Belleville

Belleville, a city and the county-seat of St Clair county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the S.W. part of the state 14 m. S.E. of St Louis, Missouri. Pop. (1890) 15,361; (1900) 17,484, of whom 2750 were foreign-born; (1910) 21,122. Belleville is served by the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Southern railways, also by extensive interurban electric systems; and a belt line to O’Fallon, Illinois, connects Belleville with the Baltimore & Ohio South Western railway. A large element of the population is of German descent or German birth, and two newspapers are published in German, besides three dailies, three weeklies and a semi-weekly in English. Among the industrial establishments of the city are stove and range factories, flour mills, rolling mills, distilleries, breweries, shoe factories, copper refining works, nail and tack factories, glass works and agricultural implement factories. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $2,873,334 in 1900 to $4,356,615 in 1905 or 51.6%. Belleville is in a rich agricultural region, and in the vicinity there are valuable coal mines, the first of which was sunk in 1852; from this dates the industrial development of the city. Belleville was first settled in 1813, was incorporated as a city in 1850, and was re-incorporated in 1876.