Countdown to the United States’ 250th Birthday
Map of North America, circa 1776.
By Kathy Turner • In just about 50 weeks the country and, as a result, the region will celebrate the 250th birthday of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Known as the semiquincentennial, it will mark the United States becoming a country.
Our newspaper would like to start the celebration now in the form of a countdown to the big event and a way of commemorating the communities we serve as they became a part of the nation. We also hope to get the community involved by welcoming local historians and writers to commit to an article for one week, or multiple weeks, as we go through the next year. But, more on that later.
For now, we will kick this off with a little quick history of what this region was between 1776 and the early 1800s. We’ll also take a quick look at where each of our communities came into their roles in that history.
1776 Illinois
The territory known as Illinois was first identified when a small American force captured Kaskaskia in July of 1778 and established a claim for the United States. The 1783 Treaty of Paris made it formally a part of the new nation. The territory that would become Illinois was acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
Native Nations were excluded from the 1783 Treaty and didn’t understand the concept of property ownership. They later ceded their claim to the lands in Illinois to the United States for goods and annual payments in agreements set up between 1803 and 1812.
At that point there was little knowledge of what lay west of the Mississippi which served as the western border. In 1804, then President Thomas Jefferson charged Meriweather Lewis and William Clark with the task of exploring the newly acquired lands from the Louisiana Purchase and to find a route to the Pacific Ocean.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition covered approximately 8,000 miles over the two years and provided maps and information about the land of Illinois and its surrounding territories.
In 1818 Illinois officially gained statehood and the state was named. But even before that time, immigrants from throughout Europe had taken to the prairie lands to carve out their own piece of this state.
The Village of Glen Carbon was first identified as a settlement in 1799. Called the Land of Goshen, immigrants settled in the community as farmers and miners, taking advantage of the close proximity to the Mississippi River and the access to transportation it could provide.
The area that is now St. Jacob was first settled in 1810. It would go on to be the settlement of farming families until it was officially founded and named in 1894.
Troy was first platted by James Riggins and David Hendershott in 1819. Previously known as Columbia, they chose the name Troy. The entire community consisted of 10 acres of land.
Highland was first settled as Swiss immigrants arrived to the region and gathered at the current city’s location. It was first named Helvetia, the Latin word for Switzerland, the land of the Helvetii.
Youngest of the communities we serve, Maryville, was not platted and laid out until 1900.
Though there were homesteads throughout the region that surrounded these towns and villages, they did not come into being as actual communities until later and will be detailed more over the next year as we count down to 2026.
We Want Your Contributions!
We would like to see our readers, the community leaders and local historians to get involved in this project. We are developing a ‘calendar’ for the next year. We are asking individuals, young and old, to sign up for a contribution in one week’s edition of the countdown.
You might write about your community history. Or, you may choose to write about when businesses, churches or schools were established in your community. Or, you can write about the entire region or Madison County and what was happening during the time slot designated for that week.
We have just over 11 months before the celebrations kick off. And, we have five communities to outline in those eleven months. So, we’ve decided to break down the countdown by months – August through June of 2026.
Those editions each month will feature each of the five communities – some duplicated in one week and some as stand-alone features. So, we’d like to kick this off with a challenge!
We would like one historian, or a group of historians, to claim their month to submit their contribution to us that will identify the history of your community being established and, eventually, incorporated. The focus should be on who were the people that made up those first communities? What did they do for a living? Maybe students or school classes want to get involved and write for the time when your schools were established, sports successes, etc.
You might include photos if they are available for your time slot. If we can’t run them all at once, we will get them in over time.
Here are the timeline break-downs: August, 1800 to 1850; September, 1850 to 1875 (note, this will be the Civil War era, so what was going on in the communities at that time?); October, 1875 to 1900; November, 1900 to 1920; December, 1920 to 1940; January, 1940 to 1960; February, 1960 to 1980; March, 1980 to 1990; April, 1990 to 2000; May, 2000 to 2010; and June, 2010 to 2025.
Get your groups together, give us a call at 618-654-0459 or by email at [email protected] and designate the time period/month you are interested in. We will email you with confirmation and let you know of the deadline for your submissions. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll reach out to those we know will be great contributors for this project.
August is fast approaching. We need volunteers for the time period of 1800 to 1850 now!
