|
When the Terre
Haute, Alton and
St. Louis Railroad announced
that they were going to come through the area, the town of
Litchfield was born. In the late fall of 1853 the County
Surveyor, Thomas Gray, laid out the town in a cornfield purchased by
the
Litchfield Town Company. Soon 80 acres of cornfields and
prairie grass became 236 lots for sale.
About two miles southwest of the site of Litchfield, another settlement called Hardinsburg was also founded in anticipation of the coming railroad. However, when it
was determined that the railroad would bypass Hardinsburg’s 50
residents in favor of Litchfield, its residents began to move their buildings, on
runners over the prairie grass, to Litchfield.
The first to arrive was a man named J.
M. McWilliams, who moved his small store and house from Hardinsburg in
January, 1854. By the time the railroad reached Litchfield in the fall of 1854, most all of the citizens of the
doomed Hardinsburg had relocated to the new town of Litchfield.
On April 4, 1856, Litchfield formally incorporated its village, and soon elected
trustees and appointed its first Justice of the Peace and Police
Magistrate.
When the Civil War started in April,
1861, Litchfield was the first town in
Illinois
to respond to the President’s call for men.
In 1875, the first hospital was
established by the nuns from the Order of St. Francis. This has
since grown to a 138 bed facility dedicated in 1971.
 In
the 1880's, two coal mines were started in the area which soon put
many men to work and provided another boost to
Litchfield's economy. Soon, another discovery was made of a
small pocket of oil and
Litchfield became the site of the first commercial oil production
in
Illinois. However the
oil was soon exhausted.
As the years passed,
Litchfield
gained five more railroads which gave a further boost the town. Today, two of those remain, including the
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and the Norfolk
Southern.
|
