboats, but the beautiful 1848 courthouse still stands. Nowadays, tourists and hunters are drawn to "Egypt"-- Illinois sixteen southernmost counties -- by the beauty of the Shawnee Forest and wildlife at Horseshoe Lake.

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Welcome to Illinois IL7
In 1673 the areas of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers were explored by Frenchmen Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette. Their voyages resulted in French claims on the area until 1763 when, by the Treaty of Paris, France ceded the land to Great Britain. During the American Revolution the Illinois Territory was won for the Commonwealth of Virginia by George Rogers Clark and his army. In 1784 it became part of the Northwest Territory and on December 3, 1818 Illinois entered the Union as the twenty-first state. U.S. Route 24 enters Illinois on the west at Quincy, site of the sixth debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. It extends east towards the Illinois River cutting diagonally across the Military Tract, an area used as bounty land for veterans of the war of 1812. It passes near Dickson Mounds, a buriel site of the Mississippian culture circa 1100 A.D. Route 24 crosses the Illinois River at Peoria, a center of agricultural equipment manufacturing, and near the site of Fort Creve Coeur erected by the French explorer Sieur de LaSalle in 1680. It bisects Eureka, site of the college attended by Ronald Reagan the 40th President of the United States and the only one born in Illinois. The route continues due east through some of the richest farm land in the nation. In the years between 1840 and1890 huge herds of cattle were raised for sale to eastern markets. Corn and beans are the main crops today. Route 24 exits Illinois east of Watseka near the Old Hubbard Trace a fur trade route which linked the Wabash River area with the settlement of Chicago in the north. Along its approximate 260 mile length Route 24 passes through eleven of Illinois' 102 counties and seven of its county seats.

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Troy MO72
Troy

Troy, laid out on the site of Woods' Fort in 1819, lies on an old Sac and Fox Indian campsite where first settlers Joseph Cottle and Zadock Woods built their cabins, 1801. It was the Sac and Fox tribes, outraged by their 1804 land cession which included this region, who carried the War of 1812 west of the Mississippi into north Missouri.

To defend their homes, pioneers in this area, which is now Lincoln County, aided by Rangers under Nathan Boone, built Woods, Howard, Stout, Clark, and Cap au Gris forts as a first line of defense. At Fort Cap au Gris, Maj. (later U.S.Pres.) Zachary Taylor's command rendezvoused, Sept., 1814, and five months after the war, at Fort Howard, May 24, 1815, Black Hawk's band skirmished with settlers and Rangers in the Battle of Sink Hole. In 1824 the Sac and Fox finally gave up all claim to the region.

The Lincoln County seat, earlier at Old Monroe and Alexandria, was located here 1829. The county, organized, 1818, was named by its first settler, Christopher Clark, for Lincoln counties, N.C., and Ky., which honor Revolutionary Gen. Benjamin Lincoln.

Troy serves as a trade and legal center for a Mississippi River county in Missouri's Glacial Plains Region, an area of livestock, grain, and poultry farming. As early as the 1790's, roving hunters and trappers took up Spanish land grants in the county's fertile Cuivre (Fr. copper) River Valley.

During the Civil War, the fighting missed pro-Southern Lincoln County, though Union troops occupied Troy almost continually. The area prospered when the St. Louis and Hannibal R.R. reached Troy in 1882. Early schools here were Lincoln Academy (later Troy Christian Institute) chartered in 1835 and Buchanan College founded in 1894.

Troy was the birthplace of Frederick G. Bonfils (1860-1933) noted co-editor of the "Denver Post". Elliott W. Major, thirty-third governor of Missouri, was a native of this county, and Congressman Clarence Cannon, noted parliamentarian, was born in Elsberry. Among points of interest in Troy are the Woods' Fort marker near the town spring; the 1870 courthouse; and the 1859 Christian and 1868 Presbyterian Churches. Just east of Troy is Cuivre River State Park.

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Site of Wood's Fort MO67

This marks the site of WOODS FORT where the settlers gathered for protection from the Indians in the War of 1812. It was the headquarters of Lieut. (afterwards President) Zachary Taylor.

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