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Became a state in 1818, just after Indiana (1816), and Mississippi (1817), and before Alabama (1819), Maine (1820), and Missouri (1821). It remained for years the northwesternmost state, bordered on the northwest and north by territories which achieved statehood, as Iowa and Wisconson, in 1846 and 1848.
Its western boundary, from top to bottom, is the great Mississippi River. Across this river, in 1830 as today, was its southwestern neighbor, Missouri, containing the largest city that far to the west; containing all of 6,000 people. A number of rivers procede generally from east to west.
The Illinois is the largest, extending from around 60 miles southwest of Chicago across and down to Grafton, which is about 15 miles upriver from Alton, which is in turn about 10 miles upriver from St. Louis. The biggest city along the river is Peoria, around the middle.
The Kaskaskia River crosses most of the state roughly parallel to, and south of, the Illinois. On it is Illinois' first state capitol, Vandalia.
The eastern boundaries of Illinois are (from north to south), a roughly 60-mile stretch of the Lake Michigan shore, a line running about 150 miles straight south from Chicago, separating Illinois from Indiana, some 120 miles (as the crow files, not as the river flows) of the Wabash River, and finally along the southeast, the Ohio river.
On the east side of the Mississippi River, just a few miles north of St. Louis, MO (which lies on the west bank).
A town with much southern commerce, like Cincinati OH, which reacted violently when Owen Lovejoy moved his abolitionist newspaper from St. Louis, after finding life in Missouri life-threatening. A mob attached Lovejoy's printing press; Lovejoy defended it by force of arms, and he was shot and killed by one of the mob.
County seat of Hancock County, on the Mississippi River, the same county in which lay Nauvoo (formerly Commerce), the home of the main Mormon community in the early to middle 40s.
On July 27, 1844, Joseph Smith was murdered there by a mob while he was under arrest and locked up in the jail house.
In the northwestern corner, and known for its lead mines. These were long used by the Indians, until around 1830, when the last Indian tribes were being pushed out of Illinois. In that period, it became a bone of contention, and led to some violence.
In the late 1850s, Ulysses S. Grant lived there as and unhappy and unsuccessful clerk in a leather store.
Just upriver (and almost due west)from Alton, and right where the Illinois River meets the Mississippi.
In the 1830s, one of the most interesting and cultured towns in Illinois.
About 30 miles west, and slightly south of Springfield. Home of Illinois College, which became, especially after the death of Elijah Lovejoy, a hotbed of anti-slavery activity. William Herndon's father is supposed to have withdrawn him from the college saying he wouldn't have his son turned into an "abolitionist pup".
It was also where Stephen A Douglas taught school (not the college but his own little school) for a year or so around 1832 or 33.
In Randolph County, near the bottom of the state. Small town on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. Apparently it was once on the Illinois side nested in an oxbow that has since been bypassed. About 60 miles downriver from St. Louis, MO.
For a while it was home to Nathaniel Pope, a federal circuit judge, and father of Major General (Civil War) John Pope.
In Hancock County. Home of Joseph Smith's Mormon colony in the early to mid 1840s; just west of Carthage, the county seat, were Smith was killed by a mob.
A tiny town on the Sangamon River where Abraham Lincoln first went out on his own. It lasted only from the late 20s to the late 30s.
was the name of the village where the Sauk Indians lived for a hundred years until evicted in 1831. (Now part of Rock Island city?)
Home of the state capitol before its removal to Springfield in 1837.
On the Mississippi, touching the point at which Missouri and Iowa meet. Contains Nauvoo, the home, for a while, of the Mormon colony, and Carthage, the county seat, where Joseph Smith was killed.
Crosses much of the length of the state in a mostly southerly direction, but drifting somewhat to the east as it goes.
A winding river, not much of which is navigable, flowing roughly east to west in the middle of Illinois, which flows in to the Illinois River just north of Beardstown. Springfield, the State Capital since 1837 is on the Sangamon, as was New Salem, a short lived town where Abraham Lincoln lived a few years.