United States Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration announced that the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain would regard themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step toward forming the United States of America; the declaration was signed by representatives from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. The Lee Resolution for independence was passed on July 2 with no opposing votes; the Committee of Five had drafted the Declaration to be ready. John Adams, a leader in pushing for independence, had persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which Congress edited to produce the final version.
The Declaration was a formal explanation of why Congress had voted to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, "The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America" – although Independence Day is celebrated on July 4, the date that the wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved. After ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms, it was published as the printed Dunlap broadside, distributed and read to the public. The source copy used for this printing has been lost and may have been a copy in Thomas Jefferson's hand. Jefferson's original draft is preserved at the Library of Congress, complete with changes made by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, as well as Jefferson's notes of changes made by Congress; the best-known version of the Declaration is a signed copy, displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.
C. and, popularly regarded as the official document. This engrossed copy was ordered by Congress on July 19 and signed on August 2; the sources and interpretation of the Declaration have been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing 27 colonial grievances against King George III and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution, its original purpose was to announce independence, references to the text of the Declaration were few in the following years. Abraham Lincoln made it the centerpiece of his policies and his rhetoric, as in the Gettysburg Address of 1863. Since it has become a well-known statement on human rights its second sentence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life and the pursuit of Happiness; this has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language", containing "the most potent and consequential words in American history".
The passage came to represent a moral standard. This view was notably promoted by Lincoln, who considered the Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted; the Declaration of Independence inspired many similar documents in other countries, the first being the 1789 Declaration of United Belgian States issued during the Brabant Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands. It served as the primary model for numerous declarations of independence in Europe and Latin America, as well as Africa and Oceania during the first half of the 19th century. Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose. By the time that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year.
Relations had been deteriorating between the colonies and the mother country since 1763. Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase revenue from the colonies, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767. Parliament believed that these acts were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep them in the British Empire. Many colonists, had developed a different conception of the empire; the colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them. This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies; the orthodox British view, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire, so, by definition, anything that Parliament did was constitutional. In the colonies, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government could violate, not Parliament.
After the Townshend Acts, some essayists began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies at all. Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth, by 1774 American writers such as
Lee Resolution
The Lee Resolution was the formal assertion passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776 which declared the establishment of a new country of United Colonies as independent from the British Empire, creating what became the United States of America. News of this act was published that evening in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the next day in the Pennsylvania Gazette; the text of the document formally announcing this action was the Declaration of Independence, approved two days on July 4, 1776, celebrated as Independence Day. The resolution is named for Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who proposed it to Congress after receiving instructions from the Virginia Convention and its President Edmund Pendleton. Lee's full resolution had three parts which were considered by Congress on June 7, 1776. Along with the independence issue, it proposed to establish a plan for ensuing American foreign relations, to prepare a plan of a confederation for the states to consider. Congress decided to address each of these three parts separately.
Some sources indicate that Lee used the language from the Virginia Convention's instructions verbatim. Voting was delayed for several weeks on the first part of the resolution while state support and legislative instruction for independence were consolidated, but the press of events forced the other less-discussed parts to proceed immediately. On June 10, Congress decided to form a committee to draft a declaration of independence in case the resolution should pass. On June 11, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston were appointed as the Committee of Five to accomplish this; that same day, Congress decided to establish two other committees to develop the resolution's last two parts. The following day, another committee of five was established to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers; the committee appointed to prepare a plan of treaties made its first report on July 18 in the writing of John Adams. A limited printing of the document was authorized, it was reviewed and amended by Congress over the next five weeks.
On August 27, the amended plan of treaties was referred back to the committee to develop instructions concerning the amendments, Richard Henry Lee and James Wilson were added to the committee. Two days the committee was empowered to prepare further instructions and report back to Congress; the formal version of the plan of treaties was adopted on September 17. On September 24, Congress approved negotiating instructions for commissioners to obtain a treaty with France, based on the template provided in the plan of treaties. Alliance with France was considered vital if the war with England was to be won and the newly declared country was to survive; the committee drafting a plan of confederation was chaired by John Dickinson. Long debates followed on such issues as sovereignty, the exact powers to be given the confederate government, whether to have a judiciary, voting procedures; the final draft of the Articles of Confederation was prepared during the summer of 1777 and approved by Congress for ratification by the individual states on November 15, 1777, after a year of debate.
It continued in use from that time onward, although it was not ratified by all states until four years on March 1, 1781. When the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, few colonists in British North America advocated independence from Great Britain. Support for independence grew in 1776 after the publication of Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense in January of that year. In the Second Continental Congress, the movement towards independence was guided principally by an informal alliance of delegates known as the "Adams-Lee Junto", after Samuel Adams and John Adams of Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. On May 15, 1776, the revolutionary Virginia Convention meeting in Williamsburg, passed a resolution instructing Virginia's delegates in the Continental Congress "to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain". In accordance with those instructions, on June 7, Richard Henry Lee proposed the resolution to Congress and it was seconded by John Adams.
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, ought to be dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances; that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation. Congress as a whole was not yet ready to declare independence at that moment, because the delegates from some of the colonies, including Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, had not yet been authorized to vote for independence. Voting on the first clause of Lee's resolution was therefore postponed for three weeks while advocates of independence worked to build support in the colonial governments for the resolution. Meanwhile, a Committee of Five was appointed to prepare a formal declaration so that it would be ready when
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Reagan was raised in a poor family in small towns of northern Illinois, he graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations. After moving to California in 1937, he found work as an actor and starred in a few major productions. Reagan was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild—the labor union for actors—where he worked to root out Communist influence. In the 1950s, he was a motivational speaker at General Electric factories. Reagan had been a Democrat until 1962, when he became a conservative and switched to the Republican Party. In 1964, Reagan's speech, "A Time for Choosing", supported Barry Goldwater's foundering presidential campaign and earned him national attention as a new conservative spokesman.
Building a network of supporters, he was elected governor of California in 1966. As governor, Reagan raised taxes, turned a state budget deficit to a surplus, challenged the protesters at the University of California, ordered in National Guard troops during a period of protest movements in 1969, was re-elected in 1970, he twice ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination, in 1968 and 1976. Four years in 1980, he won the nomination and defeated incumbent president Jimmy Carter. At 69 years, 349 days of age at the time of his first inauguration, Reagan was the oldest person to have assumed office until Donald Trump in 2017. Reagan faced former vice president Walter Mondale when he ran for re-election in 1984, defeated him, winning the most electoral votes of any U. S. president, 525, or 97.6 percent of the 538 votes in the Electoral College. This was the second-most lopsided presidential election in modern U. S. history after Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 victory over Alfred M. Landon, in which he won 98.5 percent or 523 of the 531 electoral votes.
Soon after taking office, Reagan began implementing sweeping new economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, economic deregulation, reduction in government spending. In his first term he survived an assassination attempt, spurred the War on Drugs, fought public sector labor. Over his two terms, the economy saw a reduction of inflation from 12.5% to 4.4%, an average annual growth of real GDP of 3.4%. Reagan enacted cuts in domestic discretionary spending, cut taxes, increased military spending which contributed to increased federal outlays overall after adjustment for inflation. Foreign affairs dominated his second term, including ending the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, the Iran–Iraq War, the Iran–Contra affair. In June 1987, four years after he publicly described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire", Reagan challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!", during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate.
He transitioned Cold War policy from détente to rollback by escalating an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Gorbachev. The talks culminated in the INF Treaty. Reagan began his presidency during the decline of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall fell just ten months after the end of his term. Germany reunified the following year, on December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed; when Reagan left office in 1989, he held an approval rating of 68 percent, matching those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, as the highest ratings for departing presidents in the modern era, he was the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower to serve two full terms, after a succession of five prior presidents did not. Although he had planned an active post-presidency, Reagan disclosed in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier that year. Afterward, his informal public appearances became more infrequent, he died at home on June 5, 2004. His tenure constituted a realignment toward conservative policies in the United States, he is an icon among conservatives.
Evaluations of his presidency among historians and the general public place him among the upper tier of American presidents. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in an apartment on the second floor of a commercial building in Tampico, Illinois, he was the younger son of Jack Reagan. Jack was a salesman and storyteller whose grandparents were Irish Catholic emigrants from County Tipperary, while Nelle was of half English and half Scottish descent. Reagan's older brother, Neil Reagan, became an advertising executive. Reagan's father nicknamed his son "Dutch", due to his "fat little Dutchman"-like appearance and "Dutchboy" haircut. Reagan's family lived in several towns and cities in Illinois, including Monmouth and Chicago. In 1919, they returned to Tampico and lived above the H. C. Pitney Variety Store until settling in Dixon. After his election as president, Reagan resided in the upstairs White House private quarters, he would quip that he was "living above the store again". Ronald Reagan wrote that his mother "always expected to find the best in people and did".
She attended the Disciples of Christ church and was active, influential, within it.
U.S. Route 51
U. S. Route 51 is a major south-north United States highway that extends 1,277 miles from the western suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana, to within 150 feet of the Wisconsin–Michigan state line. Much of the highway in Illinois and southern Wisconsin runs parallel to or is cosigned with Interstate 39 and much of the route in several states parallels the Illinois Central Railroad; the highway's northern terminus is between Hurley and Ironwood, where it ends with a T interchange at US 2. Its southern terminus is Laplace, ending at US 61. In addition to singing about US 61 on his album Highway 61 Revisited, musician Bob Dylan commemorated US 51, covering the folk song "Highway 51 Blues", earlier recorded by both Curtis Jones and Tommy McClennan, on his eponymous album Bob Dylan; the North Mississippi Allstars paid tribute to the highway in the title track of their album 51 Phantom. In Memphis, all of US 51 south of South Parkway East was renamed from Bellevue Boulevard to Elvis Presley Boulevard. Graceland sits in the subdivision of Whitehaven.
In 2004, the six states that US 51 traverses banded together as the Explore Hwy 51 Coalition to help promote this "All-American Road". The group now offers visitor information for traveling the length of the road. US 51 crosses the Mississippi–Louisiana border a few miles north of Kentwood and continues to parallel I-55 until just below its interchanges with Louisiana Highway 3234 and US 190 it joins I-55 just south of Hammond at exit 28. From Hammond, the two highways, running concurrently, cross the swamps between Ponchatoula and Laplace on viaducts to I-10, where I-55 ends; the old highway is still used for local traffic. US 51 continues southwestward into Laplace where it meets its end at US 61. In the 1930s, this highway was called Jefferson Davis Highway. Before the construction of I-55, US 51 was routed along what is now US 51 Business between Hammond and Ponchatoula. US 51 Business ends at the joined I-55/US 51 south of Ponchatoula. From this point southward, while US 51 is joined with I-55, the former routing of US 51 lies at ground level just to the east of I-55/US 51 and carries no designation.
While the southern terminus of US 51 is in Laplace at U. S. 61, it was once co-signed with U. S. 61 into downtown New Orleans. However, it was slated to head toward New Orleans along the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain via the New Orleans–Hammond Highway, never completed. US 51 enters Mississippi from Tennessee at Southaven and parallels Interstate 55 to the east for much of its length, except for the section between the Tennessee line and Grenada, where it parallels the highway to the west. From Memphis, US 51 passes through Senatobia, Grenada and Canton before reaching Jackson. At the Jackson-Ridgeland line, US 51 overlaps I-55 from Exit 103 to Exit 96A downtown; the split is only temporary as the highway traverses Pearl and State streets and meets I-55 again at Exit 93. The Natchez Trace Parkway is crossed near Clinton; the two highways run together until Exit 72. The highway parallels the interstate through Hazlehurst, Brookhaven and McComb until it reaches the Louisiana border; the Mississippi section of US 51 is defined at Mississippi Code Annotated § 65-3-3.
US 51 up to the Kentucky border in the Mississippi valley. It is planned to be bypassed by Interstate 69 through Tennessee. U. S 51 enters Kentucky at Fulton, continues north through the towns of Clinton and Wickliffe to the Ohio River, where it is multiplexed with U. S highways 60 and 62 over the Ohio. US 51 enters Illinois from Kentucky at the town of Cairo; the route heads northbound to a village near Cairo called Mounds, begins to overlap I-57, following it for 24 miles to Dongola, before splitting and heading north. The route remains two lanes from Dongola to just before Assumption with the exception of a 10-mile section between Centralia and I-64. Past Assumption, US 51 becomes an expressway to Decatur. In Decatur, US 51 follows I-72 to bypass town. US 51 leaves I-72 after eight miles, heads north to Bloomington–Normal as an expressway. At Bloomington–Normal, US 51 follows I-74 for a mile I-55 for seven miles, before following I-39 for 140 miles. US 51 follows I-39, intersecting I-88 along the way.
The highway follows US 20 south of Rockford. I-39/US 51 joins I-90, making US 51 of the only toll roads in Illinois, a U. S. Highway. US 51 exits I-39/I-90 just a mile south of the Wisconsin state line. US 51 follows Illinois Route 75 west to the intersection of IL 251 turns north through South Beloit to enter Wisconsin. In the state of Wisconsin, US 51 enters from Illinois at Beloit. US 51 splits off from I-39/I-90 in South Beloit and continues north through Janesville and Edgerton. In Edgerton, US 51 rejoins I-39/I-90 for 3.5 miles before splitting off towards Stoughton and McFarland. US 51 runs parallel to I-39/I-90 through the eastern portion of Madison, crosses the Interstate in DeForest, rejoins I-39 again at Portage. US 51 runs concurrently with I-39 until I-39's terminus in Wausau and continues on as a mixture of freeway and expressway until just north of the interchange with US 8. From there through Hazelhurst, US 51 is a two-lane road with sporadic three-lane sections. US 51 expands with a central fifth turn lane from Hazelhurst to Arbor Vitae.
Illinois's 16th congressional district
The 16th Congressional District of Illinois is represented by Republican Adam Kinzinger. The congressional district covers parts of DeKalb, Stark and Winnebago counties, all of Boone, Grundy, Iroquois, LaSalle, Livingston and Putnam counties, as of the 2011 redistricting which followed the 2010 census. All or parts of Belvidere, Channahon, DeKalb, Loves Park, Machesney Park, Morris, Pontiac and Streator are included; the representatives for these districts were elected in the 2012 primary and general elections, the boundaries became effective on January 5, 2013. Prominent past representatives from the 16th district have included Everett Dirksen, who went on to become the Republican leader in the United States Senate. Anderson, who became the 3rd highest ranking Republican in the House and went on to run as a major independent candidate in the 1980 Presidential election. For decades, the 16th district was the most geographically stable district in Illinois. For more than six decades, in comparison to the other districts in the state, it was stationary.
While its shape fluctuated after each census, in general it included the northwest corner of the state, extending just far enough to the east to include its largest city, Rockford. By the 1990s, it extended eastward to include part of an outer suburb of Chicago; this geographic stability contributed to electoral stability. It first became a Rockford-based district for the 1948 election, from until 2010 it was represented by just five people, all but one of whom was a Republican. However, with the new map drawn for 2012, the familiar shape of the 16th was rendered unrecognizable, it was pushed well to the east to take in the extreme exurban region of the Chicago metropolitan area, stretches from the Wisconsin border to the Indiana border. While it still included most of Rockford's suburbs, half of Rockford itself—essentially the more Democratic portion of the city—was shifted to the 17th district. There are three living former members of the House from the district; the most recent to die was John B.
Anderson, on December 3, 2017. Illinois's congressional districts List of United States congressional districts Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Martis, Kenneth C.. The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present Washington Post page on the 16th District of Illinois U. S. Census Bureau - 16th District Fact Sheet
Illinois
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product, the sixth largest population, the 25th largest land area of all U. S. states. Illinois is noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, natural resources such as coal and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population; the Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports.
Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, located in the central part of the state. Although today's Illinois' largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled the vast Mississippi of the Illinois Country of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan. John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal made transportation between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley faster and cheaper, new railroads carried immigrants to new homes in the country's west and shipped commodity crops to the nation's east. The state became a transportation hub for the nation. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars; the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in the state, including Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago, the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is now recognized as a global alpha-level city. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was born and raised in the state.
Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln, displayed on its license plates since 1954. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois Native Americans, a name, spelled in many different ways in the early records. American scholars thought the name "Illinois" meant "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois; this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for "man" is ireniwa, plural of "man" is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has been said to mean "tribe of superior men", a false etymology; the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa - "he speaks the regular way". This was taken into the Ojibwe language in the Ottawa dialect, modified into ilinwe·.
The French borrowed these forms, changing the /we/ ending to spell it as -ois, a transliteration for its pronunciation in French of that time. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area; the Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans; the Koster Site demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, they built an urban complex of more than 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre plaza larger than 35 football fields, a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound, the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide, covers 13.8 acres. It contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth, it was topped by a structure thought to have measured about 105 feet in length and 48 feet in width, covered an area 5,000 square feet, been as much as 50 feet high, making its peak 150 feet above the level of the pl
Bureau County, Illinois
Bureau County is a county located in the U. S. state of Illinois. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 34,978, its county seat is Princeton. Bureau County is part of the Ottawa–Peru, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area, the Hennepin Canal Parkway State Park is located in this county. Bureau County was created from a portion of Putnam County in 1837, it is named for brothers Michel and Pierre Bureau, French Canadians who ran a trading post from 1776 until the 1780s near the conjunction of Big Bureau Creek with Illinois River. Their actual surname most was Belleau, but the local American Indians had difficulty pronouncing the "l" sound, not found in some local languages. An early settler of this area was Bulbona, a man of mixed French and Native American descent with a Native American wife. Unlike most of the other Native Americans in the area, Bulbona remained after the area was settled by Euro-Americans and ran a trading post, where he sold whiskey among other necessities; the founders of Princeton, the area's oldest town, were settlers from New England, descendants of the English Puritans who settled New England in the 17th century.
They were part of a wave of New England farmers who moved to the Northwest Territory in the early 19th century. Most of them came soon after of the completion of the Erie Canal; when they arrived, they faced wild prairie. These New Englanders laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes, they brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools, were staunch abolitionists. They were members of the Congregationalist Church or Episcopalians. Early Bureau County, like much of northern Illinois, was culturally continuous with early New England culture. Like so many other areas in the Midwest, this county was on a "line" of the Underground Railroad. There was a "station" at the home of Owen Lovejoy in Princeton, several other locations in the county. According to the US Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 874 square miles, of which 869 square miles is land and 4.5 square miles is water.
Big Bureau Creek is the main body of water. In recent years, average temperatures in the county seat of Princeton have ranged from a low of 14 °F in January to a high of 85 °F in July, although a record low of −22 °F was recorded in February 1996 and a record high of 102 °F was recorded in June 1988. Average monthly precipitation ranged from 1.48 inches in February to 4.76 inches in August. As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 34,978 people, 14,262 households, 9,605 families residing in the county; the population density was 40.2 inhabitants per square mile. There were 15,720 housing units at an average density of 18.1 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 94.2% white, 0.7% Asian, 0.6% black or African American, 0.3% American Indian, 3.0% from other races, 1.3% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 7.7% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 32.8% were German, 13.8% were Irish, 12.1% were English, 9.2% were American, 8.8% were Italian, 7.6% were Swedish, 5.8% were Polish.
Of the 14,262 households, 29.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.6% were married couples living together, 9.2% had a female householder with no husband present, 32.7% were non-families, 28.0% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.94. The median age was 42.5 years. The median income for a household in the county was $45,692 and the median income for a family was $55,217. Males had a median income of $42,327 versus $29,210 for females; the per capita income for the county was $24,103. About 8.6% of families and 11.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.3% of those under age 18 and 7.5% of those age 65 or over. Princeton Spring Valley Charles W. Brooks, U. S. Senator Warren Giles, executive in Baseball Hall of Fame Virgil Fox, concert organist Kathryn Hays, actress Robert Petkoff, actor Eliza Suggs and temperance activist Richard Widmark, actor As part of Yankee-settled Northern Illinois, Bureau County became powerfully Republican for the century following the Civil War.
The only Democrat to carry the county between 1856 and 1988 was Franklin D. Roosevelt during his landslide 1932 victory, although Progressive Theodore Roosevelt did carry the county during the 1912 election when the GOP was mortally divided. Between 1988 and 2012, the county trended Democratic – Bill Clinton won pluralities in both his elections and Barack Obama won an absolute majority in 2008 and nearly did so in 2012 – however concern with lack of employment opportunities in the Rust Belt led to a powerful swing toward Donald Trump in 2016 for the best GOP result since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. National Register of Historic Places listings in Bureau County, Illinois Specific GeneralUS Census Bureau 2007 TIGER/Line Shapefiles US Board on Geographic Names US National Atlas Official website
Lee County, Illinois
