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NAVIGATION
LaSalle
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History at
Rays Place
Also see [ Railway Officials in America 1906
] NEW
Rays
Place
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The first settlers in this township came in 1830, and two years later many were driven from their homes by the
menace of the Black Hawk Indian war. It was in this township that occurred an historic Indian massacre of the early
days. William Hall, a native of Georgia, came to Illinois in 1825, and in 1832 he settled in Freedom Township,
on Indian Creek, where he and his wife and child were killed by the Indians, May 20 of that year. The first settler
on this creek, in 1830, was a man named Davis, who came from. Kentucky and who married a daughter of John Hays,
the first settler of Peru. Other representative pioneers who here settled within the ‘30s were John H. Henderson,
John W. Lyman, Jonathan Root, William Barbour, Ethan Z. Allen, William Munson (who laid out a village bearing his
name), David B. Martin, Samuel King, Benjamin Seabring, Thomas and William Seabring, Volney Beckwith, Jiram and
Elanson Munson, Milton B. Ruperts, John Hubbard, John H. Hosford, Rev. Wesley Batcheller (a prominent Methodist
clergyman), John Miller, Reuben Miller, Charles and Uriah Miller, Benjamin Beem, Stephen Sampson, James M. Parker,
Dr. Josiah Hall, Hugh M. Gregg, Ezra Gregg, Philip Wagy, Isaac Tarwell, James Skelton, Enos Griggs, George Schofield,
Solomon Holden, June Baxter, Minter Baxter, Samuel L. Cody, Alonzo Wilson, Hiram Harding, William Williams, Charles
Wiley, Patrick Furgeson, Rev. Charles Harding.
In the little Village of Prairie Center Philo Kellogg served as the first postmaster, a position to which he was
appointed January 1, 1867.
The first store in the Village of Harding was established in 1845, and a postoffice had been here established in
1840.
The town was named in honor of Rev. Charles Harding, the first pastor of the Baptist Church that was here founded
in 1843.
The township was organized in 1850, and its first officials were as follows: Supervisor, William Barbour; clerk,
Benjamin F. Hotchkiss; assessor, Israel G. Cooper; collector, Mahion Dickerson; highway commissioners, S. Gould,
John Miller, Ephraim Wimple; justice of the peace, E. Z. Allen; constables, Samuel E. Miner, William Bagley.
FROM:
History of LaSalle County, Illinois
By: Michael Cyprian O'Byron
The Lewis Pullishing Company
Chicago and New York
1924
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