Place:Monroe, Illinois, United States

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Monroe County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 32,957, which is an increase of 19.3% from 27,619 in 2000. Its county seat is Waterloo. Its largest city is Columbia.

History

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

Indigenous peoples lived along the Mississippi River and related waterways for thousands of years before European contact. French Jesuit priests in the Illinois Country encountered the Kaskaskia and Cahokia, bands of the Illiniwek confederacy.

The first European settlement in this area was St. Philippe, founded in 1723 by Philip Francois Renault, a French courtier, on his concession about three miles north of Fort de Chartres, on the Mississippi River. This early agricultural community quickly produced a surplus, and grains were sold to the lower Louisiana colony for years.

After the American Revolution, Monroe County was formed in 1816 out of Randolph and St. Clair Counties, as the 8th county created from the then Illinois Territory.

Beginning on the Mississippi River where the base line, which is about three-fourths of a mile below Judge Briggs's present residence, strikes the said river; thence with the base line until it strikes the first township line therefrom; thence southeast to the southeast corner of township two south, range nine west; thence south to the southeast corner of township four north, range nine west; thence southwestwardly to the Mississippi, so as to include Alexander McNabb's farm, and thence up the Mississippi to the beginning shall constitute a separate county, to be called MONROE.
Illinois Territorial Laws 1815-16, p. 25

It was named in honor of James Monroe, who had just served as United States Secretary of War and who was elected President later that same year. Its first county seat was Harrisonville, named for William Henry Harrison, former governor of the Northwest Territory and future President. Harrison actually invested in several tracts of land in the American Bottoms above Harrisonville, mostly in the present precinct of Moredock, ownership of which he retained until his death.

Waterloo assumed the mantle of county seat in 1825. The sites of the old towns of St. Philippe and Harrisonville were submerged by the Mississippi River, in flooding caused by deforestation of river banks during the steamboat years. Crews cut so many trees that banks destabilized, making the river wider and more shallow from St. Louis to the confluence with the Ohio River. It caused more severe flooding, as well as lateral channel changes, such as the one that cut off the village of Kaskaskia from the Illinois mainland.

An unincorporated community of Harrisonville was re-established east of the original site. The bounds of Monroe County in 1816 did not include Precincts 1 and 6 (village of Hecker and Prairie du Long), Precinct 1 and most of 6 was added in 1825 from St. Clair County. The strip of Precinct 6 from the survey township line east to the Kaskaskia was added, once again from St. Clair, two years later in 1827. Some minor adjustments and clarifications of the boundaries have taken place, but the borders have remained essentially static since 1827.

Timeline

Population History

source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990

Research Tips

External Links

• Outstanding guide to Monroe 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.
• www.rootsweb.com/~ilmonroe/