Place:Bond, Illinois, United States


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Bond County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. As of the 2020 census, the population was 16,725. Its county seat is Greenville.

Bond County is included in the St. Louis, MO-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Bond County was formed in 1817 out of Madison County. It was named for Shadrach Bond, who was then the delegate from the Illinois Territory to the United States Congress, and who thereupon became the first governor of Illinois, serving from 1818 to 1822.

The county's primary city, Greenville, had a post office from 1819 and was incorporated as a town in 1855 and as a city in 1872.[1] A few possible reasons have been put forth for the naming of the town. Some think the town was named after Greenville, North Carolina, which had been named after Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene. Others say that Greenville was named by early settler Thomas White because it was "so green and nice." A third possibility is that Greenville was named after Green P. Rice, the town's first merchant.[1]

In 1824, a vote taken on slavery in Bond County had received 240 votes against and 63 votes for slavery. While Illinois was not a slave state, it was adjacent to slave states, Missouri and Kentucky, and did allow the continued use of "indentured servants," a process many slaveowners used to keep their slaves even in a free state.[2]

In Bond County, at one point 14 slaves were registered to eight owners.[2] One slave, Silas Register, took his last name from the act of being registered at the county clerk's office. Register was the last known Bond County slave to survive; he died in 1872 at the age of 76.[2] A few of the slaves are buried in the county with the families they were indentured to.[2] One former slave, Fanny, was free after her owners moved out of the state and worked in the town so that she could buy her husband, Stephen, at auction in Missouri.[2]

During the 1840s, Bond County played host to a few people conducting slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.[2] Teacher T.A. Jones lived in Reno and in 2008, a letter in which he told of his Underground Railroad activities was discovered in a staircase in Sparta.[2] Slaves were often spirited from Missouri, sometimes through Carlyle to Bond County.[2] Rev. John Leeper was able to disguise his Underground Railroad activities due to his milling business.[2] Dr. Henry Perrine practiced medicine near Greenville and helped with the secret railroad activities.[2] Rev. George Denny's house was found in the 1930s to conceal a secret chamber that had been used in the Railroad.[2]

Greenville University was founded as Almira College in 1855. In 1941, college president H.J. Long "declared the founding of Almira and Greenville ran parallel, for both were founded on prayer."[1]

When Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas gave speeches in Greenville in 1858 during a campaign for the United States Senate, Douglas said: "Ladies and gentlemen it gives me great and supreme gratification and pleasure to see this vast concourse of people assembled to hear me upon this my first visit to Old Bond."[1] The Illinois State Register reported of the occasion: "I've seen many gatherings in Old Bond county but I never saw anything equal to this and I never expect to."[1]

On November 21, 1915, the Liberty Bell passed through Greenville on its nationwide tour returning to Pennsylvania from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. After that trip, the Liberty Bell returned to Pennsylvania and will not be moved again.[1]

The Greenville Public Library was established as a Carnegie library and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Hogue Hall at Greenville College, demolished in 2008, also formerly appeared on the National Register.[1]

On April 18, 1934, during the Great Depression, a group of 500 protesters marched to the Illinois Emergency Relief Commission to lodge complaints about the delivery of emergency supplies from the state and federal governments.[1]

Ronald Reagan visited Greenville on the campaign trail in the 1980s and gave a speech on the courthouse lawn. Barack Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois elected as President in November 2008, also visited Greenville while campaigning for his Senate seat in 2004, in a visit hosted by the Bond County Democrats. Women in Bond County could vote for the first time in 1914.[1]

Timeline

Date Event Source
1817 County formed Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1817 Court records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1817 Land records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1817 Marriage records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1820 First census Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
1821 Probate records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
1850 No significant boundary changes after this year Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
1877 Birth records recorded Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources

Population History

source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
Census Year Population
1820 2,931
1830 3,124
1840 5,060
1850 6,144
1860 9,815
1870 13,152
1880 14,866
1890 14,550
1900 16,078
1910 17,075
1920 16,045
1930 14,406
1940 14,540
1950 14,157
1960 14,060
1970 14,012
1980 16,224
1990 14,991

Cemeteries

Cemeteries of Bond County, Illinois, United States

Research Tips

Resources

  • Outstanding guide to Bond County family history and genealogy resources (FamilySearch Research Wiki). Birth, marriage, and death records, censuses, wills, deeds, county histories, cemeteries, churches, naturalizations, newspapers, libraries, and genealogical societies.
  • Bond County ILGenWeb
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Bond County, Illinois. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.