|
The prairie where Kewanee is situated was once the land of the Pottawatomi and Winnebago, the Sauk and Fox. With the defeat of Chief Black Hawk at Rock Island in 1832, the Indians were pushed across the Mississippi, opening one of the last regions of Illinois to white settlement.
In the fall of 1835, Caleb Tenney of Wethersfield, Conn., wanted to found a colony in Henry County near the Andover Colony he had started earlier that year.
The Connecticut Association was formed and a committee was sent west early in 1836 to select and buy land. After surveying the area, they chose a site about 22 miles east of Andover at the southern edge of a vast timber called Barren Grove.
Wethersfield grew into a thriving village and had a population of about 130 within two years.
In 1852 work began on the Central Military Tract Railroad to run from Galesburg to Chicago. In spite of efforts to bring the railroad through Wethersfield, crossing a deep slough west of the village made it cheaper to take the right-of-way on more level land to the north.
When it was learned that a rail station would be built, the scramble for choice lots was on. Businessmen in Wethersfield literally picked up their buildings and moved them on wheels, logs or anything that would roll north.
A new town was laid out on May 1, 1854, Kewanee’s “birthday.” The first train rolled down the track in November of 1854. Folks wanted to name the town after the engineer who built the railroad, a man named Berrien. Colonel Berrien was not at all interested and suggested they name the new whistle stop “Kewanee,” a Winnebago Indian word for prairie chicken which was common to the area at the time.
Kewanee became a prairie boom town sprouting along the tracks, which were taken over in 1856 by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad.
Special elections on annexation held in both towns in 1924 passed by overwhelming majorities and Wethersfield officially became part of Kewanee. The combined population of the two towns at the time was 18,000. By that time all services had been combined, with the exception of schools and township government, which remain independent today.
|
|
