There will be a lot of historical doings this year as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. And right here in Kendall County, we’ll be celebrating a little quieter, but celebrating nonetheless our small corner of northern Illinois’ 185th birthday.
In February 1841, the Illinois General Assembly, in a veritable fit of positive action seldom seen before or since, was feverishly working to establish four brand new counties. Three new counties had already been formed that January. The four set for approval in February would bring the grand total for the first two months of 1841 to seven new counties.
Debate on each of the proposals that February was hot and heavy, as Whigs and Democrats maneuvered to get the best possible political advantages.
When the dust cleared and a vote was finally held Feb. 19, 1841 – exactly 185 years ago today – the second new county formed that month (the first, on Feb. 17, was Grundy County) was voted into law.
It was officially named Kendall County after former President Andrew Jackson’s postmaster general and political fixer Amos Kendall.
The flood of settlement into the Fox River Valley that began in in 1833 continued right through the 1830s. Enough people made their way to the banks of the Fox River by the end of that decade that most of Kendall County’s towns had been surveyed and laid out.
Boosters (optimists all) laid out Oswego on the valley edge overlooking the Fox River and the mouth of Waubonsie Creek in 1835– Newark also was laid out that year. Yorkville followed in 1836 along with Little Rock, and then Lisbon and Millington in 1838.
As population increased, so did the need to do business at the county seat. For those living in what eventually became Bristol, Little Rock, and Oswego townships, that meant a long trip north to the Kane County seat in Geneva. For those living in what became Fox, Kendall, NaAuSay, Seward, Lisbon and Big Grove townships, conducting official business meant a trip down river to LaSalle County’s courthouse in Ottawa.
In the midst of the area’s biggest spurt in population growth ever (in terms of percentages), the Panic of 1837 struck like a sledgehammer blow.
The word “panic” doesn’t carry the emotional baggage that “depression” does these days, but the Panic of 1837 was a financial depression in its fullest and most devastating sense. Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Panic of 1837 almost led to the financial destruction of state government in Illinois as the nation’s monetary system collapsed.
Finding themselves at the neglected fringes of Kane and LaSalle counties, and still feeling a bond forged during the Black Hawk War of 1832, residents of the nine townships decided to petition the state to form a brand new county they could call home.
In the fall of 1840, 109 settlers signed a petition asking the General Assembly to establish a new nine township county. As originally proposed, the new county would have included today’s Bristol and Little Rock townships in Kane County; Kendall, Fox, Big Grove, Lisbon, Mission, and Northfield townships in LaSalle County and Sandwich Township in DeKalb County. As finally proposed to the General Assembly, however, the boundary of the square, nine township county was shifted one township east, eliminating Sandwich, Mission and Northfield townships and adding Oswego, NaAuSay and Seward to the new county’s makeup.
The tentative name given to the new county by the General Assembly was Orange County, after the county in New York (named after British King William of Orange) so many northern Illinois settlers came from.
But Democrats, then in the majority, voted to change the name to honor Amos Kendall, Andrew Jackson’s powerful former patronage chief. Jackson did not seek reelection in 1837 and Kendall had retired from government in 1840.
While we decry the often childish behavior of modern politicians, it seems things in Springfield weren’t much better back in 1841. In a move to embarrass Democratic sponsors, Whig Party legislators made a tongue-in-cheek effort to amend the county name to include the words “Honest Amos” to Kendall, who had been made out to be a corrupt influence on the popular Jackson. The effort was easily quashed, however, and just plain Kendall County it remained.
The bill worked its way through the legislative process, getting house approval and moving to the state senate. On Feb. 19, 1841 it was finally approved.
On April 5, eligible voters in the newly formed Kendall County – all males at the time – held its first official election of county officers. Illinois county government was then operating on the commission form of government. The first county board of commissioners elected were Jeremiah J. Cole, Levi Hills and Reuben Hunt.
That June, a three-man commission appointed by the General Assembly came up from Springfield to survey the county for a site for a county seat. After looking around, the commission picked Yorkville, since it was smack in the middle of the new county. The newly elected three-member county commission quickly rented a private home owned by Daniel Johnson for use as a courthouse. The house was situated on Lot 8, Block 15, in Yorkville, just a couple of blocks from the current Historic Courthouse.
In 1845, county voters decided to move the county seat to Oswego, thanks to the efforts of boosters in that town. But by 1859, the problems traveling all the way from the county’s southernmost areas to Oswego in extreme northeastern Kendall County by horse-drawn vehicles were becoming as bothersome as those previous trips to Geneva and Ottawa two decades earlier.
That year, voters decided to move the county seat back to Yorkville, and in June 1864, during the Civil War, the current Historic Courthouse was finally completed and the county’s official records were moved to the new facility. And in Yorkville the county seat has remained ever since.
The decision of those 109 settlers to strike off on their own in 1841 was as important then as it is today, 185 years later. They certainly didn’t foresee the recent growth that has taken place, but they did foresee the need to keep local government as close to hand as possible, something that benefits all county residents today.
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