CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CUMBERLAND COUNTY

P. 451 COUNTY SEAT CHANGES—

GENERAL FACTS OF INTEREST—

NEWSPAPERS—THE NATIONAL ROAD AND RAILROADS

       Cumberland county was created by act of the general assembly on March 2, 1843. It was made from the south end of Coles county. Its name comes from the old “Cumberland” road. The country was very well settled before it was cut off from Coles.

COUNTY SEAT CHANGES

       The first county seat was Greenup, a small town on the old National Road, somewhat in the southeast corner of the county. Here the county seat remained till 1855, when it was moved to a newly laid out town, Prairie City, which afterward came to be called Toledo.

GENERAL FACTS OF INTEREST

       This county is a prairie county though well watered by the Embarrass river and by a number of smaller streams. The chief interests are agricultural though there are some lines of manufacture carried on, but only on smaller scale. The county is one of the smaller counties containing 353 square miles, with a population of 14,281 inhabitants. The larger towns are Greenup with a population of 1,224; Neoga, 1,074; Toledo, 900; Jewett, 366. There are other small villages. There are ten post offices in the county. In addition to the four mentioned above there are Bradbury, Hazeldell, Janesville, Johnstown, Vevay Park, and Woodberry.

NEWSPAPERS

       The first newspaper in the county was the Greenup Tribune published in 1855, and continued till 1857. It was published by Daniel Marks and later by Templeton and Bloomfield. The paper was moved to Prairie City in 1857. The Toledo Democrat dates from 1859, and is still published.

THE NATIONAL ROAD AND RAILROADS

       When the National Road was surveyed in 1829, it ran across the southeast corner of the county. At a point thirty-seven miles west from the state line the survey ran over the bluffs just east of the Embarrass river. P 452 

       The grade of the road drops into the valley of the river and rises again on the west side. On the bluffs east of the river the town of Greenup was located. The presence of rocks is marked in the bluffs about Greenup. Some three miles further west the village of Jewett grew up, and two miles further the road crossed Big Muddy creek which flows into the Embarrass river at the south edge of the county.

       The county has two railroads: the Vandalia which follows the line of the National Road, and the Peoria Decatur and Evansville which passes through the county from the northwest to the southeast.

The coal report for Illinois gives no mines in operation in the county in 1911. There are nine banks in the county—one for every 1,586 people.

 

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