of Illinois into the Union as a sovereign state was passed by Congress. A convention to frame a constitution assembled at Kaskaskia in the following July. The first election under the constitution was held in September 1818, and Shadrach Bond was elected governor, and Pierre Menard, lieutenant governor. Illinois was now declared by Congress admitted to the Union as on equal footing in all respects with the original states. The legislature

again met at Kaskaskia in January, 1819. This was the last session ever held at Kaskaskia. Vandalia, the same year, was selected as capital of the state. It was stipulated that Vandalia was to be the capital for twenty years, at the end of that period it was changed to Springfield.

Illinois was constituted a separate territory by act of Congress, February 3d, 1809.

In the latter part of the year, 1808, a wagon road was laid out through that section of the territory of Illinois now comprised within the boundaries of Clinton County. This road extended from what was called the "Goshen Settlement" to the Ohio salt works. It crossed the Kaskaskia river at the site of the present city of Carlyle, thence via the Walnut hills to the salt works mentioned. This was known in the early days as the "Goshen road." The survey of this highway, doubtless, marked the time when the white man first set foot in the present limits of Clinton County, and from that date on for several years civilized man occasionally traversed this region on his way from the settlement on the American bottom to those on the Ohio river.

In 1811 a fort, or block house, was established on an elevation of ground lying some six blocks east of the present court house square in Carlyle which subsequently became the nucleus for the "lower" or old town of Carlyle. This block house was about sixteen feet square, made of logs, arranged in palisade form. At this fort there assembled the Illinois "Rangers" whenever the tocsin of alarm was sounded announcing that the Indians had committed, or were about to commit some murderous acts upon the whites of the surrounding country.

Between the years 1809 and 1817 some thirty thousand acres of land were entered within the limits of the present county of Clinton, the first of these entries being made by John JOURNEY, Charles COX and James MCCRACKEN in September, 1814. The lands thus entered were located in what is now Sugar Creek Township.

In the timbered portions of that region settlements were made about the 1810. The following year these settlers ere greatly annoyed by the predatory bands of Indians that hovered around the defenseless settlements and watched with jealous eyes these first invasions of their time-honored hunting grounds. To guard against their depredations, Nathaniel JOURNEY in 1812 constructed a rude log fort a short distance northwest of the present site of Aviston. So far as can be learned by tradition, only

one person, the wife of Jesse BAYLES was killed by the Indians in this settlement.

In the year 1810 William TAYLOR emigrated from Kentucky to Illinois and in 1813 he built a cabin for his family on a piece of land in what is now Brookside Township. This was one of the first in Clinton County. James MCCRACKEN, a native of Kentucky, and an intrepid trapper and hunter, settled in the county prior to 1814, in which he entered land and commenced to clear up a farm.

In 1815 John ROW came with his wife from Tennessee. He was one of the early Justices of the Peace and a Baptist preacher as well. Thomas HIGGINS, the celebrated Indian fighter, built a cabin about three miles northeast of the site of the present town of Trenton, on the west bank of Sugar Creek. In November 1815, the first permanent settlement in the eastern part of the county was made by William and Simon WALKER, who accompanied by John MARTIN, came from Turkey Hill, an old settlement in St. Clair County, and camped on the banks of the Kaskaskia river, near a body of water called TOWNSEND’s Lake.

The first white man that located in the northern part of the county, embraced within the present limits of Irish Township was James BURNSIDE, Jr. who located there early in the year 1817. In the same year Mr. SHERWOOD located in that neighborhood, soon erecting a grist mill which was designed to grind corn and was propelled by horse power.

It was not until 1835 that a large immigration of German settlers set in. About that time Gerhard HAHNEWINKLE, Herman KOELKER, Frank H. SHRADER, Sr., Henry J. HOCHEHLER, J. H. HILMES, H. Bernhardt WOBBE, Sr., J. Gerhard WOBBE, Joseph F. BECKMANN, W. H. BECKMANN and G. Henry HORCHELER came to Clinton County, and all settled north and west of Shoal Creek. It was characteristic of their thrift and frugality that all cultivated farms.

Among the prominent early settlers was likewise Zophar CASE, Sr. who was an honored citizen of Carlyle from 1833 to 1891.